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• Preview Links and Images in Google Chrome

  - by Asian Angel

  Anyone who has used the CoolPreviews extension in Firefox knows how wonderful that preview window can be. Now you can get the same kind of functionality in Chrome with the ezLinkPreview extension. Note: Extension will not work on websites containing “frame buster” code (navigation to the actual URL will occur). Before Normally if you want to have a better look at a particular webpage the only option you have is to go ahead and open it in a new tab or window. But it would certainly be nice to be able to take a quick “sneak peek” before-hand… After As soon as you have finished installing the extension everything is ready to go…just refresh any pages open prior to installation and enjoy the preview goodness. When you hover your mouse near any link you will notice a small “Preview Button” appear with the letters “EZ” inside. A closer look at the “Preview Button”. Click on the “Preview Button” to open the popup window. Now you can get a very good idea of whether the page is worth visiting or not. Here is a closer look at the popup window. Notice that you can see the URL for the webpage and access a convenient set of buttons on the right side (Open to new tab, Pin to keep overlay open, and Close). You can even resize the window as desired to best suit your needs (you can actually grab any of the four corners to resize the popup window). It is also possible to open a “preview window” inside the popup window…you can see the “Preview Button” here… If you have Chrome maximized you can enjoy using a large sized “preview window”. Now that is nice! For those who may be curious you can see that ezLinkPreview works nicely with images too. Conclusion The ezLinkPreview extension provides a quick and simple way to preview links and/or images while you are browsing. If you are looking for similar functionality in Firefox then be sure to read our article on CoolPreviews here. Links Download the ezLinkPreview extension (Google Chrome Extensions) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Google Image Search Quick FixSubscribe to RSS Feeds in Chrome with a Single ClickFind a Website’s Actual Location with Chrome FlagsHow to Make Google Chrome Your Default BrowserEnable Auto-Paging Goodness in Google Chrome TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 QuicklyCode Provides Cheatsheets & Other Programming Stuff Download Free MP3s from Amazon Awe inspiring, inter-galactic theme (Win 7) Case Study – How to Optimize Popular Wordpress Sites Restore Hidden Updates in Windows 7 & Vista Iceland an Insurance Job?

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• Why Ultra-Low Power Computing Will Change Everything

  - by Tori Wieldt

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

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• Box2D Bicycle Wheels Motor Problem - Flash 2.1a

  - by Craig

  I have made a bicycle with Box2D using several polygons for the frame at different angles connected using weld joints, and I have revolute joints on the wheels with a motor. I have made some basic terrain (straight ground and a small ramp) and added keyboard input to control the bicycle with torque to balance it. All of this is done in with Box2D's Debug Draw. When the bicycle is on its back wheel but diagonally forward (kinda like this position - /) the motors just cause it go spinning backwards over when in reality it should either stay on its back wheel or go down onto both wheels. Here's my code the revolute joints: //Front Wheel Joint var frontWheelJointDef:b2RevoluteJointDef = new b2RevoluteJointDef(); frontWheelJointDef.Initialize(frontWheelBody, secondFrameBody, frontWheelBody.GetWorldCenter()); frontWheelJointDef.enableMotor=true; frontWheelJointDef.maxMotorTorque=10000; frontWheelJoint = _world.CreateJoint(frontWheelJointDef) as b2RevoluteJoint; //Rear Wheel Joint var rearWheelJointDef:b2RevoluteJointDef = new b2RevoluteJointDef(); rearWheelJointDef.Initialize(rearWheelBody, firstFrameBody, rearWheelBody.GetWorldCenter()); rearWheelJointDef.enableMotor=true; rearWheelJointDef.maxMotorTorque=10000; rearWheelJoint = _world.CreateJoint(rearWheelJointDef) as b2RevoluteJoint; And here's the relevant part of my update function: // up and down control wheels motor if (up) { motorSpeed-=0.5; } if (down) { motorSpeed += 0.5; } // left and right control cart torque if (left) { middleCentreFrameBody.ApplyTorque( -3); gearBody.ApplyTorque( -3); firstFrameBody.ApplyTorque( -3); secondFrameBody.ApplyTorque( -3); rearWheelToChainBody.ApplyTorque( -3); chainToFrontFrameBody.ApplyTorque( -3); topMiddleFrameBody.ApplyTorque( -3); } if (right) { middleCentreFrameBody.ApplyTorque( 3); gearBody.ApplyTorque( 3); firstFrameBody.ApplyTorque( 3); secondFrameBody.ApplyTorque( 3); rearWheelToChainBody.ApplyTorque( 3); chainToFrontFrameBody.ApplyTorque( 3); topMiddleFrameBody.ApplyTorque( 3); } // motor friction motorSpeed*=0.99; // motor max speed if (motorSpeed>100) { motorSpeed=100; } rearWheelJoint.SetMotorSpeed(motorSpeed); frontWheelJoint.SetMotorSpeed(motorSpeed); Any ideas what might be causing this? Thanks

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• Why is Spritebatch drawing my Textures out of order?

  - by Andrew

  I just started working with XNA Studio after programming 2D games in java. Because of this, I have absolutely no experience with Spritebatch and sprite sorting. In java, I could just layer the images by calling the draw methods in order. For a while, my Spritebatch was working fine in deferred sorting mode, but when I made a change to one of my textures, it suddenly started drawing them out of order. I have searched for a solution to this problem, but nothing seems to work. I have tried adding layer depths to the sprites and changing the sort mode to BackToFront or FrontToBack or even immediate, but nothing seems to work. Here is my drawing code: protected override void Draw(GameTime gameTime) { GraphicsDevice.Clear(Color.Gray); Game1.spriteBatch.Begin(SpriteSortMode.Deferred, BlendState.AlphaBlend, SamplerState.PointClamp, null, null); for (int x = 0; x < 5; x++) { for (int y = 0; y < 5; y++) { region[x, y].draw(((float)w / aw)); // Draws the Tile-Based background } } player.draw(spriteBatch, ((float)w / aw));//draws the character (This method is where the problem occurs) enemy.draw(spriteBatch, (float)w/aw); // draws a basic enemy Game1.spriteBatch.End(); base.Draw(gameTime); } player.draw method: public void draw(SpriteBatch sb, float ratio){ //draws the player base (The character without hair or equipment) sb.Draw(playerbase[0], new Rectangle((int)(pos.X - (24 * ratio)), (int)(pos.Y - (48 * ratio)), (int)(48 * ratio), (int)(48 * ratio)), new Rectangle(orientation * 48, animFrame * 48, 48, 48), Color.White,0,Vector2.Zero,SpriteEffects.None,0); //draws the player's hair sb.Draw(playerbase[3], new Rectangle((int)(pos.X - (24 * ratio)), (int)(pos.Y - (48 * ratio)), (int)(48 * ratio), (int)(48 * ratio)), new Rectangle(orientation * 48, animFrame * 48, 48, 48), Color.White, 0, Vector2.Zero, SpriteEffects.None, 0); //draws the player's shirt sb.Draw(equipment[0], new Rectangle((int)(pos.X - (24 * ratio)), (int)(pos.Y - (48 * ratio)), (int)(48 * ratio), (int)(48 * ratio)), new Rectangle(orientation * 48, animFrame * 48, 48, 48), Color.White, 0, Vector2.Zero, SpriteEffects.None, 0); //draws the player's pants sb.Draw(equipment[1], new Rectangle((int)(pos.X - (24 * ratio)), (int)(pos.Y - (48 * ratio)), (int)(48 * ratio), (int)(48 * ratio)), new Rectangle(orientation * 48, animFrame * 48, 48, 48), Color.White, 0, Vector2.Zero, SpriteEffects.None, 0); //draws the player's shoes sb.Draw(equipment[2], new Rectangle((int)(pos.X - (24 * ratio)), (int)(pos.Y - (48 * ratio)), (int)(48 * ratio), (int)(48 * ratio)), new Rectangle(orientation * 48, animFrame * 48, 48, 48), Color.White, 0, Vector2.Zero, SpriteEffects.None, 0); } the game has a top-down perspective much like the early legend of zelda games. It draws sections of the texture depending on which direction the character is facing and the animation frame. However, instead of drawing the character in the order the draw methods are called, it ends up drawing the character out of order. Please help me with this problem.

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• nautilus selected item color

  - by shantanu

  See in the image, selected item "build" colour is black as background colour. How can i change the selected item colour gtk3 theme's nautilus.css script Which section colour need to modify: /* desktop mode */ .nautilus-desktop.nautilus-canvas-item { color: @bg_color; text-shadow: 1 1 alpha (#001B33, 0.8); } .nautilus-desktop.nautilus-canvas-item:active { background-image: none; background-color: alpha (@selected_bg_color, 0.84); border-radius: 4; color: @fg_color; } .nautilus-desktop.nautilus-canvas-item:selected { background-image: none; background-color: alpha (@bg_color, 0.84); border-radius: 4; color: @selected_fg_color; } .nautilus-desktop.nautilus-canvas-item:active, .nautilus-desktop.nautilus-canvas-item:prelight, .nautilus-desktop.nautilus-canvas-item:selected { text-shadow: none; } /* browser window */ NautilusTrashBar.info, NautilusXContentBar.info, NautilusSearchBar.info, NautilusQueryEditor.info { /* this background-color controls the symbolic icon in the entry */ background-color: mix (@fg_color, @base_color, 0.3); border-radius: 0; border-style: solid; border-width: 0 1 1 1; } NautilusSearchBar .entry { } .nautilus-cluebar-label { color: @fg_color; font: bold; } #nautilus-search-button *:active, #nautilus-search-button *:active:prelight { color: @dark_fg_color; } NautilusFloatingBar { background-color: @info_bg_color; border-radius: 3 3 0 0; border-style: solid; border-width: 1; border-color: darker (@info_bg_color); -unico-border-gradient: none; } NautilusFloatingBar .button { -GtkButton-image-spacing: 0; -GtkButton-inner-border: 0; } /* sidebar */ NautilusWindow .sidebar, NautilusWindow .sidebar .view { background-color: @bg_color; color: @fg_color; } NautilusWindow .sidebar .frame { } NautilusWindow > GtkTable > .pane-separator { background-color: @bg_color; border-color: @bg_color; border-width: 0 0 0 0; border-style: solid; }

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• Only draw visible objects to the camera in 2D

  - by Deukalion

  I have Map, each map has an array of Ground, each Ground consists of an array of VertexPositionTexture and a texture name reference so it renders a texture at these points (as a shape through triangulation). Now when I render my map I only want to get a list of all objects that are visible in the camera. (So I won't loop through more than I have to) Structs: public struct Map { public Ground[] Ground { get; set; } } public struct Ground { public int[] Indexes { get; set; } public VertexPositionNormalTexture[] Points { get; set; } public Vector3 TopLeft { get; set; } public Vector3 TopRight { get; set; } public Vector3 BottomLeft { get; set; } public Vector3 BottomRight { get; set; } } public struct RenderBoundaries<T> { public BoundingBox Box; public T Items; } when I load a map: foreach (Ground ground in CurrentMap.Ground) { Boundaries.Add(new RenderBoundaries<Ground>() { Box = BoundingBox.CreateFromPoints(new Vector3[] { ground.TopLeft, ground.TopRight, ground.BottomLeft, ground.BottomRight }), Items = ground }); } TopLeft, TopRight, BottomLeft, BottomRight are simply the locations of each corner that the shape make. A rectangle. When I try to loop through only the objects that are visible I do this in my Draw method: public int Draw(GraphicsDevice device, ICamera camera) { BoundingFrustum frustum = new BoundingFrustum(camera.View * camera.Projection); // Visible count int count = 0; EffectTexture.World = camera.World; EffectTexture.View = camera.View; EffectTexture.Projection = camera.Projection; foreach (EffectPass pass in EffectTexture.CurrentTechnique.Passes) { pass.Apply(); foreach (RenderBoundaries<Ground> render in Boundaries.Where(m => frustum.Contains(m.Box) != ContainmentType.Disjoint)) { // Draw ground count++; } } return count; } When I try adding just one ground, then moving the camera so the ground is out of frame it still returns 1 which means it still gets draw even though it's not within the camera's view. Am I doing something or wrong or can it be because of my Camera? Any ideas why it doesn't work?

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• Indentify Codecs & Technical Information About Video Files

  - by DigitalGeekery

  Have you ever wanted to play an audio or video file but didn’t have the proper codec installed? Today we’ll show how to determine codecs, along with a host of other technical details about your media files with MediaInfo. Installation Download and install MediaInfo. You can find the download link at the bottom of the page. Note: When installing MediaInfo there is a recommended software bundle which you can opt out of by selecting Do not install option. Each recommended software choice may be different, like in this example it offers Spyware Terminator. The cool thing though is they use Open Candy which opts you out of the install. Just double check to make sure you’re not installing extra crapware. Using MediaInfo The first time you run MediaInfo it will display the Preferences window. There are various option such as language, output format, and whether or not you want MediaInfo to check for new versions. Click OK. Select a file or folder to analyze by clicking on the File or Folder icons on the left of the application window or by selecting File > Open from the menu. You can also drag and drop a file directly onto the application. MediaInfo will display details of your media file. In Basic view, you’ll see basic information. Notice in the example below the video and audio codecs, along with file size, running time of the media file, and even the application used to create the video file (Writing application).    You can switch to some of the other views by selecting View from the Menu and choosing form the dropdown list.   Sheet View will present the information a bit more clearly. You can see in the example below that the video and audio codec are listing in clearly identified columns. (AVC is often more commonly referred to H.264.)   Tree View is perhaps the most detailed. You can see from the example below the codec used for this AVI file is XviD.   Scrolling down even further you’ll see additional information like video and audio bit rates, frame rate, aspect ratio, and more.   In Basic View (and also in Sheet view) you can click to find a player for your file. In this instance with an MP4 file, it took me to the download page for Quicktime. This is by no means the only media player for this file, but if you are stuck for how to play a media file, this will forward you to a solution that works. You can do the same thing with Video codec. Click Go to the web site of this video codec to find a download.   MediaInfo is a simple but powerful tool that can be used to discover the details of a media file, or just to find a compatible codec. It works with most any video file type and is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Some Mac and Linux versions, however, are currently command line only. Download MediaInfo Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips How to Convert Videos to 3GP for Mobile PhonesFix for VLC Skipping and Lagging Playing High-Def Video FilesUsing VLC Player Under VistaUse Your Mac Mini as a Media Server Part 2How to Play .OGM Video Files in Windows Vista TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 2010 World Cup Schedule Boot Snooze – Reboot and then Standby or Hibernate Customize Everything Related to Dates, Times, Currency and Measurement in Windows 7 Google Earth replacement Icon (Icons we like) Build Great Charts in Excel with Chart Advisor tinysong gives a shortened URL for you to post on Twitter (or anywhere)

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• Unable to make properly work the Ralink rt3090 wifi card on my Lenovo B575 with Kubuntu 12.04 64bit

  - by Sebastien

  I look and tried many solution from many thread but I still unable to make this wifi card work properly (very slow, unable to connect to some wifi spot, etc.). I tried to compile the driver from the ralink website but it doesn't work. Tried to blacklist many mod, withou any result. So here are some command results, hope their help you help me: lspci sebastien@sebastien-portable:~$ lspci 00:00.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 14h Processor Root Complex 00:01.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI Wrestler [Radeon HD 6310] 00:01.1 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI Wrestler HDMI Audio [Radeon HD 6250/6310] 00:11.0 SATA controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 SATA Controller [AHCI mode] 00:12.0 USB controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB OHCI0 Controller 00:12.2 USB controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB EHCI Controller 00:13.0 USB controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB OHCI0 Controller 00:13.2 USB controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB EHCI Controller 00:14.0 SMBus: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SBx00 SMBus Controller (rev 42) 00:14.2 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA) (rev 40) 00:14.3 ISA bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 LPC host controller (rev 40) 00:14.4 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SBx00 PCI to PCI Bridge (rev 40) 00:14.5 USB controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB OHCI2 Controller 00:15.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SB700/SB800/SB900 PCI to PCI bridge (PCIE port 0) 00:15.2 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SB900 PCI to PCI bridge (PCIE port 2) 00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 12h/14h Processor Function 0 (rev 43) 00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 12h/14h Processor Function 1 00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 12h/14h Processor Function 2 00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 12h/14h Processor Function 3 00:18.4 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 12h/14h Processor Function 4 00:18.5 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 12h/14h Processor Function 6 00:18.6 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 12h/14h Processor Function 5 00:18.7 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 12h/14h Processor Function 7 02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 06) 03:00.0 Network controller: Ralink corp. RT3090 Wireless 802.11n 1T/1R PCIe lsmod sebastien@sebastien-portable:~$ lsmod Module Size Used by rt2800pci 18715 0 arc4 12529 2 rt2800lib 58925 1 rt2800pci crc_ccitt 12667 1 rt2800lib rt2x00pci 14577 1 rt2800pci rt2x00lib 55301 3 rt2800pci,rt2800lib,rt2x00pci mac80211 506816 3 rt2800lib,rt2x00pci,rt2x00lib cfg80211 205544 2 rt2x00lib,mac80211 eeprom_93cx6 12725 1 rt2800pci rt2860sta 864748 0 snd_hda_codec_conexant 62128 1 snd_hda_codec_hdmi 32474 1 uvcvideo 72627 0 rts5139 351143 0 snd_hda_intel 33773 4 videodev 98259 1 uvcvideo snd_hda_codec 127706 3 snd_hda_codec_conexant,snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_intel snd_hwdep 13668 1 snd_hda_codec psmouse 87692 0 v4l2_compat_ioctl32 17128 1 videodev serio_raw 13211 0 k10temp 13166 0 snd_pcm 97188 3 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec sp5100_tco 13791 0 i2c_piix4 13301 0 snd_seq_midi 13324 0 snd_rawmidi 30748 1 snd_seq_midi ideapad_laptop 18234 0 sparse_keymap 13890 1 ideapad_laptop rfcomm 47604 0 joydev 17693 0 snd_seq_midi_event 14899 1 snd_seq_midi bnep 18281 2 bluetooth 180104 10 rfcomm,bnep parport_pc 32866 0 ppdev 17113 0 snd_seq 61896 2 snd_seq_midi,snd_seq_midi_event snd_timer 29990 2 snd_pcm,snd_seq snd_seq_device 14540 3 snd_seq_midi,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq snd 78855 18 snd_hda_codec_conexant,snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec,snd_hwdep,snd_pcm,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq,snd_timer,snd_seq_device soundcore 15091 1 snd mac_hid 13253 0 snd_page_alloc 18529 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm lp 17799 0 parport 46562 3 parport_pc,ppdev,lp usbhid 47199 0 hid 99559 1 usbhid r8169 62099 0 radeon 804372 4 video 19596 0 wmi 19256 0 ttm 76949 1 radeon drm_kms_helper 46978 1 radeon drm 242038 6 radeon,ttm,drm_kms_helper i2c_algo_bit 13423 1 radeon iwconfig sebastien@sebastien-portable:~$ iwconfig lo no wireless extensions. wlan0 IEEE 802.11bgn ESSID:"4CE6763F0E0A" Mode:Managed Frequency:2.452 GHz Access Point: 4C:E6:76:3F:0E:0A Bit Rate=54 Mb/s Tx-Power=20 dBm Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off Power Management:off Link Quality=70/70 Signal level=-39 dBm Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0 Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:100 Missed beacon:0 eth0 no wireless extensions.

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• Tuning Default WorkManager - Advantages and Disadvantages

  - by Murali Veligeti

  Before discussing on Tuning Default WorkManager, lets have a brief introduction on What is Default WorkManger Before Weblogic Server 9.0 release, we had the concept of Execute Queues. WebLogic Server (before WLS 9.0), processing was performed in multiple execute queues. Different classes of work were executed in different queues, based on priority and ordering requirements, and to avoid deadlocks. In addition to the default execute queue, weblogic.kernel.default, there were pre-configured queues dedicated to internal administrative traffic, such as weblogic.admin.HTTP and weblogic.admin.RMI.Users could control thread usage by altering the number of threads in the default queue, or configure custom execute queues to ensure that particular applications had access to a fixed number of execute threads, regardless of overall system load. From WLS 9.0 release onwards WebLogic Server uses is a single thread pool (single thread pool which is called Default WorkManager), in which all types of work are executed. WebLogic Server prioritizes work based on rules you define, and run-time metrics, including the actual time it takes to execute a request and the rate at which requests are entering and leaving the pool.The common thread pool changes its size automatically to maximize throughput. The queue monitors throughput over time and based on history, determines whether to adjust the thread count. For example, if historical throughput statistics indicate that a higher thread count increased throughput, WebLogic increases the thread count. Similarly, if statistics indicate that fewer threads did not reduce throughput, WebLogic decreases the thread count. This new strategy makes it easier for administrators to allocate processing resources and manage performance, avoiding the effort and complexity involved in configuring, monitoring, and tuning custom executes queues. The Default WorkManager is used to handle thread management and perform self-tuning.This Work Manager is used by an application when no other Work Managers are specified in the application’s deployment descriptors. In many situations, the default Work Manager may be sufficient for most application requirements. WebLogic Server’s thread-handling algorithms assign each application its own fair share by default. Applications are given equal priority for threads and are prevented from monopolizing them. The default work-manager, as its name tells, is the work-manager defined by default.Thus, all applications deployed on WLS will use it. But sometimes, when your application is already in production, it's obvious you can't take your EAR / WAR, update the deployment descriptor(s) and redeploy it.The default work-manager belongs to a thread-pool, as initial thread-pool comes with only five threads, that's not much. If your application has to face a large number of hits, you may want to start with more than that.Well, that's quite easy. You have  two option to do so.1) Modify the config.xmlJust add the following line(s) in your server definition : <server> <name>AdminServer</name> <self-tuning-thread-pool-size-min>100</self-tuning-thread-pool-size-min> <self-tuning-thread-pool-size-max>200</self-tuning-thread-pool-size-max> [...] </server> 2) Adding some JVM parameters Add the following system property in setDomainEnv.sh/setDomainEnv.cmd or startWebLogic.sh/startWebLogic.cmd : -Dweblogic.threadpool.MinPoolSize=100 -Dweblogic.threadpool.MaxPoolSize=100 Reboot WLS and see the option has been taken into account . Disadvantage: So far its fine. But here there is an disadvantage in tuning Default WorkManager. Internally Weblogic Server has many work managers configured for different types of work.  if we run out of threads in the self-tuning pool(because of system property -Dweblogic.threadpool.MaxPoolSize) due to being undersized, then important work that WLS might need to do could be starved.  So, while limiting the self-tuning would limit the default WorkManager and internally it also limits all other internal WorkManagers which WLS uses.So the best alternative is to override the default WorkManager that means creating a WorkManager for the Application and assign the WorkManager for the application instead of tuning the Default WorkManager.

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• Guest blog: A Closer Look at Oracle Price Analytics by Will Hutchinson

  - by Takin Babaei

  Overview:  Price Analytics helps companies understand how much of each sale goes into discounts, special terms, and allowances. This visibility lets sales management see the panoply of discounts and start seeing whether each discount drives desired behavior. In Price Analytics monitors parts of the quote-to-order process, tracking quotes, including the whole price waterfall and seeing which result in orders. The “price waterfall” shows all discounts between list price and “pocket price”. Pocket price is the final price the vendor puts in its pocket after all discounts are taken. The value proposition: Based on benchmarks from leading consultancies and companies I have talked to, where they have studied the effects of discounting and started enforcing what many of them call “discount discipline”, they find they can increase the pocket price by 0.8-3%. Yes, in today’s zero or negative inflation environment, one can, through better monitoring of discounts, collect what amounts to a price rise of a few percent. We are not talking about selling more product, merely about collecting a higher pocket price without decreasing quantities sold. Higher prices fall straight to the bottom line. The best reference I have ever found for understanding this phenomenon comes from an article from the September-October 1992 issue of Harvard Business Review called “Managing Price, Gaining Profit” by Michael Marn and Robert Rosiello of McKinsey & Co. They describe the outsized impact price management has on bottom line performance compared to selling more product or cutting variable or fixed costs. Price Analytics manages what Marn and Rosiello call “transaction pricing”, namely the prices of a given transaction, as opposed to what is on the price list or pricing according to the value received. They make the point that if the vendor does not manage the price waterfall, customers will, to the vendor’s detriment. It also discusses its findings that in companies it studied, there was no correlation between discount levels and any indication of customer value. I urge you to read this article. What Price Analytics does: Price analytics looks at quotes the company issues and tracks them until either the quote is accepted or rejected or it expires. There are prebuilt adapters for EBS and Siebel as well as a universal adapter. The target audience includes pricing analysts, product managers, sales managers, and VP’s of sales, marketing, finance, and sales operations. It tracks how effective discounts have been, the win rate on quotes, how well pricing policies have been followed, customer and product profitability, and customer performance against commitments. It has the concept of price waterfall, the deal lifecycle, and price segmentation built into the product. These help product and sales managers understand their pricing and its effectiveness on driving revenue and profit. They also help understand how terms are adhered to during negotiations. They also help people understand what segments exist and how well they are adhered to. To help your company increase its profits and revenues, I urge you to look at this product. If you have questions, please contact me. Will HutchinsonMaster Principal Sales Consultant – Analytics, Oracle Corp. Will Hutchinson has worked in the business intelligence and data warehousing for over 25 years. He started building data warehouses in 1986 at Metaphor, advancing to running Metaphor UK’s sales consulting area. He also worked in A.T. Kearney’s business intelligence practice for over four years, running projects and providing training to new consultants in the IT practice. He also worked at Informatica and then Siebel, before coming to Oracle with the Siebel acquisition. He became Master Principal Sales Consultant in 2009. He has worked on developing ROI and TCO models for business intelligence for over ten years. Mr. Hutchinson has a BS degree in Chemical Engineering from Princeton University and an MBA in Finance from the University of Chicago.

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• Day 5 - Tada! My Game Menu Screen Graphics

  - by dapostolov

  So, tonight I took some time to mash up some graphics for my game menu screen. My artistic talent sucks...but here goes nothing...voila, my menu screen!! The Menu Screen The screen above is displaying 4 sprites, even though it looks like maybe 7... I guess one of the first things for me to test in the future is ... is it more memory efficient (and better frame rate) to draw one big background image OR tp paint the screen black, and place each sprite in set locations? To display the 4 sprites above, I borrowed my code from yesterday ... I know, tacky, but...I wanted to see it, feel it. Do you feel it? FEEL IT! (homer voice & shakes fist) Note: the menu items won't scale properly as it stands with this code, well pretty much they do nothing except look pretty... Paint.Net & Google Fun So how did I create that image above? Well, to create the background and 3 menu items I used Paint.Net. Basically, I scoured Google images for: a stone doorway, a stone pillar, an old book, a wizards hat, and...that's it pretty much it! I'll let you type in those searches and see if you can locate the images I used. I know, bad developer...but I figured since I modified the images considerably it doesn't count...well for a personal project it shouldn't count...*shrug* Anyhow, I extracted each key assest I wanted from each image and applied lots of matting, blurring, color changes, glow effects and such. Then, using my vivid imagination I placed / composed each of the layered assets into the mashed up the "scene" above. Pretty cool, eh? Hey, did you know, the cool mist effect is actually a fire rendition in Paint.net? I set it to black & white with opacity set next to nothing. I'm also very proud of the yellow "light" in the stone doorway. I drew that in and then applied gausian blur to it to give it the effect of light creeping out around the door and into the room...heheh. So did I achieve the dark, mysterious ritual as I stated in my design doc? I think I had a great stab at it! Maybe down the road I can get a real artist to crank out some quality graphics for the game... =) So, What's Next? Well, I don't have that animated brazier yet...however, I thought it would be even cooler if I can get that door pulsing that yellow light and it would be extremely cool to have the smoke / mist moving across the screen! Make the creative ideas stop!! (clutches head) haha! I'm having great fun working on this project =) I recommend others giving something like this a try, it's really fulfilling. OK. Tomorrow... I think I'm going to start creating some game / menu objects as per the design doc, maybe even get a custom mouse cursor up on the screen and handle a couple of mouse events, and lastly, maybe a feature to toggle a framerate display... D.

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• CacheAdapter 2.4 – Bug fixes and minor functional update

  - by Glav

  Note: If you are unfamiliar with the CacheAdapter library and what it does, you can read all about its awesome ability to utilise memory, Asp.Net Web, Windows Azure AppFabric and memcached caching implementations via a single unified, simple to use API from here and here.. The CacheAdapter library is receiving an update to version 2.4 and is currently available on Nuget here. Update: The CacheAdapter has actualy just had a minor revision to 2.4.1. This significantly increases the performance and reliability in memcached scenario under more extreme loads. General to moderate usage wont see any noticeable difference though. Bugs This latest version fixes a big that is only present in the memcached implementation and is only seen in rare, intermittent times (making i particularly hard to find). The bug is where a cache node would be removed from the farm when errors in deserialization of cached objects would occur due to serialised data not being read from the stream in entirety. The code also contains enhancements to better surface serialization exceptions to aid in the debugging process. This is also specifically targeted at the memcached implementation. This is important when moving from something like memory or Asp.Web caching mechanisms to memcached where the serialization rules are not as lenient. There are a few other minor bug fixes, code cleanup and a little refactoring. Minor feature addition In addition to this bug fix, many people have asked for a single setting to either enable or disable the cache.In this version, you can disable the cache by setting the IsCacheEnabled flag to false in the application configuration file. Something like the example below: <Glav.CacheAdapter.MainConfig> <setting name="CacheToUse" serializeAs="String"> <value>memcached</value> </setting> <setting name="DistributedCacheServers" serializeAs="String"> <value>localhost:11211</value> </setting> <setting name="IsCacheEnabled" serializeAs="String"> <value>False</value> </setting> </Glav.CacheAdapter.MainConfig> Your reasons to use this feature may vary (perhaps some performance testing or problem diagnosis). At any rate, disabling the cache will cause every attempt to retrieve data from the cache, resulting in a cache miss and returning null. If you are using the ICacheProvider with the delegate/Func<T> syntax to populate the cache, this delegate method will get executed every single time. For example, when the cache is disabled, the following delegate/Func<T> code will be executed every time: var data1 = cacheProvider.Get<SomeData>("cache-key", DateTime.Now.AddHours(1), () => { // With the cache disabled, this data access code is executed every attempt to // get this data via the CacheProvider. var someData = new SomeData() { SomeText = "cache example1", SomeNumber = 1 }; return someData; }); One final note: If you access the cache directly via the ICache instance, instead of the higher level ICacheProvider API, you bypass this setting and still access the underlying cache implementation. Only the ICacheProvider instance observes the IsCacheEnabled setting. Thanks to those individuals who have used this library and provided feedback. Ifyou have any suggestions or ideas, please submit them to the issue register on bitbucket (which is where you can grab all the source code from too)

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• How can I convert a 2D bitmap (Used for terrain) to a 2D polygon mesh for collision?

  - by Megadanxzero

  So I'm making an artillery type game, sort of similar to Worms with all the usual stuff like destructible terrain etc... and while I could use per-pixel collision that doesn't give me collision normals or anything like that. Converting it all to a mesh would also mean I could use an existing physics library, which would be better than anything I can make by myself. I've seen people mention doing this by using Marching Squares to get contours in the bitmap, but I can't find anything which mentions how to turn these into a mesh (Unless it refers to a 3D mesh with contour lines defining different heights, which is NOT what I want). At the moment I can get a basic Marching Squares contour which looks something like this (Where the grid-like lines in the background would be the Marching Squares 'cells'): That needs to be interpolated to get a smoother, more accurate result but that's the general idea. I had a couple ideas for how to turn this into a mesh, but many of them wouldn't work in certain cases, and the one which I thought would work perfectly has turned out to be very slow and I've not even finished it yet! Ideally I'd like whatever I end up using to be fast enough to do every frame for cases such as rapidly-firing weapons, or digging tools. I'm thinking there must be some kind of existing algorithm/technique for turning something like this into a mesh, but I can't seem to find anything. I've looked at some things like Delaunay Triangulation, but as far as I can tell that won't correctly handle concave shapes like the above example, and also wouldn't account for holes within the terrain. I'll go through the technique I came up with for comparison and I guess I'll see if anyone has a better idea. First of all interpolate the Marching Squares contour lines, creating vertices from the line ends, and getting vertices where lines cross cell edges (Important). Then, for each cell containing vertices create polygons by using 2 vertices, and a cell corner as the 3rd vertex (Probably the closest corner). Do this for each cell and I think you should have a mesh which accurately represents the original bitmap (Though there will only be polygons at the edges of the bitmap, and large filled in areas in between will be empty). The only problem with this is that it involves lopping through every pixel once for the initial Marching Squares, then looping through every cell (image height + 1 x image width + 1) at least twice, which ends up being really slow for any decently sized image...

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• Insurers Pushed to Transform Their Business

  - by Calvin Glenn

  Everyone in the P&C industry has heard it “We can’t do it.” “Nobody wants to do it.” “We can’t afford to do it.”  Unfortunately, what they’re referencing are the reasons many insurers are still trying to maintain their business processing on legacy policy administration systems, attempting to bide time until there is no other recourse but to give in, bite the bullet, and take on the monumental task of replacing an entire policy administration system (PAS). Just the thought of that project sends IT, Business Users and Management reeling. However, is that fear real?  It is a bit daunting when one realizes that a complete policy administration system replacement will touch most every function an insurer manages, from quoting and rating, to underwriting, distribution, and even customer service. With that, everyone has heard at least one horror story around a transformation initiative that has far exceeded budget and the promised implementation / go-live timeline.    But, does it have to be that hard?  Surely, in the age where a person can voice-activate their DVR to record a TV program from a cell phone, there has to be someone somewhere who’s figured out how to simplify this process. To be able to help insurers, of all sizes, transform and grow their business while also delivering on their overall objectives of providing speed to market, straight-through-processing for applications, quoting, underwriting, and simplified product development. Maybe we’re looking too hard and the answer is simple and straight-forward. Why replace the entire machine when all it really needs is a new part…a single enterprise rating system? This core, modular piece of the policy administration system is the foundation of product development and rate management that enables insurers to provide the right product at the right price to the right customer through the best channels at any given moment in time. The real benefit of a single enterprise rating system is the ability to deliver enhanced business capabilities, such as improved product management, streamlined underwriting, and speed to market. With these benefits, carriers have accomplished a portion of their overall transformation goal. Furthermore, lessons learned from the rating project can be applied to the bigger, down-the-road PAS project to support the successful completion of the overall transformation endeavor. At the recent Oracle OpenWorld Conference in San Francisco, information was shared with attendees about a recent “go-live” project from an Oracle Insurance Tier 1 insurer who did what is proposed above…replaced just the rating portion of their legacy policy administration system with Oracle Insurance Insbridge Rating and Underwriting.  This change provided the insurer greater flexibility to set rates that better reflect risk while enabling the company to support its market segment strategy. Using the Oracle Insurance Insbridge enterprise rating solution, the insurer was able to reduce processing time for agents and underwriters, gained the ability to support proprietary rating models and improved pricing accuracy.      There is mounting pressure on P&C insurers to produce growth and show net profitability in the midst of modest overall industry growth, large weather-related losses and intensifying competition for market share.  Insurers are also being asked to improve customer service, offer a differentiated value proposition and simplify insurance processes.  While the demands are many there is an easy answer…invest in and update the most mission critical application in your arsenal, the single enterprise rating system. Download the Podcast to listen to “Stand-Alone Rating Engine - Leading Force Behind Core Transformation Projects in the P&C Market,” a podcast originally recorded in October 2013. Related Resources: White Paper: Stand-Alone Rating Engine: Leading Force Behind Core Transformation Projects in the P&C Market Webcast On Demand: Stand-Alone Rating Engine and Core Transformation for P&C Insurers Don’t forget to keep up with us year-round: Facebook: www.facebook.com/oracleinsurance Twitter: www.twitter.com/oracleinsurance YouTube: www.youtube.com/oracleinsurance

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• Getting Started with Kinect for Windows.

  - by Vishal

  Hello folks,      Recently I got involved in a project for building a demo application for one of our customers with Kinect for Windows. Yes, something similar what Tom Cruise did in the movie Minority Report. Waving arms, moving stuff around, swipes, speech recognition, manipulating computer screens without even touching it. Pretty cool!!! The idea in the movie showed us how technology would be after 50 years from that day.   Minority Report Movie clip.           Well, that 50 years of time frame got squeezed and recently on Feb 1st 2012, Microsoft released the official Kinect for Windows SDK. That’s just 10 years from the movie release. Although, the product is in it early stages but with developer creativity and continuously improving hardware, those features shown in the movie are not very far away from becoming a reality. Soon after releasing the SDK, Microsoft again announced in March the release of its new Kinect for Windows SDK version 1.5 which is coming out in sometime May. More history about Kinect. Anyways, so for a newbie with Kinect, where would you start. Here is what I would suggest you can do. Watch the Kinect for Windows Quick start Series by Den Fernandez. Download the Kinect for Windows SDK and start playing around with the demos in it. It also comes with some basic Kinect documentation. Coding4Fun Kinect Projects | Lot many more videos and open sources projects information. Kinect for Windows Session at Techdays NL demo by Jesus Rodriguez. Book: Beginning Kinect Programming with the Microsoft Kinect SDK.  | I did go through few of the chapters in this book and based on that, it does talk deeply about core Kinect concepts but in very easy to understand way. I would definitely suggest this book for any Kinect developers. I liked the way it explained the Gestures recognition in Chapter 6. Buy your Kinect device from either Amazon or NewEgg. You will get it cheaper then buying it from Microsoft Store. Personally, I love Newegg.com as I never had any order related or shipping issues with them. I always hate developing UI application but well, you would need to get your hands dirty with WPF too in order to work with Kinect. So get started with WPF concepts too. I will keep adding stuff to the list once I come across them but so far the above list would definitely get you started building your first Kinect apps. Till then Happy Kinecting…!!!!! Thanks, Vishal Mody

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• How to port animation from one skeleton to another?

  - by shawn

  While I need to do this in a Blender3D modeler script, the math should be similar for other modelers or realtime engines. Blender3D specific terminology: Armature = skeleton EditBone = rest pose bone (stores the rest pose matrix) PoseBone = can store a different pose (animation matrix) for each frame of your animation I need to share animations (Blender Actions) between Armatures which have EditBones with same names and which have the same positions, but can have different (rest pose) angles and scales. Plus the Armatures might have different bone hierarchy (bone parenting/ no bone parenting). Why I need this: I've made an importer/exporter for a 3d format for a game. The format doesn't store enough info to connect/parent the bones, which makes posing/animating character models in a 3d modeller nearly impossible (original model files for the 3d modeler don't exist, this is for modding). As there are only 2 character skeleton types in the game, I decided to optionally allow to generate the bone from a hardcoded data in the model importer and undo that in the exporter. This allows to easily pose the model for checking weights, easily create weights, makes it easier for Blender to generate automatic weights and of course makes animating possible. This worked perfectly: the importer optionally generated the Armature itself and the exporter removed those changes, so the exported model works with existing animations in the game. But now I'm writing an importer and exporter for the game's animation format and here come the problems of: Trying to make original animations work in Blender with my "custom" (modified) Armature Trying to make animations created by using the "custom" (modified) Armature work with the original models in the game (and Blender). Constraints or bone snapping inside Blender won't work as they don't care that the bones have different angles in the rest pose, they will still face the same direction. It seems I just need to get the "difference" between the EditBone matrices of all EditBones for the two Armatures somehow and apply that difference to PoseBone matrices of all PoseBones, for all frames of my animation. I need to know how to get that difference and how to apply it. BTW, PoseBone matrices are relative to rest pose, they are by default [1.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000](matrix [row 0]) [0.000000, 1.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000](matrix [row 1]) [0.000000, 0.000000, 1.000000, 0.000000](matrix [row 2]) [0.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 1.000000](matrix [row 3]) So the question is: How to get the difference between two bone (EditBone) matrices to apply that difference to the animation matrices (PoseBone matrices)? Please be easy on the matrix math.

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• Why am I getting a "network is unreachable" error on Ubuntu Server?

  - by jason328

  I'm a completely new to Ubuntu server and am having a hard time connecting the server to the internet. I first ran ping -n 8.8.8.8 connect:Network is unreachable Then I ran ifconfig Link encap:Local Loopback inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask 255.0.0.0 inet6 addr: ::1/28Scope:host UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 RX packets:192 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:192 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:15360 (15.2KB) TX bytes:15360 (15.3KB) Here is ouput for sudo lspci -n 00:00.0 0600: 8086:2580 (rev 04) 00:02.0 0300: 8086:2582 (rev 04) 00:1d.0 0c03: 8086:2658 (rev 03) 00:1d.1 0c03: 8086:2659 (rev 03) 00:1d.0 0c03: 8086:265a (rev 03) 00:1d.0 0c03: 8086:265b (rev 03) 00:1d.0 0c03: 8086:265c (rev 03) 00:1e.0 0604: 8086:244e (rev d3) 00:1e.0 0401: 8086:266e (rev 03) 00:1f.0 0601: 8086:2640 (rev 03) 00:1f.0 0101: 8086:2651 (rev 03) 00:1f.0 0c05: 8086:266a (rev 03) 00:0b.0 0200: 8086:1654 (rev 03) lshw-c network returns WARNING: you should run this program as super-user. *-network DISABLED description:Ethernet interface product: NetXtreme BCM5705_2 Gigabit Ethernet vender: Broadcom Corporation physical id:b bus info:pci@0000:0a:0b.0 logical name: eth0 capabilities: bus_master_cap_list ethernet physical tp 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd 1000bt 1000bt-fd autonegotiation configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=tg3 driverversion= 3.121 firmware=5705-v3.18 latency=32 mingnt=64 multicast=yes port=twister pair lsmod code returned this Module Size Used By e100 37213 0 dm_crypt 23125 1 ppdev 17113 0 psmouse 87603 0 snd_intel8x0 38570 0 snd_ac97_codec 134826 1 snd_intel8x0 ac97_bus 12730 1 snd_ac97_codec snd_pcm 97188 2 snd_intel8x0, snd_ac97_codec serio_raw 13211 0 snd_timer 29990 1 snd_pcm snd 78855 4 snd_intel8x0, snd_ac97_codec, snd_pcm,snd_timer soundcore 15091 1 snd snd_page_alloc 18529 2 snd_intel8x0, snd_pcm ext2 73795 1 parport_pc 32866 1 mac_hid 13253 0 lp 17799 0 parport 46562 3 ppdev, parport_pc,lp usbhid 47199 0 hid 99559 1 usbhid tg3 152032 0 i915 468651 1 floppy 70365 0 drm_kms_helper 46978 1 i915 drm 242038 2 i915,drm_kms_helper i2c_algo_bit 13423 1 i915 video 19596 1 i915 Again there is more but it's giving info on the driver itself. I know it works, I've used it. I assume then that my network got disabled when I installed Ubuntu Server. How do I enable it? I checked and the internet cable is connected to the D-link router. I have also used this same computer for internet access when I had Ubuntu Desktop installed so internet does work.

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• Is Infiniband going to get squeezed by iWARP and external QPI?

  - by andy.grover

  The Inquirer certainly thinks so.However, I'm not so sure it makes sense to compare Infiniband to an as-yet-unannounced optical external QPI. QPI is currently a processor interconnect. CPUs, RAM, and devices connected by it are conceptually part of the same machine -- they run a single OS, for example. They are both "networks" or "fabrics" but they have very different design trade-offs.Another widely-used bus in the system is closer to Infiniband than QPI -- PCI Express. Isn't it more likely that PCIe could take on IB? There are companies already who have solutions that use external PCI Express for cluster interconnect, but these have not gained significant market share. Why would QPI, a technology whose sweet spot is even further from Infiniband's than PCIe, be able to challenge Infiniband? It's hard to speculate without much information, but right now it doesn't seem likely to me.The other prediction made in the article is that Intel's 10GbE iWARP card could squeeze IB on the low end, due to its greater compatibility and lower cost.It's definitely never a good idea to bet against Ethernet when it comes to mass-market, commodity networking. Ethernet will win. 10GbE will win. But, there are now two competing ways to implement the low-latency RDMA Verbs interface on top of Ethernet. iWARP is essentially RDMA over TCP/IP over Ethernet. The new alternative is IBoE (Infiniband over Ethernet, aka RoCEE, aka "Rocky"). This encapsulates the IB packet protocol directly in the Ethernet frame. It loses the layer 3 routability of iWARP, but better maintains software compatibility with existing apps that use IB, and is simpler to implement in both software and hardware. iWARP has a substantial head start, but I believe that IBoE silicon will eventually be cheaper, and more likely to be implemented in commodity Ethernet hardware.I think IBoE is going to take low-end market share from traditional IB, but I think this is a situation IB hardware vendors have no problem accepting. Commoditized IBoE NICs invite greater use of RDMA features, and when higher performance is needed, customers can upgrade to "real" IB, maintaining IB's justification for higher prices. (IB max interconnect speeds have historically been 2-4x higher than Ethernet, and I don't see that changing.)(ObDisclosure: My current employer now sells IB hardware. I previously also worked at Intel. My opinions are my own, duh.)

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• Get Specific depth values in Kinect (XNA)

  - by N0xus

  I'm currently trying to make a hand / finger tracking with a kinect in XNA. For this, I need to be able to specify the depth range I want my program to render. I've looked about, and I cannot see how this is done. As far as I can tell, kinect's depth values only work with pre-set ranged found in the depthStream. What I would like to do is make it modular so that I can change the depth range my kinect renders. I know this has been down before but I can't find anything online that can show me how to do this. Could someone please help me out? I have made it possible to render the standard depth view with the kinect, and the method that I have made for converting the depth frame is as follows (I've a feeling its something in here I need to set) private byte[] ConvertDepthFrame(short[] depthFrame, DepthImageStream depthStream, int depthFrame32Length) { int tooNearDepth = depthStream.TooNearDepth; int tooFarDepth = depthStream.TooFarDepth; int unknownDepth = depthStream.UnknownDepth; byte[] depthFrame32 = new byte[depthFrame32Length]; for (int i16 = 0, i32 = 0; i16 < depthFrame.Length && i32 < depthFrame32.Length; i16++, i32 += 4) { int player = depthFrame[i16] & DepthImageFrame.PlayerIndexBitmask; int realDepth = depthFrame[i16] >> DepthImageFrame.PlayerIndexBitmaskWidth; // transform 13-bit depth information into an 8-bit intensity appropriate // for display (we disregard information in most significant bit) byte intensity = (byte)(~(realDepth >> 8)); if (player == 0 && realDepth == 00) { // white depthFrame32[i32 + RedIndex] = 255; depthFrame32[i32 + GreenIndex] = 255; depthFrame32[i32 + BlueIndex] = 255; } // omitted other if statements. Simple changed the color of the pixels if they went out of the pre=set depth values else { // tint the intensity by dividing by per-player values depthFrame32[i32 + RedIndex] = (byte)(intensity >> IntensityShiftByPlayerR[player]); depthFrame32[i32 + GreenIndex] = (byte)(intensity >> IntensityShiftByPlayerG[player]); depthFrame32[i32 + BlueIndex] = (byte)(intensity >> IntensityShiftByPlayerB[player]); } } return depthFrame32; } I have a strong hunch it's something I need to change in the int player and int realDepth values, but i can't be sure.

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• The Evolution of Oracle Direct EMEA by John McGann

  - by user769227

  John is expanding his Dublin based team and is currently recruiting a Director with marketing and sales leadership experience: http://bit.ly/O8PyDF Should you wish to apply, please send your CV to [email protected] Hi, my name is John McGann and I am part of the Oracle Direct management team, based in Dublin.   Today I’m writing from the Oracle London City office, right in the heart of the financial district and up to very recently at the centre of a fantastic Olympic Games. The Olympics saw individuals and teams from across the globe competing to decide who is Citius, Altius, Fortius - “Faster, Higher, Stronger" There are lots of obvious parallels between the competitive world of the Olympics and the Business environments that many of us operate in, but there are also some interesting differences – especially in my area of responsibility within Oracle. We are of course constantly striving to be the best - the best solution on offer for our clients, bringing simplicity to their management, consumption and application of information technology, and the best provider when compared with our many niche competitors.   In Oracle and especially in Oracle Direct, a key aspect of how we achieve this is what sets us apart from the Olympians.  We have long ago eliminated geographic boundaries as a limitation to what we can achieve. We assemble the strongest individuals across multiple countries and bring them together in teams focussed on a single goal. One such team is the Oracle Direct Sales Programs team. In case you don’t know, Oracle Direct EMEA (Europe Middle East and Africa) is the inside sales division in Oracle and it is where I started my Oracle career.  I remember that my first role involved putting direct mail in envelopes.... things have moved on a bit since then – for me, for Oracle Direct and in how we interact with our customers. Today, the team of over 1000 people is located in the different Oracle Direct offices around Europe – the main ones are Malaga, Berlin, Prague and Dubai plus the headquarters in Dublin. We work in over 20 languages and are in constant contact with current and future Oracle customers, using the latest internet and telephone technologies to effectively communicate and collaborate with each other, our customers and prospects. One of my areas of responsibility within Oracle Direct is the Sales Programs team. This team of 25 people manages the planning and execution of demand generation, leading the process of finding new and incremental revenue within Oracle Direct. The Sales Programs Managers or ‘SPMs’ are embedded within each of the Oracle Direct sales teams, focussed on distinct geographies or product groups. The SPMs are virtual members of the regional sales management teams, and work closely with the sales and marketing teams to define and deliver demand generation activities. The customer contact elements of these activities are executed via the Oracle Direct Sales and Business Development/Lead Generation teams, to deliver the pipeline required to meet our revenue goals. Activities can range from pan-EMEA joint sales and marketing campaigns, to very localised niche campaigns. The campaigns might focus on particular segments of our existing customers, introducing elements of our evolving solution portfolio which customers may not be familiar with. The Sales Programs team also manages ‘Nurture’ activities to ensure that we develop potential business opportunities with contacts and organisations that do not have immediate requirements. Looking ahead, it is really important that we continue to evolve our ability to add value to our clients and reduce the physical limitations of our distance from them through the innovative application of technology. This enables us to enhance the customer buying experience and to enable the Inside Sales teams to manage ever more complex sales cycles from start to finish.  One of my expectations of my team is to actively drive innovation in how we leverage data to better understand our customers, and exploit emerging technologies to better communicate with them.   With the rate of innovation and acquisition within Oracle, we need to ensure that existing and potential customers are aware of all we have to offer that relates to their business goals.   We need to achieve this via a coherent communication and sales strategy to effectively target the right people using the most effective medium. This is another area where the Sales Programs team plays a key role.

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• Windows Phone 7 + Azure.and a couple of nuggets

  I recently gave a talk about Windows Phone 7 at a Bizpark Camp in San Francisco.  The camp had two focuses: Azure and Windows Phone 7.  My presentation covered WP7 portion of the camp.  During my presentation I highlighted the phone platform and talked about some of the differentiators from design, technology and a business standpoint.    Whenever I watch presentations or go to tech meet-ups I feel like I get the most value when I can walk away with a few nuggets that I wouldnt necessarily have known about otherwise.  That said, I tried to add a few resources into my presentation that should be helpful when building WP7 apps.      Nuggets Seeing that the camp was focused on Azure and WP7 I decided to augment my presentation with a code sample.  The intention was to give some insight on how to approach building WP7 applications that talk to Azure.  Some colleges of mine here at Clarity have posted a sample on codeplex focused on getting up and running with WP7 and Azure..you can check it out HERE.   The project is not a hello world app, and is targeted at people who have some experience with the platform and a working knowledge of silverlight. Also, during my presentation I mentioned some limitations with the current phone sdk.  Our sample code on contains work-abounds for the following: #1 Panorama Control #2  Tilt effect #3   Animating Frame #4   Sample architecture (leveraging MVVM light)  and coding patterns.  Note: For the sample phone project we used an azure token that will expire in the next couple of months.  When that happensin the downloads section of the codeplex project there a link to a local development fabric that can be used for local development Presentation Admittedly, the slide deck is pretty design heavy, and doesnt contain much text.  This was semi-intentional to encourage people to come out to the camps and hear it first hand.  There is some additional info found the notes of the PPTX.  Dont forget to check out the full presentation at the Chicago Bizspark Camp on May 21st here at the Clarity Office.  Or on June 4th in  Los Angeles. You can DOWNLOAD the Slides here:  PPTX  |  PDF or view it inline below.  View more presentations from eklimcz. Cheers! Erik Klimczak  | [email protected] | twitter.com/eklimczDid you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Windows Phone 7 + Azure.and a couple of nuggets

  I recently gave a talk about Windows Phone 7 at a Bizpark Camp in San Francisco.  The camp had two focuses: Azure and Windows Phone 7.  My presentation covered WP7 portion of the camp.  During my presentation I highlighted the phone platform and talked about some of the differentiators from design, technology and a business standpoint.    Whenever I watch presentations or go to tech meet-ups I feel like I get the most value when I can walk away with a few nuggets that I wouldnt necessarily have known about otherwise.  That said, I tried to add a few resources into my presentation that should be helpful when building WP7 apps.      Nuggets Seeing that the camp was focused on Azure and WP7 I decided to augment my presentation with a code sample.  The intention was to give some insight on how to approach building WP7 applications that talk to Azure.  Some colleges of mine here at Clarity have posted a sample on codeplex focused on getting up and running with WP7 and Azure..you can check it out HERE.   The project is not a hello world app, and is targeted at people who have some experience with the platform and a working knowledge of silverlight. Also, during my presentation I mentioned some limitations with the current phone sdk.  Our sample code on contains work-abounds for the following: #1 Panorama Control #2  Tilt effect #3   Animating Frame #4   Sample architecture (leveraging MVVM light)  and coding patterns.  Note: For the sample phone project we used an azure token that will expire in the next couple of months.  When that happensin the downloads section of the codeplex project there a link to a local development fabric that can be used for local development Presentation Admittedly, the slide deck is pretty design heavy, and doesnt contain much text.  This was semi-intentional to encourage people to come out to the camps and hear it first hand.  There is some additional info found the notes of the PPTX.  Dont forget to check out the full presentation at the Chicago Bizspark Camp on May 21st here at the Clarity Office.  Or on June 4th in  Los Angeles. You can DOWNLOAD the Slides here:  PPTX  |  PDF or view it inline below.  View more presentations from eklimcz. Cheers! Erik Klimczak  | [email protected] | twitter.com/eklimczDid you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Android Swipe In Unity 3D World with AR

  - by Christian

  I am working on an AR application using Unity3D and the Vuforia SDK for Android. The way the application works is a when the designated image(a frame marker in our case) is recognized by the camera, a 3D island is rendered at that spot. Currently I am able to detect when/which objects are touched on the model by raycasting. I also am able to successfully detect a swipe using this code: if (Input.touchCount > 0) { Touch touch = Input.touches[0]; switch (touch.phase) { case TouchPhase.Began: couldBeSwipe = true; startPos = touch.position; startTime = Time.time; break; case TouchPhase.Moved: if (Mathf.Abs(touch.position.y - startPos.y) > comfortZoneY) { couldBeSwipe = false; } //track points here for raycast if it is swipe break; case TouchPhase.Stationary: couldBeSwipe = false; break; case TouchPhase.Ended: float swipeTime = Time.time - startTime; float swipeDist = (touch.position - startPos).magnitude; if (couldBeSwipe && (swipeTime < maxSwipeTime) && (swipeDist > minSwipeDist)) { // It's a swiiiiiiiiiiiipe! float swipeDirection = Mathf.Sign(touch.position.y - startPos.y); // Do something here in reaction to the swipe. swipeCounter.IncrementCounter(); } break; } touchInfo.SetTouchInfo (Time.time-startTime,(touch.position-startPos).magnitude,Mathf.Abs (touch.position.y-startPos.y)); } Thanks to andeeeee for the logic. But I want to have some interaction in the 3D world based on the swipe on the screen. I.E. If the user swipes over unoccluded enemies, they die. My first thought was to track all the points in the moved TouchPhase, and then if it is a swipe raycast into all those points and kill any enemy that is hit. Is there a better way to do this? What is the best approach? Thanks for the help!

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• World Record Siebel PSPP Benchmark on SPARC T4 Servers

  - by Brian

  Oracle's SPARC T4 servers set a new World Record for Oracle's Siebel Platform Sizing and Performance Program (PSPP) benchmark suite. The result used Oracle's Siebel Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Industry Applications Release 8.1.1.4 and Oracle Database 11g Release 2 running Oracle Solaris on three SPARC T4-2 and two SPARC T4-1 servers. The SPARC T4 servers running the Siebel PSPP 8.1.1.4 workload which includes Siebel Call Center and Order Management System demonstrates impressive throughput performance of the SPARC T4 processor by achieving 29,000 users. This is the first Siebel PSPP 8.1.1.4 benchmark supporting 29,000 concurrent users with a rate of 239,748 Business Transactions/hour. The benchmark demonstrates vertical and horizontal scalability of Siebel CRM Release 8.1.1.4 on SPARC T4 servers. Performance Landscape Systems Txn/hr Users Call Center Order Management Response Times (sec) 1 x SPARC T4-1 (1 x SPARC T4 2.85 GHz) – Web 3 x SPARC T4-2 (2 x SPARC T4 2.85 GHz) – App/Gateway 1 x SPARC T4-1 (1 x SPARC T4 2.85 GHz) – DB 239,748 29,000 0.165 0.925 Oracle: Call Center + Order Management Transactions: 197,128 + 42,620 Users: 20300 + 8700 Configuration Summary Web Server Configuration: 1 x SPARC T4-1 server 1 x SPARC T4 processor, 2.85 GHz 128 GB memory Oracle Solaris 10 8/11 iPlanet Web Server 7 Application Server Configuration: 3 x SPARC T4-2 servers, each with 2 x SPARC T4 processor, 2.85 GHz 256 GB memory 3 x 300 GB SAS internal disks Oracle Solaris 10 8/11 Siebel CRM 8.1.1.5 SIA Database Server Configuration: 1 x SPARC T4-1 server 1 x SPARC T4 processor, 2.85 GHz 128 GB memory Oracle Solaris 11 11/11 Oracle Database 11g Release 2 (11.2.0.2) Storage Configuration: 1 x Sun Storage F5100 Flash Array 80 x 24 GB flash modules Benchmark Description Siebel 8.1 PSPP benchmark includes Call Center and Order Management: Siebel Financial Services Call Center – Provides the most complete solution for sales and service, allowing customer service and telesales representatives to provide superior customer support, improve customer loyalty, and increase revenues through cross-selling and up-selling. High-level description of the use cases tested: Incoming Call Creates Opportunity, Quote and Order and Incoming Call Creates Service Request . Three complex business transactions are executed simultaneously for specific number of concurrent users. The ratios of these 3 scenarios were 30%, 40%, 30% respectively, which together were totaling 70% of all transactions simulated in this benchmark. Between each user operation and the next one, the think time averaged approximately 10, 13, and 35 seconds respectively. Siebel Order Management – Oracle's Siebel Order Management allows employees such as salespeople and call center agents to create and manage quotes and orders through their entire life cycle. Siebel Order Management can be tightly integrated with back-office applications allowing users to perform tasks such as checking credit, confirming availability, and monitoring the fulfillment process. High-level description of the use cases tested: Order & Order Items Creation and Order Updates. Two complex Order Management transactions were executed simultaneously for specific number of concurrent users concurrently with aforementioned three Call Center scenarios above. The ratio of these 2 scenarios was 50% each, which together were totaling 30% of all transactions simulated in this benchmark. Between each user operation and the next one, the think time averaged approximately 20 and 67 seconds respectively. Key Points and Best Practices No processor cores or cache were activated or deactivated on the SPARC T-Series systems to achieve special benchmark effects. See Also Siebel White Papers SPARC T4-1 Server oracle.com OTN SPARC T4-2 Server oracle.com OTN Siebel CRM oracle.com OTN Oracle Solaris oracle.com OTN Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Enterprise Edition oracle.com OTN Disclosure Statement Copyright 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. Results as of 30 September 2012.

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• Bullet Physics - Casting a ray straight down from a rigid body (first person camera)

  - by Hydrocity

  I've implemented a first person camera using Bullet--it's a rigid body with a capsule shape. I've only been using Bullet for a few days and physics engines are new to me. I use btRigidBody::setLinearVelocity() to move it and it collides perfectly with the world. The only problem is the Y-value moves freely, which I temporarily solved by setting the Y-value of the translation vector to zero before the body is moved. This works for all cases except when falling from a height. When the body drops off a tall object, you can still glide around since the translate vector's Y-value is being set to zero, until you stop moving and fall to the ground (the velocity is only set when moving). So to solve this I would like to try casting a ray down from the body to determine the Y-value of the world, and checking the difference between that value and the Y-value of the camera body, and disable or slow down movement if the difference is large enough. I'm a bit stuck on simply casting a ray and determining the Y-value of the world where it struck. I've implemented this callback: struct AllRayResultCallback : public btCollisionWorld::RayResultCallback{ AllRayResultCallback(const btVector3& rayFromWorld, const btVector3& rayToWorld) : m_rayFromWorld(rayFromWorld), m_rayToWorld(rayToWorld), m_closestHitFraction(1.0){} btVector3 m_rayFromWorld; btVector3 m_rayToWorld; btVector3 m_hitNormalWorld; btVector3 m_hitPointWorld; float m_closestHitFraction; virtual btScalar addSingleResult(btCollisionWorld::LocalRayResult& rayResult, bool normalInWorldSpace) { if(rayResult.m_hitFraction < m_closestHitFraction) m_closestHitFraction = rayResult.m_hitFraction; m_collisionObject = rayResult.m_collisionObject; if(normalInWorldSpace){ m_hitNormalWorld = rayResult.m_hitNormalLocal; } else{ m_hitNormalWorld = m_collisionObject->getWorldTransform().getBasis() * rayResult.m_hitNormalLocal; } m_hitPointWorld.setInterpolate3(m_rayFromWorld, m_rayToWorld, m_closestHitFraction); return 1.0f; } }; And in the movement function, I have this code: btVector3 from(pos.x, pos.y + 1000, pos.z); // pos is the camera's rigid body position btVector3 to(pos.x, 0, pos.z); // not sure if 0 is correct for Y AllRayResultCallback callback(from, to); Base::getSingletonPtr()->m_btWorld->rayTest(from, to, callback); So I have the callback.m_hitPointWorld vector, which seems to just show the position of the camera each frame. I've searched Google for examples of casting rays, as well as the Bullet documentation, and it's been hard to just find an example. An example is really all I need. Or perhaps there is some method in Bullet to keep the rigid body on the ground? I'm using Ogre3D as a rendering engine, and casting a ray down is quite straightforward with that, however I want to keep all the ray casting within Bullet for simplicity. Could anyone point me in the right direction? Thanks.

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