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• XNA Notes 001

  - by George Clingerman

  Just a quick recap of things I noticed going on in or around the XNA community this past week. I’m sure there’s a lot I missed (it’s a pretty big community with lots of different parts to it) but these where the things I caught that I thought were pretty cool. The XNA Team Michael Klucher gave a list of books every gamer should read. http://twitter.com/#!/mklucher/status/22313041135673344 Shawn Hargreaves posted Nelxon Studio posting about a cheatsheet for converting 3.1 to 4.0 http://blogs.msdn.com/b/shawnhar/archive/2011/01/04/xna-3-1-to-4-0-cheat-sheet.aspx?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter XNA Game Studio won the Frontline award for Programming Tool by GameDev magazine! Congrats to the XNA team! http://www.gdmag.com/homepage.htm XNA MVPs In January several MVPs were up for re-election, Jim Perry, Andy ‘The ZMan’ Dunn, Glenn Wilson and myself were all re-award a Microsoft MVP award for their contributions to the XNA/DirectX communities. https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/communities/mvp.aspx?product=1&competency=XNA%2fDirectX A movement to get Michael McLaughlin an MVP award has started and you can join in too! http://twitter.com/#!/theBigDaddio/status/22744458621620224 http://www.xnadevelopment.com/MVP/MichaelMcLaughlinMVP.txt Don’t forget you can nominate ANYONE for a MVP award, that’s how they work. https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/gp/mvpbecoming  XNA Developers James Silva of Ska Studios hit 9,200 sales of ZP2KX and recommends you listen to Infected Mushroom. http://twitter.com/#!/Jamezila/status/22538865357094912 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infected_Mushroom Noogy creator of the upcoming XBLA title Dust an Elysian tail posts some details into his art creation. http://noogy.com/image/statue/statue.html Xbox LIVE Indie Game News Microsoft posts acknowledging there was an issue with the sales data that has been addressed and apologized for not posting about it sooner. http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/71347/436154.aspx#436154 Winter Uprising sales still chugging along and being updated by Xalterax (by those developers willing to actually share sales numbers. Thanks for sharing guys, much appreciated!) http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/t/70147.aspx Don’t forget about Dream Build Play coming up in February! http://www.dreambuildplay.com/Main/Home.aspx The Best Xbox LIVE Indie Games December Edition comes out on NeoGaf http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=414485 The Greatest XBox LIVE Indie Games of 2010 on DealSpwn – Congrats to DrMistry and MStarGames for his #1 spot with his massive XBLIG Space Pirates From Tomorrow! http://www.dealspwn.com/xbligoty-2010/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Dealspwn+%28Dealspwn%29 XNA Game Development The future of XACT and WP7 has finally been confirmed and we finally know what our options are for looping audio seamlessly on WP7. http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/61826/436639.aspx#436639  Super Mario 3 Design Notes is an interesting read for XBLIG developers, giving some insight to the training that natural occurs for players as they start playing the game. Good things for XBLIG developers to think about. http://www.significant-bits.com/super-mario-bros-3-level-design-lessons

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• Stop YouTube Videos from Automatically Playing in Chrome

  - by The Geek

  If you’ve actually used the internet before, you’ve probably come across a page with an auto-playing YouTube clip, and chances are good it was a rather annoying one. Here’s how to stop them from starting automatically in Chrome. We’ve already told you how to stop them from automatically playing if you’re a Firefox user (best answer: use Flashblock!), but now it’s time for Chrome users to get their turn. Use the Stop Autoplay for YouTube Extension The great thing about this extension is that it stops the video from playing, but it allows it to continue buffering, so when you do feel like playing the video, it’ll already be downloaded—really useful for people with slower internet connections. There’s no UI or anything fancy, just head to the extension page and click the Install button. If you want to get rid of it later, use the Tools –> Extensions menu (or you can type chrome://extensions/ into your address bar), and then click the Uninstall link for that add-on.   Download Stop Autoplay for YouTube [Google Chrome Extensions] Using FlashBlock for Chrome If you really wanted to, you could just disable Flash across the board using FlashBlock for Chrome. Once you’ve installed the extension, you won’t see any Flash elements anywhere, and you’ll have to move your mouse over them and click to enable them each time. When I installed the extension the first time, I noticed that YouTube was already in the allow list. I’m not sure if that’s the default setting or not, but you can use the icon in the address bar, or the Options from the Extensions panel to get to the settings page, and from there you can remove anything from the White List that you wouldn’t want. Another nice feature about Flash Block is that it can also block Silverlight, or you could simply uninstall or remove unnecessary Chrome plug-ins. Download FlashBlock for Chrome Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Stop YouTube Videos from Automatically Playing in FirefoxDisable YouTube Comments while using ChromeApologies About An Awful Audio AdvertisementImprove YouTube Video Viewing in Google ChromeWatch YouTube Videos in Cinema Style in Firefox TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Follow Finder Finds You Twitter Users To Follow Combine MP3 Files Easily QuicklyCode Provides Cheatsheets & Other Programming Stuff Download Free MP3s from Amazon Awe inspiring, inter-galactic theme (Win 7) Case Study – How to Optimize Popular Wordpress Sites

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• Oracle is #1 in Life Sciences!

  - by Michael Snow

  Guest post today by: John Klinke, Senior Principal Product Manager, Oracle WebCenter Content 12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* 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-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} Based on the announcement last week at EMC World about Documentum for Life Sciences, it looks like EMC is starting to have regrets about pulling out of the life sciences space over the last few years. Certainly their content management customers and partners in life sciences have noticed their retreat. Many of them are now talking to us about WebCenter Content since they’ve seen the writing on the wall regarding Documentum’s decline, including falling revenue, shrinking investment, departure of key executives, and EMC’s auditing of existing customers. While EMC has been neglecting the life sciences industry over the last few years, Oracle has been increasing its investment and commitment by providing best-of-breed solutions to enable pharmaceutical, medical device, biotech and CRO companies to improve productivity and drive innovation. As a result, according to IDC Health Insights, Oracle is #1 in life sciences. From research and development through clinical development and manufacturing to sales and marketing, Oracle provides the solutions that life sciences companies depend on to accelerate R&D, expedite clinical trials, and speed time to market. Specifically for Oracle WebCenter, our life sciences business is booming thanks to our comprehensive offerings led by Oracle WebCenter Content, our 21 CFR Part 11 compliant enterprise content management platform. Unlike Documentum, WebCenter Content is all about keeping the cost of ownership low - through simplicity, flexibility, and out-of-the-box integrations. WebCenter Content is a single, comprehensive ECM platform that can handle all your content management needs, from controlled documents to digital asset management, records management and document imaging and capture. And it is much more flexible, letting you do configuration changes instead of customizations to meet your business needs. It also saves you money by being pre-integrated with the rest of the Oracle Fusion Middleware technology stack and with leading enterprise applications like Siebel (including Siebel CTMS), Primavera, E-Business Suite, JD Edwards and PeopleSoft. So if you think EMC’s announcement last week was too little and too late, I’m happy to report that Oracle is here to help. Back in October, we announced our Move Off Documentum offer, which provides a 100% trade-in credit for your Documentum licenses when you purchase Oracle WebCenter, and the good news is, this offer is still available for a limited time. So stop maintaining Documentum and start innovating with Oracle WebCenter. For more details see www.oracle.com/moveoff/documentum.

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• Why Ultra-Low Power Computing Will Change Everything

  - by Tori Wieldt

  The ARM TechCon keynote "Why Ultra-Low Power Computing Will Change Everything" was anything but low-powered. The speaker, Dr. Johnathan Koomey, knows his subject: he is a Consulting Professor at Stanford University, worked for more than two decades at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and has been a visiting professor at Stanford University, Yale University, and UC Berkeley's Energy and Resources Group. His current focus is creating a standard (computations per kilowatt hour) and measuring computer energy consumption over time. The trends are impressive: energy consumption has halved every 1.5 years for the last 60 years. Battery life has made roughly a 10x improvement each decade since 1960. It's these improvements that have made laptops and cell phones possible. What does the future hold? Dr. Koomey said that in the past, the race by chip manufacturers was to create the fastest computer, but the priorities have now changed. New computers are tiny, smart, connected and cheap. "You can't underestimate the importance of a shift in industry focus from raw performance to power efficiency for mobile devices," he said. There is also a confluence of trends in computing, communications, sensors, and controls. The challenge is how to reduce the power requirements for these tiny devices. Alternate sources of power that are being explored are light, heat, motion, and even blood sugar. The University of Michigan has produced a miniature sensor that harnesses solar energy and could last for years without needing to be replaced. Also, the University of Washington has created a sensor that scavenges power from existing radio and TV signals.Specific devices designed for a purpose are much more efficient than general purpose computers. With all these sensors, instead of big data, developers should focus on nano-data, personalized information that will adjust the lights in a room, a machine, a variable sign, etc.Dr. Koomey showed some examples:The Proteus Digital Health Feedback System, an ingestible sensor that transmits when a patient has taken their medicine and is powered by their stomach juices. (Gives "powered by you" a whole new meaning!) Streetline Parking Systems, that provide real-time data about available parking spaces. The information can be sent to your phone or update parking signs around the city to point to areas with available spaces. Less driving around looking for parking spaces!The BigBelly trash system that uses solar power, compacts trash, and sends a text message when it is full. This dramatically reduces the number of times a truck has to come to pick up trash, freeing up resources and slashing fuel costs. This is a classic example of the efficiency of moving "bits not atoms." But researchers are approaching the physical limits of sensors, Dr. Kommey explained. With the current rate of technology improvement, they'll reach the three-atom transistor by 2041. Once they hit that wall, it will force a revolution they way we do computing. But wait, researchers at Purdue University and the University of New South Wales are both working on a reliable one-atom transistors! Other researchers are working on "approximate computing" that will reduce computing requirements drastically. So it's unclear where the wall actually is. In the meantime, as Dr. Koomey promised, ultra-low power computing will change everything.

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• WebCenter Innovation Award Winners

  - by Michael Snow

  Of course, here on our WebCenter blog – we’d like to highlight and brag about our great WebCenter winners. The 2012 WebCenter Innovation Award Winners University of Louisville Location: Louisville, KY, USA Industry: Higher Education Fusion Middleware Products: WebCenter Portal, WebCenter Content, JDeveloper, WebLogic, Oracle BI, Oracle IdM University of Louisville is a state supported research university Statewide Informatics Network to improve public health The University of Louisville has implemented WebCenter as part of the LOUI (Louisville Informatics Institute) Initiative, a Statewide Informatics Network, which will improve public healthcare and lower cost through the use of novel technology and next generation analytics, decision support and innovative outcomes-based payment systems. ---------- News Limited Country/Region: Australia Industry: News/Media FMW Products: WebCenter Sites Single platform running websites for 50% of Australia's newspapers News Corp is running half of Australia's newspaper websites on this shared platform powered by Oracle WebCenter Sites and have overtaken their nearest competitors and are now leading in terms of monthly page impressions. At peak they have over 250 editors on the system publishing in real-time.Sites include: www.newsspace.com.au, www.news.com.au, www.theaustralian.com.au and many others ------ Life Technologies Corp. Country/Region: Carlsbad, CA, USAIndustry: Life SciencesFMW Products: WebCenter Portal, SOA Suite Life Technologies Corp. is a global biotechnology tools company dedicated to improving the human condition with innovative life science products. They were awarded an innovation award for their solution utilizing WebCenter Portal for remotely monitoring & repairing biotech instruments. They deployed WebCenter as a portal that accesses Life Technologies cloud based service monitoring system where all customer deployed instruments can be remotely monitored and proactively repaired.  The portal provides alerts from these cloud based monitoring services directly to the customer and to Life Technologies Field Engineers.  The Portal provides insight into the instruments and services customers purchased for the purpose of analyzing and anticipating future customer needs and creating targeted sales and service programs. ----- China Mobile Jiangsu China Mobile Jiangsu is one of the biggest subsidiaries of China Mobile. It has over 25,000 employees and 40 million mobile subscribers. Country/Region: Jiangsu, China Industry: Telecommunications FMW Products: WebCenter Portal, WebCenter Content, JDeveloper, SOA Suite, IdM They were awarded an Innovation Award for their new employee platform powered by WebCenter Portal is designed to serve their 25,000+ employees and help them drive collaboration & productivity. JSMCC (Chian Mobile Jiangsu) Employee Enterprise Portal and Collaboration Platform. It is one of the China Mobile’s most important IT innovation projects. The new platform is designed to serve for JSMCC’s 25000+ employees and to help them improve the working efficiency, changing their traditional working mode to social ways, encouraging employees on business collaboration and innovation. The solution is built on top of Oracle WebCenter Portal Framework and WebCenter Spaces while also leveraging Weblogic Server, UCM, OID, OAM, SES, IRM and Oracle Database 11g. By providing rich collaboration services, knowledge management services, sensitive document protection services, unified user identity management services, unified information search services and personalized information integration capabilities, the working efficiency of JSMCC employees has been greatly improved. Main Functionality : Information portal, office automation integration, personal space, group space, team collaboration with web2.0 services, unified search engine for multiple data sources, document management and protection. SSO for multiple platforms. -------- LADWP – Los Angeles Department for Water and Power Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) is the largest public utility company in United States with over 1.6 Million customers. LADWP provides water and power for millions of residential & commercial customers in Southern California. LADWP also bills most of these customers for sanitation services provided by another city department. Country/Region: US – Los Angeles, CA Industry: Public Utility FMW Products: WebCenter Portal, WebCenter Content, JDeveloper, SOA Suite, IdM The new infrastructure consists of: Oracle WebCenter Portal including mobile portal Oracle WebCenter Content for Content Management and Digital Asset Management (DAM) Oracle OAM (IDM, OVD, OAM) integrated with AD for enterprise identity management Oracle Siebel for CRM Oracle DB Oracle SOA Suite for integration of various subsystems and back end systems  The new portal's features include: Complete Graphical redesign based on best practices in UI Design for high usability Customer Self Service implemented through MyAccount (Bill Pay, Payment History, Bill History, Usage Analysis, Service Request Management) Financial Assistance Programs (CRM, WebCenter) Customer Rebate Programs (CRM, WebCenter) Turn On/Off/Transfer of services (Commercial & Residential) Outage Reporting eNotification (SMS, email) Multilingual (English & Spanish) – using WebCenter multi-language support Section 508 (ADA) Compliant Search – Using WebCenter SES (Secured Enterprise Search) Distributed Authorship in WebCenter Content Mobile Access (any Mobile Browser)

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• Do MORE with WebCenter - Webcast Overview & TIES Tour

  - by Michael Snow

  Today's post is from Michelle Huff, Senior Director, Product Management, Oracle WebCenter `````````````````  In case you missed it, I presented on a webcast yesterday focused on how you can “Do More with Oracle WebCenter – Expand Beyond Content Management.” As you may remember, we rebranded Oracle’s Enterprise Content Management (ECM) Suite, which some people knew by the wonderfully techie three-letter acronyms -- UCM, URM & IPM -- to Oracle WebCenter Content last year. Since it’s a unified ECM platform, I’ve seen many customers over the years continue to expand the number of content-centric solutions and application integrations powered by WebCenter throughout their organizations. But, did you know WebCenter also provides portal, collaboration and web experience management capabilities as well? This enables you to leverage your existing investment in the WebCenter platform as well as the information you’re managing to create engaging sites, collaborative spaces, or self-service portals and composite applications. In the webcast I walked through six different ways that you can do more with WebCenter: Collaborative content contribution and sharing environment Share content across intranets and extranets Combine content in composite applications Create targeted online experiences Manage interactive social experiences Optimize multi-channel customer experiences Joining me on the call was Greg Utecht with TIES. TIES is a joint powers cooperative owned by 46 Minnesota school districts, represents 514 schools – and provides software applications, hardware and software, internet service and professional development designed by educators for education. I was having a lot of fun over the past few days talking with Greg about the TIES implementation and future plans with WebCenter. He joined me on the call for a little Q&A to explain how he’s using WebCenter today for their iContent implementation for document management, records management and archiving. And also covered how they have expanded their implementation to create a collaborative space called their HRPay System with WebCenter to facilitate collaboration and to better engage their users within the school districts. During our conversation a few questions came from the audience about their implementation. They were curious to see how the system looked – so let’s take a peak. This first screenshot shows the screen that a human resources or payroll worker in one of our member districts would see upon logging in, based on their credentials and role in their district. This shows the result of clicking on the SUBSCRIBE link on the main page. It allows the user to subscribe to parts of the portal which will e-mail him/her when those are updated in any way. This shows the screen that a human resources or payroll worker in one of our member districts would see upon clicking on the Resources link. This shows the screen that a human resources or payroll worker in one of our member districts would see upon clicking on the Finance Advisory link. It shows the discussion threads and document sharing areas. This shows the screen that appears when the forum topic on the preceding screen is clicked. This shows the screen portlet up close with shared documents. This shows the screen that appears when a shared document is clicked on. Note that there is also a download button and an update button, meaning people can work on these collaboratively. If you missed the webcast, check it out! You can watch the replay OnDemand HERE. If you attended the webcast, thanks for joining - I hoped you learned a little from the session. I learned that kids are getting digital report cards today! Wow, have times changed with technology. Uh oh, is this when I start saying “You know, back in my days…?”

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• Heading out to Dallas GiveCamp 2011

  - by dotgeek

  The day has finally arrived for twelve local charities here in the Dallas area, when they’ll get some help from various local Developers with their website initiative needs at this years Dallas GiveCamp. I’m really looking forward to helping out at this year event and what I hope will be the start of many more GiveCamps to follow. Similar to Habitat for Humanity, where people gather to help build and improve homes for people in need, GiveCamp brings together programmers and equips them with the virtual tools they need to build and improve their existing websites. Tonight is when things will kickoff for this weekends events and teams will start working on their various projects. The building continues on through the night then and all the way through until Sunday afternoon. The end goal for the teams and charities is to have a completed and working website for each charity to begin using and turn over all the production code and digital assets to them. None of this would be possible with out the great sponsors we have returning once again and their donations of various products to help these charities out with their projects, like Telerik's CMS product Sitefinity 4.0, paired with a year of hosting from Verio to mention just a few of them. Just like the skilled builders who might help train volunteers in the use of a nail gun in building a house. Training is also available here on site for the Developers and these local Charities. Giving them all the skills in how to manage and use these products, from site development and then into actual production is a key to the success of this weekends event.     Tonight's training sessions will kick off with a real treat from Giovanni Gallucci, as he speaks about Social Media for NPOs and then later Gabe Sumner from Telerik will begin a training session on Sitefinity for Developers. These training sessions will continue through out the weekend with .Net Nuke and Mojo Portal sessions also planned as well. If you’re a developer and would like to help out in the future, then check in your area and with your local User Groups to find out if you already have a GiveCamp near you to help out. If you don’t have one available, then consider starting up a local GiveCamp and then you too can help Code it Forward. About GiveCamp GiveCamp is a weekend-long event where software developers, designers, and database administrators donate their time to create custom software for non-profit organizations. This custom software could be a new website for the nonprofit organization, a small data-collection application to keep track of members, or a application for the Red Cross that automatically emails a blood donor three months after they’ve donated blood to remind them that they are now eligible to donate again. The only limitation is that the project should be scoped to be able to be completed in a weekend. During GiveCamp, developers are welcome to go home in the evenings or camp out all weekend long. There are usually food and drink provided at the event. There are sometimes even game systems set up for when you and your need a little break! Overall, it’s a great opportunity for people to work together, developing new friendships, and doing something important for their community. At GiveCamp, there is an expectation of “What Happens at GiveCamp, Stays at GiveCamp”. Therefore, all source code must be turned over to the charities at the end of the weekend (developers cannot ask for payment) and the charities are responsible for maintaining the code moving forward (charities cannot expect the developers to maintain the codebase).

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• Desktop Fun: Runic Style Fonts

  - by Asian Angel

  Most of the time regular fonts are just what you need for documents, invitations, or adding text to images. But what if you are in the mood for something unusual or unique to add that perfect touch? If you like older runic style writing, then enjoy finding some new favorites for your collection with our Runic Style Fonts collection. Temple photo by ShinyShiny. Note: To manage the fonts on your Windows 7, Vista, & XP systems see our article here. The Runic Style Fonts Sable Download Worn Manuscript Download JSL Ancient Download Antropos Download Cave Gyrl Download The Roman Runes Alliance Download Ancient Geek Download Troll Download Runish Quill MK *includes two font types Download DS RUNEnglish 2 Download Runes Written *includes two font types Download Wolves And Ravens Download Art Greco Download Dalek Download Glagolitic AOE Download Linear B Download Cartouche Download Greywolf Glyphs *includes 62 individual characters Note: This group represents A – Z in all capital letters. Note: This group represents A – Z in all lower case letters. Note: This group represents the numbers 0 – 9. Download Africain *includes 62 individual characters Note: This group represents A – Z in all capital letters. Note: This group represents A – Z in all lower case letters. Note: This group represents the numbers 0 – 9. Download Cave Writings *includes 52 individual characters Note: This group represents A – Z in all capital letters. Note: This group represents A – Z in all lower case letters. Download For more great ways to customize your computer be certain to look through our Desktop Fun section. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC HTG Projects: How to Create Your Own Custom Papercraft Toy How to Combine Rescue Disks to Create the Ultimate Windows Repair Disk What is Camera Raw, and Why Would a Professional Prefer it to JPG? The How-To Geek Guide to Audio Editing: The Basics How To Boot 10 Different Live CDs From 1 USB Flash Drive The 20 Best How-To Geek Linux Articles of 2010 Five Sleek Audi R8 Car Themes for Chrome and Iron MS Notepad Replacement Metapad Returns with a New Beta Version Spybot Search and Destroy Now Available as a Portable App (PortableApps.com) ShapeShifter: What Are Dreams? [Video] This Computer Runs on Geek Power Wallpaper Bones, Clocks, and Counters; A Look at the First 35,000 Years of Computing

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• Is a university education really worth it for a good programmer?

  - by Jon Purdy

  The title says it all, but here's the personal side of it: I've been doing design and programming for about as long as I can remember. If there's a programming problem, I can figure it out. (Though admittedly StackOverflow has allowed me to skip the figuring out and get straight to the doing in many instances.) I've made games, esoteric programming languages, and widgets and gizmos galore. I'm currently working on a general-purpose programming language. There's nothing I do better than programming. However, I'm just as passionate about design. Thus when I felt leaving high school that my design skills were lacking, I decided to attend university for New Media Design and Imaging, a digital design-related major. For a year, I diligently studied art and programmed in my free time. As the next year progressed, however, I was obligated to take fewer art and design classes and more technical classes. The trouble was of course that these classes were geared toward non-technical students, and were far beneath my skill level at the time. No amount of petitioning could overcome the institution's reluctance to allow me to test out of such classes, and the major offered no promise for any greater challenge in the future, so I took the extreme route: I switched into the technical equivalent of the major, New Media Interactive Development. A lot of my credits moved over into the new major, but many didn't. It would have been infeasible to switch to a more rigorous technical major such as Computer Science, and having tutored Computer Science students at every level here, I doubt I would be exposed to anything that I haven't already or won't eventually find out on my own, since I'm so involved in the field. I'm now on track to graduate perhaps a year later than I had planned, which puts a significant financial strain on my family and my future self. My schedule continues to be bogged down with classes that are wholly unnecessary for me to take. I'm being re-introduced to subjects that I've covered a thousand times over, simply because I've always been interested in it all. And though I succeed in avoiding the cynical and immature tactic of failing to complete work out of some undeserved sense of superiority, I'm becoming increasingly disillusioned by the lack of intellectual stimulation. Further, my school requires students to complete a number of quarters of co-op work experience proportional to their major. My original major required two quarters, but my current requires three, delaying my graduation even more. To top it all off, college is putting a severe strain on my relationship with my very close partner of a few years, so I've searched diligently for co-op jobs in my area, alas to no avail. I'm now in my third year, and approaching that point past which I can no longer handle this. Either I keep my head down, get a degree no matter what it takes, and try to get a job with a company that will pay me enough to do what I love that I can eventually pay off my loans; or I cut my losses now, move wherever there is work, and in six months start paying off what debt I've accumulated thus far. So the real question is: is a university education really more than just a formality? It's a big decision, and one I can't make lightly. I think this is the appropriate venue for this kind of question, and I hope it sticks around for the sake of others who might someday find themselves in similar situations. My heartfelt thanks for reading, and in advance for your help.

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• Oracle EMEA News Digest - May 2014

  - by Steve Walker

  Systems Oracle introduced a technology preview of an OpenStack® distribution that allows Oracle Linux and Oracle VM users to work with the open source cloud software. This provides customers with additional choices and interoperability while taking advantage of the efficiency, performance, scalability, and security of Oracle Linux and Oracle VM. The distribution is delivered as part of the Oracle Linux and Oracle VM Premier Support offerings, at no additional cost. Oracle plans to work further with the OpenStack community to develop and enhance its enterprise-class capabilities to meet customer demands. Also in the Open Source arena, Oracle announced the general availability of MySQL Fabric. MySQL Fabric provides an integrated system that makes it simpler to manage groups of MySQL databases. It delivers both high availability - via failure detection and failover - and scalability through automated data sharding. Oracle Database, Middleware and Technology The company made two announcements for Oracle Tuxedo, the #1 application server for C, C++, COBOL and Java deployments in private cloud or traditional data center environments. With enhanced management and monitoring features and tighter integration with Oracle technologies, the latest release of Oracle Tuxedo 12c enables organizations to dramatically increase application throughput, while reducing total cost of ownership and time to market for new application development and deployment. Oracle also introduced the latest release of its mainframe application rehosting platform, Oracle Tuxedo ART 12c, to help organizations speed up migration projects and accelerate the adoption of the new environment by current IT staff. It enables organizations to accelerate the rehosting of IBM mainframe applications and greatly enhance management and supportability of the rehosted applications while reducing costs and risk. Applications According to new Oracle studies, B2B and B2C commerce professionals find integrated, omni-channel customer experiences increasingly valuable to their organizations, and are continuing to invest in technologies and digital content strategies to facilitate them. The studies—one for B2B and one for B2C—surveyed e-commerce professionals in business and technology departments from around the world. Although the priorities, success metrics, and technology investments differed between the two groups, customer acquisition and retention emerged as common themes across B2B and B2C. Growing market share and enhancing customer experience are cited as top investment areas for all e-commerce professionals. In product news, Oracle announced the latest release of Oracle Business Intelligence (BI) Applications (version 11.1.1.8.1, in case anyone asks). It includes prebuilt connectors between Oracle Procurement and Spend Analytics and Oracle’s JD Edwards. Additionally, a new Oracle Human Resources Analytics module for developing and maintaining a skilled workforce has been introduced. In use at more than 4,000 companies worldwide, Oracle BI Applications support leading enterprise applications, including Oracle E-Business Suite, Oracle’s PeopleSoft, Oracle's Siebel CRM, Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne offering high-performing analytics at a lower cost. Industries For the Communications Industry, Oracle has launched a new release of the Oracle Communications Core Session Manager. This gives CSPs a new way to design, deploy and manage complex networking services and embrace next-generation technology, It provides them with an immediate entry point for  network function virtualization (NFV) efforts, allowing them to realize immediate benefits associated with network virtualization – including increased service agility and improved network resource sharing. And for the Utilities Industry, Oracle is releasing solutions with new business features and enhanced technical architecture that help position utilities for success now and into the future. Oracle has provided new releases for its customer information system,  meter data management system, customer self-service solution and mobile workforce management solution.

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• Web.NET: A Brief Retrospective

  - by Chris Massey

  It’s been several weeks since I had the pleasure of visiting Milan, and joining 150 enthusiastic web developers for a day of server-side frameworks and JavaScript. Lucky for me, I keep good notes. Overall the day went smoothly, with some solid logistics and very attentiveorganizerss, and an impressively diverse audience drawn by the fact that the event was ambitiously run in English. This was great in that it drew a truly pan-European audience (11 countries were represented on the day, and at least 1 visa had to be procured to get someone there!) It was trouble because, in some cases, it pushed speakers outside their comfort zone. Thankfully, despite a slightly rocky start, every session I attended was very well presented, and the consensus on the day was that the speakers were excellent. While I felt that a lot of the speakers had more that they wanted to cover, the topics were well-chosen, every room constantly had a stack of people in it, and all the sessions were pleasingly focused on code & demos. For all that the language barriers occasionally made networking a little challenging,organizerss Simone & Ugo nailed the logistics. Registration was slick, lunch was plentiful, and session management was great. The very generous Rui was kind enough to showcase a short video about Glimpse in his session, which seemed to go down well (Although the audio in the rooms was a little under-powered). Because I think you might need a mid-week chuckle, here are some out-takes.: And lets not forget the Hackathon. The idea was what having just learned about a stack of interesting technologies, attendees could spend an evening (fuelled by pizza and some good Github beer) hacking something together using them. Unfortunately, after a (great)10-hour day, and in many cases facing international travel in the morning, many of the attendees headed straight for their hotel rooms. This idea could work so beautifully, and I’m excited to see how it pans out in 2013. On top of the slick sessions, getting to finally meet Ugo and Simone in the flesh as a pleasure, as was the serendipitous introduction to the most excellent Rui. They’re all fantastic guys who are passionate about the web, and I’m looking forward to finding opportunities to work with them. Simone & Ugo put on a great event, and I’m excited to see what they do next year.

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• DISA Cross Domain Enterprise Solutions on the NetBeans Platform

  - by Geertjan

  Bray 2.0 is a tool based on the NetBeans Platform that assists in creating valid Data Flow Configuration (DFC) files. The DFC Specification was developed to provide a standardized way for defining, validating, and approving data flows for use on cross-domain guarding solutions. A DFC document specifies key entities such as security domains, guards that facilitate data between security domains, data flows that describe how data travels between security domains, filters that transform and validate the data and more. Related info: http://www.disa.mil/Services/Information-Assurance/Cross-Domain-Solutions The Bray product is in development at Fulcrum IT (http://www.fulcrumco.com). The DFC Specification and Bray were developed in support of the US Department of Defense. Bray 2.0 marks the first release of Bray on the NetBeans Platform and utilizes a number of features that are core to the NetBeans Platform: Modular plugability. Bray consumers can integrate their own tools, file types, and more into the product with relative ease. Robust UI. The NetBeans Platform intuitive UI makes it easy to access and manipulate multiple aspects of a DFC. Explorer. The Explorer is a key component that makes the DFC XML easy to traverse, edit, and find errors. Context-sensitive help. JavaHelp can be readily integrated for the product as well as all the UI within. Editors. Any external file can be added to a DFC. Users can register their own editors or use the provided NetBeans editors to edit files. Printing. The NetBeans Platform Print API makes it easy to determine what should be printed and how.   A screenshot: Bray 2.0 provides a lot of key features in developing valid, robust DFC files:  XML validation. A DFC can be validated against the DFC schema specification. DFC Check List. An interactive, minimal guide for creating a complete DFC. Summary Window. The Summary Window functions like the Navigator in NetBeans IDE. The current "item of interest" is checked against various business rules and provides the ability to quickly find and fix errors. Change Log. Bray audits every change to a DFC and places them in a change log for users to peruse. Comments. Users can optionally add comments for other users to see. Digital signatures. DFC files can be digitally signed. A signature history and signature validation is provided in Bray. Pluggable security schemes. Bray ships with plain text and IC-ISM security schemes. If needed, users can integrate additional ones.  ...and more to come! New features for Bray are constantly in development including use of the NetBeans Visual Library, language support, and more. More screenshots:

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• How to debug lag using Bluetooth connected mouse and A2DP headset?

  - by gertvdijk

  I own a Logitech M555b mouse (since a week) for use with my HP Elitebook 8570w laptop running Kubuntu 12.04. Works fine right after connecting using the KDE Bluetooth control module. However, after some time (seemingly random), it starts to lag. Movements are being delayed for roughly 500ms for a short period of time. Usually it recovers after some time too, but it can take minutes. All actions are being delayed: movements, click, scrolls. Additionally, the movements can be choppy during these times. A workaround that always works for the same short period of time is to disconnect an re-connect the mouse. This can be done using the same KDE Bluetooth control module. What did I try already? Running this at boot time: echo on > `readlink -f /sys/class/bluetooth/hci0`/../../../power/level To disable any power saving features on the Bluetooth hci0 device. Check the mouse's batteries (it's just a week old, other new batteries: same result) Checking logs and kernel messages about Bluetooth-related entries: none aside the expected messages on connect time. I'm running kernel 3.5.0-13-generic as provided in the xorg-edgers PPA. Booting the regular 3.2 Precise kernel results in the same behaviour. Some other information that may help: It happens when no other Bluetooth connections are active on the machine. Similar symptoms also occur on my Bluetooth stereo (A2DP) headset, but then it's audio lagging and skipping. Swapping Bluetooth profiles as described here then helps. Conclusion: it's not the mouse that's faulty. The headset always worked fine using my now dead Thinkpad T61p with built-in Bluetooth. The bluetooth module in my laptop is connected via USB and shows up as Bus 002 Device 003: ID 0a5c:21e1 Broadcom Corp. I'm mobile and several people around me are using Bluetooth at work (A2DP mostly). It also occurs at home, where my neighbours are probably using Bluetooth as well. It could just be radio interference, but I think Bluetooth connections should just hop to another channel. And, moreover, it just works properly instantly when re-connecting. Therefore I think it's a software driver issue and I'd like to debug it. Is there any way to get more verbose logging on the Bluetooth(-hid) modules?

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• Wireless not working on Dell Inspirion 1501 after upgrading to Ubuntu 12.04 tried steps in other threads

  - by mark burton

  I updated to Ubuntu 12.04 and now my wireless is not working. No icon for it. Tried some of the troubleshooting in other threads but can't get it to work. Would really appreciate any help Thanks! " *-network description: Network controller product: BCM4311 802.11a/b/g vendor: Broadcom Corporation physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:05:00.0 version: 01 width: 32 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list configuration: driver=b43-pci-bridge latency=0 resources: irq:18 memory:c0200000-c0203fff *-network description: Ethernet interface product: BCM4401-B0 100Base-TX vendor: Broadcom Corporation physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:08:00.0 logical name: eth0 version: 02 serial: 00:19:b9:5c:d1:52 size: 100Mbit/s capacity: 100Mbit/s width: 32 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm bus_master cap_list ethernet physical mii 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd autonegotiation configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=b44 driverversion=2.0 duplex=full ip=10.0.0.6 latency=64 link=yes multicast=yes port=twisted pair speed=100Mbit/s resources: irq:21 memory:c0300000-c0301fff " lsub results Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 003 Device 002: ID 046d:c526 Logitech, Inc. Nano Receiver $ lspci 00:00.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI RS480 Host Bridge (rev 10) 00:01.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI RS480 PCI Bridge 00:05.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI RS480 PCI Bridge 00:06.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI RS480 PCI Bridge 00:12.0 SATA controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SB600 Non-Raid-5 SATA 00:13.0 USB controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SB600 USB (OHCI0) 00:13.1 USB controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SB600 USB (OHCI1) 00:13.2 USB controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SB600 USB (OHCI2) 00:13.3 USB controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SB600 USB (OHCI3) 00:13.4 USB controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SB600 USB (OHCI4) 00:13.5 USB controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SB600 USB Controller (EHCI) 00:14.0 SMBus: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SBx00 SMBus Controller (rev 13) 00:14.1 IDE interface: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SB600 IDE 00:14.2 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA) 00:14.3 ISA bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SB600 PCI to LPC Bridge 00:14.4 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SBx00 PCI to PCI Bridge 00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration 00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map 00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller 00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control 01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI RS482 [Radeon Xpress 200M] 05:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4311 802.11a/b/g (rev 01) 08:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4401-B0 100Base-TX (rev 02) 08:01.0 SD Host controller: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 19) 08:01.1 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C843 MMC Host Controller (rev 01) rfkill list all 0: dell-wifi: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no

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• Incomplete upgrade 12.04 to 12.10

  - by David

  Everything was running smoothly. Everything had been downloaded from Internet, packages had been installed and a prompt asked for some obsolete programs/files to be removed or kept. After that the computer crashed and and to manually force a shutdown. I turned it on again and surprise I was on 12.10! Still the upgrade was not finished! How can I properly finish that upgrade? Here's the output I got in the command line after following posted instructions: i astrill - Astrill VPN client software i dayjournal - Simple, minimal, digital journal. i gambas2-gb-form - A gambas native form component i gambas2-gb-gtk - The Gambas gtk component i gambas2-gb-gtk-ext - The Gambas extended gtk GUI component i gambas2-gb-gui - The graphical toolkit selector component i gambas2-gb-qt - The Gambas Qt GUI component i gambas2-gb-settings - Gambas utilities class i A gambas2-runtime - The Gambas runtime i google-chrome-stable - The web browser from Google i google-talkplugin - Google Talk Plugin i indicator-keylock - Indicator for Lock Keys i indicator-ubuntuone - Indicator for Ubuntu One synchronization s i A language-pack-kde-zh-hans - KDE translation updates for language Simpl i language-pack-kde-zh-hans-base - KDE translations for language Simplified C i libapt-inst1.4 - deb package format runtime library idA libattica0.3 - a Qt library that implements the Open Coll idA libbabl-0.0-0 - Dynamic, any to any, pixel format conversi idA libboost-filesystem1.46.1 - filesystem operations (portable paths, ite idA libboost-program-options1.46.1 - program options library for C++ idA libboost-python1.46.1 - Boost.Python Library idA libboost-regex1.46.1 - regular expression library for C++ i libboost-serialization1.46.1 - serialization library for C++ idA libboost-signals1.46.1 - managed signals and slots library for C++ idA libboost-system1.46.1 - Operating system (e.g. diagnostics support idA libboost-thread1.46.1 - portable C++ multi-threading i libcamel-1.2-29 - Evolution MIME message handling library i libcmis-0.2-0 - CMIS protocol client library i libcupsdriver1 - Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - Driver l i libdconf0 - simple configuration storage system - runt i libdvdcss2 - Simple foundation for reading DVDs - runti i libebackend-1.2-1 - Utility library for evolution data servers i libecal-1.2-10 - Client library for evolution calendars i libedata-cal-1.2-13 - Backend library for evolution calendars i libedataserver-1.2-15 - Utility library for evolution data servers i libexiv2-11 - EXIF/IPTC metadata manipulation library i libgdu-gtk0 - GTK+ standard dialog library for libgdu i libgdu0 - GObject based Disk Utility Library idA libgegl-0.0-0 - Generic Graphics Library idA libglew1.5 - The OpenGL Extension Wrangler - runtime en i libglew1.6 - OpenGL Extension Wrangler - runtime enviro i libglewmx1.6 - OpenGL Extension Wrangler - runtime enviro i libgnome-bluetooth8 - GNOME Bluetooth tools - support library i libgnomekbd7 - GNOME library to manage keyboard configura idA libgsoap1 - Runtime libraries for gSOAP i libgweather-3-0 - GWeather shared library i libimobiledevice2 - Library for communicating with the iPhone i libkdcraw20 - RAW picture decoding library i libkexiv2-10 - Qt like interface for the libexiv2 library i libkipi8 - library for apps that want to use kipi-plu i libkpathsea5 - TeX Live: path search library for TeX (run i libmagickcore4 - low-level image manipulation library i libmagickwand4 - image manipulation library i libmarblewidget13 - Marble globe widget library idA libmusicbrainz4-3 - Library to access the MusicBrainz.org data i libnepomukdatamanagement4 - Basic Nepomuk data manipulation interface i libnux-2.0-0 - Visual rendering toolkit for real-time app i libnux-2.0-common - Visual rendering toolkit for real-time app i libpoppler19 - PDF rendering library i libqt3-mt - Qt GUI Library (Threaded runtime version), i librhythmbox-core5 - support library for the rhythmbox music pl i libusbmuxd1 - USB multiplexor daemon for iPhone and iPod i libutouch-evemu1 - KernelInput Event Device Emulation Library i libutouch-frame1 - Touch Frame Library i libutouch-geis1 - Gesture engine interface support i libutouch-grail1 - Gesture Recognition And Instantiation Libr idA libx264-120 - x264 video coding library i libyajl1 - Yet Another JSON Library i linux-headers-3.2.0-29 - Header files related to Linux kernel versi i linux-headers-3.2.0-29-generic - Linux kernel headers for version 3.2.0 on i linux-image-3.2.0-29-generic - Linux kernel image for version 3.2.0 on 64 i mplayerthumbs - video thumbnail generator using mplayer i myunity - Unity configurator i A openoffice.org-calc - office productivity suite -- spreadsheet i A openoffice.org-writer - office productivity suite -- word processo i python-brlapi - Python bindings for BrlAPI i python-louis - Python bindings for liblouis i rts-bpp-dkms - rts-bpp driver in DKMS format. i system76-driver - Universal driver for System76 computers. i systemconfigurator - Unified Configuration API for Linux Instal i systemimager-client - Utilities for creating an image and upgrad i systemimager-common - Utilities and libraries common to both the i systemimager-initrd-template-am - SystemImager initrd template for amd64 cli i touchpad-indicator - An indicator for the touchpad i ubuntu-tweak - Ubuntu Tweak i A unity-lens-utilities - Unity Utilities lens i A unity-scope-calculator - Calculator engine i unity-scope-cities - Cities engine i unity-scope-rottentomatoes - Unity Scope Rottentomatoes

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• Ask the Readers: Would You Be Willing to Give Windows Up and Use a Different O.S.?

  - by Asian Angel

  When it comes to computers, Windows definitely rules the desktop in comparison to other operating systems. What we would like to know this week is if you would actually be willing to give up using Windows altogether and move to a different operating system on your computers. Note: This week’s Ask the Readers post is posing a hypothetical situation, so please refrain from starting arguments or a flame war in the comments. Good reasoned discussion is always welcome. There is no doubt that Windows is the dominant operating system in use today. Everywhere you go or look it is easy to find computers with Windows installed such as at work, home, the library, government offices, and more. For many people it is the operating system that they know and are comfortable with, which makes changing to a different operating system less appealing. Adding to the preference for Windows (or dependency based on your view) is the custom software that many businesses use on a daily basis. Throw in the high volume of people who depend on and use Microsoft Office as a standard for their business documents and it is little wonder that Windows is so dominant. So what would you use if you did decide to take a break from or permanently move away from Windows? If your choice is Linux then you have a large and wonderful variety of distributions to choose from based on what you want out of your system. Want a distribution that is easy to work with? You could choose Ubuntu, Linux Mint, or others that are engineered to be ready to go “out of the box”. Like a challenge? Perhaps Arch Linux is more your style. One of the most attractive features of all about Linux is the price…it is very hard to beat free! Maybe Mac OS X sounds like the perfect choice. It has a certain mystique and elegance associated with it and many OS X fans refuse to use anything else if given a choice. Then there is the soon to be released Chrome OS with its’ emphasis on cloud computing. This is a system that is definitely focused on being as low-maintenance and hassle-free as possible. Quick on, quick off, minimalist, and made to be portable. All of the system’s updates will occur automatically leaving you free to work and play in the cloud. But it does have its’ limitations…no installing all of those custom apps that you love using on Windows or other systems…it is literally all about the browsing window and web apps. So there you have it. If the opportunity presented itself would you, could you give Windows up and use a different operating system? Would it be easy or hard for you to do? Perhaps it would not really matter so long as you could do what you needed or wanted to do on a computer. And maybe this is the perfect time to try something new and find out…that new favorite operating system could be just an install disc away. Let us know your thoughts in the comments! How-To Geek Polls require Javascript. Please Click Here to View the Poll. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC The Complete List of iPad Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials The 50 Best Registry Hacks that Make Windows Better The How-To Geek Holiday Gift Guide (Geeky Stuff We Like) LCD? LED? Plasma? The How-To Geek Guide to HDTV Technology The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 8: Filters Improve Digital Photography by Calibrating Your Monitor The Brothers Mario – Epic Gangland Style Mario Brothers Movie Trailer [Video] Score Awesome Games on the Cheap with the Humble Indie Bundle Add a Colorful Christmas Theme to Your Windows 7 Desktop This Windows Hack Changes the Blue Screen of Death to Red Edit Images Quickly in Firefox with Pixlr Grabber Zoho Writer, Sheet, and Show Now Available in Chrome Web Store

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• Isis Finally Rolls Out

  - by David Dorf

  Google has rolled their wallet out for several chains; I see the NFC readers in Walgreen's when I'm sent their for milk.  But Isis has been relatively quiet until now.  As of last week they have finally launched in their two test cities: Austin, and Salt Lake City.  Below are the supported carriers and phones as of now, but more phones will be added later. 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:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} AT&T supports: HTC One™ X, LG Escape™, Samsung Galaxy Exhilarate™, Samsung Galaxy S® III, Samsung Galaxy Rugby Pro™ T-Mobile supports: Samsung Galaxy S® II, Samsung Galaxy S® III, Samsung Galaxy S® Relay 4G Verizon supports: Droid Incredible 4G LTE. Of course iPhone owners have no wallet since Apple didn't included an NFC chip. To start using Isis, you have to take your NFC-capable phone to your carrier's store to get the SIM replaced with a more sophisticated one that has a secure element configured for Isis.  The "secure element" is the cryptographic logic that secures mobile payments.  Carriers like the secure element in the SIM while non-carriers (like Google) prefer the secure element in the phone's electronics. (I'm not entirely sure if you could support both Isis and Google Wallet on the same phone.  Anybody know?) Then you can download the Isis app from Google Play and load your cards.  Most credit cards are supported, and there's a process to verify the credit cards are valid.  Then you can select from the list of participating retailers to "follow."  Selecting a retailer allows that retailer to give you offers via the app. The app is well done and easy to use.  You can select a default payment type and also switch between them easily.  When the phone is tapped on the reader, there are two exchanges of information.  The payment information is transferred, and then the Isis "SmartTap" information which includes optional loyalty number and digital coupons.  Of course the value of mobile wallets comes from the ease of handling all three data types (i.e. payment, loyalty, offers). There are several advertisements for Isis running now, and my favorite is below.

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• Register Game Object Components in Game Subsystems? (Component-based Game Object design)

  - by topright

  I'm creating a component-based game object system. Some tips: GameObject is simply a list of Components. There are GameSubsystems. For example, rendering, physics etc. Each GameSubsystem contains pointers to some of Components. GameSubsystem is a very powerful and flexible abstraction: it represents any slice (or aspect) of the game world. There is a need in a mechanism of registering Components in GameSubsystems (when GameObject is created and composed). There are 4 approaches: 1: Chain of responsibility pattern. Every Component is offered to every GameSubsystem. GameSubsystem makes a decision which Components to register (and how to organize them). For example, GameSubsystemRender can register Renderable Components. pro. Components know nothing about how they are used. Low coupling. A. We can add new GameSubsystem. For example, let's add GameSubsystemTitles that registers all ComponentTitle and guarantees that every title is unique and provides interface to quering objects by title. Of course, ComponentTitle should not be rewrited or inherited in this case. B. We can reorganize existing GameSubsystems. For example, GameSubsystemAudio, GameSubsystemRender, GameSubsystemParticleEmmiter can be merged into GameSubsystemSpatial (to place all audio, emmiter, render Components in the same hierarchy and use parent-relative transforms). con. Every-to-every check. Very innefficient. con. Subsystems know about Components. 2: Each Subsystem searches for Components of specific types. pro. Better performance than in Approach 1. con. Subsystems still know about Components. 3: Component registers itself in GameSubsystem(s). We know at compile-time that there is a GameSubsystemRenderer, so let's ComponentImageRender will call something like GameSubsystemRenderer::register(ComponentRenderBase*). pro. Performance. No unnecessary checks as in Approach 1. con. Components are badly coupled with GameSubsystems. 4: Mediator pattern. GameState (that contains GameSubsystems) can implement registerComponent(Component*). pro. Components and GameSubystems know nothing about each other. con. In C++ it would look like ugly and slow typeid-switch. Questions: Which approach is better and mostly used in component-based design? What Practice says? Any suggestions about implementation of Approach 4? Thank you.

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• Ubuntu 14.04 : Lost my sound randomly tried a few commands and I think I failed

  - by Marc-Antoine Théberge

  I lost my sound the other day and I tried to delete pulseaudio then reinstall, then I tried to delete it and install alsa, It did not work and I had to reinstall everything; overall bad idea... now I can't have any sound. Should I do a fresh install? I don't know how to boot an usb drive with GRUB... Here's my sysinfo System information report, generated by Sysinfo: 2014-05-28 05:45:58 http://sourceforge.net/projects/gsysinfo SYSTEM INFORMATION Running Ubuntu Linux, the Ubuntu 14.04 (trusty) release. GNOME: 3.8.4 (Ubuntu 2014-03-17) Kernel version: 3.13.0-27-generic (#50-Ubuntu SMP Thu May 15 18:08:16 UTC 2014) GCC: 4.8 (i686-linux-gnu) Xorg: 1.15.1 (16 April 2014 01:40:08PM) (16 April 2014 01:40:08PM) Hostname: mark-laptop Uptime: 0 days 11 h 43 min CPU INFORMATION GenuineIntel, Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU N270 @ 1.60GHz Number of CPUs: 2 CPU clock currently at 1333.000 MHz with 512 KB cache Numbering: family(6) model(28) stepping(2) Bogomips: 3192.13 Flags: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe nx constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl est tm2 ssse3 xtpr pdcm movbe lahf_lm dtherm MEMORY INFORMATION Total memory: 2007 MB Total swap: 1953 MB STORAGE INFORMATION SCSI device - scsi0 Vendor: ATA Model: ST9160310AS HARDWARE INFORMATION MOTHERBOARD Host bridge Intel Corporation Mobile 945GSE Express Memory Controller Hub (rev 03) Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 8340 PCI bridge(s) Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family PCI Express Port 1 (rev 02) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode]) Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family PCI Express Port 2 (rev 02) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode]) Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family PCI Express Port 4 (rev 02) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode]) Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev e2) (prog-if 01 [Subtractive decode]) Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family PCI Express Port 1 (rev 02) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode]) Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family PCI Express Port 2 (rev 02) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode]) Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family PCI Express Port 4 (rev 02) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode]) Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev e2) (prog-if 01 [Subtractive decode]) ISA bridge Intel Corporation 82801GBM (ICH7-M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 02) Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 830f IDE interface Intel Corporation 82801GBM/GHM (ICH7-M Family) SATA Controller [IDE mode] (rev 02) (prog-if 80 [Master]) Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 830f GRAPHIC CARD VGA controller Intel Corporation Mobile 945GSE Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller]) Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 8340 SOUND CARD Multimedia controller Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 02) Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 831a NETWORK Ethernet controller Qualcomm Atheros AR8121/AR8113/AR8114 Gigabit or Fast Ethernet (rev b0) Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 8324

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• The Power to Control Power

  - by speakjava

  I'm currently working on a number of projects using embedded Java on the Raspberry Pi and Beagle Board.  These are nice and small, so don't take up much room on my desk as you can see in this picture. As you can also see I have power and network connections emerging from under my desk.  One of the (admittedly very minor) drawbacks of these systems is that they have no on/off switch.  Instead you insert or remove the power connector (USB for the RasPi, a barrel connector for the Beagle).  For the Beagle Board this can potentially be an issue; with the micro-SD card located right next to the connector it has been known for people to eject the card when trying to power off the board, which can be quite serious for the hardware. The alternative is obviously to leave the boards plugged in and then disconnect the power from the outlet.  Simple enough, but a picture of underneath my desk shows that this is not the ideal situation either. This made me think that it would be great if I could have some way of controlling a mains voltage outlet using a remote switch or, even better, from software via a USB connector.  A search revealed not much that fit my requirements, and anything that was close seemed very expensive.  Obviously the only way to solve this was to build my own.Here's my solution.  I decided my system would support both control mechanisms (remote physical switch and USB computer control) and be modular in its design for optimum flexibility.  I did a bit of searching and found a company in Hong Kong that were offering solid state relays for 99p plus shipping (£2.99, but still made the total price very reasonable).  These would handle up to 380V AC on the output side so more than capable of coping with the UK 240V supply.  The other great thing was that being solid state, the input would work with a range of 3-32V and required a very low current of 7.5mA at 12V.  For the USB control an Arduino board seemed the obvious low-cost and simple choice.  Given the current requirments of the relay, the Arduino would not require the additional power supply and could be powered just from the USB.Having secured the relays I popped down to Homebase for a couple of 13A sockets, RS for a box and an Arduino and Maplin for a toggle switch.  The circuit is pretty straightforward, as shown in the diagram (only one output is shown to make it as simple as possible).  Originally I used a 2 pole toggle switch to select the remote switch or USB control by switching the negative connections of the low voltage side.  Unfortunately, the resistance between the digital pins of the Arduino board was not high enough, so when using one of the remote switches it would turn on both of the outlets.  I changed to a 4 pole switch and isolated both positive and negative connections. IMPORTANT NOTE: If you want to follow my design, please be aware that it requires working with mains voltages.  If you are at all concerned with your ability to do this please consult a qualified electrician to help you.It was a tight fit, especially getting the Arduino in, but in the end it all worked.  The completed box is shown in the photos. The remote switch was pretty simple just requiring the squeezing of two rocker switches and a 9V battery into the small RS supplied box.  I repurposed a standard stereo cable with phono plugs to connect the switch box to the mains outlets.  I chopped off one set of plugs and wired it to the rocker switches.  The photo shows the RasPi and the Beagle board now controllable from the switch box on the desk. I've tested the Arduino side of things and this works fine.  Next I need to write some software to provide an interface for control of the outlets.  I'm thinking a JavaFX GUI would be in keeping with the total overkill style of this project.

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• Comparing Isis, Google, and Paypal

  - by David Dorf

  Back in 2010 I was sure NFC would make great strides, but here we are two years later and NFC doesn't seem to be sticking. The obvious reason being the chicken-and-egg problem.  Retailers don't want to install the terminals until the phones support NFC, and vice-versa. So consumers continue to sit on the sidelines waiting for either side to blink and make the necessary investment.  In the meantime, EMV is looking for a way to sneak into the US with the help of the card brands. There are currently three major solutions that are battling in the marketplace.  All three know that replacing mag-stripe alone is not sufficient to move consumers.  Long-term it's the offers and loyalty programs combined with tendering that make NFC attractive. NFC solutions cross lots of barriers, so a strong partner system is required.  The solutions need to include the carriers, card brands, banks, handset manufacturers, POS terminals, and most of all lots of merchants.  Lots of coordination is necessary to make the solution seamless to the consumer. Google Wallet Google's problem has always been that only the Nexus phone has an NFC chip that supports their wallet.  There are a couple of additional phones out there now, but adoption is still slow.  They acquired Zavers a while back to incorporate digital coupons, but the the bulk of their users continue to be non-NFC.  They have taken an open approach by not specifying particular payment brands.  Google is piloting in San Francisco and New York, supporting both MasterCard PayPass and stored value. I suppose the other card brands may eventually follow.  There's no cost for consumers or merchants -- Google will make money via targeted ads. Isis Not long after Google announced its wallet, AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile announced a joint venture called Isis.  They are in the unique position of owning the SIM in the phones they issue.  At first it seemed Isis was a vehicle for the carriers to compete with the existing card brands, but Isis later switched to a generic wallet that supports the major card brands.  Isis reportedly charges issuers a $5 fee per customer per year.  Isis will pilot this summer in Salt Lake City and Austin. PayPal PayPal, the clear winner in the online payment space beyond traditional credit cards, is trying to move into physical stores.  After negotiations with Google to provide a wallet broke off, PayPal decided to avoid NFC altogether, at least for now, and focus on payments without any physical card or phone.  By avoiding NFC, consumers don't need an NFC-enabled phone and merchants don't need a new reader.  Consumers must enter their phone number and PIN in the merchant's existing device, or they can enter their PIN in the PayPal inStore app running on their phone, then show the merchant a unique barcode which authorizes payment. Paypal is free for consumers and charges a fee for merchants.  Its not clear, at least to me, how PayPal handles fraudulent transactions and whether the consumer is protected. The wildcard is, of course, Apple.  Their mobile technologies set the standard, so incorporating NFC chips would certainly accelerate adoption of many payment solutions.  Their announcement today of the iOS Passbook is a step in the right direction, but stops short of handling payments. For those retailers that have invested in modern terminals, it seems the best strategy is to support all the emerging solutions and let the consumers choose the winner.

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• New computer hangs on shutdown/reboot, how to troubleshoot?

  - by torbengb

  Summary: My machine hangs on shutdown/restart: all windows and the menu bar disappear but the desktop wallpaper remains, and it stays like that without disk activity forever (hours). It doesn't even show the shutdown screen (the one with the animated dots) where I could hit ESC and watch the shutdown text. How can I troubleshoot this? Details: I've just received a new nettop computer (Acer Aspire Revo 3700: CPU:Atom D525, GPU:Nvidia ION2). I've just made a clean install of Ubuntu 10.10 using the standard USB pendrive method. The machine boots okay and works OK including WLAN and audio, but the graphics are not OK. Ubuntu offered to install&activate the current recommended Nvidia driver, but the machine hangs on shutdown/restart which prevents the installation of the proper Nvidia driver. I have to cycle the power to reboot. I ran the Update Manager in the hope that the updates would fix the hang-up. At the end of the update-installation it asked to reboot - and got stuck just like before. I see no obvious cause of the freeze and I don't know if it's caused by graphics problems or anything else. The only USB attachment is a mouse/keyboard; I don't have any external storage attached; and I don't have any programs running (the machine freezes even when doing restart right after login). How can I determine what is causing the freeze? How can I fix this? I'm frankly rather disappointed because I bought this new machine in the hopes of getting the graphics to work, which failed miserably on my old machine, even though Ubuntu is supposed to be good with Nvidia. Being a fresh convert from Windows, I was hoping for a happier experience this time, so I'm very much looking forward to your suggestions! ... After posting this question, I see related questions in the right sidebar: this, this, and this. Don't know why these didn't show up while I composed by question. Those questions suggest some ACPI settings but I am not experienced enough to find/change those settings. I'll try the sudo shutdown -h now command when I get home and see if that works, then update this question. I did check the system BIOS but didn't see anything out of the ordinary.

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• Turn Chrome’s New Tab Page into an Ubuntu Forums Powerhouse

  - by Asian Angel

  There’s a lot of start page plug-ins for Google Chrome, but if you’re an Ubuntu Forums enthusiast, you might be interested in the powerful UbuntuForums.org Start Page extension. Using the Ubuntu Forums Chrome Start Page Once you’ve installed the extension and opened a new tab, you’ll notice quite a difference from the boring default “New Tab Page”. While you may look at this and wonder if what you see is all that there is to it, there’s actually a lot of hidden customization and functionality. The upper left corner is where you will control the content displayed in the “Ubuntu New Tab Page”. The “Buttons Toolbar” that you see at the top lets you shift between the types of content viewed, from RSS feeds to bookmarks and more. This entire set of links provides direct links to the appropriate section in the Ubuntu Forums. As with the set of links pictured above each of these will open in a new tab when clicked on. There’s even a feature to browse wallpapers from DesktopNexus with categories on the left and pictures to the right. If you want to return to the regular layout you should use the “Start Page Link” highlighted here. Options The options will allow you to customize the colors shown in the “Ubuntu New Tab Page” to create a very nice match to your current browser and/or system theme if desired. You can also do some customization to the fonts, “Bookmark Shortcuts”, and populate the “Custom Links Section” in the main page. Conclusion If you are an Ubuntu enthusiast then this will be a very useful extension to add to your browser. The wealth of direct links and built-in functionality make this extension worth trying. Links Download the Ubuntuforums.org Start Page extension (Google Chrome Extensions) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Turn Off Auto-Play of Audio and Video CDs and DVDs in UbuntuScroll Backwards From the Ubuntu Server Command LineAnnouncing the How-To Geek ForumsDisable the System Beep on Ubuntu EdgyEnable Smooth fonts on Ubuntu Linux TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Gadfly is a cool Twitter/Silverlight app Enable DreamScene in Windows 7 Microsoft’s “How Do I ?” Videos Home Networks – How do they look like & the problems they cause Check Your IMAP Mail Offline In Thunderbird Follow Finder Finds You Twitter Users To Follow

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• Social Search: Looking for Love

  - by Mike Stiles

  For marketers and enterprise executives who have placed a higher priority on and allocated bigger budgets to search over social, it might be time to notice yet another shift that’s well underway. Social is search. Search marketing was always more of an internal slam-dunk than other digital initiatives. Even a C-suite that understood little about the new technology world knew it’s a good thing when people are able to find you. Google was the new Yellow Pages. Only with Google, you could get your listing first without naming yourself “AAAA Plumbing.” There were wizards out there who could give your business prominence in front of people who were specifically looking for what you offered. Other search giants like Bing also came along to offer such ideal matchmaking possibilities. But what if the consumer isn’t using a search engine to find what they’re looking for? And what if the search engines started altering their algorithms so that search placement manipulation was more difficult? Both of those things have started to happen. Experian Hitwise’s numbers show that visits to the major search engines in the UK dropped 100 million through August. Search engines are far from dead, or even challenged. But more and more, the public is discovering the sites and brands they need through advice they get via social, not search. You’ll find the worlds of social and search increasingly co-mingling as well. Search behemoths Google and Bing are including Facebook and Google+ into their engines. Meanwhile, Facebook and Twitter have done some integration of global web search into their platforms. So what makes social such a worthwhile search entity for brands? First and foremost, the consumer has demonstrated a behavior of acting on recommendations from social connections. A cry in the wilderness like, “Anybody know any good catering companies?” will usually yield a link (and an endorsement) from a friend such as “Yeah, check out Just-Cheese-Balls Catering.” There’s no such human-driven force/influence behind the big search engines. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and others call it “Friend Mining.” It is, in essence, searching for answers from friends’ experiences as opposed to faceless code. And Facebook has all of those friends’ experiences already stored as data. eMarketer says search in an $18 billion business, and investors are really into it. So no shock Facebook’s ready to leverage their social graph into relevant search. What do you do about all this as a brand? For one thing, it’s going to lead to some interesting paid marketing opportunities around the corner, including Sponsored Stories bought against certain queries, inserting deals into search results, capitalizing on social search results on mobile, etc. Apart from that, it might be time to stop mentally separating social and search in your strategic planning and budgeting. Courting your fans on social will cumulatively add up to more valuable, personally endorsed recommendations for your company when a consumer conducts a search on social. Fail to foster those relationships, fail to engage, fail to provide knock-em-dead customer service, fail to wow them with your actual products and services…and you’ll wind up with the visibility you deserve in social search results.

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• Retail in New York - a walk down 5th Avenue

  - by sarah.taylor(at)oracle.com

  It's the week of the NRF Big Show and all eyes in the retail industry are on New York. The Big Apple is famous for Big Retail -with a proliferation of incredibly iconic stores. The environment is exciting and familiar even to people visiting this small island for the first time. Most of us have travelled down Fifth Avenue watching movies and TV even if we have never set foot on American soil. I find it one of the most exciting retail cities in the world and I am thrilled this year to be here with so many of Oracle's International retail customers who are joining us for the Retail Exchange. The Oracle program brings retailers from all over the planet together to share ideas and be inspired by New York retail and the NRF event. The show celebrates its 100th year in 2011 and New York itself has been recognized globally as the capital of innovative retail for just as long.  Fifth Avenue is where many global brands have placed their flagship stores, and businesses are in constant competition to set themselves apart from their competitors - both in the store and from the street.  These flag ship retail destinations present what today's customers are finding most exciting and delightful about retail. For the tourist market, they may only visit these stores once, but the impression that a trip to a flagship store leaves with a customer can last a lifetime.  One of the stores that is currently turning heads on Fifth Avenue is Hollister, sister brand to Abercrombie and Fitch, which has filled its shop front with a massive live video (and audio) feed of surfers on the beach in California.  To complete the effect, they also have troughs of water in front of the video screens to bring the sea to the street.  And this isn't the only kind of surfing that retailers are considering today and multi-channel retail is a hot topic that all of the retailers joining the Retail Exchange are considering.   The rest of the world looks to the brands along Fifth Avenue for inspiration - how they take advantage of new opportunities, how they set themselves apart from their competitors and how they keep their products fresh and desirable. With these inspiring pioneers in New York, it's little wonder that NRF's Big Show is so popular, and that New York is viewed as one of the retail capitals of the world. It is a pleasure to be here with so many of the world's greatest international retailers.

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