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  • Why are marketing employees, product managers, etc. deserving of their own office, yet programmers are jammed in a room as many as possible?

    - by TheImirOfGroofunkistan
    I don't understand why many (many) companies treat software developers like they are assembly line workers making widgets. Joel Spolsky has a great example of the problems this creates: With programmers, it's especially hard. Productivity depends on being able to juggle a lot of little details in short term memory all at once. Any kind of interruption can cause these details to come crashing down. When you resume work, you can't remember any of the details (like local variable names you were using, or where you were up to in implementing that search algorithm) and you have to keep looking these things up, which slows you down a lot until you get back up to speed. Here's the simple algebra. Let's say (as the evidence seems to suggest) that if we interrupt a programmer, even for a minute, we're really blowing away 15 minutes of productivity. For this example, lets put two programmers, Jeff and Mutt, in open cubicles next to each other in a standard Dilbert veal-fattening farm. Mutt can't remember the name of the Unicode version of the strcpy function. He could look it up, which takes 30 seconds, or he could ask Jeff, which takes 15 seconds. Since he's sitting right next to Jeff, he asks Jeff. Jeff gets distracted and loses 15 minutes of productivity (to save Mutt 15 seconds). Now let's move them into separate offices with walls and doors. Now when Mutt can't remember the name of that function, he could look it up, which still takes 30 seconds, or he could ask Jeff, which now takes 45 seconds and involves standing up (not an easy task given the average physical fitness of programmers!). So he looks it up. So now Mutt loses 30 seconds of productivity, but we save 15 minutes for Jeff. Ahhh! Quote Link More Spolsky on Offices Why don't managers and owner's see this?

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  • RAID 0 performance gains?

    - by NickAldwin
    I'm building a new computer over the summer. I'm fairly competent in computer hardware, and am thus building the computer from scratch. I have everything planned out, but I was wondering about RAID. I asked which RAID I should use earlier, but now that it's pretty clear that RAID 1 isn't really that great, I think I'll go with cloud-backup instead of disk-redundancy. However, I still face a choice: use two 1TB drives as two 1TB drives, or combine them into a RAID 0 striped array. Is there any performance gain at all? I know that if one drive dies, everything is gone, so is the performance gain worth it? I'm building a pretty advanced computer, with SLI video cards and a fast CPU, so I'm thinking RAID 0 would give me some good hard drive performance. From your experience, is RAID 0 viable?

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  • How to Find Your IP Address in Ubuntu Linux

    - by Trevor Bekolay
    In Windows, we use the command-line program ipconfig to find out our IP address. How do you find it in Ubuntu? We will show you two locations easily accessible through the GUI and, of course, a terminal command that will get your IP address in no time. The first location, and the easiest in most cases, is found by right clicking the network icon in the notification area and clicking Connection Information. This brings up a window which has a bunch of information, including your IP address. The second location, which shows you more detail than this first method, is at System > Administration > Network Tools. Select the right network device, and you’ve got a ton of information at your fingertips. Finally, if you can’t tear yourself away from a terminal window, the command to type in is: ifconfig Yes, it’s only one character different than ipconfig. Who would have guessed? As it turns out, you’re always a few clicks or keystrokes away from finding your IP address in Ubuntu. Isn’t choice great? Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Change Ubuntu Desktop from DHCP to a Static IP AddressAdding extra Repositories on UbuntuClear the Auto-Complete Email Address Cache in OutlookMake Firefox Display Large Images Full SizeChange Ubuntu Server from DHCP to a Static IP Address TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows Track Daily Goals With 42Goals Video Toolbox is a Superb Online Video Editor Fun with 47 charts and graphs Tomorrow is Mother’s Day Check the Average Speed of YouTube Videos You’ve Watched OutlookStatView Scans and Displays General Usage Statistics

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  • Easy Credential Caching for Git

    A common question since launching our Git support is whether there is a way to cache your username and password so you don’t have to enter it on every push.  Well thanks to Andrew Nurse from the ASP.Net team, there is now a great solution for this! Credential Caching in Windows to the Rescue Using the Git extension point for credential caching, Andrew created an integration into the Windows Credentials store. After installing git-credential-winstore instead of getting that standard prompt for a username/password, you will get a Windows Security prompt. From here your credentials for CodePlex will be stored securely within the Windows Credential Store. Setup The setup is pretty easy. Download the application from Andrew's git-credential-winstore project. Launch the executable and select yes to have it prompt for credentials. That's it. Make sure you are running the latest version of msysgit, since the credential's API is fairly new. Thanks to Andrew for sharing his work.  If you have suggestions or improvements you can fork the code here.

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  • SCSI direct-access device appears as multiple lun's

    - by unixdj
    I have a similarly described problem to this question: http://superuser.com/questions/90181/same-scsi-drive-appears-multiple-times-on-the-controller-list where a SCSI direct-access device appears as multiple lun's, when it should only be one. The device is a SCSI-1 device, the SCSI controller card is an Adaptec AHA-7850 (rev 03), and system is PC / Linux 2.6. This device worked fine with RHEL4, and appeared as a single device / lun when the OS booted, but I've just tried plugging the device into a newer Linux disto (CentOS 5.4) and it now sees the device as 8 luns; with consequently 8 device files /dev/sgb to /dev/sgi. Any clues of how to figure out where the problem / fix is, would be great.

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  • Why do marketing employees get their own office, yet programmers are jammed in a room as many as possible?

    - by TheImirOfGroofunkistan
    I don't understand why many (many) companies treat software developers like they are assembly line workers making widgets. Joel Spolsky has a great example of the problems this creates: With programmers, it's especially hard. Productivity depends on being able to juggle a lot of little details in short term memory all at once. Any kind of interruption can cause these details to come crashing down. When you resume work, you can't remember any of the details (like local variable names you were using, or where you were up to in implementing that search algorithm) and you have to keep looking these things up, which slows you down a lot until you get back up to speed. Here's the simple algebra. Let's say (as the evidence seems to suggest) that if we interrupt a programmer, even for a minute, we're really blowing away 15 minutes of productivity. For this example, lets put two programmers, Jeff and Mutt, in open cubicles next to each other in a standard Dilbert veal-fattening farm. Mutt can't remember the name of the Unicode version of the strcpy function. He could look it up, which takes 30 seconds, or he could ask Jeff, which takes 15 seconds. Since he's sitting right next to Jeff, he asks Jeff. Jeff gets distracted and loses 15 minutes of productivity (to save Mutt 15 seconds). Now let's move them into separate offices with walls and doors. Now when Mutt can't remember the name of that function, he could look it up, which still takes 30 seconds, or he could ask Jeff, which now takes 45 seconds and involves standing up (not an easy task given the average physical fitness of programmers!). So he looks it up. So now Mutt loses 30 seconds of productivity, but we save 15 minutes for Jeff. Ahhh! Quote Link More Spolsky on Offices Why don't managers and owner's see this?

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  • Introducing Kiddo: A Ruby DSL for building simple WPF and Silverlight applications

    - by fdumlao
    Read the original article here... As a long time Ruby lover and deep rooted .NET supporter, I was probably more psyched than anyone I knew when IronRuby 1.0 was finally released. I immediately grabbed and started building some apps with it to see where the boundaries were going to lie between IronRuby and ruby.exe, and so far I've been pleasantly surprised by how many things just work as I'd expect. I then started to try out some of my favorite libs that I was sure would not work with IronRuby, and I wasn't surprised at all when _why's amazing Shoes library didn't work. Being somewhat familiar with Shoes (it's a great DSL for building simple UIs in Ruby) I felt it wouldn't be that difficult to port it over and as it turned out, someone else had already started the work. As cool as this was, I was never quite satisfied with good 'ol shoes. While it was quite complete, it lacked simple extensibility points, and although easy, it wasn't quite "kid friendly". At the same time on the .NET side of the fence, IronRuby could easily compile XAML to create WPF and Silverlight UIs, but trying to do it declaratively in plain Ruby was no fun at all. And so, the Shoes-inspired, WPF/Silverlight GUI DSL was born. (and it lives here: http://bitbucket.org/fdumlao/kiddo/src) Introducing Kiddo Tell you what. Let's start with a quick code example first. We'll build a useful app that we can use to quickly reverse strings whenever we need it. Read the complete article here...

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  • Get the MakeUseOf eBook Guide to Speeding Up Windows for Free

    - by ETC
    Our friends over at MakeUseOf.com have released yet another eBook in their series of Guides to, well, just about everything. This one gives you some tips for speeding up your Windows PC. The guide has a ton of different tips, and while I wouldn’t necessarily say you follow every single tip to the letter (since everybody’s setup is different), it does give you lots of great ideas for speeding up your PC, as well as links to resources, and instructions for how to perform various cleanup tasks. The best tips? Make sure to keep your PC crapware-free, upgrade your RAM if you’re low, scan for viruses, and run some type of disk cleanup on a regular basis. Download the MakeUseOf Windows on Speed Guide (PDF) [Direct Download Link] Windows on Speed [MakeUseOf] Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How to Enable User-Specific Wireless Networks in Windows 7 How to Use Google Chrome as Your Default PDF Reader (the Easy Way) How To Remove People and Objects From Photographs In Photoshop Ask How-To Geek: How Can I Monitor My Bandwidth Usage? Internet Explorer 9 RC Now Available: Here’s the Most Interesting New Stuff Here’s a Super Simple Trick to Defeating Fake Anti-Virus Malware Comix is an Awesome Comics Archive Viewer for Linux Get the MakeUseOf eBook Guide to Speeding Up Windows for Free Need Tech Support? Call the Star Wars Help Desk! [Video Classic] Reclaim Vertical UI Space by Adding a Toolbar to the Left or Right Side of Firefox Androidify Turns You into an Android-style Avatar Reader for Android Updates; Now with Feed Widgets and More

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  • Refactoring in domain driven design

    - by Andrew Whitaker
    I've just started working on a project and we're using domain-driven design (as defined by Eric Evans in Domain-Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software. I believe that our project is certainly a candidate for this design pattern as Evans describes it in his book. I'm struggling with the idea of constantly refactoring. I know refactoring is a necessity in any project and will happen inevitably as the software changes. However, in my experience, refactoring occurs when the needs of the development team change, not as understanding of the domain changes ("refactoring to greater insight" as Evans calls it). I'm most concerned with breakthroughs in understanding of the domain model. I understand making small changes, but what if a large change in the model is necessary? What's an effective way of convincing yourself (and others) you should refactor after you obtain a clearer domain model? After all, refactoring to improve code organization or performance could be completely separate from how expressive in terms of the ubiquitous language code is. Sometimes it just seems like there's not enough time to refactor. Luckily, SCRUM lends it self to refactoring. The iterative nature of SCRUM makes it easy to build a small piece and change and it. But over time that piece will get larger and what if you have a breakthrough after that piece is so large that it will be too difficult to change? Has anyone worked on a project employing domain-driven design? If so, it would be great to get some insight on this one. I'd especially like to hear some success stories, since DDD seems very difficult to get right. Thanks!

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  • Oracle VM Templates Available for E-Business Suite 12.1.3

    - by Steven Chan (Oracle Development)
    Oracle VM has matured into a formidable virtualization product over the years. Oracle E-Business Suite is certified to run production instances on both Oracle VM 2 and 3. This applies to EBS Releases 11i and 12.  It also applies to future Oracle VM 3 updates, including subsequent Oracle VM 3.x releases. E-Business Suite 12.1.3 Oracle VM templates available now The latest EBS 12.1.3 templates for Oracle VM can be downloaded here: Oracle VM Templates: E-Business Suite Templates are available for: E-Business Suite 12.1.3 Vision (64-bit) E-Business Suite 12.1.3 Production (32-bit) E-Business Suite 12.x Sparse Middle Tiers (32-bit and 64-bit) Should EBS 11i users care? Yes.  You can use these templates to get an EBS 12 testbed environment running in minutes.  This is a great way of giving your end-users a chance to work with EBS 12 without the overhead of building an environment from scratch. References Oracle VM 3 supports a number of guest operating systems including various flavors and versions of Linux, Solaris and Windows. For information regarding certified platforms, installation and upgrade guidance and prerequisite requirements please refer to the Certifications tab on My Oracle Support as well as the following documentation: Oracle VM Installation and Upgrade Guide  Introduction to Oracle VM, Oracle VM Manager and EBS template deployment (Note 1355641.1) Related Articles Oracle VM 3 Certified with Oracle E-Business Suite Support Policies for Virtualization Technologies and Oracle E-Business Suite The Scoop: Oracle E-Business Suite Support on 64-bit Linux

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  • Frederick .NET User Group June 2010 Meeting

    - by John Blumenauer
    FredNUG is pleased to announce our June speaker will be Pete Brown.  Pete was one FredNUG’s first speakers when the group started and we’re very happy to have him visiting us again to present on Silverlight!  On June 15th @ 6:30 PM, we’ll start with a Visual Studio 2010 Launch with pizza, swag and a presentation about what makes Visual Studio 2010 great.  Then, starting at 7 PM, Pete Brown will present “What’s New in Silverlight 4.”  It looks like a evening filled with newness!   The scheduled agenda is:   6:30 PM - 7:15 PM – Visual Studio 2010 Launch Event plus Pizza/Social Networking/Announcements 7:15 PM - 8:30 PM - Main Topic: What’s New in Silverlight 4 with Pete Brown  Main Topic:  What’s New in Silverlight 4? Speaker Bio: Pete Brown is a Senior Program Manager with Microsoft on the developer community team led by Scott Hanselman, as well as a former Microsoft Silverlight MVP, INETA speaker, and RIA Architect for Applied Information Sciences, where he worked for over 13 years. Pete's focus at Microsoft is the community around client application development (WPF, Silverlight, Windows Phone, Surface, Windows Forms, C++, Native Windows API and more). From his first sprite graphics and custom character sets on the Commodore 64 to 3d modeling and design through to Silverlight, Surface, XNA, and WPF, Pete has always had a deep interest in programming, design, and user experience. His involvement in Silverlight goes back to the Silverlight 1.1 alpha application that he co-wrote and put into production in July 2007. Pete has been programming for fun since 1984, and professionally since 1992. In his spare time, Pete enjoys programming, blogging, designing and building his own woodworking projects and raising his two children with his wife in the suburbs of Maryland. Pete's site and blog is at 10rem.net, and you can follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/pete_brown Twitter: http://twitter.com/pete_brown Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pmbrown Pete is a founding member of the CapArea .NET Silverlight SIG. (Visit the CapArea. NET Silverlight SIG here )    8:30 PM - 8:45 PM – RAFFLE! Please join us and get involved in our .NET developers community!

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  • Windows does not recognize DVDs inserted into Blu-ray drive

    - by icemanind
    I am having a problem with a Blu-ray drive I have in my PC. Its a Blu-ray reader drive and it reads and writes CDs and DVDs. My drive has been working great for about a year now, but for some reason now, when I insert a DVD, Windows 7 doesn't recognize that there is a disc in the drive. I have to eject the disc and insert it again. I sometimes have to do this like 30 times before it "catches" and Windows 7 recognizes the disc. My discs are not scratched up. It does it even with brand new discs. I've tried about 10 different DVDs and the same problem happens. One thing that is weird though is that the problem does not seem to happen when I insert Blu-ray discs. The problem only happens with DVD discs. I tried running a drive lens cleaner. Same issue. Any suggestions?

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  • ArchBeat Top 20 for March 11-17, 2012

    - by Bob Rhubart
    The 20 most-clicked links as shared via my social networks for the week of March 11-17, 2012. Start Small, Grow Fast: SOA Best Practices article by @biemond, @rluttikhuizen, @demed Packt Publishing offers discounts of up to 30% on 60+ Oracle titles IT Strategies from Oracle; Three Recipes for Oracle Service Bus 11g ; Stir Up Some SOA Oracle Cloud Conference: dates and locations worldwide Applications Architecture | Roy Hunter and Brian Rasmussen How Strategic is IT? - Assessing Strategic Value | Al Kiessel White Paper: An Architect’s Guide to Big Data | Dr. Helen Sun, Peter Heller Getting Started with Oracle Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 2 | Lenz Grimmer Great Solaris 10 features paving the way to Solaris 11 | Karoly Vegh Who the Linux Developer Met on His Way to St. Ives | Rick Ramsey Peripheral Responsibilities Required for Large IDM Build Outs (Including Fusion Apps) | Brian Eidelman IOUG Real World Performance Tour, w/Tom Kyte, Andrew Holdsworth, Graham Wood Configure IPoIB on Solaris 10 branded zone | Leo Yuen Oracle OpenWorld 2012 Call for Papers Use Case Assumptions versus Pre-Conditions | Dave Burke Handling Custom XML documents in Oracle B2B | @Biemond Building a Coherence Cluster with Multiple Application Servers | Rene van Wijk XMLA vs BAPI | Sunil S. Ranka The Java EE 6 Example - Running Galleria on WebLogic 12 - Part 3 | @MyFear Public Sector Architecture | @jeremy_forman, @hamzajahangir Thought for the Day "The goal of Computer Science is to build something that will last at least until we've finished building it." —Anonymous

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  • Add Properties Back to the Context Menu in Firefox

    - by Asian Angel
    Have you noticed that the Properties Command has been removed from the Context Menu in Firefox 3.6? If you have been missing it here is how to get it back. Before With the newest version of Firefox you may have noticed a very useful command missing from the “Context Menu”. Here you can see that when we right clicked on the article link we were unable to “access” the properties for it… Same article and the same problem when trying to “access” the properties for one of the images. After Once you have installed the extension you can once again “access” the properties for those links… And those images… Looking very good… Conclusion If you have been frustrated with the removal of the “Properties Command” from the “Context Menu” in Firefox 3.6, you can now add it back in just a few moments. Links Download the Element Properties extension (Mozilla Add-ons) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Prevent Annoying Websites From Messing With the Right-Click Menu in FirefoxAccess Your Bookmarks in the Context Menu with Context BookmarksAdd Print & Print Preview Commands to Firefox’s Context MenuRestore the "Search…" Item to the Folder Context Menu in Windows Vista SP1Create Permanent Tabs in Firefox with PermaTabs Mod TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional The Ultimate Excel Cheatsheet Convert the Quick Launch Bar into a Super Application Launcher Automate Tasks in Linux with Crontab Discover New Bundled Feeds in Google Reader Play Music in Chrome by Simply Dragging a File 15 Great Illustrations by Chow Hon Lam

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  • Inexpensive Remote Assistance software?

    - by Jess
    Any recommendations for Remote Assistance software that does not require firewall modification for clients? To assist client with software problems and perform training, we currently use a tool called Remote Helpdesk to connect to their computers and guide them through the process. This tool was pretty cheap (~$400 onetime for 3 support staff), and worked great - the client's PC actually initiates the connection to us, so there's never any firewall issues (vs. Remote Desktop, VNC software, or many other similar tools). Unfortunately, the product doesn't work well with 64-bit O/S's and Vista in general (slows down by a factor of 10 or so). I am looking for alternatives that provide the same reverse connection capabilities to avoid firewall issues. The only solution I've found is WebEx's Remote Support, which is WAY too expensive ($449/month for us). Thanks for all the assistance!

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  • Wireless AP Placement and Digramming

    - by Matt Simmons
    I'm trying to research the best placement of wireless APs in a given space, and I'm running into problems in gathering information. I found (what I thought was) a great source in this tech republic article: http://techrepublic.com.com/5206-6230-0.html?forumID=82&threadID=163120 While this diagram seems detailed and overall very informative, there were a lot of comments talking about how it was lacking in things like "wire racks, microwaves, concrete walls, motors..." etc. Maybe I'm rash, but I just sort of looked around my office (which is, albeit, somewhat smaller than the one diagrammed), and went "uhhh, there", and hooked up the AP. It seems to cover everywhere. I imagine if my office quadrupled in size, I'd logically divide it up and put four APs in, with a similar amount of thought devoted to each. So, suppose I had a much more complex office. What tools (both diagramming and surveying) do you use to plan your AP placement?

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  • Wireless AP Placement and Digramming

    - by Matt Simmons
    I'm trying to research the best placement of wireless APs in a given space, and I'm running into problems in gathering information. I found (what I thought was) a great source in this tech republic article: http://techrepublic.com.com/5206-6230-0.html?forumID=82&threadID=163120 While this diagram seems detailed and overall very informative, there were a lot of comments talking about how it was lacking in things like "wire racks, microwaves, concrete walls, motors..." etc. Maybe I'm rash, but I just sort of looked around my office (which is, albeit, somewhat smaller than the one diagrammed), and went "uhhh, there", and hooked up the AP. It seems to cover everywhere. I imagine if my office quadrupled in size, I'd logically divide it up and put four APs in, with a similar amount of thought devoted to each. So, suppose I had a much more complex office. What tools (both diagramming and surveying) do you use to plan your AP placement?

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  • ASP.NET MVC: MVC Time Planner is available at CodePlex

    - by DigiMortal
    I get almost every week some e-mails where my dear readers ask for source code of my ASP.NET MVC and FullCalendar example. I have some great news, guys! I ported my sample application to Visual Studio 2010 and made it available at CodePlex. Feel free to visit the page of MVC Time Planner. NB! Current release of MVC Time Planner is initial one and it is basically conversion sfrom VS2008 example solution to VS2010. Current source code is not any study material but it gives you idea how to make calendars work together. Future releases will introduce many design and architectural improvements. I have planned also some new features. How MVC Time Planner looks? Image on right shows you how time planner looks like. It uses default design elements of ASP.NET MVC applications and jQueryUI. If I find some artist skills from myself I will improve design too, of course. :) Currently only day view of calendar is available, other views are coming in near future (I hope future will be week or two). Important links And here are some important links you may find useful. MVC Time Planner page @ CodePlex Documentation Release plan Help and support – questions, ideas, other communication Bugs and feature requests If you have any questions or you are interested in new features then please feel free to contact me through MVC Time Planner discussion forums.

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  • Better Understand the 'Strategy' Design Pattern

    - by Imran Omar Bukhsh
    Greetings Hope you all are doing great. I have been interested in design patterns for a while and started reading 'Head First Design Patterns'. I started with the first pattern called the 'Strategy' pattern. I went through the problem outlined in the images below and first tried to propose a solution myself so I could really grasp the importance of the pattern. So my question is that why is my solution ( below ) to the problem outlined in the images below not good enough. What are the good / bad points of my solution vs the pattern? What makes the pattern clearly the only viable solution ? Thanks for you input, hope it will help me better understand the pattern. MY SOLUTION Parent Class: DUCK <?php class Duck { public $swimmable; public $quackable; public $flyable; function display() { echo "A Duck Looks Like This<BR/>"; } function quack() { if($this->quackable==1) { echo("Quack<BR/>"); } } function swim() { if($this->swimmable==1) { echo("Swim<BR/>"); } } function fly() { if($this->flyable==1) { echo("Fly<BR/>"); } } } ?> INHERITING CLASS: MallardDuck <?php class MallardDuck extends Duck { function MallardDuck() { $this->quackable = 1; $this->swimmable = 1; } function display() { echo "A Mallard Duck Looks Like This<BR/>"; } } ?> INHERITING CLASS: WoddenDecoyDuck <?php class WoddenDecoyDuck extends Duck { function woddendecoyduck() { $this->quackable = 0; $this->swimmable = 0; } function display() { echo "A Wooden Decoy Duck Looks Like This<BR/>"; } } Thanking you for your input. Imran

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  • When Your Boss Doesn't Want you to Succeed

    - by Phil Factor
    You're working hard to get an application finished. You are programming long into the evenings sometimes, and eating sandwiches at your desk instead of taking a lunch break. Then one day you glance up at the IT manager, serene in his mysterious round of meetings, and think 'Does he actually care whether this project succeeds or not?'. The question may seem absurd. Of course the project must succeed. The truth, as always, is often far more complex. Your manager may even be doing his best to make sure you don't succeed. Why? There have always been rich pickings for the unscrupulous in IT.  In extreme cases, where administrators struggle with scarcely-comprehended technical issues, huge sums of money can be lost and gained without any perceptible results. In a very few cases can fraud be proven: most of the time, the intricacies of the 'game' are such that one can do little more than harbor suspicion.  Where does over-enthusiastic salesmanship end and fraud begin? The Business of Information Technology provides rich opportunities for White-collar crime. The poor developer has his, or her, hands full with the task of wrestling with the sheer complexity of building an application. He, or she, has no time for following the complexities of the chicanery of the management that is directing affairs.  Most likely, the developers wouldn't even suspect that their company management had ulterior motives. I'll illustrate what I mean with an entirely fictional, hypothetical, example. The Opportunist and the Aged Charities often do good, unexciting work that is funded by the income from a bequest that dates back maybe hundreds of years.  In our example, it isn't exciting work, for it involves the welfare of elderly people who have fallen on hard times.  Volunteers visit, giving a smile and a chat, and check that they are all right, but are able to spend a little money on their discretion to ameliorate any pressing needs for these old folk.  The money is made to work very hard and the charity averts a great deal of suffering and eases the burden on the state. Daisy hears the garden gate creak as Mrs Rainer comes up the path. She looks forward to her twice-weekly visit from the nice lady from the trust. She always asked ‘is everything all right, Love’. Cheeky but nice. She likes her cheery manner. She seems interested in hearing her memories, and talking about her far-away family. She helps her with those chores in the house that she couldn’t manage and once even paid to fill the back-shed with coke, the other year. Nice, Mrs. Rainer is, she thought as she goes to open the door. The trustees are getting on in years themselves, and worry about the long-term future of the charity: is it relevant to modern society? Is it likely to attract a new generation of workers to take it on. They are instantly attracted by the arrival to the board of a smartly dressed University lecturer with the ear of the present Government. Alain 'Stalin' Jones is earnest, persuasive and energetic. The trustees welcome him to the board and quickly forgive his humorless political-correctness. He talks of 'diversity', 'relevance', 'social change', 'equality' and 'communities', but his eye is on that huge bequest. Alain first came to notice as a Trotskyite union official, who insinuated himself into one of the duller Trades Unions and turned it, through his passionate leadership, into a radical, headline-grabbing organization.  Middle age, and the rise of European federal socialism, had brought him quiet prosperity and charcoal suits, an ear in the current government, and a wide influence as a member of various Quangos (government bodies staffed by well-paid unelected courtiers).  He was employed as a 'consultant' by several organizations that relied on government contracts. After gaining the confidence of the trustees, and showing a surprising knowledge of mundane processes and the regulatory framework of charities, Alain launches his plan.  The trust will expand their work by means of a bold IT initiative that will coordinate the interventions of several 'caring agencies', and provide  emergency cover, a special Website so anxious relatives can see how their elderly charges are doing, and a vastly more efficient way of coordinating the work of the volunteer carers. It will also provide a special-purpose site that gives 'social networking' facilities, rather like Facebook, to the few elderly folk on the lists with access to the internet. The trustees perk up. Their own experience of the internet is restricted to the occasional scanning of railway timetables, but they can see that it is 'relevant'. In his next report to the other trustees, Alain proudly announces that all this glamorous and exciting technology can be paid for by a grant from the government. He admits darkly that he has influence. True to his word, the government promises a grant of a size that is an order of magnitude greater than any budget that the trustees had ever handled. There was the understandable proviso that the company that would actually do the IT work would have to be one of the government's preferred suppliers and the work would need to be tendered under EU competition rules. The only company that tenders, a multinational IT company with a long track record of government work, quotes ten million pounds for the work. A trustee questions the figure as it seems enormous for the reasonably trivial internet facilities being built, but the IT Salesmen dazzle them with presentations and three-letter acronyms until they subside into quiescent acceptance. After all, they can’t stay locked in the Twentieth century practices can they? The work is put in hand with a large project team, in a splendid glass building near west London. The trustees see rooms of programmers working diligently at screens, and who talk with enthusiasm of the project. Paul, the project manager, looked through his resource schedule with growing unease. His initial excitement at being given his first major project hadn’t lasted. He’d been allocated a lackluster team of developers whose skills didn’t seem right, and he was allowed only a couple of contractors to make good the deficit. Strangely, the presentation he’d given to his management, where he’d saved time and resources with a OTS solution to a great deal of the development work, and a sound conservative architecture, hadn’t gone down nearly as big as he’d hoped. He almost got the feeling they wanted a more radical and ambitious solution. The project starts slipping its dates. The costs build rapidly. There are certain uncomfortable extra charges that appear, such as the £600-a-day charge by the 'Business Manager' appointed to act as a point of liaison between the charity and the IT Company.  When he appeared, his face permanently split by a 'Mr Sincerity' smile, they'd thought he was provided at the cost of the IT Company. Derek, the DBA, didn’t have to go to the server room quite some much as he did: but It got him away from the poisonous despair of the development group. Wave after wave of events had conspired to delay the project.  Why the management had imposed hideous extra bureaucracy to cover ISO 9000 and 9001:2008 accreditation just as the project was struggling to get back on-schedule was  beyond belief.  Then  the Business manager was coming back with endless changes in scope, sorrowing saying that the Trustees were very insistent, though hopelessly out in touch with the reality of technical challenges. Suddenly, the costs mount to the point of consuming the government grant in its entirety. The project remains tantalizingly just out of reach. Alain Jones gives an emotional rallying speech at the trustees review meeting, urging them not to lose their nerve. Sadly, the trustees dip into the accumulated capital of the trust, the seed-corn of all their revenues, in order to save the IT project. A few months later it is all over. The IT project is never delivered, even though it had seemed so incredibly close.  With the trust's capital all gone, the activities it funded have to be terminated and the trust becomes just a shell. There aren't even the funds to mount a legal challenge against the IT company, even had the trust's solicitor advised such a foolish thing. Alain leaves as suddenly as he had arrived, only to pop up a few months later, bronzed and rested, at another charity. The IT workers who were permanent employees are dispersed to other projects, and the contractors leave to other contracts. Within months the entire project is but a vague memory. One or two developers remain  puzzled that their managers had been so obstructive when they should have welcomed progress toward completion of the project, but they put it down to incompetence and testosterone. Few suspected that they were actively preventing the project from getting finished. The relationships between the IT consultancy, and the government of the day are intricate, and made more complex by the Private Finance initiatives and political patronage.  The losers in this case were the taxpayers, and the beneficiaries of the trust, and, perhaps the soul of the original benefactor of the trust, whose bid to give his name some immortality had been scuppered by smooth-talking white-collar political apparatniks.  Even now, nobody is certain whether a crime was ever committed. The perfect heist, I guess. Where’s the victim? "I hear that Daisy’s cottage is up for sale. She’s had to go into a care home.  She didn’t want to at all, but then there is nobody to keep an eye on her since she had that minor stroke a while back.  A charity used to help out. The ‘social’ don’t have the funding, evidently for community care. Yes, her old cat was put down. There was a good clearout, and now the house is all scrubbed and cleared ready for sale. The skip was full of old photos and letters, memories. No room in her new ‘home’."

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  • Best solution for Multi-WAN failover (inside & out)?

    - by Sean O
    Looking for a way to setup 2 ISPs in failover mode, for both incoming & outgoing traffic, for our small (<100 devices) network. The leading contender for now seems to be the Peplink Balance 310. However, a reseller I spoke with said it's great for 100% outgoing connectivity, but didn't seem to be confident in its abilities to handle incoming traffic. This is important as we host our own web site, Exchange e-mail, and virtual desktops (RDP). Do any Peplink owners use this for failover of incoming traffic? Are there other devices I should be considering? We're currently using a Cisco 1800 series router & ASA 5500 series firewall, with Comcast & T-1 lines (the goal being to replace the T with DSL/FiOS {whenever that becomes availble}). Price range: ~$1000 - $2500 USD. Thanks.

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  • How to get Facebook-Feeds in Trillian without connecting to Facebook-Chat?

    - by Protron
    I installed the trial of Trillian 5.0 Build 22 (I don't know if the version 4 Astra is any different). I successfully added my Facebook account so I can see my facebook news on Trillian and works great. The problem is that I don't want to use the Facebook-chat, and if I disconnect the Facebook-chat the rest of the facebook stuff (news, events, groups, request) also disappears. I tried by setting the Facebook status to Away; and I'm not sure if someone can chat with me if I choose that; but anyway I still have the contacts list full of people I don't want. EDIT: Maybe I wasn't clear enough about the Facebook part. And that might be why some people fell this is off-topic. But when I talk about Facebook in this question, I'm not referring to the Facebook site at any point. I'm mean the Facebook plugin of Trillian (and it's not an user plugin; it's a built-in plugin).

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  • Expanding the Oracle Enterprise Repository with functional documentation by Marc Kuijpers

    - by JuergenKress
    Introduction Have you ever experienced the challenge to map both your functional and technical assets in one software package? Finding a software package that is able to describe the metadata about these assets and their mutual relationships? And if you found the correct software package, was it maintainable? The Oracle Enterprise Repository (OER) is a powerful SOA repository. Its core task is to map and visualize the interaction between technical assets generated by the SOA Suite and OSB. However, OER can be configured to not only contain these technical assets, but also to contain functional assets, i.e.: functional designs, use cases and a logical data model. Now that’s interesting! OER is able to show all the assets in your system and, if necessary, zoom in on one of the assets and their mutual relationships (Figure 1). This opens a set of doors to powerful features, e.g.: Impact analsysis If a functional design is adjusted, which other functional designs and use cases do I need to adjust? Traceability If a web service generates an error, in which functional and technical designs is the web service described This sounds great, but how do we get all the functional and technical documents in OER, and how are we going to keep this repository up-to-date? Read the full article. SOA & BPM Partner Community For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit  www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Technorati Tags: OER,SOA Governance,SOA Community,Oracle SOA,Oracle BPM,Community,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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  • Active Directory using Samba/Open LDAP for user accounts

    - by Jon Rhoades
    I know this is the wrong way round... but Is it possible to use AD in front of Samba for our PC clients, so that the user accounts are in Samba/Open LDAP. Managing our fleet of Windows PC's is becoming more and more difficult with just Samba v3 - until Samba v4 comes along, it would be great if we could leverage Active Directory, but have the accounts stored in Samba/Open LDAP. Windows PC's are a minority in our organisation & Samaba/Open LDAP are used for just about every service (Zimbra/RADIUS/Intranet/SAN/Printing/...) so it will have to remain the definitive account source. Anyway, it probably can't be done, but I thought I would ask for ideas anyway.

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  • Anyone have experience with Silicon Mechanics 4-Node Machines?

    - by Matt Simmons
    I'm taking a look at buying some new servers (small infrastructure, 2 racks, etc), and although I like a lot of the features in blades, I'm looking at the price point for Silicon Mechanics' 4-node machines. http://www.siliconmechanics.com/i27091/xeon-2U-4-Node.php It's a bit like a mini-blade enclosure, but has no shared resources, except for the redundant power supplies. A single point of management would be great, but for the low price point here, I'm possibly willing to give that up, if the server quality is adequate. Basically, have you used these machines? Any problems? Anything you like?

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