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• Gamification = -10#/3mo

  - by erikanollwebb

  One of the purposes of gamification of anything is to see if you can modify the behavior of the user. In the enterprise, that might mean getting sales people to enter more information into a CRM system, encouraging employees to update their HR records, motivating people to participate in forums and discussions, or process invoices more quickly.  Wikipedia defines behavior modification as "the traditional term for the use of empirically demonstrated behavior change techniques to increase or decrease the frequency of behaviors, such as altering an individual's behaviors and reactions to stimuli through positive and negative reinforcement of adaptive behavior and/or the reduction of behavior through its extinction, punishment and/or satiation."  Gamification is just a way to modify someone's behavior using game mechanics. And the magic question is always whether it works. So I thought I would present my own little experiment from the last few months.  This spring, I upgraded to a Samsung Galaxy 4.  It's a pretty sweet phone in many ways, but one of the little extras I discovered was a built in app called S Health. S Health is an app that you can use to track calories, weight, exercise and it has a built in pedometer. I looked at it when I got the phone, but assumed you had to turn it on to use it so I didn't look at it much.  But sometime in July, I realized that in fact, it just ran in the background and was quietly tracking my steps, with a goal of 10,000 per day.  10,000 steps per day is this magic number recommended by the Surgeon General and the American Heart Association.  Dr. Oz pushes it as the goal for daily exercise.  It's about 5 miles of walking. I'm generally not the kind of person who always has my phone with me.  I leave it in my purse and pull it out when I need it.  But then I realized that meant I wasn't getting a good measure of my steps.  I decided to do a little experiment, and carry it with me as much as possible for a week.  That's when I discovered the gamification that changed my life over the last 3 months.  When I hit 10,000 steps, the app jingled out a little "success!" tune and I got a badge.  I was hooked.  I started carrying my phone.  I started making sure I had shoes I could walk in with me.  I started walking at lunch time, because I realized how often I sat at my desk for 8-10 hours every day without moving.  I started pestering my husband to walk with me after work because I hadn't hit my 10,000 yet, leading him at one point to say "I'm not as much a slave to that badge as you are!"  I started looking at parking lots differently.  Can't get a space up close?  No worries, just that many steps toward my 10,000.  I even tried to see if there was a second power user level at 15,000 or 20,000 (*sadly, no).  If I was close at the end of the day, I have done laps around my house until I got my badge.  I have walked around the block one more time to get my badge.  I have mentally chastised myself when I forgot to put my phone in my pocket because I don't know how many steps I got.  The badge below I got when my boss and I were in New York City and we walked around the block of our hotel just to watch the badge pop up. There are a bunch of tools out on the market now that have similar ideas for helping you to track your exercise, make it social.  There are apps (my favorite is still Zombies, Run!).  You could buy a FitBit or UP by Jawbone.   Interactive fitness makes the Expresso stationary bike with built in video games.  All designed to help you be more aware of your activity and keep you engaged and motivated.  And the idea is to help you change your behavior. I know someone who would spend extra time and work hard on the Expresso because he had built up strategies for how to kill the most dragons while he was riding to get more points.  When the machine broke down, he didn't ride a different bike because it just wasn't that interesting. But for me, just the simple jingle and badge have been all I needed.  I admit, I still giggle gleefully when I hear the tune sing out from my pocket. After a few weeks, I noticed I had dropped a few pounds.  Not a lot, just 2-3.  But then I was really hooked.  I started making a point both to eat a little less and hit 10,000 steps as much as I could.  I bemoaned that during the floods in Boulder, I wasn't hitting my 10,000 steps.  And now, a few months later, I'm almost 10 lbs lighter. All for 1 badge a day. So yes, simple gamification can increase motivation and engagement.  And that can lead to changes in behavior.  Now the job is to apply that to the enterprise space in a meaningful and engaging way. 

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• EM CLI, diving in and beyond!

  - by Maureen Byrne

  v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Doing more in less time… Isn’t that what we all strive to do? With this in mind, I put together two screen watches on Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c command line interface, or EM CLI as it is also known. There is a wealth of information on any topic that you choose to read about, from manual pages to coding documents…might I even say blog posts? In our busy lives it is so nice to just sit back with a short video, watch and learn enough to dive in. Doing more in less time, is the essence of EM CLI. It enables you to script fundamental and complex administrative tasks in an elegant way, thanks to the Jython scripting language. Repetitive tasks can be scripted and reused again and again. Sure, a Graphical User Interface provides a more intuitive step by step approach to tasks, and it provides a way of quickly becoming familiar with a product and its many features, and it is definitely the way to go when viewing performance data and historical trending…but for repetitive and complex tasks, scripting is the way to go! Lets us take the everyday task of creating an administrator. Using EM CLI in interactive mode the command could look like this.. emcli>create_user(name='jan.doe', type='EXTERNAL_USER') This command creates an administrator called jan.doe which is an externally authenticated user, possibly LDAP or SSO, defined by the EXTERNAL_USER tag. The create_user procedure takes many arguments; see the documentation for more information. Now, where EM CLI really shines and shows power is in creating multiple users. Regardless of the number, tens or thousands, the effort is the same. With the use of a standard programming construct, a loop, you can place your create_user() procedure within it. Using a loop allows you to iterate through a previously created list, creating new users until the list is complete. Using EM CLI in Script mode, your Jython loop would look something like this… for user in list_of_users:       create_user(name=user, expire=’true’, password=’welcome123’) This Jython code snippet iterates through a previously defined list of names, list_of_users, and iterates through the list, taking each name, user in this case, and creates an administrator sets the password to welcome123, but forces the user to reset it when they first login. This is only one of over four hundred procedures created to expose Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c functionality in a powerful and programmatic way. It is a few months since we released EM CLI with scripting option. We are seeing many users adapt to this fun and powerful way of using Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c. What are the first steps? Watch these screen watches, and dive in. The first screen watch steps you through where and how to download and install and how to run your first few commands. The Second screen watch steps you through a few scripts. Next time, I am going to show you the basic building blocks to writing a Jython script to perform Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c administrative tasks. Join this growing group of EM CLI users…. Dive in! Normal 0 false false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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• SharePoint 2010 Diagnostic Studio Remote Diag

  - by juanlarios

  I have had some time this week to try out some tools that I have been meaning to try out. This week I am trying out the SP 2010 Diagnostic Studio. I installed it successfully and tried it on my development evironment. I was able to build a report and a snapshot of the environment. I decided to turn my attention to my Employer's intranet environment. This would allow me to analyze it and measure it against benchmarks. I didn't want to install the Diagnostic studio on the Production Envorinment, lucky for me, the Diagnostic studio can be run remotely, well...kind of. Issue My development environment is a stand alone, full installation of SharePoint 2010 Server. It has Office 2010, SQL 2008 Enterprise, a DC...well you get the point, it's jammed packed! But more importantly it's a stand alone, self contained VM environment. Well Microsoft has instructions as to how to connect remotely with Diagnostic Studio here. The deciving part of this is that the SP2010DS prompts you for credentails. So I thought I was getting the right account to run the reports. I tried all the Power Shell commands in the link above but I still ended up getting the following errors: 06/28/2011 12:50:18    Connecting to remote server failed with the following error message : The WinRM client cannot process the request...If the SPN exists, but CredSSP cannot use Kerberos to validate the identity of the target computer and you still want to allow the delegation of the user credentials to the target computer, use gpedit.msc and look at the following policy: Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> System -> Credentials Delegation -> Allow Fresh Credentials with NTLM-only Server Authentication.  Verify that it is enabled and configured with an SPN appropriate for the target computer. For example, for a target computer name "myserver.domain.com", the SPN can be one of the following: WSMAN/myserver.domain.com or WSMAN/*.domain.com. Try the request again after these changes. For more information, see the about_Remote_Troubleshooting Help topic. 06/28/2011 12:54:47    Access to the path '\\<targetserver>\C$\Users\<account logging in>\AppData\Local\Temp' is denied. You might also get an error message like this: The WinRM client cannot process the request. A computer policy does not allow the delegation of the user credentials to the target computer. Explanation After looking at the event logs on the target environment, I noticed that there were a several Security Exceptions. After looking at the specifics around who was denied access, I was able to see the account that was being denied access, it was the client machine administrator account. Well of course that was never going to work!!! After some quick Googling, the last error message above will lead you to edit the Local Group Policy on the client server. And although there are instructions from microsoft around doing this, it really will not work in this scenario. Notice the Description and how it only applices to authentication mentioned? Resolution I can tell you what I did, but I wish there was a better way but I simply don't know if it's duable any other way. Because my development environment had it's own DC, I didn't really want to mess with Kerberos authentication. I would also not be smart to connect that server to the domain, considering it has it's own DC. I ended up installing SharePoint 2010 Diagnostic Studio on another Windows 7 Dev environment I have, and connected the machien to the domain. I ran all the necesary remote credentials commands mentioned here. Those commands add the group policy for you! Once I did this I was able to authenticate properly and I was able to get the reports. Conclusion   You can run SharePoint 2010 Diagnostic Studio Remotely but it will require some specific scenarions. A couple of things I should mention is that as far as I understand, SP2010 DS, will install agents on your target environment to run tests and retrieve the data. I was a Farm Administrator, and also a Server Admin on SharePoint Server. I am not 100% sure if you need all those permissions but I that's just what I have to my internal intranet.   I deally I would like to have a machine that I can have SharePoint 2010 DIagnostic Studio installed and I can run that against client environments. It appears that I will not be able to do that, unless I enable Kerberos on my Windows 7 Machine now. If you have it installed in the same way I would like to have it, please let me know, I'll keep trying to get what I'm after. Hope this helps someone out there doing the same.

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• MERGE gives better OUTPUT options

  - by Rob Farley

  MERGE is very cool. There are a ton of useful things about it – mostly around the fact that you can implement a ton of change against a table all at once. This is great for data warehousing, handling changes made to relational databases by applications, all kinds of things. One of the more subtle things about MERGE is the power of the OUTPUT clause. Useful for logging.   If you’re not familiar with the OUTPUT clause, you really should be – it basically makes your DML (INSERT/DELETE/UPDATE/MERGE) statement return data back to you. This is a great way of returning identity values from INSERT commands (so much better than SCOPE_IDENTITY() or the older (and worse) @@IDENTITY, because you can get lots of rows back). You can even use it to grab default values that are set using non-deterministic functions like NEWID() – things you couldn’t normally get back without running another query (or with a trigger, I guess, but that’s not pretty). That inserted table I referenced – that’s part of the ‘behind-the-scenes’ work that goes on with all DML changes. When you insert data, this internal table called inserted gets populated with rows, and then used to inflict the appropriate inserts on the various structures that store data (HoBTs – the Heaps or B-Trees used to store data as tables and indexes). When deleting, the deleted table gets populated. Updates get a matching row in both tables (although this doesn’t mean that an update is a delete followed by an inserted, it’s just the way it’s handled with these tables). These tables can be referenced by the OUTPUT clause, which can show you the before and after for any DML statement. Useful stuff. MERGE is slightly different though. With MERGE, you get a mix of entries. Your MERGE statement might be doing some INSERTs, some UPDATEs and some DELETEs. One of the most common examples of MERGE is to perform an UPSERT command, where data is updated if it already exists, or inserted if it’s new. And in a single operation too. Here, you can see the usefulness of the deleted and inserted tables, which clearly reflect the type of operation (but then again, MERGE lets you use an extra column called $action to show this). (Don’t worry about the fact that I turned on IDENTITY_INSERT, that’s just so that I could insert the values) One of the things I love about MERGE is that it feels almost cursor-like – the UPDATE bit feels like “WHERE CURRENT OF …”, and the INSERT bit feels like a single-row insert. And it is – but into the inserted and deleted tables. The operations to maintain the HoBTs are still done using the whole set of changes, which is very cool. And $action – very convenient. But as cool as $action is, that’s not the point of my post. If it were, I hope you’d all be disappointed, as you can’t really go near the MERGE statement without learning about it. The subtle thing that I love about MERGE with OUTPUT is that you can hook into more than just inserted and deleted. Did you notice in my earlier query that my source table had a ‘src’ field, that wasn’t used in the insert? Normally, this would be somewhat pointless to include in my source query. But with MERGE, I can put that in the OUTPUT clause. This is useful stuff, particularly when you’re needing to audit the changes. Suppose your query involved consolidating data from a number of sources, but you didn’t need to insert that into the actual table, just into a table for audit. This is now very doable, either using the INTO clause of OUTPUT, or surrounding the whole MERGE statement in brackets (parentheses if you’re American) and using a regular INSERT statement. This is also doable if you’re using MERGE to just do INSERTs. In case you hadn’t realised, you can use MERGE in place of an INSERT statement. It’s just like the UPSERT-style statement we’ve just seen, except that we want nothing to match. That’s easy to do, we just use ON 1=2. This is obviously more convoluted than a straight INSERT. And it’s slightly more effort for the database engine too. But, if you want the extra audit capabilities, the ability to hook into the other source columns is definitely useful. Oh, and before people ask if you can also hook into the target table’s columns... Yes, of course. That’s what deleted and inserted give you.

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• Upgrading to Code Based Migrations EF 4.3.1 with Connector/Net 6.6

  - by GABMARTINEZ

  Entity Framework 4.3.1 includes a new feature called code first migrations.  We are adding support for this feature in our upcoming 6.6 release of Connector/Net.  In this walk-through we'll see the workflow of code-based migrations when you have an existing application and you would like to upgrade to this EF 4.3.1 version and use this approach, so you can keep track of the changes that you do to your database.   The first thing we need to do is add the new Entity Framework 4.3.1 package to our application. This should via the NuGet package manager.  You can read more about why EF is not part of the .NET framework here. Adding EF 4.3.1 to our existing application  Inside VS 2010 go to Tools -> Library Package Manager -> Package Manager Console, this will open the Power Shell Host Window where we can work with all the EF commands. In order to install this library to your existing application you should type Install-Package EntityFramework This will make some changes to your application. So Let's check them. In your .config file you'll see a  <configSections> which contains the version you have from EntityFramework and also was added the <entityFramework> section as shown below. This section is by default configured to use SQL Express which won't be necesary for this case. So you can comment it out or leave it empty. Also please make sure you're using the Connector/Net 6.6.x version which is the one that has this support as is shown in the previous image. At this point we face one issue; in order to be able to work with Migrations we need the __MigrationHistory table that we don't have yet since our Database was created with an older version. This table is used to keep track of the changes in our model. So we need to get it in our existing Database. Getting a Migration-History table into an existing database First thing we need to do to enable migrations in our existing application is to create our configuration class which will set up the MySqlClient Provider as our SQL Generator. So we have to add it with the following code: using System.Data.Entity.Migrations;     //add this at the top of your cs file public class Configuration : DbMigrationsConfiguration<NameOfYourDbContext>  //Make sure to use the name of your existing DBContext { public Configuration() { this.AutomaticMigrationsEnabled = false; //Set Automatic migrations to false since we'll be applying the migrations manually for this case. SetSqlGenerator("MySql.Data.MySqlClient", new MySql.Data.Entity.MySqlMigrationSqlGenerator());     }   }  This code will set up our configuration that we'll be using when executing all the migrations for our application. Once we have done this we can Build our application so we can check that everything is fine. Creating our Initial Migration Now let's add our Initial Migration. In Package Manager Console, execute "add-migration InitialCreate", you can use any other name but I like to set this as our initial create for future reference. After we run this command, some changes were done in our application: A new Migrations Folder was created. A new class migration call InitialCreate which in most of the cases should have empty Up and Down methods as long as your database is up to date with your Model. Since all your entities already exists, delete all duplicated code to create any entity which exists already in your Database if there is any. I found this easier when you don't have any pending updates to do to your database. Now we have our empty migration that will make no changes in our database and represents how are all the things at the begining of our migrations.  Finally, let's create our MigrationsHistory table. Optionally you can add SQL code to delete the edmdata table which is not needed anymore. public override void Up() { // Just make sure that you used 4.1 or later version         Sql("DROP TABLE EdmMetadata"); } From our Package Manager Console let's type: Update-database; If you like to see the operations made on each Update-database command you can use the flag -verbose after the Update-database. This will make two important changes.  It will execute the Up method in the initial migration which has no changes in the database. And second, and very important,  it will create the __MigrationHistory table necessary to keep track of your changes. And next time you make a change to your database it will compare the current model to the one stored in the Model Column of this table. Conclusion The important thing of this walk through is that we must create our initial migration before we start doing any changes to our model. This way we'll be adding the necessary __MigrationsHistory table to our existing database, so we can keep our database up to date with all the changes we do in our context model using migrations. Hope you have found this information useful. Please let us know if you have any questions or comments, also please check our forums here where we keep answering questions in general for the community.  Happy MySQL/Net Coding!

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• Finding it Hard to Deliver Right Customer Experience: Think BPM!

  - by Ajay Khanna

  Our relationship with our customers is not a just a single interaction and we should not treat it like one. A customer’s relationship with a vendor is like a journey which starts way before customer makes a purchase and lasts long after that. The journey may start with customer researching a product that may lead to the eventual purchase and may continue with support or service needs for the product. A typical customer journey can be represented as shown below: As you may notice, customers tend to use multiple channels to interact with a company throughout their journey.  They also expect that they should get consistent experience, no matter what interaction channel they may choose. Customers do not like to repeat the information they have already provided and expect companies to remember their preferences, and offer them relevant products and services. If the company fails to meet this expectation, customers not only will abandon the purchase and go to the competitor but may also influence others’ purchase decision. Gone are the days when word of mouth was the only medium, and the customer could influence “Six” others. This is the age of social media and customer’s good or bad experience, especially bad get highly amplified and may influence hundreds of others. Challenges that face B2C companies today include: Delivering consistent experience: The reason that delivering consistent experience is challenging is due to fragmented data, disjointed systems and siloed multichannel interactions. Customers tend to get different service quality if they use web vs. phone vs. store. They get different responses from different service agents or get inconsistent answers if they call sales vs. service group in the company. Such inconsistent experiences result in lower customer satisfaction or NPS (net promoter score) numbers. Increasing Revenue: To stay competitive companies frequently introduce new products and services. Delay in launching such offerings has a significant impact on revenue realization. In addition to new product revenue, there are multiple opportunities to up-sell and cross-sell that impact bottom line. If companies are not able to identify such opportunities, bring a product to market quickly, or not offer the right product to the right customer at the right time, significant loss of revenue may occur. Ensuring Compliance: Companies must be compliant to ever changing regulations, these could be about Know Your Customer (KYC), Export/Import regulations, or taxation policies. In addition to government agencies, companies also need to comply with the SLA that they have committed to their customers. Lapse in meeting any of these requirements may lead to serious fines, penalties and loss in business. Companies have to make sure that they are in compliance will all such regulations and SLA commitments, at any given time. With the advent of social networks and mobile technology, companies not only need to focus on process efficiency but also on customer engagement. Improving engagement means delivering the customer experience as the customer is expecting and interacting with the customer at right time using right channel. Customers expect to be able to contact you via any channel of their choice (web, email, chat, mobile, social media), purchase via any viable channel (web, phone, store, mobile). Customers expect companies to understand their particular needs and remember their preferences on repeated visits. To deliver such an integrated, consistent, and contextual experience, power of BPM in must. Your company may be organized in departments like Marketing, Sales, Service. You may hold prospect data in SFA, order information in ERP, customer issues in CRM. However, the experience delivered to the customer must not be constrained by your system legacy. BPM helps in designing the right experience for the right customer and integrates all the underlining channels, systems, applications to make sure right information will be delivered to the right knowledge worker or to the customer every single time.     Orchestrating information across all systems (MDM, CRM, ERP), departments (commerce, merchandising, marketing service) and channels (Email, phone, web, social)  is the key, and that’s what BPM delivers. In addition to orchestrating systems and channels for consistency, BPM also provides an ability for analysis and decision management. By using data from historical transactions, social media and from other systems, users can determine the customer preferences, customer value, and churn propensity. This information, in the context, is then used while making a decision at a process step. Working with real-time decision management system can also suggest right up-sell or cross-sell offers, discounts or next-best-action steps for a particular customer. Timely action on customer issues or request is also a key tenet of a good customer experience. BPM’s complex event processing capabilities help companies to take proactive actions before issues get escalated. BPM system can be designed to listen to a certain event patters then deduce from those customer situations (credit card stolen, baggage lost, change of address) and do a triage before situation goes out of control. If such a situation arises you can send alerts to right people or immediately invoke corrective actions. Last but not least one of BPM’s key values is to drive continuous improvement. Learning about customers past experiences, interactions and social conversations, provide valuable insight. Such insight can be used to improve products, customer facing processes, and customer experience. You may take these insights as an input to design better more efficient and customer friendly sales, contact center or self-service processes. If customer experience is important for your business, make sure you have incorporated BPM as a part of your strategy to design, orchestrate and improve your customer facing processes.

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• BYOD-The Tablet Difference

  - by Samantha.Y. Ma

  By Allison Kutz, Lindsay Richardson, and Jennifer Rossbach, Sales Consultants Normal 0 false false false EN-US ZH-TW X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} Less than three years ago, Apple introduced a new concept to the world: The Tablet. It’s hard to believe that in only 32 months, the iPad induced an entire new way to do business. Because of their mobility and ease-of-use, tablets have grown in popularity to keep up with the increasing “on the go” lifestyle, and their popularity isn’t expected to decrease any time soon. In fact, global tablet sales are expected to increase drastically within the next five years, from 56 million tablets to 375 million by 2016. Tablets have been utilized for every function imaginable in today’s world. With over 730,000 active applications available for the iPad, these tablets are educational devices, portable book collections, gateways into social media, entertainment for children when Mom and Dad need a minute on their own, and so much more. It’s no wonder that 74% of those who own a tablet use it daily, 60% use it several times a day, and an average of 13.9 hours per week are spent tapping away. Tablets have become a critical part of a user’s personal life; but why stop there? Businesses today are taking major strides in implementing these devices, with the hopes of benefiting from efficiency and productivity gains. Limo and taxi drivers use tablets as payment devices instead of traditional cash transactions. Retail outlets use tablets to find the exact merchandise customers are looking for. Professors use tablets to teach their classes, and business professionals demonstrate solutions and review reports from tablets. Since an overwhelming majority of tablet users have started to use their personal iPads, PlayBooks, Galaxys, etc. in the workforce, organizations have had to make a change. In many cases, companies are willing to make that change. In fact, 79% of companies are making new investments in mobility this year. Gartner reported that 90% of organizations are expected to support corporate applications on personal devices by 2014. It’s not just companies that are changing. Business professionals have become accustomed to tablets making their personal lives easier, and want that same effect in the workplace. Professionals no longer want to waste time manually entering data in their computer, or worse yet in a notebook, especially when the data has to be later transcribed to an online system. The response: the Bring Your Own Device phenomenon. According to Gartner, BOYD is “an alternative strategy allowing employees, business partners and other users to utilize a personally selected and purchased client device to execute enterprise applications and access data.” Employees whose companies embrace this trend are more efficient because they get to use devices they are already accustomed to. Tablets change the game when it comes to how sales professionals perform their jobs. Sales reps can easily store and access customer information and analytics using tablet applications, such as Oracle Fusion Tap. This method is much more enticing for sales reps than spending time logging interactions on their (what seem to be outdated) computers. Forrester & IDC reported that on average sales reps spend 65% of their time on activities other than selling, so having a tablet application to use on the go is extremely powerful. In February, Information Week released a list of “9 Powerful Business Uses for Tablet Computers,” ranging from “enhancing the customer experience” to “improving data accuracy” to “eco-friendly motivations”. Tablets compliment the lifestyle of professionals who strive to be effective and efficient, both in the office and on the road. Three Things Businesses Need to do to Embrace BYOD Make customer-facing websites tablet-friendly for consistent user experiences Develop tablet applications to continue to enhance the customer experience Embrace and use the technology that comes with tablets Almost 55 million people in the U.S. own tablets because they are convenient, easy, and powerful. These are qualities that companies strive to achieve with any piece of technology. The inherent power of the devices coupled with the growing number of business applications ensures that tablets will transform the way that companies and employees perform.

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• Why Executives Need Enterprise Project Portfolio Management: 3 Key Considerations to Drive Value Across the Organization

  - by Melissa Centurio Lopes

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Cambria","serif";} By: Guy Barlow, Oracle Primavera Industry Strategy Director Over the last few years there has been a tremendous shift – some would say tectonic in nature – that has brought project management to the forefront of executive attention. Many factors have been driving this growing awareness, most notably, the global financial crisis, heightened regulatory environments and a need to more effectively operationalize corporate strategy. Executives in India are no exception. In fact, given the phenomenal rate of progress of the country, top of mind for all executives (whether in finance, operations, IT, etc.) is the need to build capacity, ramp-up production and ensure that the right resources are in place to capture growth opportunities. This applies across all industries from asset-intensive – like oil & gas, utilities and mining – to traditional manufacturing and the public sector, including services-based sectors such as the financial, telecom and life sciences segments are also part of the mix. However, compounding matters is a complex, interplay between projects – big and small, complex and simple – as companies expand and grow both domestically and internationally. So, having a standardized, enterprise wide solution for project portfolio management is natural. Failing to do so is akin to having two ERP systems, one to manage “large” invoices and one to manage “small” invoices. It makes no sense and provides no enterprise wide visibility. Therefore, it is imperative for executives to understand the full range of their business commitments, the benefit to the company, current performance and associated course corrections if needed. Irrespective of industry and regardless of the use case (e.g., building a power plant, launching a new financial service or developing a new automobile) company leaders need to approach the value of enterprise project portfolio management via 3 critical areas: Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Cambria","serif";} 1. Greater Financial Discipline – Improve financial rigor and results through better governance and control is an imperative given today’s financial uncertainty and greater investment scrutiny. For example, as India plans a US$1 trillion investment in the country’s infrastructure how do companies ensure costs are managed? How do you control cash flow? Can you easily report this to stakeholders? 2. Improved Operational Excellence – Increase efficiency and reduce costs through robust collaboration and integration. Upwards of 66% of cost variances are driven by poor supplier collaboration. As you execute initiatives do you have visibility into the performance of your supply base? How are they integrated into the broader program plan? 3. Enhanced Risk Mitigation – Manage and react to uncertainty through improved transparency and contingency planning. What happens if you’re faced with a skills shortage? How do you plan and account for geo-political or weather related events? In summary, projects are not just the delivery of a product or service to a customer inside a predetermined schedule; they often form a contractual and even moral obligation to shareholders and stakeholders alike. Hence the intimate connection between executives and projects, with the latter providing executives with the platform to demonstrate that their organization has the capabilities and competencies needed to meet and, whenever possible, exceed their customer commitments. Effectively developing and operationalizing corporate strategy is the hallmark of successful executives and enterprise project and portfolio management allows them to achieve this goal. Article was first published for Manage India, an e-newsletter, PMI India.

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• ADF Business Components

  - by Arda Eralp

  ADF Business Components and JDeveloper simplify the development, delivery, and customization of business applications for the Java EE platform. With ADF Business Components, developers aren't required to write the application infrastructure code required by the typical Java EE application to: Connect to the database Retrieve data Lock database records Manage transactions   ADF Business Components addresses these tasks through its library of reusable software components and through the supporting design time facilities in JDeveloper. Most importantly, developers save time using ADF Business Components since the JDeveloper design time makes typical development tasks entirely declarative. In particular, JDeveloper supports declarative development with ADF Business Components to: Author and test business logic in components which automatically integrate with databases Reuse business logic through multiple SQL-based views of data, supporting different application tasks Access and update the views from browser, desktop, mobile, and web service clients Customize application functionality in layers without requiring modification of the delivered application The goal of ADF Business Components is to make the business services developer more productive.   ADF Business Components provides a foundation of Java classes that allow your business-tier application components to leverage the functionality provided in the following areas: Simplifying Data Access Design a data model for client displays, including only necessary data Include master-detail hierarchies of any complexity as part of the data model Implement end-user Query-by-Example data filtering without code Automatically coordinate data model changes with business services layer Automatically validate and save any changes to the database   Enforcing Business Domain Validation and Business Logic Declaratively enforce required fields, primary key uniqueness, data precision-scale, and foreign key references Easily capture and enforce both simple and complex business rules, programmatically or declaratively, with multilevel validation support Navigate relationships between business domain objects and enforce constraints related to compound components   Supporting Sophisticated UIs with Multipage Units of Work Automatically reflect changes made by business service application logic in the user interface Retrieve reference information from related tables, and automatically maintain the information when the user changes foreign-key values Simplify multistep web-based business transactions with automatic web-tier state management Handle images, video, sound, and documents without having to use code Synchronize pending data changes across multiple views of data Consistently apply prompts, tooltips, format masks, and error messages in any application Define custom metadata for any business components to support metadata-driven user interface or application functionality Add dynamic attributes at runtime to simplify per-row state management   Implementing High-Performance Service-Oriented Architecture Support highly functional web service interfaces for business integration without writing code Enforce best-practice interface-based programming style Simplify application security with automatic JAAS integration and audit maintenance "Write once, run anywhere": use the same business service as plain Java class, EJB session bean, or web service   Streamlining Application Customization Extend component functionality after delivery without modifying source code Globally substitute delivered components with extended ones without modifying the application   ADF Business Components implements the business service through the following set of cooperating components: Entity object An entity object represents a row in a database table and simplifies modifying its data by handling all data manipulation language (DML) operations for you. These are basically your 1 to 1 representation of a database table. Each table in the database will have 1 and only 1 EO. The EO contains the mapping between columns and attributes. EO's also contain the business logic and validation. These are you core data services. They are responsible for updating, inserting and deleting records. The Attributes tab displays the actual mapping between attributes and columns, the mapping has following fields: Name : contains the name of the attribute we expose in our data model. Type : defines the data type of the attribute in our application. Column : specifies the column to which we want to map the attribute with Column Type : contains the type of the column in the database   View object A view object represents a SQL query. You use the full power of the familiar SQL language to join, filter, sort, and aggregate data into exactly the shape required by the end-user task. The attributes in the View Objects are actually coming from the Entity Object. In the end the VO will generate a query but you basically build a VO by selecting which EO need to participate in the VO and which attributes of those EO you want to use. That's why you have the Entity Usage column so you can see the relation between VO and EO. In the query tab you can clearly see the query that will be generated for the VO. At this stage we don't need it and just use it for information purpose. In later stages we might use it. Application module An application module is the controller of your data layer. It is responsible for keeping hold of the transaction. It exposes the data model to the view layer. You expose the VO's through the Application Module. This is the abstraction of your data layer which you want to show to the outside word.It defines an updatable data model and top-level procedures and functions (called service methods) related to a logical unit of work related to an end-user task. While the base components handle all the common cases through built-in behavior, customization is always possible and the default behavior provided by the base components can be easily overridden or augmented. When you create EO's, a foreign key will be translated into an association in our model. It defines the type of relation and who is the master and child as well as how the visibility of the association looks like. A similar concept exists to identify relations between view objects. These are called view links. These are almost identical as association except that a view link is based upon attributes defined in the view object. It can also be based upon an association. Here's a short summary: Entity Objects: representations of tables Association: Relations between EO's. Representations of foreign keys View Objects: Logical model View Links: Relationships between view objects Application Model: interface to your application  

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• Thinking differently about BI delivery

  - by jamiet

  My day job involves implementing Business Intelligence (BI) solutions which, as I have said before, is simply about giving people the information they need to do their jobs. I’m always interested in learning about new ways of achieving that aim and that is my motivation for writing blog entries that are not concerned with SQL or SQL Server per se. Implementing BI systems usually involves hacking together a bunch third party products with some in-house “glue” and delivering information using some shiny, expensive web-based front-end tool; the list of vendors that supply such tools is big and ever-growing. No doubt these tools have their place and of late I have started to wonder whether they can be supplemented with different ways of delivering information. The problem I have with these separate web-based tools is exactly that – they are separate web-based tools. What’s the problem with that you might ask? I’ll explain! They force the information worker to go somewhere unfamiliar in order to get the information they need to do their jobs. Would it not be better if we could deliver information into the tools that those information workers are already using and not force them to go somewhere else? I look at the rise of blogging over recent years and I realise that what made them popular is that people can subscribe to RSS feeds and have information pushed to them in their tool of choice rather than them having to go and find the information for themselves in a tool that has been foisted upon them. Would it not be a good idea to adopt the principle of subscription for the benefit of delivering BI information as well? I think it would and in the rest of this blog entry I’ll outline such a scenario where the power of subscription could be used to enhance the delivery of information to information workers. Typical questions that information workers ask might be: What are my year-on-year sales figures? What was my footfall yesterday? How many widgets have I sold so far today? Each of those questions includes a time element and that shouldn’t surprise us, any BI system that I have worked on includes the dimension of time. Now, what do people use to view and organise their time-oriented information? Its not a trick question, they use a calendar and in the enterprise space more often than not that calendar is managed using Outlook. Given then that information workers are already looking at their calendar in Outlook anyway would it not make sense then to deliver information into that same calendar? Of course it would. Calendars are a great way of visualising information such as sales figures. Observe: Just in this single screenshot I have managed to convey a multitude of information. The information worker can see, at a glance, information about hourly/daily/weekly/monthly sales and, moreover, he/she is viewing that information right inside the tool that they use every day. There is no effort on the part of him/her, the information just appears hour after hour, day after day. Taking the idea further, each one of those calendar items could be a mini-dashboard in its own right. Double-clicking on an item could show a plethora of other information about that time slot such as breaking the sales down per region or year-over-year comparisons. Perhaps the title could employ a sparkline? Loads of possibilities. The point is that calendars are a completely natural way to visualise information; we should make more use of them! The real beauty of delivering information using calendars for us BI developers is that it should be so easy. In the case of Outlook we don’t need to write complicated VBA code that can go and manipulate a person’s calendar, simply publishing data in a format that Outlook can understand is sufficient and happily such formats already exist; iCalendar is the accepted format and the even more flexible xCalendar is hopefully on its way as well.   I’d like to make one last point and this one is with my SQL Server hat on. Reporting Services 2008 R2 introduced the ability to publish data as subscribable Atom feeds so it seems logical that it could also be a vehicle for delivering calendar feeds too. If you think this would be a good idea go and vote for it at Publish data as iCalendar feeds and please please please add some comments (especially if you vote it down). Work smarter, not harder! @Jamiet Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• How to fix Ubuntu 12.04.3 boot to black screen full of errors in white text, after upgrading on dell inspiron 1501

  - by Ibuntu

  I am running a Dell Inspiron 1501 I use Linux only. No Microsoft or Apple operating systems (or really anything closed-source). I've only been using Linux for a little over a year but I'm starting to gain a comfortable level of familiarity with the system and terminology. I've been having some issues with Quantel Quetzal and Raring Ringtail, especially with older hardware, so I opted to install Ubuntu 12.04.3 Precise Pangolin on the Inspiron 1501. I checked my MD5 sum after downloading my ISO and all was good. I have in fact used this iso/dvd to install Precise Pangolin successfully on a few other systems (some of which are even older than this laptop). Install goes fine. The wireless card doesn't work out of the box but this is a known issue which is fairly easy to fix. So, first thing I did was open up a terminal and run sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade which, part way through, crashed (I assume lightdm and possibly X) and took me to a black screen filled with white lines of text that were either errors or just the ouputs of commands. The reason I say that is because I was unable to gleam any useful information from the output on the screen. I did take a picture however and will post a link. After that, every time I boot the system it goes right to that black screen posting all the error messages or output in white text. I never get a purple Ubuntu splash, so from what I can tell after reading this wiki article: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Troubleshooting/BlankScreen That means that after the kernel is selected, it is unable to correctly implement the settings it needs. If the purple splash never shows, the frame buffer was never set correctly right? This leads me to believe that it could be a kernel issue? The wiki suggested to try and pinpoint the issue by rolling back kernels until I find one that works. Is this my best option? I think I'm going to give it a try anyways and will let everyone know if I am able to solve the issue this way. I have since done a few reinstalls and some trouble-shooting including a couple hours scouring the net for anyone with any kind of similar issue. Most of the issues I could find involved getting a black screen after login and none of them said anything about any information output on this black screen. My reinstalls have taught me that there is no issue updating, but as soon as I run sudo apt-get upgrade my system goes to the black screen and every time I boot it up it does the same thing. The only way to fix is by reinstall. I never get any ability to log in. After a hard power off to the laptop (because I cannot use ctrl+alt+del to reboot) when it boots again it goes to the grub boot menu and I can select between regular boot, recovery mode and the two memtest options. I never tried the memtest options but the other two both lead to the same black screen. Some people having a black/blank screen issue claim to have fixed it by using 12.10 or 13.04 but I believe they were having a different issue where they got a black/blank screen after logging in. I think I will still give these images a try, but mostly figured I would just wait another day or two for 13.10. Other things I figured I would try from the following three articles: After logging in, there's a black screen and my cursor, nothing else! in Ubuntu 12.10 Black Screen on Login After Upgrading to 12.04 I can't get to the login screen include opening a terminal using ctrl+alt+f1 and trying a variety of reseting unity, x settings, lightdm (or switching to gdm); but I doubt this will work or that I will even be able to access a terminal. I'm pretty sure the whole system is stuck after it loads the last line on the black screen. I will try these things and post more information when I have. Hopefully someone has an idea in the meantime and I will keep checking back trying to find a solution. Thank you. Here are 3 different pictures of the error message. I had to take with my phone: http://ubuntuone.com/album/0TBBkxmVajJIQQtoN9mVdN

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• Key Windows Phone Development Concepts

  - by Tim Murphy

  As I am doing more development in and out of the enterprise arena for Windows Phone I decide I would study for the 70-599 test.  I generally take certification tests as a way to force me to dig deeper into a technology.  Between the development and studying I decided it would be good to put a post together of key development features in Windows Phone 7 environment.  Contrary to popular belief the launch of Windows Phone 8 will not obsolete Windows Phone 7 development.  With the launch of 7.8 coming shortly and people who will remain on 7.X for the foreseeable future there are still consumers needing these apps so don’t throw out the baby with the bath water. PhoneApplicationService This is a class that every Windows Phone developer needs to become familiar with.  When it comes to application state this is your go to repository.  It also contains events that help with management of your application’s lifecycle.  You can access it like the following code sample. 1: PhoneApplicationService.Current.State["ValidUser"] = userResult; DeviceNetworkInformation This class allows you to determine the connectivity of the device and be notified when something changes with that connectivity.  If you are making web service calls you will want to check here before firing off. I have found that this class doesn’t actually work very well for determining if you have internet access.  You are better of using the following code where IsConnectedToInternet is an App level property. private void Application_Launching(object sender, LaunchingEventArgs e){ // Validate user access if (Microsoft.Phone.Net.NetworkInformation.NetworkInterface.NetworkInterfaceType != Microsoft.Phone.Net.NetworkInformation.NetworkInterfaceType.None) { IsConnectedToInternet = true; } else { IsConnectedToInternet = false; } NetworkChange.NetworkAddressChanged += new NetworkAddressChangedEventHandler(NetworkChange_NetworkAddressChanged);}void NetworkChange_NetworkAddressChanged(object sender, EventArgs e){ IsConnectedToInternet = (Microsoft.Phone.Net.NetworkInformation.NetworkInterface.NetworkInterfaceType != Microsoft.Phone.Net.NetworkInformation.NetworkInterfaceType.None);} Push Notification Push notification allows your application to receive notifications in a way that reduces the application’s power needs. This MSDN article is a good place to get the basics of push notification, but you can see the essential concept in the diagram below.  There are three types of push notification: toast, Tile and raw.  The first two work regardless of the state of the application where as raw messages are discarded if your application is not running.   Live Tiles Live tiles are one of the main differentiators of the Windows Phone platform.  They allow users to find information at a glance from their start screen without navigating into individual apps.  Knowing how to implement them can be a great boost to the attractiveness of your application. The simplest step-by-step explanation for creating live tiles is here. Local Database While your application really only has Isolated Storage as a data store there are some ways of giving you database functionality to develop against.  There are a number of open source ORM style solutions.  Probably the best and most native way I have found is to use LINQ to SQL.  It does take a significant amount of setup, but the ease of use once it is configured is worth the cost.  Rather than repeat the full concepts here I will point you to a post that I wrote previously. Tasks (Bing, Email) Leveraging built in features of the Windows Phone platform is an easy way to add functionality that would be expensive to develop on your own.  The classes that you need to make yourself familiar with are BingMapsDirectionsTask and EmailComposeTask.  This will allow your application to supply directions and give the user an email path to relay information to friends and associates. Event model Because of the ability for users to switch quickly to switch to other apps or the home screen is just one reason why knowing the Windows Phone event model is important.  You need to be able to save data so that if a user gets a phone call they can come back to exactly where they were in your application.  This means that you will need to handle such events as Launching, Activated, Deactivated and Closing at an application level.  You will probably also want to get familiar with the OnNavigatedTo and OnNavigatedFrom events at the page level.  These will give you an opportunity to save data as a user navigates through your app. Summary This is just a small portion of the concepts that you will use while building Windows Phone apps, but these are some of the most critical.  With the launch of Windows Phone 8 this list will probably expand.  Take the time to investigate these topics further and try them out in your apps. del.icio.us Tags: Windows Phone 7,Windows Phone,WP7,Software Development,70-599

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• Increasing efficiency of N-Body gravity simulation

  - by Postman

  I'm making a space exploration type game, it will have many planets and other objects that will all have realistic gravity. I currently have a system in place that works, but if the number of planets goes above 70, the FPS decreases an practically exponential rates. I'm making it in C# and XNA. My guess is that I should be able to do gravity calculations between 100 objects without this kind of strain, so clearly my method is not as efficient as it should be. I have two files, Gravity.cs and EntityEngine.cs. Gravity manages JUST the gravity calculations, EntityEngine creates an instance of Gravity and runs it, along with other entity related methods. EntityEngine.cs public void Update() { foreach (KeyValuePair<string, Entity> e in Entities) { e.Value.Update(); } gravity.Update(); } (Only relevant piece of code from EntityEngine, self explanatory. When an instance of Gravity is made in entityEngine, it passes itself (this) into it, so that gravity can have access to entityEngine.Entities (a dictionary of all planet objects)) Gravity.cs namespace ExplorationEngine { public class Gravity { private EntityEngine entityEngine; private Vector2 Force; private Vector2 VecForce; private float distance; private float mult; public Gravity(EntityEngine e) { entityEngine = e; } public void Update() { //First loop foreach (KeyValuePair<string, Entity> e in entityEngine.Entities) { //Reset the force vector Force = new Vector2(); //Second loop foreach (KeyValuePair<string, Entity> e2 in entityEngine.Entities) { //Make sure the second value is not the current value from the first loop if (e2.Value != e.Value ) { //Find the distance between the two objects. Because Fg = G * ((M1 * M2) / r^2), using Vector2.Distance() and then squaring it //is pointless and inefficient because distance uses a sqrt, squaring the result simple cancels that sqrt. distance = Vector2.DistanceSquared(e2.Value.Position, e.Value.Position); //This makes sure that two planets do not attract eachother if they are touching, completely unnecessary when I add collision, //For now it just makes it so that the planets are not glitchy, performance is not significantly improved by removing this IF if (Math.Sqrt(distance) > (e.Value.Texture.Width / 2 + e2.Value.Texture.Width / 2)) { //Calculate the magnitude of Fg (I'm using my own gravitational constant (G) for the sake of time (I know it's 1 at the moment, but I've been changing it) mult = 1.0f * ((e.Value.Mass * e2.Value.Mass) / distance); //Calculate the direction of the force, simply subtracting the positions and normalizing works, this fixes diagonal vectors //from having a larger value, and basically makes VecForce a direction. VecForce = e2.Value.Position - e.Value.Position; VecForce.Normalize(); //Add the vector for each planet in the second loop to a force var. Force = Vector2.Add(Force, VecForce * mult); //I have tried Force += VecForce * mult, and have not noticed much of an increase in speed. } } } //Add that force to the first loop's planet's position (later on I'll instead add to acceleration, to account for inertia) e.Value.Position += Force; } } } } I have used various tips (about gravity optimizing, not threading) from THIS question (that I made yesterday). I've made this gravity method (Gravity.Update) as efficient as I know how to make it. This O(N^2) algorithm still seems to be eating up all of my CPU power though. Here is a LINK (google drive, go to File download, keep .Exe with the content folder, you will need XNA Framework 4.0 Redist. if you don't already have it) to the current version of my game. Left click makes a planet, right click removes the last planet. Mouse moves the camera, scroll wheel zooms in and out. Watch the FPS and Planet Count to see what I mean about performance issues past 70 planets. (ALL 70 planets must be moving, I've had 100 stationary planets and only 5 or so moving ones while still having 300 fps, the issue arises when 70+ are moving around) After 70 planets are made, performance tanks exponentially. With < 70 planets, I get 330 fps (I have it capped at 300). At 90 planets, the FPS is about 2, more than that and it sticks around at 0 FPS. Strangely enough, when all planets are stationary, the FPS climbs back up to around 300, but as soon as something moves, it goes right back down to what it was, I have no systems in place to make this happen, it just does. I considered multithreading, but that previous question I asked taught me a thing or two, and I see now that that's not a viable option. I've also thought maybe I could do the calculations on my GPU instead, though I don't think it should be necessary. I also do not know how to do this, it is not a simple concept and I want to avoid it unless someone knows a really noob friendly simple way to do it that will work for an n-body gravity calculation. (I have an NVidia gtx 660) Lastly I've considered using a quadtree type system. (Barnes Hut simulation) I've been told (in the previous question) that this is a good method that is commonly used, and it seems logical and straightforward, however the implementation is way over my head and I haven't found a good tutorial for C# yet that explains it in a way I can understand, or uses code I can eventually figure out. So my question is this: How can I make my gravity method more efficient, allowing me to use more than 100 objects (I can render 1000 planets with constant 300+ FPS without gravity calculations), and if I can't do much to improve performance (including some kind of quadtree system), could I use my GPU to do the calculations?

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• IE9, LightSwitch Beta 2 and Zune HD: A Study in Risk Management?

  - by andrewbrust

  Photo by parl, 'Risk.’ Under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License This has been a busy week for Microsoft, and for me as well.  On Monday, Microsoft launched Internet Explorer 9 at South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, TX.  That evening I flew from New York to Seattle.  On Tuesday morning, Microsoft launched Visual Studio LightSwitch, Beta 2 with a Go-Live license, in Redmond, and I had the privilege of speaking at the keynote presentation where the announcement was made.  Readers of this blog know I‘m a fan of LightSwitch, so I was happy to tell the app dev tools partners in the audience that I thought the LightSwitch extensions ecosystem represented a big opportunity – comparable to the opportunity when Visual Basic 1.0 was entering its final beta roughly 20 years ago.  On Tuesday evening, I flew back to New York (and wrote most of this post in-flight). Two busy, productive days.  But there was a caveat that impacts the accomplishments, because Monday was also the day reports surfaced from credible news agencies that Microsoft was discontinuing its dedicated Zune hardware efforts.  While the Zune brand, technology and service will continue to be a component of Windows Phone and a piece of the Xbox puzzle as well, speculation is that Microsoft will no longer be going toe-to-toe with iPod touch in the portable music player market. If we take all three of these developments together (even if one of them is based on speculation), two interesting conclusions can reasonably be drawn, one good and one less so. Microsoft is doubling down on technologies it finds strategic and de-emphasizing those that it does not.  HTML 5 and the Web are strategic, so here comes IE9, and it’s a very good browser.  Try it and see.  Silverlight is strategic too, as is SQL Server, Windows Azure and SQL Azure, so here comes Visual Studio LightSwitch Beta 2 and a license to deploy its apps to production.  Downloads of that product have exceeded Microsoft’s projections by more than 50%, and the company is even citing analyst firms’ figures covering the number of power-user developers that might use it. (I happen to think the product will be used by full-fledged developers as well, but that’s a separate discussion.) Windows Phone is strategic too…I wasn’t 100% positive of that before, but the Nokia agreement has made me confident.  Xbox as an entertainment appliance is also strategic.  Standalone music players are not strategic – and even if they were, selling them has been a losing battle for Microsoft.  So if Microsoft has consolidated the Zune content story and the ZunePass subscription into Xbox and Windows Phone, it would make sense, and would be a smart allocation of resources.  Essentially, it would be for the greater good. But it’s not all good.  In this scenario, Zune player customers would lose out.  Unless they wanted to switch to Windows Phone, and then use their phone’s battery for the portable media needs, they’re going to need a new platform.  They’re going to feel abandoned.  Even if Zune lives, there have been other such cul de sacs for customers.  Remember SPOT watches?  Live Spaces?  The original Live Mesh?  Microsoft discontinued each of these products.  The company is to be commended for cutting its losses, as admitting a loss isn’t easy.  But Redmond won’t be well-regarded by the victims of those decisions.  Instead, it gets black marks. What’s the answer?  I think it’s a bit like the 1980’s New York City “don’t block the box” gridlock rules: don’t enter an intersection unless you see a clear path through it.  If the light turns red and you’re blocking the perpendicular traffic, that’s your fault in judgment.  You get fined and get points on your license and you don’t get to shrug it off as beyond your control.  Accountability is key.  The same goes for Microsoft.  If it decides to enter a market, it should see a reasonable path through success in that market. Switching analogies, Microsoft shouldn’t make investments haphazardly, and it certainly shouldn’t ask investors to buy into a high-risk fund that is sold as safe and which offers only moderate returns.  People won’t continue to invest with a fund manager with a track record of over-zealous, imprudent, sub-prime investments.  The same is true on the product side for Microsoft, and not just with music players and geeky wrist watches.  It’s true of Web browsers, and line-of-business app dev tools, and smartphones, and cloud platforms and operating systems too.  When Microsoft is casual about its own risk, it raises risk for its customers, and weakens its reputation, market share and credibility.  That doesn’t mean all risk is bad, but it does mean no product team’s risk should be taken lightly. For mutual fund companies, it’s the CEO’s job to give his fund managers autonomy, but to make sure they’re conforming to a standard of rational risk management.  Because all those funds carry the same brand, and many of them serve the same investors. The same goes for Microsoft, its product portfolio, its executive ranks and its product managers.

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• State of the (Commerce) Union: What the healthcare.gov hiccups teach us about the commerce customer experience

  - by Katrina Gosek

  Guest Post by Brenna Johnson, Oracle Commerce Product A lot has been said about the healthcare.gov debacle in the last week. Regardless of your feelings about the Affordable Care Act, there’s a hidden issue in this story that most of the American people don’t understand: delivering a great commerce customer experience (CX) is hard. It shouldn’t be, but it is. The reality of the government’s issues getting the healthcare site up and running smooth is something we in the online commerce community know too well.  If there’s one thing the botched launch of the site has taught us, it’s that regardless of the size of your budget or the power of an executive with a high-profile project, some of the biggest initiatives with the most attention (and the most at stake) don’t go as planned. It may even give you a moment of solace – we have the same issues! But why?  Organizations engage too many separate vendors with different technologies, running sections or pieces of a site to get live. When things go wrong, it takes time to identify the problem – and who or what is at the center of it. Unfortunately, this is a brittle way of setting up a site, making it susceptible to breaks, bugs, and scaling issues. But, it’s the reality of running a site with legacy technology constraints in today’s demanding, customer-centric market. This approach also means there’s also a lot of cooks in lots of different kitchens. You’ve got development and IT, the business and the marketing team, an external Systems Integrator to bring it all together, a digital agency or consultant, QA, product experts, 3rd party suppliers, and the list goes on. To complicate things, different business units are held responsible for different pieces of the site and managing different technologies. And again – due to legacy organizational structure and processes, this is all accepted as the normal State of the Union. Digital commerce has been commonplace for 15 years. Yet, getting a site live, maintained and performing requires orchestrating a cast of thousands (or at least, dozens), big dollars, and some finger-crossing. But it shouldn’t. The great thing about the advent of mobile commerce and the continued maturity of online commerce is that it’s forced organizations to think from the outside, in. Consumers – whether they’re shopping for shoes or a new healthcare plan – don’t care about what technology issues or processes you have behind the scenes. They just want it to work.  They want their experience to be easy, fast, and tailored to them and their needs – whatever they are. This doesn’t sound like a tall order to the American consumer – especially since they interact with sites that do work smoothly.  But the reality is that it takes scores of people, teams, check-ins, late nights, testing, and some good luck to get sites to run, and even more so at Black Friday (or October 1st) traffic levels.  The last thing on a customer’s mind is making excuses for why they can’t buy a product – just get it to work. So what is the government doing? My guess is working day and night to get the site performing  - and having to throw big money at the problem. In the meantime they’re sending frustrated online users to the call center, or even a location where a trained “navigator” can help them in-person to complete their selection. Sounds a lot like multichannel commerce (where broken communication between siloed touchpoints will only frustrate the consumer more). One thing we’ve learned is that consumers spend their time and money with brands they know and trust. When sites are easy to use and adapt to their needs, they tend to spend more, come back, and even become long-time loyalists. Achieving this may require moving internal mountains, but there’s too much at stake to ignore the sea change in how organizations are thinking about their customer. If the thought of re-thinking your internal teams, technologies, and processes sounds like a headache, think about the pain associated with losing valuable customers – and dollars. Regardless if you’re in B2B or B2C, it’s guaranteed that your competitors are making CX a priority. Those early to the game who have made CX a priority have already begun to outpace their competition. So as you’re planning for 2014, look to the news this week. Make sure the customer experience is a focus at your organization. Expectations are at record highs. Map your customer’s journey, and think from the outside, in. How easy is it for your customers to do business with you? If they interact with many touchpoints across your organization, are the call center, website, mobile environment, or brick and mortar location in sync? Do you have the technology in place to achieve this? It’s time to give the people what they want!

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• YouTube SEO: Video Optimization

  - by Mike Stiles

  SEO optimization is still regarded as one of the primary tools in the digital marketing kit. However and wherever a potential customer is conducting a search, brands want their content to surface in the top results. Makes sense. But without a regular flow of good, relevant content, your SEO opportunities run shallow. We know from several studies video is one of the most engaging forms of content, so why not make sure that in addition to being cool, your videos are helping you win the SEO game? Keywords:-Decide what search phrases make the most sense for your video. Don’t dare use phrases that have nothing to do with the content. You’ll make people mad.-Research those keywords to see how competitive they are. Adjust them so there are still lots of people searching for it, but there are not as many links showing up for it.-Search your potential keywords and phrases to see what comes up. It’s amazing how many people forget to do that. Video Title: -Try to start and/or end with your keyword.-When you search on YouTube, visual action words tend to come up as suggested searches. So try to use action words. Video Description: -Lead with a link to your site (include http://). -Don’t stuff this with your keyword. It leads to bad writing and it won’t work anyway. This is where you convince people to watch, so write for humans. Use some showmanship. -At the end, do a call to action (subscribe, see the whole playlist, visit our social channels, etc.) Video Tags:-Don’t over-tag. 5-10 tags per video is plenty. -If you’re compelled to have more than 10, that means you should probably make more videos specifically targeting all those keywords. Find Linking Pals:-45% of videos are discovered on video sites. But 44% are found through links on blogs and sites.-Write a blog about your video’s content, then link to the video in it. -A good site for finding places to guest blog is myblogguest.com-Once you find good linking partners, they’ll link to your future videos (as long as they’re good and you’re returning the favor). Tap the Power of Similar Videos:-Use Video Reply to associate your video with other topic-related videos. That’s when you make a video responding to or referencing a video made by someone else. Content:-Again, build up a portfolio of videos, not just one that goes after 30 keywords.-Create shorter, sequential videos that pull them deeper into the content and closer to a desired final action.-Organize your video topics separately using Playlists. Playlists show up as a whole in search results like individual videos, so optimize playlists the same as you would for a video. Meta Data:-Too much importance is placed on it. It accounts for only 15% of search success.-YouTube reads Captions or Transcripts to determine what a video is about. If you’re not using them, you’re missing out.-You get the SEO benefit of captions and transcripts whether the viewers has them toggled on or not. Promotion:-This accounts for 25% of search success.-Promote the daylights out of your videos using your social channels and digital assets. Don’t assume it’s going to magically get discovered. -You can pay to promote your video. This could surface it on the YouTube home page, YouTube search results, YouTube related videos, and across the Google content network. Community:-Accounts for 10% of search success.-Make sure your YouTube home page is a fun place to spend time. Carefully pick your featured video, and make sure your Playlists are featured. -Participate in discussions so users will see you’re present. The volume of ratings/comments is as important as the number of views when it comes to where you surface on search. Video Sitemaps:-As with a web site, a video sitemap helps Google quickly index your video.-Google wants to know title, description, play page URL, the URL of the thumbnail image you want, and raw video file location.-Sitemaps are xml files you host or dynamically generate on your site. Once you’ve made your sitemap, sign in and submit it using Google webmaster tools. Just as with the broadcast and cable TV channels, putting a video out there is only step one. You also have to make sure everybody knows it’s there so the largest audience possible can see it. Here’s hoping you get great ratings. @mikestiles

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• Zend/PHP: Problem uploading/downloading file to/from MySQL's BLOB field.

  - by NAVEED

  I am uploading file(any type) like this: (It is uploading content of file in blob field of mysql) $organizationModel = new Model_Organization_Object( organizationId ); $myFile = file_get_contents( '../path/to/my/file/filename.ext' ); $organizationModel->setOrganizationProfile( $myFile ); $organizationModel->save(); Now I want to get that file from database and want to download. I doing this in controller's action: (I am aspecting pdf file here therefore it is hardcoded below. But in future I want to download any file from blob field) $organizationModel = new Model_Organization_Object( $organizationId ); $content = $organizationModel->getOrganizationProfile(); header('Content-Type: application/octet-stream'); header("Content-Length: " . strlen($content) ); header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=orgProfile.pdf'); $this->view->organizationProfile = $content; Now in view file I am doing this: echo $this-organizationProfile; But above download process print(echo) the content of file in firbug and does not download file in orignal format. My echo output in firebug is like this: %PDF-1.3 %???? 84 0 obj << /Linearized 1 /O 86 /H [ 541 212 ] /L 958398 /E 11238 /N 27 /T 956600 >> endobj xref 84 7 0000000016 00000 n 0000000486 00000 n 0000000753 00000 n 0000000982 00000 n 0000001102 00000 n 0000000541 00000 n 0000000732 00000 n trailer << /Size 91 /Info 83 0 R /Root 85 0 R /Prev 956590 /ID[<0a8d7035bf08791da591e8cae39b8c49><0a8d7035bf08791da591e8cae39b8c49>] >> startxref 0 %%EOF 85 0 obj << /Type /Catalog /Pages 82 0 R >> endobj 89 0 obj << /S 151 /Filter /FlateDecode /Length 90 0 R >> stream H?b```f``?e`b`?f`@\0?.????\\I~aV$?X??dO????bA?Az?lv1o#?{-????1+??G?????N`?b? >?-?? \0\0D40 endstream endobj 90 0 obj 106 endobj 86 0 obj << /Type /Page /Contents 87 0 R /Parent 79 0 R /Resources << /XObject << /img0 88 0 R >> /ProcSet [ /PDF /Text /ImageB /ImageC /ImageI ] >> /MediaBox [ 0 0 612 792 ] /CropBox [ 0 0 612 792 ] /Rotate 0 >> endobj 87 0 obj << /Filter /FlateDecode /Length 46 >> stream x?+T05???P0\0Bs#SC=S3c3??\\???t?|?@.\0??? endstream endobj 88 0 obj << /Filter /FlateDecode /Type /XObject /Length 8926 /BitsPerComponent 8 /Height 1122 /ColorSpace [ /Indexed /DeviceRGB 255 (\0\0\0JJJkkk{{{????????????????????????????????????\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\\ \0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\\ \0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\\ \0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\\ \0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\\ \0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\\ \0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\\ \0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\\ \0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\\ \0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\\ \0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0) ] /Subtype /Image /Width 793 >> stream x???v??\0?bF???mf?\\3??k?~? ?7uj??\\\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0~??/\0~??/\0~?&|??tp?pKS ????Fc???!?Q~?72?&???>???]?$?KUo????9?Tx??E8U}?????? _#=??6 Q{????v?T|s?>\\??w??.|??8?7Q????o.?o????????G??x??|?Is:??????oN>4???jJ?F?v? ? V?q<???P?????I>?.|?iT? ???Ç?Q?m????G?8c`????a`<?.|??~`????OG!?x7j??K*]??S?1??_??1\'?D?????0??\"?w\\?e?????<F:4????E-??Fa????O?v????9??_ m???P??8iuTr?i?FX?????<C? ????t:?(0??I>?2`????.???:??pv:???A??<$M??????e9??\\c???.0???t?kum?K;??<???\\@?]f/?h??m_???g???l?8&??*??2?-??Ew?4[j?v?(?????p?T???M--?8 cb??]?h??pN???kt?J$?m???X???5Cr?]?Jm?VP?X?Ð!? ?$???-?PM??O]??,?h???r=???qV}?p*?c?uq??t??????R6v??l8?I?e?9 {s\\K _?CN?^??W?8%p\']?2U?D{???Z?EB?*?d?va1^??Z\"?7?t]?TL?^??d???.|?4?q?2?&2??S{(??G?vNi4?D?K?)_^?]???D]DK???j?9????OQ?]???us?n?T4?om?P??E?|?t??w?????c?7>!]?\"}$??:??<????[9?C??Wi?u?su#9?\0?t?u=??=w??Q??A??.?dyb vN?N\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0??U/????<??v????S?A\\??qkm? !???&??J????!,??+?w;????{?!D???K×%5?E???????|n?FT*,? ?? ?j#Q??uT~r:}\\?_?????v???8Q?&? ???T?S?I\"?(>Y??????}H??aj?3??u?h?T?X?Z?-~??c\'P?^??d?????????]_???z??O]?q?????7??|?mN%??????T?????o???sUzT???m?v8?q? ??e]?wS???C~Ta???.??[%!??????2x]n~?7??????6.????K??;c }????r?)V?? u???*?7?$c\\???m?~???r??)U{?????????R?? ??D1L_????WUog?>??/?????????~?%???M???}\'?? ;???y??K`?????O?,??????<?,0???;3 #??m?v???aZ=?N?u?J`??dwnm;??.??k?n?K1-M?7????H&??????s?C??? ?}Z?1????c?(0?q?_1??7?%???G7U/??h9I??????S?Q??4nc?Lq??H6??;??c(/O??2???-?*_????%?I?/??I?o????ô?k??<????q??\'??]v?\"??+????,????qxgk?\\\\?6???7??Y???.G???Y??8??.??*???M_??J?hu1????z??W?o_??F?/???s?:?Y~??>0?g\\E?l?K5e???&L?/????k$????{?:\\>??Fs?-??l?>c??o?????9?V+?2;??}q?4 ?zS?|u?A`dK???n~?s???K?hiY?j??#p???S?M\\???0P2?\\*?m+?L5Er????[W?>9|???i?????}`Nmc:Qv??]&|?_????fx???????Ns~w??to????K?M???uN????0J6q1??u(b?M?_?????7?]?m?\':????S@???4?????\\??@~Mn?????|}?9?F6_Vr ??7??{?_??_????Y?Go?9??f1????E?|?Ucd? ????????t7k?? }??:??n?M?_????#?M$DG???:Z??y??;g:?|????F?m??e?F*?uJ?C??-?v?%??^?*??????z:l???w?e???9??i?5j???x?~??Ao???a?x?{?UL??? ??#:???\'^?????W??f;?u???ejq¯?u[?2K8??e?>/?ug?@S??L???? ??u0uI~?z?YYV???[[O?T??-Y?u?j?M?_???n&??7O?f??s??z`.`?,W??#?l??n???s??\'?????=??&#?z?M7_????s???x??y? ??u?p?G???0?e?G????8]{??N?1}??}~Q?[)?XF??_??*? p7iQ????M?(?l????????????f??6????*??U;@~\\k?i??w_??*?#???^?j?\\?L??/?}?Y?[??V??t~?w?n??a???m?O?(.?n;??ji:??W?ZnQ[9?n=?^??sE9??;?.??u3\"???<?L??y8?<H???g??u??\\?q???71p?U??}???f`?Y??m3b*C?t{?SX??7m<??6??8K??[Qs??&_??(M??:?Z???W?????W? ??4d??4?A????lw?e?d?>? ?pCV??h?SS?Z?T??4?N?,?? ?8=-?%???4?p?a??~??R?L??=J??j}??"??,?(?x?????????o?ï??t??X7???~jQ?aK???Z*YL????X??/?m?ot?9&s0???O5??j=?7sb?l?Mh???y?}Q\\4?MM?i5&?Yf??hS??N????\'?\0?????i?9??G?$??R?A1[??Y?t??4b?}????u??3?Y??Il????{??[u??f??q???Z_;??|*?t?uTO??}b?a?0>????>?>w\'P?E??]????6???v?^?,?;?uE?f?;?> yo?eNS@?C???I??????Otf????4I??? ?s????*??G?\'?>?</?=T?CE??5NR?~??%?1?d^V??O??????????e||/b??^ \0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0~????+?W8??t????????}????????X?????7??/???\\}LM?????b?#?q];J??[U???(0N??t?????[??_V?!??%????-?7:?m???9??Dau?o]??^????*??,???h?o3f??[%?FW?W!?X#; ?>HC?-?\'/??^??\'?*?)??!?_?e?+TC?7O??I.?[?tN?,??Rs???u???^???????q??S??.?c?UR?????? ????M????FS???A????>?^K?|[?]z~7??7u???7V]L?|??l???]?[e?+u?????{U}???Em??IWbV7????/v?x?zk??F@.??5?G?Í>f??_???Gg?}??tc??&R???n???G-?N]/?w?? ????f?}Ue%?;?~?:????`6(??_???g???`? E~?p06?}#/?G=????;??<$Y???l??m?T??@Y??p?????r??.?H?>\0.Ih??~???!?N/^o? ??&v??R???9?suJ?r???JZg?z?Y?7??^?J??H>{[?vQ????qw?e{{?l????????u]?.Z?xh%7??>?|???b`?K?|I\"?nh?m?????m?z5Qpw??N3???y?)??k??????,?Ws*SJ]????????!?o?Iq3~x??Az{?v]\'?k????k???Dc ?]??l?)L??? I8eG#r?dC??;??/C???l???rm???????e?6?M??fP?4?r??)?!?\\s???{??!cN??h??>?? ??o>??m?dO=&<??P??]=]???n?v??y?l??\"?K??????rF?I???)Z??]n?J??N?w???S/S??w???R6}\'u??kN?K`?C/???N??,??o??I?>?S?(??hOV????-]?p?r??0??u?(?,a????/???\"o;???44????P?9K!O]??x?r?}??8?????w?4?|?el7U??l.}|w?- ?=?Lq??e<&??g?/z8??7??:n?????ï??~??_?a???&?7sy???,?3?1??rV???m?????s??C?x50?????g???\\??!??????e?????/Cl?Y???:??jz3??????/?a?]}??\\n???BZ?0?J-+u??????x?=??CC??M??W[??v<???S14?????\\C?Z ??g???q:?u?C?k?vc?K?;??\"Y?t?r]??G?z????w???r??????0??????e?:??/f?*^?W?Q8WsN??9}*?|??~x)?N?=6J?l????M?b??????M45?C?k]??r?u??????r ] Can someone help that how to download file or I am doing something wrong with uploading process. setOrganizationProfile() and getOrganizationProfile() function are created by me which are working fine while storing/getting data to/from database. Thanks

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• Linux fsck.ext3 says "Device or resource busy" although I did not mount the disk.

  - by matnagel

  I am running an ubuntu 8.04 server instance with a 8GB virtual disk on vmware 1.0.9. For disk maintenance I made a copy of the virtual disk (by making a copy of the 2 vmdk files of sda on the stopped vm on the host) and added it to the original vm. Now this vm has it's original virtual disk sda plus a 1:1 copy (sdd). There are 2 additional disk sdb and sdc which I ignore.) I would expect sdb not to be mounted when I start the vm. So I try tp do a ext2 fsck on sdd from the running vm, but it reports fsck reported that sdb was mounted. $ sudo fsck.ext3 -b 8193 /dev/sdd e2fsck 1.40.8 (13-Mar-2008) fsck.ext3: Device or resource busy while trying to open /dev/sdd Filesystem mounted or opened exclusively by another program? The "mount" command does not tell me sdd is mounted: $ sudo mount /dev/sda1 on / type ext3 (rw,relatime,errors=remount-ro) proc on /proc type proc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev) /sys on /sys type sysfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev) varrun on /var/run type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,mode=0755) varlock on /var/lock type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,mode=1777) udev on /dev type tmpfs (rw,mode=0755) devshm on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw) devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620) /dev/sdc1 on /mnt/r1 type ext3 (rw,relatime,errors=remount-ro) /dev/sdb1 on /mnt/k1 type ext3 (rw,relatime,errors=remount-ro) securityfs on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw) When I ignore the warning and continue the fsck, it reported many errors. How do I get this under control? Is there a better way to figure out if sdd is mounted? Or how is it "busy? How to unmount it then? How to prevent ubuntu from automatically mounting. Or is there something else I am missing? Also from /var/log/syslog I cannot see it is mounted, this is the last part of the startup sequence: kernel: [ 14.229494] ACPI: Power Button (FF) [PWRF] kernel: [ 14.230326] ACPI: AC Adapter [ACAD] (on-line) kernel: [ 14.460136] input: PC Speaker as /devices/platform/pcspkr/input/input3 kernel: [ 14.639366] udev: renamed network interface eth0 to eth1 kernel: [ 14.670187] eth1: link up kernel: [ 16.329607] input: ImPS/2 Generic Wheel Mouse as /devices/platform/i8042/serio1/ kernel: [ 16.367540] parport_pc 00:08: reported by Plug and Play ACPI kernel: [ 16.367670] parport0: PC-style at 0x378, irq 7 [PCSPP,TRISTATE] kernel: [ 19.425637] NET: Registered protocol family 10 kernel: [ 19.437550] lo: Disabled Privacy Extensions kernel: [ 24.328857] loop: module loaded kernel: [ 24.449293] lp0: using parport0 (interrupt-driven). kernel: [ 26.075499] EXT3 FS on sda1, internal journal kernel: [ 28.380299] kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds kernel: [ 28.381706] EXT3 FS on sdc1, internal journal kernel: [ 28.381747] EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. kernel: [ 28.444867] kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds kernel: [ 28.445436] EXT3 FS on sdb1, internal journal kernel: [ 28.445444] EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. kernel: [ 31.309766] eth1: no IPv6 routers present kernel: [ 35.054268] ip_tables: (C) 2000-2006 Netfilter Core Team mysqld_safe[4367]: started mysqld[4370]: 100124 14:40:21 InnoDB: Started; log sequence number 0 10130914 mysqld[4370]: 100124 14:40:21 [Note] /usr/sbin/mysqld: ready for connections. mysqld[4370]: Version: '5.0.51a-3ubuntu5.4' socket: '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' port: 3 /etc/mysql/debian-start[4417]: Upgrading MySQL tables if necessary. /etc/mysql/debian-start[4422]: Looking for 'mysql' in: /usr/bin/mysql /etc/mysql/debian-start[4422]: Looking for 'mysqlcheck' in: /usr/bin/mysqlcheck /etc/mysql/debian-start[4422]: This installation of MySQL is already upgraded to 5.0.51a, u /etc/mysql/debian-start[4436]: Checking for insecure root accounts. /etc/mysql/debian-start[4444]: Checking for crashed MySQL tables.

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• HP SmartArray P400: How to repair failed logical drive?

  - by TegtmeierDE

  I have a HP Server with SmartArray P400 controller (incl. 256 MB Cache/Battery Backup) with a logicaldrive with replaced failed physicaldrive that does not rebuild. This is how it looked when I detected the error: ~# /usr/sbin/hpacucli ctrl slot=0 show config Smart Array P400 in Slot 0 (Embedded) (sn: XXXX) array A (SATA, Unused Space: 0 MB) logicaldrive 1 (698.6 GB, RAID 1, OK) physicaldrive 1I:1:1 (port 1I:box 1:bay 1, SATA, 750 GB, OK) physicaldrive 1I:1:2 (port 1I:box 1:bay 2, SATA, 750 GB, OK) array B (SATA, Unused Space: 0 MB) logicaldrive 2 (2.7 TB, RAID 5, Failed) physicaldrive 1I:1:3 (port 1I:box 1:bay 3, SATA, 750 GB, OK) physicaldrive 1I:1:4 (port 1I:box 1:bay 4, SATA, 750 GB, OK) physicaldrive 2I:1:5 (port 2I:box 1:bay 5, SATA, 750 GB, OK) physicaldrive 2I:1:6 (port 2I:box 1:bay 6, SATA, 750 GB, Failed) physicaldrive 2I:1:7 (port 2I:box 1:bay 7, SATA, 750 GB, OK) unassigned physicaldrive 2I:1:8 (port 2I:box 1:bay 8, SATA, 750 GB, OK) ~# I thought that I had drive 2I:1:8 configured as a spare for Array A and Array B, but it seems this was not the case :-(. I noticed the problem due to I/O errors on the host, even if only 1 physicaldrive of the RAID5 is failed. Does someone know why this could happen? The logicaldrive should go into "Degraded" mode but still be fully accessible from the host os!? I first tried to add the unassigned drive 2I:1:8 as a spare to logicaldrive 2, but this was not possible: ~# /usr/sbin/hpacucli ctrl slot=0 array B add spares=2I:1:8 Error: This operation is not supported with the current configuration. Use the "show" command on devices to show additional details about the configuration. ~# Interestingly it is possible to add the unassigned drive to the first array without problems. I thought maybe the controller put the array into "failed" state due to the missing spare and protects failed arrays from modification. So I tried was to reenable the logicaldrive (to add the spare afterwards): ~# /usr/sbin/hpacucli ctrl slot=0 ld 2 modify reenable Warning: Any previously existing data on the logical drive may not be valid or recoverable. Continue? (y/n) y Error: This operation is not supported with the current configuration. Use the "show" command on devices to show additional details about the configuration. ~# But as you can see, re-enabling the logicaldrive this was not possible. Now I replaced the failed drive by hotswapping it with the unassigned drive. The status now looks like this: ~# /usr/sbin/hpacucli ctrl slot=0 show config Smart Array P400 in Slot 0 (Embedded) (sn: XXXX) array A (SATA, Unused Space: 0 MB) logicaldrive 1 (698.6 GB, RAID 1, OK) physicaldrive 1I:1:1 (port 1I:box 1:bay 1, SATA, 750 GB, OK) physicaldrive 1I:1:2 (port 1I:box 1:bay 2, SATA, 750 GB, OK) array B (SATA, Unused Space: 0 MB) logicaldrive 2 (2.7 TB, RAID 5, Failed) physicaldrive 1I:1:3 (port 1I:box 1:bay 3, SATA, 750 GB, OK) physicaldrive 1I:1:4 (port 1I:box 1:bay 4, SATA, 750 GB, OK) physicaldrive 2I:1:5 (port 2I:box 1:bay 5, SATA, 750 GB, OK) physicaldrive 2I:1:6 (port 2I:box 1:bay 6, SATA, 750 GB, OK) physicaldrive 2I:1:7 (port 2I:box 1:bay 7, SATA, 750 GB, OK) ~# The logical drive is still not accessible. Why is it not rebuilding? What can I do? FYI, this is the configuration of my controller: ~# /usr/sbin/hpacucli ctrl slot=0 show Smart Array P400 in Slot 0 (Embedded) Bus Interface: PCI Slot: 0 Serial Number: XXXX Cache Serial Number: XXXX RAID 6 (ADG) Status: Enabled Controller Status: OK Chassis Slot: Hardware Revision: Rev E Firmware Version: 5.22 Rebuild Priority: Medium Expand Priority: Medium Surface Scan Delay: 15 secs Surface Analysis Inconsistency Notification: Disabled Raid1 Write Buffering: Disabled Post Prompt Timeout: 0 secs Cache Board Present: True Cache Status: OK Accelerator Ratio: 25% Read / 75% Write Drive Write Cache: Disabled Total Cache Size: 256 MB No-Battery Write Cache: Disabled Cache Backup Power Source: Batteries Battery/Capacitor Count: 1 Battery/Capacitor Status: OK SATA NCQ Supported: True ~# Thanks for you help in advance.

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• Windows 7 Samba issue

  - by abduls85

  We have a strange samba issue affecting only one user. Our samba setup is as follow : Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 5.4 (Tikanga) - Samba Server Samba version 3.0.33-3.14.el5 - Samba version Domain Controller WIN2008R2 Standard - Windows DC Windows 7 64 bit - Client PCs User mentioned that he faced this problem after he force shutdown his PC few weeks ago. By right, for all users when we access \\sambaservername in windows it will show all the shares in the samba server but for this user once he startup his PC he will not be able to access \\sambaservername, Error message Windows cannot access \\sambaservername Current workaround to solve the problem : Try to access one share in \\sambaservername for instance \\sambaservername\sharedfolder1. But even when doing so, it will first prompt an error in the beginning, error message is as follows Logon failure: unknown user name or bad password. user need to enter the credentials again and he can access the share. Thereafter, he will be able to access \\sambaservername without any issues. But once he reboots his computer the problem will persists. Troubleshooting done so far: Ensure the following settings: Go to: Control Panel → Administrative Tools → Local Security Policy Select: Local Policies → Security Options "Network security: LAN Manager authentication level" → Send LM & NTLM responses "Minimum session security for NTLM SSP" → uncheck: Require 128-bit encryption Advise user to reset his password and try again but problem still persists Tried my account on users' PC, there is no issues. Tried user account on serveral other Windows 7 PC including mine but problem still persists. Windows XP does not have this problem. Ensure that there is no stored crendentials on the windows 7 PC. Checked the credentials manager in Control Panel as well as typing this command rundll32.exe keymgr.dll, KRShowKeyMgr Restart winbindd daemon on samba server but to no avail. I suspect this is due to some caching issue but not sure where is the issue. Whenever the user has error accessing \\sambaservername, the following errors will be logged in the samba server : [2012/10/10 17:10:26, 1] smbd/sesssetup.c:reply_spnego_kerberos(316) Failed to verify incoming ticket with error NT_STATUS_LOGON_FAILURE! [2012/10/10 17:10:27, 1] smbd/sesssetup.c:reply_spnego_kerberos(316) Failed to verify incoming ticket with error NT_STATUS_LOGON_FAILURE! [2012/10/10 17:10:27, 1] smbd/sesssetup.c:reply_spnego_kerberos(316) Failed to verify incoming ticket with error NT_STATUS_LOGON_FAILURE! [2012/10/10 17:10:27, 1] smbd/sesssetup.c:reply_spnego_kerberos(316) Failed to verify incoming ticket with error NT_STATUS_LOGON_FAILURE! [2012/10/10 17:10:27, 1] smbd/sesssetup.c:reply_spnego_kerberos(316) Failed to verify incoming ticket with error NT_STATUS_LOGON_FAILURE! [2012/10/10 17:10:27, 1] smbd/sesssetup.c:reply_spnego_kerberos(316) Failed to verify incoming ticket with error NT_STATUS_LOGON_FAILURE! [2012/10/10 17:10:27, 1] smbd/sesssetup.c:reply_spnego_kerberos(316) Failed to verify incoming ticket with error NT_STATUS_LOGON_FAILURE! [2012/10/10 17:10:27, 1] smbd/sesssetup.c:reply_spnego_kerberos(316) Failed to verify incoming ticket with error NT_STATUS_LOGON_FAILURE! [2012/10/10 17:10:27, 1] smbd/sesssetup.c:reply_spnego_kerberos(316) Failed to verify incoming ticket with error NT_STATUS_LOGON_FAILURE! [2012/10/10 17:10:27, 1] smbd/sesssetup.c:reply_spnego_kerberos(316) Failed to verify incoming ticket with error NT_STATUS_LOGON_FAILURE! But after workaround, there will be no more errors. I suspect after reading the article listed below some amendments need to be made to the \var\samba\cache directory : http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-server-73/getent-passwd-dont-show-ad-groups-and-users-745829/ http://www.samba.org/samba/docs/man/Samba-HOWTO-Collection/tdb.html http://lists.samba.org/archive/samba/2010-May/155521.html http://lists.samba.org/archive/samba/2011-March/161912.html http://lzeit.blogspot.sg/2009/10/samba-shares-inaccessible-after-power.html There are several users using the samba server and i would like to solve this problem without any impacts. I saw the following article : http://www.samba.org/samba/docs/man/manpages-3/smb.conf.5.html#WINBINDCACHETIME "winbind offline logon (G) This parameter is designed to control whether Winbind should allow to login with the pam_winbind module using Cached Credentials. If enabled, winbindd will store user credentials from successful logins encrypted in a local cache. Default: winbind offline logon = false Example: winbind offline logon = true " Any idea on how to delete the entry for one user in the local cache ?

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• Huawei b153 limit of devices

  - by bdecaf

  I set up my home network all through this 3G wifi router. Problem is it only allows 5 devices to connect. That's not much especially if a wifi printer and gaming consoles keep hogging these slots. On the other hand I don't see the point on blocking these devices. They are (should) not doing anything online just intern in my network. The documentation I can find is surpirisingly unhelpful and focuses how to plug the device in a power socket. So what would be my options. Notes: I have already been able to get a shell on the device using ssh. It's running some Busybox. But I fail to find the how and where this limit is enforced/created. Notes 2: Specifically my device is a 3WebCube - unfortunately not specifically marked with the Huawei Model number. Successes so far After enabling ssh in the options I can login: ssh -T [email protected] [email protected]'s password: ------------------------------- -----Welcome to ATP Cli------ ------------------------------- unfortunately because of this -T - the tab key does not work for autocomplete and all inputted commands will be echoed. Also no history with arrow keys. ATP interface this custom interface is not very useful: ATP>help help Welcome to ATP command line tool. If any question, please input "?" at the end of command. ATP>? ? cls debug help save ? exit ATP>save? save? Command failed. ATP>save ? save ? ATP>debug ? debug ? display set trace ? Shell BUT undocumented - I somehow found on a auto translated chinese website - all you need to do is input sh ATP>sh sh BusyBox vv1.9.1 (2011-03-27 11:59:11 CST) built-in shell (ash) Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands. # builtin commands # help Built-in commands: ------------------- . : alias bg break cd chdir command continue eval exec exit export false fg getopts hash help jobs kill let local pwd read readonly return set shift source times trap true type ulimit umask unalias unset wait shows standard unix structure: # ls / var tmp proc linuxrc init etc bin usr sbin mnt lib html dev in /bin # ls /bin zebra strace ppps ln echo cat wscd startbsp pppc klog ebtables busybox wlancmd sshd ping kill dns brctl web sntp netstat iwpriv dhcps auth usbdiagd sms mount iwcontrol dhcpc atserver upnp sleep mknod iptables date atcmd upg siproxd mkdir ipcheck cp at umount sh mini_upnpd ip console ash test_at rm mic igmpproxy cms telnetd ripd ls ethcmd cmgr swapdev ps log equipcmd cli in /sbin # ls /sbin vconfig reboot insmod ifconfig arp route poweroff init halt using tftp after installing tftp on my desktop I was able to send files with tftp -s -l curcfg.xml 192.168.1.103 and to download onto the huawei with tftp -g -r curcfg.xml 192.168.1.103 I think I'll need that - because I don't see any editor installed. readout stuff (still playing around where I would get interesting info) For confirmation of hardware: # cat /var/log/modem_hardware_name ^HWVER:"WL1B153M001"# # cat /var/log/modem_software_name 1096.11.03.02.107 # cat /var/log/product_name B153

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• Oracle performance problem

  - by jreid42

  We are using an Oracle 11G machine that is very powerful; has redundant storage etc. It's a beast from what I have been told. We just got this DB for a tool that when I first came on as a coop had like 20 people using, now its upwards of 150 people. I am the only one working on it :( We currently have a system in place that distributes PERL scripts across our entire data center essentially giving us a sort of "grid" computing power. The Perl scripts run a sort of simulation and report back the results to the database. They do selects / inserts. The load is not very high for each script but it could be happening across 20-50 systems at the same time. We then have multiple data centers and users all hitting the same database with this same approach. Our main problem with this is that our database is getting overloaded with connections and having to drop some. We sometimes have upwards of 500 connections. These are old perl scripts and they do not handle this well. Essentially they fail and the results are lost. I would rather avoid having to rewrite a lot of these as they are poorly written, and are a headache to even look at. The database itself is not overloaded, just the connection overhead is too high. We open a connection, make a quick query and then drop the connection. Very short connections but many of them. The database team has basically said we need to lower the number of connections or they are going to ignore us. Because this is distributed across our farm we cant implement persistent connections. I do this with our webserver; but its on a fixed system. The other ones are perl scripts that get opened and closed by the distribution tool and thus arent always running. What would be my best approach to resolving this issue? The scripts themselves can wait for a connection to be open. They do not need to act immediately. Some sort of queing system? I've been suggested to set up a few instances of a tool called "SQL Relay". Maybe one in each data center. How reliable is this tool? How good is this approach? Would it work for what we need? We could have one for each data center and relay requests through it to our main database, keeping a pipeline of open persistent connections? Does this make sense? Is there any other suggestions you can make? Any ideas? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Sadly I am just a coop student working for a very big company and somehow all of this has landed all on my shoulders (there is literally nobody to ask for help; its a hardware company, everybody is hardware engineers, and the database team is useless and in India) and I am quite lost as what the best approach would be? I am extremely overworked and this problem is interfering with on going progress and basically needs to be resolved as quickly as possible; preferably without rewriting the whole system, purchasing hardware (not gonna happen), or shooting myself in the foot. HELP LOL!

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• How do I determine if my controller is in IDE or AHCI mode in Linux?

  - by philcolbourn

  I have an old MacBook Pro 4,1 (early 2008) - but I suspect an answer would apply to many MacBook Pros. It has an Intel IDE/SATA controller (ICH8M/ICH8M-E). I have installed a patched MBR that is supposed to put my controller into AHCI mode. It does this by setting some controller port value that I don't understand. This seems to work as I get this from lspci: 00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801HM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) IDE Controller (rev 03) 00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801HM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 03) Now most, perhaps all, sites that provide a solution (enabling AHCI) suggest that after a sleep/wake cycle that a controller will revert to IDE mode due to how Apple support Windows. They recommend disabling sleep. From author of patchedcode.bin I think Enabling AHCI for Windows on MacBooks NB: I do not have bootcamp installed and I do not have Windows installed. Is there a way to prove that my controller is in IDE or AHCI mode? Background Data Using patchedcode.bin MBR I get this in syslog: Jun 12 22:33:22 max kernel: [ 1.860955] ahci 0000:00:1f.2: version 3.0 Jun 12 22:33:22 max kernel: [ 1.861052] ahci 0000:00:1f.2: irq 45 for MSI/MSI-X Jun 12 22:33:22 max kernel: [ 1.861117] ahci 0000:00:1f.2: AHCI 0001.0100 32 slots 3 ports 1.5 Gbps 0x1 impl SATA mode Jun 12 22:33:22 max kernel: [ 1.861120] ahci 0000:00:1f.2: flags: 64bit ncq sntf pm led clo pio slum part ccc ems Jun 12 22:33:22 max kernel: [ 1.861130] ahci 0000:00:1f.2: setting latency timer to 64 Jun 12 22:33:22 max kernel: [ 1.880880] ACPI: Video Device [GFX0] (multi-head: yes rom: no post: no) Jun 12 22:33:22 max kernel: [ 1.880983] scsi2 : ahci Jun 12 22:33:22 max kernel: [ 1.884552] scsi3 : ahci Jun 12 22:33:22 max kernel: [ 1.886932] scsi4 : ahci Jun 12 22:33:22 max kernel: [ 1.886998] ata3: SATA max UDMA/133 abar m2048@0xdb504000 port 0xdb504100 irq 45 Jun 12 22:33:22 max kernel: [ 1.887000] ata4: DUMMY Jun 12 22:33:22 max kernel: [ 1.887002] ata5: DUMMY Jun 12 22:33:22 max kernel: [ 2.204103] ata3: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300) Jun 12 22:33:22 max kernel: [ 2.204656] ata3.00: ATA-8: FUJITSU MHY2200BH, 0081000D, max UDMA/100 Jun 12 22:33:22 max kernel: [ 2.204662] ata3.00: 390721968 sectors, multi 16: LBA48 NCQ (depth 31/32), AA Jun 12 22:33:22 max kernel: [ 2.205324] ata3.00: configured for UDMA/100 Jun 12 22:33:22 max kernel: [ 2.205554] scsi 2:0:0:0: Direct-Access ATA FUJITSU MHY2200B 0081 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5 Using my original MBR I get this from syslog: Jun 13 18:07:13 max kernel: [ 0.622861] ata_piix 0000:00:1f.1: version 2.13 Jun 13 18:07:13 max kernel: [ 0.622869] ata_piix 0000:00:1f.1: power state changed by ACPI to D0 Jun 13 18:07:13 max kernel: [ 0.622924] ata_piix 0000:00:1f.1: setting latency timer to 64 Jun 13 18:07:13 max kernel: [ 0.623339] scsi0 : ata_piix Jun 13 18:07:13 max kernel: [ 0.623730] scsi1 : ata_piix Jun 13 18:07:13 max kernel: [ 0.623765] ata1: PATA max UDMA/100 cmd 0x8108 ctl 0x811c bmdma 0x80e0 irq 21 Jun 13 18:07:13 max kernel: [ 0.623767] ata2: PATA max UDMA/100 cmd 0x8100 ctl 0x8118 bmdma 0x80e8 irq 21 Jun 13 18:07:13 max kernel: [ 0.623810] ata_piix 0000:00:1f.2: MAP [ Jun 13 18:07:13 max kernel: [ 0.623811] P0 -- -- -- ] Jun 13 18:07:13 max kernel: [ 0.623866] ata_piix 0000:00:1f.2: setting latency timer to 64 Jun 13 18:07:13 max kernel: [ 0.624241] scsi2 : ata_piix Jun 13 18:07:13 max kernel: [ 0.624558] scsi3 : ata_piix Jun 13 18:07:13 max kernel: [ 0.624862] ata3: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0x80f8 ctl 0x8114 bmdma 0x8020 irq 18 Jun 13 18:07:13 max kernel: [ 0.624865] ata4: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0x80f0 ctl 0x8110 bmdma 0x8028 irq 18 Jun 13 18:07:13 max kernel: [ 1.208879] ata3.00: ATA-8: FUJITSU MHY2200BH, 0081000D, max UDMA/100 Jun 13 18:07:13 max kernel: [ 1.208882] ata3.00: 390721968 sectors, multi 16: LBA48 NCQ (depth 0/32) Jun 13 18:07:13 max kernel: [ 1.208961] ata1.01: ATAPI: MATSHITA DVD+/-RW UJ-867S, 1.00, max UDMA/33 Jun 13 18:07:13 max kernel: [ 1.216186] ata3.00: configured for UDMA/100 Jun 13 18:07:13 max kernel: [ 1.224396] ata1.01: configured for UDMA/33

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• Useful Command-line Commands on Windows

  - by Sung Meister

  The aim for this Wiki is to promote using a command to open up commonly used applications without having to go through many mouse clicks - thus saving time on monitoring and troubleshooting Windows machines. Answer entries need to specify Application name Commands Screenshot (Optional) Shortcut to commands && - Command Chaining %SYSTEMROOT%\System32\rcimlby.exe -LaunchRA - Remote Assistance (Windows XP) appwiz.cpl - Programs and Features (Formerly Known as "Add or Remove Programs") appwiz.cpl @,2 - Turn Windows Features On and Off (Add/Remove Windows Components pane) arp - Displays and modifies the IP-to-Physical address translation tables used by address resolution protocol (ARP) at - Schedule tasks either locally or remotely without using Scheduled Tasks bootsect.exe - Updates the master boot code for hard disk partitions to switch between BOOTMGR and NTLDR cacls - Change Access Control List (ACL) permissions on a directory, its subcontents, or files calc - Calculator chkdsk - Check/Fix the disk surface for physical errors or bad sectors cipher - Displays or alters the encryption of directories [files] on NTFS partitions cleanmgr.exe - Disk Cleanup clip - Redirects output of command line tools to the Windows clipboard cls - clear the command line screen cmd /k - Run command with command extensions enabled color - Sets the default console foreground and background colors in console command.com - Default Operating System Shell compmgmt.msc - Computer Management control.exe /name Microsoft.NetworkAndSharingCenter - Network and Sharing Center control keyboard - Keyboard Properties control mouse(or main.cpl) - Mouse Properties control sysdm.cpl,@0,3 - Advanced Tab of the System Properties dialog control userpasswords2 - Opens the classic User Accounts dialog desk.cpl - opens the display properties devmgmt.msc - Device Manager diskmgmt.msc - Disk Management diskpart - Disk management from the command line dsa.msc - Opens active directory users and computers dsquery - Finds any objects in the directory according to criteria dxdiag - DirectX Diagnostic Tool eventvwr - Windows Event Log (Event Viewer) explorer . - Open explorer with the current folder selected. explorer /e, . - Open explorer, with folder tree, with current folder selected. F7 - View command history find - Searches for a text string in a file or files findstr - Find a string in a file firewall.cpl - Opens the Windows Firewall settings fsmgmt.msc - Shared Folders fsutil - Perform tasks related to FAT and NTFS file systems ftp - Transfers files to and from a computer running an FTP server service getmac - Shows the mac address(es) of your network adapter(s) gpedit.msc - Group Policy Editor gpresult - Displays the Resultant Set of Policy (RSoP) information for a target user and computer httpcfg.exe - HTTP Configuration Utility iisreset - To restart IIS InetMgr.exe - Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager 7 InetMgr6.exe - Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager 6 intl.cpl - Regional and Language Options ipconfig - Internet protocol configuration lusrmgr.msc - Local Users and Groups Administrator msconfig - System Configuration notepad - Notepad? ;) mmsys.cpl - Sound/Recording/Playback properties mode - Configure system devices more - Displays one screen of output at a time mrt - Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool mstsc.exe - Remote Desktop Connection nbstat - displays protocol statistics and current TCP/IP connections using NBT ncpa.cpl - Network Connections netsh - Display or modify the network configuration of a computer that is currently running netstat - Network Statistics net statistics - Check computer up time net stop - Stops a running service. net use - Connects a computer to or disconnects a computer from a shared resource, or displays information about computer connections odbcad32.exe - ODBC Data Source Administrator pathping - A traceroute that collects detailed packet loss stats perfmon - Opens Reliability and Performance Monitor ping - Determine whether a remote computer is accessible over the network powercfg.cpl - Power management control panel applet quser - Display information about user sessions on a terminal server qwinsta - See disconnected remote desktop sessions reg.exe - Console Registry Tool for Windows regedit - Registry Editor rasdial - Connects to a VPN or a dialup network robocopy - Backup/Restore/Copy large amounts of files reliably rsop.msc - Resultant Set of Policy (shows the combined effect of all group policies active on the current system/login) runas - Run specific tools and programs with different permissions than the user's current logon provides sc - Manage anything you want to do with services. schtasks - Enables an administrator to create, delete, query, change, run and end scheduled tasks on a local or remote system. secpol.msc - Local Security Settings services.msc - Services control panel set - Displays, sets, or removes cmd.exe environment variables. set DIRCMD - Preset dir parameter in cmd.exe start - Starts a separate window to run a specified program or command start. - opens the current directory in the Windows Explorer. shutdown.exe - Shutdown or Reboot a local/remote machine subst.exe - Associates a path with a drive letter, including local drives systeminfo -Displays a comprehensive information about the system taskkill - terminate tasks by process id (PID) or image name tasklist.exe - List Processes on local or a remote machine taskmgr.exe - Task Manager telephon.cpl - Telephone and Modem properties timedate.cpl - Date and Time title - Change the title of the CMD window you have open tracert - Trace route wmic - Windows Management Instrumentation Command-line winver.exe - Find Windows Version wscui.cpl - Windows Security Center wuauclt.exe - Windows Update AutoUpdate Client

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• Bash can't start a programme that's there and has all the right permissions

  - by Rory

  This is a gentoo server. There's a programme prog that can't execute. (Yes the execute permission is set) About the file $ ls prog $ ./prog bash: ./prog: No such file or directory $ file prog prog: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), for GNU/Linux 2.2.5, dynamically linked (uses shared libs), not stripped $ pwd /usr/local/bin $ /usr/local/bin/prog bash: /usr/local/bin/prog: No such file or directory $ less prog | head ELF Header: Magic: 7f 45 4c 46 01 01 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 Class: ELF32 Data: 2's complement, little endian Version: 1 (current) OS/ABI: UNIX - System V ABI Version: 0 Type: EXEC (Executable file) Machine: Intel 80386 Version: 0x1 I have a fancy less, to show that it's an actual executable, here's some more data: $ xxd prog |head 0000000: 7f45 4c46 0101 0100 0000 0000 0000 0000 .ELF............ 0000010: 0200 0300 0100 0000 c092 0408 3400 0000 ............4... 0000020: 0401 0a00 0000 0000 3400 2000 0700 2800 ........4. ...(. 0000030: 2600 2300 0600 0000 3400 0000 3480 0408 &.#.....4...4... 0000040: 3480 0408 e000 0000 e000 0000 0500 0000 4............... 0000050: 0400 0000 0300 0000 1401 0000 1481 0408 ................ 0000060: 1481 0408 1300 0000 1300 0000 0400 0000 ................ 0000070: 0100 0000 0100 0000 0000 0000 0080 0408 ................ 0000080: 0080 0408 21f1 0500 21f1 0500 0500 0000 ....!...!....... 0000090: 0010 0000 0100 0000 40f1 0500 4081 0a08 ........@...@... and $ ls -l prog -rwxrwxr-x 1 1000 devs 725706 Aug 6 2007 prog $ ldd prog not a dynamic executable $ strace ./prog 1249403877.639076 execve("./prog", ["./prog"], [/* 27 vars */]) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) 1249403877.640645 dup(2) = 3 1249403877.640875 fcntl(3, F_GETFL) = 0x8002 (flags O_RDWR|O_LARGEFILE) 1249403877.641143 fstat(3, {st_mode=S_IFCHR|0620, st_rdev=makedev(136, 0), ...}) = 0 1249403877.641484 mmap(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x2b3b8954a000 1249403877.641747 lseek(3, 0, SEEK_CUR) = -1 ESPIPE (Illegal seek) 1249403877.642045 write(3, "strace: exec: No such file or dir"..., 40strace: exec: No such file or directory ) = 40 1249403877.642324 close(3) = 0 1249403877.642531 munmap(0x2b3b8954a000, 4096) = 0 1249403877.642735 exit_group(1) = ? About the server FTR the server is a xen domU, and the programme is a closed source linux application. This VM is a copy of another VM that has the same root filesystem (including this programme), that works fine. I've tried all the above as root and same problem. Did I mention the root filesystem is mounted over NFS. However it's mounted 'defaults,nosuid', which should include execute. Also I am able to run many other programmes from that mounted drive /proc/cpuinfo: processor : 0 vendor_id : GenuineIntel cpu family : 15 model : 4 model name : Intel(R) Xeon(TM) CPU 3.00GHz stepping : 1 cpu MHz : 2992.692 cache size : 1024 KB fpu : yes fpu_exception : yes cpuid level : 5 wp : yes flags : fpu tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm syscall nx lm constant_tsc pni monitor ds_cpl cid cx16 xtpr bogmips : 5989.55 clflush size : 64 cache_alignment : 128 address sizes : 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual power management: Example of a file that I can run I can run other programmes on that mounted filesystem on that server. For example: $ ls -l ls -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 105576 Jul 25 17:14 ls $ file ls ls: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), for GNU/Linux 2.6.9, dynamically linked (uses shared libs), stripped $ ./ls attr cat cut echo getfacl ln more ... (you get the idea) ... rmdir sort tty $ less ls | head ELF Header: Magic: 7f 45 4c 46 02 01 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 Class: ELF64 Data: 2's complement, little endian Version: 1 (current) OS/ABI: UNIX - System V ABI Version: 0 Type: EXEC (Executable file) Machine: Advanced Micro Devices X86-64 Version: 0x1

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