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• TGIF: Engagement Wrap-up

  - by Michael Snow

  We've had a very busy week here at Oracle and as we build up to Oracle OpenWorld starting in less than 10 days - it doesn't look like things will be slowing down. Engagement is definitely in the air this week. Our friend, John Mancini published a great article entitled: "The World of Engagement" on his Digital Landfill blog yesterday and we hosted a great webcast with R "Ray" Wang from Constellation Research yesterday on the "9 C's of Engagement". 12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} I wanted to wrap-up the week with some key takeaways from our webcast yesterday with Ray Wang. If you missed the webcast yesterday, fear not - it is now available  On-Demand. We'll leave you this week with lots of questions about how to navigate these churning waters of engagement. Stay tuned to the Oracle WebCenter Social Business Thought Leaders Webcast Series as we fuel this dialogue. 12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} Company Culture Does company support a culture of putting customer satisfaction ahead of profits? Does culture promote creativity and cross functional employee collaboration? Does culture accept different views of multi-generational workforce? Does culture promote employee training and skills development Does culture support upward mobility and long term retention? Does culture support work-life balance? Does the culture provide rewards for employee for outstanding customer support? Channels What are the current primary channels for customer communications? What do you think will be the primary channels in two years? Is company developing support model for emerging channels? Do all channels consistently deliver the same level of customer support? Do you know the cost per transaction across all channels? Do you engage customers proactively across multiple channels? Do all channels have access to the same customer information? Community Does company extend customer support into virtual communities of interest? Does company facilitate educating users through its virtual communities? Does company mine its customer’s experience into useful data? Does company increase the value for customers through using data to deliver new products and services? Does company support two way interactions with its customers through communities of interest? Does company actively support social CRM, online communities and social media markets? Credibility Does company market its trustworthiness through external certificates such as business licenses, BBB certificates or other validations? Does company promote trust through customer testimonials and case studies on ethical business practices? Does company promote truthful market campaigns Does company make it easy for customers to complain? Does company build its reputation for standing behind its products with guarantees for satisfaction? Does company protect its customer data with high security measures> Content What sources do you use to create customer content? Does company mine social media and blogs for customer content? How does your company sort, store and retain its customer content? How frequently does content get updated? What external sources do you use for customer content? How many responses are typically received from a knowledge management system inquiry? Does your company use customer content to design and develop new product and services? Context Does your company market to customers in clusters or individually? Does your company customize its messages and personalize them to specific needs of each individual customer? Does your company store customer data based on their past behaviors, purchases, sentiment analysis and current activities? Does your company manage customer context according to channels used? For example identify personal use channels versus business channels? What is your frequency of collecting customer activities across various touch points? How is your customer data stored and analyzed? Is contextual data used for future customer outreach? Cadence Which channels does your company measure-web site visits, phone calls, IVR, store visits, face to face, social media? Does company make effective use of cross channel marketing to promote more frequent customer engagement? Does your company rate the patterns relevant for your product or service and monitor usage against this pattern? Does your company measure the frequency of both online and offline channels? Does your company apply metrics to the frequency of customer engagements with product or services revenues? Does your company consolidate data for customer engagement across various channels for a complete view of its customer? Catalyst Does company offer coupon discounts? Does company have a customer loyalty program or a VIP membership program? Does company mine customer data to target specific groups of buyers? Do internal employees serve as ambassadors for customer programs? Does company drive loyalty through social media loyalty programs? Does company build rewards based on using loyalty data? Does company offer an employee incentive program to drive customer loyalty?

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• GLSL: Strange light reflections [Solved]

  - by Tom

  According to this tutorial I'm trying to make a normal mapping using GLSL, but something is wrong and I can't find the solution. The output render is in this image: Image1 in this image is a plane with two triangles and each of it is different illuminated (that is bad). The plane has 6 vertices. In the upper left side of this plane are 2 identical vertices (same in the lower right). Here are some vectors same for each vertice: normal vector = 0, 1, 0 (red lines on image) tangent vector = 0, 0,-1 (green lines on image) bitangent vector = -1, 0, 0 (blue lines on image) here I have one question: The two identical vertices does need to have the same tangent and bitangent? I have tried to make other values to the tangents but the effect was still similar. Here are my shaders Vertex shader: #version 130 // Input vertex data, different for all executions of this shader. in vec3 vertexPosition_modelspace; in vec2 vertexUV; in vec3 vertexNormal_modelspace; in vec3 vertexTangent_modelspace; in vec3 vertexBitangent_modelspace; // Output data ; will be interpolated for each fragment. out vec2 UV; out vec3 Position_worldspace; out vec3 EyeDirection_cameraspace; out vec3 LightDirection_cameraspace; out vec3 LightDirection_tangentspace; out vec3 EyeDirection_tangentspace; // Values that stay constant for the whole mesh. uniform mat4 MVP; uniform mat4 V; uniform mat4 M; uniform mat3 MV3x3; uniform vec3 LightPosition_worldspace; void main(){ // Output position of the vertex, in clip space : MVP * position gl_Position = MVP * vec4(vertexPosition_modelspace,1); // Position of the vertex, in worldspace : M * position Position_worldspace = (M * vec4(vertexPosition_modelspace,1)).xyz; // Vector that goes from the vertex to the camera, in camera space. // In camera space, the camera is at the origin (0,0,0). vec3 vertexPosition_cameraspace = ( V * M * vec4(vertexPosition_modelspace,1)).xyz; EyeDirection_cameraspace = vec3(0,0,0) - vertexPosition_cameraspace; // Vector that goes from the vertex to the light, in camera space. M is ommited because it's identity. vec3 LightPosition_cameraspace = ( V * vec4(LightPosition_worldspace,1)).xyz; LightDirection_cameraspace = LightPosition_cameraspace + EyeDirection_cameraspace; // UV of the vertex. No special space for this one. UV = vertexUV; // model to camera = ModelView vec3 vertexTangent_cameraspace = MV3x3 * vertexTangent_modelspace; vec3 vertexBitangent_cameraspace = MV3x3 * vertexBitangent_modelspace; vec3 vertexNormal_cameraspace = MV3x3 * vertexNormal_modelspace; mat3 TBN = transpose(mat3( vertexTangent_cameraspace, vertexBitangent_cameraspace, vertexNormal_cameraspace )); // You can use dot products instead of building this matrix and transposing it. See References for details. LightDirection_tangentspace = TBN * LightDirection_cameraspace; EyeDirection_tangentspace = TBN * EyeDirection_cameraspace; } Fragment shader: #version 130 // Interpolated values from the vertex shaders in vec2 UV; in vec3 Position_worldspace; in vec3 EyeDirection_cameraspace; in vec3 LightDirection_cameraspace; in vec3 LightDirection_tangentspace; in vec3 EyeDirection_tangentspace; // Ouput data out vec3 color; // Values that stay constant for the whole mesh. uniform sampler2D DiffuseTextureSampler; uniform sampler2D NormalTextureSampler; uniform sampler2D SpecularTextureSampler; uniform mat4 V; uniform mat4 M; uniform mat3 MV3x3; uniform vec3 LightPosition_worldspace; void main(){ // Light emission properties // You probably want to put them as uniforms vec3 LightColor = vec3(1,1,1); float LightPower = 40.0; // Material properties vec3 MaterialDiffuseColor = texture2D( DiffuseTextureSampler, vec2(UV.x,-UV.y) ).rgb; vec3 MaterialAmbientColor = vec3(0.1,0.1,0.1) * MaterialDiffuseColor; //vec3 MaterialSpecularColor = texture2D( SpecularTextureSampler, UV ).rgb * 0.3; vec3 MaterialSpecularColor = vec3(0.5,0.5,0.5); // Local normal, in tangent space. V tex coordinate is inverted because normal map is in TGA (not in DDS) for better quality vec3 TextureNormal_tangentspace = normalize(texture2D( NormalTextureSampler, vec2(UV.x,-UV.y) ).rgb*2.0 - 1.0); // Distance to the light float distance = length( LightPosition_worldspace - Position_worldspace ); // Normal of the computed fragment, in camera space vec3 n = TextureNormal_tangentspace; // Direction of the light (from the fragment to the light) vec3 l = normalize(LightDirection_tangentspace); // Cosine of the angle between the normal and the light direction, // clamped above 0 // - light is at the vertical of the triangle -> 1 // - light is perpendicular to the triangle -> 0 // - light is behind the triangle -> 0 float cosTheta = clamp( dot( n,l ), 0,1 ); // Eye vector (towards the camera) vec3 E = normalize(EyeDirection_tangentspace); // Direction in which the triangle reflects the light vec3 R = reflect(-l,n); // Cosine of the angle between the Eye vector and the Reflect vector, // clamped to 0 // - Looking into the reflection -> 1 // - Looking elsewhere -> < 1 float cosAlpha = clamp( dot( E,R ), 0,1 ); color = // Ambient : simulates indirect lighting MaterialAmbientColor + // Diffuse : "color" of the object MaterialDiffuseColor * LightColor * LightPower * cosTheta / (distance*distance) + // Specular : reflective highlight, like a mirror MaterialSpecularColor * LightColor * LightPower * pow(cosAlpha,5) / (distance*distance); //color.xyz = E; //color.xyz = LightDirection_tangentspace; //color.xyz = EyeDirection_tangentspace; } I have replaced the original color value by EyeDirection_tangentspace vector and then I got other strange effect but I can not link the image (not eunogh reputation) Is it possible that with this shaders is something wrong, or maybe in other place in my code e.g with my matrices?

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• Let your Signature Experience drive IT-decision making

  - by Tania Le Voi

  Today’s CIO job description:  ‘’Align IT infrastructure and solutions with business goals and objectives ; AND while doing so reduce costs; BUT ALSO, be innovative, ensure the architectures are adaptable and agile as we need to act today on the changes that we may request tomorrow.”   Sound like an unachievable request? The fact is, reality dictates that CIO’s are put under this type of pressure to deliver more with less. In a past career phase I spent a few years as an IT Relationship Manager for a large Insurance company. This is a role that we see all too infrequently in many of our customers, and it’s a shame.  The purpose of this role was to build a bridge, a relationship between IT and the business. Key to achieving that goal was to ensure the same language was being spoken and more importantly that objectives were commonly understood - hence service and projects were delivered to time, to budget and actually solved the business problems. In reality IT and the business are already married, but the relationship is most often defined as ‘supplier’ of IT rather than a ‘trusted partner’. To deliver business value they need to understand how to work together effectively to attain this next level of partnership. The Business cannot compete if they do not get a new product to market ahead of the competition, or for example act in a timely manner to address a new industry problem such as a legislative change. An even better example is when the Application or Service fails and the Business takes a hit by bad publicity, being trending topics on social media and losing direct revenue from online channels. For this reason alone Business and IT need the alignment of their priorities and deliverables now more than ever! Take a look at Forrester’s recent study that found ‘many IT respondents considering themselves to be trusted partners of the business but their efforts are impaired by the inadequacy of tools and organizations’.  IT Meet the Business; Business Meet IT So what is going on? We talk about aligning the business with IT but the reality is it’s difficult to do. Like any relationship each side has different goals and needs and language can be a barrier; business vs. technology jargon! What if we could translate the needs of both sides into actionable information, backed by data both sides understand, presented in a meaningful way?  Well now we can with the Business-Driven Application Management capabilities in Oracle Enterprise Manager 12cR2! Enterprise Manager’s Business-Driven Application Management capabilities provide the information that IT needs to understand the impact of its decisions on business criteria.  No longer does IT need to be focused solely on speeds and feeds, performance and throughput – now IT can understand IT’s impact on business KPIs like inventory turns, order-to-cash cycle, pipeline-to-forecast, and similar.  Similarly, now the line of business can understand which IT services are most critical for the KPIs they care about. There are a good deal of resources on Oracle Technology Network that describe the functionality of these products, so I won’t’ rehash them here.  What I want to talk about is what you do with these products. What’s next after we meet? Where do you start? Step 1:  Identify the Signature Experience. This is THE business process (or set of processes) that is core to the business, the one that drives the economic engine, the process that a customer recognises the company brand for, reputation, the customer experience, the process that a CEO would state as his number one priority. The crème de la crème of your business! Once you have nailed this it gets easy as Enterprise Manager 12c makes it easy. Step 2:  Map the Signature Experience to underlying IT.  Taking the signature experience, map out the touch points of the components that play a part in ensuring this business transaction is successful end to end, think of it like mapping out a critical path; the applications, middleware, databases and hardware. Use the wealth of Enterprise Manager features such as Systems, Services, Business Application Targets and Business Transaction Management (BTM) to assist you. Adding Real User Experience Insight (RUEI) into the mix will make the end to end customer satisfaction story transparent. Work with the business and define meaningful key performance indicators (KPI’s) and thresholds to enable you to report and action upon. Step 3:  Observe the data over time.  You now have meaningful insight into every step enabling your signature experience and you understand the implication of that experience on your underlying IT.  Watch if for a few months, see what happens and reconvene with your business stakeholders and set clear and measurable targets which can re-define service levels.  Step 4:  Change the information about which you and the business communicate.  It’s amazing what happens when you and the business speak the same language.  You’ll be able to make more informed business and IT decisions. From here IT can identify where/how budget is spent whether on the level of support, performance, capacity, HA, DR, certification etc. IT SLA’s no longer need be focused on metrics such as %availability but structured around business process requirements. The power of this way of thinking doesn’t end here. IT staff get to see and understand how their own role contributes to the business making them accountable for the business service. Take a step further and appraise your staff on the business competencies that are linked to the service availability. For the business, the language barrier is removed by producing targeted reports on the signature experience core to the business and therefore key to the CEO. Chargeback or show back becomes easier to justify as the ‘cost of day per outage’ can be more easily calculated; the business will be able to translate the cost to the business to the cost/value of the underlying IT that supports it. Used this way, Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c is a key enabler to a harmonious relationship between the end customer the business and IT to deliver ultimate service and satisfaction. Just engage with the business upfront, make the signature experience visible and let Enterprise Manager 12c do the rest. In the next blog entry we will cover some of the Enterprise Manager features mentioned to enable you to implement this new way of working.  

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• GLSL: Strange light reflections

  - by Tom

  According to this tutorial I'm trying to make a normal mapping using GLSL, but something is wrong and I can't find the solution. The output render is in this image: Image1 in this image is a plane with two triangles and each of it is different illuminated (that is bad). The plane has 6 vertices. In the upper left side of this plane are 2 identical vertices (same in the lower right). Here are some vectors same for each vertice: normal vector = 0, 1, 0 (red lines on image) tangent vector = 0, 0,-1 (green lines on image) bitangent vector = -1, 0, 0 (blue lines on image) here I have one question: The two identical vertices does need to have the same tangent and bitangent? I have tried to make other values to the tangents but the effect was still similar. Here are my shaders Vertex shader: #version 130 // Input vertex data, different for all executions of this shader. in vec3 vertexPosition_modelspace; in vec2 vertexUV; in vec3 vertexNormal_modelspace; in vec3 vertexTangent_modelspace; in vec3 vertexBitangent_modelspace; // Output data ; will be interpolated for each fragment. out vec2 UV; out vec3 Position_worldspace; out vec3 EyeDirection_cameraspace; out vec3 LightDirection_cameraspace; out vec3 LightDirection_tangentspace; out vec3 EyeDirection_tangentspace; // Values that stay constant for the whole mesh. uniform mat4 MVP; uniform mat4 V; uniform mat4 M; uniform mat3 MV3x3; uniform vec3 LightPosition_worldspace; void main(){ // Output position of the vertex, in clip space : MVP * position gl_Position = MVP * vec4(vertexPosition_modelspace,1); // Position of the vertex, in worldspace : M * position Position_worldspace = (M * vec4(vertexPosition_modelspace,1)).xyz; // Vector that goes from the vertex to the camera, in camera space. // In camera space, the camera is at the origin (0,0,0). vec3 vertexPosition_cameraspace = ( V * M * vec4(vertexPosition_modelspace,1)).xyz; EyeDirection_cameraspace = vec3(0,0,0) - vertexPosition_cameraspace; // Vector that goes from the vertex to the light, in camera space. M is ommited because it's identity. vec3 LightPosition_cameraspace = ( V * vec4(LightPosition_worldspace,1)).xyz; LightDirection_cameraspace = LightPosition_cameraspace + EyeDirection_cameraspace; // UV of the vertex. No special space for this one. UV = vertexUV; // model to camera = ModelView vec3 vertexTangent_cameraspace = MV3x3 * vertexTangent_modelspace; vec3 vertexBitangent_cameraspace = MV3x3 * vertexBitangent_modelspace; vec3 vertexNormal_cameraspace = MV3x3 * vertexNormal_modelspace; mat3 TBN = transpose(mat3( vertexTangent_cameraspace, vertexBitangent_cameraspace, vertexNormal_cameraspace )); // You can use dot products instead of building this matrix and transposing it. See References for details. LightDirection_tangentspace = TBN * LightDirection_cameraspace; EyeDirection_tangentspace = TBN * EyeDirection_cameraspace; } Fragment shader: #version 130 // Interpolated values from the vertex shaders in vec2 UV; in vec3 Position_worldspace; in vec3 EyeDirection_cameraspace; in vec3 LightDirection_cameraspace; in vec3 LightDirection_tangentspace; in vec3 EyeDirection_tangentspace; // Ouput data out vec3 color; // Values that stay constant for the whole mesh. uniform sampler2D DiffuseTextureSampler; uniform sampler2D NormalTextureSampler; uniform sampler2D SpecularTextureSampler; uniform mat4 V; uniform mat4 M; uniform mat3 MV3x3; uniform vec3 LightPosition_worldspace; void main(){ // Light emission properties // You probably want to put them as uniforms vec3 LightColor = vec3(1,1,1); float LightPower = 40.0; // Material properties vec3 MaterialDiffuseColor = texture2D( DiffuseTextureSampler, vec2(UV.x,-UV.y) ).rgb; vec3 MaterialAmbientColor = vec3(0.1,0.1,0.1) * MaterialDiffuseColor; //vec3 MaterialSpecularColor = texture2D( SpecularTextureSampler, UV ).rgb * 0.3; vec3 MaterialSpecularColor = vec3(0.5,0.5,0.5); // Local normal, in tangent space. V tex coordinate is inverted because normal map is in TGA (not in DDS) for better quality vec3 TextureNormal_tangentspace = normalize(texture2D( NormalTextureSampler, vec2(UV.x,-UV.y) ).rgb*2.0 - 1.0); // Distance to the light float distance = length( LightPosition_worldspace - Position_worldspace ); // Normal of the computed fragment, in camera space vec3 n = TextureNormal_tangentspace; // Direction of the light (from the fragment to the light) vec3 l = normalize(LightDirection_tangentspace); // Cosine of the angle between the normal and the light direction, // clamped above 0 // - light is at the vertical of the triangle -> 1 // - light is perpendicular to the triangle -> 0 // - light is behind the triangle -> 0 float cosTheta = clamp( dot( n,l ), 0,1 ); // Eye vector (towards the camera) vec3 E = normalize(EyeDirection_tangentspace); // Direction in which the triangle reflects the light vec3 R = reflect(-l,n); // Cosine of the angle between the Eye vector and the Reflect vector, // clamped to 0 // - Looking into the reflection -> 1 // - Looking elsewhere -> < 1 float cosAlpha = clamp( dot( E,R ), 0,1 ); color = // Ambient : simulates indirect lighting MaterialAmbientColor + // Diffuse : "color" of the object MaterialDiffuseColor * LightColor * LightPower * cosTheta / (distance*distance) + // Specular : reflective highlight, like a mirror MaterialSpecularColor * LightColor * LightPower * pow(cosAlpha,5) / (distance*distance); //color.xyz = E; //color.xyz = LightDirection_tangentspace; //color.xyz = EyeDirection_tangentspace; } I have replaced the original color value by EyeDirection_tangentspace vector and then I got other strange effect but I can not link the image (not eunogh reputation) Is it possible that with this shaders is something wrong, or maybe in other place in my code e.g with my matrices? SOLVED Solved... 3 days needed for changing one letter from this: glBindBuffer(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, vbo); glVertexAttribPointer ( 4, // attribute 3, // size GL_FLOAT, // type GL_FALSE, // normalized? sizeof(VboVertex), // stride (void*)(12*sizeof(float)) // array buffer offset ); to this: glBindBuffer(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, vbo); glVertexAttribPointer ( 4, // attribute 3, // size GL_FLOAT, // type GL_FALSE, // normalized? sizeof(VboVertex), // stride (void*)(11*sizeof(float)) // array buffer offset ); see difference? :)

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• Strange Flash AS3 xml Socket behavior

  - by Rnd_d

  I have a problem which I can't understand. To understand it I wrote a socket client on AS3 and a server on python/twisted, you can see the code of both applications below. Let's launch two clients at the same time, arrange them so that you can see both windows and press connection button in both windows. Then press and hold any button. What I'm expecting: Client with pressed button sends a message "some data" to the server, then the server sends this message to all the clients(including the original sender) . Then each client moves right the button 'connectButton' and prints a message to the log with time in the following format: "min:secs:milliseconds". What is going wrong: The motion is smooth in the client that sends the message, but in all other clients the motion is jerky. This happens because messages to those clients arrive later than to the original sending client. And if we have three clients (let's name them A,B,C) and we send a message from A, the sending time log of B and C will be the same. Why other clients recieve this messages later than the original sender? By the way, on ubuntu 10.04/chrome all the motion is smooth. Two clients are launched in separated chromes. windows screenshot Can't post linux screenshot, need more than 10 reputation to post more hyperlinks. Listing of log, four clients simultaneously: [16:29:33.280858] 62.140.224.1 >> some data [16:29:33.280912] 87.249.9.98 << some data [16:29:33.280970] 87.249.9.98 << some data [16:29:33.281025] 87.249.9.98 << some data [16:29:33.281079] 62.140.224.1 << some data [16:29:33.323267] 62.140.224.1 >> some data [16:29:33.323326] 87.249.9.98 << some data [16:29:33.323386] 87.249.9.98 << some data [16:29:33.323440] 87.249.9.98 << some data [16:29:33.323493] 62.140.224.1 << some data [16:29:34.123435] 62.140.224.1 >> some data [16:29:34.123525] 87.249.9.98 << some data [16:29:34.123593] 87.249.9.98 << some data [16:29:34.123648] 87.249.9.98 << some data [16:29:34.123702] 62.140.224.1 << some data AS3 client code package { import adobe.utils.CustomActions; import flash.display.Sprite; import flash.events.DataEvent; import flash.events.Event; import flash.events.IOErrorEvent; import flash.events.KeyboardEvent; import flash.events.MouseEvent; import flash.events.SecurityErrorEvent; import flash.net.XMLSocket; import flash.system.Security; import flash.text.TextField; public class Main extends Sprite { private var socket :XMLSocket; private var textField :TextField = new TextField; private var connectButton :TextField = new TextField; public function Main():void { if (stage) init(); else addEventListener(Event.ADDED_TO_STAGE, init); } private function init(event:Event = null):void { socket = new XMLSocket(); socket.addEventListener(Event.CONNECT, connectHandler); socket.addEventListener(DataEvent.DATA, dataHandler); stage.addEventListener(KeyboardEvent.KEY_DOWN, keyDownHandler); addChild(textField); textField.y = 50; textField.width = 780; textField.height = 500; textField.border = true; connectButton.selectable = false; connectButton.border = true; connectButton.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_DOWN, connectMouseDownHandler); connectButton.width = 105; connectButton.height = 20; connectButton.text = "click here to connect"; addChild(connectButton); } private function connectHandler(event:Event):void { textField.appendText("Connect\n"); textField.appendText("Press and hold any key\n"); } private function dataHandler(event:DataEvent):void { var now:Date = new Date(); textField.appendText(event.data + " time = " + now.getMinutes() + ":" + now.getSeconds() + ":" + now.getMilliseconds() + "\n"); connectButton.x += 2; } private function keyDownHandler(event:KeyboardEvent):void { socket.send("some data"); } private function connectMouseDownHandler(event:MouseEvent):void { var connectAddress:String = "ep1c.org"; var connectPort:Number = 13250; Security.loadPolicyFile("xmlsocket://" + connectAddress + ":" + String(connectPort)); socket.connect(connectAddress, connectPort); } } } Python server code from twisted.internet import reactor from twisted.internet.protocol import ServerFactory from twisted.protocols.basic import LineOnlyReceiver import datetime class EchoProtocol(LineOnlyReceiver): ##### name = "" id = 0 delimiter = chr(0) ##### def getName(self): return self.transport.getPeer().host def connectionMade(self): self.id = self.factory.getNextId() print "New connection from %s - id:%s" % (self.getName(), self.id) self.factory.clientProtocols[self.id] = self def connectionLost(self, reason): print "Lost connection from "+ self.getName() del self.factory.clientProtocols[self.id] self.factory.sendMessageToAllClients(self.getName() + " has disconnected.") def lineReceived(self, line): print "[%s] %s >> %s" % (datetime.datetime.now().time(), self, line) if line=="<policy-file-request/>": data = """<?xml version="1.0"?> <!DOCTYPE cross-domain-policy SYSTEM "http://www.adobe.com/xml/dtds/cross-domain-policy.dtd"> <!-- Policy file for xmlsocket://ep1c.org --> <cross-domain-policy> <allow-access-from domain="*" to-ports="%s" /> </cross-domain-policy>""" % PORT self.send(data) else: self.factory.sendMessageToAllClients( line ) def send(self, line): print "[%s] %s << %s" % (datetime.datetime.now().time(), self, line) if line: self.transport.write( str(line) + chr(0)) else: print "Nothing to send" def __str__(self): return self.getName() class ChatProtocolFactory(ServerFactory): protocol = EchoProtocol def __init__(self): self.clientProtocols = {} self.nextId = 0 def getNextId(self): id = self.nextId self.nextId += 1 return id def sendMessageToAllClients(self, msg): for client in self.clientProtocols: self.clientProtocols[client].send(msg) def sendMessageToClient(self, id, msg): self.clientProtocols[id].send(msg) PORT = 13250 print "Starting Server" factory = ChatProtocolFactory() reactor.listenTCP(PORT, factory) reactor.run()

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• Fitting it together, database, reporting, applications in C#

  - by alvonellos

  Introduction Preamble I was hesitant to post this, since it's an application whose intricate details are defined elsewhere, and answers may not be helpful to others. Within the past few weeks (I was actually going to write a blog post about this after I finished) I've discovered that the barrier I'm encountering is one that's actually quite common for newer developers. This question is not so much about a specific thing as it is about piecing those things together. I've searched the internet far and wide, and found many tutorials on how to create applications that are kind of similar to what I'm looking for. I've also looked at hiring another, more experienced, developer to help me along, but all I've gotten are unqualified candidates that don't have the experience necessary and won't take care of the client or project like I will. I'd rather have the project never transpire than to release a solution that is half-baked. I've asked professors at my school, but they've not turned up answers to my question. I'm an experienced developer, and I've written many applications that are -- very abstractly -- close to what I'm doing, but my experiences from those applications aren't giving me enough leverage to solve this particular problem. I just hope that posting this article isn't a mistake for me to write. Project Description I have a project I'm working on for a client that is a rewrite of an application, originally written in Foxpro 2.6 by someone before me, that performs some analysis (which, sadly, I'm not allowed to disclose as per of my employment contract) on financial data. One day, after a long talk between the client and I -- where he intimately described his frustrations with all the bugs I've been hacking out of this code for 6 months now -- he told me to just rewrite it and gave me a month to write a good 1/8 of this 65k LOC Foxpro monstrosity. this 65k line of code foxpro monstrosity. It'll take me a good 3 - 6 months to rewrite this software (I know things the original programmer did not, like inheritance) going as I am right now, but I'm quickly discovering that I'm going to need to use databases. Prior to this contract I didn't even know about foxpro, and so I've had to learn foxpro on the fly, write procedures and make modifications to the database. I've actually come to like it, and this project would be rewritten in Foxpro if it were still a supported language, because over the past few months, I've come to like the features of Foxpro that make it so easy to develop data-driven applications. I once perfomed an experiment, comparing C# to Foxpro. What took me 45 minutes in C# took me two in Foxpro, and I knew C# prior to Foxpro. I was hoping to leverage the power of C#, but it intimidates me that in foxpro, you can have one line of code and be using a database. Prior to this, I have never written any serious database development from scratch. All the applications that I've written are in a different league. They are either completely data-naive or data-naive enough that I can get away with not using a database through serialization or by designing algorithms that work with the data in a manner that is stateless, so there is no need to worry about databases. I've come to realize, very quickly, that serialization and my efficacy with data structures has been my crutch all these years that's prevented me from adventuring into databases, and has consequently hindered my success in real-world programming. Sure, I've written some database stuff in Perl and Python, and I've done forms and worked with relational databases and tables, I'm a wizard in Access and Excel (seriously) and can do just about anything, but it just feels unnatural writing SQL code in another language... I don't mind writing SQL, and I don't It's that bridge between the database and the program code that drives me absolutely bonkers. I hope I'm not the only one to think this, but it bothers me that I have to create statements like the following string sSql = "SELECT * from tablename" When there's really no reason for that kind of unchecked language binding between two languages and two API's. Don't get my wrong, SQL is great, but I don't like the idea that, when executing commands on a SQL database, that one must intermix database and application software, and there's no database independence, which means that different versions of different databases can break code. This isn't very nice. The nicest thing about Foxpro is the cohesiveness between programming language and database. It's so easy, and Foxpro makes it easy, because the tool just fits the task. I can see why so many developers have created a career with this language, because it lowered the barrier of entry to data-driven applications that so many businesses need. It was wonderful. For my purposes today, with the demands and need for community support, extensibility, and language features, Foxpro isn't a solution that I feel would be the right tool for the job. I'm also worried about working too heavy with the database, because I've seen data-driven .NET applications have issues with database caches, running out of memory, and objects in the database not being collected. (Memory leaks) And OH the queries. Which one, how, and why? There are a plethora of different ways that a database can be setup, I think I counted 5 or 6 different kinds of database applications alone that I can chose from. That is a great mountain for me to climb when I don't even know where to begin when it comes to writing data-driven applications. The problem isn't that I don't know SQL or that I don't know C#. I know both and have worked with both extensively. It's making them work together that's the problem, and it's something I've never done in C# before. Reports The client likes paper. The data needs to be printed out in a format that is extensible, layered, and easy to use. I have never done reporting before, and so this is a bit of a problem. From the data source comes crystal reports, and so there's a dependency on the database, from what I understand. Code reuse A large part of the design decision that I've gone through so far is to break the task of writing a piece of this software into routines and modular DLL's and so forth such that much of the code can be reused. For example, when I setup this database, I want to be able to reuse the same database code over and over again. I also want to make sure that when the day comes that another developer is here, that he/she will be able to pick up just where I left off. The quicker I develop these applications, the better off I am. Tasks & Goals In my project, I need to write routines that apply algorithms and look for predefined patterns in financial data. Additionally, I need to simulate trading based on predefined algorithms and data. Then I need to prepare reports on that data. Additionally, I need to have a way to change the code base for this application quickly and effectively, without hacking together some band-aid solution for a problem that really needs a trauma ward. Special Considerations The solution must be fast, run quickly on existing hardware, and not be too much of a pain to maintain and write. I understand that anything I write I'm married to -- I'm responsible for the things that I write because my reputation and livelihood is dependent on it. Do I really need a database? What about performance? Performance was such a big issue that I hand wrote a data structure that is capable of performing 2 billion operations, using a total of 4 gigs of memory in under 1/4 of a second using the standard core two duo processor. I could not find a similar, pre-written data structure in C# to perform this task. What setup do I use in terms of database? What about reporting? I'd prefer to have PDF's generated, but I'd like to be able to visually sketch those reports and then just have a ReportFactory of some sort, that when I pass some variables in, it just does that data. About Me I'm a lone developer for a small business in this area. This is the first time I've done this and I've never had the breadth and depth of my knowledge tested. I'm incredibly frustrated with this project because I feel incredibly overwhelmed with the task at hand. I'm looking for that entry level point where I can draw a line and say "this is what I need to do" Conclusion I may have not been clear enough on my post. I'm still new to this whole thing, and I've been doing my best to contribute back to the community that I've leached so much knowledge from. I'd be glad to edit my post and add more information if possible. I'm looking for a big-picture solution or design process that helps me get off the ground in this world of data-driven applications, because I have a feeling that it's going to be concentric to my entire career as a programmer for some time. Specifically, if you didn't get it from the rest of the post (I may not have been clear enough) I really need some guidance as to where to go in terms of the design decisions for this project. Some things that'll be useful will be a pro/con list for the different kinds of database projects available in VS2010. I've tried, but generating that list has been as hard as solving the problem itself... If you could walk a developer writing a data-driven application for the first time in C#, how would you do that? Where would you point them to?

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• Ada and 'The Book'

  - by Phil Factor

  The long friendship between Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace created one of the most exciting and mysterious of collaborations ever to have resulted in a technological breakthrough. The fireworks that created by the collision of two prodigious mathematical and creative talents resulted in an invention, the Analytical Engine, which went on to change society fundamentally. However, beyond that, we just don't know what the bulk of their collaborative work was about:;  it was done in strictest secrecy. Even the known outcome of their friendship, the first programmable computer, was shrouded in mystery. At the time, nobody, except close friends and family, had any idea of Ada Byron's contribution to the invention of the ‘Engine’, and how to program it. Her great insight was published in August 1843, under the initials AAL, standing for Ada Augusta Lovelace, her title then being the Countess of Lovelace. It was contained in a lengthy ‘note’ to her translation of a publication that remains the best description of Babbage's amazing Analytical Engine. The secret identity of the person behind those enigmatic initials was finally revealed by Prince de Polignac who, seventy years later, wrote to Ada's daughter to seek confirmation that her mother had, indeed, been the author of the brilliant sentences that described so accurately how Babbage's mechanical computer could be programmed with punch-cards. L.F. Menabrea's paper on the Analytical Engine first appeared in the 'Bibliotheque Universelle de Geneve' in October 1842, and Ada translated it anonymously for Taylor's 'Scientific Memoirs'. Charles Babbage was surprised that she had not written an original paper as she already knew a surprising amount about the way the machine worked. He persuaded her to at least write some explanatory notes. These notes ended up extending to four times the length of the original article and represented the first published account of how a machine could be programmed to perform any calculation. Her example of programming the Bernoulli sequence would have worked on the Analytical engine had the device’s construction been completed, and gave Ada an unassailable claim to have invented the art of programming. What was the reason for Ada's secrecy? She was the only legitimate child of Lord Byron, who was probably the best known celebrity of the age, so she was already famous. She was a senior aristocrat, with titles, a fortune in money and vast estates in the Midlands. She had political influence, and was the cousin of Lord Melbourne, who was the Prime Minister at that time. She was friendly with the young Queen Victoria. Her mathematical activities were a pastime, and not one that would be considered by others to be in keeping with her roles and responsibilities. You wouldn't dare to dream up a fictional heroine like Ada. She was dazzlingly beautiful and talented. She could speak several languages fluently, and play some musical instruments with professional skill. Contemporary accounts refer to her being 'accomplished in science, art and literature'. On top of that, she was a brilliant mathematician, a talent inherited from her mother, Annabella Milbanke. In her mother's circle of literary and scientific friends was Charles Babbage, and Ada's friendship with him dates from her teenage zest for Mathematics. She was one of the first people he'd ever met who understood what he had attempted to achieve with the 'Difference Engine', and with whom he could converse as intellectual equals. He arranged for her to have an education from the most talented academics in the country. Ada melted the heart of the cantankerous genius to the point that he became a faithful and loyal father-figure to her. She was one of the very few who could grasp the principles of the later, and very different, ‘Analytical Engine’ which was designed from the start to tackle a variety of tasks. Sadly, Ada Byron's life ended less than a decade after completing the work that assured her long-term fame, in November 1852. She was dying of cancer, her gambling habits had caused her to run up huge debts, she'd had more than one affairs, and she was being blackmailed. Her brilliant but unempathic mother was nursing her in her final illness, destroying her personal letters and records, and repaying her debts. Her husband was distraught but helpless. Charles Babbage, however, maintained his steadfast paternalistic friendship to the end. She appointed her loyal friend to be her executor. For years, she and Babbage had been working together on a secret project, known only as 'The Book'. We have a clue to what it was in a letter written by her nine years earlier, on 11th August 1843. It was a joint project by herself and Lord Lovelace, her husband, and was intended to involve Babbage's 'undivided energies'. It involved 'consulting your Engine' (it required Babbage’s computer). The letter gives no hint about the project except for the high-minded nature of its purpose, and its highly mathematical nature.  From then on, the surviving correspondence between the two gives only veiled references to 'The Book'. There isn't much, since Babbage later destroyed any letters that could have damaged her reputation within the Establishment. 'I cannot spare the book today, which I am very sorry for. At the moment I want it for constant reference, but I think you can have it tomorrow' (Oct 1844)  And 'I will send you the book directly, and you can say, when you receive it, how long you will want to keep it'. (Nov 1844)  The two of them were obviously intent on the work: She writes, four years later, 'I have an engagement for Wednesday which will prevent me from attending to your wishes about the book' (Dec 1848). This was something that they both needed to work on, but could not do in parallel: 'I will send the book on Tuesday, and it can be left with you till Friday' (11 Feb 1849). After six years work, it had been so well-handled that it was beginning to fall apart: 'Don't forget the new cover you promised for the book. The poor book is very shabby and wants one' (20 Sept 1849). So what was going on? The word 'book' was not a code-word: it was a real book, probably a 'printer's blank', plain paper, but properly bound so printers and publishers could show off how the published work might look. The hints from the correspondence are of advanced mathematics. It is obvious that the book was travelling between them, back and forth, each one working on it for less than a week before passing it back. Ada and her husband were certainly involved in gambling large sums of money on the horses, and so most biographers have concluded that the three of them were trying to calculate the mathematical odds on the horses. This theory has three large problems. Firstly, Ada's original letter proposing the project refers to its high-minded nature. Babbage was temperamentally opposed to gambling and would scarcely have given so much time to the project, even though he was devoted to Ada. Secondly, Babbage would have very soon have realized the hopelessness of trying to beat the bookies. This sort of betting never attracts his type of intellectual background. The third problem is that any work on calculating the odds on horses would not need a well-thumbed book to pass back and forth between them; they would have not had to work in series. The original project was instigated by Ada, along with her husband, William King-Noel, 1st Earl of Lovelace. Charles Babbage was invited to join the project after the couple had come up with the idea. What could William have contributed? One might assume that William was a Bertie Wooster character, addicted only to the joys of the turf, but this was far from the truth. He was a scientist, a Cambridge graduate who was later elected to be a Fellow of the Royal Society. After Eton, he went to Trinity College, Cambridge. On graduation, he entered the diplomatic service and acted as secretary under Lord Nugent, who was Lord Commissioner of the Ionian Islands. William was very friendly with Babbage too, able to discuss scientific matters on equal terms. He was a capable engineer who invented a process for bending large timbers by the application of steam heat. He delivered a paper to the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1849, and received praise from the great engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel. As well as being Lord Lieutenant of the County of Surrey for most of Victoria's reign, he had time for a string of scientific and engineering achievements. Whatever the project was, it is unlikely that William was a junior partner. After Ada's death, the project disappeared. Then, two years later, Babbage, through one of his occasional outbursts of temper, demonstrated that he was able to decrypt one of the most powerful of secret codes, Vigenère's autokey cipher.  All contemporary diplomatic and military messages used a variant of this cipher. Babbage had made three important discoveries, namely, the mathematical law of this cipher, the principle of the key periodicity, and the technique of the symmetry of position. The technique is now known as the Kasiski examination, also called the Kasiski test, but Babbage got there first. At one time, he listed amongst his future projects, the writing of a book 'The Philosophy of Decyphering', but it never came to anything. This discovery was going to change the course of history, since it was used to decipher the Russians’ military dispatches in the Crimean war. Babbage himself played a role during the Crimean War as a cryptographical adviser to his friend, Rear-Admiral Sir Francis Beaufort of the Admiralty. This is as much as we can be certain about in trying to make sense of the bulk of the time that Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace worked together. Nine years of intensive work, involving the 'Engine' and a great deal of mathematics and research seems to have been lost: or has it? I've argued in the past http://www.simple-talk.com/community/blogs/philfactor/archive/2008/06/13/59614.aspx that the cracking of the Vigenère autokey cipher, was a fundamental motive behind the British Government's support and funding of the 'Difference Engine'. The Duke of Wellington, whose understanding of the military significance of being able to read enemy dispatches, was the most steadfast advocate of the project. If the three friends were actually doing the work of cracking codes by mathematical techniques that used the techniques of key periodicity, and symmetry of position (the use of a book being passed quickly to and fro is very suggestive), intending to then use the 'Engine' to do the routine cracking of each dispatch, then this is a rather different story. The project was Ada and William's idea. (William had served in the diplomatic service and would be familiar with the use of codes). This makes Ada Lovelace the initiator of a project which, by giving both Britain, and probably the USA, a diplomatic and military advantage in the second part of the Nineteenth century, changed world history. Ada would never have wanted any credit for cracking the cipher, and developing the method that rendered all contemporary military and diplomatic ciphering techniques nugatory; quite the reverse. And it is clear from the gaps in the record of the letters between the collaborators that the evidence was destroyed, probably on her request by her irascible but intensely honorable executor, Charles Babbage. Charles Babbage toyed with the idea of going public, but the Crimean war put an end to that. The British Government had a valuable secret, and intended to keep it that way. Ada and Charles had quite often discussed possible moneymaking projects that would fund the development of the Analytic Engine, the first programmable computer, but their secret work was never in the running as a potential cash cow. I suspect that the British Government was, even then, working on the concealment of a discovery whose value to the nation depended on it remaining so. The success of code-breaking in the Crimean war, and the American Civil war, led to the British and Americans  subsequently giving much more weight and funding to the science of decryption. Paradoxically, this makes Ada's contribution even closer to the creation of Colossus, the first digital computer, at Bletchley Park, specifically to crack the Nazi’s secret codes.

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• FFmpeg creates emtpy (black) frames

  - by resamsel

  I have a set of images from a timelapse shot (172 JPG files) that I want to convert into a movie. I tried several parameters with FFmpeg, but all I get is a video with black frames (though it has the expected length). ffmpeg -f image2 -vcodec mjpeg -y -i img_%03d.jpg timelapse2.mpg The command above creates this video: http://sdm-net.org/data/timelapse2.mpg What I'm expecting is something like this (created with Time Lapse Assembler.app): https://vimeo.com/39038362 - This is my fallback option, but I'd really like to create timelapse movies from a script. I'm on OSX Lion (10.7.3) with FFmpeg version (0.10) installed via Homebrew. I also tried to find a proper version of mencoder for OSX, but this doesn't seem to be an easy task. Also, ImageMagick's convert doesn't seem to work nicely, it creates really bad output and it seems there's not much I can do about it... Edit: With libx264 and an mp4 container: ffmpeg -f image2 -y -i img_%03d.jpg -vcodec libx264 timelapse4.mp4 Output: ffmpeg version 0.10 Copyright (c) 2000-2012 the FFmpeg developers built on Mar 26 2012 13:47:02 with clang 3.0 (tags/Apple/clang-211.12) configuration: --prefix=/usr/local/Cellar/ffmpeg/0.10 --enable-shared --enable-gpl --enable-version3 --enable-nonfree --enable-hardcoded-tables --enable-libfreetype --cc=/usr/bin/clang --enable-libx264 --enable-libfaac --enable-libmp3lame --enable-librtmp --enable-libtheora --enable-libvorbis --enable-libvpx --enable-libxvid --enable-libopencore-amrnb --enable-libopencore-amrwb --enable-libass --disable-ffplay libavutil 51. 34.101 / 51. 34.101 libavcodec 53. 60.100 / 53. 60.100 libavformat 53. 31.100 / 53. 31.100 libavdevice 53. 4.100 / 53. 4.100 libavfilter 2. 60.100 / 2. 60.100 libswscale 2. 1.100 / 2. 1.100 libswresample 0. 6.100 / 0. 6.100 libpostproc 52. 0.100 / 52. 0.100 Input #0, image2, from 'img_%03d.jpg': Duration: 00:00:06.88, start: 0.000000, bitrate: N/A Stream #0:0: Video: mjpeg, yuvj420p, 3888x2592 [SAR 72:72 DAR 3:2], 25 fps, 25 tbr, 25 tbn, 25 tbc [buffer @ 0x7f8ec9415f20] w:3888 h:2592 pixfmt:yuvj420p tb:1/1000000 sar:72/72 sws_param: [libx264 @ 0x7f8ec981d800] using SAR=1/1 [libx264 @ 0x7f8ec981d800] frame MB size (243x162) > level limit (36864) [libx264 @ 0x7f8ec981d800] MB rate (984150) > level limit (983040) [libx264 @ 0x7f8ec981d800] using cpu capabilities: MMX2 SSE2Fast SSSE3 FastShuffle SSE4.2 AVX [libx264 @ 0x7f8ec981d800] profile High, level 5.1 [libx264 @ 0x7f8ec981d800] 264 - core 120 - H.264/MPEG-4 AVC codec - Copyleft 2003-2011 - http://www.videolan.org/x264.html - options: cabac=1 ref=3 deblock=1:0:0 analyse=0x3:0x113 me=hex subme=7 psy=1 psy_rd=1.00:0.00 mixed_ref=1 me_range=16 chroma_me=1 trellis=1 8x8dct=1 cqm=0 deadzone=21,11 fast_pskip=1 chroma_qp_offset=-2 threads=12 sliced_threads=0 nr=0 decimate=1 interlaced=0 bluray_compat=0 constrained_intra=0 bframes=3 b_pyramid=2 b_adapt=1 b_bias=0 direct=1 weightb=1 open_gop=0 weightp=2 keyint=250 keyint_min=25 scenecut=40 intra_refresh=0 rc_lookahead=40 rc=crf mbtree=1 crf=23.0 qcomp=0.60 qpmin=0 qpmax=69 qpstep=4 ip_ratio=1.40 aq=1:1.00 Output #0, mp4, to 'timelapse4.mp4': Metadata: encoder : Lavf53.31.100 Stream #0:0: Video: h264 (![0][0][0] / 0x0021), yuvj420p, 3888x2592 [SAR 72:72 DAR 3:2], q=-1--1, 25 tbn, 25 tbc Stream mapping: Stream #0:0 -> #0:0 (mjpeg -> libx264) Press [q] to stop, [?] for help frame= 172 fps= 18 q=-1.0 Lsize= 259kB time=00:00:06.80 bitrate= 312.3kbits/s video:256kB audio:0kB global headers:0kB muxing overhead 1.089647% [libx264 @ 0x7f8ec981d800] frame I:1 Avg QP: 9.60 size:212820 [libx264 @ 0x7f8ec981d800] frame P:43 Avg QP:30.50 size: 291 [libx264 @ 0x7f8ec981d800] frame B:128 Avg QP:31.00 size: 285 [libx264 @ 0x7f8ec981d800] consecutive B-frames: 0.6% 0.0% 1.7% 97.7% [libx264 @ 0x7f8ec981d800] mb I I16..4: 22.5% 77.2% 0.3% [libx264 @ 0x7f8ec981d800] mb P I16..4: 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% P16..4: 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% skip:100.0% [libx264 @ 0x7f8ec981d800] mb B I16..4: 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% B16..8: 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% direct: 0.0% skip:100.0% L0: 1.2% L1:98.8% BI: 0.0% [libx264 @ 0x7f8ec981d800] 8x8 transform intra:77.2% inter:100.0% [libx264 @ 0x7f8ec981d800] coded y,uvDC,uvAC intra: 41.2% 23.4% 0.6% inter: 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% [libx264 @ 0x7f8ec981d800] i16 v,h,dc,p: 40% 25% 35% 1% [libx264 @ 0x7f8ec981d800] i8 v,h,dc,ddl,ddr,vr,hd,vl,hu: 36% 32% 30% 1% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% [libx264 @ 0x7f8ec981d800] i4 v,h,dc,ddl,ddr,vr,hd,vl,hu: 51% 40% 6% 1% 1% 0% 1% 0% 1% [libx264 @ 0x7f8ec981d800] i8c dc,h,v,p: 60% 21% 19% 0% [libx264 @ 0x7f8ec981d800] Weighted P-Frames: Y:0.0% UV:0.0% [libx264 @ 0x7f8ec981d800] ref P L0: 92.3% 0.0% 0.0% 7.7% [libx264 @ 0x7f8ec981d800] ref B L0: 50.0% 0.0% 50.0% [libx264 @ 0x7f8ec981d800] ref B L1: 99.4% 0.6% [libx264 @ 0x7f8ec981d800] kb/s:304.49 Output timelapse4.mp4 (beacause of spam protection I can only post two links with my reputation): http sdm-net.org/data/timelapse4.mp4

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• Python TEA implementation

  - by Gaks

  Anybody knows proper python implementation of TEA (Tiny Encryption Algorithm)? I tried the one I've found here: http://sysadminco.com/code/python-tea/ - but it does not seem to work properly. It returns different results than other implementations in C or Java. I guess it's caused by completely different data types in python (or no data types in fact). Here's the code and an example: def encipher(v, k): y=v[0];z=v[1];sum=0;delta=0x9E3779B9;n=32 w=[0,0] while(n>0): y += (z << 4 ^ z >> 5) + z ^ sum + k[sum & 3] y &= 4294967295L # maxsize of 32-bit integer sum += delta z += (y << 4 ^ y >> 5) + y ^ sum + k[sum>>11 & 3] z &= 4294967295L n -= 1 w[0]=y; w[1]=z return w def decipher(v, k): y=v[0] z=v[1] sum=0xC6EF3720 delta=0x9E3779B9 n=32 w=[0,0] # sum = delta<<5, in general sum = delta * n while(n>0): z -= (y << 4 ^ y >> 5) + y ^ sum + k[sum>>11 & 3] z &= 4294967295L sum -= delta y -= (z << 4 ^ z >> 5) + z ^ sum + k[sum&3] y &= 4294967295L n -= 1 w[0]=y; w[1]=z return w Python example: >>> import tea >>> key = [0xbe168aa1, 0x16c498a3, 0x5e87b018, 0x56de7805] >>> v = [0xe15034c8, 0x260fd6d5] >>> res = tea.encipher(v, key) >>> "%X %X" % (res[0], res[1]) **'70D16811 F935148F'** C example: #include <unistd.h> #include <stdio.h> void encipher(unsigned long *const v,unsigned long *const w, const unsigned long *const k) { register unsigned long y=v[0],z=v[1],sum=0,delta=0x9E3779B9, a=k[0],b=k[1],c=k[2],d=k[3],n=32; while(n-->0) { sum += delta; y += (z << 4)+a ^ z+sum ^ (z >> 5)+b; z += (y << 4)+c ^ y+sum ^ (y >> 5)+d; } w[0]=y; w[1]=z; } int main() { unsigned long v[] = {0xe15034c8, 0x260fd6d5}; unsigned long key[] = {0xbe168aa1, 0x16c498a3, 0x5e87b018, 0x56de7805}; unsigned long res[2]; encipher(v, res, key); printf("%X %X\n", res[0], res[1]); return 0; } $ ./tea **D6942D68 6F87870D** Please note, that both examples were run with the same input data (v and key), but results were different. I'm pretty sure C implementation is correct - it comes from a site referenced by wikipedia (I couldn't post a link to it because I don't have enough reputation points yet - some antispam thing)

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• wxPthon problems with Wrapping StaticText

  - by Scott B

  Hello. I am having an issue with wxPython. A simplified version of the code is posted below (white space, comments, etc removed to reduce size - but the general format to my program is kept roughly the same). When I run the script, the static text correctly wraps as it should, but the other items in the panel do not move down (they act as if the statictext is only one line and thus not everything is visible). If I manually resize the window/frame, even just a tiny amount, everything gets corrected and displays as it is should. I took screen shots to show this behavior, but I just created this account and thus don't have the required 10 reputation points to be allowed to post pictures. Why does it not display correctly to begin with? I've tried all sorts of combination's of GetParent().Refresh() or Update() and GetTopLevelParent().Update() or Refresh(). I've tried everything I can think of but cannot get it to display correctly without manually resizing the frame/window. Once re-sized, it works exactly as I want it to. Information: Windows XP Python 2.5.2 wxPython 2.8.11.0 (msw-unicode) Any suggestions? Thanks! Code: #! /usr/bin/python import wx class StaticWrapText(wx.PyControl): def __init__(self, parent, id=wx.ID_ANY, label='', pos=wx.DefaultPosition, size=wx.DefaultSize, style=wx.NO_BORDER, validator=wx.DefaultValidator, name='StaticWrapText'): wx.PyControl.__init__(self, parent, id, pos, size, style, validator, name) self.statictext = wx.StaticText(self, wx.ID_ANY, label, style=style) self.wraplabel = label #self.wrap() def wrap(self): self.Freeze() self.statictext.SetLabel(self.wraplabel) self.statictext.Wrap(self.GetSize().width) self.Thaw() def DoGetBestSize(self): self.wrap() #print self.statictext.GetSize() self.SetSize(self.statictext.GetSize()) return self.GetSize() class TestPanel(wx.Panel): def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs): # Init the base class wx.Panel.__init__(self, *args, **kwargs) self.createControls() def createControls(self): # --- Panel2 ------------------------------------------------------------- self.Panel2 = wx.Panel(self, -1) msg1 = 'Below is a List of Files to be Processed' staticBox = wx.StaticBox(self.Panel2, label=msg1) Panel2_box1_v1 = wx.StaticBoxSizer(staticBox, wx.VERTICAL) Panel2_box2_h1 = wx.BoxSizer(wx.HORIZONTAL) Panel2_box3_v1 = wx.BoxSizer(wx.VERTICAL) self.wxL_Inputs = wx.ListBox(self.Panel2, wx.ID_ANY, style=wx.LB_EXTENDED) sz = dict(size=(120,-1)) wxB_AddFile = wx.Button(self.Panel2, label='Add File', **sz) wxB_DeleteFile = wx.Button(self.Panel2, label='Delete Selected', **sz) wxB_ClearFiles = wx.Button(self.Panel2, label='Clear All', **sz) Panel2_box3_v1.Add(wxB_AddFile, 0, wx.TOP, 0) Panel2_box3_v1.Add(wxB_DeleteFile, 0, wx.TOP, 0) Panel2_box3_v1.Add(wxB_ClearFiles, 0, wx.TOP, 0) Panel2_box2_h1.Add(self.wxL_Inputs, 1, wx.ALL|wx.EXPAND, 2) Panel2_box2_h1.Add(Panel2_box3_v1, 0, wx.ALL|wx.EXPAND, 2) msg = 'This is a long line of text used to test the autowrapping ' msg += 'static text message. ' msg += 'This is a long line of text used to test the autowrapping ' msg += 'static text message. ' msg += 'This is a long line of text used to test the autowrapping ' msg += 'static text message. ' msg += 'This is a long line of text used to test the autowrapping ' msg += 'static text message. ' staticMsg = StaticWrapText(self.Panel2, label=msg) Panel2_box1_v1.Add(staticMsg, 0, wx.ALL|wx.EXPAND, 2) Panel2_box1_v1.Add(Panel2_box2_h1, 1, wx.ALL|wx.EXPAND, 0) self.Panel2.SetSizer(Panel2_box1_v1) # --- Combine Everything ------------------------------------------------- final_vbox = wx.BoxSizer(wx.VERTICAL) final_vbox.Add(self.Panel2, 1, wx.ALL|wx.EXPAND, 2) self.SetSizerAndFit(final_vbox) class TestFrame(wx.Frame): def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs): # Init the base class wx.Frame.__init__(self, *args, **kwargs) panel = TestPanel(self) self.SetClientSize(wx.Size(500,500)) self.Center() class wxFileCleanupApp(wx.App): def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs): # Init the base class wx.App.__init__(self, *args, **kwargs) def OnInit(self): # Create the frame, center it, and show it frame = TestFrame(None, title='Test Frame') frame.Show() return True if __name__ == '__main__': app = wxFileCleanupApp() app.MainLoop() EDIT: See my post below for a solution that works!

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• Help with refactoring PHP code

  - by Richard Knop

  I had some troubles implementing Lawler's algorithm but thanks to SO and a bounty of 200 reputation I finally managed to write a working implementation: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2466928/lawlers-algorithm-implementation-assistance I feel like I'm using too many variables and loops there though so I am trying to refactor the code. It should be simpler and shorter yet remain readable. Does it make sense to make a class for this? Any advice or even help with refactoring this piece of code is welcomed: <?php /* * @name Lawler's algorithm PHP implementation * @desc This algorithm calculates an optimal schedule of jobs to be * processed on a single machine (in reversed order) while taking * into consideration any precedence constraints. * @author Richard Knop * */ $jobs = array(1 => array('processingTime' => 2, 'dueDate' => 3), 2 => array('processingTime' => 3, 'dueDate' => 15), 3 => array('processingTime' => 4, 'dueDate' => 9), 4 => array('processingTime' => 3, 'dueDate' => 16), 5 => array('processingTime' => 5, 'dueDate' => 12), 6 => array('processingTime' => 7, 'dueDate' => 20), 7 => array('processingTime' => 5, 'dueDate' => 27), 8 => array('processingTime' => 6, 'dueDate' => 40), 9 => array('processingTime' => 3, 'dueDate' => 10)); // precedence constrainst, i.e job 2 must be completed before job 5 etc $successors = array(2=>5, 7=>9); $n = count($jobs); $optimalSchedule = array(); for ($i = $n; $i >= 1; $i--) { // jobs not required to precede any other job $arr = array(); foreach ($jobs as $k => $v) { if (false === array_key_exists($k, $successors)) { $arr[] = $k; } } // calculate total processing time $totalProcessingTime = 0; foreach ($jobs as $k => $v) { if (true === array_key_exists($k, $arr)) { $totalProcessingTime += $v['processingTime']; } } // find the job that will go to the end of the optimal schedule array $min = null; $x = 0; $lastKey = null; foreach($arr as $k) { $x = $totalProcessingTime - $jobs[$k]['dueDate']; if (null === $min || $x < $min) { $min = $x; $lastKey = $k; } } // add the job to the optimal schedule array $optimalSchedule[$lastKey] = $jobs[$lastKey]; // remove job from the jobs array unset($jobs[$lastKey]); // remove precedence constraint from the successors array if needed if (true === in_array($lastKey, $successors)) { foreach ($successors as $k => $v) { if ($lastKey === $v) { unset($successors[$k]); } } } } // reverse the optimal schedule array and preserve keys $optimalSchedule = array_reverse($optimalSchedule, true); // add tardiness to the array $i = 0; foreach ($optimalSchedule as $k => $v) { $optimalSchedule[$k]['tardiness'] = 0; $j = 0; foreach ($optimalSchedule as $k2 => $v2) { if ($j <= $i) { $optimalSchedule[$k]['tardiness'] += $v2['processingTime']; } $j++; } $i++; } echo '<pre>'; print_r($optimalSchedule); echo '</pre>';

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• Defend PHP; convince me it isn't horrible

  - by Jason L

  I made a tongue-in-cheek comment in another question thread calling PHP a terrible language and it got down-voted like crazy. Apparently there are lots of people here who love PHP. So I'm genuinely curious. What am I missing? What makes PHP a good language? Here are my reasons for disliking it: PHP has inconsistent naming of built-in and library functions. Predictable naming patterns are important in any design. PHP has inconsistent parameter ordering of built-in functions, eg array_map vs. array_filter which is annoying in the simple cases and raises all sorts of unexpected behaviour or worse. The PHP developers constantly deprecate built-in functions and lower-level functionality. A good example is when they deprecated pass-by-reference for functions. This created a nightmare for anyone doing, say, function callbacks. A lack of consideration in redesign. The above deprecation eliminated the ability to, in many cases, provide default keyword values for functions. They fixed this in PHP 5, but they deprecated the pass-by-reference in PHP 4! Poor execution of name spaces (formerly no name spaces at all). Now that name spaces exist, what do we use as the dereference character? Backslash! The character used universally for escaping, even in PHP! Overly-broad implicit type conversion leads to bugs. I have no problem with implicit conversions of, say, float to integer or back again. But PHP (last I checked) will happily attempt to magically convert an array to an integer. Poor recursion performance. Recursion is a fundamentally important tool for writing in any language; it can make complex algorithms far simpler. Poor support is inexcusable. Functions are case insensitive. I have no idea what they were thinking on this one. A programming language is a way to specify behavior to both a computer and a reader of the code without ambiguity. Case insensitivity introduces much ambiguity. PHP encourages (practically requires) a coupling of processing with presentation. Yes, you can write PHP that doesn't do so, but it's actually easier to write code in the incorrect (from a sound design perspective) manner. PHP performance is abysmal without caching. Does anyone sell a commercial caching product for PHP? Oh, look, the designers of PHP do. Worst of all, PHP convinces people that designing web applications is easy. And it does indeed make much of the effort involved much easier. But the fact is, designing a web application that is both secure and efficient is a very difficult task. By convincing so many to take up programming, PHP has taught an entire subgroup of programmers bad habits and bad design. It's given them access to capabilities that they lack the understanding to use safely. This has led to PHP's reputation as being insecure. (However, I will readily admit that PHP is no more or less secure than any other web programming language.) What is it that I'm missing about PHP? I'm seeing an organically-grown, poorly-managed mess of a language that's spawning poor programmers. So convince me otherwise!

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• DataGrid : Binding with two different classes with lists ? WPF C#

  - by MyRestlessDream

  It is my first question on StackOverflow so I hope I am doing nothing wrong ! Sorry if it is the case ! I need some help because I can not find the solution of my problem. Of course I have searched everywhere on the web but I can not find it (can not post the links that I am using because of my low reputation :( ). Moreover, I am new in C# and WPF (and self-learning). I used to work in C++/Qt so I do not know how everything works in WPF. And sorry for my English, I am French. My problem My basic classes are that an Employee can use a computer. The id of the computer and the date of use are stored into the class Connection. I would like to display the list information in a DataGrid and in RowDetailsTemplate like here : http://i.stack.imgur.com/Bvn1z.png So it will do a binding to the Employee class but also to the Connection class with only the last value of the property (here the last value of the list "Computer ID" and the last value of the list "Connection Date" on this last computer). So it is a loop in the different lists. How can I do it ? Is it too much to do ? :( I succeed to get the Employee informations but I do not know how to bind the list of computer. When I am trying, it shows me "(Collection)" so it does not go inside the list :( Summary of Questions How to display/bind a value from a list AND from a different class in a DataGrid ? How to display all the values of a list into the RowDetailsTemplate ? Under Windows 7 and Visual Studio 2010 Pro version. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ EDIT ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Solution I have used the solution of Stefan Denchev. Here the modification of my class : http://i.stack.imgur.com/Ijx5i.png And the code used: <DataGrid ItemsSource="{Binding}" Name="table"> <DataGrid.Columns> <DataGridTextColumn Header="First Name" Binding="{Binding FirstName}"/> <DataGridTextColumn Header="Last Name" Binding="{Binding LastName}"/> <DataGridTextColumn Header="Gender" Binding="{Binding Gender}"/> <DataGridTextColumn Header="Last computer used" Binding="{Binding LastComputerID}"/> <DataGridTextColumn Header="Last connection date" Binding="{Binding LastDate}"/> </DataGrid.Columns> <DataGrid.RowDetailsTemplate> <DataTemplate> <DataGrid ItemsSource="{Binding ListOfConnection}"> <DataGrid.Columns> <DataGridTextColumn Header="Computer ID" Binding="{Binding ComputerID}"/> <DataGridTemplateColumn> <DataGridTemplateColumn.CellTemplate> <DataTemplate> <ListView ItemsSource="{Binding ListOfDate}"/> </DataTemplate> </DataGridTemplateColumn.CellTemplate> </DataGridTemplateColumn> </DataGrid.Columns> </DataGrid> </DataTemplate> </DataGrid.RowDetailsTemplate> </DataGrid> With in code behind : List<Employee> allEmployees = WorkflowMgr.Instance.AllEmployees; table.DataContext = allEmployees; And it works ! I have tryed to improve my fake example :) Hope it will help to another developer !

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• What is the best Battleship AI?

  - by John Gietzen

  Battleship! Back in 2003, (when I was 17,) I competed in a Battleship AI coding competition. Even though I lost that tournament, I had a lot of fun and learned a lot from it. Now, I would like to resurrect this competition, in the search of the best battleship AI. Here is the framework: Battleship.zip The winner will be awarded +450 reputation! The competition will be held starting on the 17th of November, 2009. No entries or edits later than zero-hour on the 17th will be accepted. (Central Standard Time) Submit your entries early, so you don't miss your opportunity! To keep this OBJECTIVE, please follow the spirit of the competition. Rules of the game: The game is be played on a 10x10 grid. Each competitor will place each of 5 ships (of lengths 2, 3, 3, 4, 5) on their grid. No ships may overlap, but they may be adjacent. The competitors then take turns firing single shots at their opponent. A variation on the game allows firing multiple shots per volley, one for each surviving ship. The opponent will notify the competitor if the shot sinks, hits, or misses. Game play ends when all of the ships of any one player are sunk. Rules of the competition: The spirit of the competition is to find the best Battleship algorithm. Anything that is deemed against the spirit of the competition will be grounds for disqualification. Interfering with an opponent is against the spirit of the competition. Multithreading may be used under the following restrictions: No more than one thread may be running while it is not your turn. (Though, any number of threads may be in a "Suspended" state). No thread may run at a priority other than "Normal". Given the above two restrictions, you will be guaranteed at least 3 dedicated CPU cores during your turn. A limit of 1 second of CPU time per game is allotted to each competitor on the primary thread. Running out of time results in losing the current game. Any unhandled exception will result in losing the current game. Network access and disk access is allowed, but you may find the time restrictions fairly prohibitive. However, a few set-up and tear-down methods have been added to alleviate the time strain. Code should be posted on stack overflow as an answer, or, if too large, linked. Max total size (un-compressed) of an entry is 1 MB. Officially, .Net 2.0 / 3.5 is the only framework requirement. Your entry must implement the IBattleshipOpponent interface. Scoring: Best 51 games out of 101 games is the winner of a match. All competitors will play matched against each other, round-robin style. The best half of the competitors will then play a double-elimination tournament to determine the winner. (Smallest power of two that is greater than or equal to half, actually.) I will be using the TournamentApi framework for the tournament. The results will be posted here. If you submit more than one entry, only your best-scoring entry is eligible for the double-elim. Good luck! Have fun! EDIT 1: Thanks to Freed, who has found an error in the Ship.IsValid function. It has been fixed. Please download the updated version of the framework. EDIT 2: Since there has been significant interest in persisting stats to disk and such, I have added a few non-timed set-up and tear-down events that should provide the required functionality. This is a semi-breaking change. That is to say: the interface has been modified to add functions, but no body is required for them. Please download the updated version of the framework. EDIT 3: Bug Fix 1: GameWon and GameLost were only getting called in the case of a time out. Bug Fix 2: If an engine was timing out every game, the competition would never end. Please download the updated version of the framework. EDIT 4: Results!

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• Project Management Helps AmeriCares Deliver International Aid

  - by Sylvie MacKenzie, PMP

  Excerpt from PROFIT - ORACLE - by Alison Weiss Handle with Care Sound project management helps AmeriCares bring international aid to those in need. The stakes are always high for AmeriCares. On a mission to restore health and save lives during times of disaster, the nonprofit international relief and humanitarian aid organization delivers donated medicines, medical supplies, and humanitarian aid to people in the U.S. and around the globe. Founded in 1982 with the express mission of responding as quickly and efficiently as possible to help people in need, the Stamford, Connecticut-based AmeriCares has delivered more than US$10.5 billion in aid to 147 countries over the past three decades. Launch the Slideshow “It’s critically important to us that we steward all the donations and that the medical supplies and medicines get to people as quickly as possible with no loss,” says Kate Sears, senior vice president for finance and technology at AmeriCares. “Whether we’re shipping IV solutions to victims of cholera in Haiti or antibiotics to Somali famine victims, we need to get the medicines there sooner because it means more people will be helped and lives improved or even saved.” Ten years ago, the tracking systems used by AmeriCares associates were paper-based. In recent years, staff started using spreadsheets, but the tracking processes were not standardized between teams. “Every team was tracking completely different information,” says Megan McDermott, senior associate, Sub-Saharan Africa partnerships, at AmeriCares. “It was just a few key things. For example, we tracked the date a shipment was supposed to arrive and the date we got reports from our partner that a hospital received aid on their end.” While the data was accurate, much detail was being lost in the process. AmeriCares management knew it could do a better job of tracking this enterprise data and in 2011 took a significant step by implementing Oracle’s Primavera P6 Professional Project Management. “It’s a comprehensive solution that has helped us improve the monitoring and controlling processes. It has allowed us to do our distribution better,” says Sears. In addition, the implementation effort has been a change agent, helping AmeriCares leadership rethink project management across the entire organization. Initially, much of the focus was on standardizing processes, but staff members also learned the importance of thinking proactively to prevent possible problems and evaluating results to determine if goals and objectives are truly being met. Such data about process efficiency and overall results is critical not only to AmeriCares staff but also to the donors supporting the organization’s life-saving missions. Efficiency Saves Lives One of AmeriCares’ core operations is to gather product donations from the private sector, establish where the most-urgent needs are, and solicit monetary support to send the aid via ocean cargo or airlift to welfare- and health-oriented nongovernmental organizations, hospitals, health networks, and government ministries based in areas in need. In 2011 alone, AmeriCares sent more than 3,500 shipments to 95 countries in response to both ongoing humanitarian needs and more than two dozen emergencies, including deadly tornadoes and storms in the U.S. and the devastating tsunami in Japan. When it comes to nonprofits in general, donors want to know that the charitable organizations they support are using funds wisely. Typically, nonprofits are evaluated by donors in terms of efficiency, an area where AmeriCares has an excellent reputation: 98 percent of expenses go directly to supporting programs and less than 2 percent represent administrative and fundraising costs. Donors, however, should look at more than simple efficiency, says Peter York, senior partner and chief research and learning officer at TCC Group, a nonprofit consultancy headquartered in New York, New York. They should also look at whether organizations have the systems in place to sustain their missions and continue to thrive. An expert on nonprofit organizational management, York has spent years studying sustainable charitable organizations. He defines them as nonprofits that are able to achieve the ongoing financial support to stay relevant and continue doing core mission work. In his analysis of well over 2,500 larger nonprofits, York has found that many are not sustaining, and are actually scaling back in size. “One of the biggest challenges of nonprofit sustainability is the general public’s perception that every dollar donated has to go only to the delivery of service,” says York. “What our data shows is that there are some fundamental capacities that have to be there in order for organizations to sustain and grow.” York’s research highlights the importance of data-driven leadership at successful nonprofits. “You’ve got to have the tools, the systems, and the technologies to get objective information on what you do, the people you serve, and the results you’re achieving,” says York. “If leaders don’t have the knowledge and the data, they can’t make the strategic decisions about programs to take organizations to the next level.” Historically, AmeriCares associates have used time-tested and cost-effective strategies to ship and then track supplies from donation to delivery to their destinations in designated time frames. When disaster strikes, AmeriCares ships by air and generally pulls out all the stops to deliver the most urgently needed aid within the first few days and weeks. Then, as situations stabilize, AmeriCares turns to delivering sea containers for the postemergency and ongoing aid so often needed over the long term. According to McDermott, getting a shipment out the door is fairly complicated, requiring as many as five different AmeriCares teams collaborating together. The entire process can take months—from when products are received in the warehouse and deciding which recipients to allocate supplies to, to getting customs and governmental approvals in place, actually shipping products, and finally ensuring that the products are received in-country. Delivering that aid is no small affair. “Our volume exceeds half a billion dollars a year worth of donated medicines and medical supplies, so it’s a sizable logistical operation to bring these products in and get them out to the right place quickly to have the most impact,” says Sears. “We really pride ourselves on our controls and efficiencies.” Adding to that complexity is the fact that the longer it takes to deliver aid, the more dire the human need can be. Any time AmeriCares associates can shave off the complicated aid delivery process can translate into lives saved. “It’s really being able to track information consistently that will help us to see where are the bottlenecks and where can we work on improving our processes,” says McDermott. Setting a Standard Productivity and information management improvements were key objectives for AmeriCares when staff began the process of implementing Oracle’s Primavera solution. But before configuring the software, the staff needed to take the time to analyze the systems already in place. According to Greg Loop, manager of database systems at AmeriCares, the organization received guidance from several consultants, including Rich D’Addario, consulting project manager in the Primavera Global Business Unit at Oracle, who was instrumental in shepherding the critical requirements-gathering phase. D’Addario encouraged staff to begin documenting shipping processes by considering the order in which activities occur and which ones are dependent on others to get accomplished. This exercise helped everyone realize that to be more efficient, they needed to keep track of shipments in a more standard way. “The staff didn’t recognize formal project management methodology,” says D’Addario. “But they did understand what the most important things are and that if they go wrong, an entire project can go off course.” Before, if a boatload of supplies was being sent to Haiti and there was a problem somewhere, a lot of time was taken up finding out where the problem was—because staff was not tracking things in a standard way. As a result, even more time was needed to find possible solutions to the problem and alert recipients that the aid might be delayed. “For everyone to put on the project manager hat and standardize the way every single thing is done means that now the whole organization is on the same page as to what needs to occur from the time a hurricane hits Haiti and when a boat pulls in to unload supplies,” says D’Addario. With so much care taken to put a process foundation firmly in place, configuring the Primavera solution was actually quite simple. Specific templates were set up for different types of shipments, and dashboards were implemented to provide executives with clear overviews of every project in the system. AmeriCares’ Loop reports that system planning, refining, and testing, followed by writing up documentation and training, took approximately four months. The system went live in spring 2011 at AmeriCares’ Connecticut headquarters. While the nonprofit has an international presence, with warehouses in Europe and offices in Haiti, India, Japan, and Sri Lanka, most donated medicines come from U.S. entities and are shipped from the U.S. out to the rest of the world. In addition, all shipments are tracked from the U.S. office. AmeriCares doesn’t expect the Primavera system to take months off the shipping time, especially for sea containers. However, any time saved is still important because it will allow aid to be delivered to people more quickly at a lower overall cost. “If we can trim a day or two here or there, that can translate into lives that we’re saving, especially in emergency situations,” says Sears. A Cultural Change Beyond the measurable benefits that come with IT-driven process improvement, AmeriCares management is seeing a change in culture as a result of the Primavera project. One change has been treating every shipment of aid as a project, and everyone involved with facilitating shipments as a project manager. “This is a revolutionary concept for us,” says McDermott. “Before, we were used to thinking we were doing logistics—getting a container from point A to point B without looking at it as one project and really understanding what it meant to manage it.” AmeriCares staff is also happy to report that collaboration within the organization is much more efficient. When someone creates a shipment in the Primavera system, the same shared template is used, which means anyone can log in to the system to see the status of a shipment. Knowledgeable staff can access a shipment project to help troubleshoot a problem. Management can easily check the status of projects across the organization. “Dashboards are really useful,” says McDermott. “Instead of going into the details of each project, you can just see the high-level real-time information at a glance.” The new system is helping team members focus on proactively managing shipments rather than simply reacting when problems occur. For example, when a container is shipped, documents must be included for customs clearance. Now, the shipping template has built-in reminders to prompt team members to ask for copies of these documents from freight forwarders and to follow up with partners to discover if a shipment is on time. In the past, staff may not have worked on securing these documents until they’d been notified a shipment had arrived in-country. Another benefit of capturing and adopting best practices within the Primavera system is that staff training is easier. “Capturing the processes in documented steps and milestones allows us to teach new staff members how to do their jobs faster,” says Sears. “It provides them with the knowledge of their predecessors so they don’t have to keep reinventing the wheel.” With the Primavera system already generating positive results, management is eager to take advantage of advanced capabilities. Loop is working on integrating the company’s proprietary inventory management system with the Primavera system so that when logistics or warehousing operators input data, the information will automatically go into the Primavera system. In the past, this information had to be manually keyed into spreadsheets, often leading to errors. Mining Historical Data Another feature on the horizon for AmeriCares is utilizing Primavera P6 Professional Project Management reporting capabilities. As the system begins to include more historical data, management soon will be able to draw on this information to conduct analysis that has not been possible before and create customized reports. For example, at the beginning of the shipment process, staff will be able to use historical data to more accurately estimate how long the approval process should take for a particular country. This could help ensure that food and medicine with limited shelf lives do not get stuck in customs or used beyond their expiration dates. The historical data in the Primavera system will also help AmeriCares with better planning year to year. The nonprofit’s staff has always put together a plan at the beginning of the year, but this has been very challenging simply because it is impossible to predict disasters. Now, management will be able to look at historical data and see trends and statistics as they set current objectives and prepare for future need. In addition, this historical data will provide AmeriCares management with the ability to review year-end data and compare actual project results with goals set at the beginning of the year—to see if desired outcomes were achieved and if there are areas that need improvement. It’s this type of information that is so valuable to donors. And, according to York, project management software can play a critical role in generating the data to help nonprofits sustain and grow. “It is important to invest in systems to help replicate, expand, and deliver services,” says York. “Project management software can help because it encourages nonprofits to examine program or service changes and how to manage moving forward.” Sears believes that AmeriCares donors will support the return on investment the organization will achieve with the Primavera solution. “It won’t be financial returns, but rather how many more people we can help for a given dollar or how much more quickly we can respond to a need,” says Sears. “I think donors are receptive to such arguments.” And for AmeriCares, it is all about the future and increasing results. The project management environment currently may be quite simple, but IT staff plans to expand the complexity and functionality as the organization grows in its knowledge of project management and the goals it wants to achieve. “As we use the system over time, we’ll continue to refine our best practices and accumulate more data,” says Sears. “It will advance our ability to make better data-driven decisions.”

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• Moving the swapfiles to a dedicated partition in Snow Leopard

  - by e.James

  I have been able to move Apple's virtual memory swapfiles to a dedicated partition on my hard drive up until now. The technique I have been using is described in a thread on forums.macosxhints.com. However, with the developer preview of Snow Leopard, this method no longer works. Does anyone know how it could be done with the new OS? Update: I have marked dblu's answer as accepted even though it didn't quite work because he gave excellent, detailed instructions and because his suggestion to use plutil ultimately pointed me in the right direction. The complete, working solution is posted here in the question because I don't have enough reputation to edit the accepted answer. Complete solution: 1. Open Terminal and make a backup copy of Apple's default dynamic_pager.plist: $ cd /System/Library/LaunchDaemons $ sudo cp com.apple.dynamic_pager.plist{,_bak} 2. Convert the plist from binary to plain XML: $ sudo plutil -convert xml1 com.apple.dynamic_pager.plist 3. Open the converted plist with your text editor of choice. (I use pico, see dblu's answer for an example using vim): $ sudo pico -w com.apple.dynamic_pager.plist It should look as follows: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs$ <plist version="1.0"> <dict> <key>EnableTransactions</key> <true/> <key>HopefullyExitsLast</key> <true/> <key>Label</key> <string>com.apple.dynamic_pager</string> <key>OnDemand</key> <false/> <key>ProgramArguments</key> <array> <string>/sbin/dynamic_pager</string> <string>-F</string> <string>/private/var/vm/swapfile</string> </array> </dict> </plist> 4. Change the ProgramArguments array (lines 13 through 18) so that it launches an intermediate shell script instead of launching dynamic_pager directly. See note #1 for details on why this is necessary. <key>ProgramArguments</key> <array> <string>/sbin/dynamic_pager_init</string> </array> 5. Save the plist, and return to the terminal prompt. Using pico, the commands would be: <ctrl+o> to save the file <enter> to accept the same filename (com.apple.dynamic_pager.plist) <ctrl+x> to exit 6. Convert the modified plist back to binary: $ sudo plutil -convert binary1 com.apple.dynamic_pager.plist 7. Create the intermediate shell script: $ cd /sbin $ sudo pico -w dynamic_pager_init The script should look as follows (my partition is called 'Swap', and I chose to put the swapfiles in a hidden directory on that partition, called '.vm' be sure that the directory you specify actually exists): Update: This version of the script makes use of wait4path as suggested by ZILjr: #!/bin/bash #launch Apple's dynamic_pager only when the swap volume is mounted echo "Waiting for Swap volume to mount"; wait4path /Volumes/Swap; echo "Launching dynamic pager on volume Swap"; /sbin/dynamic_pager -F /Volumes/Swap/.vm/swapfile; 8. Save and close dynamic_pager_init (same commands as step 5) 9. Modify permissions and ownership for dynamic_pager_init: $ sudo chmod a+x-w /sbin/dynamic_pager_init $ sudo chown root:wheel /sbin/dynamic_pager_init 10. Verify the permissions on dynamic_pager_init: $ ls -l dynamic_pager_init -r-xr-xr-x 1 root wheel 6 18 Sep 15:11 dynamic_pager_init 11. Restart your Mac. If you run into trouble, switch to verbose startup mode by holding down Command-v immediately after the startup chime. This will let you see all of the startup messages that appear during startup. If you run into even worse trouble (i.e. you never see the login screen), hold down Command-s instead. This will boot the computer in single-user mode (no graphical UI, just a command prompt) and allow you to restore the backup copy of com.apple.dynamic_pager.plist that you made in step 1. 12. Once the computer boots, fire up Terminal and verify that the swap files have actually been moved: $ cd /Volumes/Swap/.vm $ ls -l You should see something like this: -rw------- 1 someUser staff 67108864 18 Sep 12:02 swapfile0 13. Delete the old swapfiles: $ cd /private/var/vm $ sudo rm swapfile* 14. Profit! Note 1 Simply modifying the arguments to dynamic_pager in the plist does not always work, and when it fails, it does so in a spectacularly silent way. The problem stems from the fact that dynamic_pager is launched very early in the startup process. If your swap partition has not yet been mounted when dynamic_pager is first loaded (in my experience, this happens 99% of the time), then the system will fake its way through. It will create a symbolic link in your /Volumes directory which has the same name as your swap partition, but points back to the default swapfile location (/private/var/vm). Then, when your actual swap partition mounts, it will be given the name Swap 1 (or YourDriveName 1). You can see the problem by opening up Terminal and listing the contents of your /Volumes directory: $ cd /Volumes $ ls -l You will see something like this: drwxrwxrwx 11 yourUser staff 442 16 Sep 12:13 Swap -> private/var/vm drwxrwxrwx 14 yourUser staff 5 16 Sep 12:13 Swap 1 lrwxr-xr-x 1 root admin 1 17 Sep 12:01 System -> / Note that this failure can be very hard to spot. If you were to check for the swapfiles as I show in step 12, you would still see them! The symbolic link would make it seem as though your swapfiles had been moved, even though they were actually being stored in the default location. Note 2 I was originally unable to get this to work in Snow Leopard because com.apple.dynamic_pager.plist was stored in binary format. I made a copy of the original file and opened it with Apple's Property List Editor (available with Xcode) in order to make changes, but this process added some extended attributes to the plist file which caused the system to ignore it and just use the defaults. As dblu pointed out, using plutil to convert the file to plain XML works like a charm. Note 3 You can check the Console application to see any messages that dynamic_pager_init echos to the screen. If you see the following lines repeated over and over again, there is a problem with the setup. I ran into these messages because I forgot to create the '.vm' directory that I specified in dynamic_pager_init. com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.dynamic_pager[176]) Exited with exit code: 1 com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.dynamic_pager) Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds When everything is working properly, you may see the above message a couple of times, but you should also see the following message, and then no more of the "Throttling respawn" messages afterwards. com.apple.dynamic_pager[???] Launching dynamic pager on volume Swap This means that the script did have to wait for the partition to load, but in the end it was successful.

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• What is auto-mounting my media volume?

  - by user285277

  Something is repeatedly mounting my "media" share, doing something with it, then quietly un-mounting it with no notifications at the user level. from the little I can gleaned from the console messages below, I thought I'd managed to stop it, if not understand it last night when I followed instructions for deleting all traces of the Google Update Daemon. I've not been using any Google apps whatsoever, so I was surprised to see that in Console. What's more surprising, and perhaps a little distressing, is that the same thing occurred this evening, when the Google Daemon is long gone. I don't have that log because I can't recall precisely what time it occurred. I'll do a search and provide it if you wish, though. In the meantime, any help with this would be extremely appreciated. I've asked over at Apple Discussions but I think it might be a little deeper than those manning the boards this weekend are comfortable with. It's certainly beyond my meager skills. With apologies in advance if this is more lines thank you need. Please note that I've transformed the Google links a little because the forum here requires more reputation points before one can post more than two links. 12/27/13 10:47:31.000 PM kernel[0]: memorystatus_thread: idle exiting pid 53629 [distnoted] 12/27/13 10:48:10.433 PM com.apple.Preview.TrustedBookmarksService[53640]: Failed to resolve bookmark data at index: 0; not stale; error: The file doesn’t exist. 12/27/13 10:48:10.434 PM com.apple.Preview.TrustedBookmarksService[53640]: Failed to resolve bookmark data at index: 1; not stale; error: The file doesn’t exist. 12/27/13 10:48:10.950 PM com.apple.SecurityServer[17]: Session 103257 created 12/27/13 10:48:34.328 PM com.apple.Preview.TrustedBookmarksService[53640]: Failed to resolve bookmark data at index: 2; not stale; error: The file doesn’t exist. 12/27/13 10:48:34.000 PM kernel[0]: AFP_VFS afpfs_mount: /Volumes/Media Archive-1, pid 53641 12/27/13 10:48:34.000 PM kernel[0]: AFP_VFS afpfs_mount : succeeded on volume 0xffffff80d6355008 /Volumes/Media Archive-1 (error = 0, retval = 0) 12/27/13 10:49:32.000 PM kernel[0]: wlEvent: en0 en0 Link DOWN virtIf = 0 12/27/13 10:49:32.000 PM kernel[0]: AirPort: Link Down on en0. Reason 8 (Disassociated because station leaving). 12/27/13 10:49:32.000 PM kernel[0]: en0::IO80211Interface::postMessage bssid changed 12/27/13 10:49:33.681 PM configd[16]: network changed: v4(en0-:10.0.1.12) DNS- Proxy- SMB 12/27/13 10:49:33.697 PM configd[16]: network changed: DNS* Proxy 12/27/13 10:49:35.475 PM KernelEventAgent[57]: tid 00000000 received event(s) VQ_NOTRESP (1) 12/27/13 10:49:35.000 PM kernel[0]: ASP_TCP Disconnect: triggering reconnect by bumping reconnTrigger from curr value 0 on so 0xffffff802176b4a0 12/27/13 10:49:35.000 PM kernel[0]: AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect started /Volumes/Media Archive-1 prevTrigger 0 currTrigger 1 12/27/13 10:49:35.000 PM kernel[0]: AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect: doing reconnect on /Volumes/Media Archive-1 12/27/13 10:49:35.000 PM kernel[0]: AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect: posting to KEA EINPROGRESS for /Volumes/Media Archive-1 12/27/13 10:49:35.000 PM kernel[0]: AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect: Max reconnect time: 600 secs, Connect timeout: 15 secs for /Volumes/Media Archive-1 12/27/13 10:49:35.000 PM kernel[0]: AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect: connect to the server /Volumes/Media Archive-1 12/27/13 10:49:35.000 PM kernel[0]: AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect: connect on /Volumes/Media Archive-1 failed 65. 12/27/13 10:49:35.000 PM kernel[0]: AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect: sleep for 1 seconds and then try again 12/27/13 10:49:35.479 PM KernelEventAgent[57]: tid 00000000 type 'afpfs', mounted on '/Volumes/Media Archive-1', from '//Me@Capsule._afpovertcp._tcp.local/Media%20Archive', not responding 12/27/13 10:49:35.487 PM KernelEventAgent[57]: tid 00000000 found 1 filesystem(s) with problem(s) 12/27/13 10:49:36.692 PM com.bourgeoisbits.cloak.agent[14503]: NetworkProfile: (null), (null), (null) (Connected: NO, Airport: NO, Open: NO) [trusted] 12/27/13 10:49:36.000 PM kernel[0]: AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect: connect to the server /Volumes/Media Archive-1 12/27/13 10:49:36.000 PM kernel[0]: AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect: connect on /Volumes/Media Archive-1 failed 65. 12/27/13 10:49:36.000 PM kernel[0]: AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect: sleep for 2 seconds and then try again 12/27/13 10:49:38.000 PM kernel[0]: AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect: connect to the server /Volumes/Media Archive-1 12/27/13 10:49:38.000 PM kernel[0]: AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect: connect on /Volumes/Media Archive-1 failed 65. 12/27/13 10:49:38.000 PM kernel[0]: AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect: sleep for 4 seconds and then try again 12/27/13 10:49:41.000 PM kernel[0]: CODE SIGNING: cs_invalid_page(0x1000): p=53662[GoogleSoftwareUp] clearing CS_VALID 12/27/13 10:49:42.102 PM GoogleSoftwareUpdateDaemon[53663]: -[KeystoneDaemon logServiceState] GoogleSoftwareUpdate daemon (1.1.0.3659) vending: com.google.Keystone.Daemon.UpdateEngine: 2 connection(s) com.google.Keystone.Daemon.Administration: 0 connection(s) 12/27/13 10:49:42.113 PM GoogleSoftwareUpdateDaemon[53663]: -[KSUpdateEngine updateProductID:] KSUpdateEngine updating product ID: "com.google.Keystone" 12/27/13 10:49:42.116 PM GoogleSoftwareUpdateDaemon[53663]: -[KSCheckAction performAction] KSCheckAction checking 1 ticket(s). 12/27/13 10:49:42.121 PM GoogleSoftwareUpdateDaemon[53663]: -[KSUpdateCheckAction performAction] KSUpdateCheckAction starting update check for ticket(s): {( <KSTicket:0x531870 productID=com.google.Keystone version=1.1.0.3659 xc=<KSPathExistenceChecker:0x5302d0 path=/Library/Google/GoogleSoftwareUpdate/GoogleSoftwareUpdate.bundle/> serverType=Omaha url=htt[PeeEs]://tools.google.com/service/update2 creationDate=2012-08-12 14:47:10 > )} Using server: <KSOmahaServer:0x534340 engine=<KSDaemonUpdateEngine:0x52e530> params={ EngineVersion = "1.1.0.3659"; ActivesInfo = { "com.google.talkplugin" = { LastRollCallPingDate = 2013-10-06 07:00:00 +0000; }; "com.google.Keystone" = { LastRollCallPingDate = 2013-10-06 07:00:00 +0000; LastActivePingDate = 2013-10-06 07:00:00 +0000; LastActiveDate = 2013-12-28 03:49:42 +0000; }; "com.google.picasa" = { LastActiveDate = 2012-08-29 10:15:42 +0000; }; }; UserInitiated = 0; IsSystem = 1; OmahaOSVersion = "10.8.5_i486"; Identity = KeystoneDaemon; AllowedSubdomains = ( ".omaha.sandbox.google.com", ".tools.google.com", ".www.google.com", ".corp.google.com" ); } > 12/27/13 10:49:42.130 PM GoogleSoftwareUpdateDaemon[53663]: -[KSUpdateCheckAction performAction] KSUpdateCheckAction running KSServerUpdateRequest: <KSOmahaServerUpdateRequest:0x1a31a90 server=<KSOmahaServer:0x534340> url="htt[PeeEs]://tools.google.com/service/update2" runningFetchers=0 tickets=1 activeTickets=1 rollCallTickets=1 body= <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?> <o:gupdate xmlns:o="htt[Pee]://www.google.com/update2/request" protocol="2.0" version="KeystoneDaemon-1.1.0.3659" ismachine="1"> <o:os platform="mac" version="MacOSX" sp="10.8.5_i486"></o:os> <o:app appid="com.google.Keystone" version="1.1.0.3659" lang="en-us" installage="502" brand="GGLG"> <o:ping r="82" a="82"></o:ping> <o:updatecheck></o:updatecheck> </o:app> </o:gupdate> > 12/27/13 10:49:42.291 PM GoogleSoftwareUpdateDaemon[53663]: -[KSOutOfProcessFetcher(PrivateMethods) helperDidTerminate:] The Internet connection appears to be offline. [NSURLErrorDomain:-1009] 12/27/13 10:49:42.291 PM GoogleSoftwareUpdateDaemon[53663]: -[KSServerUpdateRequest(PrivateMethods) fetcher:failedWithError:] KSServerUpdateRequest fetch failed. (productIDs: com.google.Keystone) [com.google.UpdateEngine.CoreErrorDomain:702 - 'htt[PeeEs]://tools.google.com/service/update2'] (The Internet connection appears to be offline. [NSURLErrorDomain:-1009]) 12/27/13 10:49:42.292 PM GoogleSoftwareUpdateDaemon[53663]: -[KSUpdateCheckAction(PrivateMethods) finishAction] KSUpdateCheckAction found updates: {( )} 12/27/13 10:49:42.295 PM GoogleSoftwareUpdateDaemon[53663]: -[KSPrefetchAction performAction] KSPrefetchAction no updates to prefetch. 12/27/13 10:49:42.295 PM GoogleSoftwareUpdateDaemon[53663]: -[KSMultiUpdateAction performAction] KSSilentUpdateAction had no updates to apply. 12/27/13 10:49:42.296 PM GoogleSoftwareUpdateDaemon[53663]: -[KSMultiUpdateAction performAction] KSPromptAction had no updates to apply. 12/27/13 10:49:42.299 PM GoogleSoftwareUpdateDaemon[53663]: -[KSUpdateEngine(PrivateMethods) updateFinish] KSUpdateEngine update processing complete. 12/27/13 10:49:42.000 PM kernel[0]: AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect: connect to the server /Volumes/Media Archive-1 12/27/13 10:49:42.000 PM kernel[0]: AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect: connect on /Volumes/Media Archive-1 failed 65. 12/27/13 10:49:42.000 PM kernel[0]: AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect: sleep for 8 seconds and then try again 12/27/13 10:49:43.152 PM GoogleSoftwareUpdateDaemon[53663]: -[KSUpdateEngine updateAllProducts] KSUpdateEngine updating all installed products. 12/27/13 10:49:43.153 PM GoogleSoftwareUpdateDaemon[53663]: -[KSCheckAction performAction] KSCheckAction checking 2 ticket(s). 12/27/13 10:49:43.158 PM GoogleSoftwareUpdateDaemon[53663]: -[KSUpdateCheckAction performAction] KSUpdateCheckAction starting update check for ticket(s): {( <KSTicket:0x18367a0 productID=com.google.Keystone version=1.1.0.3659 xc=<KSPathExistenceChecker:0x1837e10 path=/Library/Google/GoogleSoftwareUpdate/GoogleSoftwareUpdate.bundle/> serverType=Omaha url=htt[PeeEs]://tools.google.com/service/update2 creationDate=2012-08-12 14:47:10 >, <KSTicket:0x1834750 productID=com.google.talkplugin version=4.7.0.15362 xc=<KSPathExistenceChecker:0x1833890 path=/Library/Application Support/Google/GoogleTalkPlugin.app> serverType=Omaha url=htt[PeeEs]://tools.google.com/service/update2 creationDate=2012-08-12 14:47:10 > )} Using server: <KSOmahaServer:0x52e930 engine=<KSDaemonUpdateEngine:0x52e530> params={ EngineVersion = "1.1.0.3659"; ActivesInfo = { "com.google.talkplugin" = { LastRollCallPingDate = 2013-10-06 07:00:00 +0000; }; "com.google.Keystone" = { LastRollCallPingDate = 2013-10-06 07:00:00 +0000; LastActivePingDate = 2013-10-06 07:00:00 +0000; LastActiveDate = 2013-12-28 03:49:42 +0000; }; "com.google.picasa" = { LastActiveDate = 2012-08-29 10:15:42 +0000; }; }; UserInitiated = 0; IsSystem = 1; OmahaOSVersion = "10.8.5_i486"; Identity = KeystoneDaemon; AllowedSubdomains = ( ".omaha.sandbox.google.com", ".tools.google.com", ".www.google.com", ".corp.google.com" ); } > 12/27/13 10:49:43.159 PM GoogleSoftwareUpdateDaemon[53663]: -[KSUpdateCheckAction performAction] KSUpdateCheckAction running KSServerUpdateRequest: <KSOmahaServerUpdateRequest:0x53a210 server=<KSOmahaServer:0x52e930> url="htt[PeeEs]://tools.google.com/service/update2" runningFetchers=0 tickets=2 activeTickets=1 rollCallTickets=2 body= <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?> <o:gupdate xmlns:o="htt[Pee]://www.google.com/update2/request" protocol="2.0" version="KeystoneDaemon-1.1.0.3659" ismachine="1"> <o:os platform="mac" version="MacOSX" sp="10.8.5_i486"></o:os> <o:app appid="com.google.Keystone" version="1.1.0.3659" lang="en-us" installage="502" brand="GGLG"> <o:ping r="82" a="82"></o:ping> <o:updatecheck></o:updatecheck> </o:app> <o:app appid="com.google.talkplugin" version="4.7.0.15362" lang="en-us" installage="502" brand="GGLG"> <o:ping r="82"></o:ping> <o:updatecheck></o:updatecheck> </o:app> </o:gupdate> > 12/27/13 10:49:43.243 PM GoogleSoftwareUpdateDaemon[53663]: -[KSOutOfProcessFetcher(PrivateMethods) helperDidTerminate:] The Internet connection appears to be offline. [NSURLErrorDomain:-1009] 12/27/13 10:49:43.243 PM GoogleSoftwareUpdateDaemon[53663]: -[KSServerUpdateRequest(PrivateMethods) fetcher:failedWithError:] KSServerUpdateRequest fetch failed. (productIDs: com.google.Keystone, ... (2)) [com.google.UpdateEngine.CoreErrorDomain:702 - 'htt[PeeEs]://tools.google.com/service/update2'] (The Internet connection appears to be offline. [NSURLErrorDomain:-1009]) 12/27/13 10:49:43.244 PM GoogleSoftwareUpdateDaemon[53663]: -[KSUpdateCheckAction(PrivateMethods) finishAction] KSUpdateCheckAction found updates: {( )} 12/27/13 10:49:43.247 PM GoogleSoftwareUpdateDaemon[53663]: -[KSPrefetchAction performAction] KSPrefetchAction no updates to prefetch. 12/27/13 10:49:43.248 PM GoogleSoftwareUpdateDaemon[53663]: -[KSMultiUpdateAction performAction] KSSilentUpdateAction had no updates to apply. 12/27/13 10:49:43.248 PM GoogleSoftwareUpdateDaemon[53663]: -[KSMultiUpdateAction performAction] KSPromptAction had no updates to apply. 12/27/13 10:49:43.250 PM GoogleSoftwareUpdateDaemon[53663]: -[KSUpdateEngine(PrivateMethods) updateFinish] KSUpdateEngine update processing complete. 12/27/13 10:49:45.570 PM GoogleSoftwareUpdateDaemon[53663]: -[KeystoneDaemon logServiceState] GoogleSoftwareUpdate daemon (1.1.0.3659) vending: com.google.Keystone.Daemon.UpdateEngine: 1 connection(s) com.google.Keystone.Daemon.Administration: 0 connection(s) 12/27/13 10:49:50.000 PM kernel[0]: AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect: connect to the server /Volumes/Media Archive-1 12/27/13 10:49:50.000 PM kernel[0]: AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect: connect on /Volumes/Media Archive-1 failed 65. 12/27/13 10:49:50.000 PM kernel[0]: AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect: sleep for 10 seconds and then try again 12/27/13 10:49:53.828 PM KernelEventAgent[57]: tid 00000000 unmounting 1 filesystems 12/27/13 10:49:53.000 PM kernel[0]: AFP_VFS afpfs_unmount: /Volumes/Media Archive-1, flags 524288, pid 57 12/27/13 10:49:54.000 PM kernel[0]: AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect: get the reconnect token 12/27/13 10:49:54.000 PM kernel[0]: AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect: GetReconnectToken failed 32 /Volumes/Media Archive-1 12/27/13 10:49:54.000 PM kernel[0]: AFP_VFS afpfs_unmount : afpfs_DoReconnect sent signal for unmount to proceed 12/27/13 10:50:12.104 PM GoogleSoftwareUpdateDaemon[53663]: -[KeystoneDaemon main] GoogleSoftwareUpdateDaemon inactive, shutdown. 12/27/13 10:50:29.396 PM Dock[93157]: no information back from LS about running process

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• Android programming. Application stopped unexpectedly.

  - by user277704

  I've just created a prototype of interface for my android app and tried to run it. Unfortunately I get an error that my app has stopped unexpectedly (my reputation doesn't allow me to post images so follow my links): screenshot of error message This is layout mode of editing. Everything looks as I want so there shouldn't be errors: mobileka.freehostia.com/3.png (I can post only one hyperlink...) This is my main.xml code: <code> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" android:orientation="vertical" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="fill_parent" android:gravity="top" android:background="@drawable/back" > <TextView android:id="@+id/score" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:text = "@string/scoreT" android:textColor="@string/scoreColor" android:gravity = "left" android:typeface="serif" android:textStyle="bold|italic" android:textSize="16sp" android:paddingLeft = "10px" android:paddingTop="4px"/ <TextView android:id = "@+id/scoreTxt" android:layout_toRightOf="@+id/score" android:textSize="16sp" android:paddingTop = "5px" android:paddingLeft="4px" android:typeface="serif" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:text=" 0" android:textColor="@string/scoreTextColor" android:gravity = "left"/> <TextView android:id = "@+id/scoreSeparator" android:layout_toRightOf="@+id/scoreTxt" android:textSize="16sp" android:paddingTop = "3px" android:paddingLeft="4px" android:typeface="serif" android:textStyle="bold" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:text="|" android:textColor="@string/scoreColor" android:gravity = "left"/> <TextView android:id = "@+id/timerTxt" android:layout_alignParentRight="true" android:textSize="16sp" android:paddingRight="10px" android:paddingTop="4px" android:typeface="serif" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:textColor="@string/scoreTextColor" android:gravity = "right" android:text="00:00" /> <TextView android:id = "@+id/timer" android:layout_toLeftOf="@+id/timerTxt" android:textColor="@string/scoreColor" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:textSize="16sp" android:padding = "3px" android:typeface="serif" android:textStyle="bold|italic" android:text="@string/timerT" android:gravity = "left"/> <TextView android:id = "@+id/timerSeparator" android:layout_toLeftOf="@+id/timer" android:textSize="16sp" android:paddingTop = "3px" android:paddingLeft="4px" android:typeface="serif" android:textStyle="bold" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:text="|" android:textColor="@string/scoreColor" android:gravity = "left"/> <ImageButton android:id="@+id/buttonOne" android:layout_below="@+id/score" android:layout_marginTop="40px" android:layout_marginLeft="14px" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:clickable="true" android:src="@drawable/inactive"/> <ImageButton android:id="@+id/buttonTwo" android:layout_toRightOf="@+id/buttonOne" android:layout_marginTop="63px" android:layout_marginLeft="10px" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:src="@drawable/inactive" /> <ImageButton android:id="@+id/buttonThree" android:layout_toRightOf="@+id/buttonTwo" android:layout_marginTop="63px" android:layout_marginLeft="10px" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:src="@drawable/inactive" /> <ImageButton android:id="@+id/buttonFour" android:layout_toRightOf="@+id/buttonThree" android:layout_marginTop="63px" android:layout_marginLeft="10px" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:src="@drawable/inactive" /> <ImageButton android:id="@+id/buttonFive" android:layout_below="@+id/buttonOne" android:layout_marginTop="40px" android:layout_marginLeft="14px" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:src="@drawable/inactive" /> <ImageButton android:id="@+id/buttonSix" android:layout_toRightOf="@+id/buttonFive" android:layout_marginTop="164px" android:layout_marginLeft="10px" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:src="@drawable/inactive" /> <ImageButton android:id="@+id/buttonSeven" android:layout_toRightOf="@+id/buttonSix" android:layout_marginTop="164px" android:layout_marginLeft="10px" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:src="@drawable/inactive" /> <ImageButton android:id="@+id/buttonEight" android:layout_toRightOf="@+id/buttonSeven" android:layout_marginTop="164px" android:layout_marginLeft="10px" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:src="@drawable/inactive" /> <ImageButton android:id="@+id/buttonNine" android:layout_below="@+id/buttonEight" android:layout_marginTop="40px" android:layout_marginLeft="14px" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:src="@drawable/inactive" /> <ImageButton android:id="@+id/buttonTen" android:layout_toRightOf="@+id/buttonNine" android:layout_marginTop="264px" android:layout_marginLeft="10px" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:src="@drawable/inactive" /> <ImageButton android:id="@+id/buttonEleven" android:layout_toRightOf="@+id/buttonTen" android:layout_marginTop="264px" android:layout_marginLeft="10px" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:src="@drawable/inactive" /> <ImageButton android:id="@+id/buttonTwelve" android:layout_toRightOf="@+id/buttonEleven" android:layout_marginTop="264px" android:layout_marginLeft="10px" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:src="@drawable/inactive" /> And this is my logcat errors (p.s. line #12 is the first TextView in main.xml): 03-26 22:59:31.670: WARN/dalvikvm(185): threadid=3: thread exiting with uncaught exception (group=0x4001b188) 03-26 22:59:31.727: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(185): Uncaught handler: thread main exiting due to uncaught exception 03-26 22:59:31.784: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(185): java.lang.RuntimeException: Unable to start activity ComponentInfo{kz.androidmarket.www.randomtest1/kz.androidmarket.www.randomtest1.randomTest1}: android.view.InflateException: Binary XML file line #12: Error inflating class 03-26 22:59:31.784: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(185): at android.app.ActivityThread.performLaunchActivity(ActivityThread.java:2496) 03-26 22:59:31.784: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(185): at android.app.ActivityThread.handleLaunchActivity(ActivityThread.java:2512) 03-26 22:59:31.784: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(185): at android.app.ActivityThread.access$2200(ActivityThread.java:119) 03-26 22:59:31.784: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(185): at android.app.ActivityThread$H.handleMessage(ActivityThread.java:1863) 03-26 22:59:31.784: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(185): at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:99) 03-26 22:59:31.784: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(185): at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:123) 03-26 22:59:31.784: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(185): at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:4363) 03-26 22:59:31.784: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(185): at java.lang.reflect.Method.invokeNative(Native Method) 03-26 22:59:31.784: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(185): at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:521) 03-26 22:59:31.784: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(185): at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(ZygoteInit.java:860) 03-26 22:59:31.784: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(185): at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:618) 03-26 22:59:31.784: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(185): at dalvik.system.NativeStart.main(Native Method) 03-26 22:59:31.784: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(185): Caused by: android.view.InflateException: Binary XML file line #12: Error inflating class 03-26 22:59:31.784: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(185): at android.view.LayoutInflater.createView(LayoutInflater.java:513) 03-26 22:59:31.784: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(185): at com.android.internal.policy.impl.PhoneLayoutInflater.onCreateView(PhoneLayoutInflater.java:56) 03-26 22:59:31.784: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(185): at android.view.LayoutInflater.createViewFromTag(LayoutInflater.java:563) 03-26 22:59:31.784: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(185): at android.view.LayoutInflater.rInflate(LayoutInflater.java:618) 03-26 22:59:31.784: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(185): at android.view.LayoutInflater.inflate(LayoutInflater.java:407) 03-26 22:59:31.784: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(185): at android.view.LayoutInflater.inflate(LayoutInflater.java:320) 03-26 22:59:31.784: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(185): at android.view.LayoutInflater.inflate(LayoutInflater.java:276) 03-26 22:59:31.784: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(185): at com.android.internal.policy.impl.PhoneWindow.setContentView(PhoneWindow.java:198) 03-26 22:59:31.784: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(185): at android.app.Activity.setContentView(Activity.java:1622) 03-26 22:59:31.784: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(185): at kz.androidmarket.www.randomtest1.randomTest1.onCreate(randomTest1.java:11) 03-26 22:59:31.784: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(185): at android.app.Instrumentation.callActivityOnCreate(Instrumentation.java:1047) 03-26 22:59:31.784: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(185): at android.app.ActivityThread.performLaunchActivity(ActivityThread.java:2459) 03-26 22:59:31.784: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(185): ... 11 more 03-26 22:59:31.784: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(185): Caused by: java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException 03-26 22:59:31.784: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(185): at android.widget.TextView.(TextView.java:320) 03-26 22:59:31.784: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(185): at java.lang.reflect.Constructor.constructNative(Native Method) 03-26 22:59:31.784: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(185): at java.lang.reflect.Constructor.newInstance(Constructor.java:446) 03-26 22:59:31.784: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(185): at android.view.LayoutInflater.createView(LayoutInflater.java:500) 03-26 22:59:31.784: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(185): ... 22 more 03-26 22:59:31.784: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(185): Caused by: android.content.res.Resources$NotFoundException: File #ffff9900 from drawable resource ID #0x7f040002: .xml extension required 03-26 22:59:31.784: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(185): at android.content.res.Resources.loadColorStateList(Resources.java:1820) 03-26 22:59:31.784: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(185): at android.content.res.TypedArray.getColorStateList(TypedArray.java:289) 03-26 22:59:31.784: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(185): at android.widget.TextView.(TextView.java:627) 03-26 22:59:31.784: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(185): ... 26 more Could anybody help me?

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• Is there a Telecommunications Reference Architecture?

  - by raul.goycoolea

  @font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Courier New"; }@font-face { font-family: "Wingdings"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }ol { margin-bottom: 0cm; }ul { margin-bottom: 0cm; } Abstract   Reference architecture provides needed architectural information that can be provided in advance to an enterprise to enable consistent architectural best practices. Enterprise Reference Architecture helps business owners to actualize their strategies, vision, objectives, and principles. It evaluates the IT systems, based on Reference Architecture goals, principles, and standards. It helps to reduce IT costs by increasing functionality, availability, scalability, etc. Telecom Reference Architecture provides customers with the flexibility to view bundled service bills online with the provision of multiple services. It provides real-time, flexible billing and charging systems, to handle complex promotions, discounts, and settlements with multiple parties. This paper attempts to describe the Reference Architecture for the Telecom Enterprises. It lays the foundation for a Telecom Reference Architecture by articulating the requirements, drivers, and pitfalls for telecom service providers. It describes generic reference architecture for telecom enterprises and moves on to explain how to achieve Enterprise Reference Architecture by using SOA.   Introduction   A Reference Architecture provides a methodology, set of practices, template, and standards based on a set of successful solutions implemented earlier. These solutions have been generalized and structured for the depiction of both a logical and a physical architecture, based on the harvesting of a set of patterns that describe observations in a number of successful implementations. It helps as a reference for the various architectures that an enterprise can implement to solve various problems. It can be used as the starting point or the point of comparisons for various departments/business entities of a company, or for the various companies for an enterprise. It provides multiple views for multiple stakeholders.   Major artifacts of the Enterprise Reference Architecture are methodologies, standards, metadata, documents, design patterns, etc.   Purpose of Reference Architecture   In most cases, architects spend a lot of time researching, investigating, defining, and re-arguing architectural decisions. It is like reinventing the wheel as their peers in other organizations or even the same organization have already spent a lot of time and effort defining their own architectural practices. This prevents an organization from learning from its own experiences and applying that knowledge for increased effectiveness.   Reference architecture provides missing architectural information that can be provided in advance to project team members to enable consistent architectural best practices.   Enterprise Reference Architecture helps an enterprise to achieve the following at the abstract level:   ·       Reference architecture is more of a communication channel to an enterprise ·       Helps the business owners to accommodate to their strategies, vision, objectives, and principles. ·       Evaluates the IT systems based on Reference Architecture Principles ·       Reduces IT spending through increasing functionality, availability, scalability, etc ·       A Real-time Integration Model helps to reduce the latency of the data updates Is used to define a single source of Information ·       Provides a clear view on how to manage information and security ·       Defines the policy around the data ownership, product boundaries, etc. ·       Helps with cost optimization across project and solution portfolios by eliminating unused or duplicate investments and assets ·       Has a shorter implementation time and cost   Once the reference architecture is in place, the set of architectural principles, standards, reference models, and best practices ensure that the aligned investments have the greatest possible likelihood of success in both the near term and the long term (TCO).     Common pitfalls for Telecom Service Providers   Telecom Reference Architecture serves as the first step towards maturity for a telecom service provider. During the course of our assignments/experiences with telecom players, we have come across the following observations – Some of these indicate a lack of maturity of the telecom service provider:   ·       In markets that are growing and not so mature, it has been observed that telcos have a significant amount of in-house or home-grown applications. In some of these markets, the growth has been so rapid that IT has been unable to cope with business demands. Telcos have shown a tendency to come up with workarounds in their IT applications so as to meet business needs. ·       Even for core functions like provisioning or mediation, some telcos have tried to manage with home-grown applications. ·       Most of the applications do not have the required scalability or maintainability to sustain growth in volumes or functionality. ·       Applications face interoperability issues with other applications in the operator's landscape. Integrating a new application or network element requires considerable effort on the part of the other applications. ·       Application boundaries are not clear, and functionality that is not in the initial scope of that application gets pushed onto it. This results in the development of the multiple, small applications without proper boundaries. ·       Usage of Legacy OSS/BSS systems, poor Integration across Multiple COTS Products and Internal Systems. Most of the Integrations are developed on ad-hoc basis and Point-to-Point Integration. ·       Redundancy of the business functions in different applications • Fragmented data across the different applications and no integrated view of the strategic data • Lot of performance Issues due to the usage of the complex integration across OSS and BSS systems   However, this is where the maturity of the telecom industry as a whole can be of help. The collaborative efforts of telcos to overcome some of these problems have resulted in bodies like the TM Forum. They have come up with frameworks for business processes, data, applications, and technology for telecom service providers. These could be a good starting point for telcos to clean up their enterprise landscape.   Industry Trends in Telecom Reference Architecture   Telecom reference architectures are evolving rapidly because telcos are facing business and IT challenges.   “The reality is that there probably is no killer application, no silver bullet that the telcos can latch onto to carry them into a 21st Century.... Instead, there are probably hundreds – perhaps thousands – of niche applications.... And the only way to find which of these works for you is to try out lots of them, ramp up the ones that work, and discontinue the ones that fail.” – Martin Creaner President & CTO TM Forum.   The following trends have been observed in telecom reference architecture:   ·       Transformation of business structures to align with customer requirements ·       Adoption of more Internet-like technical architectures. The Web 2.0 concept is increasingly being used. ·       Virtualization of the traditional operations support system (OSS) ·       Adoption of SOA to support development of IP-based services ·       Adoption of frameworks like Service Delivery Platforms (SDPs) and IP Multimedia Subsystem ·       (IMS) to enable seamless deployment of various services over fixed and mobile networks ·       Replacement of in-house, customized, and stove-piped OSS/BSS with standards-based COTS products ·       Compliance with industry standards and frameworks like eTOM, SID, and TAM to enable seamless integration with other standards-based products   Drivers of Reference Architecture   The drivers of the Reference Architecture are Reference Architecture Goals, Principles, and Enterprise Vision and Telecom Transformation. The details are depicted below diagram. @font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoCaption, li.MsoCaption, div.MsoCaption { margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; font-size: 9pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; color: rgb(79, 129, 189); font-weight: bold; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } Figure 1. Drivers for Reference Architecture @font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Courier New"; }@font-face { font-family: "Wingdings"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }ol { margin-bottom: 0cm; }ul { margin-bottom: 0cm; } Today’s telecom reference architectures should seamlessly integrate traditional legacy-based applications and transition to next-generation network technologies (e.g., IP multimedia subsystems). This has resulted in new requirements for flexible, real-time billing and OSS/BSS systems and implications on the service provider’s organizational requirements and structure.   Telecom reference architectures are today expected to:   ·       Integrate voice, messaging, email and other VAS over fixed and mobile networks, back end systems ·       Be able to provision multiple services and service bundles • Deliver converged voice, video and data services ·       Leverage the existing Network Infrastructure ·       Provide real-time, flexible billing and charging systems to handle complex promotions, discounts, and settlements with multiple parties. ·       Support charging of advanced data services such as VoIP, On-Demand, Services (e.g.  Video), IMS/SIP Services, Mobile Money, Content Services and IPTV. ·       Help in faster deployment of new services • Serve as an effective platform for collaboration between network IT and business organizations ·       Harness the potential of converging technology, networks, devices and content to develop multimedia services and solutions of ever-increasing sophistication on a single Internet Protocol (IP) ·       Ensure better service delivery and zero revenue leakage through real-time balance and credit management ·       Lower operating costs to drive profitability   Enterprise Reference Architecture   The Enterprise Reference Architecture (RA) fills the gap between the concepts and vocabulary defined by the reference model and the implementation. Reference architecture provides detailed architectural information in a common format such that solutions can be repeatedly designed and deployed in a consistent, high-quality, supportable fashion. This paper attempts to describe the Reference Architecture for the Telecom Application Usage and how to achieve the Enterprise Level Reference Architecture using SOA.   • Telecom Reference Architecture • Enterprise SOA based Reference Architecture   Telecom Reference Architecture   Tele Management Forum’s New Generation Operations Systems and Software (NGOSS) is an architectural framework for organizing, integrating, and implementing telecom systems. NGOSS is a component-based framework consisting of the following elements:   ·       The enhanced Telecom Operations Map (eTOM) is a business process framework. ·       The Shared Information Data (SID) model provides a comprehensive information framework that may be specialized for the needs of a particular organization. ·       The Telecom Application Map (TAM) is an application framework to depict the functional footprint of applications, relative to the horizontal processes within eTOM. ·       The Technology Neutral Architecture (TNA) is an integrated framework. TNA is an architecture that is sustainable through technology changes.   NGOSS Architecture Standards are:   ·       Centralized data ·       Loosely coupled distributed systems ·       Application components/re-use  ·       A technology-neutral system framework with technology specific implementations ·       Interoperability to service provider data/processes ·       Allows more re-use of business components across multiple business scenarios ·       Workflow automation   The traditional operator systems architecture consists of four layers,   ·       Business Support System (BSS) layer, with focus toward customers and business partners. Manages order, subscriber, pricing, rating, and billing information. ·       Operations Support System (OSS) layer, built around product, service, and resource inventories. ·       Networks layer – consists of Network elements and 3rd Party Systems. ·       Integration Layer – to maximize application communication and overall solution flexibility.   Reference architecture for telecom enterprises is depicted below. @font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Courier New"; }@font-face { font-family: "Wingdings"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoCaption, li.MsoCaption, div.MsoCaption { margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; font-size: 9pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; color: rgb(79, 129, 189); font-weight: bold; }p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }ol { margin-bottom: 0cm; }ul { margin-bottom: 0cm; } Figure 2. Telecom Reference Architecture   The major building blocks of any Telecom Service Provider architecture are as follows:   1. Customer Relationship Management   CRM encompasses the end-to-end lifecycle of the customer: customer initiation/acquisition, sales, ordering, and service activation, customer care and support, proactive campaigns, cross sell/up sell, and retention/loyalty.   CRM also includes the collection of customer information and its application to personalize, customize, and integrate delivery of service to a customer, as well as to identify opportunities for increasing the value of the customer to the enterprise.   The key functionalities related to Customer Relationship Management are   ·       Manage the end-to-end lifecycle of a customer request for products. ·       Create and manage customer profiles. ·       Manage all interactions with customers – inquiries, requests, and responses. ·       Provide updates to Billing and other south bound systems on customer/account related updates such as customer/ account creation, deletion, modification, request bills, final bill, duplicate bills, credit limits through Middleware. ·       Work with Order Management System, Product, and Service Management components within CRM. ·       Manage customer preferences – Involve all the touch points and channels to the customer, including contact center, retail stores, dealers, self service, and field service, as well as via any media (phone, face to face, web, mobile device, chat, email, SMS, mail, the customer's bill, etc.). ·       Support single interface for customer contact details, preferences, account details, offers, customer premise equipment, bill details, bill cycle details, and customer interactions.   CRM applications interact with customers through customer touch points like portals, point-of-sale terminals, interactive voice response systems, etc. The requests by customers are sent via fulfillment/provisioning to billing system for ordering processing.   2. Billing and Revenue Management   Billing and Revenue Management handles the collection of appropriate usage records and production of timely and accurate bills – for providing pre-bill usage information and billing to customers; for processing their payments; and for performing payment collections. In addition, it handles customer inquiries about bills, provides billing inquiry status, and is responsible for resolving billing problems to the customer's satisfaction in a timely manner. This process grouping also supports prepayment for services.   The key functionalities provided by these applications are   ·       To ensure that enterprise revenue is billed and invoices delivered appropriately to customers. ·       To manage customers’ billing accounts, process their payments, perform payment collections, and monitor the status of the account balance. ·       To ensure the timely and effective fulfillment of all customer bill inquiries and complaints. ·       Collect the usage records from mediation and ensure appropriate rating and discounting of all usage and pricing. ·       Support revenue sharing; split charging where usage is guided to an account different from the service consumer. ·       Support prepaid and post-paid rating. ·       Send notification on approach / exceeding the usage thresholds as enforced by the subscribed offer, and / or as setup by the customer. ·       Support prepaid, post paid, and hybrid (where some services are prepaid and the rest of the services post paid) customers and conversion from post paid to prepaid, and vice versa. ·       Support different billing function requirements like charge prorating, promotion, discount, adjustment, waiver, write-off, account receivable, GL Interface, late payment fee, credit control, dunning, account or service suspension, re-activation, expiry, termination, contract violation penalty, etc. ·       Initiate direct debit to collect payment against an invoice outstanding. ·       Send notification to Middleware on different events; for example, payment receipt, pre-suspension, threshold exceed, etc.   Billing systems typically get usage data from mediation systems for rating and billing. They get provisioning requests from order management systems and inquiries from CRM systems. Convergent and real-time billing systems can directly get usage details from network elements.   3. Mediation   Mediation systems transform/translate the Raw or Native Usage Data Records into a general format that is acceptable to billing for their rating purposes.   The following lists the high-level roles and responsibilities executed by the Mediation system in the end-to-end solution.   ·       Collect Usage Data Records from different data sources – like network elements, routers, servers – via different protocol and interfaces. ·       Process Usage Data Records – Mediation will process Usage Data Records as per the source format. ·       Validate Usage Data Records from each source. ·       Segregates Usage Data Records coming from each source to multiple, based on the segregation requirement of end Application. ·       Aggregates Usage Data Records based on the aggregation rule if any from different sources. ·       Consolidates multiple Usage Data Records from each source. ·       Delivers formatted Usage Data Records to different end application like Billing, Interconnect, Fraud Management, etc. ·       Generates audit trail for incoming Usage Data Records and keeps track of all the Usage Data Records at various stages of mediation process. ·       Checks duplicate Usage Data Records across files for a given time window.   4. Fulfillment   This area is responsible for providing customers with their requested products in a timely and correct manner. It translates the customer's business or personal need into a solution that can be delivered using the specific products in the enterprise's portfolio. This process informs the customers of the status of their purchase order, and ensures completion on time, as well as ensuring a delighted customer. These processes are responsible for accepting and issuing orders. They deal with pre-order feasibility determination, credit authorization, order issuance, order status and tracking, customer update on customer order activities, and customer notification on order completion. Order management and provisioning applications fall into this category.   The key functionalities provided by these applications are   ·       Issuing new customer orders, modifying open customer orders, or canceling open customer orders; ·       Verifying whether specific non-standard offerings sought by customers are feasible and supportable; ·       Checking the credit worthiness of customers as part of the customer order process; ·       Testing the completed offering to ensure it is working correctly; ·       Updating of the Customer Inventory Database to reflect that the specific product offering has been allocated, modified, or cancelled; ·       Assigning and tracking customer provisioning activities; ·       Managing customer provisioning jeopardy conditions; and ·       Reporting progress on customer orders and other processes to customer.   These applications typically get orders from CRM systems. They interact with network elements and billing systems for fulfillment of orders.   5. Enterprise Management   This process area includes those processes that manage enterprise-wide activities and needs, or have application within the enterprise as a whole. They encompass all business management processes that   ·       Are necessary to support the whole of the enterprise, including processes for financial management, legal management, regulatory management, process, cost, and quality management, etc.;   ·       Are responsible for setting corporate policies, strategies, and directions, and for providing guidelines and targets for the whole of the business, including strategy development and planning for areas, such as Enterprise Architecture, that are integral to the direction and development of the business;   ·       Occur throughout the enterprise, including processes for project management, performance assessments, cost assessments, etc.     (i) Enterprise Risk Management:   Enterprise Risk Management focuses on assuring that risks and threats to the enterprise value and/or reputation are identified, and appropriate controls are in place to minimize or eliminate the identified risks. The identified risks may be physical or logical/virtual. Successful risk management ensures that the enterprise can support its mission critical operations, processes, applications, and communications in the face of serious incidents such as security threats/violations and fraud attempts. Two key areas covered in Risk Management by telecom operators are:   ·       Revenue Assurance: Revenue assurance system will be responsible for identifying revenue loss scenarios across components/systems, and will help in rectifying the problems. The following lists the high-level roles and responsibilities executed by the Revenue Assurance system in the end-to-end solution. o   Identify all usage information dropped when networks are being upgraded. o   Interconnect bill verification. o   Identify where services are routinely provisioned but never billed. o   Identify poor sales policies that are intensifying collections problems. o   Find leakage where usage is sent to error bucket and never billed for. o   Find leakage where field service, CRM, and network build-out are not optimized.   ·       Fraud Management: Involves collecting data from different systems to identify abnormalities in traffic patterns, usage patterns, and subscription patterns to report suspicious activity that might suggest fraudulent usage of resources, resulting in revenue losses to the operator.   The key roles and responsibilities of the system component are as follows:   o   Fraud management system will capture and monitor high usage (over a certain threshold) in terms of duration, value, and number of calls for each subscriber. The threshold for each subscriber is decided by the system and fixed automatically. o   Fraud management will be able to detect the unauthorized access to services for certain subscribers. These subscribers may have been provided unauthorized services by employees. The component will raise the alert to the operator the very first time of such illegal calls or calls which are not billed. o   The solution will be to have an alarm management system that will deliver alarms to the operator/provider whenever it detects a fraud, thus minimizing fraud by catching it the first time it occurs. o   The Fraud Management system will be capable of interfacing with switches, mediation systems, and billing systems   (ii) Knowledge Management   This process focuses on knowledge management, technology research within the enterprise, and the evaluation of potential technology acquisitions.   Key responsibilities of knowledge base management are to   ·       Maintain knowledge base – Creation and updating of knowledge base on ongoing basis. ·       Search knowledge base – Search of knowledge base on keywords or category browse ·       Maintain metadata – Management of metadata on knowledge base to ensure effective management and search. ·       Run report generator. ·       Provide content – Add content to the knowledge base, e.g., user guides, operational manual, etc.   (iii) Document Management   It focuses on maintaining a repository of all electronic documents or images of paper documents relevant to the enterprise using a system.   (iv) Data Management   It manages data as a valuable resource for any enterprise. For telecom enterprises, the typical areas covered are Master Data Management, Data Warehousing, and Business Intelligence. It is also responsible for data governance, security, quality, and database management.   Key responsibilities of Data Management are   ·       Using ETL, extract the data from CRM, Billing, web content, ERP, campaign management, financial, network operations, asset management info, customer contact data, customer measures, benchmarks, process data, e.g., process inputs, outputs, and measures, into Enterprise Data Warehouse. ·       Management of data traceability with source, data related business rules/decisions, data quality, data cleansing data reconciliation, competitors data – storage for all the enterprise data (customer profiles, products, offers, revenues, etc.) ·       Get online update through night time replication or physical backup process at regular frequency. ·       Provide the data access to business intelligence and other systems for their analysis, report generation, and use.   (v) Business Intelligence   It uses the Enterprise Data to provide the various analysis and reports that contain prospects and analytics for customer retention, acquisition of new customers due to the offers, and SLAs. It will generate right and optimized plans – bolt-ons for the customers.   The following lists the high-level roles and responsibilities executed by the Business Intelligence system at the Enterprise Level:   ·       It will do Pattern analysis and reports problem. ·       It will do Data Analysis – Statistical analysis, data profiling, affinity analysis of data, customer segment wise usage patterns on offers, products, service and revenue generation against services and customer segments. ·       It will do Performance (business, system, and forecast) analysis, churn propensity, response time, and SLAs analysis. ·       It will support for online and offline analysis, and report drill down capability. ·       It will collect, store, and report various SLA data. ·       It will provide the necessary intelligence for marketing and working on campaigns, etc., with cost benefit analysis and predictions.   It will advise on customer promotions with additional services based on loyalty and credit history of customer   ·       It will Interface with Enterprise Data Management system for data to run reports and analysis tasks. It will interface with the campaign schedules, based on historical success evidence.   (vi) Stakeholder and External Relations Management   It manages the enterprise's relationship with stakeholders and outside entities. Stakeholders include shareholders, employee organizations, etc. Outside entities include regulators, local community, and unions. Some of the processes within this grouping are Shareholder Relations, External Affairs, Labor Relations, and Public Relations.   (vii) Enterprise Resource Planning   It is used to manage internal and external resources, including tangible assets, financial resources, materials, and human resources. Its purpose is to facilitate the flow of information between all business functions inside the boundaries of the enterprise and manage the connections to outside stakeholders. ERP systems consolidate all business operations into a uniform and enterprise wide system environment.   The key roles and responsibilities for Enterprise System are given below:   ·        It will handle responsibilities such as core accounting, financial, and management reporting. ·       It will interface with CRM for capturing customer account and details. ·       It will interface with billing to capture the billing revenue and other financial data. ·       It will be responsible for executing the dunning process. Billing will send the required feed to ERP for execution of dunning. ·       It will interface with the CRM and Billing through batch interfaces. Enterprise management systems are like horizontals in the enterprise and typically interact with all major telecom systems. E.g., an ERP system interacts with CRM, Fulfillment, and Billing systems for different kinds of data exchanges.   6. External Interfaces/Touch Points   The typical external parties are customers, suppliers/partners, employees, shareholders, and other stakeholders. External interactions from/to a Service Provider to other parties can be achieved by a variety of mechanisms, including:   ·       Exchange of emails or faxes ·       Call Centers ·       Web Portals ·       Business-to-Business (B2B) automated transactions   These applications provide an Internet technology driven interface to external parties to undertake a variety of business functions directly for themselves. These can provide fully or partially automated service to external parties through various touch points.   Typical characteristics of these touch points are   ·       Pre-integrated self-service system, including stand-alone web framework or integration front end with a portal engine ·       Self services layer exposing atomic web services/APIs for reuse by multiple systems across the architectural environment ·       Portlets driven connectivity exposing data and services interoperability through a portal engine or web application   These touch points mostly interact with the CRM systems for requests, inquiries, and responses.   7. Middleware   The component will be primarily responsible for integrating the different systems components under a common platform. It should provide a Standards-Based Platform for building Service Oriented Architecture and Composite Applications. The following lists the high-level roles and responsibilities executed by the Middleware component in the end-to-end solution.   ·       As an integration framework, covering to and fro interfaces ·       Provide a web service framework with service registry. ·       Support SOA framework with SOA service registry. ·       Each of the interfaces from / to Middleware to other components would handle data transformation, translation, and mapping of data points. ·       Receive data from the caller / activate and/or forward the data to the recipient system in XML format. ·       Use standard XML for data exchange. ·       Provide the response back to the service/call initiator. ·       Provide a tracking until the response completion. ·       Keep a store transitional data against each call/transaction. ·       Interface through Middleware to get any information that is possible and allowed from the existing systems to enterprise systems; e.g., customer profile and customer history, etc. ·       Provide the data in a common unified format to the SOA calls across systems, and follow the Enterprise Architecture directive. ·       Provide an audit trail for all transactions being handled by the component.   8. Network Elements   The term Network Element means a facility or equipment used in the provision of a telecommunications service. Such terms also includes features, functions, and capabilities that are provided by means of such facility or equipment, including subscriber numbers, databases, signaling systems, and information sufficient for billing and collection or used in the transmission, routing, or other provision of a telecommunications service.   Typical network elements in a GSM network are Home Location Register (HLR), Intelligent Network (IN), Mobile Switching Center (MSC), SMS Center (SMSC), and network elements for other value added services like Push-to-talk (PTT), Ring Back Tone (RBT), etc.   Network elements are invoked when subscribers use their telecom devices for any kind of usage. These elements generate usage data and pass it on to downstream systems like mediation and billing system for rating and billing. They also integrate with provisioning systems for order/service fulfillment.   9. 3rd Party Applications   3rd Party systems are applications like content providers, payment gateways, point of sale terminals, and databases/applications maintained by the Government.   Depending on applicability and the type of functionality provided by 3rd party applications, the integration with different telecom systems like CRM, provisioning, and billing will be done.   10. Service Delivery Platform   A service delivery platform (SDP) provides the architecture for the rapid deployment, provisioning, execution, management, and billing of value added telecom services. SDPs are based on the concept of SOA and layered architecture. They support the delivery of voice, data services, and content in network and device-independent fashion. They allow application developers to aggregate network capabilities, services, and sources of content. SDPs typically contain layers for web services exposure, service application development, and network abstraction.   SOA Reference Architecture   SOA concept is based on the principle of developing reusable business service and building applications by composing those services, instead of building monolithic applications in silos. It’s about bridging the gap between business and IT through a set of business-aligned IT services, using a set of design principles, patterns, and techniques.   In an SOA, resources are made available to participants in a value net, enterprise, line of business (typically spanning multiple applications within an enterprise or across multiple enterprises). It consists of a set of business-aligned IT services that collectively fulfill an organization’s business processes and goals. We can choreograph these services into composite applications and invoke them through standard protocols. SOA, apart from agility and reusability, enables:   ·       The business to specify processes as orchestrations of reusable services ·       Technology agnostic business design, with technology hidden behind service interface ·       A contractual-like interaction between business and IT, based on service SLAs ·       Accountability and governance, better aligned to business services ·       Applications interconnections untangling by allowing access only through service interfaces, reducing the daunting side effects of change ·       Reduced pressure to replace legacy and extended lifetime for legacy applications, through encapsulation in services   ·       A Cloud Computing paradigm, using web services technologies, that makes possible service outsourcing on an on-demand, utility-like, pay-per-usage basis   The following section represents the Reference Architecture of logical view for the Telecom Solution. The new custom built application needs to align with this logical architecture in the long run to achieve EA benefits.   Packaged implementation applications, such as ERP billing applications, need to expose their functions as service providers (as other applications consume) and interact with other applications as service consumers.   COT applications need to expose services through wrappers such as adapters to utilize existing resources and at the same time achieve Enterprise Architecture goal and objectives.   The following are the various layers for Enterprise level deployment of SOA. This diagram captures the abstract view of Enterprise SOA layers and important components of each layer. Layered architecture means decomposition of services such that most interactions occur between adjacent layers. However, there is no strict rule that top layers should not directly communicate with bottom layers.   The diagram below represents the important logical pieces that would result from overall SOA transformation. @font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Courier New"; }@font-face { font-family: "Wingdings"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoCaption, li.MsoCaption, div.MsoCaption { margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; font-size: 9pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; color: rgb(79, 129, 189); font-weight: bold; }p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }ol { margin-bottom: 0cm; }ul { margin-bottom: 0cm; } Figure 3. Enterprise SOA Reference Architecture 1.          Operational System Layer: This layer consists of all packaged applications like CRM, ERP, custom built applications, COTS based applications like Billing, Revenue Management, Fulfilment, and the Enterprise databases that are essential and contribute directly or indirectly to the Enterprise OSS/BSS Transformation.   ERP holds the data of Asset Lifecycle Management, Supply Chain, and Advanced Procurement and Human Capital Management, etc.   CRM holds the data related to Order, Sales, and Marketing, Customer Care, Partner Relationship Management, Loyalty, etc.   Content Management handles Enterprise Search and Query. Billing application consists of the following components:   ·       Collections Management, Customer Billing Management, Invoices, Real-Time Rating, Discounting, and Applying of Charges ·       Enterprise databases will hold both the application and service data, whether structured or unstructured.   MDM - Master data majorly consists of Customer, Order, Product, and Service Data.     2.          Enterprise Component Layer:   This layer consists of the Application Services and Common Services that are responsible for realizing the functionality and maintaining the QoS of the exposed services. This layer uses container-based technologies such as application servers to implement the components, workload management, high availability, and load balancing.   Application Services: This Service Layer enables application, technology, and database abstraction so that the complex accessing logic is hidden from the other service layers. This is a basic service layer, which exposes application functionalities and data as reusable services. The three types of the Application access services are:   ·       Application Access Service: This Service Layer exposes application level functionalities as a reusable service between BSS to BSS and BSS to OSS integration. This layer is enabled using disparate technology such as Web Service, Integration Servers, and Adaptors, etc.   ·       Data Access Service: This Service Layer exposes application data services as a reusable reference data service. This is done via direct interaction with application data. and provides the federated query.   ·       Network Access Service: This Service Layer exposes provisioning layer as a reusable service from OSS to OSS integration. This integration service emphasizes the need for high performance, stateless process flows, and distributed design.   Common Services encompasses management of structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data such as information services, portal services, interaction services, infrastructure services, and security services, etc.   3.          Integration Layer:   This consists of service infrastructure components like service bus, service gateway for partner integration, service registry, service repository, and BPEL processor. Service bus will carry the service invocation payloads/messages between consumers and providers. The other important functions expected from it are itinerary based routing, distributed caching of routing information, transformations, and all qualities of service for messaging-like reliability, scalability, and availability, etc. Service registry will hold all contracts (wsdl) of services, and it helps developers to locate or discover service during design time or runtime.   • BPEL processor would be useful in orchestrating the services to compose a complex business scenario or process. • Workflow and business rules management are also required to support manual triggering of certain activities within business process. based on the rules setup and also the state machine information. Application, data, and service mediation layer typically forms the overall composite application development framework or SOA Framework.   4.          Business Process Layer: These are typically the intermediate services layer and represent Shared Business Process Services. At Enterprise Level, these services are from Customer Management, Order Management, Billing, Finance, and Asset Management application domains.   5.          Access Layer: This layer consists of portals for Enterprise and provides a single view of Enterprise information management and dashboard services.   6.          Channel Layer: This consists of various devices; applications that form part of extended enterprise; browsers through which users access the applications.   7.          Client Layer: This designates the different types of users accessing the enterprise applications. The type of user typically would be an important factor in determining the level of access to applications.   8.          Vertical pieces like management, monitoring, security, and development cut across all horizontal layers Management and monitoring involves all aspects of SOA-like services, SLAs, and other QoS lifecycle processes for both applications and services surrounding SOA governance.     9.          EA Governance, Reference Architecture, Roadmap, Principles, and Best Practices:   EA Governance is important in terms of providing the overall direction to SOA implementation within the enterprise. This involves board-level involvement, in addition to business and IT executives. At a high level, this involves managing the SOA projects implementation, managing SOA infrastructure, and controlling the entire effort through all fine-tuned IT processes in accordance with COBIT (Control Objectives for Information Technology).   Devising tools and techniques to promote reuse culture, and the SOA way of doing things needs competency centers to be established in addition to training the workforce to take up new roles that are suited to SOA journey.   Conclusions   Reference Architectures can serve as the basis for disparate architecture efforts throughout the organization, even if they use different tools and technologies. Reference architectures provide best practices and approaches in the independent way a vendor deals with technology and standards. Reference Architectures model the abstract architectural elements for an enterprise independent of the technologies, protocols, and products that are used to implement an SOA. Telecom enterprises today are facing significant business and technology challenges due to growing competition, a multitude of services, and convergence. Adopting architectural best practices could go a long way in meeting these challenges. The use of SOA-based architecture for communication to each of the external systems like Billing, CRM, etc., in OSS/BSS system has made the architecture very loosely coupled, with greater flexibility. Any change in the external systems would be absorbed at the Integration Layer without affecting the rest of the ecosystem. The use of a Business Process Management (BPM) tool makes the management and maintenance of the business processes easy, with better performance in terms of lead time, quality, and cost. Since the Architecture is based on standards, it will lower the cost of deploying and managing OSS/BSS applications over their lifecycles.

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• WCF AuthenticationService in IIS7 Error

  - by germandb

  I have a WCF Server running on IIS 7 using default application pool, with SSL activate, the services is installed in a SBS Server 2008. I implement client application services with wcf and SQL 2005 for setting the access control in my application. The application run under windows vista and is make with WPF. In my developer machine the application and the WCF services run well, the IIS i'm use for the trials is the local IIS 7 and the database is the SQL Server 2005 database hosting in my server. I'm using Visual Studio Project Designer to enable and configure client application services. using https://localhost/WcfServidorFundacion. When i'm change the authentication services location to https://WcfServices:5659/WcfServidorFundacion and recompile the application, the following error show up. Message: The web service returned the error status code: InternalServerError. Details of service failure: {"Message":" Error while processing your request ","StackTrace":"","ExceptionType":""} Stack Trace: en System.Net.HttpWebRequest.GetResponse() en System.Web.ClientServices.Providers.ProxyHelper.CreateWebRequestAndGetResponse(String serverUri, CookieContainer& cookies, String username, String connectionString, String connectionStringProvider, String[] paramNames, Object[] paramValues, Type returnType) InnerException: System.Net.WebException Message="Remote Server Error: (500) Interal Server Error." I can access the WCF service from the navigator using the url mentioned above and even make a webReference in my project. I make a capture of the response but I'cant post it because i don't have 10 reputation points I activate the error log in the IIS 7 server, and the result is a Warning in the ManagedPipilineHandler. I appreciate if any one can help me Errors & Warnings No.? Severity Event Module Name 132. view trace Warning -MODULE_SET_RESPONSE_ERROR_STATUS ModuleName ManagedPipelineHandler Notification 128 HttpStatus 500 HttpReason Internal Server Error HttpSubStatus 0 ErrorCode 0 ConfigExceptionInfo Notification EXECUTE_REQUEST_HANDLER ErrorCode La operación se ha completado correctamente. (0x0) Maybe this can help, is the web.config of my service <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <!-- Nota: como alternativa para editar manualmente este archivo, puede utilizar la herramienta Administración de sitios web para configurar los valores de la aplicación. Utilice la opción Sitio Web->Configuración de Asp.Net en Visual Studio. Encontrará una lista completa de valores de configuración y comentarios en machine.config.comments, que se encuentra generalmente en \Windows\Microsoft.Net\Framework\v2.x\Config --> <configuration> <configSections> <sectionGroup name="system.web.extensions" type="System.Web.Configuration.SystemWebExtensionsSectionGroup, System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35"> <sectionGroup name="scripting" type="System.Web.Configuration.ScriptingSectionGroup, System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35"> <section name="scriptResourceHandler" type="System.Web.Configuration.ScriptingScriptResourceHandlerSection, System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" requirePermission="false" allowDefinition="MachineToApplication" /> <sectionGroup name="webServices" type="System.Web.Configuration.ScriptingWebServicesSectionGroup, System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35"> <section name="jsonSerialization" type="System.Web.Configuration.ScriptingJsonSerializationSection, System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" requirePermission="false" allowDefinition="Everywhere" /> <section name="profileService" type="System.Web.Configuration.ScriptingProfileServiceSection, System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" requirePermission="false" allowDefinition="MachineToApplication" /> <section name="authenticationService" type="System.Web.Configuration.ScriptingAuthenticationServiceSection, System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" requirePermission="false" allowDefinition="MachineToApplication" /> <section name="roleService" type="System.Web.Configuration.ScriptingRoleServiceSection, System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" requirePermission="false" allowDefinition="MachineToApplication" /> </sectionGroup> </sectionGroup> </sectionGroup> </configSections> <appSettings /> <connectionStrings> <remove name="LocalMySqlServer" /> <remove name="LocalSqlServer" /> <add name="fundacionSelfAut" connectionString="Data Source=FUNDACIONSERVER/PRUEBAS;Initial Catalog=fundacion;User ID=wcfBaseDatos;Password=qwerty_2009;" providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" /> </connectionStrings> <system.web> <profile enabled="true" defaultProvider="SqlProfileProvider"> <providers> <clear /> <add name="SqlProfileProvider" type="System.Web.Profile.SqlProfileProvider" connectionStringName="fundacionSelfAut" applicationName="fundafe" /> </providers> <properties> <add name="FirstName" type="String" /> <add name="LastName" type="String" /> <add name="PhoneNumber" type="String" /> </properties> </profile> <roleManager enabled="true" defaultProvider="SqlRoleProvider"> <providers> <clear /> <add name="SqlRoleProvider" type="System.Web.Security.SqlRoleProvider" connectionStringName="fundacionSelfAut" applicationName="fundafe" /> </providers> </roleManager> <membership defaultProvider="SqlMembershipProvider"> <providers> <clear /> <add name="SqlMembershipProvider" type="System.Web.Security.SqlMembershipProvider" connectionStringName="fundacionSelfAut" applicationName="fundafe" enablePasswordRetrieval="false" enablePasswordReset="false" requiresQuestionAndAnswer="true" requiresUniqueEmail="true" passwordFormat="Hashed" /> </providers> </membership> <authentication mode="Forms" /> <compilation debug="true" strict="false" explicit="true"> <assemblies> <add assembly="System.Core, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=B77A5C561934E089" /> <add assembly="System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" /> </assemblies> </compilation> <!-- La sección <authentication> permite la configuración del modo de autenticación de seguridad utilizado por ASP.NET para identificar a un usuario entrante. --> <!-- La sección <customErrors> permite configurar las acciones que se deben llevar a cabo/cuando un error no controlado tiene lugar durante la ejecución de una solicitud. Específicamente, permite a los desarrolladores configurar páginas de error html que se mostrarán en lugar de un seguimiento de pila de errores. <customErrors mode="RemoteOnly" defaultRedirect="GenericErrorPage.htm"> <error statusCode="403" redirect="NoAccess.htm" /> <error statusCode="404" redirect="FileNotFound.htm" /> </customErrors> --> <pages> <controls> <add tagPrefix="asp" namespace="System.Web.UI" assembly="System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" /> </controls> </pages> <httpHandlers> <remove verb="*" path="*.asmx" /> <add verb="*" path="*.asmx" validate="false" type="System.Web.Script.Services.ScriptHandlerFactory, System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" /> <add verb="*" path="*_AppService.axd" validate="false" type="System.Web.Script.Services.ScriptHandlerFactory, System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" /> <add verb="GET,HEAD" path="ScriptResource.axd" type="System.Web.Handlers.ScriptResourceHandler, System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" validate="false" /> </httpHandlers> <httpModules> <add name="ScriptModule" type="System.Web.Handlers.ScriptModule, System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" /> </httpModules> <sessionState timeout="40" /> </system.web> <system.codedom> <compilers> <compiler language="c#;cs;csharp" extension=".cs" warningLevel="4" type="Microsoft.CSharp.CSharpCodeProvider, System, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089"> <providerOption name="CompilerVersion" value="v3.5" /> <providerOption name="WarnAsError" value="false" /> </compiler> </compilers> </system.codedom> <!-- La sección webServer del sistema es necesaria para ejecutar ASP.NET AJAX en Internet Information Services 7.0. Sin embargo, no es necesaria para la versión anterior de IIS. --> <system.webServer> <validation validateIntegratedModeConfiguration="false" /> <modules> <add name="ScriptModule" preCondition="integratedMode" type="System.Web.Handlers.ScriptModule, System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" /> </modules> <handlers> <remove name="WebServiceHandlerFactory-Integrated" /> <add name="ScriptHandlerFactory" verb="*" path="*.asmx" preCondition="integratedMode" type="System.Web.Script.Services.ScriptHandlerFactory, System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" /> <add name="ScriptHandlerFactoryAppServices" verb="*" path="*_AppService.axd" preCondition="integratedMode" type="System.Web.Script.Services.ScriptHandlerFactory, System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" /> <add name="ScriptResource" preCondition="integratedMode" verb="GET,HEAD" path="ScriptResource.axd" type="System.Web.Handlers.ScriptResourceHandler, System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" /> </handlers> <tracing> <traceFailedRequests> <add path="*"> <traceAreas> <add provider="ASP" verbosity="Verbose" /> <add provider="ASPNET" areas="Infrastructure,Module,Page,AppServices" verbosity="Verbose" /> <add provider="ISAPI Extension" verbosity="Verbose" /> <add provider="WWW Server" areas="Authentication,Security,Filter,StaticFile,CGI,Compression,Cache,RequestNotifications,Module" verbosity="Verbose" /> </traceAreas> <failureDefinitions statusCodes="401.3,500,403,404,405" /> </add> </traceFailedRequests> </tracing> <security> <authorization> <add accessType="Allow" users="germanbarbosa,informatica" /> </authorization> <authentication> <windowsAuthentication enabled="false" /> </authentication> </security> </system.webServer> <system.web.extensions> <scripting> <webServices> <authenticationService enabled="true" requireSSL="true" /> <profileService enabled="true" readAccessProperties="FirstName,LastName,PhoneNumber" /> <roleService enabled="true" /> </webServices> </scripting> </system.web.extensions> <system.serviceModel> <services> <!-- this enables the WCF AuthenticationService endpoint --> <service behaviorConfiguration="AppServiceBehaviors" name="System.Web.ApplicationServices.AuthenticationService"> <endpoint address="" binding="basicHttpBinding" bindingConfiguration="userHttps" bindingNamespace="http://asp.net/ApplicationServices/v200" contract="System.Web.ApplicationServices.AuthenticationService" /> </service> <!-- this enables the WCF RoleService endpoint --> <service behaviorConfiguration="AppServiceBehaviors" name="System.Web.ApplicationServices.RoleService"> <endpoint binding="basicHttpBinding" bindingConfiguration="userHttps" bindingNamespace="http://asp.net/ApplicationServices/v200" contract="System.Web.ApplicationServices.RoleService" /> </service> <!-- this enables the WCF ProfileService endpoint --> <service behaviorConfiguration="AppServiceBehaviors" name="System.Web.ApplicationServices.ProfileService"> <endpoint binding="basicHttpBinding" bindingNamespace="http://asp.net/ApplicationServices/v200" bindingConfiguration="userHttps" contract="System.Web.ApplicationServices.ProfileService" /> </service> </services> <bindings> <basicHttpBinding> <!-- Set up a binding that uses Username as the client credential type --> <binding name="userHttps"> <security mode="Transport"> </security> </binding> </basicHttpBinding> </bindings> <behaviors> <serviceBehaviors> <behavior name="AppServiceBehaviors"> <serviceMetadata httpGetEnabled="false" httpsGetEnabled="true" /> <serviceDebug includeExceptionDetailInFaults="true" /> <serviceAuthorization principalPermissionMode="UseAspNetRoles" roleProviderName="SqlRoleProvider" /> <serviceCredentials> <userNameAuthentication userNamePasswordValidationMode="MembershipProvider" membershipProviderName="SqlMembershipProvider" /> </serviceCredentials> </behavior> </serviceBehaviors> </behaviors> <serviceHostingEnvironment aspNetCompatibilityEnabled="true" /> </system.serviceModel> </configuration>

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• flash core engine by Dinesh [closed]

  - by hdinesh

  This post was a dump of the following code (without the highlights). No question, just a dump. Please update this q. with a real question to have it reopened. You (the asker) risk to be flagged as spammer (if not already) and a bad reputation. This is a q/a site, not a site to promote your own code libraries. package facers { import flash.display.*; import flash.events.*; import flash.geom.ColorTransform; import flash.utils.Dictionary; import org.papervision3d.cameras.*; import org.papervision3d.scenes.*; import org.papervision3d.objects.*; import org.papervision3d.objects.special.*; import org.papervision3d.objects.primitives.*; import org.papervision3d.materials.*; import org.papervision3d.events.FileLoadEvent; import org.papervision3d.materials.special.*; import org.papervision3d.materials.shaders.*; import org.papervision3d.materials.utils.*; import org.papervision3d.lights.*; import org.papervision3d.render.*; import org.papervision3d.view.*; import org.papervision3d.events.InteractiveScene3DEvent; import org.papervision3d.events.*; import org.papervision3d.core.utils.*; import org.papervision3d.core.geom.renderables.Vertex3D; import caurina.transitions.*; public class Main extends Sprite { public var viewport :BasicView; public var displayObject :DisplayObject3D; private var light :PointLight3D; private var shadowPlane :Plane; private var dataArray :Array; private var material :BitmapFileMaterial; private var planeByContainer :Dictionary = new Dictionary(); private var paperSize :Number = 0.5; private var cloudSize :Number = 1500; private var rotSize :Number = 360; private var maxAlbums :Number = 50; private var num :Number = 0; public function Main():void { trace("START APPLICATION"); viewport = new BasicView(1024, 690, true, true, CameraType.FREE); viewport.camera.zoom = 50; viewport.camera.extra = { goPosition: new DisplayObject3D(),goTarget: new DisplayObject3D() }; addChild(viewport); displayObject = new DisplayObject3D(); viewport.scene.addChild(displayObject); createAlbum(); addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, onRenderEvent); } private function createAlbum() { dataArray = new Array("images/thums/pic1.jpg", "images/thums/pic2.jpg", "images/thums/pic3.jpg", "images/thums/pic4.jpg", "images/thums/pic5.jpg", "images/thums/pic6.jpg", "images/thums/pic7.jpg", "images/thums/pic8.jpg", "images/thums/pic9.jpg", "images/thums/pic10.jpg", "images/thums/pic1.jpg", "images/thums/pic2.jpg", "images/thums/pic3.jpg", "images/thums/pic4.jpg", "images/thums/pic5.jpg", "images/thums/pic6.jpg", "images/thums/pic7.jpg", "images/thums/pic8.jpg", "images/thums/pic9.jpg", "images/thums/pic10.jpg"); for (var i:int = 0; i < dataArray.length; i++) { material = new BitmapFileMaterial(dataArray[i]); material.doubleSided = true; material.addEventListener(FileLoadEvent.LOAD_COMPLETE, loadMaterial); } } public function loadMaterial(event:Event) { var plane:Plane = new Plane(material, 300, 180); displayObject.addChild(plane); var _x:int = Math.random() * cloudSize - cloudSize/2; var _y:int = Math.random() * cloudSize - cloudSize/2; var _z:int = Math.random() * cloudSize - cloudSize/2; var _rotationX:int = Math.random() * rotSize; var _rotationY:int = Math.random() * rotSize; var _rotationZ:int = Math.random() * rotSize; Tweener.addTween(plane, { x:_x, y:_y, z:_z, rotationX:_rotationX, rotationY:_rotationY, rotationZ:_rotationZ, time:5, transition:"easeIn" } ); } protected function onRenderEvent(event:Event):void { var rotY: Number = (mouseY-(stage.stageHeight/2))/(900/2)*(1200); var rotX: Number = (mouseX-(stage.stageWidth/2))/(600/2)*(-1200); displayObject.rotationY = viewport.camera.x + (rotX - viewport.camera.x) / 50; displayObject.rotationX = viewport.camera.y + (rotY - viewport.camera.y) / 30; viewport.singleRender(); } } } package designLab.events { import flash.display.BlendMode; import flash.display.Sprite; import flash.events.Event; import flash.filters.BlurFilter; // Import designLab import designLab.layer.IntroLayer; import designLab.shadow.ShadowCaster; import designLab.utils.LayerConstant; // Import Papervision3D import org.papervision3d.cameras.*; import org.papervision3d.scenes.*; import org.papervision3d.objects.*; import org.papervision3d.objects.special.*; import org.papervision3d.objects.primitives.*; import org.papervision3d.materials.*; import org.papervision3d.materials.special.*; import org.papervision3d.materials.shaders.*; import org.papervision3d.materials.utils.*; import org.papervision3d.lights.*; import org.papervision3d.render.*; import org.papervision3d.view.*; import org.papervision3d.events.InteractiveScene3DEvent; import org.papervision3d.events.*; import org.papervision3d.core.utils.*; import org.papervision3d.core.geom.renderables.Vertex3D; public class CoreEnging extends Sprite { public var viewport :BasicView; // Create BasicView public var displayObject :DisplayObject3D; // Create DisplayObject public var shadowCaster :ShadowCaster; // Create ShadowCaster private var light :PointLight3D; // Create PointLight private var shadowPlane :Plane; // Create Plane private var layer :LayerConstant; // Create constant resource layer private static var instance :CoreEnging; // Create CoreEnging class static instance // CoreEnging class static instance mathod function public static function getinstance() { if (instance != null) return instance; else { instance = new CoreEnging(); return instance; } } // CoreEnging constrictor public function CoreEnging () { trace("INFO: Design Lab Application : Core Enging v0.1"); layer = new LayerConstant(); viewport = new BasicView(900, 600, true, true, CameraType.FREE); // pass the width, height, scaleToStage, interactive, cameraType to BasicView viewport.camera.zoom = 100; // Define the zoom level of camera addChild(viewport); createFloor(); // Create the floor displayObject = new DisplayObject3D(); // Create new instance of DisplayObject viewport.scene.addChild(displayObject); // Add the DisplayObject to the BasicView light = new PointLight3D(); // Create new instance of PointLight light.z = -50; // Position the Z of create instance light.x = 0; //Position the X of create instance light.rotationZ = 45; //Position the rotation angel of the Z of create instance light.y = 500; //Position the Y of create instance shadowCaster = new ShadowCaster("shadow", 0x000000, BlendMode.MULTIPLY, .1, [new BlurFilter(20, 20, 1)]); // pass shadowcaster name, color, blend mode, alpha and filters shadowCaster.setType(ShadowCaster.SPOTLIGHT); // Define the shadow type addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, onRenderEvent); // Add frame render event } // Start create floor public function createFloor() { var spr:Sprite = new Sprite(); // Create Sprite spr.graphics.beginFill(0xFFFFFF); // Define the fill color for sprite spr.graphics.drawRect(0, 0, 600, 600); // Define the X, Y, width, height of the sprite var sprMaterial:MovieMaterial = new MovieMaterial(spr, true, true, true); //Create a texture from an existing sprite instance shadowPlane = new Plane(sprMaterial, 2000, 2000, 1, 1); // create new instance of the Plane and pass the texture material, width, height, segmentsW and segmentsH shadowPlane.rotationX = 80; //Position the rotation angel of the X of Plane shadowPlane.y = -200; //Position the Y of Plane viewport.scene.addChild(shadowPlane); // Add the Plane to the BasicView } // switch method function of the page layer control public function addLayer(type:String) { switch (type) { case layer.INTRO: var intro:IntroLayer = new IntroLayer(); break; } } // Create get mathod function for DisplayObject public function getDisplayObject():DisplayObject3D { return displayObject; } // Create get mathod function for BasicView public function getViewport():BasicView { return viewport; } // Rendering function protected function onRenderEvent(event:Event):void { var rotY: Number = (mouseY-(stage.stageHeight/2))/(900/2)*(1200); var rotX: Number = (mouseX-(stage.stageWidth/2))/(600/2)*(-1200); displayObject.rotationY = viewport.camera.x + (rotX - viewport.camera.x) / 50; displayObject.rotationX = viewport.camera.y + (rotY - viewport.camera.y) / 30; // Remove the shadow shadowCaster.invalidate(); // create new shadow on DisplayObject move shadowCaster.castModel(displayObject, light, shadowPlane); viewport.singleRender(); } } } package designLab.layer { import flash.display.Sprite; import flash.events.Event; // Import designLab import designLab.materials.iBusinessCard; import designLab.events.CoreEnging; // Import Papervision3D import org.papervision3d.objects.primitives.Cube; import org.papervision3d.materials.ColorMaterial; import org.papervision3d.materials.MovieMaterial; public class IntroLayer { // IntroLayer constrictor public function IntroLayer() { trace("INFO: Load Intro layer"); var indexDP:DP_index = new DP_index(); //Create the library MovieClip var blackMaterial:MovieMaterial = new MovieMaterial(indexDP, true); //Create a texture from an existing library MovieClip instance blackMaterial.smooth = true; blackMaterial.doubleSided = false; var mycolor:ColorMaterial = new ColorMaterial(0x000000); //Create solid color material var mycard:iBusinessCard = new iBusinessCard(blackMaterial, blackMaterial, mycolor, 372, 10, 207); // Create custom 3D cube object to pass the Front, Back, All, CubeWidth, CubeDepth and CubeHeight CoreEnging.getinstance().getDisplayObject().addChild(mycard.create3DCube()); // Add the custom 3D cube to the DisplayObject } } } package designLab.materials { import flash.display.*; import flash.events.*; // Import Papervision3D import org.papervision3d.materials.*; import org.papervision3d.materials.utils.MaterialsList; import org.papervision3d.objects.primitives.Cube; public class iBusinessCard extends Sprite { private var materialsList :MaterialsList; private var cube :Cube; private var Front :MovieMaterial = new MovieMaterial(); private var Back :MovieMaterial = new MovieMaterial(); private var All :ColorMaterial = new ColorMaterial(); private var CubeWidth :Number; private var CubeDepth :Number; private var CubeHeight :Number; public function iBusinessCard(Front:MovieMaterial, Back:MovieMaterial, All:ColorMaterial, CubeWidth:Number, CubeDepth:Number, CubeHeight:Number) { setFront(Front); setBack(Back); setAll(All); setCubeWidth(CubeWidth); setCubeDepth(CubeDepth); setCubeHeight(CubeHeight); } public function create3DCube():Cube { materialsList = new MaterialsList(); materialsList.addMaterial(Front, "front"); materialsList.addMaterial(Back, "back"); materialsList.addMaterial(All, "left"); materialsList.addMaterial(All, "right"); materialsList.addMaterial(All, "top"); materialsList.addMaterial(All, "bottom"); cube = new Cube(materialsList, CubeWidth, CubeDepth, CubeHeight); cube.x = 0; cube.y = 0; cube.z = 0; cube.rotationY = 180; return cube; } public function setFront(Front:MovieMaterial) { this.Front = Front; } public function getFront():MovieMaterial { return Front; } public function setBack(Back:MovieMaterial) { this.Back = Back; } public function getBack():MovieMaterial { return Back; } public function setAll(All:ColorMaterial) { this.All = All; } public function getAll():ColorMaterial { return All; } public function setCubeWidth(CubeWidth:Number) { this.CubeWidth = CubeWidth; } public function getCubeWidth():Number { return CubeWidth; } public function setCubeDepth(CubeDepth:Number) { this.CubeDepth = CubeDepth; } public function getCubeDepth():Number { return CubeDepth; } public function setCubeHeight(CubeHeight:Number) { this.CubeHeight = CubeHeight; } public function getCubeHeight():Number { return CubeHeight; } } } package designLab.shadow { import flash.display.Sprite; import flash.filters.BlurFilter; import flash.geom.Point; import flash.geom.Rectangle; import flash.utils.Dictionary; import org.papervision3d.core.geom.TriangleMesh3D; import org.papervision3d.core.geom.renderables.Triangle3D; import org.papervision3d.core.geom.renderables.Vertex3D; import org.papervision3d.core.math.BoundingSphere; import org.papervision3d.core.math.Matrix3D; import org.papervision3d.core.math.Number3D; import org.papervision3d.core.math.Plane3D; import org.papervision3d.lights.PointLight3D; import org.papervision3d.materials.MovieMaterial; import org.papervision3d.objects.DisplayObject3D; import org.papervision3d.objects.primitives.Plane; public class ShadowCaster { private var vertexRefs:Dictionary; private var numberRefs:Dictionary; private var lightRay:Number3D = new Number3D() private var p3d:Plane3D = new Plane3D(); public var color:uint = 0; public var alpha:Number = 0; public var blend:String = ""; public var filters:Array; public var uid:String; private var _type:String = "point"; private var dir:Number3D; private var planeBounds:Dictionary; private var targetBounds:Dictionary; private var models:Dictionary; public static var DIRECTIONAL:String = "dir"; public static var SPOTLIGHT:String = "spot"; public function ShadowCaster(uid:String, color:uint = 0, blend:String = "multiply", alpha:Number = 1, filters:Array=null) { this.uid = uid; this.color = color; this.alpha = alpha; this.blend = blend; this.filters = filters ? filters : [new BlurFilter()]; numberRefs = new Dictionary(true); targetBounds = new Dictionary(true); planeBounds = new Dictionary(true); models = new Dictionary(true); } public function castModel(model:DisplayObject3D, light:PointLight3D, plane:Plane, faces:Boolean = true, cull:Boolean = false):void{ var ar:Array; if(models[model]) { ar = models[model]; }else{ ar = new Array(); getChildMesh(model, ar); models[model] = ar; } var reset:Boolean = true; for each(var t:TriangleMesh3D in ar){ if(faces) castFaces(light, t, plane, cull, reset); else castBoundingSphere(light, t, plane, 0.75, reset); reset = false; } } private function getChildMesh(do3d:DisplayObject3D, ar):void{ if(do3d is TriangleMesh3D) ar.push(do3d); for each(var d:DisplayObject3D in do3d.children) getChildMesh(d, ar); } public function setType(type:String="point"):void{ _type = type; } public function getType():String{ return _type; } public function castBoundingSphere(light:PointLight3D, target:TriangleMesh3D, plane:Plane, scaleRadius:Number=0.8, clear:Boolean = true):void{ var planeVertices:Array = plane.geometry.vertices; //convert to target space? var world:Matrix3D = plane.world; var inv:Matrix3D = Matrix3D.inverse(plane.transform); var lp:Number3D = new Number3D(light.x, light.y, light.z); Matrix3D.multiplyVector(inv, lp); p3d.setNormalAndPoint(plane.geometry.faces[0].faceNormal, new Number3D()); var b:BoundingSphere = target.geometry.boundingSphere; var bounds:Object = planeBounds[plane]; if(!bounds){ bounds = plane.boundingBox(); planeBounds[plane] = bounds; } var tbounds:Object = targetBounds[target]; if(!tbounds){ tbounds = target.boundingBox(); targetBounds[target] = tbounds; } var planeMovie:Sprite = Sprite(MovieMaterial(plane.material).movie); var movieSize:Point = new Point(planeMovie.width, planeMovie.height); var castClip:Sprite = getCastClip(plane); castClip.blendMode = this.blend; castClip.filters = this.filters; castClip.alpha = this.alpha; if(clear) castClip.graphics.clear(); vertexRefs = new Dictionary(true); var tlp:Number3D = new Number3D(light.x, light.y, light.z); Matrix3D.multiplyVector(Matrix3D.inverse(target.world), tlp); var center:Number3D = new Number3D(tbounds.min.x+tbounds.size.x*0.5, tbounds.min.y+tbounds.size.y*0.5, tbounds.min.z+tbounds.size.z*0.5); var dif:Number3D = Number3D.sub(lp, center); dif.normalize(); var other:Number3D = new Number3D(); other.x = -dif.y; other.y = dif.x; other.z = 0; other.normalize(); var cross:Number3D = Number3D.cross(new Number3D(plane.transform.n12, plane.transform.n22, plane.transform.n32), p3d.normal); cross.normalize(); //cross = new Number3D(-dif.y, dif.x, 0); //cross.normalize(); cross.multiplyEq(b.radius*scaleRadius); if(_type == DIRECTIONAL){ var oPos:Number3D = new Number3D(target.x, target.y, target.z); Matrix3D.multiplyVector(target.world, oPos); Matrix3D.multiplyVector(inv, oPos); dir = new Number3D(oPos.x-lp.x, oPos.y-lp.y, oPos.z-lp.z); } //numberRefs = new Dictionary(true); var pos:Number3D; var c2d:Point; var r2d:Point; //_type = SPOTLIGHT; pos = projectVertex(new Vertex3D(center.x, center.y, center.z), lp, inv, target.world); c2d = get2dPoint(pos, bounds.min, bounds.size, movieSize); pos = projectVertex(new Vertex3D(center.x+cross.x, center.y+cross.y, center.z+cross.z), lp, inv, target.world); r2d = get2dPoint(pos, bounds.min, bounds.size, movieSize); var dx:Number = r2d.x-c2d.x; var dy:Number = r2d.y-c2d.y; var rad:Number = Math.sqrt(dx*dx+dy*dy); castClip.graphics.beginFill(color); castClip.graphics.moveTo(c2d.x, c2d.y); castClip.graphics.drawCircle(c2d.x, c2d.y, rad); castClip.graphics.endFill(); } public function getCastClip(plane:Plane):Sprite{ var planeMovie:Sprite = Sprite(MovieMaterial(plane.material).movie); var movieSize:Point = new Point(planeMovie.width, planeMovie.height); var castClip:Sprite;// = new Sprite(); if(planeMovie.getChildByName("castClip"+uid)) return Sprite(planeMovie.getChildByName("castClip"+uid)); else{ castClip = new Sprite(); castClip.name = "castClip"+uid; castClip.scrollRect = new Rectangle(0, 0, movieSize.x, movieSize.y); //castClip.alpha = 0.4; planeMovie.addChild(castClip); return castClip; } } public function castFaces(light:PointLight3D, target:TriangleMesh3D, plane:Plane, cull:Boolean=false, clear:Boolean = true):void{ var planeVertices:Array = plane.geometry.vertices; //convert to target space? var world:Matrix3D = plane.world; var inv:Matrix3D = Matrix3D.inverse(plane.transform); var lp:Number3D = new Number3D(light.x, light.y, light.z); Matrix3D.multiplyVector(inv, lp); var tlp:Number3D; if(cull){ tlp = new Number3D(light.x, light.y, light.z); Matrix3D.multiplyVector(Matrix3D.inverse(target.world), tlp); } //Matrix3D.multiplyVector(Matrix3D.inverse(target.transform), tlp); //p3d.setThreePoints(planeVertices[0].getPosition(), planeVertices[1].getPosition(), planeVertices[2].getPosition()); p3d.setNormalAndPoint(plane.geometry.faces[0].faceNormal, new Number3D()); if(_type == DIRECTIONAL){ var oPos:Number3D = new Number3D(target.x, target.y, target.z); Matrix3D.multiplyVector(target.world, oPos); Matrix3D.multiplyVector(inv, oPos); dir = new Number3D(oPos.x-lp.x, oPos.y-lp.y, oPos.z-lp.z); } var bounds:Object = planeBounds[plane]; if(!bounds){ bounds = plane.boundingBox(); planeBounds[plane] = bounds; } var castClip:Sprite = getCastClip(plane); castClip.blendMode = this.blend; castClip.filters = this.filters; castClip.alpha = this.alpha; var planeMovie:Sprite = Sprite(MovieMaterial(plane.material).movie); var movieSize:Point = new Point(planeMovie.width, planeMovie.height); if(clear) castClip.graphics.clear(); vertexRefs = new Dictionary(true); //numberRefs = new Dictionary(true); var pos:Number3D; var p2d:Point; var s2d:Point; var hitVert:Number3D = new Number3D(); for each(var t:Triangle3D in target.geometry.faces){ if( cull){ hitVert.x = t.v0.x; hitVert.y = t.v0.y; hitVert.z = t.v0.z; if(Number3D.dot(t.faceNormal, Number3D.sub(tlp, hitVert)) <= 0) continue; } castClip.graphics.beginFill(color); pos = projectVertex(t.v0, lp, inv, target.world); s2d = get2dPoint(pos, bounds.min, bounds.size, movieSize); castClip.graphics.moveTo(s2d.x, s2d.y); pos = projectVertex(t.v1, lp, inv, target.world); p2d = get2dPoint(pos, bounds.min, bounds.size, movieSize); castClip.graphics.lineTo(p2d.x, p2d.y); pos = projectVertex(t.v2, lp, inv, target.world); p2d = get2dPoint(pos, bounds.min, bounds.size, movieSize); castClip.graphics.lineTo(p2d.x, p2d.y); castClip.graphics.lineTo(s2d.x, s2d.y); castClip.graphics.endFill(); } } public function invalidate():void{ invalidateModels(); invalidatePlanes(); } public function invalidatePlanes():void{ planeBounds = new Dictionary(true); } public function invalidateTargets():void{ numberRefs = new Dictionary(true); targetBounds = new Dictionary(true); } public function invalidateModels():void{ models = new Dictionary(true); invalidateTargets(); } private function get2dPoint(pos3D:Number3D, min3D:Number3D, size3D:Number3D, movieSize:Point):Point{ return new Point((pos3D.x-min3D.x)/size3D.x*movieSize.x, ((-pos3D.y-min3D.y)/size3D.y*movieSize.y)); } private function projectVertex(v:Vertex3D, light:Number3D, invMat:Matrix3D, world:Matrix3D):Number3D{ var pos:Number3D = vertexRefs[v]; if(pos) return pos; var n:Number3D = numberRefs[v]; if(!n){ n = new Number3D(v.x, v.y, v.z); Matrix3D.multiplyVector(world, n); Matrix3D.multiplyVector(invMat, n); numberRefs[v] = n; } if(_type == SPOTLIGHT){ lightRay.x = light.x; lightRay.y = light.y; lightRay.z = light.z; }else{ lightRay.x = n.x-dir.x; lightRay.y = n.y-dir.y; lightRay.z = n.z-dir.z; } pos = p3d.getIntersectionLineNumbers(lightRay, n); vertexRefs[v] = pos; return pos; } } } package designLab.utils { public class LayerConstant { public const INTRO:String = "INTRO"; // Intro layer string constant } }*emphasized text*

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• How can I center XHTML content with CSS?

  - by drea

  so I recently converted a website of mine from a table content format to a div content format. Table format Version: Table version of the website: here. Table version style CSS: body { width: 1020px; margin: 0 auto; background-image: url(images/bg.png); } .logo{ width:301px; height:151px; background:url(images/logo.png); text-indent:-9999px; border:none; cursor:pointer; } .logo:hover { opacity:0.9; } .signin{ width:69px; height:30px; background:url(images/signin.png); text-indent:-9999px; border:none; cursor:pointer; } .signin:hover { opacity:0.9; } .register{ width:79px; height:30px; background:url(images/register.png); text-indent:-9999px; border:none; cursor:pointer; } .register:hover { opacity:0.9; } .Contact_Us{ width:53px; height:9px; background:url(images/Contact_Us.png); text-indent:-9999px; border:none; cursor:pointer; } .Contact_Us:hover { opacity:0.9; } .Code_of_Conduct{ width:84px; height:9px; background:url(images/Code_of_Conduct.png); text-indent:-9999px; border:none; cursor:pointer; } .Code_of_Conduct:hover { opacity:0.9; } .Privacy_Policy{ width:65px; height:12px; background:url(images/Privacy_Policy.png); text-indent:-9999px; border:none; cursor:pointer; } .Privacy_Policy:hover { opacity:0.9; } .Copyright{ width:149px; height:9px; background:url(images/Copyright.png); text-indent:-9999px; border:none; cursor:pointer; } .Copyright:hover { opacity:0.9; } .slideshow{ width:301px; height:151px; background: url(slideshow.png), url(minecraft.png), url(tf2.png), url(CSS.png), url(GM.png), url(aos.png), url(CSGO.png), url(voip.png), text-indent:-9999px; border:none; cursor:pointer; } .slideshow:hover { opacity:0.9; } Table version source: <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"> <html> <head profile="http://www.w3.org/2005/10/profile"> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="http://www.xodusen.com/resources/images/favicon.png"> <title>Welcome to XodusEN</title> <script type="text/javascript" src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.8.0/jquery.min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://cloud.github.com/downloads/malsup/cycle/jquery.cycle.all.latest.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> $(document).ready(function() { $('.slideshow').cycle({ fx: 'fade' // choose your transition type, ex: fade, scrollUp, shuffle, etc... }); }); </script> <meta name="description" content="This is the homepage of XodusEN. Xodus Entertainment Network is a unique & friendly Gaming Community that welcomes & realises the potential, and value within any user regardless of their origin. " > <meta name="keywords" content="XeN, Xodus, XEN, xen, Xodus Entertainment Network, gaming, community, PC, Steam, XBL, Xbox 360, PSN, Playstation, games, Gaming, Community, XodusEN, Gaming Network, Network, TF2, Server, CS:S, Minecraft, premium, servers, Counter-Strike: Source, Website, Homepage, Minecraftia" > <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> <link href="style.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"> <!--[if IE]> <script type="text/javascript"> window.location = "http://www.xodusen.com/ie/"; </script> <![endif]--> </head> <body bgcolor="#d7d7d7"> <table id="Table_01" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tr> <td colspan="18"> <img src="images/index_01.png" width="1020" height="9" alt=""></td> <td> <img src="images/spacer.gif" width="1" height="9" alt=""></td> </tr> <tr> <td colspan="11" rowspan="2"> <img src="images/index_02.png" width="826" height="252" alt=""></td> <td> <a id="signin" class="signin" href="http://s.xodusen.com/VrtqYm"> <img src="images/signin.png" width="69" height="30" border="0" alt=""></a> <td rowspan="6"> <img src="images/index_04.png" width="3" height="643" alt=""></td> <td colspan="3"> <a id="register" class="register" href="http://s.xodusen.com/WW3rpZ"> <img src="images/Register.png" width="79" height="30" border="0" alt=""></a> <td colspan="2" rowspan="6"> <img src="images/index_06.png" width="43" height="643" alt=""></td> <td> <img src="images/spacer.gif" width="1" height="30" alt=""></td> </tr> <tr> <td rowspan="5"> <img src="images/index_07.png" width="69" height="613" alt=""></td> <td colspan="3" rowspan="5"> <img src="images/index_08.png" width="79" height="613" alt=""></td> <td> <img src="images/spacer.gif" width="1" height="222" alt=""></td> </tr> <tr> <td colspan="5"> <img src="images/index_09.png" width="385" height="53" alt=""></td> <td> <img src="images/index_10.png" width="250" height="53" alt=""></td> <td colspan="5"> <img src="images/index_11.png" width="191" height="53" alt=""></td> <td> <img src="images/spacer.gif" width="1" height="53" alt=""></td> </tr> <tr> <td colspan="4" rowspan="3"> <img src="images/index_09-13.png" width="360" height="338" alt=""></td> <td colspan="3"> <a id="logo" class="logo" href="http://www.xodusen.com/community"> <img src="images/logo.png" alt=""></a> </td> <td colspan="4" rowspan="3"> <img src="images/index_11-15.png" width="165" height="338" alt=""></td> <td> <img src="images/spacer.gif" width="1" height="151" alt=""></td> </tr> <tr> <td rowspan="2"> <img src="images/index_09-16.png" width="25" height="187" alt=""></td> <td> <img src="images/index_16.png" width="250" height="46" alt=""></td> <td rowspan="2"> <img src="images/index_11-18.png" width="26" height="187" alt=""></td> <td> <img src="images/spacer.gif" width="1" height="46" alt=""></td> </tr> <tr> <td> <img src="images/index_12.png" width="250" height="141" alt=""></td> <td> <img src="images/spacer.gif" width="1" height="141" alt=""></td> </tr> <tr> <td rowspan="7"> <img src="images/index_13.png" width="27" height="548" alt=""></td> <td colspan="16" id="slideshow" class="slideshow"> <a href="http://www.xodusen.com/community"><img src="images/slideshow.png" width="960" height="305" alt=""></a> <a href="http://www.xodusen.com/mcurl"><img src="images/minecraft.png" width="960" height="305" alt=""></a> <a href="steam://connect/74.121.188.194:27015"><img src="images/tf2.png" width="960" height="305" alt=""></a> <a href="steam://connect/74.121.188.195:27015"><img src="images/CSS.png" width="960" height="305" alt=""></a> <a href="steam://connect/74.121.188.197:27015"><img src="images/GM.png" width="960" height="305" alt=""></a> <a href="aos://3267131722:32887"><img src="images/aos.png" width="960" height="305" alt=""></a> <a href="steam://connect/74.121.188.196:27015"><img src="images/CSGO.png" width="960" height="305" alt=""></a></td> <td rowspan="7"> <img src="images/index_15.png" width="33" height="548" alt=""></td> <td> <img src="images/spacer.gif" width="1" height="305" alt=""></td> </tr> <tr> <td colspan="16"> <img src="images/index_16-23.png" width="960" height="155" alt=""></td> <td> <img src="images/spacer.gif" width="1" height="155" alt=""></td> </tr> <tr> <td rowspan="5"> <img src="images/index_17.png" width="38" height="88" alt=""></td> <td rowspan="2"> <a id="Copyright" class="Copyright" href="http://www.xodusen.com/community"> <img src="images/Copyright.png" width="149" height="9" border="0" alt=""></a></td> <td colspan="14"> <img src="images/index_25.png" width="773" height="5" alt=""></td> <td> <img src="images/spacer.gif" width="1" height="5" alt=""></td> </tr> <tr> <td colspan="5" rowspan="4"> <img src="images/index_20.png" width="527" height="83" alt=""></td> <td rowspan="3"> <a id="Privacy_Policy" class="Privacy_Policy" href="http://s.xodusen.com/VhGEkH"> <img src="images/Privacy_Policy.png" width="65" height="12" border="0" alt=""></a></td> <td rowspan="4"> <img src="images/index_28.png" width="8" height="83" alt=""></td> <td colspan="3" rowspan="2"> <a id="Code_of_Conduct" class="Code_of_Conduct" href="http://s.xodusen.com/Tf5Gz7"> <img src="images/Code_of_Conduct.png" width="84" height="9" border="0" alt=""></a></td> <td rowspan="4"> <img src="images/index_30.png" width="6" height="83" alt=""></td> <td rowspan="2"> <a id="Contact_Us" class="Contact_Us" href="http://s.xodusen.com/T5EYsG"> <img src="images/Contact_Us.png" width="53" height="9" border="0" alt=""></a></td> <td colspan="2" rowspan="4"> <img src="images/index_26.png" width="30" height="83" alt=""></td> <td> <img src="images/spacer.gif" width="1" height="4" alt=""></td> </tr> <tr> <td rowspan="3"> <img src="images/index_27.png" width="149" height="79" alt=""></td> <td> <img src="images/spacer.gif" width="1" height="5" alt=""></td> </tr> <tr> <td colspan="3" rowspan="2"> <img src="images/index_28-35.png" width="84" height="74" alt=""></td> <td rowspan="2"> <img src="images/index_29.png" width="53" height="74" alt=""></td> <td> <img src="images/spacer.gif" width="1" height="3" alt=""></td> </tr> <tr> <td> <img src="images/index_30-37.png" width="65" height="71" alt=""></td> <td> <img src="images/spacer.gif" width="1" height="71" alt=""></td> </tr> <tr> <td> <img src="images/spacer.gif" width="27" height="1" alt=""></td> <td> <img src="images/spacer.gif" width="38" height="1" alt=""></td> <td> <img src="images/spacer.gif" width="149" height="1" alt=""></td> <td> <img src="images/spacer.gif" width="146" height="1" alt=""></td> <td> <img src="images/spacer.gif" width="25" height="1" alt=""></td> <td> <img src="images/spacer.gif" width="250" height="1" alt=""></td> <td> <img src="images/spacer.gif" width="26" height="1" alt=""></td> <td> <img src="images/spacer.gif" width="80" height="1" alt=""></td> <td> <img src="images/spacer.gif" width="65" height="1" alt=""></td> <td> <img src="images/spacer.gif" width="8" height="1" alt=""></td> <td> <img src="images/spacer.gif" width="12" height="1" alt=""></td> <td> <img src="images/spacer.gif" width="69" height="1" alt=""></td> <td> <img src="images/spacer.gif" width="3" height="1" alt=""></td> <td> <img src="images/spacer.gif" width="6" height="1" alt=""></td> <td> <img src="images/spacer.gif" width="53" height="1" alt=""></td> <td> <img src="images/spacer.gif" width="20" height="1" alt=""></td> <td> <img src="images/spacer.gif" width="10" height="1" alt=""></td> <td> <img src="images/spacer.gif" width="33" height="1" alt=""></td> <td></td> </tr> </table> </body> </html> Div format Version: Div version of the website: here. Div version style CSS: body { width: 1020px; margin: 0 auto; background-image: url(images/bg.png); } #Table_01 { position:absolute; left:0px; top:0px; width:1020px; height:1200px; } #index-01_ { position:absolute; left:0px; top:0px; width:1020px; height:9px; } #index-02_ { position:absolute; left:0px; top:9px; width:826px; height:305px; } #Signin_ { position:absolute; left:826px; top:9px; width:69px; height:30px; } #index-04_ { position:absolute; left:895px; top:9px; width:3px; height:643px; } #Register_ { position:absolute; left:898px; top:9px; width:79px; height:30px; } #index-06_ { position:absolute; left:977px; top:9px; width:43px; height:643px; } #index-07_ { position:absolute; left:826px; top:39px; width:69px; height:613px; } #index-08_ { position:absolute; left:898px; top:39px; width:79px; height:613px; } #index-09_ { position:absolute; left:0px; top:314px; width:360px; height:338px; } #Logo_ { position:absolute; left:360px; top:314px; width:301px; height:151px; } #index-11_ { position:absolute; 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} Div version source: <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <script type="text/javascript"> //<![CDATA[ window.__CF=window.__CF||{};window.__CF.AJS={"vig_key":{"sid":"c6d1454039dd49b1c8400bbfdf74df7a"},"trumpet":{"message":"XodusEN is undergoing background maintenance, that will provide performance & graphical improvements to our system, but will not hinder your experience across our services."},"ga_key":{"ua":"UA-35779435-1","ga_bs":"2"},"exprmntly":{"service_id":"7967"},"cdnjs":{"__h":"1","cdnjs":"MO,GF,FX,CS,JS"},"abetterbrowser":{"ie":"10"}}; //]]> </script> <script type="text/javascript"> //<![CDATA[ try{if (!window.CloudFlare) { var CloudFlare=[{verbose:0,p:0,byc:0,owlid:"cf",mirage:{responsive:0,lazy:0},oracle:0,paths:{cloudflare:"/cdn-cgi/nexp/aav=1870252173/"},atok:"d6e39f49946fcb6d690f0d10d5a963f3",zone:"xodusen.com",rocket:"a",apps:{"vig_key":{"sid":"c6d1454039dd49b1c8400bbfdf74df7a"},"trumpet":{"message":"XodusEN is undergoing background maintenance, that will provide performance & graphical improvements to our system, but will not hinder your experience across our services."},"ga_key":{"ua":"UA-35779435-1","ga_bs":"2"},"exprmntly":{"service_id":"7967"},"cdnjs":{"__h":"1","cdnjs":"MO,GF,FX,CS,JS"},"abetterbrowser":{"ie":"10"}}}];document.write('<script type="text/javascript" src="//ajax.cloudflare.com/cdn-cgi/nexp/aav=4114775854/cloudflare.min.js"><'+'\/script>')}}catch(e){}; //]]> </script> <script type="text/javascript" src="//ajax.cloudflare.com/cdn-cgi/nexp/aav=1566821048/appsh.min.js"></script><script type="text/javascript">__CF.AJS.inith();</script><link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="http://www.xodusen.com/resources/images/favicon.png"> <title>Welcome to XodusEN</title> <meta name="description" content="This is the homepage of XodusEN. Xodus Entertainment Network is a unique & friendly Gaming Community that welcomes & realises the potential, and value within any user regardless of their origin. "> <meta name="keywords" content="XeN, Xodus, XEN, xen, Xodus Entertainment Network, gaming, community, PC, Steam, XBL, Xbox 360, PSN, Playstation, games, Gaming, Community, XodusEN, Gaming Network, Network, TF2, Server, CS:S, Minecraft, premium, servers, Counter-Strike: Source, Website, Homepage, Minecraftia"> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"/> <link href="style.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"> <script type="text/rocketscript" data-rocketsrc="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.8.0/jquery.min.js"></script> <script type="text/rocketscript" data-rocketsrc="http://cloud.github.com/downloads/malsup/cycle/jquery.cycle.all.latest.js"></script> <script type="text/rocketscript"> $(document).ready(function() { $('.slideshow').cycle({ fx: 'fade' // choose your transition type, ex: fade, scrollUp, shuffle, etc... }); }); </script> <!--[if IE]> <script type="text/javascript"> window.location = "http://www.xodusen.com/ie/"; </script> <![endif]--> <script type="text/javascript"> /* <![CDATA[ */ var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-35779435-1']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 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I have done some research to no avail, so I'd thought given the reputation of this site, that i'd post my issue here. Thank you in advance, ~ drea.

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