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• Oracle Service Cloud May 2014 Release – Focus on your driving by JP Saunders

  - by Tuula Fai

  The next time you’re twiddling dials on your car’s dashboard to get the air to blow in the right direction, and the right song to play on the stereo, while pulling on the wires to charge your phone and punching in passwords to re-sync your hands-free headset to take a call, consider this… Does having a better dashboard UI in your car improve your driving performance? The Tesla car has one of the most modern and intuitive dashboards in any commercial car today. It is actually based on the design of a smart phone, which can download apps and updates directly from the cloud.  The 17” touchscreen, Lynx-based dashboard totally integrates all channels and devices, allowing the driver to focus on the smooth driving and power of this luxury (toy) car.  What the folks at Tesla didn't do was avoid the complexity of our needs. Instead, they streamlined them. And, while we might not all be able to afford a Tesla, their approach demonstrates that a modern UI approach can ultimately make a positive difference in our lives and businesses.  This is why the productivity and effectiveness of a Modern Contact Center is many times greater than that of a traditional contact center. Agents in a Modern Contact Center get to focus on the task at hand, the customer engagement, rather than stumbling their way through Lego blocks of complexity.  The Oracle Service Cloud is a modern approach to customer service that empowers your agents to achieve greater focus on improving your operational and strategic success through streamlined business processes.  Here are some of the recent May 2014 release highlights to the Oracle Service Cloud: Performance Enhanced Desktop UI A modern agent desktop interface that optimizes clumsy tasks, logins, screens and workflows and is optimized for agent and system performance. Improvements include performance for drag-and-drop configurable views, saved searches, and improved caching for high-speed performance even during disconnected or slow internet access.  Customer Experience Routing A streamlined automatic way to connect the right customer need to the best agent skills, based on multidimensional variables such as product skills, language skills, workload, call volume to optimize the connection and resolution experience. On-The-Go Mobile Improvements to the Agent mobile app that extend connectivity to websites, and customer surveys that are mobile-ready and rendered for any device, and ensure the customer’s voice is captured while the insight is still top of mind.  Infused Social Engagement Enhancements to infused social capabilities allow agents to respond in social threads directly from within the agent desktop, with the information becoming part of the incident record for automatic actions (such as replay or escalate) triggered off the response. Front-End Siebel Contact Center The market leading online Web Customer Self-Service interface from the Oracle Service Cloud, is now out-of-the-box ready for Oracle Siebel customers. Deploy a new online web self-service interface in a matter of weeks to have customers self-serve and self-solve answers, with escalated incidents routed directly into the Oracle Siebel Contact Center. For more information on the latest enhancements for the Oracle Service Cloud, please see the Oracle Service Cloud May 2014 Capabilities and Benefits. Related blogs: Oracle Service Cloud Feb 2014

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• Oracle NoSQL Database Exceeds 1 Million Mixed YCSB Ops/Sec

  - by Charles Lamb

  We ran a set of YCSB performance tests on Oracle NoSQL Database using SSD cards and Intel Xeon E5-2690 CPUs with the goal of achieving 1M mixed ops/sec on a 95% read / 5% update workload. We used the standard YCSB parameters: 13 byte keys and 1KB data size (1,102 bytes after serialization). The maximum database size was 2 billion records, or approximately 2 TB of data. We sized the shards to ensure that this was not an "in-memory" test (i.e. the data portion of the B-Trees did not fit into memory). All updates were durable and used the "simple majority" replica ack policy, effectively 'committing to the network'. All read operations used the Consistency.NONE_REQUIRED parameter allowing reads to be performed on any replica. In the past we have achieved 100K ops/sec using SSD cards on a single shard cluster (replication factor 3) so for this test we used 10 shards on 15 Storage Nodes with each SN carrying 2 Rep Nodes and each RN assigned to its own SSD card. After correcting a scaling problem in YCSB, we blew past the 1M ops/sec mark with 8 shards and proceeded to hit 1.2M ops/sec with 10 shards.  Hardware Configuration We used 15 servers, each configured with two 335 GB SSD cards. We did not have homogeneous CPUs across all 15 servers available to us so 12 of the 15 were Xeon E5-2690, 2.9 GHz, 2 sockets, 32 threads, 193 GB RAM, and the other 3 were Xeon E5-2680, 2.7 GHz, 2 sockets, 32 threads, 193 GB RAM.  There might have been some upside in having all 15 machines configured with the faster CPU, but since CPU was not the limiting factor we don't believe the improvement would be significant. The client machines were Xeon X5670, 2.93 GHz, 2 sockets, 24 threads, 96 GB RAM. Although the clients had 96 GB of RAM, neither the NoSQL Database or YCSB clients require anywhere near that amount of memory and the test could have just easily been run with much less. Networking was all 10GigE. YCSB Scaling Problem We made three modifications to the YCSB benchmark. The first was to allow the test to accommodate more than 2 billion records (effectively int's vs long's). To keep the key size constant, we changed the code to use base 32 for the user ids. The second change involved to the way we run the YCSB client in order to make the test itself horizontally scalable.The basic problem has to do with the way the YCSB test creates its Zipfian distribution of keys which is intended to model "real" loads by generating clusters of key collisions. Unfortunately, the percentage of collisions on the most contentious keys remains the same even as the number of keys in the database increases. As we scale up the load, the number of collisions on those keys increases as well, eventually exceeding the capacity of the single server used for a given key.This is not a workload that is realistic or amenable to horizontal scaling. YCSB does provide alternate key distribution algorithms so this is not a shortcoming of YCSB in general. We decided that a better model would be for the key collisions to be limited to a given YCSB client process. That way, as additional YCSB client processes (i.e. additional load) are added, they each maintain the same number of collisions they encounter themselves, but do not increase the number of collisions on a single key in the entire store. We added client processes proportionally to the number of records in the database (and therefore the number of shards). This change to the use of YCSB better models a use case where new groups of users are likely to access either just their own entries, or entries within their own subgroups, rather than all users showing the same interest in a single global collection of keys. If an application finds every user having the same likelihood of wanting to modify a single global key, that application has no real hope of getting horizontal scaling. Finally, we used read/modify/write (also known as "Compare And Set") style updates during the mixed phase. This uses versioned operations to make sure that no updates are lost. This mode of operation provides better application behavior than the way we have typically run YCSB in the past, and is only practical at scale because we eliminated the shared key collision hotspots.It is also a more realistic testing scenario. To reiterate, all updates used a simple majority replica ack policy making them durable. Scalability Results In the table below, the "KVS Size" column is the number of records with the number of shards and the replication factor. Hence, the first row indicates 400m total records in the NoSQL Database (KV Store), 2 shards, and a replication factor of 3. The "Clients" column indicates the number of YCSB client processes. "Threads" is the number of threads per process with the total number of threads. Hence, 90 threads per YCSB process for a total of 360 threads. The client processes were distributed across 10 client machines. Shards KVS Size Clients Mixed (records) Threads OverallThroughput(ops/sec) Read Latencyav/95%/99%(ms) Write Latencyav/95%/99%(ms) 2 400m(2x3) 4 90(360) 302,152 0.76/1/3 3.08/8/35 4 800m(4x3) 8 90(720) 558,569 0.79/1/4 3.82/16/45 8 1600m(8x3) 16 90(1440) 1,028,868 0.85/2/5 4.29/21/51 10 2000m(10x3) 20 90(1800) 1,244,550 0.88/2/6 4.47/23/53

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• Bridging 10GbE with 12.04 - bridging works but the bridging computer has no internet access

  - by Donal

  I have been trying to get 12.04 bridging working with two 10GbE cards. I have 2 10GbE cards in a linux box being used only for this bridge, 1 with 2 10GbaseT ports and another with a single CX4 port. I have 2 client computers connected with 10GbaseT cards and the CX4 card connects to a procurve switch. I can get the bridging happening mostly the way that I want, The clients receive dhcp information from the dhcp server (not the bridging machine) and can connect to and properly see the rest of the network. Speeds are ok, not amazing but working on that is another matter. My problem is that the bridging machine has no internet access ... meaning I can't update anything or apt-get anything It can ping all other machines on the local network. I've tried the helpful hints from: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/NetworkConnectionBridge "Enabling Internet Use on the Bridging Computer" and get the following RTNETLINK answers: File exists but dhclient br0 does nothing for me :( I think if it is anything it a multiple route problem as both br0 and eth4 have ipaddresses ... even though I have only set it up so that br0 has one ... Bridge setup details: /etc/network/interface auto br0 iface br0 inet static address 192.168.0.246 netmask 255.255.255.0 gateway 192.168.0.1 broadcast 192.168.0.255 dns-nameservers 192.168.0.1 dns-search example.com dns-domain example.com #(eth2 & eth3 are the 10GbaseT) #(eth4 is the CX4 connection) pre-up ip link set eth2 down pre-up ip link set eth3 down pre-up ip link set eth4 down pre-up brctl addbr br0 pre-up brctl addif br0 eth4 eth3 eth2 pre-up ip addr flush dev eth3 pre-up ip addr flush dev eth2 pre-up ip addr flush dev eth4 post-down ip link set eth4 down post-down ip link set eth2 down post-down ip link set eth3 down post-down ip link set br0 down post-down brctl delif br0 eth2 eth3 eth4 post-down brctl delbr br0 ifconfig -a br0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:15:17:22:20:34 inet addr:192.168.0.102 Bcast:192.168.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 inet6 addr: fe80::215:17ff:fe22:2034/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:4957 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:1077 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:596320 (596.3 KB) TX bytes:139952 (139.9 KB) eth4 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:60:dd:47:7c:05 inet addr:192.168.0.57 Bcast:192.168.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 inet6 addr: fe80::260:ddff:fe47:7c05/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:9000 Metric:1 RX packets:15391 errors:0 dropped:51 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:1207 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:5916769 (5.9 MB) TX bytes:154312 (154.3 KB) Interrupt:70 route -n Kernel IP routing table Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface 0.0.0.0 192.168.0.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth4 0.0.0.0 192.168.0.1 0.0.0.0 UG 100 0 0 br0 169.254.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.0.0 U 1000 0 0 br0 192.168.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 br0 192.168.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 1 0 0 eth4

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• ADF Reusable Artefacts

  - by Arda Eralp

  Primary reusable ADF Business Component: Entity Objects (EOs) View Objects (VOs) Application Modules (AMs) Framework Extensions Classes Primary reusable ADF Controller: Bounded Task Flows (BTFs) Task Flow Templates Primary reusable ADF Faces: Page Templates Skins Declarative Components Utility Classes Certain components will often be used more than once. Whether the reuse happens within the same application, or across different applications, it is often advantageous to package these reusable components into a library that can be shared between different developers, across different teams, and even across departments within an organization. In the world of Java object-oriented programming, reusing classes and objects is just standard procedure. With the introduction of the model-view-controller (MVC) architecture, applications can be further modularized into separate model, view, and controller layers. By separating the data (model and business services layers) from the presentation (view and controller layers), you ensure that changes to any one layer do not affect the integrity of the other layers. You can change business logic without having to change the UI, or redesign the web pages or front end without having to recode domain logic. Oracle ADF and JDeveloper support the MVC design pattern. When you create an application in JDeveloper, you can choose many application templates that automatically set up data model and user interface projects. Because the different MVC layers are decoupled from each other, development can proceed on different projects in parallel and with a certain amount of independence. ADF Library further extends this modularity of design by providing a convenient and practical way to create, deploy, and reuse high-level components. When you first design your application, you design it with component reusability in mind. If you created components that can be reused, you can package them into JAR files and add them to a reusable component repository. If you need a component, you may look into the repository for those components and then add them into your project or application. For example, you can create an application module for a domain and package it to be used as the data model project in several different applications. Or, if your application will be consuming components, you may be able to load a page template component from a repository of ADF Library JARs to create common look and feel pages. Then you can put your page flow together by stringing together several task flow components pulled from the library. An ADF Library JAR contains ADF components and does not, and cannot, contain other JARs. It should not be confused with the JDeveloper library, Java EE library, or Oracle WebLogic shared library. Reusable Component Description Data Control Any data control can be packaged into an ADF Library JAR. Some of the data controls supported by Oracle ADF include application modules, Enterprise JavaBeans, web services, URL services, JavaBeans, and placeholder data controls. Application Module When you are using ADF Business Components and you generate an application module, an associated application module data control is also generated. When you package an application module data control, you also package up the ADF Business Components associated with that application module. The relevant entity objects, view objects, and associations will be a part of the ADF Library JAR and available for reuse. Business Components Business components are the entity objects, view objects, and associations used in the ADF Business Components data model project. You can package business components by themselves or together with an application module. Task Flows & Task Flow Templates Task flows can be packaged into an ADF Library JAR for reuse. If you drop a bounded task flow that uses page fragments, JDeveloper adds a region to the page and binds it to the dropped task flow. ADF bounded task flows built using pages can be dropped onto pages. The drop will create a link to call the bounded task flow. A task flow call activity and control flow will automatically be added to the task flow, with the view activity referencing the page. If there is more than one existing task flow with a view activity referencing the page, it will prompt you to select the one to automatically add a task flow call activity and control flow. If an ADF task flow template was created in the same project as the task flow, the ADF task flow template will be included in the ADF Library JAR and will be reusable. Page Templates You can package a page template and its artifacts into an ADF Library JAR. If the template uses image files and they are included in a directory within your project, these files will also be available for the template during reuse. Declarative Components You can create declarative components and package them for reuse. The tag libraries associated with the component will be included and loaded into the consuming project. You can also package up projects that have several different reusable components if you expect that more than one component will be consumed. For example, you can create a project that has both an application module and a bounded task flow. When this ADF Library JAR file is consumed, the application will have both the application module and the task flow available for use. You can package multiple components into one JAR file, or you can package a single component into a JAR file. Oracle ADF and JDeveloper give you the option and flexibility to create reusable components that best suit you and your organization. You create a reusable component by using JDeveloper to package and deploy the project that contains the components into a ADF Library JAR file. You use the components by adding that JAR to the consuming project. At design time, the JAR is added to the consuming project's class path and so is available for reuse. At runtime, the reused component runs from the JAR file by reference.

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• How to manage a Closed Source High-Risk Project?

  - by abel

  I am currently planning to develop a J2EE website and wish to bring in 1 developer and 1 web designer to assist me. The project is a financial app with a niche market. I plan to keep the source closed . However, I fear that my would-be employees could easily copy the codebase and use it /sell it to a third party especially when they switch jobs. The app development will take 4-6months and perhaps more and I may have to bring in people after the app goes live. How do I keep the source to myself. Are there techniques companies use to guard their source. I foresee disabling pendrives and dvd writers on my development machines, but uploading data or attaching the code in one's mail would still be possible. My question is incomplete. But programmers who have been in my situation, please advice. How should I go about this? Building a team, maintaining code-secrecy,etc. I am looking forward to sign a secrecy contract with the employees if needed too. (Please add relevant tags) Update Thank you for all the answers. I certainly won't be disabling all USB ports and DVD writers now. But I think I should be logging activity(How exactly should I do that?) I am wary of scalpers who would join and then run off with the existing code. I haven't met any, but I have been advised to be wary of them. I would include a secrecy clause, but given this is a startup with almost no funding and in a highly competitive business niche with bigger players in the field, I doubt I would be able to detect or pursue any scalpers. How do I hire people I trust, when I don't know them personally. Their resume will be helpful but otherwise trust will develop only with time. But finally even if they do run away with the code, it is service that matters after the sale is made. So I am not really worried for the long term.

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• Unable to ping inside or outside network with default gateway 0.0.0.0

  - by agentroadkill

  I've been around here before and I could usually piece together everything to more or less get myself up and running, but this time I'm truly stumped. I'm trying to connect my new 14.04 install to a network, and I'm forced to be behind my college's router. Now I've tested the vary cable that is right now plugged into my Ubuntu box on a Windows, Mac OS X, and even my friend's Ubuntu 14.04 box, and they all connect no problem. I've been trying to track this down for about two days, but every time I get close to it, the bug jumps to some other piece of my connection. Anyway, as it sits ifconfig -a gives: eth2 Lninkencap:Ethernet HWaddr:00:1f:bc:08:31:1d inet addr:10.32.51.51 Bcast:10.32.51.155 Mask: 255.255.255.0 UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 RX bytes:0 TX bytes:0 as well as the local loopback, but I'm assuming that is not an issue here. sudo dhclient -v eth2 returns: Listening on LPF/<hardware address of my integrated NIC, above> Sending on <same> Sending on Socket/fallback DHCPREQUEST of 10.32.51.51 on eth2 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 (xid=0x6f4a66ba) <two more lines of same> DHCPDISCOVER on eth2 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 3 (xid=0x156f9fb4) <many more of above with varying intervals> No DHCPOFFERS received. Trying recorded lease 10.32.51.51 RTNETLINK answers: File exists bound: renewal in <large number> seconds If I then try ping 8.8.8.8, I get: connect: Network is unreachable /etc/resolv.conf only contains the two lines telling you not to edit it, while /etc/network/interfaces only has the loopback interface block in it. I've tried commenting out the "option rfc3442" line in /etc/dhcp/dhclient.conf which seemed to fix this issue for many people, as well as adding the line send vendor-class-indentifier "MSFT5.0" to dhclient.conf as well to tell the router I'm a windows box, in case they don't like Linux. Finally, route -n reveals: Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface 10.32.51.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth2 I would like to apologize in advance for the doubtless butchered text alignment, but I'm obviously typing this all by hand, reading from the terminal as I type commands. I'm hoping this is an interesting problem, and not something I blithely stumbled past in my (apparent) over-confidence. TIA! Quick addendum before posting: The activity light on the ethernet port are lit and one blinks during boot, but they rarely (and seemingly randomly) do so afterwards (both are dark) even while running dhclient in the foreground. When I had the Ubuntu box tethered to my MacBook earlier, I got what looked like a normal power/uplink blinking pattern, but was unable to ping one from the other.

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• Got Samba, Got PyNeighbourhood but still no connection. What else do I need?

  - by Frank A

  I am sure I had already hit post before but then could only find it by backing through browser. Was it deleted? is the question too dumb, sorry that I do not know the right jargon just trying to get answers to my problem anyway have reworded stuff a bit This seems to be a number one requirement for lots of people and 2 months on from setting up my Ubuntu pc, I am still unable to get a lasting connection in either direction. Adding a windows pc to a network is so easy... just a few clicks and get on with using it all. Using all command approaches and modifying configuration files is hardly user friendly. Googling brings up thousands of solutions but mostly they are too techy or assume the user is fully aware of how to use Linux. I do realise that their must be a lot of flavours for connecting to networks. So far I have installed Samba and fiddled with its config file. The day I did all that it worked from XP to Ubuntu. When I came back two days later to transfer my data over it would not connect. Although the the share does show up in Windows (XP) My Network Places. Today I installed PyNeighbourhood and this shows the Ubuntu box and all of the shares I had created at some point on Ubuntu and it even shows this under the XP workgroup name. But instructions on setting the connection up seem to relate to an earlier version and nothing seems to work there either. (I unshared most of those test folders but they still show up her but that is another question. When I click on mount- I can only click on one on the Ubuntu machine, there is one with no name so I assume this to be my attempt to add one XP Shared drive using ipaddress, I get errors. (gksu:9767): Gtk-WARNING **: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "pixmap", (gksu:9767): Gtk-WARNING **: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "pixmap", (gksu:9767): Gtk-WARNING **: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "pixmap", (gksu:9767): Gtk-WARNING **: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "pixmap", mount error(6): No such device or address Refer to the mount.cifs(8) manual page (e.g. man mount.cifs) OK tried to find the manual referred to... only an old comment that manual would be produced for future versions. I saw in another thread that Winbind is needed as well or at least I assume as well? Totally lost again? Please help, what else needs to be installed to connect to win pcs on the network.

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• Tech Talk: Can we put "Simple" in Application Business Process Management?

  - by Tanu Sood

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} Customers are challenged with looking for answers to basic questions: Why can't it be simpler to connect applications in cloud to applications on-premise? How do I make my business more responsive and agile? How do I create end-to-end processes joining multiple applications? Tune in to this Tech Talk session with Amit Zavery, Vice President of Product Management for Oracle Fusion Middleware as he discusses the relevance and importance of business process management and how Oracle BPM Suite is benefiting customers across all industries. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} For other Fusion Middleware talks, subscribe to Fusion Middleware Radio today and visit us on oracle.com

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• What economic books would you suggest for learning about economic valuation of goods and simulations thereof?

  - by Rushyo

  I'm looking to create an economic model for a game based on goods created procedurally. Every natural resource and produced good would be procedurally generated, with certain goods being assigned certain uses. Fakesium might be used for the production of Weapon A and produced from Fakesium factories which use Dilithium and Widgets as reagents, where Widgets are also the product of Foo and Bar The problem is not creating the resources and their various production utlities - but getting the game's AI empires and merchants to (Addendum: somewhat) correctly value the goods according to their scarcity, utility and production costs. I need to create a simulation of goods which allows the various game factions to assign a common value denominator (credits) to each resource, depending on how much its worth to that empire. I see the simulation being something like: "I have a high requirement for Weapon A. Since I don't have much of Fakesium, which is needed for Weapon A - I must have a high demand for Fakesium. If I can acquire Fakesium, devalue it. If not, increase its value - and also increase demand for Dilithium and Widgets too." This is very naive - because it may be much much cheaper for the empire to simply purchase Dilithium and Widgets directly rather than purchasing Fakesium, for example. Another example is two resources might allow the creation of Weapon A (Fakesium and Lieron), so we'd need to consider that. I've been scratching my head over the problem and it keeps growing. By the time the player joins the world, I'd expect enough iterations of this process to have occurred that prices would have largely normalised - and would then only trigger rarely to compensate for major changes (eg. if the player blows up the world's only Foo mine!) Could anyone suggest resources (books, largely) which outline this style of modelling, preferably in the context of simulations? Since this problem would never occur outside fantasy worlds, I figured this is probably the most likely place to find people who have encountered similar problems and I'm sure there's people who know of good places for Games Developers to start looking at less specific economic theory too. Additionally, does anyone know of any developers with blogs whose games or research applications perform similar modelling? EDIT: I think I should underline that I'm not looking for optimal solutions. I'm looking to make the actors impulsive - making rudimentary decisions based on fuzzy inputs about what they care about or don't. I'm aiming to understand the problem area better not derive answers. All the textbooks I've found seem to be about real-world economics or how to solve complex theoretical problems, neither of which are terribly relevant to the actor's decision making.

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• Big-name School for Undergrad Students

  - by itaiferber

  As a soon-to-be graduating high school senior in the U.S., I'm going to be facing a tough decision in a few months: which college should I go to? Will it be worth it to go to Cornell or Stanford or Carnegie Mellon (assuming I get in, of course) to get a big-name computer science degree, internships, and connections with professors, while taking on massive debt; or am I better off going to SUNY Binghamton (probably the best state school in New York) and still get a pretty decent education while saving myself from over a hundred-thousand dollars worth of debt? Yes, I know questions like this has been asked before (namely here and here), but please bear with me because I haven't found an answer that fits my particular situation. I've read the two linked questions above in depth, but they haven't answered what I want to know: Yes, I understand that going to a big-name college can potentially get me connected with some wonderful professors and leaders in the field, but on average, how does that translate financially? I mean, will good connections pay off so well that I'd be easily getting rid of over a hundred-thousand dollars of debt? And how does the fact that I can get a fifth-years master's degree at Carnegie Mellon play into the equation? Will the higher degree right off the bat help me get a better-paying job just out of college, or will the extra year only put me further into debt? Not having to go to graduate school to get a comparable degree will, of course, be a great financial relief, but will getting it so early give it any greater worth? And if I go to SUNY Binghamton, which is far lesser-known than what I've considered (although if there are any alumni out there who want to share their experience, I would greatly appreciate it), would I be closing off doors that would potentially offset my short-term economic gain with long-term benefits? Essentially, is the short-term benefit overweighed by a potential long-term loss? The answers to these questions all tie in to my final college decision (again, permitting I make it to these schools), so I hope that asking the skilled and knowledgeable people of the field will help me make the right choice (if there is such a thing). Also, please note: I'm in a rather peculiar situation where I can't pay for college without taking out a bunch of loans, but will be getting little to no financial aid (likely federal or otherwise). I don't want to elaborate on this too much (so take it at face value), but this is mainly the reason I'm asking the question. Thanks a lot! It means a lot to me.

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• Registering domain during christmas holydays

  - by arkascha

  One of the domain names I tried to register previously has been blocked by a domain grabber two days prior to my own attempt. That was about 1 year ago. The attempt to buy the domain from that person failed due to a totally exaggerated price. So I dropped the issue and watched the domain (offered at sedo.com). As expected there were no more offers, the domain was not sold. Now I learn from the whois database that the registration of that domain name ends on 25.12.2012 (christmas holyday). This raises two questions for me, I fail to find reliable answers on the internet. So maybe someone experienced here can drop a statement or a hint: is it reasonable that the domain name in question really will be free again when that date mentioned in the whois database up to when the domain is registered has passed? I certainly know that the registration can be prolonged, that is not what I mean. I expect (hope) that that domain grabber does not extend the registration, since it costs money and effort and he failed to sell the domain. Provided this is the case and the domain registration is not prolonged, is that date mentioned reliable? Or might it just be some 'default' date? I would like to try to register that domain name as soon as it is unregistered. Since that domain grabber registered that domain only two days before my own registration attempt I would like to prevent such annoying interference next time. So I ask myself: is it possible to register a domain name on a holyday? I mean not to send an email to my provider to do so on that day or before, but to actually have to process taking place as not to wait for 1-2 days after the unregistration? My own provider which I am very happy with does not offer such service on a holyday (which is perfectly understandable). They are 'still checking' if they can offer something automatic. I researched and did not find an answer to the question if that is possible at all. Is an autoomatic registration attempt on a holyday possible? Where can I do that? Is that reliable? Thanks for any reply!

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• How to make sprint planning fun

  - by Jacob Spire

  Not only are our sprint planning meetings not fun, they're downright dreadful. The meetings are tedious, and boring, and take forever (a day, but it feels like a lot longer). The developers complain about it, and dread upcoming plannings. Our routine is pretty standard (user story inserted into sprint backlog by priority story is taken apart to tasks tasks are estimated in hours repeat), and I can't figure out what we're doing wrong. How can we make the meetings more enjoyable? ... Some more details, in response to requests for more information: Why are the backlog items not inserted and prioritized before sprint kickoff? User stories are indeed prioritized; we have no idea how long they'll take until we break them down into tasks! From the (excellent) answers here, I see that maybe we shouldn't estimate tasks at all, only the user stories. The reason we estimate tasks (and not stories) is because we've been getting story-estimates terribly wrong -- but I guess that's the subject for an altogether different question. Why are developers complaining? Meetings are long. Meetings are monotonous. Story after story, task after task, struggling (yes, struggling) to estimate how long it will take and what it involves. Estimating tasks makes user-story-estimation seem pointless. The longer the meeting, the less focus in the room. The less focused colleagues are, the longer the meeting takes. A recursive hate-spiral develops. We've considered splitting the meeting into two days in order to keep people focused, but the developers wouldn't hear of it. One day of planning is bad enough; now we'll have two?! Part of our problem is that we go into very small detail (in order to get more accurate estimations). But when we estimate roughly, we go way off the mark! To sum up the question: What are we doing wrong? What additional ways are there to make the meeting generally more enjoyable?

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• "static" as a semantic clue about statelessness?

  - by leoger

  this might be a little philosophical but I hope someone can help me find a good way to think about this. I've recently undertaken a refactoring of a medium sized project in Java to go back and add unit tests. When I realized what a pain it was to mock singletons and statics, I finally "got" what I've been reading about them all this time. (I'm one of those people that needs to learn from experience. Oh well.) So, now that I'm using Spring to create the objects and wire them around, I'm getting rid of static keywords left and right. (If I could potentially want to mock it, it's not really static in the same sense that Math.abs() is, right?) The thing is, I had gotten into the habit of using static to denote that a method didn't rely on any object state. For example: //Before import com.thirdparty.ThirdPartyLibrary.Thingy; public class ThirdPartyLibraryWrapper { public static Thingy newThingy(InputType input) { new Thingy.Builder().withInput(input).alwaysFrobnicate().build(); } } //called as... ThirdPartyLibraryWrapper.newThingy(input); //After public class ThirdPartyFactory { public Thingy newThingy(InputType input) { new Thingy.Builder().withInput(input).alwaysFrobnicate().build(); } } //called as... thirdPartyFactoryInstance.newThingy(input); So, here's where it gets touchy-feely. I liked the old way because the capital letter told me that, just like Math.sin(x), ThirdPartyLibraryWrapper.newThingy(x) did the same thing the same way every time. There's no object state to change how the object does what I'm asking it to do. Here are some possible answers I'm considering. Nobody else feels this way so there's something wrong with me. Maybe I just haven't really internalized the OO way of doing things! Maybe I'm writing in Java but thinking in FORTRAN or somesuch. (Which would be impressive since I've never written FORTRAN.) Maybe I'm using staticness as a sort of proxy for immutability for the purposes of reasoning about code. That being said, what clues should I have in my code for someone coming along to maintain it to know what's stateful and what's not? Perhaps this should just come for free if I choose good object metaphors? e.g. thingyWrapper doesn't sound like it has state indepdent of the wrapped Thingy which may itself be mutable. Similarly, a thingyFactory sounds like it should be immutable but could have different strategies that are chosen among at creation. I hope I've been clear and thanks in advance for your advice!

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• What's Bringing SharePoint 2007 Server to a hault?

  - by juanlarios

  I've been having issues with my teste environment and I'm hoping someone has run into this problem and can point me in the right direction. I noticed: SharePoint Server Memory is through the roof at times and so is the CPU usage. Most of CPU usage is a sql proccess. Running out of disk space all the time. I looked in the Logs located in the 12 hive and sure enough I have 1G log files that are hard to open because of the size. The following are the 3 error messages that are flooding my SharePoint logs:   04/05/2010 16:02:36.99     OWSTIMER.EXE (0x0B94)                       0x0BA4    Windows SharePoint Services       Timer                             5uuf    Monitorable    The previous instance of the timer job 'Variations Propagate Page Job Definition', id '{F9A73EB4-90FE-4574-AD99-B4034056F915}' for service '{F89169F9-707B-4588-9ED0-E6D399FE5E3D}' is still running, so the current instance will be skipped.  Consider increasing the interval between jobs.    04/05/2010 15:59:51.51     OWSTIMER.EXE (0x0B94)                       0x0BA4    Windows SharePoint Services       Timer                             5uuf    Monitorable    The previous instance of the timer job 'Profile Synchronization', id '{A05E3439-8DCD-449A-9D9E-46D601CACAA2}' for service '{F89169F9-707B-4588-9ED0-E6D399FE5E3D}' is still running, so the current instance will be skipped.  Consider increasing the interval between jobs.     04/05/2010 15:56:25.53     OWSTIMER.EXE (0x0B94)                       0x0BA4    Windows SharePoint Services       Timer                             5uuf    Monitorable    The previous instance of the timer job 'Scheduled Unpublish', id '{6298F93F-388D-46B9-809E-CEDBB8659661}' for service '{F89169F9-707B-4588-9ED0-E6D399FE5E3D}' is still running, so the current instance will be skipped.  Consider increasing the interval between jobs.     04/05/2010 15:54:14.73     OWSTIMER.EXE (0x0B94)                       0x0BA4    Windows SharePoint Services       Timer                             5uuf    Monitorable    The previous instance of the timer job 'Config Refresh', id '{C42DA970-3DA3-4AA2-94E5-8499C5B80A3E}' for service '{7F6D2CBE-8071-4A30-B313-7C9989FC2D87}' is still running, so the current instance will be skipped.  Consider increasing the interval between jobs.       I'm googling around but haven't found much. I know one other person posted something about this back in 2008, but no answers were reached. I have already checked the databases to see if any of them have gone offline for whatever reason, but from SQL everything is fine. I recently re-created an SSP and deleted an old ssp. So I thought maybe that was causing it, and who knows? maybe that causes some of the problems or maybe all. I'm running configuration wizard and see if anything changes. Please if someone has had similar issues let me know.

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• Ray Picking Problems

  - by A Name I Haven't Decided On

  I've read so many answers on here about how to do Ray Picking, that I thought I had the idea of it down. But when I try to implement it in my game, I get garbage. I'm working with LWJGL. Here's the code: public static Ray getPick(int mouseX, int mouseY){ glPushMatrix(); //Setting up the Mouse Clip Vector4f mouseClip = new Vector4f((float)mouseX * 2 / 960f - 1, 1 - (float)mouseY * 2 / 640f ,0 ,1); //Loading Matrices FloatBuffer modMatrix = BufferUtils.createFloatBuffer(16); FloatBuffer projMatrix = BufferUtils.createFloatBuffer(16); glGetFloat(GL_MODELVIEW_MATRIX, modMatrix); glGetFloat(GL_PROJECTION_MATRIX, projMatrix); //Assigning Matrices Matrix4f proj = new Matrix4f(); Matrix4f model = new Matrix4f(); model.load(modMatrix); proj.load(projMatrix); //Multiplying the Projection Matrix by the Model View Matrix Matrix4f tempView = new Matrix4f(); Matrix4f.mul(proj, model, tempView); tempView.invert(); //Getting the Camera Position in World Space. The 4th Column of the Model View Matrix. model.invert(); Point cameraPos = new Point(model.m30, model.m31, model.m32); //Theoretically getting the vector the Picking Ray goes Vector4f rayVector = new Vector4f(); Matrix4f.transform(tempView, mouseClip, rayVector); rayVector.translate((float)-cameraPos.getX(),(float) -cameraPos.getY(),(float) -cameraPos.getZ(), 0f); rayVector.normalise(); glPopMatrix(); //This Basically Spits out a value that changes as the Camera moves. //When the Mouse moves, the values change around 0.001 points from screen edge to edge. System.out.format("Vector: %f %f %f%n", rayVector.x, rayVector.y, rayVector.z); //return new Ray(cameraPos, rayVector); return null; } I don't really know why this isn't working. I was hoping some more experienced eyes might be able to help me out. I can get the camera position like a champ, it's the vector the rays going in that I can't seem to get right. Thanks.

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• An invitation to join a JDeveloper and ADF productivity clinic (and more!) at KScope

  - by Chris Muir

  Would you like a chance to influence Oracle's decisions on tool usability and productivity? If you're attending ODTUG's Kaleidoscope conference this year in San Antonio, Oracle would like to invite you to participate in our Usability Activity Research and separately our JDeveloper and ADF Productivity Clinics with our experienced user experience teams.  The teams are keen to hear what you have to say about your experiences with our tools in general and specifically JDeveloper and ADF.  The details of each event are described below. Invitation to Usability Activity - Sunday June 24th to Wednesday June 27th Oracle is constantly working on new tools and new features for developers, and invites YOU to become a key part of the process!  As a special addition to Kscope 12, Oracle will be conducting onsite usability research in the Alyssum room, from Sunday June 24 to Wednesday June 27. Usability activities are scheduled ahead of time for participants' convenience.  If you would like to take part, please fill out this form to let us know of the session(s) that you would like to attend and your development experience. You will be emailed with your scheduled session before the start of the conference. JDeveloper and ADF Productivity Clinic - Thursday June 28th Are you concerned that Java, Oracle ADF or JDeveloper is difficult? Is JDeveloper making you jump through hoops?  Do you hate a particular dialog or feature of JDeveloper? Well, come and get things off your chest! Oracle is hosting a product management and user experience clinic where we want to hear about your issues and concerns. What's difficult to use?  What doesn't work the way you want, and how would you want it to work?  What isn't behaving like your current favorite tool?  If we can't help on you the spot, we'll take your feedback and use it to improve the product experience.  A great opportunity to get answers, or get improvements. Drop by the Alyssum room, anytime from 8:30 to 10:30 on Thursday, June 28. We look forward to seeing you at KScope soon! 

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• Has test driven development (TDD) actually benefited a real world project?

  - by James

  I am not new to coding. I have been coding (seriously) for over 15 years now. I have always had some testing for my code. However, over the last few months I have been learning test driven design/development (TDD) using Ruby on Rails. So far, I'm not seeing the benefit. I see some benefit to writing tests for some things, but very few. And while I like the idea of writing the test first, I find I spend substantially more time trying to debug my tests to get them to say what I really mean than I do debugging actual code. This is probably because the test code is often substantially more complicated than the code it tests. I hope this is just inexperience with the available tools (RSpec in this case). I must say though, at this point, the level of frustration mixed with the disappointing lack of performance is beyond unacceptable. So far, the only value I'm seeing from TDD is a growing library of RSpec files that serve as templates for other projects/files. Which is not much more useful, maybe less useful, than the actual project code files. In reading the available literature, I notice that TDD seems to be a massive time sink up front, but pays off in the end. I'm just wondering, are there any real world examples? Does this massive frustration ever pay off in the real world? I really hope I did not miss this question somewhere else on here. I searched, but all the questions/answers are several years old at this point. It was a rare occasion when I found a developer who would say anything bad about TDD, which is why I have spent as much time on this as I have. However, I noticed that nobody seems to point to specific real-world examples. I did read one answer that said the guy debugging the code in 2011 would thank you for have a complete unit testing suite (I think that comment was made in 2008). So, I'm just wondering, after all these years, do we finally have any examples showing the payoff is real? Has anybody actually inherited or gone back to code that was designed/developed with TDD and has a complete set of unit tests and actually felt a payoff? Or did you find that you were spending so much time trying to figure out what the test was testing (and why it was important) that you just tossed out the whole mess and dug into the code?

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• Are closures with side-effects considered "functional style"?

  - by Giorgio

  Many modern programming languages support some concept of closure, i.e. of a piece of code (a block or a function) that Can be treated as a value, and therefore stored in a variable, passed around to different parts of the code, be defined in one part of a program and invoked in a totally different part of the same program. Can capture variables from the context in which it is defined, and access them when it is later invoked (possibly in a totally different context). Here is an example of a closure written in Scala: def filterList(xs: List[Int], lowerBound: Int): List[Int] = xs.filter(x => x >= lowerBound) The function literal x => x >= lowerBound contains the free variable lowerBound, which is closed (bound) by the argument of the function filterList that has the same name. The closure is passed to the library method filter, which can invoke it repeatedly as a normal function. I have been reading a lot of questions and answers on this site and, as far as I understand, the term closure is often automatically associated with functional programming and functional programming style. The definition of function programming on wikipedia reads: In computer science, functional programming is a programming paradigm that treats computation as the evaluation of mathematical functions and avoids state and mutable data. It emphasizes the application of functions, in contrast to the imperative programming style, which emphasizes changes in state. and further on [...] in functional code, the output value of a function depends only on the arguments that are input to the function [...]. Eliminating side effects can make it much easier to understand and predict the behavior of a program, which is one of the key motivations for the development of functional programming. On the other hand, many closure constructs provided by programming languages allow a closure to capture non-local variables and change them when the closure is invoked, thus producing a side effect on the environment in which they were defined. In this case, closures implement the first idea of functional programming (functions are first-class entities that can be moved around like other values) but neglect the second idea (avoiding side-effects). Is this use of closures with side effects considered functional style or are closures considered a more general construct that can be used both for a functional and a non-functional programming style? Is there any literature on this topic? IMPORTANT NOTE I am not questioning the usefulness of side-effects or of having closures with side effects. Also, I am not interested in a discussion about the advantages / disadvantages of closures with or without side effects. I am only interested to know if using such closures is still considered functional style by the proponent of functional programming or if, on the contrary, their use is discouraged when using a functional style.

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• Coherence Data Guarantees for Data Reads - Basic Terminology

  - by jpurdy

  When integrating Coherence into applications, each application has its own set of requirements with respect to data integrity guarantees. Developers often describe these requirements using expressions like "avoiding dirty reads" or "making sure that updates are transactional", but we often find that even in a small group of people, there may be a wide range of opinions as to what these terms mean. This may simply be due to a lack of familiarity, but given that Coherence sits at an intersection of several (mostly) unrelated fields, it may be a matter of conflicting vocabularies (e.g. "consistency" is similar but different in transaction processing versus multi-threaded programming). Since almost all data read consistency issues are related to the concept of concurrency, it is helpful to start with a definition of that, or rather what it means for two operations to be concurrent. Rather than implying that they occur "at the same time", concurrency is a slightly weaker statement -- it simply means that it can't be proven that one event precedes (or follows) the other. As an example, in a Coherence application, if two client members mutate two different cache entries sitting on two different cache servers at roughly the same time, it is likely that one update will precede the other by a significant amount of time (say 0.1ms). However, since there is no guarantee that all four members have their clocks perfectly synchronized, and there is no way to precisely measure the time it takes to send a given message between any two members (that have differing clocks), we consider these to be concurrent operations since we can not (easily) prove otherwise. So this leads to a question that we hear quite frequently: "Are the contents of the near cache always synchronized with the underlying distributed cache?". It's easy to see that if an update on a cache server results in a message being sent to each near cache, and then that near cache being updated that there is a window where the contents are different. However, this is irrelevant, since even if the application reads directly from the distributed cache, another thread update the cache before the read is returned to the application. Even if no other member modifies a cache entry prior to the local near cache entry being updated (and subsequently read), the purpose of reading a cache entry is to do something with the result, usually either displaying for consumption by a human, or by updating the entry based on the current state of the entry. In the former case, it's clear that if the data is updated faster than a human can perceive, then there is no problem (and in many cases this can be relaxed even further). For the latter case, the application must assume that the value might potentially be updated before it has a chance to update it. This almost aways the case with read-only caches, and the solution is the traditional optimistic transaction pattern, which requires the application to explicitly state what assumptions it made about the old value of the cache entry. If the application doesn't want to bother stating those assumptions, it is free to lock the cache entry prior to reading it, ensuring that no other threads will mutate the entry, a pessimistic approach. The optimistic approach relies on what is sometimes called a "fuzzy read". In other words, the application assumes that the read should be correct, but it also acknowledges that it might not be. (I use the qualifier "sometimes" because in some writings, "fuzzy read" indicates the situation where the application actually sees an original value and then later sees an updated value within the same transaction -- however, both definitions are roughly equivalent from an application design perspective). If the read is not correct it is called a "stale read". Going back to the definition of concurrency, it may seem difficult to precisely define a stale read, but the practical way of detecting a stale read is that is will cause the encompassing transaction to roll back if it tries to update that value. The pessimistic approach relies on a "coherent read", a guarantee that the value returned is not only the same as the primary copy of that value, but also that it will remain that way. In most cases this can be used interchangeably with "repeatable read" (though that term has additional implications when used in the context of a database system). In none of cases above is it possible for the application to perform a "dirty read". A dirty read occurs when the application reads a piece of data that was never committed. In practice the only way this can occur is with multi-phase updates such as transactions, where a value may be temporarily update but then withdrawn when a transaction is rolled back. If another thread sees that value prior to the rollback, it is a dirty read. If an application uses optimistic transactions, dirty reads will merely result in a lack of forward progress (this is actually one of the main risks of dirty reads -- they can be chained and potentially cause cascading rollbacks). The concepts of dirty reads, fuzzy reads, stale reads and coherent reads are able to describe the vast majority of requirements that we see in the field. However, the important thing is to define the terms used to define requirements. A quick web search for each of the terms in this article will show multiple meanings, so I've selected what are generally the most common variations, but it never hurts to state each definition explicitly if they are critical to the success of a project (many applications have sufficiently loose requirements that precise terminology can be avoided).

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• What HTML and CSS markup is best for SEO for a list of questions (like on Stack Exchange sites)

  - by Oleg9

  On the StackOverflow a question block (in the q-list on the index page and so on) represented by the following html code: <div class="question-summary narrow tagged-interesting" id="question-summary-19832613"> <div onclick="window.location.href='/questions/19832613/how-to-display-only-transit-routesfor-trains-in-google-maps-api'" class="cp"> <div class="votes"> <div class="mini-counts">0</div> <div>votes</div> </div> <div class="status unanswered"> <div class="mini-counts">0</div> <div>answers</div> </div> <div class="views"> <div class="mini-counts">3</div> <div>views</div> </div> </div> <div class="summary"> <h3>...</h3> <div class="tags t-javascript t-google-maps t-google t-google-maps-api-3"> </div> <div class="started"> <a href="/questions/19832613/how-to-display-only-transit-routesfor-trains-in-google-maps-api" class="started-link"><span title="2013-11-07 09:52:29Z" class="relativetime">1 min ago</span></a> <a href="/users/1309392/shirish">Shirish</a> <span class="reputation-score" title="reputation score " dir="ltr">189</span> </div> </div> </div> It uses float positioning. My questions is: Would use of css styled tables be a better choice? (It's a table, isn't it?) Or it just depends on what are you prefer to use and doesn't affect the technical side (search engines or something)? The background information (such as number of views, votes etc.) comes first in the code. And I know that search engines have a limit at viewing each page. So would it better to place div's depending on their importance and then markup them on the page using css methods (like negative margins and absolute positioning)? Or it isn't so important in this instance?

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• Who Are the BI Users in Your Neighborhood?

  - by [email protected]

  By Brian Dayton on March 19, 2010 10:52 PM Forrester's Boris Evelson recently wrote a blog titled "Who are the BI Personas?" that I enjoyed for a number of reasons. It's a quick read, easy to grasp and (refreshingly) focuses on the users of technology VS the technology. As Evelson admits, he meant to keep the reference chart at a high-level because there are too many different permutations and additional sub-categories to make such a chart useful. For me, I wouldn't head into the technical permutations but more the contextual use of BI and the issues that users experience. My thoughts brought up more questions than answers such as: Context: - HOW: With the exception of the "Power User" persona--likely some sort of business or operations analyst? - WHEN: Are they using the information to make real-time decisions on the front lines (a customer service manager or shipping/logistics VP) or are they using this information for cumulative analysis and business planning? Or both? - WHERE: What areas of the business are more or less likely to rely on BI across an organization? Human Resources, Operations, Facilities, Finance--- and why are some more prone to use data-driven analysis than others? Issues: - DELAYS & DRAG ON IT?: One of the persona characteristics Evelson calls out is a reliance on IT. Every persona except for the "Power User" has a heavy reliance on IT for support. What business issues or delays does that cause to users? What is the drag on IT resources who could potentially be creating instead of reporting? - HOW MANY CLICKS: If BI is being used within the context of a transaction (sales manager looking for upsell opportunities as an example) is that person getting the information within the context of that action or transaction? Or are they minimizing screens, logging into another application or reporting tool, running queries, etc.? Who are the BI Users in your neighborhood or line of business? Do Evelson's personas resonate--and do the tools that he calls out (he refers to it as "BI Style") resonate with what your personas have or need? Finally, I'm very interested if BI use is viewed as a bolt-on...or an integrated part of your daily enterprise processes?

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• Do I need to go to a big-name university?

  - by itaiferber

  As a soon-to-be graduating high school senior in the U.S., I'm going to be facing a tough decision in a few months: which college should I go to? Will it be worth it to go to Cornell or Stanford or Carnegie Mellon (assuming I get in, of course) to get a big-name computer science degree, internships, and connections with professors, while taking on massive debt; or am I better off going to SUNY Binghamton (probably the best state school in New York) and still get a pretty decent education while saving myself from over a hundred-thousand dollars worth of debt? Yes, I know questions like this has been asked before (namely here and here), but please bear with me because I haven't found an answer that fits my particular situation. I've read the two linked questions above in depth, but they haven't answered what I want to know: Yes, I understand that going to a big-name college can potentially get me connected with some wonderful professors and leaders in the field, but on average, how does that translate financially? I mean, will good connections pay off so well that I'd be easily getting rid of over a hundred-thousand dollars of debt? And how does the fact that I can get a fifth-years master's degree at Carnegie Mellon play into the equation? Will the higher degree right off the bat help me get a better-paying job just out of college, or will the extra year only put me further into debt? Not having to go to graduate school to get a comparable degree will, of course, be a great financial relief, but will getting it so early give it any greater worth? And if I go to SUNY Binghamton, which is far lesser-known than what I've considered (although if there are any alumni out there who want to share their experience, I would greatly appreciate it), would I be closing off doors that would potentially offset my short-term economic gain with long-term benefits? Essentially, is the short-term benefit overweighed by a potential long-term loss? The answers to these questions all tie in to my final college decision (again, permitting I make it to these schools), so I hope that asking the skilled and knowledgeable people of the field will help me make the right choice (if there is such a thing). Also, please note: I'm in a rather peculiar situation where I can't pay for college without taking out a bunch of loans, but will be getting little to no financial aid (likely federal or otherwise). I don't want to elaborate on this too much (so take it at face value), but this is mainly the reason I'm asking the question. Thanks a lot! It means a lot to me.

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• Generating tileable terrain using Perlin Noise [duplicate]

  - by terrorcell

  This question already has an answer here: How do you generate tileable Perlin noise? 9 answers I'm having trouble figuring out the solution to this particular algorithm. I'm using the Perlin Noise implementation from: https://code.google.com/p/mikeralib/source/browse/trunk/Mikera/src/main/java/mikera/math/PerlinNoise.java Here's what I have so far: for (Chunk chunk : chunks) { PerlinNoise noise = new PerlinNoise(); for (int y = 0; y < CHUNK_SIZE_HEIGHT; ++y) { for (int x = 0; x < CHUNK_SIZE_WIDTH; ++x) { int index = get1DIndex(y, CHUNK_SIZE_WIDTH, x); float val = 0; for (int i = 2; i <= 32; i *= i) { double n = noise.tileableNoise2(i * x / (float)CHUNK_SIZE_WIDTH, i * y / (float)CHUNK_SIZE_HEIGHT, CHUNK_SIZE_WIDTH, CHUNK_SIZE_HEIGHT); val += n / i; } // chunk tile at [index] gets set to the colour 'val' } } } Which produces something like this: Each chunk is made up of CHUNK_SIZE number of tiles, and each tile has a TILE_SIZE_WIDTH/HEIGHT. I think it has something to do with the inner-most for loop and the x/y co-ords given to the noise function, but I could be wrong. Solved: PerlinNoise noise = new PerlinNoise(); for (Chunk chunk : chunks) { for (int y = 0; y < CHUNK_SIZE_HEIGHT; ++y) { for (int x = 0; x < CHUNK_SIZE_WIDTH; ++x) { int index = get1DIndex(y, CHUNK_SIZE_WIDTH, x); float val = 0; float xx = x * TILE_SIZE_WIDTH + chunk.x; float yy = y * TILE_SIZE_HEIGHT + chunk.h; int w = CHUNK_SIZE_WIDTH * TILE_SIZE_WIDTH; int h = CHUNK_SIZE_HEIGHT * TILE_SIZE_HEIGHT; for (int i = 2; i <= 32; i *= i) { double n = noise.tileableNoise2(i * xx / (float)w, i * yy / (float)h, w, h); val += n / i; } // chunk tile at [index] gets set to the colour 'val' } } }

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• How to explain bad software to non-technical people?

  - by mtutty

  In discussing software development with non-technical people (customers, business owners, project sponsors, etc.), I often resort to analogies and metaphors. It's relatively easy and effective to use a "house" or other metaphor for describing the size and complexity of new development. However, we often inherit someone else's code or data, and this approach doesn't seem to hold up as well when trying to explain why we're gutting something that already seems to work. Of course we can point to cycle time and cost to be saved in the future but this generally means nothing to business folks. I know doctors can say "just take this pill," but I'm not sure that software devs have the same authority. Ideas? EDIT: Let me add a bit to the discussion. The specific project I'm talking about has customers that don't realize (or care) about specific aspects of the system we're retiring (i.e., they think it was just fine): The system would save a NEW RECORD every time someone updated a field The system contained tables for reference data. These tables had new records added every day, even though they were duplicates of previous records. And there was no way to tie the reference data used for a particular case at the time it was closed. This is like 99% of the data in the old system. The field NAMES also have spaces, apostrophes and other inappropriate characters in them, making everything harder to work with. In addition to the incredible amount of duplicate data, they have around 1000 XLS files with data they want added to the system. Previously, they would do a spreadsheet for each case in the database, IN ADDITION TO what they typed into the database. Getting rid of this old, unneeded information and piping in the XLS data comprises about 80% of the total project effort, and was not something we could accurately predict. I'm trying to find a concrete way to describe how bad this thing was, mostly so that the customer will understand why the migration process has been so time-consuming. The actual coding was done pretty quickly and the new system works fine, but without the old data they won't be happy. Sorry to get into the weeds, but most of the answers I've seen so far are pretty basic scope/schedule/cost things. I've been doing this for 15 years, so this really is more of a reflective, philosophical question - but without some of the details it can be difficult to really appreciate the awful beauty of this problem.

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• Career advice: stay with PHP or start a new career in something else ( .Net?)

  - by Christian P

  I'm planning on moving to NY in 6-12 months tops, so I'm forced to find a new job. When I'm planing to start my life in another city it's also probably a good time to think about career changes. I've found a lot of different opinions about PHP vs .Net vs Java and this is not topic here. I don't want to start a new fight about which language is better. Knowing programming language is not the most important thing for being a software developer. To be a really good developer you need to know OOP, design patterns, testing... and language is just a tool to make things happen. So back to my question. I have mixed experience in IT - 1 year as an IT support guy (Windows administration and support), around 2 years of experience in embedded programming (VB.Net 2005) and for the last 2 years I'm working with PHP/MySQL. I have worked with Magento web shop, assisted in some projects in Symfony, modified few Drupal sites. My main concerns are following: Do I continue to improve my skills in PHP e.g. to start learning some major PHP framework like Zend, Symfony maybe get some PHP certification. Or do I start learning .NET or Java. I'm more familiar to .NET so I'll probably choose it if choice falls between .NET and Java ( or you could convince me to choose Java :). Career-wise, I don't know what is the best choice. Learning new framework and language is more time consuming then improving my existing skills in PHP. But with .NET you have a lot of possibilities (Windows 7 Phone development, Silverlight, WPF) and possibly bigger chances to find better jobs. PHP jobs are less payed then .NET, at least, according to my researches (correct me if I'm wrong). But if I start now with .NET I'm just a beginner and my salary will be low. I need at least 2+ years of experience in some language to even try to find some job that is paying higher than $50-60k in NY. My main goal in next 2-3 years is to try to find a job in a $60-80k category. Don't get me wrong, I'm not just chasing money, but money is an important factor when you're trying to start a family. I'm 27 years old and I feel that there isn't a lot of room for wrong decisions regarding my career, so any advice will be very welcome. Update Thank you all for spending time to help me with my problem. All of the answers and comments have been very helpful. I have decided to stick with PHP but also to learn C# and Silverlight 4. We'll see where the life will take me.

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