Search Results

Search found 5963 results on 239 pages for 'rest wing'.

Page 222/239 | < Previous Page | 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229  | Next Page >

• 10 tape technology features that make you go hmm.

  - by Karoly Vegh

  A week ago an Oracle/StorageTek Tape Specialist, Christian Vanden Balck, visited Vienna, and agreed to visit customers to do techtalks and update them about the technology boom going around tape. I had the privilege to attend some of his sessions and noted the information and features that took the customers by surprise and made them think. Allow me to share the top 10: I. StorageTek as a brand: StorageTek is one of he strongest names in the Tape field. The brand itself was valued so much by customers that even after Sun Microsystems acquiring StorageTek and the Oracle acquiring Sun the brand lives on with all the Oracle tapelibraries are officially branded StorageTek.See http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/storage/tape-storage/overview/index.html II. Disk information density limitations: Disk technology struggles with information density. You haven't seen the disk sizes exploding lately, have you? That's partly because there are physical limits on a disk platter. The size is given, the number of platters is limited, they just can't grow, and are running out of physical area to write to. Now, in a T10000C tape cartridge we have over 1000m long tape. There you go, you have got your physical space and don't need to stuff all that data crammed together. You can write in a reliable pattern, and have space to grow too. III. Oracle has a market share of 62% worldwide in recording head manufacturing. That's right. If you are running LTO drives, with a good chance you rely on StorageTek production. That's two out of three LTO recording heads produced worldwide.  IV. You can store 1 Exabyte data in a single tape library. Yes, an Exabyte. That is 1000 Petabytes. Or, a million Terabytes. A thousand million GigaBytes. You can store that in a stacked StorageTek SL8500 tapelibrary. In one SL8500 you can put 10.000 T10000C cartridges, that store 10TB data (compressed). You can stack 10 of these SL8500s together. Boom. 1000.000 TB.(n.b.: stacking means interconnecting the libraries. Yes, cartridges are moved between the stacked libraries automatically.)  V. EMC: 'Tape doesn't suck after all. We moved on.': Do you remember the infamous 'Tape sucks, move on' Datadomain slogan? Of course they had to put it that way, having only had disk products. But here's a fun fact: on the EMCWorld 2012 there was a major presence of a Tape-tech company - EMC, in a sudden burst of sanity is embracing tape again. VI. The miraculous T10000C: Oracle StorageTek has developed an enterprise-grade tapedrive and cartridge, the T10000C. With awesome numbers: The Cartridge: Native 5TB capacity, 10TB with compression Over a kilometer long tape within the cartridge. And it's locked when unmounted, no rattling of your data.  Replaced the metalparticles datalayer with BaFe (bariumferrite) - metalparticles lose around 7% of magnetism within 30 days. BaFe does not. Yes we employ solid-state physicists doing R&D on demagnetisation in our labs. Can be partitioned, storage tiering within the cartridge!  The Drive: 2GB Cache Encryption implemented in HW - no performance hit 252 MB/s native sustained data rate, beats disk technology by far. Not to mention peak throughput.  Leading the tape while never touching the data side of it, protecting your data physically too Data integritiy checking (CRC recalculation) on tape within the drive without having to read it back to the server reordering data from tape-order, delivering it back in application-order  writing 32 tracks at once, reading them back for CRC check at once VII. You only use 20% of your data on a regular basis. The rest 80% is just lying around for years. On continuously spinning disks. Doubly consuming energy (power+cooling), blocking diskstorage capacity. There is a solution called SAM (Storage Archive Manager) that provides you a filesystem unifying disk and tape, moving data on-demand and for clients transparently between the different storage tiers. You can share these filesystems with NFS or CIFS for clients, and enjoy the low TCO of tape. Tapes don't spin. They sit quietly in their slots, storing 10TB data, using no energy, producing no heat, automounted when a client accesses their data.See: http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/storage/storage-software/storage-archive-manager/overview/index.html VIII. HW supported for three decades: Did you know that the original PowderHorn library was released in '87 and has been only discontinued in 2010? That is over two decades of supported operation. Tape libraries are - just like the data carrying on tapecartridges - built for longevity. Oh, and the T10000C cartridge has 30-year archival life for long-term retention.  IX. Tape is easy to manage: Have you heard of Tape Storage Analytics? It is a central graphical tool to summarize, monitor, analyze dataflow, health and performance of drives and libraries, see: http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/storage/tape-storage/tape-analytics/overview/index.html X. The next generation: The T10000B drives were able to reuse the T10000A cartridges and write on them even more data. On the same cartridges. We call this investment protection, and this is very important for Oracle for the future too. We usually support two generations of cartridges together. The current drive is a T10000C. (...I know I promised to enlist 10, but I got still two more I really want to mention. Allow me to work around the problem: ) X++. The TallBots, the robots moving around the cartridges in the StorageTek library from tapeslots to the drives are cableless. Cables, belts, chains running to moving parts in a library cause maintenance downtimes. So StorageTek eliminated them. The TallBots get power, commands, even firmwareupgrades through the rails they are running on. Also, the TallBots don't just hook'n'pull the tapes out of their slots, they actually grip'n'lift them out. No friction, no scratches, no zillion little plastic particles floating around in the library, in the drives, on your data. (X++)++: Tape beats SSDs and Disks. In terms of throughput (252 MB/s), in terms of TCO: disks cause around 290x more power and cooling, in terms of capacity: 10TB on a single media and soon more.  So... do you need to store large amounts of data? Are you legally bound to archive it for dozens of years? Would you benefit from automatic storage tiering? Have you got large mediachunks to be streamed at times? Have you got power and cooling issues in the growing datacenters? Do you find EMC's 180° turn of tape attitude interesting, but appreciate it at the same time? With all that, you aren't alone. The most data on this planet is stored on tape. Tape is coming. Big time.

  Read the article

• Visiting the Fire Station in Coromandel

  Hm, I just tried to remember how we actually came up with this cool idea... but it's already too blurred and it doesn't really matter after all. Anyway, if I remember correctly (IIRC), it happened during one of the Linux meetups at Mugg & Bean, Bagatelle where Ajay and I brought our children along and we had a brief conversation about how cool it would be to check out one of the fire stations here in Mauritius. We both thought that it would be a great experience and adventure for the little ones. An idea takes shape And there we go, down the usual routine these... having an idea, checking out the options and discussing who's doing what. Except this time, it was all up to Ajay, and he did a fantastic job. End of August, he told me that he got in touch with one of his friends which actually works as a fire fighter at the station in Coromandel and that there could be an option to come and visit them (soon). A couple of days later - Confirmed! Be there, and in time... What time? Anyway, doesn't really matter... Everything was settled and arranged. I asked the kids on Friday afternoon if they might be interested to see the fire engines and what a fire fighter is doing. Of course, they were all in! Getting up early on Sunday morning isn't really a regular exercise for all of us but everything went smooth and after a short breakfast it was time to leave. Where are we going? Are we there yet? Now, we are in Bambous. Why do you go this way? The kids were so much into it. Absolutely amazing to see their excitement. Are we there yet? Well, we went through the sugar cane fields towards Chebel and then down into the industrial zone at Coromandel. Honestly, I had a clue where the fire station is located but having Google Maps in reach that shouldn't be a problem in case that we might get lost. But my worries were washed away when our children guided us... "There! Over there are the fire engines! We have to turn left, dad." - No comment, the kids were right! As we were there a little bit too early, we parked the car and the kids started to explore the area and outskirts of the fire station. Some minutes later, as if we had placed an order a unit of two cars had to go out for an alarm and the kids could witness them leaving as closely as possible. Sirens on and wow!!! Ladder truck L32 - MAN truck with Rosenbauer built-up and equipment by Metz Taking the tour Ajay arrived shortly after that and guided us finally inside the station to meet with his pal. The three guys were absolutely well-prepared and showed us around in the hall, explaining that there two units out at the moment. But the ladder truck (with max. 32m expandable height) was still around we all got a great insight into the technique and equipment on the vehicle. It was amazing to see all three kids listening to Mambo as give some figures about the truck and how the fire fighters are actually it. The children and 'our' fire fighters of the day had great fun with the various fire engines Absolutely fantastic that the children were allowed to experience this - we had so much fun! Ajay's son brought two of his toy fire engines along, shared them with ours, and they all played very well together. As a parent it was really amazing to see them at such an ease. Enough theory Shortly afterwards the ladder truck was moved outside, got stabilised and ready to go for 'real-life' exercising. With the additional equipment of safety helmets, security belts and so on, we all got a first-hand impression about how it could be as a fire-fighter. Actually, I was totally amazed by the curiousity and excitement of my BWE. She was really into it and asked lots of interesting questions - in general but also technical. And while our fighters were busy with Ajay and family, I gave her some more details and explanations about the truck, the expandable ladder, the safety cage at the top and other equipment available. Safety first! No exceptions and always be prepared for the worst case... Also, the equipped has been checked prior to excuse - This is your life saver... Hooked up and ready to go... ...of course not too high. This is just a demonstration - and 32 meters above ground isn't for everyone. Well, after that it was me that had the asking looks on me, and I finally revealed to the local fire fighters that I was in the auxiliary fire brigade, more precisely in the hazard department, for more than 10 years. So not a professional fire fighter but at least a passionate and educated one as them. Inside the station Our fire fighters really took their time to explain their daily job to kids, provided them access to operation seat on the ladder truck and how the truck cabin is actually equipped with the different radios and so on. It was really a great time. Later on we had a brief tour through the building itself, and again all of our questions were answered. We had great fun and started to joke about bits and pieces. For me it was also very interesting to see the comparison between the fire station here in Mauritius and the ones I have been to back in Germany. Amazing to see them completely captivated in the play - the children had lots of fun! Also, that there are currently ten fire stations all over the island, plus two additional but private ones at the airport and at the harbour. The newest one is actually down in Black River on the west coast because the time from Quatre Bornes takes too long to have any chance of an effective alarm at all. IMHO, a very good decision as time is the most important factor in getting fire incidents under control. After all it was great experience for all of us, especially for the children to see and understand that their toy trucks are only copies of the real thing and that the job of a (professional) fire fighter is very important in our society. Don't forget that those guys run into the danger zone while you're trying to get away from it as much as possible. Another unit just came back from a grass fire - and shortly after they went out again. No time to rest, too much to do! Mauritian Fire Fighters now and (maybe) in the future... Thank you! It was an honour to be around! Thank you to Ajay for organising and arranging this Sunday morning event, and of course of Big Thank You to the three guys that took some time off to have us at the Fire Station in Coromandel and guide us through their daily job! And remember to call 115 in case of emergencies!

  Read the article

• 3D Ball Physics Theory: collision response on ground and against walls?

  - by David

  I'm really struggling to get a strong grasp on how I should be handling collision response in a game engine I'm building around a 3D ball physics concept. Think Monkey Ball as an example of the type of gameplay. I am currently using sphere-to-sphere broad phase, then AABB to OBB testing (the final test I am using right now is one that checks if one of the 8 OBB points crosses the planes of the object it is testing against). This seems to work pretty well, and I am getting back: Plane that object is colliding against (with a point on the plane, the plane's normal, and the exact point of intersection. I've tried what feels like dozens of different high-level strategies for handling these collisions, without any real success. I think my biggest problem is understanding how to handle collisions against walls in the x-y axes (left/right, front/back), which I want to have elasticity, and the ground (z-axis) where I want an elastic reaction if the ball drops down, but then for it to eventually normalize and be kept "on the ground" (not go into the ground, but also not continue bouncing). Without kluging something together, I'm positive there is a good way to handle this, my theories just aren't getting me all the way there. For physics modeling and movement, I am trying to use a Euler based setup with each object maintaining a position (and destination position prior to collision detection), a velocity (which is added onto the position to determine the destination position), and an acceleration (which I use to store any player input being put on the ball, as well as gravity in the z coord). Starting from when I detect a collision, what is a good way to approach the response to get the expected behavior in all cases? Thanks in advance to anyone taking the time to assist... I am grateful for any pointers, and happy to post any additional info or code if it is useful. UPDATE Based on Steve H's and eBusiness' responses below, I have adapted my collision response to what makes a lot more sense now. It was close to right before, but I didn't have all the right pieces together at the right time! I have one problem left to solve, and that is what is causing the floor collision to hit every frame. Here's the collision response code I have now for the ball, then I'll describe the last bit I'm still struggling to understand. // if we are moving in the direction of the plane (against the normal)... if (m_velocity.dot(intersection.plane.normal) <= 0.0f) { float dampeningForce = 1.8f; // eventually create this value based on mass and acceleration // Calculate the projection velocity PVRTVec3 actingVelocity = m_velocity.project(intersection.plane.normal); m_velocity -= actingVelocity * dampeningForce; } // Clamp z-velocity to zero if we are within a certain threshold // -- NOTE: this was an experimental idea I had to solve the "jitter" bug I'll describe below float diff = 0.2f - abs(m_velocity.z); if (diff > 0.0f && diff <= 0.2f) { m_velocity.z = 0.0f; } // Take this object to its new destination position based on... // -- our pre-collision position + vector to the collision point + our new velocity after collision * time // -- remaining after the collision to finish the movement m_destPosition = m_position + intersection.diff + (m_velocity * intersection.tRemaining * GAMESTATE->dt); The above snippet is run after a collision is detected on the ball (collider) with a collidee (floor in this case). With a dampening force of 1.8f, the ball's reflected "upward" velocity will eventually be overcome by gravity, so the ball will essentially be stuck on the floor. THIS is the problem I have now... the collision code is running every frame (since the ball's z-velocity is constantly pushing it a collision with the floor below it). The ball is not technically stuck, I can move it around still, but the movement is really goofy because the velocity and position keep getting affected adversely by the above snippet. I was experimenting with an idea to clamp the z-velocity to zero if it was "close to zero", but this didn't do what I think... probably because the very next frame the ball gets a new gravity acceleration applied to its velocity regardless (which I think is good, right?). Collisions with walls are as they used to be and work very well. It's just this last bit of "stickiness" to deal with. The camera is constantly jittering up and down by extremely small fractions too when the ball is "at rest". I'll keep playing with it... I like puzzles like this, especially when I think I'm close. Any final ideas on what I could be doing wrong here? UPDATE 2 Good news - I discovered I should be subtracting the intersection.diff from the m_position (position prior to collision). The intersection.diff is my calculation of the difference in the vector of position to destPosition from the intersection point to the position. In this case, adding it was causing my ball to always go "up" just a little bit, causing the jitter. By subtracting it, and moving that clamper for the velocity.z when close to zero to being above the dot product (and changing the test from <= 0 to < 0), I now have the following: // Clamp z-velocity to zero if we are within a certain threshold float diff = 0.2f - abs(m_velocity.z); if (diff > 0.0f && diff <= 0.2f) { m_velocity.z = 0.0f; } // if we are moving in the direction of the plane (against the normal)... float dotprod = m_velocity.dot(intersection.plane.normal); if (dotprod < 0.0f) { float dampeningForce = 1.8f; // eventually create this value based on mass and acceleration? // Calculate the projection velocity PVRTVec3 actingVelocity = m_velocity.project(intersection.plane.normal); m_velocity -= actingVelocity * dampeningForce; } // Take this object to its new destination position based on... // -- our pre-collision position + vector to the collision point + our new velocity after collision * time // -- remaining after the collision to finish the movement m_destPosition = m_position - intersection.diff + (m_velocity * intersection.tRemaining * GAMESTATE->dt); UpdateWorldMatrix(m_destWorldMatrix, m_destOBB, m_destPosition, false); This is MUCH better. No jitter, and the ball now "rests" at the floor, while still bouncing off the floor and walls. The ONLY thing left is that the ball is now virtually "stuck". He can move but at a much slower rate, likely because the else of my dot product test is only letting the ball move at a rate multiplied against the tRemaining... I think this is a better solution than I had previously, but still somehow not the right idea. BTW, I'm trying to journal my progress through this problem for anyone else with a similar situation - hopefully it will serve as some help, as many similar posts have for me over the years.

  Read the article

• how to do event checks for loops?

  - by yao jiang

  I am having some trouble getting the logic down for this. Currently, I have an app that animates the astar pathfinding algorithm. On start of the app, the ui will show the following: User can press "space" to randomly choose start/end coords, then the app will animate it. Or, user can choose the start/end by left-click/right-click. During the animation, the user can also left-click to generate blocks, or right-click to choose a new destiantion. Where I am stuck at is how to handle the events while the app is animating. Right now, I am checking events in the main loop, then when the app is animating, I do event checks again. While it works fine, I feel that I am probably doing it wrong. What is the proper way of setting up the main loop that will handle the events while the app is animating? In main loop, the app start animating once user choose start/end. In my draw function, I am putting another event checker in there. def clear(rows): for r in range(rows): for c in range(rows): if r%3 == 1 and c%3 == 1: color = brown; grid[r][c] = 1; buildCoor.append(r); buildCoor.append(c); else: color = white; grid[r][c] = 0; pick_image(screen, color, width*c, height*r); pygame.display.flip(); os.system('cls'); # draw out the grid def draw(start, end, grid, route_coord): # draw the end coords color = red; pick_image(screen, color, width*end[1],height*end[0]); pygame.display.flip(); # then draw the rest of the route for i in range(len(route_coord)): # pausing because we want animation time.sleep(speed); # get the x/y coords x,y = route_coord[i]; event_on = False; if grid[x][y] == 2: color = green; elif grid[x][y] == 3: color = blue; for event in pygame.event.get(): if event.type == pygame.MOUSEBUTTONDOWN: if event.button == 3: print "destination change detected, rerouting"; # get mouse position, px coords pos = pygame.mouse.get_pos(); # get grid coord c = pos[0] // width; r = pos[1] // height; grid[r][c] = 4; end = [r, c]; elif event.button == 1: print "user generated event"; pos = pygame.mouse.get_pos(); # get grid coord c = pos[0] // width; r = pos[1] // height; # mark it as a block for now grid[r][c] = 1; event_on = True; if check_events([x,y]) or event_on: # there is an event # mark it as a block for now grid[y][x] = 1; pick_image(screen, event_x, width*y, height*x); pygame.display.flip(); # then find a new route new_start = route_coord[i-1]; marked_grid, route_coord = find_route(new_start, end, grid); draw(new_start, end, grid, route_coord); return; # just end draw here so it wont throw the "index out of range" error elif grid[x][y] == 4: color = red; pick_image(screen, color, width*y, height*x); pygame.display.flip(); # clear route coord list, otherwise itll just add more unwanted coords route_coord_list[:] = []; clear(rows); # main loop while not done: # check the events for event in pygame.event.get(): # mouse events if event.type == pygame.MOUSEBUTTONDOWN: # get mouse position, px coords pos = pygame.mouse.get_pos(); # get grid coord c = pos[0] // width; r = pos[1] // height; # find which button pressed, highlight grid accordingly if event.button == 1: # left click, start coords if grid[r][c] == 2: grid[r][c] = 0; color = white; elif grid[r][c] == 0 or grid[r][c] == 4: grid[r][c] = 2; start = [r,c]; color = green; else: grid[r][c] = 1; color = brown; elif event.button == 3: # right click, end coords if grid[r][c] == 4: grid[r][c] = 0; color = white; elif grid[r][c] == 0 or grid[r][c] == 2: grid[r][c] = 4; end = [r,c]; color = red; else: grid[r][c] = 1; color = brown; pick_image(screen, color, width*c, height*r); # keyboard events elif event.type == pygame.KEYDOWN: clear(rows); # one way to quit program if event.key == pygame.K_ESCAPE: print "program will now exit."; done = True; # space key for random start/end elif event.key == pygame.K_SPACE: # first clear the ui clear(rows); # now choose random start/end coords buildLoc = zip(buildCoor,buildCoor[1:])[::2]; #print buildLoc; (start_x, start_y, end_x, end_y) = pick_point(); while (start_x, start_y) in buildLoc or (end_x, end_y) in buildLoc: (start_x, start_y, end_x, end_y) = pick_point(); clear(rows); print "chosen random start/end coords: ", (start_x, start_y, end_x, end_y); if (start_x, start_y) in buildLoc or (end_x, end_y) in buildLoc: print "error"; # draw the route marked_grid, route_coord = find_route([start_x,start_y],[end_x,end_y], grid); draw([start_x, start_y], [end_x, end_y], marked_grid, route_coord); # return key for user defined start/end elif event.key == pygame.K_RETURN: # first clear the ui clear(rows); # get the user defined start/end print "user defined start/end are: ", (start[0], start[1], end[0], end[1]); grid[start[0]][start[1]] = 1; grid[end[0]][end[1]] = 2; # draw the route marked_grid, route_coord = find_route(start, end, grid); draw(start, end, marked_grid, route_coord); # c to clear the screen elif event.key == pygame.K_c: print "clearing screen."; clear(rows); # go fullscreen elif event.key == pygame.K_f: if not full_sc: pygame.display.set_mode([1366, 768], pygame.FULLSCREEN); full_sc = True; rows = 15; clear(rows); else: pygame.display.set_mode(size); full_sc = False; # +/- key to change speed of animation elif event.key == pygame.K_LEFTBRACKET: if speed >= 0.1: print SPEED_UP; speed = speed_up(speed); print speed; else: print FASTEST; print speed; elif event.key == pygame.K_RIGHTBRACKET: if speed < 1.0: print SPEED_DOWN; speed = slow_down(speed); print speed; else: print SLOWEST print speed; # second method to quit program elif event.type == pygame.QUIT: print "program will now exit."; done = True; # limit to 20 fps clock.tick(20); # update the screen pygame.display.flip();

  Read the article

• Expectations + Rewards = Innovation

  - by D'Arcy Lussier

  “Innovation” is a heavy word. We regard those that embrace it as “Innovators”. We describe organizations as being “Innovative”. We hold those associated with the word in high regard, even though its dictionary definition is very simple: Introducing something new. What our culture has done is wrapped Innovation in white robes and a gold crown. Innovation is rarely just introducing something new. Innovations and innovators are typically associated with other terms: groundbreaking, genius, industry-changing, creative, leading. Being a true innovator and creating innovations are a big deal, and something companies try to strive for…or at least say they strive for. There’s huge value in being recognized as an innovator in an industry, since the idea is that innovation equates to increased profitability. IBM ran an ad a few years back that showed what their view of innovation is: “The point of innovation is to make actual money.” If the money aspect makes you feel uneasy, consider it another way: the point of innovation is to <insert payoff here>. Companies that innovate will be more successful. Non-profits that innovate can better serve their target clients. Governments that innovate can better provide services to their citizens. True innovation is not easy to come by though. As with anything in business, how well an organization will innovate is reliant on the employees it retains, the expectations placed on those employees, and the rewards available to them. In a previous blog post I talked about one formula: Right Employees + Happy Employees = Productive Employees I want to introduce a new one, that builds upon the previous one: Expectations + Rewards = Innovation  The level of innovation your organization will realize is directly associated with the expectations you place on your staff and the rewards you make available to them. Expectations We may feel uncomfortable with the idea of placing expectations on our staff, mainly because expectation has somewhat of a negative or cold connotation to it: “I expect you to act this way or else!” The problem is in the or-else part…we focus on the negative aspects of failing to meet expectations instead of looking at the positive side. “I expect you to act this way because it will produce <insert benefit here>”. Expectations should not be set to punish but instead be set to ensure quality. At a recent conference I spoke with some Microsoft employees who told me that you have five years from starting with the company to reach a “Senior” level. If you don’t, then you’re let go. The expectation Microsoft placed on their staff is that they should be working towards improving themselves, taking more responsibility, and thus ensure that there is a constant level of quality in the workforce. Rewards Let me be clear: a paycheck is not a reward. A paycheck is simply the employer’s responsibility in the employee/employer relationship. A paycheck will never be the key motivator to drive innovation. Offering employees something over and above their required compensation can spur them to greater performance and achievement. Working in the food service industry, this tactic was used again and again: whoever has the highest sales over lunch will receive a free lunch/gift certificate/entry into a draw/etc. There was something to strive for, to try beyond the baseline of what our serving jobs were. It was through this that innovative sales techniques would be tried and honed, with key servers being top sellers time and time again. At a code camp I spoke at, I was amazed to see that all the employees from one company receive $100 Visa gift cards as a thank you for taking time to speak. Again, offering something over and above that can give that extra push for employees. Rewards work. But what about the fairness angle? In the restaurant example I gave, there were servers that would never win the competition. They just weren’t good enough at selling and never seemed to get better. So should those that did work at performing better and produce more sales for the restaurant not get rewarded because those who weren’t working at performing better might get upset? Of course not! Organizations succeed because of their top performers and those that strive to join their ranks. The Expectation/Reward Graph While the Expectations + Rewards = Innovation formula may seem like a simple mathematics formula, there’s much more going under the hood. In fact there are three different outcomes that could occur based on what you put in as values for Expectations and Rewards. Consider the graph below and the descriptions that follow: Disgruntled – High Expectation, Low Reward I worked at a company where the mantra was “Company First, Because We Pay You”. Even today I still hear stories of how this sentiment continues to be perpetuated: They provide you a paycheck and a means to live, therefore you should always put them as your top priority. Of course, this is a huge imbalance in the expectation/reward equation. Why would anyone willingly meet high expectations of availability, workload, deadlines, etc. when there is no reward other than a paycheck to show for it? Remember: paychecks are not rewards! Instead, you see employees be disgruntled which not only affects the level of production but also the level of quality within an organization. It also means that you see higher turnover. Complacent – Low Expectation, Low Reward Complacency is a systemic problem that typically exists throughout all levels of an organization. With no real expectations or rewards, nobody needs to excel. In fact, those that do try to innovate, improve, or introduce new things into the organization might be shunned or pushed out by the rest of the staff who are just doing things the same way they’ve always done it. The bigger issue for the organization with low/low values is that at best they’ll never grow beyond their current size (and may shrink actually), and at worst will cease to exist. Entitled – Low Expectation, High Reward It’s one thing to say you have the best people and reward them as such, but its another thing to actually have the best people and reward them as such. Organizations with Entitled employees are the former: their organization provides them with all types of comforts, benefits, and perks. But there’s no requirement before the rewards are dolled out, and there’s no short-list of who receives the rewards. Everyone in the company is treated the same and is given equal share of the spoils. Entitlement is actually almost identical with Complacency with one notable difference: just try to introduce higher expectations into an entitled organization! Entitled employees have been spoiled for so long that they can’t fathom having rewards taken from them, or having to achieve specific levels of performance before attaining them. Those running the organization also buy in to the Entitled sentiment, feeling that they must persist the same level of comforts to appease their staff…even though the quality of the employee pool may be suspect. Innovative – High Expectation, High Reward Finally we have the Innovative organization which places high expectations but also provides high rewards. This organization gets it: if you truly want the best employees you need to apply equal doses of pressure and praise. Realize that I’m not suggesting crazy overtime or un-realistic working conditions. I do not agree with the “Glengary-Glenross” method of encouragement. But as anyone who follows sports can tell you, the teams that win are the ones where the coaches push their players to be their best; to achieve new levels of performance that they didn’t know they could receive. And the result for the players is more money, fame, and opportunity. It’s in this environment that organizations can focus on innovation – true innovation that builds the business and allows everyone involved to truly benefit. In Closing Organizations love to use the word “Innovation” and its derivatives, but very few actually do innovate. For many, the term has just become another marketing buzzword to lump in with all the other business terms that get overused. But for those organizations that truly get the value of innovation, they will be the ones surging forward while other companies simply fade into the background. And they will be the organizations that expect more from their employees, and give them their just rewards.

  Read the article

• Christmas in the Clouds

  - by andrewbrust

  I have been spending the last 2 weeks immersing myself in a number of Windows Azure and SQL Azure technologies.  And in setting up a new business (I’ll speak more about that in the future), I have also become a customer of Microsoft’s BPOS (Business Productivity Online Services).  In short, it has been a fortnight of Microsoft cloud computing. On the Azure side, I’ve looked, of course, at Web Roles and Worker Roles.  But I’ve also looked at Azure Storage’s REST API (including coding to it directly), I’ve looked at Azure Drive and the new VM Role; I’ve looked quite a bit at SQL Azure (including the project “Houston” Silverlight UI) and I’ve looked at SQL Azure labs’ OData service too. I’ve also looked at DataMarket and its integration with both PowerPivot and native Excel.  Then there’s AppFabric Caching, SQL Azure Reporting (what I could learn of it) and the Visual Studio tooling for Azure, including the storage of certificate-based credentials.  And to round it out with some user stuff, on the BPOS side, I’ve been working with Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and LiveMeeting. I have to say I like a lot of what I’ve been seeing.  Azure’s not perfect, and BPOS certainly isn’t either.  But there’s good stuff in all these products, and there’s a lot of value. Azure Goes Deep Most people know that Web and Worker roles put the platform in charge of spinning virtual machines up and down, and keeping them up to date. But you can go way beyond that now.  The still-in-beta VM Role gives you the power to craft the machine (much as does Amazon’s EC2), though it takes away the platform’s self-managing attributes.  It still spins instances up and down, making drive storage non-durable, but Azure Drive gives you the ability to store VHD files as blobs and mount them as virtual hard drives that are readable and writeable.  Whether with Azure Storage or SQL Azure, Azure does data.  And OData is everywhere.  Azure Table Storage supports an OData Interface.  So does SQL Azure and so does DataMarket (the former project “Dallas”).  That means that Azure data repositories aren’t just straightforward to provision and configure…they’re also easy to program against, from just about any programming environment, in a RESTful manner.  And for more .NET-centric implementations, Azure AppFabric caching takes the technology formerly known as “Velocity” and throws it up into the cloud, speeding data access even more. Snapping in Place Once you get the hang of it, this stuff just starts to work in a way that becomes natural to understand.  I wasn’t expecting that, and I was really happy to discover it. In retrospect, I am not surprised, because I think the various Azure teams are the center of gravity for Redmond’s innovation right now.  The products belie this and so do my observations of the product teams’ motivation and high morale.  It is really good to see this; Microsoft needs to lead somewhere, and they need to be seen as the underdog while doing so.  With Azure, both requirements are in place.   BPOS: Bad Acronym, Easy Setup BPOS is about products you already know; Exchange, SharePoint, Live Meeting and Office Communications Server.  As such, it’s hard not to be underwhelmed by BPOS.  Until you realize how easy it makes it to get all that stuff set up.  I would say that from sign-up to productive use took me about 45 minutes…and that included the time necessary to wrestle with my DNS provider, set up Outlook and my SmartPhone up to talk to the Exchange account, create my SharePoint site collection, and configure the Outlook Conferencing add-in to talk to the provisioned Live Meeting account. Never before did I think setting up my own Exchange mail could come anywhere close to the simplicity of setting up an SMTP/POP account, and yet BPOS actually made it faster.   What I want from my Azure Christmas Next Year Not everything about Microsoft’s cloud is good.  I close this post with a list of things I’d like to see addressed: BPOS offerings are still based on the 2007 Wave of Microsoft server technologies.  We need to get to 2010, and fast.  Arguably, the 2010 products should have been released to the off-premises channel before the on-premise sone.  Office 365 can’t come fast enough. Azure’s Internet tooling and domain naming, is scattered and confusing.  Deployed ASP.NET applications go to cloudapp.net; SQL Azure and Azure storage work off windows.net.  The Azure portal and Project Houston are at azure.com.  Then there’s appfabriclabs.com and sqlazurelabs.com.  There is a new Silverlight portal that replaces most, but not all of the HTML ones.  And Project Houston is Silvelright-based too, though separate from the Silverlight portal tooling. Microsoft is the king off tooling.  They should not make me keep an entire OneNote notebook full of portal links, account names, access keys, assemblies and namespaces and do so much CTRL-C/CTRL-V work.  I’d like to see more project templates, have them automatically reference the appropriate assemblies, generate the right using/Imports statements and prime my config files with the right markup.  Then I want a UI that lets me log in with my Live ID and pick the appropriate project, database, namespace and key string to get set up fast. Beta programs, if they’re open, should onboard me quickly.  I know the process is difficult and everyone’s going as fast as they can.  But I don’t know why it’s so difficult or why it takes so long.  Getting developers up to speed on new features quickly helps popularize the platform.  Make this a priority. Make Azure accessible from the simplicity platforms, i.e. ASP.NET Web Pages (Razor) and LightSwitch.  Support .NET 4 now.  Make WebMatrix, IIS Express and SQL Compact work with the Azure development fabric. Have HTML helpers make Azure programming easier.  Have LightSwitch work with SQL Azure and not require SQL Express.  LightSwitch has some promising Azure integration now.  But we need more.  WebMatrix has none and that’s just silly, now that the Extra Small Instance is being introduced. The Windows Azure Platform Training Kit is great.  But I want Microsoft to make it even better and I want them to evangelize it much more aggressively.  There’s a lot of good material on Azure development out there, but it’s scattered in the same way that the platform is.   The Training Kit ties a lot of disparate stuff together nicely.  Make it known. Should Old Acquaintance Be Forgot All in all, diving deep into Azure was a good way to end the year.  Diving deeper into Azure should a great way to spend next year, not just for me, but for Microsoft too.

  Read the article

• Quaternion Camera Orbiting around a Sphere

  - by jessejuicer

  Background: I'm trying to create a game where the camera is always rotating around a single sphere. I'm using the DirectX D3DX math functions in C++ on Windows. The Problem: I cannot get both the camera position and orientation both working properly at the same time. Either one works but not both together. Here's the code for my quaternion camera that revolves around a sphere, always looking at the centerpoint of the sphere, ... as far as I understand it (but which isn't working properly): (I'm only going to present rotation around the X axis here, to simplify this post) Whenever the UP key is pressed or held down, the camera should rotate around the X axis, while looking at the centerpoint of the sphere (which is at 0,0,0 in the world). So, I build a quaternion that represents a small angle of rotation around the x axis like this (where 'deltaAngle' is a small enough number for a slow rotation): D3DXVECTOR3 rotAxis; D3DXQUATERNION tempQuat; tempQuat.x = 0.0f; tempQuat.y = 0.0f; tempQuat.z = 0.0f; tempQuat.w = 1.0f; rotAxis.x = 1.0f; rotAxis.y = 0.0f; rotAxis.z = 0.0f; D3DXQuaternionRotationAxis(&tempQuat, &rotAxis, deltaAngle); ...and I accumulate the result into the camera's current orientation quat, like this: D3DXQuaternionMultiply(&cameraOrientationQuat, &cameraOrientationQuat, &tempQuat); ...which all works fine. Now I need to build a view matrix to pass to DirectX SetTransform function. So I build a rotation matrix from the camera orientation quat as follows: D3DXMATRIXA16 rotationMatrix; D3DXMatrixIdentity(&rotationMatrix); D3DXMatrixRotationQuaternion(&rotationMatrix, &cameraOrientationQuat); ...Now (as seen below) if I just transpose that rotationMatrix and plug it into the 3x3 section of the view matrix, then negate the camera's position and plug it into the translation section of the view matrix, the rotation magically works. Perfectly. (even when I add in rotations for all three axes). There's no gimbal lock, just a smooth rotation all around in any direction. BUT- this works even though I never change the camera's position. At all. Which sorta blows my mind. I even display the camera position and can watch it stay constant at it's starting point (0.0, 0.0, -4000.0). It never moves, but the rotation around the sphere is perfect. I don't understand that. For proper view rotation, the camera position should be revolving around the sphere. Here's the rest of building the view matrix (I'll talk about the commented code below). Note that the camera starts out at (0.0, 0.0, -4000.0) and m_camDistToTarget is 4000.0: /* D3DXVECTOR3 vec1; D3DXVECTOR4 vec2; vec1.x = 0.0f; vec1.y = 0.0f; vec1.z = -1.0f; D3DXVec3Transform(&vec2, &vec1, &rotationMatrix); g_cameraActor->pos.x = vec2.x * g_cameraActor->m_camDistToTarget; g_cameraActor->pos.y = vec2.y * g_cameraActor->m_camDistToTarget; g_cameraActor->pos.z = vec2.z * g_cameraActor->m_camDistToTarget; */ D3DXMatrixTranspose(&g_viewMatrix, &rotationMatrix); g_viewMatrix._41 = -g_cameraActor->pos.x; g_viewMatrix._42 = -g_cameraActor->pos.y; g_viewMatrix._43 = -g_cameraActor->pos.z; g_viewMatrix._44 = 1.0f; g_direct3DDevice9->SetTransform( D3DTS_VIEW, &g_viewMatrix ); ...(The world matrix is always an identity, and the perspective projection works fine). ...So, without the commented code being compiled, the rotation works fine. But to be proper, for obvious reasons, the camera position should be rotating around the sphere, which it currently is not. That's what the commented code is supposed to do. And when I add in that chunk of code to do that, and look at all the data as I hold the keys down (using UP, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT to rotate different directions) all the values look correct! The camera position is rotating around the sphere just fine, and I can watch that happen visually too. The problem is that the camera orientation does not lookat the center of the sphere. It always looks straight forward down the z axis (toward positive z) as it revolves around the sphere. Yet the values of both the rotation matrix and the view matrix seem to be behaving correctly. (The view matrix orientation is the same as the rotation matrix, just transposed). For instance if I just hold down the key to spin around the x axis, I can watch the values of the three axes represented in the view matrix (x, y, and z axes)... view x-axis stays at (1.0, 0.0, 0.0), and view y-axis and z-axis both spin around the x axis just fine. All the numbers are changing as they should be... well, almost. As far as I can tell, the position of the view matrix is spinning around the sphere one direction (like clockwise), and the orientation (the axes in the view matrix) are spinning the opposite direction (like counter-clockwise). Which I guess explains why the orientation appears to stay straight ahead. I know the position is correct. It revolves properly. It's the orientation that's wrong. Can anyone see what am I doing wrong? Am I using these functions incorrectly? Or is my algorithm flawed? As usual I've been combing my code for simple mistakes for many hours. I'm willing to post the actual code, and a video of the behavior, but that will take much more effort. Thought I'd ask this way first.

  Read the article

• Moving from Tortoise to TFS

  - by MarkPearl

  The Past A few years ago my small software company made the jump from storing code on a shared folder to source code control. At the time we had evaluated a few of the options and settled on Tortoise SVN. The main motivation for going the SVN route was that we found a great plugin for Visual Studio that allowed us to avoid the command prompt for uploading changes (like I said we are windows programmers… command prompt bad!! ) and it was free. Up to now we have been pretty happy with SVN as it removed many of the worries that I had about how safe my code was on a shared folder and also gave us the opportunity to safely have several developers work on the same project at the same time. The only times when we have been unhappy has been when we have had SVN hell days – which pretty much occur when you are doing something out of the norm and suddenly SVN just won’t resolve conflicts or something along those lines. This happens once every 4 or 5 months and is not necessarily a problem caused directly by SVN – but a problem augmented by SVN. When you have SVN hell days you want to curse SVN! With that in mind I recently have been relooking at our source code control. I have explored using GIT and was very impressed by it and have also looked at TFS. From a source code control perspective I don’t want to get into a heated discussion on which one is better – but I do want to mention that I wear two hats in my organization – software developer & manager, and with the manager hat on I tend to sway the TFS route. So when I was given a coupon to test DiscountASP.Net Team Foundation Server Service for a year, I thought it was the perfect opportunity to try TFS in a distributed environment and also make the first step towards having an integrated development management system. Some of the things that appeal to me about DiscountASP’s offering are the following… Basic management / planning facilities like to do lists inside Visual Studio Daily backup of data on the server – we are developers, not IT managers and so the more of this I could outsource the better Distributed solution – all of us work remotely and so this was a big one as well. Registering and Setting Up with DiscountASP.NET The whole registration process was simple and intuitive. The web interface is not the most visually impressive one, but it is functional and a few seconds after I clicked the last submit button a email was sitting in my inbox giving me my control panel username and suggesting that I read the “Getting Started” article. The getting started article was easy to read and understand so no complaints there either. Next to set my dev environment to work. With a few references to the getting started article I had completed the whole setup process in a matter of minutes. Ten minutes after initiating the whole thing I was logged into VS2010 and creating my first TFS project. With the service that I signed up for, I have access for 5 users – which is sufficient for my internal needs. So from what I can tell, to set the rest of us up on the system I just need to supply them with their user credentials and url. My Concerns Resolved 1) Security So, a few concerns I had about the service. First and foremost – is it secure? I would hate for someone to get access to our code and the whole idea of putting it up on the internet is a concern for me. Turning to the Knowledge Base on the DiscountASP website this is one of the first question I can see answered. According to them it is secure. I have extracted their comment below regarding this. Our TFS hosting service is secure. We only accept HTTPS connections ensuring that any client-server data transmission is encrypted. At the network level, all of our systems are protected by multiple Juniper firewalls, Tipping Point's Intrusion Detection System (see Tipping Point's case study of our use here), and we also employ DDoS mitigation to add extra layers of security. Additionally, physical access to the servers is tightly restricted. Please see the security section of this Knowledge Base article for further details. 2) Web Portal Access The other big concern I have is regarding web portal access. In the ideal world I would like to be able to give my end users access to a web portal for reporting bugs etc. When I initially read through the FAQ of the site it mentioned that there was web portal access – but from what I can see this is just for “users”. Since I am limited to 5 users for the account, it would not be practical to set up external users that we could get feedback from on bugs etc. I would be interested if this is possible – and if so if someone could post it in the comments it would be much appreciated. If this isn’t possible, it is a slight let down as we rely heavily on end user feedback to get feedback and it would have been ideal to have gotten this within the service. Other than those two items, I didn’t have any real concerns that were unresolved. So where do I go from here? So time passed by from the initial writing of this post and as work whirred in and out of my inbox I have still not had a proper opportunity to give the service a test run. Recently though things have began to slow down and then surprise surprise I had another SVN Hell day. With that experience I had a new found resolve to get our team on TFS and so today we are going to start to use the service as a team. I am hoping that I do not have TFS hell days – but if I do, I will be sure to write about them. In short - the verdict is still out on whether this service is going to be invaluable to my business or whether it will create more headaches than it is worth BUT I am hopping it will be an invaluable service. I will only really be able to determine that in a few months… till then!

  Read the article

• RIF PRD: Presentation syntax issues

  - by Charles Young

  Over Christmas I got to play a bit with the W3C RIF PRD and came across a few issues which I thought I would record for posterity. Specifically, I was working on a grammar for the presentation syntax using a GLR grammar parser tool (I was using the current CTP of ‘M’ (MGrammer) and Intellipad – I do so hope the MS guys don’t kill off M and Intellipad now they have dropped the other parts of SQL Server Modelling). I realise that the presentation syntax is non-normative and that any issues with it do not therefore compromise the standard. However, presentation syntax is useful in its own right, and it would be great to iron out any issues in a future revision of the standard. The main issues are actually not to do with the grammar at all, but rather with the ‘running example’ in the RIF PRD recommendation. I started with the code provided in Example 9.1. There are several discrepancies when compared with the EBNF rules documented in the standard. Broadly the problems can be categorised as follows: ·      Parenthesis mismatch – the wrong number of parentheses are used in various places. For example, in GoldRule, the RHS of the rule (the ‘Then’) is nested in the LHS (‘the If’). In NewCustomerAndWidgetRule, the RHS is orphaned from the LHS. Together with additional incorrect parenthesis, this leads to orphanage of UnknownStatusRule from the entire Document. ·      Invalid use of parenthesis in ‘Forall’ constructs. Parenthesis should not be used to enclose formulae. Removal of the invalid parenthesis gave me a feeling of inconsistency when comparing formulae in Forall to formulae in If. The use of parenthesis is not actually inconsistent in these two context, but in an If construct it ‘feels’ as if you are enclosing formulae in parenthesis in a LISP-like fashion. In reality, the parenthesis is simply being used to group subordinate syntax elements. The fact that an If construct can contain only a single formula as an immediate child adds to this feeling of inconsistency. ·      Invalid representation of compact URIs (CURIEs) in the context of Frame productions. In several places the URIs are not qualified with a namespace prefix (‘ex1:’). This conflicts with the definition of CURIEs in the RIF Datatypes and Built-Ins 1.0 document. Here are the productions: CURIE          ::= PNAME_LN                  | PNAME_NS PNAME_LN       ::= PNAME_NS PN_LOCAL PNAME_NS       ::= PN_PREFIX? ':' PN_LOCAL       ::= ( PN_CHARS_U | [0-9] ) ((PN_CHARS|'.')* PN_CHARS)? PN_CHARS       ::= PN_CHARS_U                  | '-' | [0-9] | #x00B7                  | [#x0300-#x036F] | [#x203F-#x2040] PN_CHARS_U     ::= PN_CHARS_BASE                  | '_' PN_CHARS_BASE ::= [A-Z] | [a-z] | [#x00C0-#x00D6] | [#x00D8-#x00F6]                  | [#x00F8-#x02FF] | [#x0370-#x037D] | [#x037F-#x1FFF]                  | [#x200C-#x200D] | [#x2070-#x218F] | [#x2C00-#x2FEF]                  | [#x3001-#xD7FF] | [#xF900-#xFDCF] | [#xFDF0-#xFFFD]                  | [#x10000-#xEFFFF] PN_PREFIX      ::= PN_CHARS_BASE ((PN_CHARS|'.')* PN_CHARS)? The more I look at CURIEs, the more my head hurts! The RIF specification allows prefixes and colons without local names, which surprised me. However, the CURIE Syntax 1.0 working group note specifically states that this form is supported…and then promptly provides a syntactic definition that seems to preclude it! However, on (much) deeper inspection, it appears that ‘ex1:’ (for example) is allowed, but would really represent a ‘fragment’ of the ‘reference’, rather than a prefix! Ouch! This is so completely ambiguous that it surely calls into question the whole CURIE specification.   In any case, RIF does not allow local names without a prefix. ·      Missing ‘External’ specifiers for built-in functions and predicates.  The EBNF specification enforces this for terms within frames, but does not appear to enforce (what I believe is) the correct use of External on built-in predicates. In any case, the running example only specifies ‘External’ once on the predicate in UnknownStatusRule. External() is required in several other places. ·      The List used on the LHS of UnknownStatusRule is comma-delimited. This is not supported by the EBNF definition. Similarly, the argument list of pred:list-contains is illegally comma-delimited. ·      Unnecessary use of conjunction around a single formula in DiscountRule. This is strictly legal in the EBNF, but redundant.   All the above issues concern the presentation syntax used in the running example. There are a few minor issues with the grammar itself. Note that Michael Kiefer stated in his paper “Rule Interchange Format: The Framework” that: “The presentation syntax of RIF … is an abstract syntax and, as such, it omits certain details that might be important for unambiguous parsing.” ·      The grammar cannot differentiate unambiguously between strategies and priorities on groups. A processor is forced to resolve this by detecting the use of IRIs and integers. This could easily be fixed in the grammar.   ·      The grammar cannot unambiguously parse the ‘->’ operator in frames. Specifically, ‘-’ characters are allowed in PN_LOCAL names and hence a parser cannot determine if ‘status->’ is (‘status’ ‘->’) or (‘status-’ ‘>’).   One way to fix this is to amend the PN_LOCAL production as follows: PN_LOCAL ::= ( PN_CHARS_U | [0-9] ) ((PN_CHARS|'.')* ((PN_CHARS)-('-')))? However, unilaterally changing the definition of this production, which is defined in the SPARQL Query Language for RDF specification, makes me uncomfortable. ·      I assume that the presentation syntax is case-sensitive. I couldn’t find this stated anywhere in the documentation, but function/predicate names do appear to be documented as being case-sensitive. ·      The EBNF does not specify whitespace handling. A couple of productions (RULE and ACTION_BLOCK) are crafted to enforce the use of whitespace. This is not necessary. It seems inconsistent with the rest of the specification and can cause parsing issues. In addition, the Const production exhibits whitespaces issues. The intention may have been to disallow the use of whitespace around ‘^^’, but any direct implementation of the EBNF will probably allow whitespace between ‘^^’ and the SYMSPACE. Of course, I am being a little nit-picking about all this. On the whole, the EBNF translated very smoothly and directly to ‘M’ (MGrammar) and proved to be fairly complete. I have encountered far worse issues when translating other EBNF specifications into usable grammars.   I can’t imagine there would be any difficulty in implementing the same grammar in Antlr, COCO/R, gppg, XText, Bison, etc. A general observation, which repeats a point made above, is that the use of parenthesis in the presentation syntax can feel inconsistent and un-intuitive.   It isn’t actually inconsistent, but I think the presentation syntax could be improved by adopting braces, rather than parenthesis, to delimit subordinate syntax elements in a similar way to so many programming languages. The familiarity of braces would communicate the structure of the syntax more clearly to people like me.  If braces were adopted, parentheses could be retained around ‘var (frame | ‘new()’) constructs in action blocks. This use of parenthesis feels very LISP-like, and I think that this is my issue. It’s as if the presentation syntax represents the deformed love-child of LISP and C. In some places (specifically, action blocks), parenthesis is used in a LISP-like fashion. In other places it is used like braces in C. I find this quite confusing. Here is a corrected version of the running example (Example 9.1) in compliant presentation syntax: Document(    Prefix( ex1 <http://example.com/2009/prd2> )    (* ex1:CheckoutRuleset *)  Group rif:forwardChaining (     (* ex1:GoldRule *)    Group 10 (      Forall ?customer such that And(?customer # ex1:Customer                                     ?customer[ex1:status->"Silver"])        (Forall ?shoppingCart such that ?customer[ex1:shoppingCart->?shoppingCart]           (If Exists ?value (And(?shoppingCart[ex1:value->?value]                                  External(pred:numeric-greater-than-or-equal(?value 2000))))            Then Do(Modify(?customer[ex1:status->"Gold"])))))      (* ex1:DiscountRule *)    Group (      Forall ?customer such that ?customer # ex1:Customer        (If Or( ?customer[ex1:status->"Silver"]                ?customer[ex1:status->"Gold"])         Then Do ((?s ?customer[ex1:shoppingCart-> ?s])                  (?v ?s[ex1:value->?v])                  Modify(?s [ex1:value->External(func:numeric-multiply (?v 0.95))]))))      (* ex1:NewCustomerAndWidgetRule *)    Group (      Forall ?customer such that And(?customer # ex1:Customer                                     ?customer[ex1:status->"New"] )        (If Exists ?shoppingCart ?item                   (And(?customer[ex1:shoppingCart->?shoppingCart]                        ?shoppingCart[ex1:containsItem->?item]                        ?item # ex1:Widget ) )         Then Do( (?s ?customer[ex1:shoppingCart->?s])                  (?val ?s[ex1:value->?val])                  (?voucher ?customer[ex1:voucher->?voucher])                  Retract(?customer[ex1:voucher->?voucher])                  Retract(?voucher)                  Modify(?s[ex1:value->External(func:numeric-multiply(?val 0.90))]))))      (* ex1:UnknownStatusRule *)    Group (      Forall ?customer such that ?customer # ex1:Customer        (If Not(Exists ?status                       (And(?customer[ex1:status->?status]                            External(pred:list-contains(List("New" "Bronze" "Silver" "Gold") ?status)) )))         Then Do( Execute(act:print(External(func:concat("New customer: " ?customer))))                  Assert(?customer[ex1:status->"New"]))))  ) )   I hope that helps someone out there :-)

  Read the article

• How to Identify Which Hardware Component is Failing in Your Computer

  - by Chris Hoffman

  Concluding that your computer has a hardware problem is just the first step. If you’re dealing with a hardware issue and not a software issue, the next step is determining what hardware problem you’re actually dealing with. If you purchased a laptop or pre-built desktop PC and it’s still under warranty, you don’t need to care about this. Have the manufacturer fix the PC for you — figuring it out is their problem. If you’ve built your own PC or you want to fix a computer that’s out of warranty, this is something you’ll need to do on your own. Blue Screen 101: Search for the Error Message This may seem like obvious advice, but searching for information about a blue screen’s error message can help immensely. Most blue screens of death you’ll encounter on modern versions of Windows will likely be caused by hardware failures. The blue screen of death often displays information about the driver that crashed or the type of error it encountered. For example, let’s say you encounter a blue screen that identified “NV4_disp.dll” as the driver that caused the blue screen. A quick Google search will reveal that this is the driver for NVIDIA graphics cards, so you now have somewhere to start. It’s possible that your graphics card is failing if you encounter such an error message. Check Hard Drive SMART Status Hard drives have a built in S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) feature. The idea is that the hard drive monitors itself and will notice if it starts to fail, providing you with some advance notice before the drive fails completely. This isn’t perfect, so your hard drive may fail even if SMART says everything is okay. If you see any sort of “SMART error” message, your hard drive is failing. You can use SMART analysis tools to view the SMART health status information your hard drives are reporting. Test Your RAM RAM failure can result in a variety of problems. If the computer writes data to RAM and the RAM returns different data because it’s malfunctioning, you may see application crashes, blue screens, and file system corruption. To test your memory and see if it’s working properly, use Windows’ built-in Memory Diagnostic tool. The Memory Diagnostic tool will write data to every sector of your RAM and read it back afterwards, ensuring that all your RAM is working properly. Check Heat Levels How hot is is inside your computer? Overheating can rsult in blue screens, crashes, and abrupt shut downs. Your computer may be overheating because you’re in a very hot location, it’s ventilated poorly, a fan has stopped inside your computer, or it’s full of dust. Your computer monitors its own internal temperatures and you can access this information. It’s generally available in your computer’s BIOS, but you can also view it with system information utilities such as SpeedFan or Speccy. Check your computer’s recommended temperature level and ensure it’s within the appropriate range. If your computer is overheating, you may see problems only when you’re doing something demanding, such as playing a game that stresses your CPU and graphics card. Be sure to keep an eye on how hot your computer gets when it performs these demanding tasks, not only when it’s idle. Stress Test Your CPU You can use a utility like Prime95 to stress test your CPU. Such a utility will fore your computer’s CPU to perform calculations without allowing it to rest, working it hard and generating heat. If your CPU is becoming too hot, you’ll start to see errors or system crashes. Overclockers use Prime95 to stress test their overclock settings — if Prime95 experiences errors, they throttle back on their overclocks to ensure the CPU runs cooler and more stable. It’s a good way to check if your CPU is stable under load. Stress Test Your Graphics Card Your graphics card can also be stress tested. For example, if your graphics driver crashes while playing games, the games themselves crash, or you see odd graphical corruption, you can run a graphics benchmark utility like 3DMark. The benchmark will stress your graphics card and, if it’s overheating or failing under load, you’ll see graphical problems, crashes, or blue screens while running the benchmark. If the benchmark seems to work fine but you have issues playing a certain game, it may just be a problem with that game. Swap it Out Not every hardware problem is easy to diagnose. If you have a bad motherboard or power supply, their problems may only manifest through occasional odd issues with other components. It’s hard to tell if these components are causing problems unless you replace them completely. Ultimately, the best way to determine whether a component is faulty is to swap it out. For example, if you think your graphics card may be causing your computer to blue screen, pull the graphics card out of your computer and swap in a new graphics card. If everything is working well, it’s likely that your previous graphics card was bad. This isn’t easy for people who don’t have boxes of components sitting around, but it’s the ideal way to troubleshoot. Troubleshooting is all about trial and error, and swapping components out allows you to pin down which component is actually causing the problem through a process of elimination. This isn’t a complete guide to everything that could likely go wrong and how to identify it — someone could write a full textbook on identifying failing components and still not cover everything. But the tips above should give you some places to start dealing with the more common problems. Image Credit: Justin Marty on Flickr     

  Read the article

• It was a figure of speech!

  - by Ratman21

  Yesterday I posted the following as attention getter / advertisement (as well as my feelings). In the groups, (I am in) on the social networking site, LinkedIn and boy did I get responses.    I am fighting mad about (a figure of speech, really) not having a job! Look just because I am over 55 and have gray hair. It does not mean, my brain is dead or I can no longer trouble shoot a router or circuit or LAN issue. Or that I can do “IT” work at all. And I could prove this if; some one would give me at job. Come on try me for 90 days at min. wage. I know you will end up keeping me (hope fully at normal pay) around. Is any one hearing me…come on take up the challenge!     This was the responses I got.   I hear you. We just need to retrain and get our skills up to speed is all. That is what I am doing. I have not given up. Just got to stay on top of the game. Experience is on our side if we have the credentials and we are reasonable about our salaries this should not be an issue.   Already on it, going back to school and have got three certifications (CompTIA A+, Security+ and Network+. I am now studying for my CISCO CCNA certification. As to my salary, I am willing to work at very reasonable rate.   You need to re-brand yourself like a product, market and sell yourself. You need to smarten up, look and feel a million dollars, re-energize yourself, regain your confidents. Either start your own business, or re-write your CV so it stands out from the rest, get the template off the internet. Contact every recruitment agent in your town, state, country and overseas, and on the web. Apply to every job you think you could do, you may not get it but you will make a contact for your network, which may lead to a job at the end of the tunnel. Get in touch with everyone you know from past jobs. Do charity work. I maintain the IT Network, stage electrical and the Telecom equipment in my church,   Again already on it. I have email the world is seems with my resume and cover letters. So far, I have rewritten or had it rewrote, my resume and cover letters; over seven times so far. Re-energize? I never lost my energy level or my self-confidents in my work (now if could get some HR personal to see the same). I also volunteer at my church, I created and maintain the church web sit.   I share your frustration. Sucks being over 50 and looking for work. Please don't sell yourself short at min wage because the employer will think that’s your worth. Keep trying!!   I never stop trying and min wage is only for 90 days. If some one takes up the challenge. Some post asked if I am keeping up technology.   Do you keep up with the latest technology and can speak the language fluidly?   Yep to that and as to speaking it also a yep! I am a geek you know. I heard from others over the 50 year mark and younger too.   I'm with you! I keep getting told that I don't have enough experience because I just recently completed a Masters level course in Microsoft SQL Server, which gave me a project-intensive equivalent of between 2 and 3 years of experience. On top of that training, I have 19 years as an applications programmer and database administrator. I can normalize rings around experienced DBAs and churn out effective code with the best of them. But my 19 years is worthless as far as most recruiters and HR people are concerned because it is not the specific experience for which they're looking. HR AND RECRUITERS TAKE NOTE: Experience, whatever the language, translates across platforms and technology! By the way, I'm also over 55 and still have "got it"!   I never lost it and I also can work rings round younger techs.   I'm 52 and female and seem to be having the same issues. I have over 10 years experience in tech support (with a BS in CIS) and can't get hired either.   Ow, I only have an AS in computer science along with my certifications.   Keep the faith, I have been unemployed since August of 2008. I agree with you...I am willing to return to the beginning of my retail career and work myself back through the ranks, if someone will look past the grey and realize the knowledge I would bring to the table.   I also would like some one to look past the gray.   Interesting approach, volunteering to work for minimum wage for 90 days. I'm in the same situation as you, being 55 & balding w/white hair, so I know where you're coming from. I've been out of work now for a year. I'm in Michigan, where the unemployment rate is estimated to be 15% (the worst in the nation) & even though I've got 30+ years of IT experience ranging from mainframe to PC desktop support, it's difficult to even get a face-to-face interview. I had one prospective employer tell me flat out that I "didn't have the energy required for this position". Mostly I never get any feedback. All I can say is good luck & try to remain optimistic.   He said WHAT! Yes remaining optimistic is key. Along with faith in God. Then there was this (for lack of better word) jerk.   Give it up already. You were too old to work in high tech 10 years ago. Scratch that, 20 years ago! Try selling hot dogs in front of Fry's Electronics. At least you would get a chance to eat lunch with your previous colleagues....   You know funny thing on this person is that I checked out his profile. He is older than I am.

  Read the article

• Five Key Strategies in Master Data Management

  - by david.butler(at)oracle.com

  Here is a very interesting Profit Magazine article on MDM: A recent customer survey reveals the deleterious effects of data fragmentation. by Trevor Naidoo, December 2010   Across industries and geographies, IT organizations have grown in complexity, whether due to mergers and acquisitions, or decentralized systems supporting functional or departmental requirements. With systems architected over time to support unique, one-off process needs, they are becoming costly to maintain, and the Internet has only further added to the complexity. Data fragmentation has become a key inhibitor in delivering flexible, user-friendly systems. The Oracle Insight team conducted a survey assessing customers' master data management (MDM) capabilities over the past two years to get a sense of where they are in terms of their capabilities. The responses, by 27 respondents from six different industries, reveal five key areas in which customers need to improve their data management in order to get better financial results. 1. Less than 15 percent of organizations surveyed understand the sources and quality of their master data, and have a roadmap to address missing data domains. Examples of the types of master data domains referred to are customer, supplier, product, financial and site. Many organizations have multiple sources of master data with varying degrees of data quality in each source -- customer data stored in the customer relationship management system is inconsistent with customer data stored in the order management system. Imagine not knowing how many places you stored your customer information, and whether a customer's address was the most up to date in each source. In fact, more than 55 percent of the respondents in the survey manage their data quality on an ad-hoc basis. It is important for organizations to document their inventory of data sources and then profile these data sources to ensure that there is a consistent definition of key data entities throughout the organization. Some questions to ask are: How do we define a customer? What is a product? How do we define a site? The goal is to strive for one common repository for master data that acts as a cross reference for all other sources and ensures consistent, high-quality master data throughout the organization. 2. Only 18 percent of respondents have an enterprise data management strategy to ensure that data is treated as an asset to the organization. Most respondents handle data at the department or functional level and do not have an enterprise view of their master data. The sales department may track all their interactions with customers as they move through the sales cycle, the service department is tracking their interactions with the same customers independently, and the finance department also has a different perspective on the same customer. The salesperson may not be aware that the customer she is trying to sell to is experiencing issues with existing products purchased, or that the customer is behind on previous invoices. The lack of a data strategy makes it difficult for business users to turn data into information via reports. Without the key building blocks in place, it is difficult to create key linkages between customer, product, site, supplier and financial data. These linkages make it possible to understand patterns. A well-defined data management strategy is aligned to the business strategy and helps create the governance needed to ensure that data stewardship is in place and data integrity is intact. 3. Almost 60 percent of respondents have no strategy to integrate data across operational applications. Many respondents have several disparate sources of data with no strategy to keep them in sync with each other. Even though there is no clear strategy to integrate the data (see #2 above), the data needs to be synced and cross-referenced to keep the business processes running. About 55 percent of respondents said they perform this integration on an ad hoc basis, and in many cases, it is done manually with the help of Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. For example, a salesperson needs a report on global sales for a specific product, but the product has different product numbers in different countries. Typically, an analyst will pull all the data into Excel, manually create a cross reference for that product, and then aggregate the sales. The exact same procedure has to be followed if the same report is needed the following month. A well-defined consolidation strategy will ensure that a central cross-reference is maintained with updates in any one application being propagated to all the other systems, so that data is synchronized and up to date. This can be done in real time or in batch mode using integration technology. 4. Approximately 50 percent of respondents spend manual efforts cleansing and normalizing data. Information stored in various systems usually follows different standards and formats, making it difficult to match the data. A customer's address can be stored in different ways using a variety of abbreviations -- for example, "av" or "ave" for avenue. Similarly, a product's attributes can be stored in a number of different ways; for example, a size attribute can be stored in inches and can also be entered as "'' ". These types of variations make it difficult to match up data from different sources. Today, most customers rely on manual, heroic efforts to match, cleanse, and de-duplicate data -- clearly not a scalable, sustainable model. To solve this challenge, organizations need the ability to standardize data for customers, products, sites, suppliers and financial accounts; however, less than 10 percent of respondents have technology in place to automatically resolve duplicates. It is no wonder, therefore, that we get communications about products we don't own, at addresses we don't reside, and using channels (like direct mail) we don't like. An all-too-common example of a potential challenge follows: Customers end up receiving duplicate communications, which not only impacts customer satisfaction, but also incurs additional mailing costs. Cleansing, normalizing, and standardizing data will help address most of these issues. 5. Only 10 percent of respondents have the ability to share data that was mastered in a master data hub. Close to 60 percent of respondents have efforts in place that profile, standardize and cleanse data manually, and the output of these efforts are stored in spreadsheets in various parts of the organization. This valuable information is not easily shared with the rest of the organization and, more importantly, this enriched information cannot be sent back to the source systems so that the data is fixed at the source. A key benefit of a master data management strategy is not only to clean the data, but to also share the data back to the source systems as well as other systems that need the information. Aside from the source systems, another key beneficiary of this data is the business intelligence system. Having clean master data as input to business intelligence systems provides more accurate and enhanced reporting.  Characteristics of Stellar MDM When deciding on the right master data management technology, organizations should look for solutions that have four main characteristics: enterprise-grade MDM performance complete technology that can be rapidly deployed and addresses multiple business issues end-to-end MDM process management with data quality monitoring and assurance pre-built MDM business relevant applications with data stores and workflows These master data management capabilities will aid in moving closer to a best-practice maturity level, delivering tremendous efficiencies and savings as well as revenue growth opportunities as a result of better understanding your customers.  Trevor Naidoo is a senior director in Industry Strategy and Insight at Oracle. 

  Read the article

• elffile: ELF Specific File Identification Utility

  - by user9154181

  Solaris 11 has a new standard user level command, /usr/bin/elffile. elffile is a variant of the file utility that is focused exclusively on linker related files: ELF objects, archives, and runtime linker configuration files. All other files are simply identified as "non-ELF". The primary advantage of elffile over the existing file utility is in the area of archives — elffile examines the archive members and can produce a summary of the contents, or per-member details. The impetus to add elffile to Solaris came from the effort to extend the format of Solaris archives so that they could grow beyond their previous 32-bit file limits. That work introduced a new archive symbol table format. Now that there was more than one possible format, I thought it would be useful if the file utility could identify which format a given archive is using, leading me to extend the file utility: % cc -c ~/hello.c % ar r foo.a hello.o % file foo.a foo.a: current ar archive, 32-bit symbol table % ar r -S foo.a hello.o % file foo.a foo.a: current ar archive, 64-bit symbol table In turn, this caused me to think about all the things that I would like the file utility to be able to tell me about an archive. In particular, I'd like to be able to know what's inside without having to unpack it. The end result of that train of thought was elffile. Much of the discussion in this article is adapted from the PSARC case I filed for elffile in December 2010: PSARC 2010/432 elffile Why file Is No Good For Archives And Yet Should Not Be Fixed The standard /usr/bin/file utility is not very useful when applied to archives. When identifying an archive, a user typically wants to know 2 things: Is this an archive? Presupposing that the archive contains objects, which is by far the most common use for archives, what platform are the objects for? Are they for sparc or x86? 32 or 64-bit? Some confusing combination from varying platforms? The file utility provides a quick answer to question (1), as it identifies all archives as "current ar archive". It does nothing to answer the more interesting question (2). To answer that question, requires a multi-step process: Extract all archive members Use the file utility on the extracted files, examine the output for each file in turn, and compare the results to generate a suitable summary description. Remove the extracted files It should be easier and more efficient to answer such an obvious question. It would be reasonable to extend the file utility to examine archive contents in place and produce a description. However, there are several reasons why I decided not to do so: The correct design for this feature within the file utility would have file examine each archive member in turn, applying its full abilities to each member. This would be elegant, but also represents a rather dramatic redesign and re-implementation of file. Archives nearly always contain nothing but ELF objects for a single platform, so such generality in the file utility would be of little practical benefit. It is best to avoid adding new options to standard utilities for which other implementations of interest exist. In the case of the file utility, one concern is that we might add an option which later appears in the GNU version of file with a different and incompatible meaning. Indeed, there have been discussions about replacing the Solaris file with the GNU version in the past. This may or may not be desirable, and may or may not ever happen. Either way, I don't want to preclude it. Examining archive members is an O(n) operation, and can be relatively slow with large archives. The file utility is supposed to be a very fast operation. I decided that extending file in this way is overkill, and that an investment in the file utility for better archive support would not be worth the cost. A solution that is more narrowly focused on ELF and other linker related files is really all that we need. The necessary code for doing this already exists within libelf. All that is missing is a small user-level wrapper to make that functionality available at the command line. In that vein, I considered adding an option for this to the elfdump utility. I examined elfdump carefully, and even wrote a prototype implementation. The added code is small and simple, but the conceptual fit with the rest of elfdump is poor. The result complicates elfdump syntax and documentation, definite signs that this functionality does not belong there. And so, I added this functionality as a new user level command. The elffile Command The syntax for this new command is elffile [-s basic | detail | summary] filename... Please see the elffile(1) manpage for additional details. To demonstrate how output from elffile looks, I will use the following files: FileDescription configA runtime linker configuration file produced with crle dwarf.oAn ELF object /etc/passwdA text file mixed.aArchive containing a mixture of ELF and non-ELF members mixed_elf.aArchive containing ELF objects for different machines not_elf.aArchive containing no ELF objects same_elf.aArchive containing a collection of ELF objects for the same machine. This is the most common type of archive. The file utility identifies these files as follows: % file config dwarf.o /etc/passwd mixed.a mixed_elf.a not_elf.a same_elf.a config: Runtime Linking Configuration 64-bit MSB SPARCV9 dwarf.o: ELF 64-bit LSB relocatable AMD64 Version 1 /etc/passwd: ascii text mixed.a: current ar archive, 32-bit symbol table mixed_elf.a: current ar archive, 32-bit symbol table not_elf.a: current ar archive same_elf.a: current ar archive, 32-bit symbol table By default, elffile uses its "summary" output style. This output differs from the output from the file utility in 2 significant ways: Files that are not an ELF object, archive, or runtime linker configuration file are identified as "non-ELF", whereas the file utility attempts further identification for such files. When applied to an archive, the elffile output includes a description of the archive's contents, without requiring member extraction or other additional steps. Applying elffile to the above files: % elffile config dwarf.o /etc/passwd mixed.a mixed_elf.a not_elf.a same_elf.a config: Runtime Linking Configuration 64-bit MSB SPARCV9 dwarf.o: ELF 64-bit LSB relocatable AMD64 Version 1 /etc/passwd: non-ELF mixed.a: current ar archive, 32-bit symbol table, mixed ELF and non-ELF content mixed_elf.a: current ar archive, 32-bit symbol table, mixed ELF content not_elf.a: current ar archive, non-ELF content same_elf.a: current ar archive, 32-bit symbol table, ELF 64-bit LSB relocatable AMD64 Version 1 The output for same_elf.a is of particular interest: The vast majority of archives contain only ELF objects for a single platform, and in this case, the default output from elffile answers both of the questions about archives posed at the beginning of this discussion, in a single efficient step. This makes elffile considerably more useful than file, within the realm of linker-related files. elffile can produce output in two other styles, "basic", and "detail". The basic style produces output that is the same as that from 'file', for linker-related files. The detail style produces per-member identification of archive contents. This can be useful when the archive contents are not homogeneous ELF object, and more information is desired than the summary output provides: % elffile -s detail mixed.a mixed.a: current ar archive, 32-bit symbol table mixed.a(dwarf.o): ELF 32-bit LSB relocatable 80386 Version 1 mixed.a(main.c): non-ELF content mixed.a(main.o): ELF 64-bit LSB relocatable AMD64 Version 1 [SSE]

  Read the article

• PASS: The Budget Process

  - by Bill Graziano

  Every fiscal year PASS creates a detailed budget.  This helps us set priorities and communicate to our members what we’re going to do in the upcoming year.  You can review the current budget on the PASS Governance page.  That page currently requires you to login but I’m talking with HQ to see if there are any legal issues with opening that up. The Accounting Team The PASS accounting team is two people.  The Executive Vice-President of Finance (“EVP”) and the PASS Accounting Manager.  Sandy Cherry is the accounting manager and works at PASS HQ.  Sandy has been with PASS since we switched management companies in 2007.  Throughout this document when I talk about any actual work related to the budget that’s all Sandy :)  She’s the glue that gets us through this process.  Last year we went through 32 iterations of the budget before the Board approved so it’s a pretty busy time for her us – well, mostly her. Fiscal Year The PASS fiscal year runs from July 1st through June 30th the following year.  Right now we’re in fiscal year 2011.  Our 2010 Summit actually occurred in FY2011.  We switched to this schedule from a calendar year in 2006.  Our goal was to have the Summit occur early in our fiscal year.  That gives us the rest of the year to handle any significant financial impact from the Summit.  If registrations are down we can reduce spending.  If registrations are up we can decide how much to increase our reserves and how much to spend.  Keep in mind that the Summit is budgeted to generate 82% of our revenue this year.  How it performs has a significant impact on our financials.  The other benefit of this fiscal year is that it matches the Microsoft fiscal year.  We sign an annual sponsorship agreement with Microsoft and it’s very helpful that our fiscal years match. This year our budget process will probably start in earnest in March or April.  I’d like to be done in early June so we can publish before July 1st.  I was late publishing it this year and I’m trying not to repeat that. Our Budget Our actual budget is an Excel spreadsheet with 36 sheets.  We remove some of those when we publish it since they include salary information.  The budget is broken up into various portfolios or departments.  We have 20 portfolios.  They include chapters, marketing, virtual chapters, marketing, etc.  Ideally each portfolio is assigned to a Board member.  Each portfolio also typically has a staff person assigned to it.  Portfolios that aren’t assigned to a Board member are monitored by HQ and the ExecVP-Finance (me).  These are typically smaller portfolios such as deferred membership or Summit futures.  (More on those in a later post.)  All portfolios are reviewed by all Board members during the budget approval process, when interim financials are released internally and at year-end. The Process Our first step is to budget revenues.  The Board determines a target attendee number.  We have formulas based on historical performance that convert that to an overall attendee revenue number.  Other revenue projections (such as vendor sponsorships) come from different parts of the organization.  I hope to have another post with more details on how we project revenues. The next step is to budget expenses.  Board members fill out a sample spreadsheet with their budget for the year.  They can add line items and notes describing what the amounts are for.  Each Board portfolio typically has from 10 to 30 line items.  Any new initiatives they want to pursue needs to be budgeted.  The Summit operations budget is managed by HQ.  It includes the cost for food, electrical, internet, etc.  Most of these come from our estimate of attendees and our contract with the convention center.  During this process the Board can ask for more or less to be spent on various line items.  For example, if we weren’t happy with the Internet at the last Summit we can ask them to look into different options and/or increasing the budget.  HQ will also make adjustments to these numbers based on what they see at the events and the feedback we receive on the surveys. After we have all the initial estimates we start reviewing the entire budget.  It is sent out to the Board and we can see what each portfolio requested and what the overall profit and loss number is.  We usually start with too much in expenses and need to cut.  In years past the Board started haggling over these numbers as a group.  This past year they decided I should take a first cut and present them with a reasonable budget and a list of what I changed.  That worked well and I think we’ll continue to do that in the future. We go through a number of iterations on the budget.  If I remember correctly, we went through 32 iterations before we passed the budget.  At each iteration various revenue and expense numbers can change.  Keep in mind that the PASS budget has 200+ line items spread over 20 portfolios.  Many of these depend on other numbers.  For example, if we decide increase the projected attendees that cascades through our budget.  At each iteration we list what changed and the impact.  Ideally these discussions will take place at a face-to-face Board meeting.  Many of them also take place over the phone.  Board members explain any increase they are asking for while performing due diligence on other budget requests.  Eventually a budget emerges and is passed. Publishing After the budget is passed we create a version without the formulas and salaries for posting on the web site.  Sandy also creates some charts to help our members understand the budget.  The EVP writes a nice little letter describing some of the changes from last year’s budget.  You can see my letter and our budget on the PASS Governance page. And then, eight months later, we start all over again.

  Read the article

• How I Work: Staying Productive Whilst Traveling

  - by BuckWoody

  I travel a lot. Not like some folks that are gone every week, mind you, although in the last month I’ve been to: Cambridge, UK; Anchorage, AK; San Jose, CA; Copenhagen, DK, Boston, MA; and I’m currently en-route to Anaheim, CA.  While this many places in a month is a bit unusual for me, I would say I travel frequently. I’ve travelled most of my 28+ years in IT, and at one time was a consultant traveling weekly.   With that much time away from my primary work location, I have to find ways to stay productive. Some might say “just rest – take a nap!” – but I’m not able to do that. For one thing, I’m a very light sleeper and I’ve never slept on a plane - even a 30+ hour trip to New Zealand in Business Class - so that just isn’t option. I also am not always in the plane, of course. There’s the hotel, the taxi/bus/train, the airport and then all that over again when I arrive. Since my regular jobs have many demands, I have to get work done.   Note: No, I’m not always focused on work. I need downtime just like everyone else. Sometimes I just think, watch a movie or listen to tunes – and I give myself permission to do that anytime – sometimes the whole trip. I have too fewheartbeats left in life to only focus on work – it’s just not that important, and neither am I. Some of these tasks are letters to friends and family, or other personal things. What I’m talking about here is a plan, not some task list I have to follow. When I get to the location I’m traveling to, I always build in as much time as I can to ensure I enjoy those sights and the people I’m with. I would find traveling to be a waste if not for that.   The Unrealistic Expectation As I would evaluate the trip I was taking – say a 6-8 hour flight – I would expect to get 10-12 hours of work done. After all, there’s the time at the airport, the taxi and so on, and then of course the time in the air with all of the room, power, internet and everything else I needed to get my work done. I would pile up tasks at home, pack my bags, and head happily to the magical land of the TSA.   Right. On return from the trip, I had accomplished little, had more e-mails and other work that had piled up, and I was tired, hungry, and unorganized. This had to change. So, I decided to do three things: Segment my work Set realistic expectations Plan accordingly  Segmenting By Available Resources The first task was to decide what kind of work I could do in each location – if any. I found that I was dependent on a few things to get work done, such as power, the Internet, and a place to sit down. Before I fly, I take some time at home to get all of the work I’d like to accomplish while away segmented into these areas, and print that out on paper, which goes in my suit-coat pocket along with a mechanical pencil. I print my tickets, and I’m all set for the adventure ahead. Then I simply do each kind of work whenever I’m in that situation. No power There are certain times when I don’t have power available. But not only that, I might not even be able to use most of my electronics. So I now schedule as many phone calls as I can for the taxi/bus/train ride and the airports as I can. I have a paper notebook (Moleskine, of course) and a pencil and I print out any notes or numbers I need prior to the trip. Once I’m airborne or at the airport, I work on my laptop. I check and respond to e-mails, create slides, write code, do architecture, whatever I can.  If I can’t use any electronics, or once the power runs out, I schedule time for reading. I can read at the airport or anywhere, actually, even in-flight or any other transport. I “read with a pencil”, meaning I take a lot of notes, which I liketo put in OneNote, but since in most cases I don’t have power, I use the Moleskine to do that. Speaking of which, sometimes as I’m thinking I come up with new topics, ideas, blog posts, or things to teach in my classes. Once again I take out the notebook and write it down. All of these notes get a check-mark when I get back to the office and transfer the writing to OneNote. I’ve tried those “smart pens” and so on to automate this, but it just never works out. Pencil and paper are just fine. As I mentioned, sometime I just need to think. I’ll do nothing, and let my mind wander, thinking of nothing in particular, or some math problem or science question I’m interested in. My only issue with this is that I communicate tothink, and I don’t want to drive people crazy by being that guy that won’t shut up, so I think in a different way. Power, but no Internet or Phone If I have power but no Internet or phone, I focus on the laptop and the tablet as before, and I also recharge my other gadgets. Power, Internet, Phone and a Place to Work At first I thought that when I arrived at the hotel or event I could get the same amount of work done that I do at the office. Not so. There’s simply too many distractions, things you need, or other issues that allow this. Of course, Ican work on any device, read, think, write or whatever, but I am simply not as productive as I am in my home office. So I plan for about 25-50% as much work getting done in this environment as I think I could really do. I’ve done some measurements, and this holds out to be true almost every time. The key is that I re-set my expectations (and my co-worker’s expectations as well) that this is the case. I use the Out-Of-Office notices to let people know that I’m just not going to be 100% at this time – it’s hard for everyone, but it’s more honest and realistic, and I’d rather they know that – and that I realize that – than to let them think I’m totally available. Because I’m not – I’m traveling. I don’t tend to put too much detail, because after all I don’t necessarily want to let people know when I’m not home :) but I do think it’s important to let people that depend on my know that I’ll get back with them later. I hope this helps you think through your own methodology of staying productive when you travel. Or perhaps you just go offline, and don’t worry about any of this – good for you! That’s completely valid as well.   (Oh, and yes, I wrote this at 35K feet, on Alaska Airlines on a trip. :)  Practice what you preach, Buck.)

  Read the article

• SQL Server Developer Tools &ndash; Codename Juneau vs. Red-Gate SQL Source Control

  - by Ajarn Mark Caldwell

  So how do the new SQL Server Developer Tools (previously code-named Juneau) stack up against SQL Source Control?  Read on to find out. At the PASS Community Summit a couple of weeks ago, it was announced that the previously code-named Juneau software would be released under the name of SQL Server Developer Tools with the release of SQL Server 2012.  This replacement for Database Projects in Visual Studio (also known in a former life as Data Dude) has some great new features.  I won’t attempt to describe them all here, but I will applaud Microsoft for making major improvements.  One of my favorite changes is the way database elements are broken down.  Previously every little thing was in its own file.  For example, indexes were each in their own file.  I always hated that.  Now, SSDT uses a pattern similar to Red-Gate’s and puts the indexes and keys into the same file as the overall table definition. Of course there are really cool features to keep your database model in sync with the actual source scripts, and the rename refactoring feature is now touted as being more than just a search and replace, but rather a “semantic-aware” search and replace.  Funny, it reminds me of SQL Prompt’s Smart Rename feature.  But I’m not writing this just to criticize Microsoft and argue that they are late to the party with this feature set.  Instead, I do see it as a viable alternative for folks who want all of their source code to be version controlled, but there are a couple of key trade-offs that you need to know about when you choose which tool set to use. First, the basics Both tool sets integrate with a wide variety of source control systems including the most popular: Subversion, GIT, Vault, and Team Foundation Server.  Both tools have integrated functionality to produce objects to upgrade your target database when you are ready (DACPACs in SSDT, integration with SQL Compare for SQL Source Control).  If you regularly live in Visual Studio or the Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) then SSDT will likely be comfortable for you.  Like BIDS, SSDT is a Visual Studio Project Type that comes with SQL Server, and if you don’t already have Visual Studio installed, it will install the shell for you.  If you already have Visual Studio 2010 installed, then it will just add this as an available project type.  On the other hand, if you regularly live in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) then you will really enjoy the SQL Source Control integration from within SSMS.  Both tool sets store their database model in script files.  In SSDT, these are on your file system like other source files; in SQL Source Control, these are stored in the folder structure in your source control system, and you can always GET them to your file system if you want to browse them directly. For me, the key differentiating factors are 1) a single, unified check-in, and 2) migration scripts.  How you value those two features will likely make your decision for you. Unified Check-In If you do a continuous-integration (CI) style of development that triggers an automated build with unit testing on every check-in of source code, and you use Visual Studio for the rest of your development, then you will want to really consider SSDT.  Because it is just another project in Visual Studio, it can be added to your existing Solution, and you can then do a complete, or unified single check-in of all changes whether they are application or database changes.  This is simply not possible with SQL Source Control because it is in a different development tool (SSMS instead of Visual Studio) and there is no way to do one unified check-in between the two.  You CAN do really fast back-to-back check-ins, but there is the possibility that the automated build that is triggered from the first check-in will cause your unit tests to fail and the CI tool to report that you broke the build.  Of course, the automated build that is triggered from the second check-in which contains the “other half” of your changes should pass and so the amount of time that the build was broken may be very, very short, but if that is very, very important to you, then SQL Source Control just won’t work; you’ll have to use SSDT. Refactoring and Migrations If you work on a mature system, or on a not-so-mature but also not-so-well-designed system, where you want to refactor the database schema as you go along, but you can’t have data suddenly disappearing from your target system, then you’ll probably want to go with SQL Source Control.  As I wrote previously, there are a number of changes which you can make to your database that the comparison tools (both from Microsoft and Red Gate) simply cannot handle without the possibility (or probability) of data loss.  Currently, SSDT only offers you the ability to inject PRE and POST custom deployment scripts.  There is no way to insert your own script in the middle to override the default behavior of the tool.  In version 3.0 of SQL Source Control (Early Access version now available) you have that ability to create your own custom migration script to take the place of the commands that the tool would have done, and ensure the preservation of your data.  Or, even if the default tool behavior would have worked, but you simply know a better way then you can take control and do things your way instead of theirs. You Decide In the environment I work in, our automated builds are not triggered off of check-ins, but off of the clock (currently once per night) and so there is no point at which the automated build and unit tests will be triggered without having both sides of the development effort already checked-in.  Therefore having a unified check-in, while handy, is not critical for us.  As for migration scripts, these are critically important to us.  We do a lot of new development on systems that have already been in production for years, and it is not uncommon for us to need to do a refactoring of the database.  Because of the maturity of the existing system, that often involves data migrations or other additional SQL tasks that the comparison tools just can’t detect on their own.  Therefore, the ability to create a custom migration script to override the tool’s default behavior is very important to us.  And so, you can see why we will continue to use Red Gate SQL Source Control for the foreseeable future.

  Read the article

• Windows Azure – Write, Run or Use Software

  - by BuckWoody

  Windows Azure is a platform that has you covered, whether you need to write software, run software that is already written, or Install and use “canned” software whether you or someone else wrote it. Like any platform, it’s a set of tools you can use where it makes sense to solve a problem. The primary location for Windows Azure information is located at http://windowsazure.com. You can find everything there from the development kits for writing software to pricing, licensing and tutorials on all of that. I have a few links here for learning to use Windows Azure – although it’s best if you focus not on the tools, but what you want to solve. I’ve got it broken down here into various sections, so you can quickly locate things you want to know. I’ll include resources here from Microsoft and elsewhere – I use these same resources in the Architectural Design Sessions (ADS) I do with my clients worldwide. Write Software Also called “Platform as a Service” (PaaS), Windows Azure has lots of components you can use together or separately that allow you to write software in .NET or various Open Source languages to work completely online, or in partnership with code you have on-premises or both – even if you’re using other cloud providers. Keep in mind that all of the features you see here can be used together, or independently. For instance, you might only use a Web Site, or use Storage, but you can use both together. You can access all of these components through standard REST API calls, or using our Software Development Kit’s API’s, which are a lot easier. In any case, you simply use Visual Studio, Eclipse, Cloud9 IDE, or even a text editor to write your code from a Mac, PC or Linux.  Components you can use: Azure Web Sites: Windows Azure Web Sites allow you to quickly write an deploy websites, without setting a Virtual Machine, installing a web server or configuring complex settings. They work alone, with other Windows Azure Web Sites, or with other parts of Windows Azure. Web and Worker Roles: Windows Azure Web Roles give you a full stateless computing instance with Internet Information Services (IIS) installed and configured. Windows Azure Worker Roles give you a full stateless computing instance without Information Services (IIS) installed, often used in a "Services" mode. Scale-out is achieved either manually or programmatically under your control. Storage: Windows Azure Storage types include Blobs to store raw binary data, Tables to use key/value pair data (like NoSQL data structures), Queues that allow interaction between stateless roles, and a relational SQL Server database. Other Services: Windows Azure has many other services such as a security mechanism, a Cache (memcacheD compliant), a Service Bus, a Traffic Manager and more. Once again, these features can be used with a Windows Azure project, or alone based on your needs. Various Languages: Windows Azure supports the .NET stack of languages, as well as many Open-Source languages like Java, Python, PHP, Ruby, NodeJS, C++ and more.   Use Software Also called “Software as a Service” (SaaS) this often means consumer or business-level software like Hotmail or Office 365. In other words, you simply log on, use the software, and log off – there’s nothing to install, and little to even configure. For the Information Technology professional, however, It’s not quite the same. We want software that provides services, but in a platform. That means we want things like Hadoop or other software we don’t want to have to install and configure.  Components you can use: Kits: Various software “kits” or packages are supported with just a few clicks, such as Umbraco, Wordpress, and others. Windows Azure Media Services: Windows Azure Media Services is a suite of services that allows you to upload media for encoding, processing and even streaming – or even one or more of those functions. We can add DRM and even commercials to your media if you like. Windows Azure Media Services is used to stream large events all the way down to small training videos. High Performance Computing and “Big Data”: Windows Azure allows you to scale to huge workloads using a few clicks to deploy Hadoop Clusters or the High Performance Computing (HPC) nodes, accepting HPC Jobs, Pig and Hive Jobs, and even interfacing with Microsoft Excel. Windows Azure Marketplace: Windows Azure Marketplace offers data and programs you can quickly implement and use – some free, some for-fee.   Run Software Also known as “Infrastructure as a Service” (IaaS), this offering allows you to build or simply choose a Virtual Machine to run server-based software.  Components you can use: Persistent Virtual Machines: You can choose to install Windows Server, Windows Server with Active Directory, with SQL Server, or even SharePoint from a pre-configured gallery. You can configure your own server images with standard Hyper-V technology and load them yourselves – and even bring them back when you’re done. As a new offering, we also even allow you to select various distributions of Linux – a first for Microsoft. Windows Azure Connect: You can connect your on-premises networks to Windows Azure Instances. Storage: Windows Azure Storage can be used as a remote backup, a hybrid storage location and more using software or even hardware appliances.   Decision Matrix With all of these options, you can use Windows Azure to solve just about any computing problem. It’s often hard to know when to use something on-premises, in the cloud, and what kind of service to use. I’ve used a decision matrix in the last couple of years to take a particular problem and choose the proper technology to solve it. It’s all about options – there is no “silver bullet”, whether that’s Windows Azure or any other set of functions. I take the problem, decide which particular component I want to own and control – and choose the column that has that box darkened. For instance, if I have to control the wiring for a solution (a requirement in some military and government installations), that means the “Networking” component needs to be dark, and so I select the “On Premises” column for that particular solution. If I just need the solution provided and I want no control at all, I can look as “Software as a Service” solutions. Security, Pricing, and Other Info  Security: Security is one of the first questions you should ask in any distributed computing environment. We have certification info, coding guidelines and more, even a general “Request for Information” RFI Response already created for you.   Pricing: Are there licenses? How much does this cost? Is there a way to estimate the costs in this new environment? New Features: Many new features were added to Windows Azure - a good roundup of those changes can be found here. Support: Software Support on Virtual Machines, general support.    

  Read the article

• PASS Summit – looking back on my first time

  - by Fatherjack

    So I was lucky enough to get my first experience of PASS Summit this year and took some time beforehand to read some blogs and reference material to get an idea on what to do and how to get the best out of my visit. Having been to other conferences – technical and non-technical – I had a reasonable idea on the routine and what to expect in general. Here is a list of a few things that I have learned/remembered as the week has gone by. Wear comfortable shoes. This actually needs to be broadened to Take several pairs of comfortable shoes. You will be spending many many hours, for several days one after another. Having comfortable feet that can literally support you for the duration will make the week in general a whole lot better. Not only at the conference but getting to and from you could well be walking. In the evenings you will be walking around town and standing talking in various bars and clubs. Looking back, on some days I was on my feet for over 20 hours. Make friends. This is a given for the long term benefits it brings but there is also an immediate reward in being at a conference with a friend or two. Some events are bigger and more popular than others and some have the type of session that every single attendee will want to be in. This is great for those that get in but if you are in the bathroom or queuing for coffee and you miss out it sucks. Having a friend that can get in to a room and reserve you a seat is a great advantage to make sure you get the content that you want to see and still have the coffee that you need. Don’t go to every session you want to see This might sound counter intuitive and it relies on the sessions being recorded in some way to guarantee you don’t totally miss out. Both PASS Summit and SQL Bits sessions are recorded (summit is audio, SQLBits is video) and this means that if you get into a good conversation with someone over a coffee you don’t have to break it up to go to a session. Obviously there is a trade-off here and you need to decide on the tipping point for yourself but a conversation at a place like this could make a big difference to the next contract or employer you have or it might simply be great catching up with some friends you don’t see so often. Go to at least one session you don’t want to Again, this will seem to be contrary to normal logic but there is no reason why you shouldn’t learn about a part of SQL Server that isn’t part of your daily routine. Not only will you learn something new but you will also pick up on the feelings and attitudes of the people in the session. So, if you are a DBA, head off to a BI session and so on. You’ll hear BI speakers speaking to a BI audience and get to understand their point of view and reasoning for making the decisions they do. You will also appreciate the way that your decisions and instructions affect the way they have to work. This will help you a lot when you are on a project, working with multiple teams and make you all more productive. Socialise While you are at the conference venue, speak to people. Ask questions, be interested in whoever you are speaking to. You get chances to talk to new friends at breakfast, dinner and every break between sessions. The only people that might not talk to you would be speakers that are about to go and give a session, in most cases speakers like peace and quiet before going on stage. Other than that the people around you are just waiting for someone to talk to them so make the first move. There is a whole lot going on outside of the conference hours and you should make an effort to join in with some of this too. At karaoke evenings or just out for a quiet drink with a few of the people you meet at the conference. Either way, don’t be a recluse and hide in your room or be alone out in the town. Don’t talk to people Once again this sounds wrong but stay with me. I have spoken to a number of speakers since Summit 2013 finished and they have all mentioned the time it has taken them to move about the conference venue due to people stopping them for a chat or to ask a question. 45 minutes to walk from a session room to the speaker room in one case. Wow. While none of the speakers were upset about this sort of delay I think delegates should take the situation into account and possibly defer their question to an email or to a time when the person they want is clearly less in demand. Give them a chance to enjoy the conference in the same way that you are, they may actually want to go to a session or just have a rest after giving their session – talking for 75 minutes is hard work, taking an extra 45 minutes right after is unbelievable. I certainly hope that they get good feedback on their sessions and perhaps if you spoke to a speaker outside a session you can give them a mention in the ‘any other comments’ part of the feedback, just to convey your gratitude for them giving up their time and expertise for free. Say thank you I just mentioned giving the speakers a clear, visible ‘thank you’ in the feedback but there are plenty of people that help make any conference the success it is that would really appreciate hearing that their efforts are valued. People on the registration desk, volunteers giving schedule guidance and directions, people on the community zone are all volunteers giving their time to help you have the best experience possible. Send an email to PASS and convey your thoughts about the work that was done. Maybe you want to be a volunteer next time so you could enquire how you get into that position at the same time. This isn’t an exclusive list and you may agree or disagree with the points I have made, please add anything you think is good advice in the comments. I’d like to finish by saying a huge thank you to all the people involved in planning, facilitating and executing the PASS Summit 2013, it was an excellent event and I know many others think it was a totally worthwhile event to attend.

  Read the article

• First PC Build (Part 1)

  - by Anthony Trudeau

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/tonyt/archive/2014/08/05/157959.aspxA couple of months ago I made the decision to build myself a new computer. The intended use is gaming and for using the last real version of Photoshop. I was motivated by the poor state of console gaming and a simple desire to do something I haven’t done before – build a PC from the ground up. I’ve been using PCs for more than two decades. I’ve replaced a component hear and there, but for the last 10 years or so I’ve only used laptops. Therefore, this article will be written from the perspective of someone familiar with PCs, but completely new at building. I’m not an expert and this is not a definitive guide for building a PC, but I do hope that it encourages you to try it yourself. Component List Research There was a lot of research necessary, because building a PC is completely new to me, and I haven’t kept up with what’s out there. The first thing you want to do is nail down what your goals are. Your goals are going to be driven by what you want to do with your computer and personal choice. Don’t neglect the second one, because if you’re doing this for fun you want to get what you want. In my case, I focused on three things: performance, longevity, and aesthetics. The performance aspect is important for gaming and Photoshop. This will drive what components you get. For example, heavy gaming use is going to drive your choice of graphics card. Longevity is relevant to me, because I don’t want to be changing things out anytime soon for the next hot game. The consequence of performance and longevity is cost. Finally, aesthetics was my next consideration. I could have just built a box, but it wouldn’t have been nearly as fun for me. Aesthetics might not be important to you. They are for me. I also like gadgets and that played into at least one purchase for this build. I used PC Part Picker to put together my component list. I found it invaluable during the process and I’d recommend it to everyone. One caveat is that I wouldn’t trust the compatibility aspects. It does a pretty good job of not steering you wrong, but do your own research. The rest of it isn’t really sexy. I started out with what appealed to me and then I made changes and additions as I dived deep into researching each component and interaction I could find. The resources I used are innumerable. I used reviews, product descriptions, forum posts (praises and problems), et al. to assist me. I also asked friends into gaming what they thought about my component list. And when I got near the end I posted my list to the Reddit /r/buildapc forum. I cannot stress the value of extra sets of eyeballs and first hand experiences. Some of the resources I used: PC Part Picker Tom’s Hardware bit-tech Reddit Purchase PC Part Picker favors certain vendors. You should look at others too. In my case I found their favorites to be the best. My priorities were out-the-door price and shipping time. I knew that once I started getting parts I’d want to start building. Luckily, I timed it well and everything arrived within the span of a few days. Here are my opinions on the vendors I ended up using in alphabetical order. Amazon.com is a good, reliable choice. They have excellent customer service in my experience, and I knew I wouldn’t have trouble with them. However, shipping time is often a problem when you use their free shipping unless you order expensive items (I’ve found items over $100 ship quickly). Ultimately though, price wasn’t always the best and their collection of sales tax in my state turned me off them. I did purchase my case from them. I ordered the mouse as well, but I cancelled after it was stuck four days in a “shipping soon” state. I purchased the mouse locally. Best Buy is not my favorite place to do business. There’s a lot of history with poor, uninterested sales representatives and they used to have a lot of bad anti-consumer policies. That’s a lot better now, but the bad taste is still in my mouth. I ended up purchasing the accessories from them including mouse (locally) and headphones. NCIX is a company that I’ve never heard of before. It popped up as a recommendation for my CPU cooler on PC Part Picker. I didn’t do a lot of research on the company, because their policy on you buying insurance for your orders turned me off. That policy makes it clear to me that the company finds me responsible for the shipment once it leaves their dock. That’s not right, and may run afoul of state laws. Regardless they shipped my CPU cooler quickly and I didn’t have a problem. NewEgg.com is a well known company. I had never done business with them, but I’m glad I did. They shipped quickly and provided good visibility over everything. The prices were also the best in most cases. My main complaint is that they have a lot of exchange only return policies on components. To their credit those policies are listed in the cart underneath each item. The visibility tells me that they’re not playing any shenanigans and made me comfortable dealing with that risk. The vast majority of what I ordered came from them. Coming Next In the next part I’ll tackle my build experience.

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, August 18, 2014

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, August 18, 2014Popular ReleasesMagick.NET: Magick.NET 7.0.0.0001: Magick.NET linked with ImageMagick 7-Beta.CMake Tools for Visual Studio: CMake Tools for Visual Studio 1.2: This release adds the following new features and bug fixes from CMake Tools for Visual Studio 1.1: Added support for CMake 3.0. Added support for word completion. Added IntelliSense support for the CMAKEHOSTSYSTEM_INFORMATION command. Fixed syntax highlighting for tokens beginning with escape sequences. Fixed issue uninstalling CMake Tools for Visual Studio after Visual Studio has been uninstalled.GW2 Personal Assistant Overlay: GW2 Personal Assistant Overlay 1.1: Overview1.1 is the second 'stable' release of the GW2 Personal Assistant Overlay. This version includes just a couple of very minor features and some minor bug fixes. For details regarding installation, setup, and general use, see Documentation. Note: If you were using a previous version, you will probably want to copy over the following user settings files: GW2PAO.DungeonSettings.xml GW2PAO.EventSettings.xml GW2PAO.WvWSettings.xml GW2PAO.ZoneCompletionSettings.xml New FeaturesAdded new "No...WallSwitch: WallSwitch 1.2.5: Version 1.2.5 Changes: Added support for sequential order in collage mode. Added option to display multiple images per switch in collage mode. Fixed bug where border width wasn't being loaded properly, and was reverting to default values. Fixed bug where sequential order was repeating images on multiple monitors. Decreased likelihood of random images being repeated.OpenCppCoverage: OpenCppCoverage 0.9.1: - Add Jenkins support. - Command line argument can be placed inside a config file. If you do not have Visual Studio C++ 2013 you need to download redistributable packages: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=40784Easy Backup Windows Service: Release 2.0 with CU: Fix log error when "To" directory not exist in fyle system. Force run program as administrator by default. Add 'everyday' schedule element. Update solution to VS 2013.Easy Backup Application: Release 2.0 with CU: Fix log error when "To" directory not exist in fyle system. Fix app location initialization. Force run program as administrator by default. Update solution to VS 2013.TEBookConverter: 1.5: Added: Turkish and French translations Added: A few interface changes Removed: SkinDynamulet: Dynamulet v0.1: DynamoDB Transaction Server v0.1Console parallel nunit tests runner: ConsoleUnitTestsRunner 1.03: bugfixingFluentx: Fluentx v1.5.3: Added few more extension methods.fastJSON: v2.1.2: 2.1.2 - bug fix circular referencesJPush.NET: JPush Server SDK 1.2.1 (For JPush V3): Assembly: 1.2.1.24728 JPush REST API Version: v3 JPush Documentation Reference .NET framework: v4.0 or above. Sample: class: JPushClientV3 2014 Augest 15th.SEToolbox: SEToolbox 01.043.008 Release 1: Changed ship/station names to use new DisplayName instead of Beacon/Antenna. Fixed issue with updated SE binaries 01.043.018 using new Voxel Material definitions.Google .Net API: Drive.Sample: Google .NET Client API – Drive.SampleInstructions for the Google .NET Client API – Drive.Sample</h2> http://code.google.com/p/google-api-dotnet-client/source/browse/?repo=samples#hg%2FDrive.SampleBrowse Source, or main file http://code.google.com/p/google-api-dotnet-client/source/browse/Drive.Sample/Program.cs?repo=samplesProgram.cs <h3>1. Checkout Instructions</h3> <p><b>Prerequisites:</b> Install Visual Studio, and <a href="http://mercurial.selenic.com/">Mercurial</a>.</p> ...FineUI - jQuery / ExtJS based ASP.NET Controls: FineUI v4.1.1: -??Form??????????????（???-5929）。 -?TemplateField??ExpandOnDoubleClick、ExpandOnEnter、ExpandToSelectRow????（LZOM-5932）。 -BodyPadding???????，??“5”“5 10”，???????????“5px”“5px 10px”。 -??TriggerBox?EnableEdit=false????，??????????????（Jango_Jing-5450）。 -???????????DataKeyNames???????????（yygy-6002）。 -????????????????????????（Gnid-6018）。 -??PageManager???AutoSizePanelID????，??????????????????（yygy-6008）。 -?FState???????????????，????????????????（????-5925）。 -??????OnClientClick???return?????????（FineU...DNN CMS Platform: 07.03.02: Major Highlights Fixed backwards compatibility issue with 3rd party control panels Fixed issue in the drag and drop functionality of the File Uploader in IE 11 and Safari Fixed issue where users were able to create pages with the same name Fixed issue that affected older versions of DNN that do not include the maxAllowedContentLength during upgrade Fixed issue that stopped some skins from being upgraded to newer versions Fixed issue that randomly showed an unexpected error during us...WordMat: WordMat for Mac: WordMat for Mac has a few limitations compared to the Windows version - Graph is not supported (Gnuplot, GeoGebra and Excel works) - Units are not supported yet (Coming up) The Mac version is yet as tested as the windows version.MFCMAPI: August 2014 Release: Build: 15.0.0.1042 Full release notes at SGriffin's blog. If you just want to run the MFCMAPI or MrMAPI, get the executables. If you want to debug them, get the symbol files and the source. The 64 bit builds will only work on a machine with Outlook 2010/2013 64 bit installed. All other machines should use the 32 bit builds, regardless of the operating system. Facebook BadgeEWSEditor: EwsEditor 1.10 Release: • Export and import of items as a full fidelity steam works - without proxy classes! - I used raw EWS POSTs. • Turned off word wrap for EWS request field in EWS POST windows. • Several windows with scrolling texts boxes were limiting content to 32k - I removed this restriction. • Split server timezone info off to separate menu item from the timezone info windows so that the timezone info window could be used without logging into a mailbox. • Lots of updates to the TimeZone window. • UserAgen...New Projectsballmon: ballmonExchange Database Recovery With and Without Log Files is Possible: This segments giving an overview of Exchange Server transaction log files. It describes process how users can recover their database with & without log filesFabs.Net: Ego tatmini ve gelisme amaçli yaptigim bir projedir.JacoChat: JacoChat is a simple chatting interface that uses my personal webserver as a "wall" for people to chat on.ManagedWin32: ManagedWin32 is a library that exposes the Win32 API to .NET applications.Open XML Extensions: The project provides additions to the Open XML SDK and related projects (e.g., PowerTools for Open XML), starting with MemoryStreams for Open XML Documents.orntic: Project for insurace companyTBOX: The Treasure Box Library: TBOX is a mutli-platform c library for unix, windows, mac, ios, android, etc. It includes asio, stream, container, algorithm, xml and other library modules.WeatherTS: Typescript weather application.?????@/????: ??????????????:????,????,????,???????,????????,??????:????????,?????! ?????????: ????????????????????,????????:??、??、???,?????????????????????! ????-??: ??????????????，????，???????????????。

  Read the article

• Let your Signature Experience drive IT-decision making

  - by Tania Le Voi

  Today’s CIO job description:  ‘’Align IT infrastructure and solutions with business goals and objectives ; AND while doing so reduce costs; BUT ALSO, be innovative, ensure the architectures are adaptable and agile as we need to act today on the changes that we may request tomorrow.”   Sound like an unachievable request? The fact is, reality dictates that CIO’s are put under this type of pressure to deliver more with less. In a past career phase I spent a few years as an IT Relationship Manager for a large Insurance company. This is a role that we see all too infrequently in many of our customers, and it’s a shame.  The purpose of this role was to build a bridge, a relationship between IT and the business. Key to achieving that goal was to ensure the same language was being spoken and more importantly that objectives were commonly understood - hence service and projects were delivered to time, to budget and actually solved the business problems. In reality IT and the business are already married, but the relationship is most often defined as ‘supplier’ of IT rather than a ‘trusted partner’. To deliver business value they need to understand how to work together effectively to attain this next level of partnership. The Business cannot compete if they do not get a new product to market ahead of the competition, or for example act in a timely manner to address a new industry problem such as a legislative change. An even better example is when the Application or Service fails and the Business takes a hit by bad publicity, being trending topics on social media and losing direct revenue from online channels. For this reason alone Business and IT need the alignment of their priorities and deliverables now more than ever! Take a look at Forrester’s recent study that found ‘many IT respondents considering themselves to be trusted partners of the business but their efforts are impaired by the inadequacy of tools and organizations’.  IT Meet the Business; Business Meet IT So what is going on? We talk about aligning the business with IT but the reality is it’s difficult to do. Like any relationship each side has different goals and needs and language can be a barrier; business vs. technology jargon! What if we could translate the needs of both sides into actionable information, backed by data both sides understand, presented in a meaningful way?  Well now we can with the Business-Driven Application Management capabilities in Oracle Enterprise Manager 12cR2! Enterprise Manager’s Business-Driven Application Management capabilities provide the information that IT needs to understand the impact of its decisions on business criteria.  No longer does IT need to be focused solely on speeds and feeds, performance and throughput – now IT can understand IT’s impact on business KPIs like inventory turns, order-to-cash cycle, pipeline-to-forecast, and similar.  Similarly, now the line of business can understand which IT services are most critical for the KPIs they care about. There are a good deal of resources on Oracle Technology Network that describe the functionality of these products, so I won’t’ rehash them here.  What I want to talk about is what you do with these products. What’s next after we meet? Where do you start? Step 1:  Identify the Signature Experience. This is THE business process (or set of processes) that is core to the business, the one that drives the economic engine, the process that a customer recognises the company brand for, reputation, the customer experience, the process that a CEO would state as his number one priority. The crème de la crème of your business! Once you have nailed this it gets easy as Enterprise Manager 12c makes it easy. Step 2:  Map the Signature Experience to underlying IT.  Taking the signature experience, map out the touch points of the components that play a part in ensuring this business transaction is successful end to end, think of it like mapping out a critical path; the applications, middleware, databases and hardware. Use the wealth of Enterprise Manager features such as Systems, Services, Business Application Targets and Business Transaction Management (BTM) to assist you. Adding Real User Experience Insight (RUEI) into the mix will make the end to end customer satisfaction story transparent. Work with the business and define meaningful key performance indicators (KPI’s) and thresholds to enable you to report and action upon. Step 3:  Observe the data over time.  You now have meaningful insight into every step enabling your signature experience and you understand the implication of that experience on your underlying IT.  Watch if for a few months, see what happens and reconvene with your business stakeholders and set clear and measurable targets which can re-define service levels.  Step 4:  Change the information about which you and the business communicate.  It’s amazing what happens when you and the business speak the same language.  You’ll be able to make more informed business and IT decisions. From here IT can identify where/how budget is spent whether on the level of support, performance, capacity, HA, DR, certification etc. IT SLA’s no longer need be focused on metrics such as %availability but structured around business process requirements. The power of this way of thinking doesn’t end here. IT staff get to see and understand how their own role contributes to the business making them accountable for the business service. Take a step further and appraise your staff on the business competencies that are linked to the service availability. For the business, the language barrier is removed by producing targeted reports on the signature experience core to the business and therefore key to the CEO. Chargeback or show back becomes easier to justify as the ‘cost of day per outage’ can be more easily calculated; the business will be able to translate the cost to the business to the cost/value of the underlying IT that supports it. Used this way, Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c is a key enabler to a harmonious relationship between the end customer the business and IT to deliver ultimate service and satisfaction. Just engage with the business upfront, make the signature experience visible and let Enterprise Manager 12c do the rest. In the next blog entry we will cover some of the Enterprise Manager features mentioned to enable you to implement this new way of working.  

  Read the article

• JavaOne Session Report: “50 Tips in 50 Minutes for GlassFish Fans”

  - by Janice J. Heiss

  At JavaOne 2012 on Monday, Oracle’s Engineer Chris Kasso, and Technology Evangelist Arun Gupta, presented a head-spinning session (CON4701) in which they offered 50 tips for GlassFish fans. Kasso and Gupta alternated back and forth with each presenting 10 tips at a time. An audience of about (appropriately) 50 attentive and appreciative developers was on hand in what has to be one of the most information-packed sessions ever at JavaOne!Aside: I experienced one of the quiet joys of JavaOne when, just before the session began, I spotted Java Champion and JavaOne Rock Star Adam Bien sitting nearby – Adam is someone I have been fortunate to know for many years.GlassFish is a freely available, commercially supported Java EE reference implementation. The session prioritized quantity of tips over depth of information and offered tips that are intended for both seasoned and new users, that are meant to increase the range of functional options available to GlassFish users. The focus was on lesser-known dimensions of GlassFish. Attendees were encouraged to pursue tips that contained new information for them. All 50 tips can be accessed here.Below are several examples of more elaborate tips and a final practical tip on how to get in touch with these folks. Tip #1: Using the login Command * To execute a remote command with asadmin you must provide the admin's user name and password.* The login command allows you to store the login credentials to be reused in subsequent commands.* Can be logged into multiple servers (distinguish by host and port). Example:     % asadmin --host ouch login     Enter admin user name [default: admin]>     Enter admin password>     Login information relevant to admin user name [admin]     for host [ouch] and admin port [4848] stored at     [/Users/ckasso/.asadminpass] successfully.     Make sure that this file remains protected.     Information stored in this file will be used by     asadmin commands to manage the associated domain.     Command login executed successfully.     % asadmin --host ouch list-clusters     c1 not running     Command list-clusters executed successfully.Tip #4: Using the AS_DEBUG Env Variable* Environment variable to control client side debug output* Exposes: command processing info URL used to access the command:                           http://localhost:4848/__asadmin/uptime Raw response from the server Example:   % export AS_DEBUG=true  % asadmin uptime  CLASSPATH= ./../glassfish/modules/admin-cli.jar  Commands: [uptime]  asadmin extension directory: /work/gf-3.1.2/glassfish3/glassfish/lib/asadm      ------- RAW RESPONSE  ---------   Signature-Version: 1.0   message: Up 7 mins 10 secs   milliseconds_value: 430194   keys: milliseconds   milliseconds_name: milliseconds   use-main-children-attribute: false   exit-code: SUCCESS  ------- RAW RESPONSE  ---------Tip #11: Using Password Aliases * Some resources require a password to access (e.g. DB, JMS, etc.).* The resource connector is defined in the domain.xml.Example:Suppose the DB resource you wish to access requires an entry like this in the domain.xml:     <property name="password" value="secretp@ssword"/>But company policies do not allow you to store the password in the clear.* Use password aliases to avoid storing the password in the domain.xml* Create a password alias:     % asadmin create-password-alias DB_pw_alias     Enter the alias password>     Enter the alias password again>     Command create-password-alias executed successfully.* The password is stored in domain's encrypted keystore.* Now update the password value in the domain.xml:     <property name="password" value="${ALIAS=DB_pw_alias}"/>Tip #21: How to Start GlassFish as a Service * Configuring a server to automatically start at boot can be tedious.* Each platform does it differently.* The create-service command makes this easy.   Windows: creates a Windows service Linux: /etc/init.d script Solaris: Service Management Facility (SMF) service * Must execute create-service with admin privileges.* Can be used for the DAS or instances* Try it first with the --dry-run option.* There is a (unsupported) _delete-serverExample:     # asadmin create-service domain1     The Service was created successfully. Here are the details:     Name of the service:application/GlassFish/domain1     Type of the service:Domain     Configuration location of the service:/work/gf-3.1.2.2/glassfish3/glassfish/domains     Manifest file location on the system:/var/svc/manifest/application/GlassFish/domain1_work_gf-3.1.2.2_glassfish3_glassfish_domains/Domain-service-smf.xml.     You have created the service but you need to start it yourself. Here are the most typical Solaris commands of interest:     * /usr/bin/svcs  -a | grep domain1  // status     * /usr/sbin/svcadm enable domain1 // start     * /usr/sbin/svcadm disable domain1 // stop     * /usr/sbin/svccfg delete domain1 // uninstallTip #34: Posting a Command via REST* Use wget/curl to execute commands on the DAS.Example:  Deploying an application   % curl -s -S \       -H 'Accept: application/json' -X POST \       -H 'X-Requested-By: anyvalue' \       -F id=@/path/to/application.war \       -F force=true http://localhost:4848/management/domain/applications/application* Use @ before a file name to tell curl to send the file's contents.* The force option tells GlassFish to force the deployment in case the application is already deployed.* Use wget/curl to execute commands on the DAS.Example:  Deploying an application   % curl -s -S \       -H 'Accept: application/json' -X POST \       -H 'X-Requested-By: anyvalue' \       -F id=@/path/to/application.war \       -F force=true http://localhost:4848/management/domain/applications/application* Use @ before a file name to tell curl to send the file's contents.* The force option tells GlassFish to force the deployment in case the application is already deployed.Tip #46: Upgrading to a Newer Version * Upgrade applications and configuration from an earlier version* Upgrade Tool: Side-by-side upgrade– GUI: asupgrade– CLI: asupgrade --c– What happens ?* Copies older source domain -> target domain directory* asadmin start-domain --upgrade* Update Tool and pkg: In-place upgrade– GUI: updatetool, install all Available Updates– CLI: pkg image-update– Upgrade the domain* asadmin start-domain --upgradeTip #50: How to reach us?* GlassFish Forum: http://www.java.net/forums/glassfish/glassfish* [email protected]* @glassfish* facebook.com/glassfish* youtube.com/GlassFishVideos* blogs.oracle.com/theaquariumArun Gupta acknowledged that their method of presentation was experimental and actively solicited feedback about the session. The best way to reach them is on the GlassFish user forum.In addition, check out Gupta’s new book Java EE 6 Pocket Guide.

  Read the article

• OS8- AK8- The bad news...

  - by Steve Tunstall

  Ok I told you I would give you the bad news of AK8 to go along with all the cool new stuff, so here it is. It's not that bad, really, just things you need to be aware of. First, the 2013.1 code is being called OS8, AK8 and 2013.1 by different people. I mean different people INSIDE Oracle!! It was supposed to be easy, but it never is. So for the rest of this blog entry, I'm calling it AK8. AK8 is not compatible with the 7x10 series. Ever. The 7x10 series is not supported with AK8, and if you try to upgrade one, it will fail at the healthcheck. All 7x20 series, all of them regardless of age, are supported with AK8. Drive trays. Let's talk about drive trays and SAS cards. The older drive trays for the 7x20 series were called the "Riverwalk 2" or "DS2" trays. They were technically the "J4410" series JBODs that Sun used to sell a la carte before we stopped selling JBODs. Don't get me started on that, it still makes me mad. We used these for many years, and you can still buy them right now until December 15th, 2013, when they will no longer be sold. The DS2 tray only came as a 4u, 24 drive shelf. It held 3.5" drives, and you had a choice of 2TB, 3TB, 300GB or 600GB drives. The SAS HBA in the 7x20 series was called a "Thebe" card, with a part # of 7105394. The 7420, for example, came standard with two of these "Thebe" cards for connecting to the disk trays. Two Thebe cards could handle up to 12 trays, so one would add two more cards to go to 24 trays, or have up to six Thebe cards to handle 36 trays. This card was for external SAS only. It did not connect to the internal OS drives or the Readzillas, both of which used the internal SCSI controller of the server. These Riverwalk 2 trays ARE supported with AK8. You can upgrade your older 7420 or 7320, no problem, as-is. The much older Riverwalk 1 trays or J4400 trays are NOT supported by AK8. However, they were only used by the 7x10 series, and we already said that the 7x10 series was not supported. Here's where it gets tricky. Since last January, we have been selling the new style disk trays. We call them the "DE2-24P" and the "DE2-24C" trays. The "C" tray is for capacity drives, which are 3.5" 3TB or 4TB drives. The "P" trays are for performance drives, which are 2.5" 300GB and 900GB drives. These trays are NOT Riverwalk 2 trays, even though the "C" series may kind of look like it. Different manufacturer and different firmware. They are not new. Like I said, we've been selling them with the 7x20 series since last January. They are the only disk trays we will be selling going forward. Of course, AK8 supports them. So what's the problem? The problem is going to be for people who have to mix drive trays. Remember, your older 7x20 series has Thebe SAS2 HBAs. These have 2 SAS ports per card.  The new ZS3-2 and ZS3-4 systems, however, have the new "Thebe2" SAS2 HBAs. These Thebe2 cards have 4 ports per card. This is very cool, as we can now do more SAS channels with less cards. Instead of needing 4 SAS cards to grow to 24 trays like we did with the old Thebe cards, I can now do 24 trays with only 2 Thebe2 cards. This means more IO slots for fun things like Infiniband and 10G. So far, so good, right? These Thebe2 cards work with any disk tray. You can even mix older DS2 trays with the newer DE2 trays in the same system, as long as you have Thebe2 cards. Ah, there's your problem. You don't have Thebe2 cards in your old 7420, do you? Well, I told you the bad news wasn't that bad, right? We can take out your Thebe cards and replace them with Thebe2. You can then plug your older DS2 trays right back in, and also now get newer DE2 trays going forward. However, it's important that the trays are on different SAS channels. You can mix them in the same system, but not on the same channel. Ask your local SC if you need help with the new cable layout. By the way, the new ZS3-2 and ZS3-4 systems also include a new IO card called "Erie" cards. These are for INTERNAL SAS to the OS drives and the Readzillas. So those are now SAS2 instead of SATA like the older models. Yes, the Erie card uses an IO slot, but that's OK, because the Thebe2 cards allow us to use less SAS HBAs to grow the system, right? That's it. Not too much bad news and really not that bad. AK8 does not support the 7x10 series, and you may need new Thebe2 cards in your older systems if you want to add on newer DE2 trays. I think we can all agree that there are worse things out there. Like our Congress.   Next up.... More good news and cool AK8 tricks. Such as virtual NICS. 

  Read the article

• Delight and Excite

  - by Applications User Experience

  Mick McGee, CEO & President, EchoUser Editor’s Note: EchoUser is a User Experience design firm in San Francisco and a member of the Oracle Usability Advisory Board. Mick and his staff regularly consult on Oracle Applications UX projects. Being part of a user experience design firm, we have the luxury of working with a lot of great people across many great companies. We get to help people solve their problems.  At least we used to. The basic design challenge is still the same; however, the goal is not necessarily to solve “problems” anymore; it is, “I want our products to delight and excite!” The question for us as UX professionals is how to design to those goals, and then how to assess them from a usability perspective. I’m not sure where I first heard “delight and excite” (A book? blog post? Facebook  status? Steve Jobs quote?), but now I hear these listed as user experience goals all the time. In particular, somewhat paradoxically, I routinely hear them in enterprise software conversations. And when asking these same enterprise companies what will make the project successful, we very often hear, “Make it like Apple.” In past days, it was “make it like Yahoo (or Amazon or Google“) but now Apple is the common benchmark. Steve Jobs and Apple were not secrets, but with Jobs’ passing and Apple becoming the world’s most valuable company in the last year, the impact of great design and experience is suddenly very widespread. In particular, users’ expectations have gone way up. Being an enterprise company is no shield to the general expectations that users now have, for all products. Designing a “Minimum Viable Product” The user experience challenge has historically been, to echo the words of Eric Ries (author of Lean Startup) , to create a “minimum viable product”: the proverbial, “make it good enough”. But, in our profession, the “minimum viable” part of that phrase has oftentimes, unfortunately, referred to the design and user experience. Technology typically dominated the focus of the biggest, most successful companies. Few have had the laser focus of Apple to also create and sell design and user experience alongside great technology. But now that Apple is the most valuable company in the world, copying their success is a common undertaking. Great design is now a premium offering that everyone wants, from the one-person startup to the largest companies, consumer and enterprise. This emerging business paradigm will have significant impact across the user experience design process and profession. One area that particularly interests me is, how are we going to evaluate these new emerging “delight and excite” experiences, which are further customized to each particular domain? How to Measure “Delight and Excite” Traditional usability measures of task completion rate, assists, time, and errors are still extremely useful in many situations; however, they are too blunt to offer much insight into emerging experiences “Satisfaction” is usually assessed in user testing, in roughly equivalent importance to the above objective metrics. Various surveys and scales have provided ways to measure satisfying UX, with whatever questions they include. However, to meet the demands of new business goals and keep users at the center of design and development processes, we have to explore new methods to better capture custom-experience goals and emotion-driven user responses. We have had success assessing custom experiences, including “delight and excite”, by employing a variety of user testing methods that tend to combine formative and summative techniques (formative being focused more on identifying usability issues and ways to improve design, and summative focused more on metrics). Our most successful tool has been one we’ve been using for a long time, Magnitude Estimation Technique (MET). But it’s not necessarily about MET as a measure, rather how it is created. Caption: For one client, EchoUser did two rounds of testing.  Each test was a mix of performing representative tasks and gathering qualitative impressions. Each user participated in an in-person moderated 1-on-1 session for 1 hour, using a testing set-up where they held the phone. The primary goal was to identify usability issues and recommend design improvements. MET is based on a definition of the desired experience, which users will then use to rate items of interest (usually tasks in a usability test). In other words, a custom experience definition needs to be created. This can then be used to measure satisfaction in accomplishing tasks; “delight and excite”; or anything else from strategic goals, user demands, or elsewhere. For reference, our standard MET definition in usability testing is: “User experience is your perception of how easy to use, well designed and productive an interface is to complete tasks.” Articulating the User Experience We’ve helped construct experience definitions for several clients to better match their business goals. One example is a modification of the above that was needed for a company that makes medical-related products: “User experience is your perception of how easy to use, well-designed, productive and safe an interface is for conducting tasks. ‘Safe’ is how free an environment (including devices, software, facilities, people, etc.) is from danger, risk, and injury.” Another example is from a company that is pushing hard to incorporate “delight” into their enterprise business line: “User experience is your perception of a product’s ease of use and learning, satisfaction and delight in design, and ability to accomplish objectives.” I find the last one particularly compelling in that there is little that identifies the experience as being for a highly technical enterprise application. That definition could easily be applied to any number of consumer products. We have gone further than the above, including “sexy” and “cool” where decision-makers insisted they were part of the desired experience. We also applied it to completely different experiences where the “interface” was, for example, riding public transit, the “tasks” were train rides, and we followed the participants through the train-riding journey and rated various aspects accordingly: “A good public transportation experience is a cost-effective way of reliably, conveniently, and safely getting me to my intended destination on time.” To construct these definitions, we’ve employed both bottom-up and top-down approaches, depending on circumstances. For bottom-up, user inputs help dictate the terms that best fit the desired experience (usually by way of cluster and factor analysis). Top-down depends on strategic, visionary goals expressed by upper management that we then attempt to integrate into product development (e.g., “delight and excite”). We like a combination of both approaches to push the innovation envelope, but still be mindful of current user concerns. Hopefully the idea of crafting your own custom experience, and a way to measure it, can provide you with some ideas how you can adapt your user experience needs to whatever company you are in. Whether product-development or service-oriented, nearly every company is ultimately providing a user experience. The Bottom Line Creating great experiences may have been popularized by Steve Jobs and Apple, but I’ll be honest, it’s a good feeling to be moving from “good enough” to “delight and excite,” despite the challenge that entails. In fact, it’s because of that challenge that we will expand what we do as UX professionals to help deliver and assess those experiences. I’m excited to see how we, Oracle, and the rest of the industry will live up to that challenge.

  Read the article

• What's the best/most efficent way to create a semi-intelligent AI for a tic tac toe game?

  - by Link

  basically I am attempting to make a a efficient/smallish C game of Tic-Tac-Toe. I have implemented everything other then the AI for the computer so far. my squares are basically structs in an array with an assigned value based on the square. For example s[1].value = 1; therefore it's a x, and then a value of 3 would be a o. My question is whats the best way to create a semi-decent game playing AI for my tic-tac-toe game? I don't really want to use minimax, since It's not what I need. So how do I avoid a a lot of if statments and make it more efficient. Here is the rest of my code: #include <stdio.h> #include <stdlib.h> #include <string.h> #include <time.h> struct state{ // defined int state; // 0 is tie, 1 is user loss, 2 is user win, 3 is ongoing game int moves; }; struct square{ // one square of the board int value; // 1 is x, 3 is o char sign; // no space used }; struct square s[9]; //set up the struct struct state gamestate = {0,0}; //nothing void setUpGame(){ // setup the game int i = 0; for(i = 0; i < 9; i++){ s[i].value = 0; s[i].sign = ' '; } gamestate.moves=0; printf("\nHi user! You're \"x\"! I'm \"o\"! Good Luck :)\n"); } void displayBoard(){// displays the game board printf("\n %c | %c | %c\n", s[6].sign, s[7].sign, s[8].sign); printf("-----------\n"); printf(" %c | %c | %c\n", s[3].sign, s[4].sign, s[5].sign); printf("-----------\n"); printf(" %c | %c | %c\n\n", s[0].sign, s[1].sign, s[2].sign); } void getHumanMove(){ // get move from human int i; while(1){ printf(">>:"); char line[255]; // input the move to play fgets(line, sizeof(line), stdin); while(sscanf(line, "%d", &i) != 1) { //1 match of defined specifier on input line printf("Sorry, that's not a valid move!\n"); fgets(line, sizeof(line), stdin); } if(s[i-1].value != 0){printf("Sorry, That moves already been taken!\n\n");continue;} break; } s[i-1].value = 1; s[i-1].sign = 'x'; gamestate.moves++; } int sum(int x, int y, int z){return(x*y*z);} void getCompMove(){ // get the move from the computer } void checkWinner(){ // check the winner int i; for(i = 6; i < 9; i++){ // check cols if((sum(s[i].value,s[i-3].value,s[i-6].value)) == 8){printf("The Winner is o!\n");gamestate.state=1;} if((sum(s[i].value,s[i-3].value,s[i-6].value)) == 1){printf("The Winner is x!\n");gamestate.state=2;} } for(i = 0; i < 7; i+=3){ // check rows if((sum(s[i].value,s[i+1].value,s[i+2].value)) == 8){printf("The Winner is o!\n");gamestate.state=1;} if((sum(s[i].value,s[i+1].value,s[i+2].value)) == 1){printf("The Winner is x!\n");gamestate.state=2;} } if((sum(s[0].value,s[4].value,s[8].value)) == 8){printf("The Winner is o!\n");gamestate.state=1;} if((sum(s[0].value,s[4].value,s[8].value)) == 1){printf("The Winner is x!\n");gamestate.state=2;} if((sum(s[2].value,s[4].value,s[6].value)) == 8){printf("The Winner is o!\n");gamestate.state=1;} if((sum(s[2].value,s[4].value,s[6].value)) == 1){printf("The Winner is x!\n");gamestate.state=2;} } void playGame(){ // start playing the game gamestate.state = 3; //set-up the gamestate srand(time(NULL)); int temp = (rand()%2) + 1; if(temp == 2){ // if two comp goes first temp = (rand()%2) + 1; if(temp == 2){ s[4].value = 2; s[4].sign = 'o'; gamestate.moves++; }else{ s[2].value = 2; s[2].sign = 'o'; gamestate.moves++; } } displayBoard(); while(gamestate.state == 3){ if(gamestate.moves<10); getHumanMove(); if(gamestate.moves<10); getCompMove(); checkWinner(); if(gamestate.state == 3 && gamestate.moves==9){ printf("The game is a tie :p\n"); break; } displayBoard(); } } int main(int argc, const char *argv[]){ printf("Welcome to Tic Tac Toe\nby The Elite Noob\nEnter 1-9 To play a move, standard numpad\n1 is bottom-left, 9 is top-right\n"); while(1){ // while game is being played printf("\nPress 1 to play a new game, or any other number to exit;\n>>:"); char line[255]; // input whether or not to play the game fgets(line, sizeof(line), stdin); int choice; // user's choice about playing or not while(sscanf(line, "%d", &choice) != 1) { //1 match of defined specifier on input line printf("Sorry, that's not a valid option!\n"); fgets(line, sizeof(line), stdin); } if(choice == 1){ setUpGame(); // set's up the game playGame(); // Play a Game }else {break;} // exit the application } printf("\nThank's For playing!\nHave a good Day!\n"); return 0; }

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229  | Next Page >