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  • How to convert pitch and yaw to x, y, z rotations?

    - by Aaron Anodide
    I'm a beginner using XNA to try and make a 3D Asteroids game. I'm really close to having my space ship drive around as if it had thrusters for pitch and yaw. The problem is I can't quite figure out how to translate the rotations, for instance, when I pitch forward 45 degrees and then start to turn - in this case there should be rotation being applied to all three directions to get the "diagonal yaw" - right? I thought I had it right with the calculations below, but they cause a partly pitched forward ship to wobble instead of turn.... :( So my quesiton is: how do you calculate the X, Y, and Z rotations for an object in terms of pitch and yaw? Here's current (almost working) calculations for the Rotation acceleration: float accel = .75f; // Thrust +Y / Forward if (currentKeyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.I)) { this.ship.AccelerationY += (float)Math.Cos(this.ship.RotationZ) * accel; this.ship.AccelerationX += (float)Math.Sin(this.ship.RotationZ) * -accel; this.ship.AccelerationZ += (float)Math.Sin(this.ship.RotationX) * accel; } // Rotation +Z / Yaw if (currentKeyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.J)) { this.ship.RotationAccelerationZ += (float)Math.Cos(this.ship.RotationX) * accel; this.ship.RotationAccelerationY += (float)Math.Sin(this.ship.RotationX) * accel; this.ship.RotationAccelerationX += (float)Math.Sin(this.ship.RotationY) * accel; } // Rotation -Z / Yaw if (currentKeyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.K)) { this.ship.RotationAccelerationZ += (float)Math.Cos(this.ship.RotationX) * -accel; this.ship.RotationAccelerationY += (float)Math.Sin(this.ship.RotationX) * -accel; this.ship.RotationAccelerationX += (float)Math.Sin(this.ship.RotationY) * -accel; } // Rotation +X / Pitch if (currentKeyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.F)) { this.ship.RotationAccelerationX += accel; } // Rotation -X / Pitch if (currentKeyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.D)) { this.ship.RotationAccelerationX -= accel; } I'm combining that with drawing code that does a rotation to the model: public void Draw(Matrix world, Matrix view, Matrix projection, TimeSpan elsapsedTime) { float seconds = (float)elsapsedTime.TotalSeconds; // update velocity based on acceleration this.VelocityX += this.AccelerationX * seconds; this.VelocityY += this.AccelerationY * seconds; this.VelocityZ += this.AccelerationZ * seconds; // update position based on velocity this.PositionX += this.VelocityX * seconds; this.PositionY += this.VelocityY * seconds; this.PositionZ += this.VelocityZ * seconds; // update rotational velocity based on rotational acceleration this.RotationVelocityX += this.RotationAccelerationX * seconds; this.RotationVelocityY += this.RotationAccelerationY * seconds; this.RotationVelocityZ += this.RotationAccelerationZ * seconds; // update rotation based on rotational velocity this.RotationX += this.RotationVelocityX * seconds; this.RotationY += this.RotationVelocityY * seconds; this.RotationZ += this.RotationVelocityZ * seconds; Matrix translation = Matrix.CreateTranslation(PositionX, PositionY, PositionZ); Matrix rotation = Matrix.CreateRotationX(RotationX) * Matrix.CreateRotationY(RotationY) * Matrix.CreateRotationZ(RotationZ); model.Root.Transform = rotation * translation * world; model.CopyAbsoluteBoneTransformsTo(boneTransforms); foreach (ModelMesh mesh in model.Meshes) { foreach (BasicEffect effect in mesh.Effects) { effect.World = boneTransforms[mesh.ParentBone.Index]; effect.View = view; effect.Projection = projection; effect.EnableDefaultLighting(); } mesh.Draw(); } }

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  • Managing common code on Windows 7 (.NET) and Windows 8 (WinRT)

    - by ryanabr
    Recent announcements regarding Windows Phone 8 and the fact that it will have the WinRT behind it might make some of this less painful but I  discovered the "XmlDocument" object is in a new location in WinRT and is almost the same as it's brother in .NET System.Xml.XmlDocument (.NET) Windows.Data.Xml.Dom.XmlDocument (WinRT) The problem I am trying to solve is how to work with both types in the code that performs the same task on both Windows Phone 7 and Windows 8 platforms. The first thing I did was define my own XmlNode and XmlNodeList classes that wrap the actual Microsoft objects so that by using the "#if" compiler directive either work with the WinRT version of the type, or the .NET version from the calling code easily. public class XmlNode     { #if WIN8         public Windows.Data.Xml.Dom.IXmlNode Node { get; set; }         public XmlNode(Windows.Data.Xml.Dom.IXmlNode xmlNode)         {             Node = xmlNode;         } #endif #if !WIN8 public System.Xml.XmlNode Node { get; set ; } public XmlNode(System.Xml.XmlNode xmlNode)         {             Node = xmlNode;         } #endif     } public class XmlNodeList     { #if WIN8         public Windows.Data.Xml.Dom.XmlNodeList List { get; set; }         public int Count {get {return (int)List.Count;}}         public XmlNodeList(Windows.Data.Xml.Dom.XmlNodeList list)         {             List = list;         } #endif #if !WIN8 public System.Xml.XmlNodeList List { get; set ; } public int Count { get { return List.Count;}} public XmlNodeList(System.Xml.XmlNodeList list)         {             List = list;        } #endif     } From there I can then use my XmlNode and XmlNodeList in the calling code with out having to clutter the code with all of the additional #if switches. The challenge after this was the code that worked directly with the XMLDocument object needed to be seperate on both platforms since the method for populating the XmlDocument object is completly different on both platforms. To solve this issue. I made partial classes, one partial class for .NET and one for WinRT. Both projects have Links to the Partial Class that contains the code that is the same for the majority of the class, and the partial class contains the code that is unique to the version of the XmlDocument. The files with the little arrow in the lower left corner denotes 'linked files' and are shared in multiple projects but only exist in one location in source control. You can see that the _Win7 partial class is included directly in the project since it include code that is only for the .NET platform, where as it's cousin the _Win8 (not pictured above) has all of the code specific to the _Win8 platform. In the _Win7 partial class is this code: public partial class WUndergroundViewModel     { public static WUndergroundData GetWeatherData( double lat, double lng)         { WUndergroundData data = new WUndergroundData();             System.Net. WebClient c = new System.Net. WebClient(); string req = "http://api.wunderground.com/api/xxx/yesterday/conditions/forecast/q/[LAT],[LNG].xml" ;             req = req.Replace( "[LAT]" , lat.ToString());             req = req.Replace( "[LNG]" , lng.ToString()); XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();             doc.Load(c.OpenRead(req)); foreach (XmlNode item in doc.SelectNodes("/response/features/feature" ))             { switch (item.Node.InnerText)                 { case "yesterday" :                         ParseForecast( new FishingControls.XmlNodeList (doc.SelectNodes( "/response/forecast/txt_forecast/forecastdays/forecastday" )), new FishingControls.XmlNodeList (doc.SelectNodes( "/response/forecast/simpleforecast/forecastdays/forecastday" )), data); break ; case "conditions" :                         ParseCurrent( new FishingControls.XmlNode (doc.SelectSingleNode("/response/current_observation" )), data); break ; case "forecast" :                         ParseYesterday( new FishingControls.XmlNodeList (doc.SelectNodes( "/response/history/observations/observation" )),data); break ;                 }             } return data;         }     } in _win8 partial class is this code: public partial class WUndergroundViewModel     { public async static Task< WUndergroundData > GetWeatherData(double lat, double lng)         { WUndergroundData data = new WUndergroundData (); HttpClient c = new HttpClient (); string req = "http://api.wunderground.com/api/xxxx/yesterday/conditions/forecast/q/[LAT],[LNG].xml" ;             req = req.Replace( "[LAT]" , lat.ToString());             req = req.Replace( "[LNG]" , lng.ToString()); HttpResponseMessage msg = await c.GetAsync(req); string stream = await msg.Content.ReadAsStringAsync(); XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument ();             doc.LoadXml(stream, null); foreach ( IXmlNode item in doc.SelectNodes("/response/features/feature" ))             { switch (item.InnerText)                 { case "yesterday" :                         ParseForecast( new FishingControls.XmlNodeList (doc.SelectNodes( "/response/forecast/txt_forecast/forecastdays/forecastday" )), new FishingControls.XmlNodeList (doc.SelectNodes( "/response/forecast/simpleforecast/forecastdays/forecastday" )), data); break; case "conditions" :                         ParseCurrent( new FishingControls.XmlNode (doc.SelectSingleNode("/response/current_observation" )), data); break; case "forecast" :                         ParseYesterday( new FishingControls.XmlNodeList (doc.SelectNodes( "/response/history/observations/observation")), data); break;                 }             } return data;         }     } Summary: This method allows me to have common 'business' code for both platforms that is pretty clean, and I manage the technology differences separately. Thank you tostringtheory for your suggestion, I was considering that approach.

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  • Color Picking Troubles - LWJGL/OpenGL

    - by Tom Johnson
    I'm attempting to check which object the user is hovering over. While everything seems to be just how I'd think it should be, I'm not able to get the correct color due to the second time I draw (without picking colors). Here is my rendering code: public void render() { glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT | GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT); glLoadIdentity(); camera.applyTranslations(); scene.pick(); glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT | GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT); glLoadIdentity(); camera.applyTranslations(); scene.render(); } And here is what gets called on each block/tile on "scene.pick()": public void pick() { glColor3ub((byte) pickingColor.x, (byte) pickingColor.y, (byte) pickingColor.z); draw(); glReadBuffer(GL_FRONT); ByteBuffer buffer = BufferUtils.createByteBuffer(4); glReadPixels(Mouse.getX(), Mouse.getY(), 1, 1, GL_RGBA, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, buffer); int r = buffer.get(0) & 0xFF; int g = buffer.get(1) & 0xFF; int b = buffer.get(2) & 0xFF; if(r == pickingColor.x && g == pickingColor.y && b == pickingColor.z) { hovered = true; } else { hovered = false; } } I believe the problem is that in the method of each tile/block called by scene.pick(), it is reading the color from the regular drawing state, after that method is called somehow. I believe this because when I remove the "glReadBuffer(GL_FRONT)" line from the pick method, it seems to almost fix it, but then it will also select blocks behind the one you are hovering as it is not only looking at the front. If you have any ideas of what to do, please be sure to reply!/ EDIT: Adding scene.render(), tile.render(), and tile.draw() scene.render: public void render() { for(int x = 0; x < tiles.length; x++) { for(int z = 0; z < tiles.length; z++) { tiles[x][z].render(); } } } tile.render: public void render() { glColor3f(color.x, color.y, color.z); draw(); if(hovered) { glColor3f(1, 1, 1); glPolygonMode(GL_FRONT_AND_BACK, GL_LINE); draw(); glPolygonMode(GL_FRONT_AND_BACK, GL_FILL); } } tile.draw: public void draw() { float x = position.x, y = position.y, z = position.z; //Top glBegin(GL_QUADS); glVertex3f(x, y + size, z); glVertex3f(x + size, y + size, z); glVertex3f(x + size, y + size, z + size); glVertex3f(x, y + size, z + size); glEnd(); //Left glBegin(GL_QUADS); glVertex3f(x, y, z); glVertex3f(x + size, y, z); glVertex3f(x + size, y + size, z); glVertex3f(x, y + size, z); glEnd(); //Right glBegin(GL_QUADS); glVertex3f(x + size, y, z); glVertex3f(x + size, y + size, z); glVertex3f(x + size, y + size, z + size); glVertex3f(x + size, y, z + size); glEnd(); } (The game is like an isometric game. That's why I only draw 3 faces.)

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  • ARTS Reference Model for Retail

    - by Sanjeev Sharma
    Consider a hypothetical scenario where you have been tasked to set up retail operations for a electronic goods or daily consumables or a luxury brand etc. It is very likely you will be faced with the following questions: What are the essential business capabilities that you must have in place?  What are the essential business activities under-pinning each of the business capabilities, identified in Step 1? What are the set of steps that you need to perform to execute each of the business activities, identified in Step 2? Answers to the above will drive your investments in software and hardware to enable the core retail operations. More importantly, the choices you make in responding to the above questions will several implications in the short-run and in the long-run. In the short-term, you will incur the time and cost of defining your technology requirements, procuring the software/hardware components and getting them up and running. In the long-term, as you grow in operations organically or through M&A, partnerships and franchiser business models  you will invariably need to make more technology investments to manage the greater complexity (scale and scope) of business operations.  "As new software applications, such as time & attendance, labor scheduling, and POS transactions, just to mention a few, are introduced into the store environment, it takes a disproportionate amount of time and effort to integrate them with existing store applications. These integration projects can add up to 50 percent to the time needed to implement a new software application and contribute significantly to the cost of the overall project, particularly if a systems integrator is called in. This has been the reality that all retailers have had to live with over the last two decades. The effect of the environment has not only been to increase costs, but also to limit retailers' ability to implement change and the speed with which they can do so." (excerpt taken from here) Now, one would think a lot of retailers would have already gone through the pain of finding answers to these questions, so why re-invent the wheel? Precisely so, a major effort began almost 17 years ago in the retail industry to make it less expensive and less difficult to deploy new technology in stores and at the retail enterprise level. This effort is called the Association for Retail Technology Standards (ARTS). Without standards such as those defined by ARTS, you would very likely end up experiencing the following: Increased Time and Cost due to resource wastage arising from re-inventing the wheel i.e. re-creating vanilla processes from scratch, and incurring, otherwise avoidable, mistakes and errors by ignoring experience of others Sub-optimal Process Efficiency due to narrow, isolated view of processes thereby ignoring process inter-dependencies i.e. optimizing parts but not the whole, and resulting in lack of transparency and inter-departmental finger-pointing Embracing ARTS standards as a blue-print for establishing or managing or streamlining your retail operations can benefit you in the following ways: Improved Time-to-Market from parity with industry best-practice processes e.g. ARTS, thus avoiding “reinventing the wheel” for common retail processes and focusing more on customizing processes for differentiations, and lowering integration complexity and risk with a standardized vocabulary for exchange between internal and external i.e. partner systems Lower Operating Costs by embracing the ARTS enterprise-wide process reference model for developing and streamlining retail operations holistically instead of a narrow, silo-ed view, and  procuring IT systems in compliance with ARTS thus avoiding IT budget marginalization While parity with industry standards such as ARTS business process model by itself does not create a differentiation, it does however provide a higher starting point for bridging the strategy-execution gap in setting up and improving retail operations.

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  • E-Business Suite : Role of CHUNK_SIZE in Oracle Payroll

    - by Giri Mandalika
    Different batch processes in Oracle Payroll flow have the ability to spawn multiple child processes (or threads) to complete the work in hand. The number of child processes to fork is controlled by the THREADS parameter in APPS.PAY_ACTION_PARAMETERS view. THREADS parameter The default value for THREADS parameter is 1, which is fine for a single-processor system but not optimal for the modern multi-core multi-processor systems. Setting the THREADS parameter to a value equal to or less than the total number of [virtual] processors available on the system may improve the performance of payroll processing. However on the down side, since multiple child processes operate against the same set of payroll tables in HR schema, database may experience undesired consequences such as buffer busy waits and index contention, which results in giving up some of the gains achieved by using multiple child processes/threads to process the work. Couple of other action parameters, CHUNK_SIZE and CHUNK_SHUFFLE, help alleviate the database contention. eg., Set a value for THREADS parameter as shown below. CONNECT APPS/APPS_PASSWORD UPDATE PAY_ACTION_PARAMETERS SET PARAMETER_VALUE = DESIRED_VALUE WHERE PARAMETER_NAME = 'THREADS'; COMMIT; (I am not aware of any maximum value for THREADS parameter) CHUNK_SIZE parameter The size of each commit unit for the batch process is controlled by the CHUNK_SIZE action parameter. In other words, chunking is the act of splitting the assignment actions into commit groups of desired size represented by the CHUNK_SIZE parameter. The default value is 20, and each thread processes one chunk at a time -- which means each child process inserts or processes 20 assignment actions at any time. When multiple threads are configured, each thread picks up a chunk to process, completes the assignment actions and then picks up another chunk. This is repeated until all the chunks are exhausted. It is possible to use different chunk sizes in different batch processes. During the initial phase of processing, CHUNK_SIZE number of assignment actions are inserted into relevant table(s). When multiple child processes are inserting data at the same time into the same set of tables, as explained earlier, database may experience contention. The default value of 20 is mostly optimal in such a case. Experiment with different values for the initial phase by +/-10 for CHUNK_SIZE parameter and observe the performance impact. A larger value may make sense during the main processing phase. Again experimentation is the key in finding the suitable value for your environment. Start with a large value such as 2000 for the chunk size, then increment or decrement the size by 500 at a time until an optimal value is found. eg., Set a value for CHUNK_SIZE parameter as shown below. CONNECT APPS/APPS_PASSWORD UPDATE PAY_ACTION_PARAMETERS SET PARAMETER_VALUE = DESIRED_VALUE WHERE PARAMETER_NAME = 'CHUNK_SIZE'; COMMIT; CHUNK_SIZE action parameter accepts a value that is as low as 1 or as high as 16000. CHUNK SHUFFLE parameter By default, chunks of assignment actions are processed sequentially by all threads - which may not be a good thing especially given that all child processes/threads performing similar actions against the same set of tables almost at the same time. By saying not a good thing, I mean to say that the default behavior leads to contention in the database (in data blocks, for example). It is possible to relieve some of that database contention by randomizing the processing order of chunks of assignment actions. This behavior is controlled by the CHUNK SHUFFLE action parameter. Chunk processing is not randomized unless explicitly configured. eg., Set chunk shuffling as shown below. CONNECT APPS/APPS_PASSWORD UPDATE PAY_ACTION_PARAMETERS SET PARAMETER_VALUE = 'Y' WHERE PARAMETER_NAME = 'CHUNK SHUFFLE'; COMMIT; Finally I recommend checking the following document out for additional details and additional pay action tunable parameters that may speed up the processing of Oracle Payroll.     My Oracle Support Doc ID: 226987.1 Oracle 11i & R12 Human Resources (HRMS) & Benefits (BEN) Tuning & System Health Checks Also experiment with different combinations of parameters and values until the right set of action parameters and values are found for your deployment.

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  • Customer owes me half my payment. Should I take ownership of his AWS account for charging? How?

    - by Cawas
    Background They paid me my first half (back in April 15th) before even we could get into an agreement. Very nice of him! Then I've finished the 2 weeks job of setting up the servers, using his AWS credentials he had just bought. I waited for another 2 weeks for everything settling up, and it was all running fine. He did what he needed with his sftp account, everyone were happy. Now, it has been almost 2 months since I've finished the job and I still didn't get the 2nd half. I must assume, it's not much money (about U$400, converted), but it would help me pay the bills at least. Heck, the Amazon bills they are paying are little less than that (for now). Measures I'm wondering how I can go to charge him now. First thought, of course, would be taking everything down and say "pay now, or be doomed". If that's not good enough, then I lost it. I have no contracts and I doubt I could get a law suit in this country for such a low value based only on emails. And I don't really want to get too agressive here - there might be a business chance in the future and I don't want to ruin it. Second though would be just changing the password. But then he probably could gain access again by some recovery means. That's where my question may mainly relay. How can I do it and not leaving any room for recovery from his side? I even got the first AWS "your account was created" mail from himself, showing me I could begin my job, back then. Lastly, do you have any other idea on what I can and what I should do in this case? Responding to Answers Please, consider reading the current answers and comments. This is not a very simple case. I've considered many, many options (including all lawful ones) before considering this ones I've listed here, and I am willing to take the loss and all that. That's not the point. The point is being practical here. I will call him again and talk about it. I will do terrorism on getting lawyers and getting contract. I am ready to go all forth while I have time and energy for it. But, in practice, there is this extra thing I can do to assure myself of the work I've done. I can basically take it back and delete everything! I'd only take his password because I can find no other way to do it within Amazon. Maybe, contacting Amazon and explaining the situation? I don't know. Give me ideas on this technical side! And thank everyone for the attention and helping me clarifying the issue so far! :)

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  • SQL to select random mix of rows fairly [migrated]

    - by Matt Sieker
    Here's my problem: I have a set of tables in a database populated with data from a client that contains product information. In addition to the basic product information, there is also information about the manufacturer, and categories for those products (a product can be in one or more categories). These categories are then referred to as "Product Categories", and which stores these products are available at. These tables are updated once a week from a feed from the customer. Since for our purposes, some of the product categories are the same, or closely related for our purposes, there is another level of categories called "General Categories", a general category can have one or more product categories. For the scope of these tables, here's some rough numbers: Data Tables: Products: 475,000 Manufacturers: 1300 Stores: 150 General Categories: 245 Product Categories: 500 Mapping Tables: Product Category -> Product: 655,000 Stores -> Products: 50,000,000 Now, for the actual problem: As part of our software, we need to select n random products, given a store and a general category. However, we also need to ensure a good mix of manufacturers, as in some categories, a single manufacturer dominates the results, and selecting rows at random causes the results to strongly favor that manufacturer. The solution that is currently in place, works for most cases, involves selecting all of the rows that match the store and category criteria, partition them on manufacturer, and include their row number from within their partition, then select from that where the row number for that manufacturer is less than n, and use ROWCOUNT to clamp the total rows returned to n. This query looks something like this: SET ROWCOUNT 6 select p.Id, GeneralCategory_Id, Product_Id, ISNULL(m.DisplayName, m.Name) AS Vendor, MSRP, MemberPrice, FamilyImageName from (select p.Id, gc.Id GeneralCategory_Id, p.Id Product_Id, ctp.Store_id, Manufacturer_id, ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY Manufacturer_id ORDER BY NEWID()) AS 'VendorOrder', MSRP, MemberPrice, FamilyImageName from GeneralCategory gc inner join GeneralCategoriesToProductCategories gctpc ON gc.Id=gctpc.GeneralCategory_Id inner join ProductCategoryToProduct pctp on gctpc.ProductCategory_Id = pctp.ProductCategory_Id inner join Product p on p.Id = pctp.Product_Id inner join StoreToProduct ctp on p.Id = ctp.Product_id where gc.Id = @GeneralCategory and ctp.Store_id=@StoreId and p.Active=1 and p.MemberPrice >0) p inner join Manufacturer m on m.Id = p.Manufacturer_id where VendorOrder <=6 order by NEWID() SET ROWCOUNT 0 (I've tried to somewhat format it to make it cleaner, but I don't think it really helps) Running this query with an execution plan shows that for the majority of these tables, it's doing a Clustered Index Seek. There are two operations that take up roughly 90% of the time: Index Seek (Nonclustered) on StoreToProduct: 17%. This table just contains the key of the store, and the key of the product. It seems that NHibernate decided not to make a composite key when making this table, but I'm not concerned about this at this point, as compared to the other seek... Clustered Index Seek on Product: 69%. I really have no clue how I could make this one more performant. On categories without a lot of products, performance is acceptable (<50ms), however larger categories can take a few hundred ms, with the largest category taking 3s (which has about 170k products). It seems I have two ways to go from this point: Somehow optimize the existing query and table indices to lower the query time. As almost every expensive operation is already a clustered index scan, I don't know what could be done there. The inner query could be tuned to not return all of the possible rows for that category, but I am unsure how to do this, and maintain the requirements (random products, with a good mix of manufacturers) Denormalize this data for the purpose of this query when doing the once a week import. However, I am unsure how to do this and maintain the requirements. Does anyone have any input on either of these items?

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  • Blind As a Bat in Multi-Monitor Hell &ndash; Free Program Inside!

    - by ToStringTheory
    If you know me personally, then you probably know that I am going blind thanks to a rare genetic eye disease.  My eye disease has already been a huge detriment to my eyesight.  One of the big things to suffer is my ability to see small things moving fast right in front of me.  On a multi-monitor setup, this makes finding the cursor absolute hell. The Problem I’ll keep this short, as I’ve basically already told you what the problem is.  On my three monitor development computer, I am constantly losing the mouse during the day.  I had used the Microsoft accessibility mousefinder (press CTRL, and it pings around the mouse).  The problem with this is, there is only an effect around 50-100 PX around the mouse, and it is a very light gray, almost unnoticeable.. For someone like me, if I am not looking at the monitor when I click the CTRL button, I have to click it multiple times and dart my eyes back and forth in a futile attempt to catch a glimpse of the action…  I had tried other cursor finders, but none I liked… The Solution So what’s a guy to do when he doesn’t like his options?  MAKE A NEW OPTION…  What else should we as developers do, am I right?  So, I went ahead and made a mousefinder of my own, with 6 separate settings to change the effect.  I am releasing it here for anyone else that may also have problems finding their mouse at times. Some of its features include: Multiple options to change to achieve the exact effect you want. If your mouse moves while it is honing in, it will hone in on its current position. Many times, I would press the button and move my mouse at the same time, and many times, the mouse happened to be at a screen edge, so I would miss it. This program will restart its animation on a new screen if the mouse changes its screen while playing. Tested on Windows 7 x64 Stylish color changing from green to red. Deployed as a ClickOnce, so easy to remove if you don't like it. Press Right CTRL to trigger effect Application lives in notification area so that you can easily reach configuration or close it. To get it to run on startup, copy its application shortcut from its startmenu directory to the “Startup” folder in your startmenu. Conclusion I understand if you don’t download this…  You don’t know me and I don’t know you.  I can only say that I have honestly NOT added any virus’ or malware to the package. Yeah, I know it’s weird Download: ‘ToString(theory) Mousefinder.zip’ CRC32: EEBCE300 MD5: 0394DA581BE6F3371B5BA11A8B24BC91 SHA-1: 2080C4930A2E7D98B81787BB5E19BB24E118991C Finally, if you do use this application - please leave a comment, or email me and tell me what you think of it. Encounter a bug or hashes no longer match? I want to know that too! <warning type=”BadPun”>Now, stop messing around and start mousing around!</warning>

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  • Make the Time

    - by WonderOfItAll
    Took the little one to the pool tonight for swim lessons. Okay, Okay. They're not really lessons so much as they are "Hey, here's a few bucks, let me rent out a small section of your pool to swim around with my little one" Saw a dad at the pool. Bluetooth on, iPad in hand, and two year old somewhere around there. Saw a mom at the pool. Arguing with her five year old to NOT take a shower after swimming. Bluetooth on, iPad in hand, work laptop open on stadium seats. Her reasoning for not wanting the child to shower "Look, I have to get this stuff to the office by 6:30, we don't have time for you to shower. Let's go" Wait, isn't the whole point of this little experience called Mommy and Me (or, as in my case, Daddy and Me). Wherein Mommy/Daddy is supposed to spend time with little one. Not with the Bluetooth. Not with the work laptop. Dad (yeah, the same dad from earlier), in the pool. Bluetooth off (it's not waterproof or I'm sure he would've had it on), two year old in hand and iPad somewhere put away. Getting frustrated with kid because he won't 'perform' on command. Here's a little exchange Kid: "I don't wanna get in the water" Dad: "Well, we're here for 30 minutes, get in the water" Kid: "No, don't wanna" Dad: "Fine, I'm getting in" and, true to his word, in he goes, off to swim. Kid: Crying Dad: "Well, c'mon" Kid: Walking to stands Dad: Ignoring kid Kid: At stands Dad: Out of pool, drying off. Frustrated. Grabs bag, grabs kid, leaves How sad. It really seems like I am living in a generation of parents who view their children as one big scheduled distraction to another. It's almost like the dad was saying "Look, little 2 year old boy, I have a busy scheduled. Right now my Outlook Calendar tells me that I have 30 mins to spend with you, so, let's go kid: PERFORM because I have the time" Really? Can someone please tell me when the hell this happened? When did spending time with your kid, spending time with your family, spending time with your spouse, etc... become a distraction? I've seen people at work all day Tweeting throughout the day, checked in with Four Square, IM up and running constantly so they can 'stay in touch' only to see these same folks come home and be irritated because their kids or their spouse wants to connect with the. I've seen these very same people leave the house, go to the corner bar/store/you-name-the-place to be 'alone' only to find them there, plugged in, tweeting away, etc, etc, etc I LOVE technology. I love working with technology. But I also know that I am a human being. A person who, by very definition, is a social being. I needed social interactions and contact--and, no, I'm not talking about the Social Graph kind of connections, I'm talking about those interactions which, *GASP* involve eye to eye contact and human contact. A recent study found that the number one complaint of kids is that they feel they have to compete with technology for their parents time and attention. The number one wish from high school kids? That there parents would turn off the computer/tv/cell phone at dinner. This, coming from high school kids. Shouldn't that tell you a whole helluva lot? So, do yourself a favor tomorrow. Plug into technology all day. Throw yourself into it. Be passionate about what you do. When you walk through the door to your family, turn it all off for 30 mins and be there with your loved ones. If you can manage to play Angry Birds, I'm sure you can handle being disconnected for 30 minutes. Make the time

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  • WF4 &ndash; Guess the number game!

    - by MarkPearl
    I posted yesterday how really good WF4 was looking. Today I thought I would show some real basics that I was able to figure out. This will be a simple example, I am going to make a flowchart workflow – which will prompt the user to guess the number until they guess the right number. Lets begin… Make a new project and make it a Workflow console Application. Then select the Workflow file and drag a FlowChart (2) to point 3. This will now show a green start circle in the designer form. We are going to work with primitives to start with. We are now going to drag a few objects onto the Workflow, We drag the WriteLine, Assign & Decision items onto the designer. Once they are dragged onto the designer we will want to link them up. The order that they are linked is critical since this will determine the order of the solution. In this case, we want the system to first ask “Guess a number”, then to wait for the user to input some code, and then to display “You got it” if they got it right, and “Try again” if they got it wrong. So we now link the arrows to the objects. This is done by moving the mouse pointer over the start objects and clicking on one of the toggles and then dragging it to the next object and releasing the button over one of the toggles. This will place an arrow from the source object to the target object. Okay… pretty simple stuff – now we just need these primitive objects to do stuff. Lets start with the WriteLine primitive. We place the text in inverted commas in the Text field. Because this field accepts any valid VB expression we could have put variables etc. in there if we wanted to. The next thing we want to do is allow the user to input a number. This brings up an interesting problem, if a user were to type in a number, there would need to be someway to declare a variable to hold that value for the life of the workflow. We can achieve this by declaring a variable. To declare a variable, move your cursor over the variables tab at the bottom of the workflow, and then type the name of the new variable in the “Create Variable” field and set it as shown in the image above. Now that we have a variable, we want to call the Console.Readline method and assign the inputted value from the Console to that variable. The code that cannot be seen is actually this – Convert.ToInt32(Console.ReadLine()) We now have a workflow that first prompts the user for a number, then allows the user to type in a number. We are almost done, we just need to make the system react to the value inputted. There are a few ways we could do this, I am going to use the Decision item. So select the Decision object on the designer and then view its properties (F4 for me), and in the condition field place a condition. For simplicity sake I have decided that if the user guesses 10, they will have guessed the number. This is now the completed workflow. Its really easy to understand and shows some really powerful principles for Business applications. You can run the application and see what it does. Imagine writing business solutions that do not worry about the exact flow of objects, but simply allows a business analyst or someone to configure the solution to work exactly as the business rules would dictate. And if the rules changed six months later all they would need to do is re-drag some of the flows. Now I do not know if WF4 will allow for this, but it feels like it is a step in the right direct.

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  • Internet of Things Becoming Reality

    - by kristin.jellison
    The Internet of Things is not just on the radar—it’s becoming a reality. A globally connected continuum of devices and objects will unleash untold possibilities for businesses and the people they touch. But the “things” are only a small part of a much larger, integrated architecture. A great example of this comes from the healthcare industry. Imagine an expectant mother who needs to watch her blood pressure. She lives in a mountain village 100 miles away from medical attention. Luckily, she can use a small “wearable” device to monitor her status and wirelessly transmit the information to a healthcare hub in her village. Now, say the healthcare hub identifies that the expectant mother’s blood pressure is dangerously high. It sends a real-time alert to the patient’s wearable device, advising her to contact her doctor. It also pushes an alert with the patient’s historical data to the doctor’s tablet PC. He inserts a smart security card into the tablet to verify his identity. This ensures that only the right people have access to the patient’s data. Then, comparing the new data with the patient’s medical history, the doctor decides she needs urgent medical attention. GPS tracking devices on ambulances in the field identify and dispatch the closest one available. An alert also goes to the closest hospital with the necessary facilities. It sends real-time information on her condition directly from the ambulance. So when she arrives, they already have a treatment plan in place to ensure she gets the right care. The Internet of Things makes a huge difference for the patient. She receives personalized and responsive healthcare. But this technology also helps the businesses involved. The healthcare provider achieves a competitive advantage in its services. The hospital benefits from cost savings through more accurate treatment and better application of services. All of this, in turn, translates into savings on insurance claims. This is an ideal scenario for the Internet of Things—when all the devices integrate easily and when the relevant organizations have all the right systems in place. But in reality, that can be difficult to achieve. Core design principles are required to make the whole system work. Open standards allow these systems to talk to each other. Integrated security protects personal, financial, commercial and regulatory information. A reliable and highly available systems infrastructure is necessary to keep these systems running 24/7. If this system were just made up of separate components, it would be prohibitively complex and expensive for almost any organization. The solution is integration, and Oracle is leading the way. We’re developing converged solutions, not just from device to datacenter, but across devices, utilizing the Java platform, and through data acquisition and management, integration, analytics, security and decision-making. The Internet of Things (IoT) requires the predictable action and interaction of a potentially endless number of components. It’s in that convergence that the true value of the Internet of Things emerges. Partners who take the comprehensive view and choose to engage with the Internet of Things as a fully integrated platform stand to gain the most from the Internet of Things’ many opportunities. To discover what else Oracle is doing to connect the world, read about Oracle’s Internet of Things Platform. Learn how you can get involved as a partner by checking out the Oracle Java Knowledge Zone. Best regards, David Hicks

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  • Framework for Everything - Where to begin? [Longer post]

    - by SquaredSoft
    Back story of this question, feel free to skip down for the specific question Hello, I've been very interested in the idea of abstract programming the last few years. I've made about 30 attempts at creating a piece of software that is capable of almost anything you throw at it. I've undertook some attempts at this that have taken upwards of a year, while getting close, never releasing it beyond my compiler. This has been something I've always tried wrapping my head around, and something is always missing. With the title, I'm sure you're assuming, "Yes of course you noob! You can't account for everything!" To which I have to reply, "Why not?" To give you some background into what I'm talking about, this all started with doing maybe a shade of gray hat SEO software. I found myself constantly having to create similar, but slightly different sets of code. I've gone through as many iterations of way to communicate on http as the universe has particles. "How many times am I going to have to write this multi-threaded class?" is something I found myself asking a lot. Sure, I could create a class library, and just work with that, but I always felt I could optimize what I had, which often was a large undertaking and typically involved frequent use of the CRTL+A keyboard shortcut, mixed with the delete button. It dawned on me that it was time to invest in a plugin system. This would allow me to simply add snippets of code. as time went on, and I could subversion stuff out, and distribute small chunks of code, rather than something that encompasses only a specific function or design. This comes with its own complexity, of course, and by the time I had finished the software scope for this addition, it hit me that I would want to add to everything in the software, not just a new http method, or automation code for a specific website. Great, we're getting more abstract. However, the software that I have in my mind comes down to a quite a few questions regarding its execution. I have to have some parameters to what I am going to do. After writing what the perfect software would do in my mind, I came up with this as a list of requirements: Should be able to use networking A "Macro" or "Expression system" which would allow people to do something like : =First(=ParseToList(=GetUrl("http://www.google.com?q=helloworld!"), Template.Google)) Multithreaded Able to add UI elements through some type of XML -- People can make their own addons etc. Can use third party API through the plugins, such as Microsoft CRM, Exchange, etc. This would allow the software to essentially be used for everything. Really, any task you wish to automate, in a simple way. Making the UI was as also extremely hard. How do you do all of this? Its very difficult. So my question: With so many attempts at this, I'm out of ideas how to successfully complete this. I have a very specific idea in my mind, but I keep failing to execute it. I'm a self taught programmer. I've been doing it for years, and work professionally in it, but I've never encountered something that would be as complex and in-depth as a system which essentially does everything. Where would you start? What are the best practices for design? How can I avoid constantly having to go back and optimize my software. What can I do to generalize this and draw everything out to completion. These are things I struggle with. P.s., I'm using c# as my main language. I feel like in this example, I might be hitting the outer limit of the language, although, I don't know if that is the case, or if I'm just a bad programmer. Thanks for your time.

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  • Dual monitor not working completely in 12.10 after upgrade

    - by Mark Baldridge
    At 12.04, dual monitors worked perfectly. After upgrading to 12.10, the primary monitor works, the second monitor only partly works. I am sure there is some difference between the releases that I have missed setting properly. System settings - Displays show both correctly as Acer 22" monitors at 1680x1050 (16:10). An icon on monitor 2 is present, but elongated; almost an artifact, since other icons on the primary screen are absent, but this one icon is there on th second monitor. Selecting the icons on both screens exist. Painting is weird on monitor 2. Launcher exists and works on both screens, but even with sticky edges off, the cursor stops at the left edge of monitor 2. Clicking on text editor on screen 2 launcer will launch gedit there. If I drag it, it leaves a trail of after images like repaint is failing. If I drive the cursor on the launcher, the help tags like "LibreOffice Writer" appear, but stay on screen unless I drag the active gedit window over them. Then part of the help bubbles are overwritten, leaving behind after images of the gedit window on screen. What is really fascinating is that the System settings - Displays is now ignoring monitor selection, after allowing it earlier. Just before this, the help popup which said "Select a monitor to change its properties; drag to rearrange its placement" actually let me do that. Maybe a trick of where I grab the edge of the monitor in the Displays setting. I just found a working handle. When I drag monitor 1 to the right of monitor 2, "Apply" and confirm, both monitors work normally (although the right monitor lets the cursor slide off the right edge onto the left edge of monitor 1 - which sounds correct). Painting of windows does not leave an after image. However, success is only temporary. The setting survives the reboot, but painting on the left monitor, now monitor 2, now replicates the issues from before. The after image of the gedit window and the small window for "Are you sure you want to close all programs and restart the computer?" are still on monitor 2 (on the left now), even though they are not real windows, nor do they have processes behind them. Curiously, in Displays, the "green" monitor on the left in the display window is matched by the right monitor color in the monitor upper left corner. Probably makes sense as the one on the right is now monitor 1. If I repeat the "drag the left monitor to the right of the right monitor on the "Displays" window, things are oriented properly, with no display artifacts as I drag windows around either screen. Also the description bubbles that pop up are overwritten on both screens, so none of those artifacts either. This goodness does not survive a reboot, however. Have not tried logging out and back in. All of this after positing that the motherboard VGA and HDMI ports could have been the issue. So, I installed an e-GeForce 7600 GT Dual DVI (I know the web thinks it is not DVI, but VGA, but the connectors are DVI). No change to the weird behavior. The good parts continue to work, the weirdness also works, and swapping monitor positions seems to cure the issue. So, is there a setting I have missed? Given "swapping" monitor 1 and 2 on the System Settings... - Displays makes it work, just not across boot, I suspect so.

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  • Oracle Executive Strategy Brief: Enterprise-Grade Cloud Applications

    - by B Shashikumar
    Cloud Computing has clearly evolved into one of the dominant secular trends in the industry. Organizations are looking to the cloud to change how they buy and consume IT. And its no longer about just lower up-front costs. The cloud promises to deliver greater agility and free up resources to focus on innovation versus running and maintaining systems. But are organizations actually realizing these benefits? The full promise of cloud is not being realized by customers who entrust their business to multiple niche cloud providers. While almost 9 out of 10 companies  expect more IT agility with cloud, only 47% are actually getting it (Source: 2011 State of Cloud Survey by Symantec). These niche cloud customers have also seen the promises of lower costs, efficiency gains, improved security, and compliance go unfulfilled. Having one cloud provider for customer relationship management (CRM) and another for human capital management (HCM), and then trying to glue these proprietary systems together while integrating to a back-office financial system can add to complexity and long-term costs. Completing a business process or generating an integrated report is cumbersome, and leverages incomplete data. Why can’t niche cloud providers deliver on the full promise of cloud? It’s simple: you still need to complete business processes. You still need reporting that enables you to take action using data from multiple systems. You still have to comply with SOX and other industry regulations. These requirements don’t go away just because you deploy in the cloud. Delivering lower up-front costs by enabling customers to buy software as a service (SaaS) is the easy part. To get real value that lasts longer than your quarterly report, it’s important to realize the benefits of cloud without compromising on functionality and while having the right level of control and flexibility. This is the true promise of cloud. Oracle’s cloud strategy centers around delivering the benefits of cloud—without compromise. We uniquely empower our customers with complete solutions and choice. From the richest functionality to integrated reporting and great user experience. It’s all available in the cloud. And it works not just with other Oracle cloud applications, but with your existing Oracle and third-party systems as well. This helps protect your current investments and extend their value as you journey to the cloud. We’ve made the necessary investments not only in our applications but also in the underlying technology that makes it all run—from the platform down to the hardware and operating system. We make it all. And we’ve engineered it to work together and be highly optimized for our customers, in the cloud. With Oracle enterprise-grade cloud applications, you get the benefits of cloud plus more power, more choice, and more confidence. Read more about how you can realize the true advantage of Cloud with Oracle Enterprise-grade Cloud applications in the Oracle Executive Strategy Brief here.  You can also attend an Oracle Cloud Conference event at a city near you. Register here. 

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  • Admin Panel like Custom Framework

    - by bhuvin
    I want to Create a Framework , like Admin panel , which can rule almost all the aspects of what is shown on the frontend. For an (most basic) example: If suppose the links which are to be shown in a navigation area is passed from the server, with the order and the url , etc. The whole aim is to save the time on the tedious tasks. You can just start creating menus and start assigning pages to it. Give a url, actual files which are to be rendered (in case of static files.), in case of dynamic files, giving the file accordingly. And all this is fully server side manageable using different portlets, sort of things. So basic Roadmap is having : Areas like: Header Area - Which can contain logos, links etc. Navigation Area - Which can contains links and submenus. Content Area - Now this is where the tricky part is that that it has zones like: left, center & right. It contains Order in which it has to be displayed. So, when someday we want to change the way the articles appear on the page, we can do so easily, without any deployments. Now these zones can have n number of internal elements, like the word cloud, or the advertisement area. Footer Area: Again similar as Header Area. Currently there is a preexisting custom framework, which uses XSLT files for pulling out data from the server side. And it has the above capabilities. For example: If there's a grid it will be having a <table> tag embedded in the XSLT file. Now whatever might be the source of the data, we serialize this as XML and give it to the XSLT file and the html is derived from this and is appended to the layer in a page. The problem with this approach is: The XSLT conversion is occurring on the server side, so the server is responsible for getting the data, running XSLT transform, and append the html generated to the layer div. So, according to me, firstly this isn't the server's concern to do so. Secondly for larger applications this might be slower. Debugging isn't possible for XSLT transformation. So, whenever we face problems with data its always a bit of a trial & error method. Maintaining it is a bit of an eerie job i.e. styling changes, and other stuff. Adding dynamic values. Like JavaScript can't actually be very easily used in this. Secondly, we can't use JQuery or any other libraries with this since this is all occurring on the server. For now what I have thought about is using Templating - Javascript - JSON combination in place of XSLT, this will be offloaded to the client and the rendering will take place accordingly. This could solve the above problems and also could add mobile support for the same. Only problem which I could think of is that: It is much work and adding new portlets on the go needs to be looked into. What could be the alternatives for this? What kind of problems are there with the JavaScript approach? What are the different ways to implement the same? Are there any existing frameworks for similar usage?

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  • SQL Server 2000 and SSL Encryption

    - by Angry_IT_Guru
    We are a datacenter that hsots a SQL Server 2000 environment which provides database services for a product we sell that is loaded as a rich-client applicatin at each of our many clients and their workstations. Currently today, the application uses straight ODBC connections from the client site to our datacenter. We need to begin encrypting the credentials -- since everything is clear-text today and the authentication is weakly encrypted -- and I'm trying to determine the best way to implement SSL on the server with minimizing the impact of the client. A few things, however: 1) We have our own Windows domain and all our servers are joined to our private domain. Our clietns no nothing of our domain. 2) Typically, our clients connect to our datacenter servers either by: a) Using TCP/IP address b) Using a DNS name that we publish via internet, zone transfers from our DNS servers to our customers, or the client can add static HOSTS entries. 3) From what I understand from enabling encryption is that I can go to the Network Utility and select the "encryption" option for the protocol that I wish to encrypt. Such as TCP/IP. 4) When the encryption option is selected, I have a choice of installing a third-party certificate or a self-signed. I have tested the self-signed, but do have potential issues. I'll explain in a bit. If I go with a third-party cert, such as Verisign, or Network solutions... what kind of certificate do I request? These aren't IIS certificates? When I go create a self-signed via Microsoft's certificate server, I have to select "Authentication certificate". What does this translate to in the third-party world? 5) If I create a self-signed certificate, I understand that the "issue to" name has to match the FQDN for the server that is running SQL. In my case, I have to use my private domain name. If I use this, what does this do for my clients when trying to connect to my SQL Server? Surely they cannot resolve my private DNS names on their network.... I've also verified that when the self-signed certificate is installed, it has to be in the local personal store for the user account that is running SQL Server. SQL Server will only start if the FQDN matches the "issue to" of the certificate and SQL is running under the account that has the certificate installed. If I use a self-signed certificate, does this mean I have to have every one of my clients install it to verify? 6) If I used a third-party certificate, which sounds like the best option, do all my clients have to have internet access when accessing my private servers of their private WAN connection to use to verify the certificate? What do I do about the FQDN? It sounds like they have to use my private domain name -- which is not published -- and can no longer use the one that I setup for them to use? 7) I plan on upgrading to SQL 2000 soon. Is setup of SSL any easier/better with SQL 2005 than SQL 2000? Any help or guiadance would be appreciated

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  • Red Meat's Music is Rare - and Well Done

    - by Oracle OpenWorld Blog Team
    By Karen Shamban The blogger has questions; San Francisco-based country band Red Meat has answers. Although we forgot to ask how they got their band name, dang it. Read on and enjoy the honesty and insight. Q. What do you like best about performing in front of a live audience?A. Probably just having fun and entertaining the audience. We've been together for almost two decades, and in that time we've played for crowds of five people, and for crowds of more than 15,000. Both are equally important to us, and just as fun. We turn Jill and Smelley loose on the between-songs repartee, and let the songs shine through. On the best night, we feed on the audience's love and vice-versa. It's emotional vampirism of the best sort. [Blogger's note: now that whole "red meat" thing is starting to make sense ...] Q. Do you prefer smaller, intimate venues or larger, louder ones? Why?A. We love both. Whether it's a chance to connect with a small room or huge audience, we always try to hit 'em between the eyes! Q. What about your fans surprises you?A. Since we've been together for so long, we're pretty much on our third generation of fans now. We're excited that the Bakersfield sound has that same effect on the new, younger fans as it did on the punk rockers that we played to 20 years ago. And we still see them at our shows too! Q. What about your live act surprises your fans?A. For people who haven't seen Red Meat before, they may be dragged to a show thinking they don't like country music. But they're surprised to hear it done in a way that excites them so much. We get a lot of first-timers coming up to us after a performance and asking, "Wait, THAT'S what country music can sound like?" Q. There are going to be a lot of technical people (you could call them geeks) in the Oracle crowd - what are they going to love about your performance?A. Just what everyone loves about a Red Meat show - the chance to drink beer, dance, get rowdy, and have a great time. Q. Have you been on tour recently? If so, what do you like about touring, and what do you dislike?A. Actually, we're going to be coming off the road immediately into the Oracle OpenWorld Music Festival, having just played some Texas dates. On tour, we love playing for fans who don't get to see us as often as our California fans do. And food. Most of our conversations in the van center around food. Q. Ever think about playing another kind of music? If so, what, and why?A. Our tastes and influences in the band run all over the place. Obviously we love the Bakersfield artists - Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, Dwight Yoakam - but we love other types of roots music as well, along with the Beatles, NRBQ, MC5, punk/new wave, and countless bar bands that we've had the privilege of playing with through the years. But as far as playing a different kind of music as Red Meat? Nah. We love what we're doing. Q. What are the top three things people should know about your music?A1. Country music, done right, has unlimited soul.A2. Red Meat is a modern band, playing original material, with a great debt to the Bakersfield sound of Buck Owens and Merle Haggard.A3. It's FUN. More details on the Festival and the band: Oracle OpenWorld Music Festival Red Meat

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  • Get More Value From Your Oracle Premier Support Investment

    - by Get Proactive Customer Adoption Team
    Untitled Document The Return on Investment in Support Training I’m a typical software user. I’ve been using spreadsheets almost daily for the past 10 years or so. I know how to enter simple formulas, format cells, import files, and I can sort and filter. Sometimes I even use a pivot table. I never attended training. I learnt everything I know on the fly. Sometimes it was intuitive and easy, other times I had to spend minutes and even hours searching for a solution. Yet when I see what some other people can do with their spreadsheets, I know I’m utilizing maybe 15% of the functionality. Pity, one day I really have to sign up for training. Why haven’t I done it yet? Ah, you know, I’m a busy person, I have work to do. And if I need to use a feature that I am unfamiliar with, I’ll spend time on it only when I really need it. Now wait. When I recall how much time I spent trying to figure how things work compared to time I spent doing the productive work, I realize it was not insignificant. I’m unable to sum up all the time I spent ‘learning’ on the fly, but I’m sure it’s been days or even weeks. And after all this time, I’ve mastered 15% of its features. If only I had attended training years ago. That investment would have paid back 10 times! Working with My Oracle Support is no different. Our customers typically use simple search, create service requests, and download patches. They think they know how to use My Oracle Support. And they’re right. They know something but often they’re utilizing only a fragment of My Oracle Support’s potential. For the investment that has been made, using only a small subset of the capabilities offered in My Oracle Support leaves value on the table. There is much more available in My Oracle Support. Dozens of diagnostic tools and proactive health checks will keep verifying your Oracle environments against best practices that Oracle gathers every day thanks to our comprehensive knowledge management process. Automated patch recommendations will help prevent known issues, and upgrade planning and more is included in My Oracle Support. Why are you not utilizing all of these best practices, capabilities and tools? Is it because you don’t have time to invest 2-3 hours of your time to learn about the features? Simply because you think you can learn on the fly like I thought I could? Does learning on the fly how to properly use the Service Request escalation process when you already have critical issue sound like a good idea? My advice is: Invest your time now to learn how My Oracle Support can help you prevent issues on your systems. Learn how to find answers faster and resolve problems more efficiently. Understand how to properly complete a service request. Invest in Support training, offered at no additional cost to Oracle Premier Support customers. It will pay back quicker than you think. It will bring you more value than you think. Discover your advantage with Oracle Premier Support's Proactive Portfolio.

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  • django/python: is one view that handles two sibling models a good idea?

    - by clime
    I am using django multi-table inheritance: Video and Image are models derived from Media. I have implemented two views: video_list and image_list, which are just proxies to media_list. media_list returns images or videos (based on input parameter model) for a certain object, which can be of type Event, Member, or Crag. The view alters its behaviour based on input parameter action (better name would be mode), which can be of value "edit" or "view". The problem is that I need to ask whether the input parameter model contains Video or Image in media_list so that I can do the right thing. Similar condition is also in helper method media_edit_list that is called from the view. I don't particularly like it but the only alternative I can think of is to have separate (but almost the same) logic for video_list and image_list and then probably also separate helper methods for videos and images: video_edit_list, image_edit_list, video_view_list, image_view_list. So four functions instead of just two. That I like even less because the video functions would be very similar to the respective image functions. What do you recommend? Here is extract of relevant parts: http://pastebin.com/07t4bdza. I'll also paste the code here: #urls url(r'^media/images/(?P<rel_model_tag>(event|member|crag))/(?P<rel_object_id>\d+)/(?P<action>(view|edit))/$', views.image_list, name='image-list') url(r'^media/videos/(?P<rel_model_tag>(event|member|crag))/(?P<rel_object_id>\d+)/(?P<action>(view|edit))/$', views.video_list, name='video-list') #views def image_list(request, rel_model_tag, rel_object_id, mode): return media_list(request, Image, rel_model_tag, rel_object_id, mode) def video_list(request, rel_model_tag, rel_object_id, mode): return media_list(request, Video, rel_model_tag, rel_object_id, mode) def media_list(request, model, rel_model_tag, rel_object_id, mode): rel_model = tag_to_model(rel_model_tag) rel_object = get_object_or_404(rel_model, pk=rel_object_id) if model == Image: star_media = rel_object.star_image else: star_media = rel_object.star_video filter_params = {} if rel_model == Event: filter_params['event'] = rel_object_id elif rel_model == Member: filter_params['members'] = rel_object_id elif rel_model == Crag: filter_params['crag'] = rel_object_id media_list = model.objects.filter(~Q(id=star_media.id)).filter(**filter_params).order_by('date_added').all() context = { 'media_list': media_list, 'star_media': star_media, } if mode == 'edit': return media_edit_list(request, model, rel_model_tag, rel_object_id, context) return media_view_list(request, model, rel_model_tag, rel_object_id, context) def media_view_list(request, model, rel_model_tag, rel_object_id, context): if request.is_ajax(): context['base_template'] = 'boxes/base-lite.html' return render(request, 'media/list-items.html', context) def media_edit_list(request, model, rel_model_tag, rel_object_id, context): if model == Image: get_media_edit_record = get_image_edit_record else: get_media_edit_record = get_video_edit_record media_list = [get_media_edit_record(media, rel_model_tag, rel_object_id) for media in context['media_list']] if context['star_media']: star_media = get_media_edit_record(context['star_media'], rel_model_tag, rel_object_id) else: star_media = None json = simplejson.dumps({ 'star_media': star_media, 'media_list': media_list, }) return HttpResponse(json, content_type=json_response_mimetype(request)) def get_image_edit_record(image, rel_model_tag, rel_object_id): record = { 'url': image.image.url, 'name': image.title or image.filename, 'type': mimetypes.guess_type(image.image.path)[0] or 'image/png', 'thumbnailUrl': image.thumbnail_2.url, 'size': image.image.size, 'id': image.id, 'media_id': image.media_ptr.id, 'starUrl':reverse('image-star', kwargs={'image_id': image.id, 'rel_model_tag': rel_model_tag, 'rel_object_id': rel_object_id}), } return record def get_video_edit_record(video, rel_model_tag, rel_object_id): record = { 'url': video.embed_url, 'name': video.title or video.url, 'type': None, 'thumbnailUrl': video.thumbnail_2.url, 'size': None, 'id': video.id, 'media_id': video.media_ptr.id, 'starUrl': reverse('video-star', kwargs={'video_id': video.id, 'rel_model_tag': rel_model_tag, 'rel_object_id': rel_object_id}), } return record # models class Media(models.Model, WebModel): title = models.CharField('title', max_length=128, default='', db_index=True, blank=True) event = models.ForeignKey(Event, null=True, default=None, blank=True) crag = models.ForeignKey(Crag, null=True, default=None, blank=True) members = models.ManyToManyField(Member, blank=True) added_by = models.ForeignKey(Member, related_name='added_images') date_added = models.DateTimeField('date added', auto_now_add=True, null=True, default=None, editable=False) class Image(Media): image = ProcessedImageField(upload_to='uploads', processors=[ResizeToFit(width=1024, height=1024, upscale=False)], format='JPEG', options={'quality': 75}) thumbnail_1 = ImageSpecField(source='image', processors=[SmartResize(width=178, height=134)], format='JPEG', options={'quality': 75}) thumbnail_2 = ImageSpecField(source='image', #processors=[SmartResize(width=256, height=192)], processors=[ResizeToFit(height=164)], format='JPEG', options={'quality': 75}) class Video(Media): url = models.URLField('url', max_length=256, default='') embed_url = models.URLField('embed url', max_length=256, default='', blank=True) author = models.CharField('author', max_length=64, default='', blank=True) thumbnail = ProcessedImageField(upload_to='uploads', processors=[ResizeToFit(width=1024, height=1024, upscale=False)], format='JPEG', options={'quality': 75}, null=True, default=None, blank=True) thumbnail_1 = ImageSpecField(source='thumbnail', processors=[SmartResize(width=178, height=134)], format='JPEG', options={'quality': 75}) thumbnail_2 = ImageSpecField(source='thumbnail', #processors=[SmartResize(width=256, height=192)], processors=[ResizeToFit(height=164)], format='JPEG', options={'quality': 75}) class Crag(models.Model, WebModel): name = models.CharField('name', max_length=64, default='', db_index=True) normalized_name = models.CharField('normalized name', max_length=64, default='', editable=False) type = models.IntegerField('crag type', null=True, default=None, choices=crag_types) description = models.TextField('description', default='', blank=True) country = models.ForeignKey('country', null=True, default=None) #TODO: make this not null when db enables it latitude = models.FloatField('latitude', null=True, default=None) longitude = models.FloatField('longitude', null=True, default=None) location_index = FixedCharField('location index', length=24, default='', editable=False, db_index=True) # handled by db, used for marker clustering added_by = models.ForeignKey('member', null=True, default=None) #route_count = models.IntegerField('route count', null=True, default=None, editable=False) date_created = models.DateTimeField('date created', auto_now_add=True, null=True, default=None, editable=False) last_modified = models.DateTimeField('last modified', auto_now=True, null=True, default=None, editable=False) star_image = models.ForeignKey('Image', null=True, default=None, related_name='star_crags', on_delete=models.SET_NULL) star_video = models.ForeignKey('Video', null=True, default=None, related_name='star_crags', on_delete=models.SET_NULL)

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  • My 2009 MacBook Logic board failed - options to proceed and how difficult?

    - by user181061
    Scannerz just gave my MacBook logic board a big fat F! I upgraded from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion about 3 weeks ago. The system was running short of memory so I upgraded it. The system was running fine for about 2 weeks. Yesterday the thing started acting erratic. A lot of spinning beach balls, delays, and then some errors saying files couldn't be read to or from the drive. I figured the drive was going because the system is over 3 years old. I ran Scannerz on it and it indicated a lot of errors and irregularities. I rescanned it in cursory mode, and none of them were repeatable, just showing up all over the place in different regions of the scan. I went through the docs and they implied either an I/O cable was bad, a connection was damaged, or the logic board was bad. I tossed on my backup of Snow Leopard that I cloned from the original hard drive because I figured Mountain Lion was to blame and booted from the USB drive with the clone on it. It wasn't. I performed scans on every single port, and errors and irregularities that couldn't be repeated were showing up on every single one of them. I then, for kicks, put a CD into the CD player. Scannerz doesn't test optical drives but I figured surely that will work. No it won't. More spinning beach balls and messages telling me it can't be read. It was working fine 3 days ago. I know a lot of people don't like MacBook's, but mine's been great, at least until now. It was working great even with Mountain Lion after the upgrade. The system is a mid-2009 MacBook. In my opinion, it's a complete waste to toss this system. The display is too good, the keyboard works great, and it still looks good, plus this type of MacBook still uses the FireWire 400 port and I use that for Time Machine backups. I've tried reseating the RAM, it didn't do anything. I shut the system down and put in the old RAM, booted to Snow Leopard, and the problems persist. Here are my questions: The Scannerz documentation somewhere said something about the Airport card not being seated properly, but when I go to iFixit, it's apparent, at least I think it's apparent, that this isn't a slot type Airport card that the user can easily install or remove. If the cables or connections to the Airport card are bad, could they be causing this problem. How about any other connections that can be intermittent, failing or erratic? Any type of resets that I could possibly do to get rid of this? For any of those that have replaced a logic board on a MacBook, if this really is the culprit, are there any "gotcha's" I need to be aware of? As an FYI, I replaced the hard drive on an old iBook @500MHz that I had a long time ago, and I replaced the drive on a 1.33GHz PowerBook about 6 years ago. You have to be careful, but using some of the info on web sites like iFixit it's not that hard. Time consuming, but not that hard. The Intel based MacBook's to me look like they're easier to service than either of those. I'm thinking about getting a unit off of eBay that matches mine but has something else wrong with it, like a busted display. I REFUSE to buy a new system. A guy at my office has a 2007 Mac Pro and he can't upgrade to Mountain Lion because his system is "obsoleted." That's ridiculous. If you pay nearly $7,500 for a system it shouldn't be trash just because Apple decides they don't have enough money (sorry for the soap box, but it's true, IMO!) Any input is appreciated.

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  • "The connection has timed out" - Please help!

    - by gon
    I recently installed a fresh Ubuntu 12.04 LTS on a desktop, and the installation itself was successful (other than 'grub rescue' issue that I encountered but fixed) but this connection problem is really giving me a headache. Symptoms: 1. When I open the FireFox browser and try to connect to a website, it just hangs for a while saying "Connecting..." but eventually loads an error page "The connection has timed out". 2. It's not a browser problem (and I tried setting ipv6 thing to "true" at about:config) because running "sudo apt-get install [some-random-package]" at terminal fails ("E: Unable to locate package [package]") too. All other operations that need internet access are not working. 3. I certainly see a wired network (called "eth1") at the Network Manager, and it says "Connection Established" after disconnecting and then connecting again. I have tried almost everything that could be found from google search results still no luck. Their problems slightly differ from mine or the solutions just don't work. By the way it didn't have internet access when installing Ubuntu 12.04. (I ignored the message that I need internet to install Ubuntu) Could this be a problem? I'm sorry I don't remember if internet worked or not on the previous version of Ubuntu. :( I would really appreciate your help... I don't even know what more to do if this fails too.. Thanks!! Thanks for your comment. Here is the result of ifconfig: eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 78:ac:c0:3d:b2:b9 inet addr:10.10.65.185 Bcast:10.10.65.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 inet6 addr: fe80::7aac:c0ff:fe3d:b2b9/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:3907 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:771 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:393118 (393.1 KB) TX bytes:73472 (73.4 KB) Interrupt:16 eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 78:ac:c0:3d:b2:b8 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 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B) Interrupt:17 lo Link encap:Local Loopback inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0 inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1 RX packets:4 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:4 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:204 (204.0 B) TX bytes:204 (204.0 B) route -n: Kernel IP routing table Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface 0.0.0.0 10.10.65.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth0 10.10.65.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 1 0 0 eth0 169.254.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.0.0 U 1000 0 0 eth0 /etc/resolv.conf: # Dynamic resolv.conf(5) file for glibc resolver(3) generated by resolvconf(8) # DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE BY HAND -- YOUR CHANGES WILL BE OVERWRITTEN nameserver 8.8.8.8 nameserver 8.8.4.4 nameserver 10.81.1.8 nameserver 10.1.2.10 nameserver 127.0.0.1 search yamatake.local /etc/network/interfaces: auto lo iface lo inet loopback #auto eth0 #iface eth0 inet dhcp #auto eth1 #iface eth1 inet dhcp And I'll also include the result of 'sudo lshw -C network' in case it might help: *-network description: Ethernet interface product: NetXtreme BCM5764M Gigabit Ethernet PCIe vendor: Broadcom Corporation physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:02:00.0 logical name: eth0 version: 10 serial: 78:ac:c0:3d:b2:b9 size: 100Mbit/s capacity: 1Gbit/s width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm vpd msi pciexpress 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 duplex=full firmware=5764m-v3.35 ip=10.10.65.185 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes port=twisted pair speed=100Mbit/s resources: irq:93 memory:fc000000-fc00ffff *-network description: Ethernet interface product: NetXtreme BCM5764M Gigabit Ethernet PCIe vendor: Broadcom Corporation physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0 logical name: eth1 version: 10 serial: 78:ac:c0:3d:b2:b8 size: 100Mbit/s capacity: 1Gbit/s width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm vpd msi pciexpress 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 duplex=full firmware=5764m-v3.35 latency=0 link=no multicast=yes port=twisted pair speed=100Mbit/s resources: irq:94 memory:fb000000-fb00ffff

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  • XNA - 3D AABB collision detection and response

    - by fastinvsqrt
    I've been fiddling around with 3D AABB collision in my voxel engine for the last couple of days, and every method I've come up with thus far has been almost correct, but each one never quite worked exactly the way I hoped it would. Currently what I do is get two bounding boxes for my entity, one modified by the X translation component and the other by the Z component, and check if each collides with any of the surrounding chunks (chunks have their own octrees that are populated only with blocks that support collision). If there is a collision, then I cast out rays into that chunk to get the shortest collision distance, and set the translation component to that distance if the component is greater than the distance. The problem is that sometimes collisions aren't even registered. Here's a video on YouTube that I created showing what I mean. I suspect the problem may be with the rays that I cast to get the collision distance not being where I think they are, but I'm not entirely sure what would be wrong with them if they are indeed the problem. Here is my code for collision detection and response in the X direction (the Z direction is basically the same): // create the XZ offset vector Vector3 offsXZ = new Vector3( ( _translation.X > 0.0f ) ? SizeX / 2.0f : ( _translation.X < 0.0f ) ? -SizeX / 2.0f : 0.0f, 0.0f, ( _translation.Z > 0.0f ) ? SizeZ / 2.0f : ( _translation.Z < 0.0f ) ? -SizeZ / 2.0f : 0.0f ); // X physics BoundingBox boxx = GetBounds( _translation.X, 0.0f, 0.0f ); if ( _translation.X > 0.0f ) { foreach ( Chunk chunk in surrounding ) { if ( chunk.Collides( boxx ) ) { float dist = GetShortestCollisionDistance( chunk, Vector3.Right, offsXZ ) - 0.0001f; if ( dist < _translation.X ) { _translation.X = dist; } } } } else if ( _translation.X < 0.0f ) { foreach ( Chunk chunk in surrounding ) { if ( chunk.Collides( boxx ) ) { float dist = GetShortestCollisionDistance( chunk, Vector3.Left, offsXZ ) - 0.0001f; if ( dist < -_translation.X ) { _translation.X = -dist; } } } } And here is my implementation for GetShortestCollisionDistance: private float GetShortestCollisionDistance( Chunk chunk, Vector3 rayDir, Vector3 offs ) { int startY = (int)( -SizeY / 2.0f ); int endY = (int)( SizeY / 2.0f ); int incY = (int)Cube.Size; float dist = Chunk.Size; for ( int y = startY; y <= endY; y += incY ) { // Position is the center of the entity's bounding box Ray ray = new Ray( new Vector3( Position.X + offs.X, Position.Y + offs.Y + y, Position.Z + offs.Z ), rayDir ); // Chunk.GetIntersections(Ray) returns Dictionary<Block, float?> foreach ( var pair in chunk.GetIntersections( ray ) ) { if ( pair.Value.HasValue && pair.Value.Value < dist ) { dist = pair.Value.Value; } } } return dist; } I realize some of this code can be consolidated to help with speed, but my main concern right now is to get this bit of physics programming to actually work.

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  • Log transport and aggregation at scale

    - by markdrayton
    How're you analysing log files from UNIX/Linux machines? We run several hundred servers which all generate their own log files, either directly or through syslog. I'm looking for a decent solution to aggregate these and pick out important events. This problem breaks down into 3 components: 1) Message transport The classic way is to use syslog to log messages to a remote host. This works fine for applications that log into syslog but less useful for apps that write to a local file. Solutions for this might include having the application log into a FIFO connected to a program to send the message using syslog, or by writing something that will grep the local files and send the output to the central syslog host. However, if we go to the trouble of writing tools to get messages into syslog would we be better replacing the whole lot with something like Facebook's Scribe which offers more flexibility and reliability than syslog? 2) Message aggregation Log entries seem to fall into one of two types: per-host and per-service. Per-host messages are those which occur on one machine; think disk failures or suspicious logins. Per-service messages occur on most or all of the hosts running a service. For instance, we want to know when Apache finds an SSI error but we don't want the same error from 100 machines. In all cases we only want to see one of each type of message: we don't want 10 messages saying the same disk has failed, and we don't want a message each time a broken SSI is hit. One approach to solving this is to aggregate multiple messages of the same type into one on each host, send the messages to a central server and then aggregate messages of the same kind into one overall event. SER can do this but it's awkward to use. Even after a couple of days of fiddling I had only rudimentary aggregations working and had to constantly look up the logic SER uses to correlate events. It's powerful but tricky stuff: I need something which my colleagues can pick up and use in the shortest possible time. SER rules don't meet that requirement. 3) Generating alerts How do we tell our admins when something interesting happens? Mail the group inbox? Inject into Nagios? So, how're you solving this problem? I don't expect an answer on a plate; I can work out the details myself but some high-level discussion on what is surely a common problem would be great. At the moment we're using a mishmash of cron jobs, syslog and who knows what else to find events. This isn't extensible, maintainable or flexible and as such we miss a lot of stuff we shouldn't. Updated: we're already using Nagios for monitoring which is great for detected down hosts/testing services/etc but less useful for scraping log files. I know there are log plugins for Nagios but I'm interested in something more scalable and hierarchical than per-host alerts.

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  • Spotlight on Oracle Social Relationship Management. Social Enable Your Enterprise with Oracle SRM.

    - by Pat Ma
    Facebook is now the most popular site on the Internet. People are tweeting more than they send email. Because there are so many people on social media, companies and brands want to be there too. They want to be able to listen to social chatter, engage with customers on social, create great-looking Facebook pages, and roll out social-collaborative work environments within their organization. This is where Oracle Social Relationship Management (SRM) comes in. Oracle SRM is a product that allows companies to manage their presence with prospects and customers on social channels. Let's talk about two popular use cases with Oracle SRM. Easy Publishing - Companies now have an average of 178 social media accounts - with every product or geography or employee group creating their own social media channel. For example, if you work at an international hotel chain with every single hotel creating their own Facebook page for their location, that chain can have well over 1,000 social media accounts. Managing these channels is a mess - with logging in and out of every account, making sure that all accounts are on brand, and preventing rogue posts from destroying the brand. This is where Oracle SRM comes in. With Oracle Social Relationship Management, you can log into one window and post messages to all 1,000+ social channels at once. You can set up approval flows and have each account generate their own content but that content must be approved before publishing. The benefits of this are easy social media publishing, brand consistency across all channels, and protection of your brand from inappropriate posts. Monitoring and Listening - People are writing and talking about your company right now on social media. 75% of social media users have written a negative post about a brand after a poor customer service experience. Think about all the negative posts you see in your Facebook news feed about delayed flights or being on hold for 45 minutes. There is so much social chatter going on around your brand that it's almost impossible to keep up or comprehend what's going on. That's where Oracle SRM comes in. With Social Relationship Management, a company can monitor and listen to what people are saying about them on social channels. They can drill down into individual posts or get a high level view of trends and mentions. The benefits of this are comprehending what's being said about your brand and its competitors, understanding customers and their intent, and responding to negative posts before they become a PR crisis. Oracle SRM is part of Oracle Cloud. The benefits of cloud deployment for customers are faster deployments, less maintenance, and lower cost of ownership versus on-premise deployments. Oracle SRM also fits into Oracle's vision to social enable your enterprise. With Oracle SRM, social media is not just a marketing channel. Social media is also mechanism for sales, customer support, recruiting, and employee collaboration. For more information about how Oracle SRM can social enable your enterprise, please visit oracle.com/social. For more information about Oracle Cloud, please visit cloud.oracle.com.

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  • Using WKA in Large Coherence Clusters (Disabling Multicast)

    - by jpurdy
    Disabling hardware multicast (by configuring well-known addresses aka WKA) will place significant stress on the network. For messages that must be sent to multiple servers, rather than having a server send a single packet to the switch and having the switch broadcast that packet to the rest of the cluster, the server must send a packet to each of the other servers. While hardware varies significantly, consider that a server with a single gigabit connection can send at most ~70,000 packets per second. To continue with some concrete numbers, in a cluster with 500 members, that means that each server can send at most 140 cluster-wide messages per second. And if there are 10 cluster members on each physical machine, that number shrinks to 14 cluster-wide messages per second (or with only mild hyperbole, roughly zero). It is also important to keep in mind that network I/O is not only expensive in terms of the network itself, but also the consumption of CPU required to send (or receive) a message (due to things like copying the packet bytes, processing a interrupt, etc). Fortunately, Coherence is designed to rely primarily on point-to-point messages, but there are some features that are inherently one-to-many: Announcing the arrival or departure of a member Updating partition assignment maps across the cluster Creating or destroying a NamedCache Invalidating a cache entry from a large number of client-side near caches Distributing a filter-based request across the full set of cache servers (e.g. queries, aggregators and entry processors) Invoking clear() on a NamedCache The first few of these are operations that are primarily routed through a single senior member, and also occur infrequently, so they usually are not a primary consideration. There are cases, however, where the load from introducing new members can be substantial (to the point of destabilizing the cluster). Consider the case where cluster in the first paragraph grows from 500 members to 1000 members (holding the number of physical machines constant). During this period, there will be 500 new member introductions, each of which may consist of several cluster-wide operations (for the cluster membership itself as well as the partitioned cache services, replicated cache services, invocation services, management services, etc). Note that all of these introductions will route through that one senior member, which is sharing its network bandwidth with several other members (which will be communicating to a lesser degree with other members throughout this process). While each service may have a distinct senior member, there's a good chance during initial startup that a single member will be the senior for all services (if those services start on the senior before the second member joins the cluster). It's obvious that this could cause CPU and/or network starvation. In the current release of Coherence (3.7.1.3 as of this writing), the pure unicast code path also has less sophisticated flow-control for cluster-wide messages (compared to the multicast-enabled code path), which may also result in significant heap consumption on the senior member's JVM (from the message backlog). This is almost never a problem in practice, but with sufficient CPU or network starvation, it could become critical. For the non-operational concerns (near caches, queries, etc), the application itself will determine how much load is placed on the cluster. Applications intended for deployment in a pure unicast environment should be careful to avoid excessive dependence on these features. Even in an environment with multicast support, these operations may scale poorly since even with a constant request rate, the underlying workload will increase at roughly the same rate as the underlying resources are added. Unless there is an infrastructural requirement to the contrary, multicast should be enabled. If it can't be enabled, care should be taken to ensure the added overhead doesn't lead to performance or stability issues. This is particularly crucial in large clusters.

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