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  • Electronics Recycling

    - by Evan Carroll
    Is it common practice to not pay for recycling electronics? I find it kind of funny that scrap metal demands such a premium but electronics recycling gets nothing. My dad owns a stereostore and throws away hundreds of radio head-units a month is there anything useful or profitable that can be done with electronics on such a mass scale? http://stselectronicrecyclinginc.com/index.php/electronics-recycling http://www.basscomputerrecycling.com/?page_id=30 http://www.computerrecyclecenter.com/services.htm None of them seem to pay anything for the scrap.

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  • EC2 Filesystem / Files stored on the wrong partiton after launching new instance from AMI

    - by Philip Isaacs
    Today I set up a new EC2 Instance from and AMI I created from an older EC2 instance. When I launched the new instance I took the AMI that was on a small instance and launched with a medium instance. From what I can tell this is pretty standard stuff. But here's the stang part. According to AWS these are the differences Small Instance (Default) 1.7 GB of memory, 1 EC2 Compute Unit (1 virtual core with 1 EC2 Compute Unit), 160 GB of local instance storage, 32-bit or 64-bit platform Medium Instance 3.75 GB of memory, 2 EC2 Compute Units (1 virtual core with 2 EC2 Compute Units each), 410 GB of local instance storage, 32-bit or 64-bit platform Okay now here's where I'm having an issue. I when I log into the new bigger instance it still reports only having 1.7 GB of ram. The other strange part is that all my old partitions are still their in the same configurations. I see a new larger partition /mnt which is essential empty. Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sda1 7.9G 5.9G 1.6G 79% / none 846M 120K 846M 1% /dev none 879M 0 879M 0% /dev/shm none 879M 76K 878M 1% /var/run none 879M 0 879M 0% /var/lock none 879M 0 879M 0% /lib/init/rw /dev/sda2 335G 195M 318G 1% /mnt /dev/sdf 16G 9.9G 5.1G 67% /var2 This EC2 is a web server and I was serving files off the /var2 directory but for some reason the instance is storing everything on / Okay here's what I'd like to do. Move all my website files to /mnt and have the web server point to that. Any suggestions? If it helps here is what my fstab looks like as well. root@myserver:/var# mount -l /dev/sda1 on / type ext3 (rw) [cloudimg-rootfs] proc on /proc type proc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev) none on /sys type sysfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev) none on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw) none on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw) none on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,mode=0755) none on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=0620) none on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev) none on /var/run type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,mode=0755) none on /var/lock type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev) none on /lib/init/rw type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,mode=0755) /dev/sda2 on /mnt type ext3 (rw) /dev/sdf on /var2 type ext4 (rw,noatime) I hope this question makes sense. Basically i want my old files on this new partition. Thanks in advance

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  • How to correctly partition usb flash drive and which filesystem to choose considering wear leveling?

    - by random1
    Two problems. First one: how to partition the flash drive? I shouldn't need to do this, but I'm no longer sure if my partition is properly aligned since I was forced to delete and create a new partition table after gparted complained when I tried to format the drive from FAT to ext4. The naive answer would be to say "just use default and everything is going to be alright". However if you read the following links you'll know things are not that simple: https://lwn.net/Articles/428584/ and http://linux-howto-guide.blogspot.com/2009/10/increase-usb-flash-drive-write-speed.html Then there is also the issue of cylinders, heads and sectors. Currently I get this: $sfdisk -l -uM /dev/sdd Disk /dev/sdd: 30147 cylinders, 64 heads, 32 sectors/track Warning: The partition table looks like it was made for C/H/S=*/255/63 (instead of 30147/64/32). For this listing I'll assume that geometry. Units = mebibytes of 1048576 bytes, blocks of 1024 bytes, counting from 0 Device Boot Start End MiB #blocks Id System /dev/sdd1 1 30146 30146 30869504 83 Linux $fdisk -l /dev/sdd Disk /dev/sdd: 31.6 GB, 31611420672 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 3843 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x00010c28 So from my current understanding I should align partitions at 4 MiB (currently it's at 1 MiB). But I still don't know how to set the heads and sectors properly for my device. Second problem: file system. From the benchmarks I saw ext4 provides the best performance, however there is the issue of wear leveling. How can I know that my Transcend JetFlash 700's microcontroller provides for wear leveling? Or will I just be killing my drive faster? I've seen a lot of posts on the web saying don't worry the newer drives already take care of that. But I've never seen a single piece of backed evidence of that and at some point people start mixing SSD with USB flash drives technology. The safe option would be to go for ext2, however a serious of tests that I performed showed horrible performance!!! These values are from a real scenario and not some synthetic test: 42 files: 3,429,415,284 bytes copied to flash drive original fat32: 15.1 MiB/s ext4 after new partition table: 10.2 MiB/s ext2 after new partition table: 1.9 MiB/s Please read the links that I posted above before answering. I would also be interested in answers backed up with some references because a lot is said and re-said but then it lacks facts. Thank you for the help.

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  • APC switched rack PDU: Startup outlet state

    - by Ian Gregory
    I have an APC Switched Rack PDU powering a number of servers in a remote datacentre. After a recent power outage, I noticed that the outlets did not automatically default to the On status once power was restored. Having reviewed the Web UI, I cannot find this option. I'm not certain of the model number (it doesn't appear to be visible in the Web UI), but I think it's this one. Is it possible to configure these PDU units to automatically power outlets after a cold start?

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  • How does Brocade (Foundry) FastIron CX compare to Cisco 3750 stackable switches?

    - by Paul
    We're considering Brocade's CX series vs. Cisco's 3750 at both core and distribution layers for a new site with gig to desktop, without POE. If you have any hands-on experience with FastIron CX switches, I would greatly value your impressions. I'll gladly add mine to the discussion when we get some quality time with our eval units (one just arrived yesterday, another's on the way). Thank you!

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  • HP Colour LaserJet Printer Hard Drive

    - by Jon Rhoades
    We are struggling to print Student's Theses on our HP CLJ CP4025 Printers (It will only let us print 1 at a time & typically they need multiple copies). Supposedly the solution is to install the optional Hard Drive. My question is: a) Does a hard drive on the printer make a significant difference? b) Can we use any old hard drive or do we have to use the rather pricey HP High performance EIO units?

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  • Amazon EC2 High-Memory Extra Large Instance

    - by Simpanoz
    I am new to Mongodb and EC2. If I use following single MongoDb server : High-Memory Extra Large Instance 17.1 GiB memory, 6.5 ECU (2 virtual cores with 3.25 EC2 Compute Units each), 420 GB of local instance storage, 64-bit platform As a layman, if we quantify I/O, data in MB/sec. How much I/O transactions mongodb server can handle easily, without being burnt out. Consider default settings of EC2 server with Ubuntu and MongoDb version available in AWS marketplace. Thanks in advance

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  • Overhead video camera to capture live video to a PC

    - by BrianLy
    Can anyone recommend a manufacturer or starting point for overhead video camera units that can be used to capture a Microsoft Surface application in use? I'd like to stream this from another PC but I'm not sure what the best camera to look at would be. It seems like some of the overhead security cameras would fit the requirements but I don't know if they will interface easily with a PC.

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  • PXE boot from USB NIC

    - by JoelHess
    Is there a USB solution to PXE boot? I want to use ghost or clonezilla or something to image a bunch of units that don't have on board ethernet, and no clear real way to add to it.

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  • How can I repair my USB drive?

    - by yurko
    USB drive is in read only state and I can't repair it. First of all I tried erase it using dd: root@yurko-laptop:/home/yurko-laptop# ls -l /dev/disk/by-id | grep usb lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 ??? 18 23:45 usb-Generic_Flash_Disk_C173828A-0:0 -> ../../sdb lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 ??? 18 23:45 usb-Generic_Flash_Disk_C173828A-0:0-part1 -> ../../sdb1 root@yurko-laptop:/home/yurko-laptop# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb dd: ?????? ? «/dev/sdb»: ?? ?????????? ????????? ????? 8257537+0 ??????? ??????? 8257536+0 ??????? ???????? ??????????? 4227858432 ????? (4,2 GB), 942,633 c, 4,5 MB/c After that I wanted to create new filesystem using fdisk: root@yurko-laptop:/home/yurko-laptop# fdisk /dev/sdb You will not be able to write the partition table. WARNING: DOS-compatible mode is deprecated. It's strongly recommended to switch off the mode (command 'c') and change display units to sectors (command 'u'). Command (m for help): p Disk /dev/sdb: 4227 MB, 4227858432 bytes 4 heads, 63 sectors/track, 32768 cylinders Units = cylinders of 252 * 512 = 129024 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x00000000 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdb1 18 32768 4126596 b W95 FAT32 Command (m for help): fdisk showed that the partition still exists and I can't write the partition table. I tried to delete the existing partition: Command (m for help): d Selected partition 1 Command (m for help): w Unable to write /dev/sdb root@yurko-laptop:/home/yurko-laptop# Why am I not be able to write the partition table? Does it mean that some hardware failure occurred? And is it possible to repair the current USB drive? I've tried to use hdparm and it showed that the readonly flag is on: root@yurko-laptop:/home/yurko-laptop# hdparm /dev/sdb /dev/sdb: SG_IO: bad/missing sense data, sb[]: f0 00 05 00 00 00 00 0a 00 00 00 00 26 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 multcount = 0 (off) readonly = 1 (on) readahead = 256 (on) geometry = 1016/131/62, sectors = 8257536, start = 0

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  • How do I change the default for the "df" command in the Unix terminal from KILOBYTES TO MEGABYTES?

    - by user1656014
    I can't really show the code in Unix, but I can explain it very clearly. In the terminal, when you type "df", you get information on the disk free space all in KILOBYTE units. KILOBYTES is currently set as the default in Unix. My problem is trying to change the default from KILOBYTES to MEGABYTES. After changing of the default, I should be able to type in "df" and all the disk free space should come up in MEGABYTES.

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  • Security: Managing network shares remotely on Ubuntu?

    - by Industrial
    Hi everyone, I am about to setup a home network server running Ubuntu Server and I'm currently a bit worried about how to handle network shares and permissions in a good way. After working a bit lately with Netgears ReadyNAS's units, I have become really spoiled with how easy it was to set up network shares and giving a specific user different levels of network access to a specific share (forbidden access, read, read/write). How would I accomplish the same with my Ubuntu server through SSH? Thanks a lot

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  • Excel Data Organization: Array Formulas? Tables? Named Range?

    - by Joe Arasin
    I'm trying to make a huge Excel sheet reasonably maintainable, but it's huge in the "hundred-table-db" direction, rather than the "hundred-thousand-row-table" direction. I want to have a baseline data table that looks something like this: | Indicator | Units | 2010 | 2015 | 2020 | 2025 | Source | | GDP | $Gazillion | 300 | 350 | 400 | 450 | BLS | | Population | Millions | 350 | 400 | 450 | 500 | Census | | PetMonkeyPopulation | Thousands | 50 | 60 | 70 | 80 | SimiansRUs | And then be able to have another sheet that looks like: | | 2010 | 2015 | 2020 | 2025 | | MonkeysPerCapita | .1 | .2 | .3 | .4 | | MonkeysPerDollar | .01 | .01 | .01 | .01 | | GDPPerCapita | 300 | 400 | 450 | 600 | Is there some standard way to make this kind of thing maintainable?

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  • Folding at home: how to check the actual bonus credited?

    - by netvope
    In the past I've completed many SMP Core A2 units, but I haven't been folding since A3 was out. Now I'm running SMP Core A3 on Linux. HFM.NET shows that I should be getting a certain amount of bonus credit, but somebody pointed out that it is only a prediction. How can I check the amount of actual bonus credited to my account for each completed unit?

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  • Security: Managing network shares remotely on Ubuntu?

    - by Industrial
    Hi everyone, I am about to setup a home network server running Ubuntu Server and I'm currently a bit worried about how to handle network shares and permissions in a good way. After working a bit lately with Netgears ReadyNAS's units, I have become really spoiled with how easy it was to set up network shares and giving a specific user different levels of network access to a specific share (forbidden access, read, read/write). How would I accomplish the same with my Ubuntu server through SSH? Thanks a lot

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  • Amazon EC2 & S3 costs - can they be tied to specific instances

    - by monkeymagic
    Hi, I'd like to start using S3 and EC2 to host some of my company's simpler websites. I would like to be able to identify all of the costs associated with running each site (instance run-time costs + storage + data transfers) so that the costs can be allocated (cross-charged) to business units in my company. Is it possible to identify all the costs associated with each site in this way if all of the sites are running on separate instances ? thanks

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  • How to image an fresh hard drive

    - by JoelHess
    I'm looking for something that can drop an image of Windows onto an uninitialized Hard Drive. I have new units that haven't even had the partition table created on them, and I'm trying to come up with a one (or two) step process for getting a disk image onto them. I've tried clonezilla, but that doesn't seem to like the lack of partition table, and as far as I can tell, Acronis doesn't work either.

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  • Secure Standalone Server Plus Firewall Unit [closed]

    - by orbitron
    We need to send a 2U server, 1U UPS and 1U firewall to a third-party. The thing is, it needs to be a secured case (locked unit) that has proper airflow and we can have power and networking cables coming out of the back. We've googled far and wide and have only been able to find 'hard case' units that offer some level of security but they are extremely bulky and require freight delivery. Thank you for any insight or solutions.

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  • Fast block placement algorithm, advice needed?

    - by James Morris
    I need to emulate the window placement strategy of the Fluxbox window manager. As a rough guide, visualize randomly sized windows filling up the screen one at a time, where the rough size of each results in an average of 80 windows on screen without any window overlapping another. It is important to note that windows will close and the space that closed windows previously occupied becomes available once more for the placement of new windows. The window placement strategy has three binary options: Windows build horizontal rows or vertical columns (potentially) Windows are placed from left to right or right to left Windows are placed from top to bottom or bottom to top Why is the algorithm a problem? It needs to operate to the deadlines of a real time thread in an audio application. At this moment I am only concerned with getting a fast algorithm, don't concern yourself over the implications of real time threads and all the hurdles in programming that that brings. So far I have two choices which I have built loose prototypes for: 1) A port of the Fluxbox placement algorithm into my code. The problem with this is, the client (my program) gets kicked out of the audio server (JACK) when I try placing the worst case scenario of 256 blocks using the algorithm. This algorithm performs over 14000 full (linear) scans of the list of blocks already placed when placing the 256th window. 2) My alternative approach. Only partially implemented, this approach uses a data structure for each area of rectangular free unused space (the list of windows can be entirely separate, and is not required for testing of this algorithm). The data structure acts as a node in a doubly linked list (with sorted insertion), as well as containing the coordinates of the top-left corner, and the width and height. Furthermore, each block data structure also contains four links which connect to each immediately adjacent (touching) block on each of the four sides. IMPORTANT RULE: Each block may only touch with one block per side. The problem with this approach is, it's very complex. I have implemented the straightforward cases where 1) space is removed from one corner of a block, 2) splitting neighbouring blocks so that the IMPORTANT RULE is adhered to. The less straightforward case, where the space to be removed can only be found within a column or row of boxes, is only partially implemented - if one of the blocks to be removed is an exact fit for width (ie column) or height (ie row) then problems occur. And don't even mention the fact this only checks columns one box wide, and rows one box tall. I've implemented this algorithm in C - the language I am using for this project (I've not used C++ for a few years and am uncomfortable using it after having focused all my attention to C development, it's a hobby). The implementation is 700+ lines of code (including plenty of blank lines, brace lines, comments etc). The implementation only works for the horizontal-rows + left-right + top-bottom placement strategy. So I've either got to add some way of making this +700 lines of code work for the other 7 placement strategy options, or I'm going to have to duplicate those +700 lines of code for the other seven options. Neither of these is attractive, the first, because the existing code is complex enough, the second, because of bloat. The algorithm is not even at a stage where I can use it in the real time worst case scenario, because of missing functionality, so I still don't know if it actually performs better or worse than the first approach. What else is there? I've skimmed over and discounted: Bin Packing algorithms: their emphasis on optimal fit does not match the requirements of this algorithm. Recursive Bisection Placement algorithms: sounds promising, but these are for circuit design. Their emphasis is optimal wire length. Both of these, especially the latter, all elements to be placed/packs are known before the algorithm begins. I need an algorithm which works accumulatively with what it is given to do when it is told to do it. What are your thoughts on this? How would you approach it? What other algorithms should I look at? Or even what concepts should I research seeing as I've not studied computer science/software engineering? Please ask questions in comments if further information is needed. [edit] If it makes any difference, the units for the coordinates will not be pixels. The units are unimportant, but the grid where windows/blocks/whatever can be placed will be 127 x 127 units.

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  • Inconsistent results in R with RNetCDF - why?

    - by sarcozona
    I am having trouble extracting data from NetCDF data files using RNetCDF. The data files each have 3 dimensions (longitude, latitude, and a date) and 3 variables (latitude, longitude, and a climate variable). There are four datasets, each with a different climate variable. Here is some of the output from print.nc(p8m.tmax) for clarity. The other datasets are identical except for the specific climate variable. dimensions: month = UNLIMITED ; // (1368 currently) lat = 3105 ; lon = 7025 ; variables: float lat(lat) ; lat:long_name = "latitude" ; lat:standard_name = "latitude" ; lat:units = "degrees_north" ; float lon(lon) ; lon:long_name = "longitude" ; lon:standard_name = "longitude" ; lon:units = "degrees_east" ; short tmax(lon, lat, month) ; tmax:missing_value = -9999 ; tmax:_FillValue = -9999 ; tmax:units = "degree_celsius" ; tmax:scale_factor = 0.01 ; tmax:valid_min = -5000 ; tmax:valid_max = 6000 ; I am getting behavior I don't understand when I use the var.get.nc function from the RNetCDF package. For example, when I attempt to extract 82 values beginning at stval from the maximum temperature data (p8m.tmax <- open.nc(tmaxdataset.nc)) with > var.get.nc(p8m.tmax,'tmax', start=c(lon_val, lat_val, stval),count=c(1,1,82)) (where lon_val and lat_val specify the location in the dataset of the coordinates I'm interested in and stval is stval is set to which(time_vec==200201), which in this case equaled 1285.) I get Error: Invalid argument But after successfully extracting 80 and 81 values > var.get.nc(p8m.tmax,'tmax', start=c(lon_val, lat_val, stval),count=c(1,1,80)) > var.get.nc(p8m.tmax,'tmax', start=c(lon_val, lat_val, stval),count=c(1,1,81)) the command with 82 works: > var.get.nc(p8m.tmax,'tmax', start=c(lon_val, lat_val, stval),count=c(1,1,82)) [1] 444 866 1063 ... [output snipped] The same problem occurs in the identically structured tmin file, but at 36 instead of 82: > var.get.nc(p8m.tmin,'tmin', start=c(lon_val, lat_val, stval),count=c(1,1,36)) produces Error: Invalid argument But after repeating with counts of 30, 31, etc > var.get.nc(p8m.tmin,'tmin', start=c(lon_val, lat_val, stval), count=c(1,1,36)) works. These examples make it seem like the function is failing at the last count, but that actually isn't the case. In the first example, var.get.nc gave Error: Invalid argument after I asked for 84 values. I then narrowed the failure down to the 82nd count by varying the starting point in the dataset and asking for only 1 value at a time. The particular number the problem occurs at also varies. I can close and reopen the dataset and have the problem occur at a different location. In the particular examples above, lon_val and lat_val are 1595 and 1751, respectively, identifying the location in the dataset along the lat and lon dimensions for the latitude and longitude I'm interested in. The 1595th latitude and 1751th longitude are not the problem, however. The problem occurs with all other latitude and longitudes I've tried. Varying the starting location in the dataset along the climate variable dimension (stval) and/or specifying it different (as a number in the command instead of the object stval) also does not fix the problem. This problem doesn't always occur. I can run identical code three times in a row (clearing all objects in between runs) and get a different outcome each time. The first run may choke on the 7th entry I'm trying to get, the second might work fine, and the third run might choke on the 83rd entry. I'm absolutely baffled by such inconsistent behavior. The open.nc function has also started to fail with the same Error: Invalid argument. Like the var.get.nc problems, it also occurs inconsistently. Does anyone know what causes the initial failure to extract the variable? And how I might prevent it? Could have to do with the size of the data files (~60GB each) and/or the fact that I'm accessing them through networked drives? This was also asked here: https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-help/2011-June/281233.html > sessionInfo() R version 2.13.0 (2011-04-13) Platform: i386-pc-mingw32/i386 (32-bit) locale: [1] LC_COLLATE=English_United States.1252 LC_CTYPE=English_United States.1252 [3] LC_MONETARY=English_United States.1252 LC_NUMERIC=C [5] LC_TIME=English_United States.1252 attached base packages: [1] stats graphics grDevices utils datasets methods base other attached packages: [1] reshape_0.8.4 plyr_1.5.2 RNetCDF_1.5.2-2 loaded via a namespace (and not attached): [1] tools_2.13.0

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  • Scrum in 5 Minutes

    - by Stephen.Walther
    The goal of this blog entry is to explain the basic concepts of Scrum in less than five minutes. You learn how Scrum can help a team of developers to successfully complete a complex software project. Product Backlog and the Product Owner Imagine that you are part of a team which needs to create a new website – for example, an e-commerce website. You have an overwhelming amount of work to do. You need to build (or possibly buy) a shopping cart, install an SSL certificate, create a product catalog, create a Facebook page, and at least a hundred other things that you have not thought of yet. According to Scrum, the first thing you should do is create a list. Place the highest priority items at the top of the list and the lower priority items lower in the list. For example, creating the shopping cart and buying the domain name might be high priority items and creating a Facebook page might be a lower priority item. In Scrum, this list is called the Product Backlog. How do you prioritize the items in the Product Backlog? Different stakeholders in the project might have different priorities. Gary, your division VP, thinks that it is crucial that the e-commerce site has a mobile app. Sally, your direct manager, thinks taking advantage of new HTML5 features is much more important. Multiple people are pulling you in different directions. According to Scrum, it is important that you always designate one person, and only one person, as the Product Owner. The Product Owner is the person who decides what items should be added to the Product Backlog and the priority of the items in the Product Backlog. The Product Owner could be the customer who is paying the bills, the project manager who is responsible for delivering the project, or a customer representative. The critical point is that the Product Owner must always be a single person and that single person has absolute authority over the Product Backlog. Sprints and the Sprint Backlog So now the developer team has a prioritized list of items and they can start work. The team starts implementing the first item in the Backlog — the shopping cart — and the team is making good progress. Unfortunately, however, half-way through the work of implementing the shopping cart, the Product Owner changes his mind. The Product Owner decides that it is much more important to create the product catalog before the shopping cart. With some frustration, the team switches their developmental efforts to focus on implementing the product catalog. However, part way through completing this work, once again the Product Owner changes his mind about the highest priority item. Getting work done when priorities are constantly shifting is frustrating for the developer team and it results in lower productivity. At the same time, however, the Product Owner needs to have absolute authority over the priority of the items which need to get done. Scrum solves this conflict with the concept of Sprints. In Scrum, a developer team works in Sprints. At the beginning of a Sprint the developers and the Product Owner agree on the items from the backlog which they will complete during the Sprint. This subset of items from the Product Backlog becomes the Sprint Backlog. During the Sprint, the Product Owner is not allowed to change the items in the Sprint Backlog. In other words, the Product Owner cannot shift priorities on the developer team during the Sprint. Different teams use Sprints of different lengths such as one month Sprints, two-week Sprints, and one week Sprints. For high-stress, time critical projects, teams typically choose shorter sprints such as one week sprints. For more mature projects, longer one month sprints might be more appropriate. A team can pick whatever Sprint length makes sense for them just as long as the team is consistent. You should pick a Sprint length and stick with it. Daily Scrum During a Sprint, the developer team needs to have meetings to coordinate their work on completing the items in the Sprint Backlog. For example, the team needs to discuss who is working on what and whether any blocking issues have been discovered. Developers hate meetings (well, sane developers hate meetings). Meetings take developers away from their work of actually implementing stuff as opposed to talking about implementing stuff. However, a developer team which never has meetings and never coordinates their work also has problems. For example, Fred might get stuck on a programming problem for days and never reach out for help even though Tom (who sits in the cubicle next to him) has already solved the very same problem. Or, both Ted and Fred might have started working on the same item from the Sprint Backlog at the same time. In Scrum, these conflicting needs – limiting meetings but enabling team coordination – are resolved with the idea of the Daily Scrum. The Daily Scrum is a meeting for coordinating the work of the developer team which happens once a day. To keep the meeting short, each developer answers only the following three questions: 1. What have you done since yesterday? 2. What do you plan to do today? 3. Any impediments in your way? During the Daily Scrum, developers are not allowed to talk about issues with their cat, do demos of their latest work, or tell heroic stories of programming problems overcome. The meeting must be kept short — typically about 15 minutes. Issues which come up during the Daily Scrum should be discussed in separate meetings which do not involve the whole developer team. Stories and Tasks Items in the Product or Sprint Backlog – such as building a shopping cart or creating a Facebook page – are often referred to as User Stories or Stories. The Stories are created by the Product Owner and should represent some business need. Unlike the Product Owner, the developer team needs to think about how a Story should be implemented. At the beginning of a Sprint, the developer team takes the Stories from the Sprint Backlog and breaks the stories into tasks. For example, the developer team might take the Create a Shopping Cart story and break it into the following tasks: · Enable users to add and remote items from shopping cart · Persist the shopping cart to database between visits · Redirect user to checkout page when Checkout button is clicked During the Daily Scrum, members of the developer team volunteer to complete the tasks required to implement the next Story in the Sprint Backlog. When a developer talks about what he did yesterday or plans to do tomorrow then the developer should be referring to a task. Stories are owned by the Product Owner and a story is all about business value. In contrast, the tasks are owned by the developer team and a task is all about implementation details. A story might take several days or weeks to complete. A task is something which a developer can complete in less than a day. Some teams get lazy about breaking stories into tasks. Neglecting to break stories into tasks can lead to “Never Ending Stories” If you don’t break a story into tasks, then you can’t know how much of a story has actually been completed because you don’t have a clear idea about the implementation steps required to complete the story. Scrumboard During the Daily Scrum, the developer team uses a Scrumboard to coordinate their work. A Scrumboard contains a list of the stories for the current Sprint, the tasks associated with each Story, and the state of each task. The developer team uses the Scrumboard so everyone on the team can see, at a glance, what everyone is working on. As a developer works on a task, the task moves from state to state and the state of the task is updated on the Scrumboard. Common task states are ToDo, In Progress, and Done. Some teams include additional task states such as Needs Review or Needs Testing. Some teams use a physical Scrumboard. In that case, you use index cards to represent the stories and the tasks and you tack the index cards onto a physical board. Using a physical Scrumboard has several disadvantages. A physical Scrumboard does not work well with a distributed team – for example, it is hard to share the same physical Scrumboard between Boston and Seattle. Also, generating reports from a physical Scrumboard is more difficult than generating reports from an online Scrumboard. Estimating Stories and Tasks Stakeholders in a project, the people investing in a project, need to have an idea of how a project is progressing and when the project will be completed. For example, if you are investing in creating an e-commerce site, you need to know when the site can be launched. It is not enough to just say that “the project will be done when it is done” because the stakeholders almost certainly have a limited budget to devote to the project. The people investing in the project cannot determine the business value of the project unless they can have an estimate of how long it will take to complete the project. Developers hate to give estimates. The reason that developers hate to give estimates is that the estimates are almost always completely made up. For example, you really don’t know how long it takes to build a shopping cart until you finish building a shopping cart, and at that point, the estimate is no longer useful. The problem is that writing code is much more like Finding a Cure for Cancer than Building a Brick Wall. Building a brick wall is very straightforward. After you learn how to add one brick to a wall, you understand everything that is involved in adding a brick to a wall. There is no additional research required and no surprises. If, on the other hand, I assembled a team of scientists and asked them to find a cure for cancer, and estimate exactly how long it will take, they would have no idea. The problem is that there are too many unknowns. I don’t know how to cure cancer, I need to do a lot of research here, so I cannot even begin to estimate how long it will take. So developers hate to provide estimates, but the Product Owner and other product stakeholders, have a legitimate need for estimates. Scrum resolves this conflict by using the idea of Story Points. Different teams use different units to represent Story Points. For example, some teams use shirt sizes such as Small, Medium, Large, and X-Large. Some teams prefer to use Coffee Cup sizes such as Tall, Short, and Grande. Finally, some teams like to use numbers from the Fibonacci series. These alternative units are converted into a Story Point value. Regardless of the type of unit which you use to represent Story Points, the goal is the same. Instead of attempting to estimate a Story in hours (which is doomed to failure), you use a much less fine-grained measure of work. A developer team is much more likely to be able to estimate that a Story is Small or X-Large than the exact number of hours required to complete the story. So you can think of Story Points as a compromise between the needs of the Product Owner and the developer team. When a Sprint starts, the developer team devotes more time to thinking about the Stories in a Sprint and the developer team breaks the Stories into Tasks. In Scrum, you estimate the work required to complete a Story by using Story Points and you estimate the work required to complete a task by using hours. The difference between Stories and Tasks is that you don’t create a task until you are just about ready to start working on a task. A task is something that you should be able to create within a day, so you have a much better chance of providing an accurate estimate of the work required to complete a task than a story. Burndown Charts In Scrum, you use Burndown charts to represent the remaining work on a project. You use Release Burndown charts to represent the overall remaining work for a project and you use Sprint Burndown charts to represent the overall remaining work for a particular Sprint. You create a Release Burndown chart by calculating the remaining number of uncompleted Story Points for the entire Product Backlog every day. The vertical axis represents Story Points and the horizontal axis represents time. A Sprint Burndown chart is similar to a Release Burndown chart, but it focuses on the remaining work for a particular Sprint. There are two different types of Sprint Burndown charts. You can either represent the remaining work in a Sprint with Story Points or with task hours (the following image, taken from Wikipedia, uses hours). When each Product Backlog Story is completed, the Release Burndown chart slopes down. When each Story or task is completed, the Sprint Burndown chart slopes down. Burndown charts typically do not always slope down over time. As new work is added to the Product Backlog, the Release Burndown chart slopes up. If new tasks are discovered during a Sprint, the Sprint Burndown chart will also slope up. The purpose of a Burndown chart is to give you a way to track team progress over time. If, halfway through a Sprint, the Sprint Burndown chart is still climbing a hill then you know that you are in trouble. Team Velocity Stakeholders in a project always want more work done faster. For example, the Product Owner for the e-commerce site wants the website to launch before tomorrow. Developers tend to be overly optimistic. Rarely do developers acknowledge the physical limitations of reality. So Project stakeholders and the developer team often collude to delude themselves about how much work can be done and how quickly. Too many software projects begin in a state of optimism and end in frustration as deadlines zoom by. In Scrum, this problem is overcome by calculating a number called the Team Velocity. The Team Velocity is a measure of the average number of Story Points which a team has completed in previous Sprints. Knowing the Team Velocity is important during the Sprint Planning meeting when the Product Owner and the developer team work together to determine the number of stories which can be completed in the next Sprint. If you know the Team Velocity then you can avoid committing to do more work than the team has been able to accomplish in the past, and your team is much more likely to complete all of the work required for the next Sprint. Scrum Master There are three roles in Scrum: the Product Owner, the developer team, and the Scrum Master. I’v e already discussed the Product Owner. The Product Owner is the one and only person who maintains the Product Backlog and prioritizes the stories. I’ve also described the role of the developer team. The members of the developer team do the work of implementing the stories by breaking the stories into tasks. The final role, which I have not discussed, is the role of the Scrum Master. The Scrum Master is responsible for ensuring that the team is following the Scrum process. For example, the Scrum Master is responsible for making sure that there is a Daily Scrum meeting and that everyone answers the standard three questions. The Scrum Master is also responsible for removing (non-technical) impediments which the team might encounter. For example, if the team cannot start work until everyone installs the latest version of Microsoft Visual Studio then the Scrum Master has the responsibility of working with management to get the latest version of Visual Studio as quickly as possible. The Scrum Master can be a member of the developer team. Furthermore, different people can take on the role of the Scrum Master over time. The Scrum Master, however, cannot be the same person as the Product Owner. Using SonicAgile SonicAgile (SonicAgile.com) is an online tool which you can use to manage your projects using Scrum. You can use the SonicAgile Product Backlog to create a prioritized list of stories. You can estimate the size of the Stories using different Story Point units such as Shirt Sizes and Coffee Cup sizes. You can use SonicAgile during the Sprint Planning meeting to select the Stories that you want to complete during a particular Sprint. You can configure Sprints to be any length of time. SonicAgile calculates Team Velocity automatically and displays a warning when you add too many stories to a Sprint. In other words, it warns you when it thinks you are overcommitting in a Sprint. SonicAgile also includes a Scrumboard which displays the list of Stories selected for a Sprint and the tasks associated with each story. You can drag tasks from one task state to another. Finally, SonicAgile enables you to generate Release Burndown and Sprint Burndown charts. You can use these charts to view the progress of your team. To learn more about SonicAgile, visit SonicAgile.com. Summary In this post, I described many of the basic concepts of Scrum. You learned how a Product Owner uses a Product Backlog to create a prioritized list of tasks. I explained why work is completed in Sprints so the developer team can be more productive. I also explained how a developer team uses the daily scrum to coordinate their work. You learned how the developer team uses a Scrumboard to see, at a glance, who is working on what and the state of each task. I also discussed Burndown charts. You learned how you can use both Release and Sprint Burndown charts to track team progress in completing a project. Finally, I described the crucial role of the Scrum Master – the person who is responsible for ensuring that the rules of Scrum are being followed. My goal was not to describe all of the concepts of Scrum. This post was intended to be an introductory overview. For a comprehensive explanation of Scrum, I recommend reading Ken Schwaber’s book Agile Project Management with Scrum: http://www.amazon.com/Agile-Project-Management-Microsoft-Professional/dp/073561993X/ref=la_B001H6ODMC_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1345224000&sr=1-1

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  • SiriProxy Harnesses Siri’s Voice Processing to Control Thermostats and More

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    iOS: This clever hack taps into the Siri voice agent in iPhone 4S units and allows a proxy service to execute commands outside the normal range of Siri’s behavior–like adjusting the thermostat. It’s a highly experimental hack but it showcases the great potential for Siri-based interaction with a wide range of services and network devices. In the above video Apple enthusiast Plamoni demonstrates how, using SiriProxy, he can check and control his home thermostat. Watch the video the see it in action and, if you feel like riding the edge of experimental and unapproved iPhone antics, you can hit up the link below for the source code and additional documentation. SiriProxy [via ExtremeTech] HTG Explains: When Do You Need to Update Your Drivers? How to Make the Kindle Fire Silk Browser *Actually* Fast! Amazon’s New Kindle Fire Tablet: the How-To Geek Review

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  • World Record Batch Rate on Oracle JD Edwards Consolidated Workload with SPARC T4-2

    - by Brian
    Oracle produced a World Record batch throughput for single system results on Oracle's JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Day-in-the-Life benchmark using Oracle's SPARC T4-2 server running Oracle Solaris Containers and consolidating JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, Oracle WebLogic servers and the Oracle Database 11g Release 2. The workload includes both online and batch workload. The SPARC T4-2 server delivered a result of 8,000 online users while concurrently executing a mix of JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Long and Short batch processes at 95.5 UBEs/min (Universal Batch Engines per minute). In order to obtain this record benchmark result, the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, Oracle WebLogic and Oracle Database 11g Release 2 servers were executed each in separate Oracle Solaris Containers which enabled optimal system resources distribution and performance together with scalable and manageable virtualization. One SPARC T4-2 server running Oracle Solaris Containers and consolidating JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, Oracle WebLogic servers and the Oracle Database 11g Release 2 utilized only 55% of the available CPU power. The Oracle DB server in a Shared Server configuration allows for optimized CPU resource utilization and significant memory savings on the SPARC T4-2 server without sacrificing performance. This configuration with SPARC T4-2 server has achieved 33% more Users/core, 47% more UBEs/min and 78% more Users/rack unit than the IBM Power 770 server. The SPARC T4-2 server with 2 processors ran the JD Edwards "Day-in-the-Life" benchmark and supported 8,000 concurrent online users while concurrently executing mixed batch workloads at 95.5 UBEs per minute. The IBM Power 770 server with twice as many processors supported only 12,000 concurrent online users while concurrently executing mixed batch workloads at only 65 UBEs per minute. This benchmark demonstrates more than 2x cost savings by consolidating the complete solution in a single SPARC T4-2 server compared to earlier published results of 10,000 users and 67 UBEs per minute on two SPARC T4-2 and SPARC T4-1. The Oracle DB server used mirrored (RAID 1) volumes for the database providing high availability for the data without impacting performance. Performance Landscape JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Day in the Life (DIL) Benchmark Consolidated Online with Batch Workload System Rack Units BatchRate(UBEs/m) Online Users Users /Units Users /Core Version SPARC T4-2 (2 x SPARC T4, 2.85 GHz) 3 95.5 8,000 2,667 500 9.0.2 IBM Power 770 (4 x POWER7, 3.3 GHz, 32 cores) 8 65 12,000 1,500 375 9.0.2 Batch Rate (UBEs/m) — Batch transaction rate in UBEs per minute Configuration Summary Hardware Configuration: 1 x SPARC T4-2 server with 2 x SPARC T4 processors, 2.85 GHz 256 GB memory 4 x 300 GB 10K RPM SAS internal disk 2 x 300 GB internal SSD 2 x Sun Storage F5100 Flash Arrays Software Configuration: Oracle Solaris 10 Oracle Solaris Containers JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 9.0.2 JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Tools (8.98.4.2) Oracle WebLogic Server 11g (10.3.4) Oracle HTTP Server 11g Oracle Database 11g Release 2 (11.2.0.1) Benchmark Description JD Edwards EnterpriseOne is an integrated applications suite of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software. Oracle offers 70 JD Edwards EnterpriseOne application modules to support a diverse set of business operations. Oracle's Day in the Life (DIL) kit is a suite of scripts that exercises most common transactions of JD Edwards EnterpriseOne applications, including business processes such as payroll, sales order, purchase order, work order, and manufacturing processes, such as ship confirmation. These are labeled by industry acronyms such as SCM, CRM, HCM, SRM and FMS. The kit's scripts execute transactions typical of a mid-sized manufacturing company. The workload consists of online transactions and the UBE – Universal Business Engine workload of 61 short and 4 long UBEs. LoadRunner runs the DIL workload, collects the user’s transactions response times and reports the key metric of Combined Weighted Average Transaction Response time. The UBE processes workload runs from the JD Enterprise Application server. Oracle's UBE processes come as three flavors: Short UBEs < 1 minute engage in Business Report and Summary Analysis, Mid UBEs > 1 minute create a large report of Account, Balance, and Full Address, Long UBEs > 2 minutes simulate Payroll, Sales Order, night only jobs. The UBE workload generates large numbers of PDF files reports and log files. The UBE Queues are categorized as the QBATCHD, a single threaded queue for large and medium UBEs, and the QPROCESS queue for short UBEs run concurrently. Oracle's UBE process performance metric is Number of Maximum Concurrent UBE processes at transaction rate, UBEs/minute. Key Points and Best Practices Two JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Application Servers, two Oracle WebLogic Servers 11g Release 1 coupled with two Oracle Web Tier HTTP server instances and one Oracle Database 11g Release 2 database on a single SPARC T4-2 server were hosted in separate Oracle Solaris Containers bound to four processor sets to demonstrate consolidation of multiple applications, web servers and the database with best resource utilizations. Interrupt fencing was configured on all Oracle Solaris Containers to channel the interrupts to processors other than the processor sets used for the JD Edwards Application server, Oracle WebLogic servers and the database server. A Oracle WebLogic vertical cluster was configured on each WebServer Container with twelve managed instances each to load balance users' requests and to provide the infrastructure that enables scaling to high number of users with ease of deployment and high availability. The database log writer was run in the real time RT class and bound to a processor set. The database redo logs were configured on the raw disk partitions. The Oracle Solaris Container running the Enterprise Application server completed 61 Short UBEs, 4 Long UBEs concurrently as the mixed size batch workload. The mixed size UBEs ran concurrently from the Enterprise Application server with the 8,000 online users driven by the LoadRunner. See Also SPARC T4-2 Server oracle.com OTN JD Edwards EnterpriseOne oracle.com OTN Oracle Solaris oracle.com OTN Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Enterprise Edition oracle.com OTN Oracle Fusion Middleware oracle.com OTN Disclosure Statement Copyright 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. Results as of 09/30/2012.

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