Search Results

Search found 11536 results on 462 pages for 'whole foods market'.

Page 195/462 | < Previous Page | 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202  | Next Page >

• Eloqua Sales Awareness Training for Partners - London, November 28-29

  - by Richard Lefebvre

  We are pleased to invite you to the free of charge Oracle Eloqua Sales Awareness Training for Partners - London, November 28&29 - COME LEARN WHAT ALL THE BUZZ IS ABOUT! WHEN SALES & MARKETING BOND, REVENUE GROWS It’s not one thing that makes a company successful with marketing automation – it’s the combination of the best implementation, flexible long-term support and access to a community of marketing innovation that ensures you have the assistance you need every step of the way. Our customers choose Oracle|Eloqua because they know when sales and marketing work together, leads are called upon, quotas are crushed and revenues climb. Learn how Oracle|Eloqua can help you put marketing to work for you! COVERED IN THIS TRAINING Eloqua and the Customer Experience Strategy How Modern Marketing Works Introduction to Eloqua – Whiteboard POV Go To Market Playbook Competitive Landscape Integration Options Service Offerings With case studies, workshops and product demos to help you on your way to a new world of marketing expertise LOGISTICS If you are ready to join us on this journey, now’s the time to let us know! Tell us a little about your experience – complete this form to help us know you better (Please ignore if your firm has already completed) Complete this form to RSVP by Thursday, November 21, 2013. Find out more about the Oracle|Eloqua, join the Oracle Eloqua Marketing Cloud Service Knowledge Zone and keep up on all the news! QUESTIONS? Contact [email protected] Please note that similar events will take place in other cities (Brussels, Istanbul and more come) later in 2014. /* 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:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";}

  Read the article

• How should I land my next consulting gig? [closed]

  - by MrOodles

  For the last couple of years, I've been working on speculative projects, expanding my skillset with side work, and paying the bills while having a blast consulting for startups. However, for a number of personal reasons, I need to spend the next 6-9 months maximizing my cash income. I want to put this into effect starting in early August. So that means I have one month to put the necessary client list/portfolio/resume together to start making this happen. As a programmer, I am very proficient in building Django web apps. I can write the necessary SQL, python, javascript, and css to build every part of a Django app, and then do the system administration necessary to deploy on AWS using EC2. I can also rig up a CDN to work seemlessly with the app using S3 and Cloudfront. I have built GIS applications using GeoDjango and PostGIS, and I have constructed social video apps by implementing Encoding.com as a service to prepare raw video files for consumption on the web. I am also moderately proficient in programming PHP, Java, and C#. I have built web apps in PHP, and desktop apps in Java and C#. I have dabbled with Android applications and iPhone apps, but nothing I would show off. I have experience doing SEO, social media marketing, and content marketing. Many of my clients have needed their apps promoted after they were built, and I was always happy to oblige when I could. I have also worked with biometrics technology including fingerprints for government contractors. This was as much a business analyst role as it was a programming gig, as I had to help answer RFPs, make checklists, and work around reems and reems of regulations to build applications that met very large bureaucratic requirements. I only have two real requirements for my next gig(s): 1) Work remotely. I live in North East Ohio, and I don't plan on leaving, but I wouldn't mind traveling one or two weeks out of every month to service clients who need on-site help. 2) $60.00hr-$∞ USD contracting rate. So what should I do for the next 30 days to achieve this? Should I target some large company and learn the requisite buzzwords to impress them? Should I learn some new language or technology? Polish some skill that I already have? Should I build something using my current skillset, or with some new technology? Should I put a website for my consultancy together to market myself? Should I do that using latest technology x, y, and z? Or should I just slap something up on Tumblr? I'm willing to do anything (moral) over the next 4 weeks to put myself into a position to maximize my income, and I'm open to all and every idea Programmers users may have. Let me hear them.

  Read the article

• Cloud Infrastructure has a new standard

  - by macoracle

  I have been working for more than two years now in the DMTF working group tasked with creating a Cloud Management standard. That work has culminated in the release today of the Cloud Infrastructure Management Interface (CIMI) version 1.0 by the DMTF. CIMI is a single interface that a cloud consumer can use to manage their cloud infrastructure in multiple clouds. As CIMI is adopted by the cloud vendors, no more will you need to adapt client code to each of the proprietary interfaces from these multiple vendors. Unlike a de facto standard where typically one vendor has change control over the interface, and everyone else has to reverse engineer the inner workings of it, CIMI is a de jure standard that is under change control of a standards body. One reason the standard took two years to create is that we factored in use cases, requirements and contributed APIs from multiple vendors. These vendors have products shipping today and as a result CIMI has a strong foundation in real world experience. What does CIMI allow? CIMI is both a model for the resources (computing, storage networking) in the cloud as well as a RESTful protocol binding to HTTP. This means that to create a Machine (guest VM) for example, the client creates a “document” that represents the Machine resource and sends it to the server using HTTP. CIMI allows the resources to be encoded in either JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) or the eXentsible Markup Language (XML). CIMI provides a model for the resources that can be mapped to any existing cloud infrastructure offering on the market. There are some features in CIMI that may not be supported by every cloud, but CIMI also supports the discovery of which features are implemented. This means that you can still have a client that works across multiple clouds and is able to take full advantage of the features in each of them. Isn’t it too early for a standard? A key feature of a successful standard is that it allows for compatible extensions to occur within the core framework of the interface itself. CIMI’s feature discovery (through metadata) is used to convey to the client that additional features that may be vendor specific have been implemented. As multiple vendors implement such features, they become candidates to add the future versions of CIMI. Thus innovation can continue in the cloud space without being slowed down by a lowest common denominator type of specification. Since CIMI was developed in the open by dozens of stakeholders who are already implementing infrastructure clouds, I expect to CIMI being adopted by these same companies and others over the next year or two. Cloud Customers who can see the benefit of this standard should start to ask their cloud vendors to show a CIMI implementation in their roadmap.  For more information on CIMI and the DMTF's other cloud efforts, go to: http://dmtf.org/cloud

  Read the article

• Oracle Social Relationship Management Implementation Exam is now available in Beta!

  - by Richard Lefebvre

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Get certified in implementing the most complete social relationship management solution on the market. Passing the exam means you will be recognized as an Implementation Specialist for Oracle Social Relationship Management. Schedule your exam as soon as possible to benefit from our exclusive vouchers which can waive the entire exam fee! /* 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:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; 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;} /* 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:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; 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;}

  Read the article

• “It Isn’t Easy At All; Otherwise, Everyone Would Be Doing It”

  - by Kathryn Perry

  A few months ago, JP Saunders (pictured left), who leads the go-to-market initiatives for the Oracle CX Service offering, kicked off a series of articles about modern customer service. He contends that to take care of customers?and the people that support those customers?companies need to make it easy to deliver consistently great experiences. But it’s not easy; it’s an art. The six posts in The Art of Easy series will help you better understand some of the customer service challenges you face and how to avoid common pitfalls. We pulled them all together here in one post for continuity and easy access. Saunders introduces the series with The Art of Easy: Make It Easy To Deliver Great Customer Service Experiences (Part 1). The Art of Easy: Offer Self Service With the Emphasis on Service (Part 2) by David Fulton (pictured left): David Fulton, Director of Product Management, Oracle Service Cloud, shares five tenets of customer self service that move an organization closer to becoming a modern customer service business. Easy Decisions For Complex Problems (Part 3) by Heike Lorenz (pictured right): Heike Lorenz, Director of Global Product Marketing, Policy Automation, writes about automating service policies to ensure that the correct decisions are being applied to the right people. The goal is to nurture the trusted relationships with customers during complex decision-making processes. Moving at the Speed of Easy (Part 4) by Chris Ulmand (pictured left): Chris Omland, Director of Product Management, Oracle Service Cloud, addresses the need for speed to keep up with customers’ expectations. His advice—start with a platform that enables agile innovation, respects a company’s unique needs, and has proven reliability to protect customer relationships. Knowledge Makes It Easy For Everyone (Part 5) by Nav Chakravarti (pictured rig: Vice President Nav Chakravarti, Oracle Service Cloud, talks about managing the knowledge that customers need and want. He coaches readers on delivering answers to customers’ questions easily, in context, with relevance, reliably, and accurately. Making Easy, Both Effective and Efficient (Part 6) by Melinda Uhland (pictured left): Melinda Uhland, Oracle CX Product Management teaches us that happy agents produce happy customers. A Modern Customer Service organization is one that invests in its agents and empowers them with tools to make them efficient and effective, which, in turn, improves customer results.

  Read the article

• Criteria for a programming language to be considered "mature"

  - by Giorgio

  I was recently reading an answer to this question, and I was struck by the statement "The language is mature". So I was wondering what we actually mean when we say that "A programming language is mature"? Normally, a programming language is initially developed out of a need, e.g. Try out / implement a new programming paradigm or a new combination of features that cannot be found in existing languages. Try to solve a problem or overcome a limitation of an existing language. Create a language for teaching programming. Create a language that solves a particular class of problems (e.g. concurrency). Create a language and an API for a special application field, e.g. the web (in this case the language might reuse a well-known paradigm, but the whole API must be new). Create a language to push your competitor out of the market (in this case the creator might want the new language to be very similar to an existing one, in order to attract developers to the new programming language and platform). Regardless of what the original motivation and scenario in which a language has been created, eventually some languages are considered mature. In my intuition, this means that the language has achieved (at least one of) its goals, e.g. "We can now use language X as a reliable tool for writing web applications." This is however a bit vague, so I wanted to ask what you consider the most important criteria (if any) that are applied when saying that a language is mature. IMPORTANT NOTE This question is (on purpose) language-agnostic because I am only interested in general criteria. Please write only language-agnostic answers and comments! I am not asking whether any specific "language X is mature" or "which programming languages can be considered mature", or whether "language X is more mature than language Y": please avoid posting any opinions or reference about any specific languages because these are out of the scope of this question. EDIT To make the question more precise, by criteria I mean such things as "tool support", "adoption by the industry", "stability", "rich API", "large user community", "successful application record", "standardization", "clean and uniform semantics", and so on.

  Read the article

• "Expecting A Different Result?" (2 of 3 in 'No Customer Left Behind' Series)

  - by Kathryn Perry

  A guest post by David Vap, Group Vice President, Oracle Applications Product Development Many companies already have some type of customer experience initiative in process or one that could be framed as such. The challenge is that the initiatives too often are started in a department silo, don't have the right level of executive sponsorship, or have been initiated without the necessary insight and strategic business alignment. You can't keep doing the same things, give it a customer experience name, and expect a different result. You can't continue to just compete on price or features - that is not sustainable in commoditized markets. And ultimately, investing in technology alone doesn't solve customer experience problems; it just adds to the complexity of them. You need a customer experience strategy and approach on how to execute a customer-centric worldview within your business. To develop this, you must take an outside in journey on how your customers are interacting with your business to establish a benchmark of your customers' experiences. Then you must get cross-functional alignment on what you are trying to achieve, near, mid, and long term. Your execution of that strategy should be based on a customer experience approach: Understand your customer: You need to capture the insights across interactions, channels (including social), and personas to better understand whom to serve, how to serve them, and when to serve them. Not all experiences or customers are equal, so leverage this insight to understand the strategic business objectives you need to address. Then determine which experiences can be improved immediately and which over time to get the result you need. Empower your ecosystem: You need to align your front-line employees with your strategy and give them the power, insight, and tools that allow them to cultivate a culture around strengthening the relationships with your customers. You also need to provide the transparency, access, and collaboration that enable your customers and partners to self serve and self solve and to share with ease. Adapt your business: You need to enable the discipline of agility within your organization and infrastructure so that you can innovate, tailor, and personalize experiences. This needs to be done both reactively from insight and proactively in real time so you can stay ahead of shifting market trends and evolving consumer behaviors. No longer will the old approaches provide the same returns. To compete, differentiate, and win in a world where the customer has the power, you must execute a strategy that is sure to deliver a better brand experience for your customers. Note: This is Part 2 in a three-part series. Part 1 is here. Stop back for Part 3 on November 28.

  Read the article

• What OpenGL version(s) to learn and/or use?

  - by zuko

  So, I'm new to OpenGL... I have general knowledge of game programming but little practical experience. I've been looking into various articles and books and trying to dive into OpenGL, but I've found the various versions and old vs new way of doing things confusing. I guess my first questions is does anyone know some figures about percentages of gamers that can run each version of OpenGL. What's the market share like? 2.x, 3.x, 4.x... I looked into the requirements for Half Life 2 since I know Valve updated it with OpenGL to run on Mac and I know they usually try to hit a very wide user-base, and they say a minimum of GeForce 8 Series. I looked at the 8800 GT on Nvidia's website and it listed support for OpenGL 2.1. Which, maybe I'm wrong, sounds ancient to me since there's already 4.x. I looked up a driver for 8800GT and it says it supports 4.2! A bit of a discrepancy there, lol. I've also read things like XP only supports up to a certain version, or OS X only supports 3.2, or all kinds of other things. Overall, I'm just confused as to how much support there is for various versions and what version to learn/use. I'm also looking for learning resources. My search results thus far have pointed me to the OpenGL SuperBible. The 4th edition has great reviews on Amazon, but it teaches 2.1. The 5th edition teaches 3.3 and there are a couple things in the reviews that mention the 4th edition is better and that the 5th edition doesn't properly teach the new features or something? Basically, even within learning material I'm seeing discrepancies and I just don't even know where to start. From what I understand, 3.x started a whole new way of doing things and I've read from various articles and reviews that you want to "stay away from deprecated features like glBegin(), glEnd()" yet a lot of books and tutorials I've seen use that method. I've seen people saying that, basically, the new way of doing stuff is more complicated yet the old way is bad . Just a side note, personally, I know I still have a lot to learn beforehand, but I'm interested in tessellation; so I guess that factors into it as well, because, as far as I understand that's only in 4.x? [just btw, my desktop supports 4.2]

  Read the article

• HTMLUNIT Facebook javascript warning

  - by Shin

  Hi I am trying to create simple application that would be able to search people on facebook using given e-mail. I am already able to log into an account using the HTMLunit tool and even create a page, which should throw result of my search. But when I try to print the result as XML the file is missing some blocks of javascript results (I can tell that they are missing by comparing file created by my application and source code, that can be viewed by using IE) Is there any way around this? I just need to get the same result IE's showsource function does. Thanks a lot. During execution of file, I am getting these WARNINGS: 1.4.2010 23:25:14 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.IncorrectnessListenerImpl notify WARNING: Expected content type of 'application/javascript' or 'application/ecmascript' for remotely loaded JavaScript element at 'https://s-static.ak.facebook.com/rsrc.php/z49PH/hash/9p47jvzp.js', but got 'application/x-javascript'. 21.4.2010 23:25:14 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.IncorrectnessListenerImpl notify WARNING: Expected content type of 'application/javascript' or 'application/ecmascript' for remotely loaded JavaScript element at 'https://s-static.ak.facebook.com/rsrc.php/z5N5C/hash/dhdy6xq3.js', but got 'application/x-javascript'. 21.4.2010 23:25:14 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.IncorrectnessListenerImpl notify WARNING: Expected content type of 'application/javascript' or 'application/ecmascript' for remotely loaded JavaScript element at 'https://s-static.ak.facebook.com/rsrc.php/z4TLI/hash/9ucb5trt.js', but got 'application/x-javascript'. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.IncorrectnessListenerImpl notify WARNING: Expected content type of 'application/javascript' or 'application/ecmascript' for remotely loaded JavaScript element at 'http://static.ak.fbcdn.net/rsrc.php/z49PH/hash/9p47jvzp.js', but got 'application/x-javascript'. And then a lot of CSS errors 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [44:92] Error in style rule. Invalid token "*". Was expecting one of: <S>, "}", ";", <IDENT>. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler warning WARNING: CSS warning: null [44:92] Ignoring the following declarations in this rule. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [51:75] Error in style rule. Invalid token "*". Was expecting one of: <S>, "}", ";", <IDENT>. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler warning WARNING: CSS warning: null [51:75] Ignoring the following declarations in this rule. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [161:62] Error in style rule. Invalid token ":". Was expecting one of: <S>, "}", <COMMA>, ";", "/", <PLUS>, "-", <HASH>, <STRING>, <URI>, "!", "inherit", <EMS>, <EXS>, <LENGTH_PX>, <LENGTH_CM>, <LENGTH_MM>, <LENGTH_IN>, <LENGTH_PT>, <LENGTH_PC>, <ANGLE_DEG>, <ANGLE_RAD>, <ANGLE_GRAD>, <TIME_MS>, <TIME_S>, <FREQ_HZ>, <FREQ_KHZ>, <DIMENSION>, <PERCENTAGE>, <NUMBER>, <FUNCTION>, <IDENT>. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler warning WARNING: CSS warning: null [161:62] Ignoring the following declarations in this rule. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [134:25] Error in style rule. Invalid token "*". Was expecting one of: <S>, "}", ";", <IDENT>. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler warning WARNING: CSS warning: null [134:25] Ignoring the following declarations in this rule. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [140:175] Error in style rule. Invalid token "*". Was expecting one of: <S>, "}", ";", <IDENT>. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler warning WARNING: CSS warning: null [140:175] Ignoring the following declarations in this rule. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [157:38] Error in expression. Invalid token "=". Was expecting one of: <S>, <COMMA>, "/", <PLUS>, "-", <HASH>, <STRING>, ")", <URI>, "inherit", <EMS>, <EXS>, <LENGTH_PX>, <LENGTH_CM>, <LENGTH_MM>, <LENGTH_IN>, <LENGTH_PT>, <LENGTH_PC>, <ANGLE_DEG>, <ANGLE_RAD>, <ANGLE_GRAD>, <TIME_MS>, <TIME_S>, <FREQ_HZ>, <FREQ_KHZ>, <DIMENSION>, <PERCENTAGE>, <NUMBER>, <FUNCTION>, <IDENT>. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [158:128] Error in style rule. Invalid token "*". Was expecting one of: <S>, "}", ";", <IDENT>. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler warning WARNING: CSS warning: null [158:128] Ignoring the following declarations in this rule. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [197:16] Error in pseudo class or element. Invalid token ":". Was expecting one of: <FUNCTION>, <IDENT>. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler warning WARNING: CSS warning: null [197:16] Ignoring the whole rule. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [218:58] Error in style rule. Invalid token "*". Was expecting one of: <S>, "}", ";", <IDENT>. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler warning WARNING: CSS warning: null [218:58] Ignoring the following declarations in this rule. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [349:141] Error in style rule. Invalid token "*". Was expecting one of: <S>, "}", ";", <IDENT>. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler warning WARNING: CSS warning: null [349:141] Ignoring the following declarations in this rule. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [356:101] Error in expression. Invalid token "=". Was expecting one of: <S>, <COMMA>, "/", <PLUS>, "-", <HASH>, <STRING>, ")", <URI>, "inherit", <EMS>, <EXS>, <LENGTH_PX>, <LENGTH_CM>, <LENGTH_MM>, <LENGTH_IN>, <LENGTH_PT>, <LENGTH_PC>, <ANGLE_DEG>, <ANGLE_RAD>, <ANGLE_GRAD>, <TIME_MS>, <TIME_S>, <FREQ_HZ>, <FREQ_KHZ>, <DIMENSION>, <PERCENTAGE>, <NUMBER>, <FUNCTION>, <IDENT>. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [356:106] Error in style rule. Invalid token "opacity". Was expecting one of: "}", ";". 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler warning WARNING: CSS warning: null [356:106] Ignoring the following declarations in this rule. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [360:87] Error in expression. Invalid token "=". Was expecting one of: <S>, <COMMA>, "/", <PLUS>, "-", <HASH>, <STRING>, ")", <URI>, "inherit", <EMS>, <EXS>, <LENGTH_PX>, <LENGTH_CM>, <LENGTH_MM>, <LENGTH_IN>, <LENGTH_PT>, <LENGTH_PC>, <ANGLE_DEG>, <ANGLE_RAD>, <ANGLE_GRAD>, <TIME_MS>, <TIME_S>, <FREQ_HZ>, <FREQ_KHZ>, <DIMENSION>, <PERCENTAGE>, <NUMBER>, <FUNCTION>, <IDENT>. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [360:93] Error in style rule. Invalid token "opacity". Was expecting one of: "}", ";". 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler warning WARNING: CSS warning: null [360:93] Ignoring the following declarations in this rule. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [365:39] Error in expression. Invalid token "=". Was expecting one of: <S>, <COMMA>, "/", <PLUS>, "-", <HASH>, <STRING>, ")", <URI>, "inherit", <EMS>, <EXS>, <LENGTH_PX>, <LENGTH_CM>, <LENGTH_MM>, <LENGTH_IN>, <LENGTH_PT>, <LENGTH_PC>, <ANGLE_DEG>, <ANGLE_RAD>, <ANGLE_GRAD>, <TIME_MS>, <TIME_S>, <FREQ_HZ>, <FREQ_KHZ>, <DIMENSION>, <PERCENTAGE>, <NUMBER>, <FUNCTION>, <IDENT>. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [365:43] Error in style rule. Invalid token "left". Was expecting one of: "}", ";". 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler warning WARNING: CSS warning: null [365:43] Ignoring the following declarations in this rule. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [423:51] Error in style rule. Invalid token "~". Was expecting one of: <S>, <LBRACE>, <COMMA>, <PLUS>, <GREATER>, <IDENT>, "*", <HASH>, ".", "[", ":". 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler warning WARNING: CSS warning: null [423:51] Ignoring the following declarations in this rule. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [466:135] Error in style rule. Invalid token "*". Was expecting one of: <S>, "}", ";", <IDENT>. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler warning WARNING: CSS warning: null [466:135] Ignoring the following declarations in this rule. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [501:30] Error in style rule. Invalid token "*". Was expecting one of: <S>, "}", ";", <IDENT>. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler warning WARNING: CSS warning: null [501:30] Ignoring the following declarations in this rule. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [584:59] Error in expression. Invalid token "=". Was expecting one of: <S>, <COMMA>, "/", <PLUS>, "-", <HASH>, <STRING>, ")", <URI>, "inherit", <EMS>, <EXS>, <LENGTH_PX>, <LENGTH_CM>, <LENGTH_MM>, <LENGTH_IN>, <LENGTH_PT>, <LENGTH_PC>, <ANGLE_DEG>, <ANGLE_RAD>, <ANGLE_GRAD>, <TIME_MS>, <TIME_S>, <FREQ_HZ>, <FREQ_KHZ>, <DIMENSION>, <PERCENTAGE>, <NUMBER>, <FUNCTION>, <IDENT>. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [584:64] Error in style rule. Invalid token "opacity". Was expecting one of: "}", ";". 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler warning WARNING: CSS warning: null [584:64] Ignoring the following declarations in this rule. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [585:36] Error in style rule. Invalid token "*". Was expecting one of: <S>, "}", ";", <IDENT>. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler warning WARNING: CSS warning: null [585:36] Ignoring the following declarations in this rule. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [592:120] Error in expression. Invalid token "=". Was expecting one of: <S>, <COMMA>, "/", <PLUS>, "-", <HASH>, <STRING>, ")", <URI>, "inherit", <EMS>, <EXS>, <LENGTH_PX>, <LENGTH_CM>, <LENGTH_MM>, <LENGTH_IN>, <LENGTH_PT>, <LENGTH_PC>, <ANGLE_DEG>, <ANGLE_RAD>, <ANGLE_GRAD>, <TIME_MS>, <TIME_S>, <FREQ_HZ>, <FREQ_KHZ>, <DIMENSION>, <PERCENTAGE>, <NUMBER>, <FUNCTION>, <IDENT>. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [592:125] Error in style rule. Invalid token "opacity". Was expecting one of: "}", ";". 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler warning WARNING: CSS warning: null [592:125] Ignoring the following declarations in this rule. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [598:44] Error in expression. Invalid token "=". Was expecting one of: <S>, <COMMA>, "/", <PLUS>, "-", <HASH>, <STRING>, ")", <URI>, "inherit", <EMS>, <EXS>, <LENGTH_PX>, <LENGTH_CM>, <LENGTH_MM>, <LENGTH_IN>, <LENGTH_PT>, <LENGTH_PC>, <ANGLE_DEG>, <ANGLE_RAD>, <ANGLE_GRAD>, <TIME_MS>, <TIME_S>, <FREQ_HZ>, <FREQ_KHZ>, <DIMENSION>, <PERCENTAGE>, <NUMBER>, <FUNCTION>, <IDENT>. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [598:48] Error in style rule. Invalid token "left". Was expecting one of: "}", ";". 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler warning WARNING: CSS warning: null [598:48] Ignoring the following declarations in this rule. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [601:52] Error in style rule. Invalid token "*". Was expecting one of: <S>, "}", ";", <IDENT>. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler warning WARNING: CSS warning: null [601:52] Ignoring the following declarations in this rule. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [637:89] Error in style rule. Invalid token "*". Was expecting one of: <S>, "}", ";", <IDENT>. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler warning WARNING: CSS warning: null [637:89] Ignoring the following declarations in this rule. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [648:56] Error in style rule. Invalid token "*". Was expecting one of: <S>, "}", ";", <IDENT>. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler warning WARNING: CSS warning: null [648:56] Ignoring the following declarations in this rule. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [656:289] Error in style rule. Invalid token "*". Was expecting one of: <S>, "}", ";", <IDENT>. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler warning WARNING: CSS warning: null [656:289] Ignoring the following declarations in this rule. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [660:48] Error in expression. Invalid token "=". Was expecting one of: <S>, <COMMA>, "/", <PLUS>, "-", <HASH>, <STRING>, ")", <URI>, "inherit", <EMS>, <EXS>, <LENGTH_PX>, <LENGTH_CM>, <LENGTH_MM>, <LENGTH_IN>, <LENGTH_PT>, <LENGTH_PC>, <ANGLE_DEG>, <ANGLE_RAD>, <ANGLE_GRAD>, <TIME_MS>, <TIME_S>, <FREQ_HZ>, <FREQ_KHZ>, <DIMENSION>, <PERCENTAGE>, <NUMBER>, <FUNCTION>, <IDENT>. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [660:55] Error in style rule. Invalid token "-ms-filter". Was expecting one of: "}", ";". 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler warning WARNING: CSS warning: null [660:55] Ignoring the following declarations in this rule. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [664:29] Error in style rule. Invalid token "*". Was expecting one of: <S>, "}", ";", <IDENT>. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler warning WARNING: CSS warning: null [664:29] Ignoring the following declarations in this rule. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [669:22] Error in style rule. Invalid token "*". Was expecting one of: <S>, "}", ";", <IDENT>. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler warning WARNING: CSS warning: null [669:22] Ignoring the following declarations in this rule. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [673:231] Error in style rule. Invalid token "*". Was expecting one of: <S>, "}", ";", <IDENT>. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler warning WARNING: CSS warning: null [673:231] Ignoring the following declarations in this rule. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [674:17] Error in pseudo class or element. Invalid token ":". Was expecting one of: <FUNCTION>, <IDENT>. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler warning WARNING: CSS warning: null [674:17] Ignoring the whole rule. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [690:81] Error in expression. Invalid token "=". Was expecting one of: <S>, <COMMA>, "/", <PLUS>, "-", <HASH>, <STRING>, ")", <URI>, "inherit", <EMS>, <EXS>, <LENGTH_PX>, <LENGTH_CM>, <LENGTH_MM>, <LENGTH_IN>, <LENGTH_PT>, <LENGTH_PC>, <ANGLE_DEG>, <ANGLE_RAD>, <ANGLE_GRAD>, <TIME_MS>, <TIME_S>, <FREQ_HZ>, <FREQ_KHZ>, <DIMENSION>, <PERCENTAGE>, <NUMBER>, <FUNCTION>, <IDENT>. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [690:87] Error in style rule. Invalid token "-ms-filter". Was expecting one of: "}", ";". 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler warning WARNING: CSS warning: null [690:87] Ignoring the following declarations in this rule. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [693:84] Error in expression. Invalid token "=". Was expecting one of: <S>, <COMMA>, "/", <PLUS>, "-", <HASH>, <STRING>, ")", <URI>, "inherit", <EMS>, <EXS>, <LENGTH_PX>, <LENGTH_CM>, <LENGTH_MM>, <LENGTH_IN>, <LENGTH_PT>, <LENGTH_PC>, <ANGLE_DEG>, <ANGLE_RAD>, <ANGLE_GRAD>, <TIME_MS>, <TIME_S>, <FREQ_HZ>, <FREQ_KHZ>, <DIMENSION>, <PERCENTAGE>, <NUMBER>, <FUNCTION>, <IDENT>. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [693:91] Error in style rule. Invalid token "-ms-filter". Was expecting one of: "}", ";". 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler warning WARNING: CSS warning: null [693:91] Ignoring the following declarations in this rule. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [695:32] Error in style rule. Invalid token "*". Was expecting one of: <S>, "}", ";", <IDENT>. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler warning WARNING: CSS warning: null [695:32] Ignoring the following declarations in this rule. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [702:32] Error in style rule. Invalid token "*". Was expecting one of: <S>, "}", ";", <IDENT>. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler warning WARNING: CSS warning: null [702:32] Ignoring the following declarations in this rule. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [703:17] Error in style rule. Invalid token "*". Was expecting one of: <S>, "}", ";", <IDENT>. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler warning WARNING: CSS warning: null [703:17] Ignoring the following declarations in this rule. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [705:166] Error in style rule. Invalid token "*". Was expecting one of: <S>, "}", ";", <IDENT>. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler warning WARNING: CSS warning: null [705:166] Ignoring the following declarations in this rule. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [706:21] Error in pseudo class or element. Invalid token ":". Was expecting one of: <FUNCTION>, <IDENT>. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler warning WARNING: CSS warning: null [706:21] Ignoring the whole rule. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [101:1] Error in declaration. Invalid token "}". Was expecting one of: <S>, ":". 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [101:2] Error in style rule. Invalid token "\n". Was expecting one of: <S>, "}", ";". 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler warning WARNING: CSS warning: null [101:2] Ignoring the following declarations in this rule. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [185:39] Error in style rule. Invalid token "*". Was expecting one of: <S>, "}", ";", <IDENT>. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler warning WARNING: CSS warning: null [185:39] Ignoring the following declarations in this rule. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [186:38] Error in style rule. Invalid token "*". Was expecting one of: <S>, "}", ";", <IDENT>. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler warning WARNING: CSS warning: null [186:38] Ignoring the following declarations in this rule. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [235:84] Error in style rule. Invalid token "*". Was expecting one of: <S>, "}", ";", <IDENT>. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler warning WARNING: CSS warning: null [235:84] Ignoring the following declarations in this rule. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [290:26] Error in style rule. Invalid token "*". Was expecting one of: <S>, "}", ";", <IDENT>. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler warning WARNING: CSS warning: null [290:26] Ignoring the following declarations in this rule. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [291:70] Error in style rule. Invalid token "*". Was expecting one of: <S>, "}", ";", <IDENT>. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler warning WARNING: CSS warning: null [291:70] Ignoring the following declarations in this rule. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [298:52] Error in style rule. Invalid token "*". Was expecting one of: <S>, "}", ";", <IDENT>. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler warning WARNING: CSS warning: null [298:52] Ignoring the following declarations in this rule. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [299:48] Error in style rule. Invalid token "*". Was expecting one of: <S>, "}", ";", <IDENT>. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler warning WARNING: CSS warning: null [299:48] Ignoring the following declarations in this rule. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [305:50] Error in style rule. Invalid token "*". Was expecting one of: <S>, "}", ";", <IDENT>. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler warning WARNING: CSS warning: null [305:50] Ignoring the following declarations in this rule. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [306:69] Error in style rule. Invalid token "*". Was expecting one of: <S>, "}", ";", <IDENT>. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler warning WARNING: CSS warning: null [306:69] Ignoring the following declarations in this rule. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [307:89] Error in style rule. Invalid token "*". Was expecting one of: <S>, "}", ";", <IDENT>. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler warning WARNING: CSS warning: null [307:89] Ignoring the following declarations in this rule. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [309:83] Error in style rule. Invalid token "*". Was expecting one of: <S>, "}", ";", <IDENT>. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler warning WARNING: CSS warning: null [309:83] Ignoring the following declarations in this rule. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [317:84] Error in style rule. Invalid token "*". Was expecting one of: <S>, "}", ";", <IDENT>. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler warning WARNING: CSS warning: null [317:84] Ignoring the following declarations in this rule. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [473:215] Error in style rule. Invalid token "*". Was expecting one of: <S>, "}", ";", <IDENT>. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler warning WARNING: CSS warning: null [473:215] Ignoring the following declarations in this rule. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [475:137] Error in style rule. Invalid token "*". Was expecting one of: <S>, "}", ";", <IDENT>. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler warning WARNING: CSS warning: null [475:137] Ignoring the following declarations in this rule. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [480:78] Error in style rule. Invalid token "*". Was expecting one of: <S>, "}", ";", <IDENT>. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler warning WARNING: CSS warning: null [480:78] Ignoring the following declarations in this rule. 21.4.2010 23:25:23 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [484:78] Error in style rule. Invalid token "*". Was expecting one of: <S>, "}", ";", <IDENT>. 21.4.2010 23:25:24 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler warning WARNING: CSS warning: null [484:78] Ignoring the following declarations in this rule. 21.4.2010 23:25:24 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [486:91] Error in style rule. Invalid token "*". Was expecting one of: <S>, "}", ";", <IDENT>. 21.4.2010 23:25:24 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler warning WARNING: CSS warning: null [486:91] Ignoring the following declarations in this rule. 21.4.2010 23:25:24 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [498:16] Error in style rule. Invalid token "*". Was expecting one of: <S>, "}", ";", <IDENT>. 21.4.2010 23:25:24 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler warning WARNING: CSS warning: null [498:16] Ignoring the following declarations in this rule. 21.4.2010 23:25:24 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [506:33] Error in style rule. Invalid token "*". Was expecting one of: <S>, "}", ";", <IDENT>. 21.4.2010 23:25:24 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler warning WARNING: CSS warning: null [506:33] Ignoring the following declarations in this rule. 21.4.2010 23:25:24 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [508:14] Error in pseudo class or element. Invalid token ":". Was expecting one of: <FUNCTION>, <IDENT>. 21.4.2010 23:25:24 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler warning WARNING: CSS warning: null [508:14] Ignoring the whole rule. 21.4.2010 23:25:24 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [567:82] Error in expression. Invalid token "=". Was expecting one of: <S>, <COMMA>, "/", <PLUS>, "-", <HASH>, <STRING>, ")", <URI>, "inherit", <EMS>, <EXS>, <LENGTH_PX>, <LENGTH_CM>, <LENGTH_MM>, <LENGTH_IN>, <LENGTH_PT>, <LENGTH_PC>, <ANGLE_DEG>, <ANGLE_RAD>, <ANGLE_GRAD>, <TIME_MS>, <TIME_S>, <FREQ_HZ>, <FREQ_KHZ>, <DIMENSION>, <PERCENTAGE>, <NUMBER>, <FUNCTION>, <IDENT>. 21.4.2010 23:25:24 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [567:86] Error in style rule. Invalid token "opacity". Was expecting one of: "}", ";". 21.4.2010 23:25:24 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler warning WARNING: CSS warning: null [567:86] Ignoring the following declarations in this rule. 21.4.2010 23:25:24 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler error WARNING: CSS error: null [572:159] Error in style rule. Invalid token "*". Was expecting one of: <S>, "}", ";", <IDENT>. 21.4.2010 23:25:24 com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultCssErrorHandler warning WARNING: CSS warning:

  Read the article

• The Incremental Architect&rsquo;s Napkin - #5 - Design functions for extensibility and readability

  - by Ralf Westphal

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/theArchitectsNapkin/archive/2014/08/24/the-incremental-architectrsquos-napkin---5---design-functions-for.aspx The functionality of programs is entered via Entry Points. So what we´re talking about when designing software is a bunch of functions handling the requests represented by and flowing in through those Entry Points. Designing software thus consists of at least three phases: Analyzing the requirements to find the Entry Points and their signatures Designing the functionality to be executed when those Entry Points get triggered Implementing the functionality according to the design aka coding I presume, you´re familiar with phase 1 in some way. And I guess you´re proficient in implementing functionality in some programming language. But in my experience developers in general are not experienced in going through an explicit phase 2. “Designing functionality? What´s that supposed to mean?” you might already have thought. Here´s my definition: To design functionality (or functional design for short) means thinking about… well, functions. You find a solution for what´s supposed to happen when an Entry Point gets triggered in terms of functions. A conceptual solution that is, because those functions only exist in your head (or on paper) during this phase. But you may have guess that, because it´s “design” not “coding”. And here is, what functional design is not: It´s not about logic. Logic is expressions (e.g. +, -, && etc.) and control statements (e.g. if, switch, for, while etc.). Also I consider calling external APIs as logic. It´s equally basic. It´s what code needs to do in order to deliver some functionality or quality. Logic is what´s doing that needs to be done by software. Transformations are either done through expressions or API-calls. And then there is alternative control flow depending on the result of some expression. Basically it´s just jumps in Assembler, sometimes to go forward (if, switch), sometimes to go backward (for, while, do). But calling your own function is not logic. It´s not necessary to produce any outcome. Functionality is not enhanced by adding functions (subroutine calls) to your code. Nor is quality increased by adding functions. No performance gain, no higher scalability etc. through functions. Functions are not relevant to functionality. Strange, isn´t it. What they are important for is security of investment. By introducing functions into our code we can become more productive (re-use) and can increase evolvability (higher unterstandability, easier to keep code consistent). That´s no small feat, however. Evolvable code can hardly be overestimated. That´s why to me functional design is so important. It´s at the core of software development. To sum this up: Functional design is on a level of abstraction above (!) logical design or algorithmic design. Functional design is only done until you get to a point where each function is so simple you are very confident you can easily code it. Functional design an logical design (which mostly is coding, but can also be done using pseudo code or flow charts) are complementary. Software needs both. If you start coding right away you end up in a tangled mess very quickly. Then you need back out through refactoring. Functional design on the other hand is bloodless without actual code. It´s just a theory with no experiments to prove it. But how to do functional design? An example of functional design Let´s assume a program to de-duplicate strings. The user enters a number of strings separated by commas, e.g. a, b, a, c, d, b, e, c, a. And the program is supposed to clear this list of all doubles, e.g. a, b, c, d, e. There is only one Entry Point to this program: the user triggers the de-duplication by starting the program with the string list on the command line C:\>deduplicate "a, b, a, c, d, b, e, c, a" a, b, c, d, e …or by clicking on a GUI button. This leads to the Entry Point function to get called. It´s the program´s main function in case of the batch version or a button click event handler in the GUI version. That´s the physical Entry Point so to speak. It´s inevitable. What then happens is a three step process: Transform the input data from the user into a request. Call the request handler. Transform the output of the request handler into a tangible result for the user. Or to phrase it a bit more generally: Accept input. Transform input into output. Present output. This does not mean any of these steps requires a lot of effort. Maybe it´s just one line of code to accomplish it. Nevertheless it´s a distinct step in doing the processing behind an Entry Point. Call it an aspect or a responsibility - and you will realize it most likely deserves a function of its own to satisfy the Single Responsibility Principle (SRP). Interestingly the above list of steps is already functional design. There is no logic, but nevertheless the solution is described - albeit on a higher level of abstraction than you might have done yourself. But it´s still on a meta-level. The application to the domain at hand is easy, though: Accept string list from command line De-duplicate Present de-duplicated strings on standard output And this concrete list of processing steps can easily be transformed into code:static void Main(string[] args) { var input = Accept_string_list(args); var output = Deduplicate(input); Present_deduplicated_string_list(output); } Instead of a big problem there are three much smaller problems now. If you think each of those is trivial to implement, then go for it. You can stop the functional design at this point. But maybe, just maybe, you´re not so sure how to go about with the de-duplication for example. Then just implement what´s easy right now, e.g.private static string Accept_string_list(string[] args) { return args[0]; } private static void Present_deduplicated_string_list( string[] output) { var line = string.Join(", ", output); Console.WriteLine(line); } Accept_string_list() contains logic in the form of an API-call. Present_deduplicated_string_list() contains logic in the form of an expression and an API-call. And then repeat the functional design for the remaining processing step. What´s left is the domain logic: de-duplicating a list of strings. How should that be done? Without any logic at our disposal during functional design you´re left with just functions. So which functions could make up the de-duplication? Here´s a suggestion: De-duplicate Parse the input string into a true list of strings. Register each string in a dictionary/map/set. That way duplicates get cast away. Transform the data structure into a list of unique strings. Processing step 2 obviously was the core of the solution. That´s where real creativity was needed. That´s the core of the domain. But now after this refinement the implementation of each step is easy again:private static string[] Parse_string_list(string input) { return input.Split(',') .Select(s => s.Trim()) .ToArray(); } private static Dictionary<string,object> Compile_unique_strings(string[] strings) { return strings.Aggregate( new Dictionary<string, object>(), (agg, s) => { agg[s] = null; return agg; }); } private static string[] Serialize_unique_strings( Dictionary<string,object> dict) { return dict.Keys.ToArray(); } With these three additional functions Main() now looks like this:static void Main(string[] args) { var input = Accept_string_list(args); var strings = Parse_string_list(input); var dict = Compile_unique_strings(strings); var output = Serialize_unique_strings(dict); Present_deduplicated_string_list(output); } I think that´s very understandable code: just read it from top to bottom and you know how the solution to the problem works. It´s a mirror image of the initial design: Accept string list from command line Parse the input string into a true list of strings. Register each string in a dictionary/map/set. That way duplicates get cast away. Transform the data structure into a list of unique strings. Present de-duplicated strings on standard output You can even re-generate the design by just looking at the code. Code and functional design thus are always in sync - if you follow some simple rules. But about that later. And as a bonus: all the functions making up the process are small - which means easy to understand, too. So much for an initial concrete example. Now it´s time for some theory. Because there is method to this madness ;-) The above has only scratched the surface. Introducing Flow Design Functional design starts with a given function, the Entry Point. Its goal is to describe the behavior of the program when the Entry Point is triggered using a process, not an algorithm. An algorithm consists of logic, a process on the other hand consists just of steps or stages. Each processing step transforms input into output or a side effect. Also it might access resources, e.g. a printer, a database, or just memory. Processing steps thus can rely on state of some sort. This is different from Functional Programming, where functions are supposed to not be stateful and not cause side effects.[1] In its simplest form a process can be written as a bullet point list of steps, e.g. Get data from user Output result to user Transform data Parse data Map result for output Such a compilation of steps - possibly on different levels of abstraction - often is the first artifact of functional design. It can be generated by a team in an initial design brainstorming. Next comes ordering the steps. What should happen first, what next etc.? Get data from user Parse data Transform data Map result for output Output result to user That´s great for a start into functional design. It´s better than starting to code right away on a given function using TDD. Please get me right: TDD is a valuable practice. But it can be unnecessarily hard if the scope of a functionn is too large. But how do you know beforehand without investing some thinking? And how to do this thinking in a systematic fashion? My recommendation: For any given function you´re supposed to implement first do a functional design. Then, once you´re confident you know the processing steps - which are pretty small - refine and code them using TDD. You´ll see that´s much, much easier - and leads to cleaner code right away. For more information on this approach I call “Informed TDD” read my book of the same title. Thinking before coding is smart. And writing down the solution as a bunch of functions possibly is the simplest thing you can do, I´d say. It´s more according to the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) principle than returning constants or other trivial stuff TDD development often is started with. So far so good. A simple ordered list of processing steps will do to start with functional design. As shown in the above example such steps can easily be translated into functions. Moving from design to coding thus is simple. However, such a list does not scale. Processing is not always that simple to be captured in a list. And then the list is just text. Again. Like code. That means the design is lacking visuality. Textual representations need more parsing by your brain than visual representations. Plus they are limited in their “dimensionality”: text just has one dimension, it´s sequential. Alternatives and parallelism are hard to encode in text. In addition the functional design using numbered lists lacks data. It´s not visible what´s the input, output, and state of the processing steps. That´s why functional design should be done using a lightweight visual notation. No tool is necessary to draw such designs. Use pen and paper; a flipchart, a whiteboard, or even a napkin is sufficient. Visualizing processes The building block of the functional design notation is a functional unit. I mostly draw it like this: Something is done, it´s clear what goes in, it´s clear what comes out, and it´s clear what the processing step requires in terms of state or hardware. Whenever input flows into a functional unit it gets processed and output is produced and/or a side effect occurs. Flowing data is the driver of something happening. That´s why I call this approach to functional design Flow Design. It´s about data flow instead of control flow. Control flow like in algorithms is of no concern to functional design. Thinking about control flow simply is too low level. Once you start with control flow you easily get bogged down by tons of details. That´s what you want to avoid during design. Design is supposed to be quick, broad brush, abstract. It should give overview. But what about all the details? As Robert C. Martin rightly said: “Programming is abot detail”. Detail is a matter of code. Once you start coding the processing steps you designed you can worry about all the detail you want. Functional design does not eliminate all the nitty gritty. It just postpones tackling them. To me that´s also an example of the SRP. Function design has the responsibility to come up with a solution to a problem posed by a single function (Entry Point). And later coding has the responsibility to implement the solution down to the last detail (i.e. statement, API-call). TDD unfortunately mixes both responsibilities. It´s just coding - and thereby trying to find detailed implementations (green phase) plus getting the design right (refactoring). To me that´s one reason why TDD has failed to deliver on its promise for many developers. Using functional units as building blocks of functional design processes can be depicted very easily. Here´s the initial process for the example problem: For each processing step draw a functional unit and label it. Choose a verb or an “action phrase” as a label, not a noun. Functional design is about activities, not state or structure. Then make the output of an upstream step the input of a downstream step. Finally think about the data that should flow between the functional units. Write the data above the arrows connecting the functional units in the direction of the data flow. Enclose the data description in brackets. That way you can clearly see if all flows have already been specified. Empty brackets mean “no data is flowing”, but nevertheless a signal is sent. A name like “list” or “strings” in brackets describes the data content. Use lower case labels for that purpose. A name starting with an upper case letter like “String” or “Customer” on the other hand signifies a data type. If you like, you also can combine descriptions with data types by separating them with a colon, e.g. (list:string) or (strings:string[]). But these are just suggestions from my practice with Flow Design. You can do it differently, if you like. Just be sure to be consistent. Flows wired-up in this manner I call one-dimensional (1D). Each functional unit just has one input and/or one output. A functional unit without an output is possible. It´s like a black hole sucking up input without producing any output. Instead it produces side effects. A functional unit without an input, though, does make much sense. When should it start to work? What´s the trigger? That´s why in the above process even the first processing step has an input. If you like, view such 1D-flows as pipelines. Data is flowing through them from left to right. But as you can see, it´s not always the same data. It get´s transformed along its passage: (args) becomes a (list) which is turned into (strings). The Principle of Mutual Oblivion A very characteristic trait of flows put together from function units is: no functional units knows another one. They are all completely independent of each other. Functional units don´t know where their input is coming from (or even when it´s gonna arrive). They just specify a range of values they can process. And they promise a certain behavior upon input arriving. Also they don´t know where their output is going. They just produce it in their own time independent of other functional units. That means at least conceptually all functional units work in parallel. Functional units don´t know their “deployment context”. They now nothing about the overall flow they are place in. They are just consuming input from some upstream, and producing output for some downstream. That makes functional units very easy to test. At least as long as they don´t depend on state or resources. I call this the Principle of Mutual Oblivion (PoMO). Functional units are oblivious of others as well as an overall context/purpose. They are just parts of a whole focused on a single responsibility. How the whole is built, how a larger goal is achieved, is of no concern to the single functional units. By building software in such a manner, functional design interestingly follows nature. Nature´s building blocks for organisms also follow the PoMO. The cells forming your body do not know each other. Take a nerve cell “controlling” a muscle cell for example:[2] The nerve cell does not know anything about muscle cells, let alone the specific muscel cell it is “attached to”. Likewise the muscle cell does not know anything about nerve cells, let a lone a specific nerve cell “attached to” it. Saying “the nerve cell is controlling the muscle cell” thus only makes sense when viewing both from the outside. “Control” is a concept of the whole, not of its parts. Control is created by wiring-up parts in a certain way. Both cells are mutually oblivious. Both just follow a contract. One produces Acetylcholine (ACh) as output, the other consumes ACh as input. Where the ACh is going, where it´s coming from neither cell cares about. Million years of evolution have led to this kind of division of labor. And million years of evolution have produced organism designs (DNA) which lead to the production of these different cell types (and many others) and also to their co-location. The result: the overall behavior of an organism. How and why this happened in nature is a mystery. For our software, though, it´s clear: functional and quality requirements needs to be fulfilled. So we as developers have to become “intelligent designers” of “software cells” which we put together to form a “software organism” which responds in satisfying ways to triggers from it´s environment. My bet is: If nature gets complex organisms working by following the PoMO, who are we to not apply this recipe for success to our much simpler “machines”? So my rule is: Wherever there is functionality to be delivered, because there is a clear Entry Point into software, design the functionality like nature would do it. Build it from mutually oblivious functional units. That´s what Flow Design is about. In that way it´s even universal, I´d say. Its notation can also be applied to biology: Never mind labeling the functional units with nouns. That´s ok in Flow Design. You´ll do that occassionally for functional units on a higher level of abstraction or when their purpose is close to hardware. Getting a cockroach to roam your bedroom takes 1,000,000 nerve cells (neurons). Getting the de-duplication program to do its job just takes 5 “software cells” (functional units). Both, though, follow the same basic principle. Translating functional units into code Moving from functional design to code is no rocket science. In fact it´s straightforward. There are two simple rules: Translate an input port to a function. Translate an output port either to a return statement in that function or to a function pointer visible to that function. The simplest translation of a functional unit is a function. That´s what you saw in the above example. Functions are mutually oblivious. That why Functional Programming likes them so much. It makes them composable. Which is the reason, nature works according to the PoMO. Let´s be clear about one thing: There is no dependency injection in nature. For all of an organism´s complexity no DI container is used. Behavior is the result of smooth cooperation between mutually oblivious building blocks. Functions will often be the adequate translation for the functional units in your designs. But not always. Take for example the case, where a processing step should not always produce an output. Maybe the purpose is to filter input. Here the functional unit consumes words and produces words. But it does not pass along every word flowing in. Some words are swallowed. Think of a spell checker. It probably should not check acronyms for correctness. There are too many of them. Or words with no more than two letters. Such words are called “stop words”. In the above picture the optionality of the output is signified by the astrisk outside the brackets. It means: Any number of (word) data items can flow from the functional unit for each input data item. It might be none or one or even more. This I call a stream of data. Such behavior cannot be translated into a function where output is generated with return. Because a function always needs to return a value. So the output port is translated into a function pointer or continuation which gets passed to the subroutine when called:[3]void filter_stop_words( string word, Action<string> onNoStopWord) { if (...check if not a stop word...) onNoStopWord(word); } If you want to be nitpicky you might call such a function pointer parameter an injection. And technically you´re right. Conceptually, though, it´s not an injection. Because the subroutine is not functionally dependent on the continuation. Firstly continuations are procedures, i.e. subroutines without a return type. Remember: Flow Design is about unidirectional data flow. Secondly the name of the formal parameter is chosen in a way as to not assume anything about downstream processing steps. onNoStopWord describes a situation (or event) within the functional unit only. Translating output ports into function pointers helps keeping functional units mutually oblivious in cases where output is optional or produced asynchronically. Either pass the function pointer to the function upon call. Or make it global by putting it on the encompassing class. Then it´s called an event. In C# that´s even an explicit feature.class Filter { public void filter_stop_words( string word) { if (...check if not a stop word...) onNoStopWord(word); } public event Action<string> onNoStopWord; } When to use a continuation and when to use an event dependens on how a functional unit is used in flows and how it´s packed together with others into classes. You´ll see examples further down the Flow Design road. Another example of 1D functional design Let´s see Flow Design once more in action using the visual notation. How about the famous word wrap kata? Robert C. Martin has posted a much cited solution including an extensive reasoning behind his TDD approach. So maybe you want to compare it to Flow Design. The function signature given is:string WordWrap(string text, int maxLineLength) {...} That´s not an Entry Point since we don´t see an application with an environment and users. Nevertheless it´s a function which is supposed to provide a certain functionality. The text passed in has to be reformatted. The input is a single line of arbitrary length consisting of words separated by spaces. The output should consist of one or more lines of a maximum length specified. If a word is longer than a the maximum line length it can be split in multiple parts each fitting in a line. Flow Design Let´s start by brainstorming the process to accomplish the feat of reformatting the text. What´s needed? Words need to be assembled into lines Words need to be extracted from the input text The resulting lines need to be assembled into the output text Words too long to fit in a line need to be split Does sound about right? I guess so. And it shows a kind of priority. Long words are a special case. So maybe there is a hint for an incremental design here. First let´s tackle “average words” (words not longer than a line). Here´s the Flow Design for this increment: The the first three bullet points turned into functional units with explicit data added. As the signature requires a text is transformed into another text. See the input of the first functional unit and the output of the last functional unit. In between no text flows, but words and lines. That´s good to see because thereby the domain is clearly represented in the design. The requirements are talking about words and lines and here they are. But note the asterisk! It´s not outside the brackets but inside. That means it´s not a stream of words or lines, but lists or sequences. For each text a sequence of words is output. For each sequence of words a sequence of lines is produced. The asterisk is used to abstract from the concrete implementation. Like with streams. Whether the list of words gets implemented as an array or an IEnumerable is not important during design. It´s an implementation detail. Does any processing step require further refinement? I don´t think so. They all look pretty “atomic” to me. And if not… I can always backtrack and refine a process step using functional design later once I´ve gained more insight into a sub-problem. Implementation The implementation is straightforward as you can imagine. The processing steps can all be translated into functions. Each can be tested easily and separately. Each has a focused responsibility. And the process flow becomes just a sequence of function calls: Easy to understand. It clearly states how word wrapping works - on a high level of abstraction. And it´s easy to evolve as you´ll see. Flow Design - Increment 2 So far only texts consisting of “average words” are wrapped correctly. Words not fitting in a line will result in lines too long. Wrapping long words is a feature of the requested functionality. Whether it´s there or not makes a difference to the user. To quickly get feedback I decided to first implement a solution without this feature. But now it´s time to add it to deliver the full scope. Fortunately Flow Design automatically leads to code following the Open Closed Principle (OCP). It´s easy to extend it - instead of changing well tested code. How´s that possible? Flow Design allows for extension of functionality by inserting functional units into the flow. That way existing functional units need not be changed. The data flow arrow between functional units is a natural extension point. No need to resort to the Strategy Pattern. No need to think ahead where extions might need to be made in the future. I just “phase in” the remaining processing step: Since neither Extract words nor Reformat know of their environment neither needs to be touched due to the “detour”. The new processing step accepts the output of the existing upstream step and produces data compatible with the existing downstream step. Implementation - Increment 2 A trivial implementation checking the assumption if this works does not do anything to split long words. The input is just passed on: Note how clean WordWrap() stays. The solution is easy to understand. A developer looking at this code sometime in the future, when a new feature needs to be build in, quickly sees how long words are dealt with. Compare this to Robert C. Martin´s solution:[4] How does this solution handle long words? Long words are not even part of the domain language present in the code. At least I need considerable time to understand the approach. Admittedly the Flow Design solution with the full implementation of long word splitting is longer than Robert C. Martin´s. At least it seems. Because his solution does not cover all the “word wrap situations” the Flow Design solution handles. Some lines would need to be added to be on par, I guess. But even then… Is a difference in LOC that important as long as it´s in the same ball park? I value understandability and openness for extension higher than saving on the last line of code. Simplicity is not just less code, it´s also clarity in design. But don´t take my word for it. Try Flow Design on larger problems and compare for yourself. What´s the easier, more straightforward way to clean code? And keep in mind: You ain´t seen all yet ;-) There´s more to Flow Design than described in this chapter. In closing I hope I was able to give you a impression of functional design that makes you hungry for more. To me it´s an inevitable step in software development. Jumping from requirements to code does not scale. And it leads to dirty code all to quickly. Some thought should be invested first. Where there is a clear Entry Point visible, it´s functionality should be designed using data flows. Because with data flows abstraction is possible. For more background on why that´s necessary read my blog article here. For now let me point out to you - if you haven´t already noticed - that Flow Design is a general purpose declarative language. It´s “programming by intention” (Shalloway et al.). Just write down how you think the solution should work on a high level of abstraction. This breaks down a large problem in smaller problems. And by following the PoMO the solutions to those smaller problems are independent of each other. So they are easy to test. Or you could even think about getting them implemented in parallel by different team members. Flow Design not only increases evolvability, but also helps becoming more productive. All team members can participate in functional design. This goes beyon collective code ownership. We´re talking collective design/architecture ownership. Because with Flow Design there is a common visual language to talk about functional design - which is the foundation for all other design activities.   PS: If you like what you read, consider getting my ebook “The Incremental Architekt´s Napkin”. It´s where I compile all the articles in this series for easier reading. I like the strictness of Function Programming - but I also find it quite hard to live by. And it certainly is not what millions of programmers are used to. Also to me it seems, the real world is full of state and side effects. So why give them such a bad image? That´s why functional design takes a more pragmatic approach. State and side effects are ok for processing steps - but be sure to follow the SRP. Don´t put too much of it into a single processing step. ? Image taken from www.physioweb.org ? My code samples are written in C#. C# sports typed function pointers called delegates. Action is such a function pointer type matching functions with signature void someName(T t). Other languages provide similar ways to work with functions as first class citizens - even Java now in version 8. I trust you find a way to map this detail of my translation to your favorite programming language. I know it works for Java, C++, Ruby, JavaScript, Python, Go. And if you´re using a Functional Programming language it´s of course a no brainer. ? Taken from his blog post “The Craftsman 62, The Dark Path”. ?

  Read the article

• Enterprise Process Maps: A Process Picture worth a Million Words

  - by raul.goycoolea

  p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; }h1 { margin-top: 0.33in; margin-bottom: 0in; color: rgb(54, 95, 145); page-break-inside: avoid; }h1.western { font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 14pt; }h1.cjk { font-family: "DejaVu Sans"; font-size: 14pt; }h1.ctl { font-size: 14pt; } Getting Started with Business Transformations A well-known proverb states that "A picture is worth a thousand words." In relation to Business Process Management (BPM), a credible analyst might have a few questions. What if the picture was taken from some particular angle, like directly overhead? What if it was taken from only an inch away or a mile away? What if the photographer did not focus the camera correctly? Does the value of the picture depend on who is looking at it? Enterprise Process Maps are analogous in this sense of relative value. Every BPM project (holistic BPM kick-off, enterprise system implementation, Service-oriented Architecture, business process transformation, corporate performance management, etc.) should be begin with a clear understanding of the business environment, from the biggest picture representations down to the lowest level required or desired for the particular project type, scope and objectives. The Enterprise Process Map serves as an entry point for the process architecture and is defined: the single highest level of process mapping for an organization. It is constructed and evaluated during the Strategy Phase of the Business Process Management Lifecycle. (see Figure 1) Fig. 1: Business Process Management Lifecycle Many organizations view such maps as visual abstractions, constructed for the single purpose of process categorization. This, in turn, results in a lesser focus on the inherent intricacies of the Enterprise Process view, which are explored in the course of this paper. With the main focus of a large scale process documentation effort usually underlying an ERP or other system implementation, it is common for the work to be driven by the desire to "get to the details," and to the type of modeling that will derive near-term tangible results. For instance, a project in American Pharmaceutical Company X is driven by the Director of IT. With 120+ systems in place, and a lack of standardized processes across the United States, he and the VP of IT have decided to embark on a long-term ERP implementation. At the forethought of both are questions, such as: How does my application architecture map to the business? What are each application's functionalities, and where do the business processes utilize them? Where can we retire legacy systems? Well-developed BPM methodologies prescribe numerous model types to capture such information and allow for thorough analysis in these areas. Process to application maps, Event Driven Process Chains, etc. provide this level of detail and facilitate the completion of such project-specific questions. These models and such analysis are appropriately carried out at a relatively low level of process detail. (see figure 2) Fig. 2: The Level Concept, Generic Process HierarchySome of the questions remaining are ones of documentation longevity, the continuation of BPM practice in the organization, process governance and ownership, process transparency and clarity in business process objectives and strategy. The Level Concept in Brief Figure 2 shows a generic, four-level process hierarchy depicting the breakdown of a "Process Area" into progressively more detailed process classifications. The number of levels and the names of these levels are flexible, and can be fit to the standards of the organization's chosen terminology or any other chosen reference model that makes logical sense for both short and long term process description. It is at Level 1 (in this case the Process Area level), that the Enterprise Process Map is created. This map and its contained objects become the foundation for a top-down approach to subsequent mapping, object relationship development, and analysis of the organization's processes and its supporting infrastructure. Additionally, this picture serves as a communication device, at an executive level, describing the design of the business in its service to a customer. It seems, then, imperative that the process development effort, and this map, start off on the right foot. Figuring out just what that right foot is, however, is critical and trend-setting in an evolving organization. Key Considerations Enterprise Process Maps are usually not as living and breathing as other process maps. Just as it would be an extremely difficult task to change the foundation of the Sears Tower or a city plan for the entire city of Chicago, the Enterprise Process view of an organization usually remains unchanged once developed (unless, of course, an organization is at a stage where it is capable of true, high-level process innovation). Regardless, the Enterprise Process map is a key first step, and one that must be taken in a precise way. What makes this groundwork solid depends on not only the materials used to construct it (process areas), but also the layout plan and knowledge base of what will be built (the entire process architecture). It seems reasonable that care and consideration are required to create this critical high level map... but what are the important factors? Does the process modeler need to worry about how many process areas there are? About who is looking at it? Should he only use the color pink because it's his boss' favorite color? Interestingly, and perhaps surprisingly, these are all valid considerations that may just require a bit of structure. Below are Three Key Factors to consider when building an Enterprise Process Map: Company Strategic Focus Process Categorization: Customer is Core End-to-end versus Functional Processes Company Strategic Focus As mentioned above, the Enterprise Process Map is created during the Strategy Phase of the Business Process Management Lifecycle. From Oracle Business Process Management methodology for business transformation, it is apparent that business processes exist for the purpose of achieving the strategic objectives of an organization. In a prescribed, top-down approach to process development, it must be ensured that each process fulfills its objectives, and in an aggregated manner, drives fulfillment of the strategic objectives of the company, whether for particular business segments or in a broader sense. This is a crucial point, as the strategic messages of the company must therefore resound in its process maps, in particular one that spans the processes of the complete business: the Enterprise Process Map. One simple example from Company X is shown below (see figure 3). Fig. 3: Company X Enterprise Process Map In reviewing Company X's Enterprise Process Map, one can immediately begin to understand the general strategic mindset of the organization. It shows that Company X is focused on its customers, defining 10 of its process areas belonging to customer-focused categories. Additionally, the organization views these end-customer-oriented process areas as part of customer-fulfilling value chains, while support process areas do not provide as much contiguous value. However, by including both support and strategic process categorizations, it becomes apparent that all processes are considered vital to the success of the customer-oriented focus processes. Below is an example from Company Y (see figure 4). Fig. 4: Company Y Enterprise Process Map Company Y, although also a customer-oriented company, sends a differently focused message with its depiction of the Enterprise Process Map. Along the top of the map is the company's product tree, overarching the process areas, which when executed deliver the products themselves. This indicates one strategic objective of excellence in product quality. Additionally, the view represents a less linear value chain, with strong overlaps of the various process areas. Marketing and quality management are seen as a key support processes, as they span the process lifecycle. Often, companies may incorporate graphics, logos and symbols representing customers and suppliers, and other objects to truly send the strategic message to the business. Other times, Enterprise Process Maps may show high level of responsibility to organizational units, or the application types that support the process areas. It is possible that hundreds of formats and focuses can be applied to an Enterprise Process Map. What is of vital importance, however, is which formats and focuses are chosen to truly represent the direction of the company, and serve as a driver for focusing the business on the strategic objectives set forth in that right. Process Categorization: Customer is Core In the previous two examples, processes were grouped using differing categories and techniques. Company X showed one support and three customer process categorizations using encompassing chevron objects; Customer Y achieved a less distinct categorization using a gradual color scheme. Either way, and in general, modeling of the process areas becomes even more valuable and easily understood within the context of business categorization, be it strategic or otherwise. But how one categorizes their processes is typically more complex than simply choosing object shapes and colors. Previously, it was stated that the ideal is a prescribed top-down approach to developing processes, to make certain linkages all the way back up to corporate strategy. But what about external influences? What forces push and pull corporate strategy? Industry maturity, product lifecycle, market profitability, competition, etc. can all drive the critical success factors of a particular business segment, or the company as a whole, in addition to previous corporate strategy. This may seem to be turning into a discussion of theory, but that is far from the case. In fact, in years of recent study and evolution of the way businesses operate, cross-industry and across the globe, one invariable has surfaced with such strength to make it undeniable in the game plan of any strategy fit for survival. That constant is the customer. Many of a company's critical success factors, in any business segment, relate to the customer: customer retention, satisfaction, loyalty, etc. Businesses serve customers, and so do a business's processes, mapped or unmapped. The most effective way to categorize processes is in a manner that visualizes convergence to what is core for a company. It is the value chain, beginning with the customer in mind, and ending with the fulfillment of that customer, that becomes the core or the centerpiece of the Enterprise Process Map. (See figure 5) Fig. 5: Company Z Enterprise Process Map Company Z has what may be viewed as several different perspectives or "cuts" baked into their Enterprise Process Map. It has divided its processes into three main categories (top, middle, and bottom) of Management Processes, the Core Value Chain and Supporting Processes. The Core category begins with Corporate Marketing (which contains the activities of beginning to engage customers) and ends with Customer Service Management. Within the value chain, this company has divided into the focus areas of their two primary business lines, Foods and Beverages. Does this mean that areas, such as Strategy, Information Management or Project Management are not as important as those in the Core category? No! In some cases, though, depending on the organization's understanding of high-level BPM concepts, use of category names, such as "Core," "Management" or "Support," can be a touchy subject. What is important to understand, is that no matter the nomenclature chosen, the Core processes are those that drive directly to customer value, Support processes are those which make the Core processes possible to execute, and Management Processes are those which steer and influence the Core. Some common terms for these three basic categorizations are Core, Customer Fulfillment, Customer Relationship Management, Governing, Controlling, Enabling, Support, etc. End-to-end versus Functional Processes Every high and low level of process: function, task, activity, process/work step (whatever an organization calls it), should add value to the flow of business in an organization. Suppose that within the process "Deliver package," there is a documented task titled "Stop for ice cream." It doesn't take a process expert to deduce the room for improvement. Though stopping for ice cream may create gain for the one person performing it, it likely benefits neither the organization nor, more importantly, the customer. In most cases, "Stop for ice cream" wouldn't make it past the first pass of To-Be process development. What would make the cut, however, would be a flow of tasks that, each having their own value add, build up to greater and greater levels of process objective. In this case, those tasks would combine to achieve a status of "package delivered." Figure 3 shows a simple example: Just as the package can only be delivered (outcome of the process) without first being retrieved, loaded, and the travel destination reached (outcomes of the process steps), some higher level of process "Play Practical Joke" (e.g., main process or process area) cannot be completed until a package is delivered. It seems that isolated or functionally separated processes, such as "Deliver Package" (shown in Figure 6), are necessary, but are always part of a bigger value chain. Each of these individual processes must be analyzed within the context of that value chain in order to ensure successful end-to-end process performance. For example, this company's "Create Joke Package" process could be operating flawlessly and efficiently, but if a joke is never developed, it cannot be created, so the end-to-end process breaks. Fig. 6: End to End Process Construction That being recognized, it is clear that processes must be viewed as end-to-end, customer-to-customer, and in the context of company strategy. But as can also be seen from the previous example, these vital end-to-end processes cannot be built without the functionally oriented building blocks. Without one, the other cannot be had, or at least not in a complete and organized fashion. As it turns out, but not discussed in depth here, the process modeling effort, BPM organizational development, and comprehensive coverage cannot be fully realized without a semi-functional, process-oriented approach. Then, an Enterprise Process Map should be concerned with both views, the building blocks, and access points to the business-critical end-to-end processes, which they construct. Without the functional building blocks, all streams of work needed for any business transformation would be lost mess of process disorganization. End-to-end views are essential for utilization in optimization in context, understanding customer impacts, base-lining all project phases and aligning objectives. Including both views on an Enterprise Process Map allows management to understand the functional orientation of the company's processes, while still providing access to end-to-end processes, which are most valuable to them. (See figures 7 and 8). Fig. 7: Simplified Enterprise Process Map with end-to-end Access Point The above examples show two unique ways to achieve a successful Enterprise Process Map. The first example is a simple map that shows a high level set of process areas and a separate section with the end-to-end processes of concern for the organization. This particular map is filtered to show just one vital end-to-end process for a project-specific focus. Fig. 8: Detailed Enterprise Process Map showing connected Functional Processes The second example shows a more complex arrangement and categorization of functional processes (the names of each process area has been removed). The end-to-end perspective is achieved at this level through the connections (interfaces at lower levels) between these functional process areas. An important point to note is that the organization of these two views of the Enterprise Process Map is dependent, in large part, on the orientation of its audience, and the complexity of the landscape at the highest level. If both are not apparent, the Enterprise Process Map is missing an opportunity to serve as a holistic, high-level view. Conclusion In the world of BPM, and specifically regarding Enterprise Process Maps, a picture can be worth as many words as the thought and effort that is put into it. Enterprise Process Maps alone cannot change an organization, but they serve more purposes than initially meet the eye, and therefore must be designed in a way that enables a BPM mindset, business process understanding and business transformation efforts. Every Enterprise Process Map will and should be different when looking across organizations. Its design will be driven by company strategy, a level of customer focus, and functional versus end-to-end orientations. This high-level description of the considerations of the Enterprise Process Maps is not a prescriptive "how to" guide. However, a company attempting to create one may not have the practical BPM experience to truly explore its options or impacts to the coming work of business process transformation. The biggest takeaway is that process modeling, at all levels, is a science and an art, and art is open to interpretation. It is critical that the modeler of the highest level of process mapping be a cognoscente of the message he is delivering and the factors at hand. Without sufficient focus on the design of the Enterprise Process Map, an entire BPM effort may suffer. For additional information please check: Oracle Business Process Management.

  Read the article

• Desktop SATA drives in SATA <-> FC array

  - by chris

  Let's assume you've got a box like one of these with space for 24 SATA disks. What are the best bits of advice for deploying this? For instance, should you be greedy and go for the 1.5 or 2tb disks or are they just not reliable enough to be used in an array like this and you should stick with 640gb or 750gb disks instead? Also, I know that FC (or generically, "enterprise class") disks have a different error recovery strategy than desktop disks. An enterprise disk will fail a read quickly and report to the controller that it wasn't able to read that block, and the RAID controller will quickly regenerate the info from the parity disk and mark the block as bad. A desktop disk, on the other hand, will try and try and try again to get the data, and in pathological cases this may cause a raid controller to fail the whole disk because the read operation times out. So there are a couple aspects to this question: What's the best sort of disk to get today? (ie specific disks on the market in Feb 2010) Generically, what should someone look for when trying to buy something like this that kinda walks the line between enterprise and consumer? Lastly -- is there anything that can be done with current "consumer" disks to make them more suitable for array use? IE can you use a SMART configuration to change the error recovery strategy used by the disk? Thanks!

  Read the article

• Laptop choice for development: MacBook Pro 17 vs Dell Studio XPS 16 vs HP Envy 15

  - by Shalan

  Hey! First things first - let me state that I am not intending to play games on this - I have narrowed down to these 3 purely based on specs and its individual brand reliability in the market. I intend to primarily use: Visual Studio 2008 Pro a lot (develop and deploy on Windows platforms) SQL Server 2005 Oracle 10g Adobe Photoshop CS4 Microsoft Expression Studio Google Sketchup I currently use a desktop PC (Core2Duo 2.66Ghz with 3GB DDRII memory) running Vista Business 32-bit - and I have to admit that, especially for Visual Studio, its quite sluggish to a point where it affects productivity. Furthermore, I intend to only use the notebook on a table - with a cooled surface, like granite :) - so I would appreciate people's input with regard to heat issues. Im aware that the Dell's primary exhaust gets blocked by the lid when open, but some reviews don't seem to place extraordinary emphasis on heat issues resulting from this. My options for the Dell/Alienware: Core i7 720QM 4GB DDRIII memory ATI mobility 3670 (512) 128GB Solid State Drive 16-inch Full HD RGB-LED LCD display (1080p) 3-year next-business-day support My configuration for the Apple MBP: Core2Duo 2.8Ghz (Im assuming the T9600) 4GB DDRIII memory 128GB Solid State Drive standard 1 year support The one advantage I think of with the MBP is that I can have the addition of OSX (though Im unsure what I would use it for, but purely to play around with a much-boasted-about OS) What are your thoughts on this, especially regarding build-quality, heat, performance and battery-life? Much thanks! ~shalan

  Read the article

• Htpc aka "Media Center": cheap and *silent*?

  - by Unknown

  It may be me, or the place I live (Italy), but it seems pretty hard to get a build or a prebuilt nettop or a laptop that fits the need. I need something silent able to playback all h.264 fullhd content without stuttering, and well (and not loosing the hw acceleration because of softsubs...) silent not ugly silent and (possibly) cheap. I'm going the linux route, therefore i'm moving towards a cpu-based or nvida-integrated solution (i don't think ati hw accelerated playback - or the intel "hd" acceleration - is useable yet). Ion nettop; it's either the Acer Revo (but here it's incredibly pricey and it's hard to find the dualcore version) or the Asrock Ion 330, that in the current version is rated "silent" at 26Db. 26. Sounds pretty noisy to me!!! the previous version was even worse. was this product really aimed at htpc market?? the Dell Zino - i think it's ATI based unfortunately. Laptop: correct me if I'm wrong: sub 600€/$ units are quite loud under full load (because of the tiny fans). ULW laptops are indeed quite similar: tiniest fans = high pitched noise and the cpu still lacks power for non hd-accelerated video decoding Handmade build: little money can be saved with underpowered cpus, a low-midrange cpu would help in the case of non-hw-accelerated content the cases are quite pricey the PSU one has to get ranges between 100/150 €/$ minimum to keep the noise down a low-mid build, all included, sums up to over 650 €/$ for a still-looking-ugly-unit, without the blu-ray drive. Please help. What do you advise on this? ;) Am I ignoring laptops too much, maybe? Are low-priced Acers that noisy/high pitched under full load?

  Read the article

• Chroot jail of Nginx and php

  - by sqren

  I'm hosting multiple websites on one VPS, and want to chroot each website, eg. /chroot/website1 /chroot/website2 I'm using makejail, which is a highlevel tool, for creating the jails, and copying the libraries and dependencies. Easy peasy. Each website will need nginx, php and mysql. For php I'm using php5-fpm which actually supports chroot by configuration, however I'm not using this (maybe I should?) My question is which approach of the following three is the better: 1) Every website will have its own seperated instance of nginx, php and mysql. The downside is, that each webserver + php has to listen to a different port. I also need a "master" nginx web server in front of them, reverse proxying to the chrooted servers behind it. Probably most secure, but also most advanced. 2) I don't make any chroot jails manually. I setup one nginx web server, that proxies php requests to php-fpm, on different ports. I can have multiple php-fpm configurations each with is own chroot'ed folder. This is quite managable - however only php will be chrooted. Not the actual webserver. Is this secure enough. Also, I tried this option out, and it seems I will need to use TCP instead of sockets for connecting to MySQL. 3) You tell me ;) I'm quite new to chroot jailing, so please correct me if I'm wrong in my assumptions. I've been reading all the tutorials I could find, however, I find the market for chroot guides very scarce. Any help or inputs much appreciated!

  Read the article

• Black Screen and System Hang - Possibly CPU overheating

  - by Mahesh

  I have this old computer - P4 2.0ghz, 1.2GB RAM and onboard graphics(no external card), 80GBHDD. It has xubuntu installed on it and it regularly hangs when it takes more system resources for say like graphical programs, too many tabs on firefox etc. It just either hangs the system or shows black screen. Tested if it was issue of HD but it wasn't because i have used linux livecd and problem is still the same even if I have removed the HD. I have also tested with USB linux (puppy linux and ubuntu linux on 8gb drives). Tested windows XP as well on this HD and results are the same. Tested another HD on this machine, results are still the same with it. System hangs or goes black screen and requires restart. I thought later it could be thermal heat issue and then applied thermal paste on heatsink but still it fails to work for me. It continues to show symptoms. Another thing which was yet to be tested is changing of CPU fan which was not done because I have not found any fan for old pentium 4 machine in the market. I have to hit online stores (but i am in india and it's hard to find it in online shops which can deliver it to me). So far I don't see this as HD or Monitor or OS issue because I have tested with other HD and results are the same. So it could be either CPU fan or motherboard? What could be possible issue with the hardware?

  Read the article

• Intel z77 vs h77 for intensive compiling, gaming [closed]

  - by Bilal Akhtar

  I'm in the market for a desktop motherboard (preferably ATX) that functions well with Intel i7-3770 Ivy Bridge processor at 3.4 GHz with LGA1155 socket. That processor is very fast, and it should handle all my tasks. My question is about the type of motherboard chipset I should choose to accompany it. I plan to use my rig for compiling and developing Debian package and other OS components, web development, occasional Android apps, chroots, VMs, FlightGear, other gaming but nothing serious, and heavy multitasking, all on Ubuntu. I do NOT plan to overclock, and I never will, so that's not a cause of concern for me. That said, I'm down to three chipset choices: Intel H77 Intel Z68 Intel Z77 I'm planning to go for H77 since I don't need any of the new features in Z77. I don't plan to use a second GPU and I will never overclock my CPU/GPU. My question is, will H77 based MoBos handle all my tasks well? Intel advertises that chipset as "everyday computing" but other sites say it's base functionality is the same as Z77. Intel rather advertises Z77 for "serious multitaskers, hardcore gamers and overclocking enthusiasts". But the problem with all Z77 motherboards I've seen is, they're way too expensive and their main feature seems to be overclocking, which won't be useful to me. Will I lose any raw CPU/GPU performance or HDD R/w with the H77 when comparing it to a Z77? Will heat, etc be an issue too? From what I've seen, Z77 motherboards have larger heat sinks when compared to H77 ones. Will that be an issue too, if I go with an H77 motherboard with no heat sinks for the chipset? The CPU will have a fan in both cases, of course. tl;dr When it comes to CPU/GPU performance and HDD r/w, is the Intel H77 chipset slower than the Z77? I don't care about overclocking or multiple GPUs, and for the processor, I'm set on Ivy Bridge i7-3770.

  Read the article

• Alternatives to Splunk?

  - by MichaelGG

  I'm pretty impressed with Splunk, especially version 4. Pretty graphs, alerting (Enterprise only), and fast, accurate, searching. It's a great product. However, the cost just way too high to consider for full production use for our company. All we really need is to be able to index different logs in a central place, and have reasonable searching on that. Having alerts based on a saved search is also really nice. We don't really go beyond that. In fact, our biggest usage has been in deploying new applications. Everything gets logged via log4net to either the Event log on Windows or a text file on Linux. Splunk makes it pretty easy to quickly search across those to make sure all the parts of the app are working ok -- that's saved us tons of time versus hunting down individual logging sources. What alternatives exist in this market? I have a sinking feeling Splunk's pricing is so high because they have the best product by far, and they know it. We want the server to run on Windows. I'd be open to a split model, using one product for general logs (collect via syslog/Snare), and a dedicated product for our custom apps (like Log4Net Dashboard). Would using a simple syslog server such as Kiwi, sent to SQL Server (perhaps with fulltext enabled) work? I'd hope the cost should be well under 5 figures, USD. (And yes, I know, we're cheap. We're a startup with little money, and BizSpark takes care of all our MS licensing.) Edit: I should add, we have about 10 physical servers, 20 VMs, and a couple firewalls and switches. 90% is Windows.

  Read the article

• How can a Linux Administrator improve their shell scripting and automation skills?

  - by ewwhite

  In my organization, I work with a group of NOC staff, budding junior engineers and a handful of senior engineers; all with a focus on Linux. One interesting step in the way the company grows talent is that there's a path from the NOC to the senior engineering ranks. Viewing the talent pool as a relative newcomer, I see that there's a split in the skill sets that tends to grow over time... There are engineers who know one or several particular technologies well and are constantly immersed... e.g. MySQL, firewalls, SAN storage, load balancers... There are others who are generalists and can navigate multiple technologies. All learn enough Linux (commands, processes) to do what they need and use on a daily basis. A differentiating factor between some of the staff is how well they embrace scripting, automation and configuration management methodologies. For instance, we have two engineers who do the bulk of Amazon AWS CloudFormation work, and another who handles most of the Puppet infrastructure. Perhaps a quarter of the engineers are adept at BASH shell scripting. Looking at this in the context of the incredibly high demand for DevOps skills in the job market, I'm curious how other organizations foster the development of these skills and grow their internal talent. Scripting doesn't seem like a particularly-teachable concept. How does a sysadmin improve their shell scripting? Is there still a place for engineers who do not/cannot keep up in the DevOps paradigm? Are we simply to assume that some people will be left behind as these technologies evolve? Is that okay?

  Read the article

• Are HDMI to VGA Adapters Really Device-Specific?

  - by allquixotic

  There are a lot of devices on the market right now (especially mobile devices) with a Micro-HDMI or Mini-HDMI port and no VGA or D-Sub output. Most manufacturers of said devices sell a cable that looks something like this: I have yet to find a cable like this that claims to work on a wide array of devices. In general, these cables claim to work with one specific device only. The way these cables work, I think, is that analog VGA signals are sent from the HDMI port on the device. This should work for devices that have special hardware on the motherboard/GPU capable of driving this. Is it the case that these cables have to be custom designed for each device? Or, is it rather that any device which possesses this special "signaling of analog VGA over the HDMI port" can be made to work with a cable that is physically compatible (i.e. the HDMI end plugs into the device and the VGA end accepts a VGA monitor cable)? Note that I am not looking for a product recommendation, just a conceptual clarification on what exactly these devices are doing. Also, a few remarks: The cables like the one depicted here are not digital to analog converters. I know about these: they are expensive, and they are the ONLY solution if your device only outputs a digital signal and is incapable of driving analog VGA over the HDMI port. The cables like the one depicted here are not straight crossover cables from VGA to HDMI, either. The crossover cables are designed to send a digital HDMI signal over the VGA port's wires; that is, the wire protocol is HDMI (digital) but the physical pinout is the same as VGA, even though nothing analog is happening. Once again, this is not the behavior that, I believe, the devices which I'm talking about in this question are doing. The cabling and devices that this question is about transmit the analog VGA data over the HDMI port (the HDMI port is in the device outputting the data, and the VGA side is the monitor/projector).

  Read the article

• Bare-metal virtualisation for the desktop

  - by Andrew Taylor

  Hi, Does anyone have any knowledge about bare-metal virtualisation products? I'm interested in building a new desktop machine for home, I've been looking at the Intel Quad Core processors and I'd like to put 8GB of RAM in there, but, it got me thinking about making the most out of the available resources. I thought if I could get a good 64bit machine, put some bare-metal virtualisation on, then have a primary system, I'd also be able to bring up some extra virtualised systems as and when I needed. I know most of the bare metal systems are designed for the server market, but, is there anything out there that works well for a desktop. What are the caveats? I presume I won't be able to make the most out of any video cards I could buy, what about just getting a decent screen resolution, will this be a problem? I run a single 24" screen. What about DVD/CD writing, is this possible? I'd like to re-rip my CD collection, I was hoping the quad 64Bit goodness would help me out with the encoding. I currently use a Mac and couldn't go back to windows so that leaves Linux, I was thinking a primary OS of ubuntu. Does this make a difference? Thanks Andrew

  Read the article

• Trying to understand Wireless N vs Wireless AC

  - by EGHDK

  Whenever a new wireless standard gets approved you expect faster speeds and longer range. From everything that I've read about it, it seems that AC will only transfer over the 5GHz band and up to 3Gbps. Studying the new AC routers on the market, it seems that they will transfer over 5GHz and 2.4GHz. And 5GHz will only transfer at 1.3Gbps. Which isn't what AC is supposed to be. I know there is a difference between what the standard actually says, and what products will actually do, but is there any reason for this? Is there any other main differences between AC and N? I've heard people discussing AC and saying that it's finally "fixing" what N was supposed to fix... what do they mean by that? Any security benefits? I have seen this image online: Will AC really do that? Will that require an AC network card in my laptop for that to actually happen? Lastly, will the router only be able to communicate with AC devices if I have beamforming technology on? I know it's a ton of questions, but most articles online seem to be outdated, and don't provide too much reliability.

  Read the article

• Recommendations for colocation in the US

  - by Emil

  Hello serverfault I work for a European media company and we are currently looking for colocation in the US. I know the European market quite well unfortunately that is not the case for the US. I'm hoping for you guys to help me out a bit with a few questions, it would be much appreciated! I am looking for a data center that can deliver a high level of availability (tier 3 or better). The installation will be fairly large so capacity is important. Good internet connectivity/carrier presence. However most important is good customer support, skilled dedicated and responsive technical staff, since we won't have tech staff close by. I'm looking for a small and fast moving company that target internet businesses rather than big old enterprise hosting. What locations should we go for given that we want to reach all of the US from a single site and still maintain decent latency? (do we need east and west coast?) Where are the main internet hubs and should you try and get as close as possible? Are there any good online resources I should look at? Where do the large scale internet/media services colocate? Lastly I would be very happy to get some actual recommendations for companies to talk to P.S I'm happy to return the favor if anyone has question regarding data centers and colocation in Europe.

  Read the article

• Options for small windows network setup without dedicated server?

  - by Mitch

  I'm very weak on networking and hope someone can point me in the right direction: I have written some windows client/server software which incorporates a database which is located on a windows server. I have a test installation running at a customer's office where the server has a static IP address. In this case its easy for the clients to access the database because of the fixed IP address. Also, customers with network servers generally have specialist support staff to set up my software, so its not such a problem for me. However I also need to offer the software to customers who have small offices with less than 10 PCs and no dedicated network server. In this case I want the customer to be able to nominate one PC as the database "server" and install my software and have the clients access it. But in this situation I believe the "server" PC may not have a dedicated IP address. Q1: What is the best way to set this up simply and make it work? Can I reliably reference the "server" by using its name, or is there a way to assign dummy fixed IP addresses? Ideally this needs to be workable on small networks running a mixture of XP/Vista/Windows7 as my target market may well have mixed OSes etc. I guess this would be akin to home networking? Many thanks Mitch

  Read the article

• Is UPS worthwhile for home equipment?

  - by Jon Skeet

  Over the years, I've had to throw away a quite a few bits of computing equipment (and the like): Several ADSL routers with odd symptoms (losing wireless connections, losing wired connections, DHCP failures, DNS symptoms etc) Two PVRs spontaneously rebooting and corrupting themselves (despite the best efforts of the community to diagnose and help) One external hard disk still claiming to function, but corrupting data One hard disk as part of a NAS raid array "going bad" (as far as the NAS was concerned) (This is in addition to various laptops and printers dying in ways unrelated to this question.) Obviously it'll be impossible to tell for sure from such a small amount of information, but might these be related to power issues? I don't currently have a UPS for any of this equipment. Everything on surge-protected gang sockets, but there's nothing to smooth a power cut. Is home UPS really viable and useful? I know there are some reasonably cheap UPSes on the market, but I don't know how useful they really are. I'm not interested in keeping my home network actually running during a power cut, but I'd like it to power down a bit more gracefully if the current situation is putting my hardware in jeopardy.

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202  | Next Page >