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• Messing with the Team

  - by Robert May

  Good Product Owners will help the team be the best that they can be.  Bad product owners will mess with the team and won’t care about the team.  If you’re a product owner, seek to do good and avoid bad behavior at all costs.  Remember, this is for YOUR benefit and you have much power given to you.  Use that power wisely. Scope Creep The product owner has several tools at his disposal to inject scope into an iteration.  First, the product owner can use defects to inject scope.  To do this, they’ll tell the team what functionality that they want to see in a feature.  Then, after the feature is developed, the Product Owner will decide that they don’t really like how the functionality behaves.  To change it, rather than creating a new story, they’ll add a defect.  The functionality is correct, as designed, but the Product Owner doesn’t like it.  By creating the defect, the Product Owner destroys the trust that the team has of the product owner.  They may not be able to count the story, because the Product Owner changed the story in the iteration, and the team then ends up looking like they have low velocity for something over which they have no control.  This is bad.  One way to deal with this is to add “Product Owner Time” to the iteration.  This will slow the velocity, but then the ScrumMaster can tell stake holders that this time is strictly in place to deal with bad behavior of the Product Owner. Another mechanism often used to inject Scope is the concept of directed development.  Outside of planning, stand-ups, or any other meeting, the Product Owner will take a developer aside and ask them to complete a task for them.  This is bad!  The team should be allocating all of their time to development.  If the Product Owner asks for a favor, then time that would normally be used for development will be used for a pet project of the Product Owner and the team will not get credit for this work.  Selfish product owners do this, and I typically see people who were “managers” do this behavior.  Authoritarian command and control development environments also see this happen.  The best thing that can happen is for the team member to report the issue to the ScrumMaster and the ScrumMaster to get very aggressive with management and the Product Owner to try and stop the behavior.  This may result in the ScrumMaster being fired, but if the behavior continues, Scrum is doomed.  This problem is especially bad in cases where the team member’s direct supervisor is the Product Owner.  I don’t recommend that the Product Owner or ScrumMaster have a direct report relationship with team members, since team members need the ability to say no.  To work around this issue, team members need to say no.  If that fails, team members need to add extra time to the iteration to deal with the scope creep injection and accept the lower velocity. As discussed above, another mechanism for injecting scope is by changing acceptance tests after the work is complete.  This is similar to adding defects to change scope and is bad.  To get around, add time for Product Owner uncertainty to the iteration and make sure that stakeholders are aware of the need to add this time because of the Product Owner. Refusing to Prioritize Refusing to prioritize causes chaos for the team.  From the team’s perspective, things that are not important will be worked on while things that the team knows are vital will be ignored.  A poor Product Owner will often pick the stories for the iteration on a whim.  This leads to the team working on many different aspects of the product and results in a lower velocity, since each iteration the team must switch context to the new area of development. The team will also experience confusion about priorities.  In one iteration, Feature X was the highest priority and had to be done.  Then, the following iteration, even though parts of Feature X still need to be completed, no stories to address them will be in the iteration.  However, three iterations later, Feature X will again become high priority. This will cause the team to not trust the Product Owner, and eventually, they’ll stop caring about the features they implement.  They won’t know what is important, so to insulate themselves from the ever changing chaos, they’ll become apathetic to all features.  Team members are some of the most creative people in a company.  By losing their engagement, the company is going to have a substandard product because the passion for the product won’t be in the team. Other signs that the Product Owner refuses to prioritize is that no one outside of the product owner will be consulted on priorities.  Additionally, the product, release, and iteration backlogs will be weak or non-existent. Dealing with this issue is not easy.  This really isn’t something the team can fix, short of taking over the role of Product Owner themselves.  An appeal to the stake holders might work, but only if the Product Owner isn’t a “manager” themselves.  The ScrumMaster needs to protect the team and do what they can to either get the Product Owner to prioritize or have the Product Owner replaced. Managing the Team A Product Owner that is also the “boss” of team members is a Scrum team that is waiting to fail.  If your boss tells you to do something, failing to do that something can cause you to be fired.  The team needs the ability to tell the Product Owner NO.  If the product owner introduces scope creep, the team has a responsibility to tell the Product Owner no.  If the Product Owner tries to get the team to commit to more than they can accomplish in an iteration, the team needs the ability to tell the Product Owner no. If the Product Owner is your boss and determines your pay increases, you’re probably not going to ever tell them no, and Scrum will likely fail.  The team can’t do much in this situation. Another aspect of “managing the team” that often happens is the Product Owner tries to tell the team how to develop the stories that are in the iteration.  This is one reason why I recommend that Product Owners are NOT technical people.  That way, the team can come up with the tasks that are needed to accomplish the stories and the Product Owner won’t know better.  If the Product Owner is technical, the ScrumMaster will need to take great care to protect the team from the ScrumMaster changing how the team thinks they need to implement the stories. Product Owners can also try to manage the team by their body language.  If the team says a task is going to take 6 hours to complete, and the Product Owner disagrees, they will use some kind of sour body language to indicate this disagreement.  In weak teams, this may cause the team to revise their estimate down, which will result in them taking longer than estimated and may result in them missing the iteration.  The ScrumMaster will need to make sure that the Product Owner doesn’t send such messages and that the team ignores them and estimates what they REALLY think it will take to complete the tasks.  Forcing the team to deal with such items in the retrospective can be helpful. Absenteeism The team is completely dependent upon the Product Owner to develop features for the customer.  The Product Owner IS the voice of the customer and without them, the team will lack direction.  Being the Product Owner is a full time job!  If the Product Owner cannot dedicate daily time with the team, a different product owner should be found. The Product Owner needs to attend every stand-up, planning meeting, showcase, and retrospective that the team has.  The team also must be able to have instant communication with the product owner.  They must not be required to schedule meetings to speak with their product owner.  The team must be the highest priority task that the Product Owner has. The best way to work around an absent Product Owner is to appoint a new Product Owner in the team.  This person will be responsible for making the decisions that the Product Owner should be making and to act as the liaison to the absent Product Owner.  If the delegate Product Owner doesn’t have authority to make decisions for the team, Scrum will fail.  If the Product Owner is absent, the ScrumMaster should seek to have that Product Owner replaced by someone who has the time and ability to be a real Product Owner. Making it Personal Too often Product Owners will become convinced that their ideas are the ones that matter and that anyone who disagrees is making a personal attack on them.  Remember that Product Owners will inherently be at odds with many people, simply because they have the need to prioritize.  Others will frequently question prioritization because they only see part of the picture that Product Owners face. Product Owners must have a thick skin and think egos.  If they don’t, they tend to make things personal, which causes them to become emotional and causes them to take actions that can destroy the trust that team members have in the Product Owner. If a Product Owner is making things person, the best thing that team members can do is reassure them that its not personal, but be firm about doing what is best for the Company and for the users.  The ScrumMaster should also spend significant time coaching the Product Owner on how to not react emotionally and how to accept criticism without becoming defensive. Conclusion I’m sure there are other ways that a Product Owner can mess with the team, but these are the most common that I’ve seen.  I would encourage all Product Owners to seek to be a good Product Owner.  If you find yourself behaving in any of the bad product owner ways, change your behavior today!  Your team will thank you. Remember, being Product Owner is very difficult!  Product Owner is one of the most difficult roles in Scrum.  However, it can also be one of the most rewarding roles in Scrum, since Product Owners literally see their ideas brought to life on the computer screen.  Product Owners need to be very patient, even in the face of criticism and need to be willing to make tough decisions on priority, but then not become offended when others disagree with those decisions.  Companies should spend the time needed to find the right product owners for their teams.  Doing so will only help the company to write better software. Technorati Tags: Scrum,Product Owner

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• Speaker at developer conferences and user group meetings

  Catching up on a couple of sessions I did in the past. This article gives an overview of some of my activities. Mainly at the annual German Visual FoxPro Developer Conference also known as SQL-Server & ASP.NET Conference in Frankfurt. The below listed entries are excerpts from the original Conference Coverage documents you'll find on UniversalThread. German Visual FoxPro Developer Conference 2002 (1 session - Vendor session about Active FoxPro Pages 3.0) German Visual FoxPro Developer Conference 2003 (2.5 sessions - Visual FoxPro running on Linux) German Visual FoxPro Developer Conference 2004 (4 sessions - 2x Active FoxPro Pages, VFP on Linux, and VFP using additional databases) German Visual FoxPro Developer Conference 2005 (4 sessions - RegEx, XML, XSLT, and using free (as in beer) development tools) German Visual FoxPro Developer Conference 2006 (3 sessions - .NET interop via COM, writing own CLR host in VFP, and Active FoxPro Pages) Furthermore, I did a couple of (hopefully) interesting sessions at various user group meetings in Speyer and Stuttgart. A more comprehensive list is available under Presentations (in German language). And last but not least, back in May 2005 Microsoft Germany invited me to host a WebCast for MSDN on how to use 'Visual FoxPro mit Visual Studio 2005'. Unfortunately, I was too unexperienced and too nervous (first time ever), we experienced technical issues with the microphone, and the obviously low quality of recording demanded to replace it by a whole series on Visual FoxPro 9.0. The webcast covered the same topics I already described in other articles here on my blog. Despite the desaster I'd like to thank Ralf Westphal for his kind words afterwards - I really felt bad. Eventually, you might ask yourself why it stopped by the end of 2006... Well, new chapter in my life: Mauritius!

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• Revisiting ANTS Performance Profiler 7.4

  - by James Michael Hare

  Last year, I did a small review on the ANTS Performance Profiler 6.3, now that it’s a year later and a major version number higher, I thought I’d revisit the review and revise my last post. This post will take the same examples as the original post and update them to show what’s new in version 7.4 of the profiler. Background A performance profiler’s main job is to keep track of how much time is typically spent in each unit of code. This helps when we have a program that is not running at the performance we expect, and we want to know where the program is experiencing issues. There are many profilers out there of varying capabilities. Red Gate’s typically seem to be the very easy to “jump in” and get started with very little training required. So let’s dig into the Performance Profiler. I’ve constructed a very crude program with some obvious inefficiencies. It’s a simple program that generates random order numbers (or really could be any unique identifier), adds it to a list, sorts the list, then finds the max and min number in the list. Ignore the fact it’s very contrived and obviously inefficient, we just want to use it as an example to show off the tool: 1: // our test program 2: public static class Program 3: { 4: // the number of iterations to perform 5: private static int _iterations = 1000000; 6: 7: // The main method that controls it all 8: public static void Main() 9: { 10: var list = new List<string>(); 11: 12: for (int i = 0; i < _iterations; i++) 13: { 14: var x = GetNextId(); 15: 16: AddToList(list, x); 17: 18: var highLow = GetHighLow(list); 19: 20: if ((i % 1000) == 0) 21: { 22: Console.WriteLine("{0} - High: {1}, Low: {2}", i, highLow.Item1, highLow.Item2); 23: Console.Out.Flush(); 24: } 25: } 26: } 27: 28: // gets the next order id to process (random for us) 29: public static string GetNextId() 30: { 31: var random = new Random(); 32: var num = random.Next(1000000, 9999999); 33: return num.ToString(); 34: } 35: 36: // add it to our list - very inefficiently! 37: public static void AddToList(List<string> list, string item) 38: { 39: list.Add(item); 40: list.Sort(); 41: } 42: 43: // get high and low of order id range - very inefficiently! 44: public static Tuple<int,int> GetHighLow(List<string> list) 45: { 46: return Tuple.Create(list.Max(s => Convert.ToInt32(s)), list.Min(s => Convert.ToInt32(s))); 47: } 48: } So let’s run it through the profiler and see what happens! Visual Studio Integration First, let’s look at how the ANTS profilers integrate with Visual Studio’s menu system. Once you install the ANTS profilers, you will get an ANTS menu item with several options: Notice that you can either Profile Performance or Launch ANTS Performance Profiler. These sound similar but achieve two slightly different actions: Profile Performance: this immediately launches the profiler with all defaults selected to profile the active project in Visual Studio. Launch ANTS Performance Profiler: this launches the profiler much the same way as starting it from the Start Menu. The profiler will pre-populate the application and path information, but allow you to change the settings before beginning the profile run. So really, the main difference is that Profile Performance immediately begins profiling with the default selections, where Launch ANTS Performance Profiler allows you to change the defaults and attach to an already-running application. Let’s Fire it Up! So when you fire up ANTS either via Start Menu or Launch ANTS Performance Profiler menu in Visual Studio, you are presented with a very simple dialog to get you started: Notice you can choose from many different options for application type. You can profile executables, services, web applications, or just attach to a running process. In fact, in version 7.4 we see two new options added: ASP.NET Web Application (IIS Express) SharePoint web application (IIS) So this gives us an additional way to profile ASP.NET applications and the ability to profile SharePoint applications as well. You can also choose your level of detail in the Profiling Mode drop down. If you choose Line-Level and method-level timings detail, you will get a lot more detail on the method durations, but this will also slow down profiling somewhat. If you really need the profiler to be as unintrusive as possible, you can change it to Sample method-level timings. This is performing very light profiling, where basically the profiler collects timings of a method by examining the call-stack at given intervals. Which method you choose depends a lot on how much detail you need to find the issue and how sensitive your program issues are to timing. So for our example, let’s just go with the line and method timing detail. So, we check that all the options are correct (if you launch from VS2010, the executable and path are filled in already), and fire it up by clicking the [Start Profiling] button. Profiling the Application Once you start profiling the application, you will see a real-time graph of CPU usage that will indicate how much your application is using the CPU(s) on your system. During this time, you can select segments of the graph and bookmark them, giving them mnemonic names. This can be useful if you want to compare performance in one part of the run to another part of the run. Notice that once you select a block, it will give you the call tree breakdown for that selection only, and the relative performance of those calls. Once you feel you have collected enough information, you can click [Stop Profiling] to stop the application run and information collection and begin a more thorough analysis. Analyzing Method Timings So now that we’ve halted the run, we can look around the GUI and see what we can see. By default, the times are shown in terms of percentage of time of the total run of the application, though you can change it in the View menu item to milliseconds, ticks, or seconds as well. This won’t affect the percentages of methods, it only affects what units the times are shown. Notice also that the major hotspot seems to be in a method without source, ANTS Profiler will filter these out by default, but you can right-click on the line and remove the filter to see more detail. This proves especially handy when a bottleneck is due to a method in the BCL. So now that we’ve removed the filter, we see a bit more detail: In addition, ANTS Performance Profiler gives you the ability to decompile the methods without source so that you can dive even deeper, though typically this isn’t necessary for our purposes. When looking at timings, there are generally two types of timings for each method call: Time: This is the time spent ONLY in this method, not including calls this method makes to other methods. Time With Children: This is the total of time spent in both this method AND including calls this method makes to other methods. In other words, the Time tells you how much work is being done exclusively in this method, and the Time With Children tells you how much work is being done inclusively in this method and everything it calls. You can also choose to display the methods in a tree or in a grid. The tree view is the default and it shows the method calls arranged in terms of the tree representing all method calls and the parent method that called them, etc. This is useful for when you find a hot-spot method, you can see who is calling it to determine if the problem is the method itself, or if it is being called too many times. The grid method represents each method only once with its totals and is useful for quickly seeing what method is the trouble spot. In addition, you can choose to display Methods with source which are generally the methods you wrote (as opposed to native or BCL code), or Any Method which shows not only your methods, but also native calls, JIT overhead, synchronization waits, etc. So these are just two ways of viewing the same data, and you’re free to choose the organization that best suits what information you are after. Analyzing Method Source If we look at the timings above, we see that our AddToList() method (and in particular, it’s call to the List<T>.Sort() method in the BCL) is the hot-spot in this analysis. If ANTS sees a method that is consuming the most time, it will flag it as a hot-spot to help call out potential areas of concern. This doesn’t mean the other statistics aren’t meaningful, but that the hot-spot is most likely going to be your biggest bang-for-the-buck to concentrate on. So let’s select the AddToList() method, and see what it shows in the source window below: Notice the source breakout in the bottom pane when you select a method (from either tree or grid view). This shows you the timings in this method per line of code. This gives you a major indicator of where the trouble-spot in this method is. So in this case, we see that performing a Sort() on the List<T> after every Add() is killing our performance! Of course, this was a very contrived, duh moment, but you’d be surprised how many performance issues become duh moments. Note that this one line is taking up 86% of the execution time of this application! If we eliminate this bottleneck, we should see drastic improvement in the performance. So to fix this, if we still wanted to maintain the List<T> we’d have many options, including: delay Sort() until after all Add() methods, using a SortedSet, SortedList, or SortedDictionary depending on which is most appropriate, or forgoing the sorting all together and using a Dictionary. Rinse, Repeat! So let’s just change all instances of List<string> to SortedSet<string> and run this again through the profiler: Now we see the AddToList() method is no longer our hot-spot, but now the Max() and Min() calls are! This is good because we’ve eliminated one hot-spot and now we can try to correct this one as well. As before, we can then optimize this part of the code (possibly by taking advantage of the fact the list is now sorted and returning the first and last elements). We can then rinse and repeat this process until we have eliminated as many bottlenecks as possible. Calls by Web Request Another feature that was added recently is the ability to view .NET methods grouped by the HTTP requests that caused them to run. This can be helpful in determining which pages, web services, etc. are causing hot spots in your web applications. Summary If you like the other ANTS tools, you’ll like the ANTS Performance Profiler as well. It is extremely easy to use with very little product knowledge required to get up and running. There are profilers built into the higher product lines of Visual Studio, of course, which are also powerful and easy to use. But for quickly jumping in and finding hot spots rapidly, Red Gate’s Performance Profiler 7.4 is an excellent choice. Technorati Tags: Influencers,ANTS,Performance Profiler,Profiler

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• Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8101E/RTL8102E

  - by Sebastian Bugiu

  I had Ubuntu 11.10 and in the last few weeks I experienced an obscure problem: after I had the computer running for a few days I could no longer connect to google.com or anything related to google. All sites worked with all browsers (Firefox, chrome, opera) except google. It remained in the connecting phase for a few minutes and either timed out or finally connected with this huge delay. Even if I entered other sites such as this one, if it had anything to do with google such adsense or gstatic or whatever with g in it, that site took a long time to load waiting in connecting to gstatic.com . Anything google related took minutes to work, but everything else worked instantly! I tried rebooting or using other machine(with windows on it) and this worked, so it's not network related. But after a few days it started not working again... So I upgraded to the Precise Pangolin hoping this behavior would go away. It didn't! After a few days I get the same behavior as in 11.10. What am I supposed to do? Reboot every other day? I didn't have this problem with neither 10.10 or 11.04. I found the Realtek RTL8168/8111E issue with the r8169 driver but this is not exactly the same card so probably trying r8168 won't help. Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller (rev 02) Subsystem: Toshiba America Info Systems Device ff1c Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 44 I/O ports at 4000 [size=256] Memory at d0010000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=4K] Memory at d0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=64K] Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 7 Capabilities: [50] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+ Capabilities: [70] Express Endpoint, MSI 01 Capabilities: [ac] MSI-X: Enable- Count=2 Masked- Capabilities: [cc] Vital Product Data Capabilities: [100] Advanced Error Reporting Capabilities: [140] Virtual Channel Capabilities: [160] Device Serial Number 09-00-00-00-ff-ff-00-00 Kernel driver in use: r8169 Kernel modules: r8169

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• Oracle OpenWorld Preview: Oracle WebCenter Sessions You Won’t Want to Miss

  - by Christie Flanagan

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} The beginning of Oracle OpenWorld is only a few short days away. This week on the WebCenter blog, we’ll focus in on the sessions you definitely don’t want to miss while you’re in San Francisco next week.  Monday, October 1 will be a day focused on strategy.  Here are the sessions you want to add to your calendar: CON8268 - Oracle WebCenter Strategy: Engaging Your Customers. Empowering Your Business Monday, Oct 1, 10:45 AM - 11:45 AM - Moscone West – 3001 Start things off with Oracle WebCenter’s Christian Finn, Senior Director of Evangelism and Roel Stalman, VP of Product Management to learn more about the Oracle WebCenter strategy, and to understand where Oracle is taking the platform to help companies engage, customers, empower employees, and enable partners. This session will also feature Richard Backx, Business IT Architect/Consultant, for the Dutch telecom, KPN. Richard has played a key role in the roll-out of WebCenter products for KPN’s multibrand portals with a specific focus on creating the best customer journey platform for all the company’s digital channels. Business success starts with ensuring that everyone is engaged with the right people and the right information and can access what they need through the channel of their choice—web, mobile, or social. Are you giving customers, employees, and partners the best-possible experience? Come learn how you can! Dig deeper into WebCenter’s strategy for its ECM, portal, web experience management and social collaboration in the following sessions: CON8270 - Oracle WebCenter Content Strategy and Vision Monday, Oct 1, 12:15 PM - 1:15 PM - Moscone West – 3001 Oracle WebCenter Content provides a strategic content infrastructure for managing documents, images, e-mails, and rich media files. With a single repository, organizations can address any content use case, such as accounts payable, HR onboarding, document management, compliance, records management, digital asset management, or Website management. In this session, learn about future plans for how Oracle WebCenter will address new use cases as well as new integrations with Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle Applications, leveraging your investments by making your users more productive and error-free. CON8269 - Oracle WebCenter Sites Strategy and Vision Monday, Oct 1, 1:45 PM - 2:45 PM - Moscone West - 3009 Oracle’s Web experience management solution, Oracle WebCenter Sites, enables organizations to use the online channel to drive customer acquisition and brand loyalty. It helps marketers and business users easily create and manage contextually relevant, social, interactive online experiences across multiple channels on a global scale. In this session, learn about future plans for how Oracle WebCenter Sites will provide you with the tools, capabilities, and integrations you need in order to continue to address your customers’ evolving requirements for engaging online experiences and keep moving your business forward. CON8271 - Oracle WebCenter Portal Strategy and Vision Monday, Oct 1, 3:15 PM - 4:15 PM - Moscone West - 3001 To innovate and keep a competitive edge, organizations need to leverage the power of agile and responsive Web applications. Oracle WebCenter Portal enables you to do just that, by delivering intuitive user experiences for enterprise applications to drive innovation with composite applications and mashups. Attend this session to learn firsthand from Oracle WebCenter Portal customers like the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, extend the value of existing enterprise applications, business processes, and content; delivers a superior business user experience; and maximizes limited IT resources. CON8272 - Oracle Social Network Strategy and Vision Monday, Oct 1, 4:45 PM - 5:45 PM - Moscone West - 3001 One key way of increasing employee productivity is by bringing people, processes, and information together—providing new social capabilities to enable business users to quickly correspond and collaborate on business activities. Oracle WebCenter provides a user engagement platform with social and collaborative technologies to empower business users to focus on their key business processes, applications, and content in the context of their role and process. Attend this session to hear how the latest social capabilities in Oracle Social Network are enabling organizations to transform themselves into social businesses.Attention WebCenter Customers: Last Day to RSVP for WebCenter Customer Appreciation Reception Oracle WebCenter partners Fishbowl Solutions, Fujitsu, Keste, Mythics, Redstone Content Solutions, TEAM Informatics, and TekStream invite Oracle WebCenter customers to a private cocktail reception at one of San Francisco's finest hotels. Please join us and fellow Oracle WebCenter customers for hors d'oeuvres and cocktails at this exclusive reception. Don't miss this opportunity to meet and talk with executives from Oracle WebCenter product management and product marketing, and premier Oracle WebCenter partners. We look forward to seeing you! RSVP today.

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• Wireless will not connect

  - by azz0r

  Hello, I have installed Ubuntu 10.10 on the same machine as my windows setup. However, it will not connect to my wireless network. It can see its there, it can attempt to connect, yet it will never connect. It will keep bringing up the password prompt everyso often. I have tried turning my security to WEP, I ended up turning it back to WPA2. It is set to AES (noted a few threads on google about that). Can you assist? I would love to dive into Ubuntu, but without the internet its pointless. --- lshw -C network --- *-network description: Ethernet interface product: RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller vendor: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:02:00.0 logical name: eth0 version: 02 serial: 00:1d:92:ea:cc:62 capacity: 1GB/s width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress msix vpd bus_master cap_list rom ethernet physical tp 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd 1000bt-fd autonegotiation configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=r8168 driverversion=8.020.00-NAPI duplex=half latency=0 link=no multicast=yes port=twisted pair resources: irq:29 ioport:e800(size=256) memory:feaff000-feafffff memory:f8ff0000-f8ffffff(prefetchable) memory:feac0000-feadffff(prefetchable) *-network description: Wireless interface physical id: 1 logical name: wlan0 serial: 00:15:af:72:a4:38 capabilities: ethernet physical wireless configuration: broadcast=yes multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11bgn --- iwconfig ---- lo no wireless extensions. eth0 no wireless extensions. wlan0 IEEE 802.11bgn ESSID:"Wuggawoo" Mode:Managed Frequency:2.437 GHz Access Point: Not-Associated Tx-Power=9 dBm Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off Encryption key:off Power Management:on --- cat /etc/network/interfaces ---- auto lo iface lo inet loopback logs deamon.log --- Jan 19 04:17:09 ubuntu wpa_supplicant[1289]: Authentication with 94:44:52:0d:22:0d timed out. Jan 19 04:17:09 ubuntu NetworkManager: <info> (wlan0): supplicant connection state: associating -> disconnected Jan 19 04:17:09 ubuntu NetworkManager: <info> (wlan0): supplicant connection state: disconnected -> scanning Jan 19 04:17:11 ubuntu wpa_supplicant[1289]: WPS-AP-AVAILABLE Jan 19 04:17:11 ubuntu wpa_supplicant[1289]: Trying to associate with 94:44:52:0d:22:0d (SSID='Wuggawoo' freq=2437 MHz) Jan 19 04:17:11 ubuntu NetworkManager: <info> (wlan0): supplicant connection state: scanning -> associating Jan 19 04:17:12 ubuntu NetworkManager: <info> Activation (wlan0/wireless): association took too long. Jan 19 04:17:12 ubuntu NetworkManager: <info> (wlan0): device state change: 5 -> 6 (reason 0) Jan 19 04:17:12 ubuntu NetworkManager: <info> Activation (wlan0/wireless): asking for new secrets Jan 19 04:17:12 ubuntu NetworkManager: <info> Activation (wlan0) Stage 1 of 5 (Device Prepare) scheduled... Jan 19 04:17:12 ubuntu NetworkManager: <info> Activation (wlan0) Stage 1 of 5 (Device Prepare) started... Jan 19 04:17:12 ubuntu NetworkManager: <info> (wlan0): device state change: 6 -> 4 (reason 0) Jan 19 04:17:12 ubuntu NetworkManager: <info> Activation (wlan0) Stage 2 of 5 (Device Configure) scheduled... Jan 19 04:17:12 ubuntu NetworkManager: <info> Activation (wlan0) Stage 1 of 5 (Device Prepare) complete. Jan 19 04:17:12 ubuntu NetworkManager: <info> Activation (wlan0) Stage 2 of 5 (Device Configure) starting... Jan 19 04:17:12 ubuntu NetworkManager: <info> (wlan0): device state change: 4 -> 5 (reason 0) Jan 19 04:17:12 ubuntu NetworkManager: <info> Activation (wlan0/wireless): connection 'Wuggawoo' has security, and secrets exist. No new secrets needed. Jan 19 04:17:12 ubuntu NetworkManager: <info> Config: added 'ssid' value 'Wuggawoo' Jan 19 04:17:12 ubuntu NetworkManager: <info> Config: added 'scan_ssid' value '1' Jan 19 04:17:12 ubuntu NetworkManager: <info> Config: added 'key_mgmt' value 'WPA-PSK' Jan 19 04:17:12 ubuntu NetworkManager: <info> Config: added 'psk' value '<omitted>' Jan 19 04:17:12 ubuntu NetworkManager: nm_setting_802_1x_get_pkcs11_engine_path: assertion `NM_IS_SETTING_802_1X (setting)' failed Jan 19 04:17:12 ubuntu NetworkManager: nm_setting_802_1x_get_pkcs11_module_path: assertion `NM_IS_SETTING_802_1X (setting)' failed Jan 19 04:17:12 ubuntu NetworkManager: <info> Activation (wlan0) Stage 2 of 5 (Device Configure) complete. Jan 19 04:17:12 ubuntu NetworkManager: <info> (wlan0): supplicant connection state: associating -> disconnected Jan 19 04:17:12 ubuntu NetworkManager: <info> Config: set interface ap_scan to 1 Jan 19 04:17:12 ubuntu NetworkManager: <info> (wlan0): supplicant connection state: disconnected -> scanning Jan 19 04:17:13 ubuntu wpa_supplicant[1289]: WPS-AP-AVAILABLE Jan 19 04:17:13 ubuntu wpa_supplicant[1289]: Trying to associate with 94:44:52:0d:22:0d (SSID='Wuggawoo' freq=2437 MHz) Jan 19 04:17:13 ubuntu NetworkManager: <info> (wlan0): supplicant connection state: scanning -> associating Jan 19 04:17:23 ubuntu wpa_supplicant[1289]: Authentication with 94:44:52:0d:22:0d timed out. Jan 19 04:17:23 ubuntu NetworkManager: <info> (wlan0): supplicant connection state: associating -> disconnected Jan 19 04:17:23 ubuntu NetworkManager: <info> (wlan0): supplicant connection state: disconnected -> scanning Jan 19 04:17:24 ubuntu AptDaemon: INFO: Initializing daemon Jan 19 04:17:25 ubuntu wpa_supplicant[1289]: WPS-AP-AVAILABLE Jan 19 04:17:25 ubuntu wpa_supplicant[1289]: Trying to associate with 94:44:52:0d:22:0d (SSID='Wuggawoo' freq=2437 MHz) Jan 19 04:17:25 ubuntu NetworkManager: <info> (wlan0): supplicant connection state: scanning -> associating Jan 19 04:17:27 ubuntu NetworkManager: <info> wlan0: link timed out. --- kern.log --- Jan 19 04:18:11 ubuntu kernel: [ 142.420024] wlan0: direct probe to AP 94:44:52:0d:22:0d timed out Jan 19 04:18:13 ubuntu kernel: [ 144.333847] wlan0: direct probe to AP 94:44:52:0d:22:0d (try 1) Jan 19 04:18:13 ubuntu kernel: [ 144.539996] wlan0: direct probe to AP 94:44:52:0d:22:0d (try 2) Jan 19 04:18:13 ubuntu kernel: [ 144.750027] wlan0: direct probe to AP 94:44:52:0d:22:0d (try 3) Jan 19 04:18:14 ubuntu kernel: [ 144.940022] wlan0: direct probe to AP 94:44:52:0d:22:0d timed out Jan 19 04:18:25 ubuntu kernel: [ 155.832995] wlan0: direct probe to AP 94:44:52:0d:22:0d (try 1) Jan 19 04:18:25 ubuntu kernel: [ 156.030046] wlan0: direct probe to AP 94:44:52:0d:22:0d (try 2) Jan 19 04:18:25 ubuntu kernel: [ 156.230039] wlan0: direct probe to AP 94:44:52:0d:22:0d (try 3) Jan 19 04:18:25 ubuntu kernel: [ 156.430039] wlan0: direct probe to AP 94:44:52:0d:22:0d timed out --- syslog --- Jan 19 04:18:46 ubuntu wpa_supplicant[1289]: Authentication with 94:44:52:0d:22:0d timed out. Jan 19 04:18:46 ubuntu NetworkManager: <info> (wlan0): supplicant connection state: associating -> disconnected Jan 19 04:18:46 ubuntu NetworkManager: <info> (wlan0): supplicant connection state: disconnected -> scanning Jan 19 04:18:48 ubuntu wpa_supplicant[1289]: WPS-AP-AVAILABLE Jan 19 04:18:48 ubuntu wpa_supplicant[1289]: Trying to associate with 94:44:52:0d:22:0d (SSID='Wuggawoo' freq=2437 MHz) Jan 19 04:18:48 ubuntu NetworkManager: <info> (wlan0): supplicant connection state: scanning -> associating Jan 19 04:18:48 ubuntu kernel: [ 178.833905] wlan0: direct probe to AP 94:44:52:0d:22:0d (try 1) Jan 19 04:18:48 ubuntu kernel: [ 179.030035] wlan0: direct probe to AP 94:44:52:0d:22:0d (try 2) Jan 19 04:18:48 ubuntu kernel: [ 179.230020] wlan0: direct probe to AP 94:44:52:0d:22:0d (try 3) Jan 19 04:18:48 ubuntu kernel: [ 179.433634] wlan0: direct probe to AP 94:44:52:0d:22:0d timed out lspci and lsusb lspci -- 00:00.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] RS780 Host Bridge 00:02.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] RS780 PCI to PCI bridge (ext gfx port 0) 00:05.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] RS780 PCI to PCI bridge (PCIE port 1) 00:06.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] RS780 PCI to PCI bridge (PCIE port 2) 00:11.0 SATA controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 SATA Controller [AHCI mode] 00:12.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 USB OHCI0 Controller 00:12.1 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700 USB OHCI1 Controller 00:12.2 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 USB EHCI Controller 00:13.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 USB OHCI0 Controller 00:13.1 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700 USB OHCI1 Controller 00:13.2 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 USB EHCI Controller 00:14.0 SMBus: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 SMBus Controller (rev 3a) 00:14.1 IDE interface: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 IDE Controller 00:14.2 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA) 00:14.3 ISA bridge: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 LPC host controller 00:14.4 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 PCI to PCI Bridge 00:14.5 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 USB OHCI2 Controller 00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K10 [Opteron, Athlon64, Sempron] HyperTransport Configuration 00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K10 [Opteron, Athlon64, Sempron] Address Map 00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K10 [Opteron, Athlon64, Sempron] DRAM Controller 00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K10 [Opteron, Athlon64, Sempron] Miscellaneous Control 00:18.4 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K10 [Opteron, Athlon64, Sempron] Link Control 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G80 [GeForce 8800 GTS] (rev a2) 02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 02) 03:00.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): JMicron Technology Corp. IEEE 1394 Host Controller -- lsusb -- Bus 007 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 004 Device 003: ID 046d:c517 Logitech, Inc. LX710 Cordless Desktop Laser Bus 004 Device 002: ID 045e:0730 Microsoft Corp. Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 002 Device 003: ID 13d3:3247 IMC Networks 802.11 n/g/b Wireless LAN Adapter Bus 002 Device 002: ID 0718:0628 Imation Corp. Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 001 Device 003: ID 046d:08c2 Logitech, Inc. QuickCam PTZ Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0424:2228 Standard Microsystems Corp. 9-in-2 Card Reader Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub With no security on my router I still can't connect, I get: Jan 19 15:58:01 ubuntu wpa_supplicant[1165]: Authentication with 94:44:52:0d:22:0d timed out. Jan 19 15:58:01 ubuntu NetworkManager: <info> (wlan0): supplicant connection state: associating -> disconnected Jan 19 15:58:01 ubuntu NetworkManager: <info> (wlan0): supplicant connection state: disconnected -> scanning Jan 19 15:58:02 ubuntu wpa_supplicant[1165]: WPS-AP-AVAILABLE Jan 19 15:58:02 ubuntu wpa_supplicant[1165]: Trying to associate with 94:44:52:0d:22:0d (SSID='Wuggawoo' freq=2437 MHz) Jan 19 15:58:02 ubuntu wpa_supplicant[1165]: Association request to the driver failed Jan 19 15:58:02 ubuntu NetworkManager: <info> (wlan0): supplicant connection state: scanning -> associating Jan 19 15:58:05 ubuntu NetworkManager: <info> wlan0: link timed out. Jan 19 15:58:07 ubuntu wpa_supplicant[1165]: Authentication with 94:44:52:0d:22:0d timed out. Jan 19 15:58:07 ubuntu NetworkManager: <info> (wlan0): supplicant connection state: associating -> disconnected Jan 19 15:58:07 ubuntu NetworkManager: <info> (wlan0): supplicant connec

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• Is it illegal to rewrite every line of an open source project in a slightly different way, and use it in a closed source project?

  - by Chris Barry

  There is some code which is GPL or LGPL that I am considering using for an iPhone project. If I took that code (JavaScript) and rewrote it in a different language for use on the iPhone would that be a legal issue? In theory the process that has happened is that I have gone through each line of the project, learnt what it is doing, and then reimplemented the ideas in a new language. To me it seems this is like learning how to implement something, but then reimplementing it separately from the original licence. Therefore you have only copied the algorithm, which arguably you could have learnt from somewhere else other than the original project. Does the licence cover the specific implementation or the algorithm as well? EDIT------ Really glad to see this topic create a good conversation. To give a bit more backing to the project, the code involved does some kind of audio analysis. I believe it is non-trivial to learn or implement, although I was prepared to embark on this task (I'm at the level where I can implement an FFT algorithm, and this was going to go beyond that.) It is a fairly low LOC script, so I didn't think it would be too hard to do a straight port. I really like the idea of rereleasing my port as well as using it in the application. I don't see any problem with that, and it would be a great way to give something back to the community. I was going to add a line about not wanting to discuss the moral issues, but I'm quite glad I didn't as it seems to have fired the debate a bit. I still feel a bit odd about using open source code to learn from. Does this mean that anything one learns from an open source project is not allowed to be used in a closed source project? And how long after or different does an implementation have to be to not be considered violation of the licence? Murky! EDIT 2 -------- Follow up question

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• Step Aside Google

  - by David Dorf

  Step aside Google. While search will always be a huge part of the web, I can see a day in the not-too-distance future where search takes a backseat to the social graph. Links between pages will give way to relationships between people, including context like location. What does this mean for retail? It means your e-commerce strategy will slowly transition to an f-commerce strategy. Remember when a large portion of the online population was held captive inside the walls of AOL? All the commercials listed an AOL keyword, not a web address because that's where the majority of people surfed. Now, people are spending a huge amount of time in Facebook (despite Betty White's proclamation that its a big waste of time). According to Facebook, users spend 500 billion minutes per month on the site. Selling products where consumers are spending their time makes sense. The power of Like and Share are the most effective approach to marketing. More and more stores are popping up on Facebook, and soon they will be the front-end to e-commerce systems. As sites adopt the Facebook Open Graph API, users will have a harder time distinguishing the open web from their Facebook experience, including shopping. Of course e-commerce sites won't go away, but a large portion of their traffic will emanate from Facebook and in some cases Facebook will act as the front-end for the web store. Ignore Facebook Open Graph at your peril. In a Mashable article, Mitchell Harper made several predictions about how e-commerce will change based on Facebook. His five points are not far-fetched at all, so we need to watch this space carefully.

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• Does software architect/designer require more skills and intellectual than software engineer (implementation)?

  - by Amumu

  So I heard the positions for designing software and writing spec for developers to implement are higher and getting paid more. I think many companies are using the Software Engineering title to depict the person to implement software, which means using tools and technologies to write the actual code. I know that in order to be a software architecture, one needs to be good at implementation in order to have an architectural overview of a system using a set of specific technologies. This is different than I thought of a Software Engineer. My thinking is similar to the standard of IEEE: A software engineer is an engineer who is capable of going from requirement analysis until the software is deployed, based on the SWEBOK (IEEE). Just look at the table of content. The IEEE even has the certificate for Software Engineering, since ABET (Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology) seems to not have an official qualification test for Software Engineer (although IEEE is a member of ABET). The two certificates are CSDA and CSDP. I intend to take on these two examination in the future to be qualified as a software engineer, although I am already working as one (Junior position). On a side note on the issues of Software Engineer, you can read the dicussion here: Just a Programmer and Just a Software Engineer. The information of ABET does not accredit Software Engineer is in "Just a Software Engineer". On the other hand, why is Programmer/Softwar Engineer who writes code considered a low level position? Suppose if two people have equal skills after the same years of experience, one becomes a software architect and one keeps focus on implementation aspect of Software Engineering (of course he also has design skill to compose a system, since he's a software engineer as well, but maybe less than the specialized software architect), how comes work from Software Engineer is less complicated than the Software Architect? In order to write great code with turn design into reality, it requires far greater skill than just understanding a particular language and a framework. I don't think the ones who wrote and contributing Linux OS are lower level job and easier than conceptual design and writing spec. Can someone enlighten me?

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• Suggested Web Application Framework and Database for Enterprise, “Big-Data” App?

  - by willOEM

  I have a web application that I have been developing for a small group within my company over the past few years, using Pipeline Pilot (plus jQuery and Python scripting) for web development and back-end computation, and Oracle 10g for my RDBMS. Users upload experimental genomic data, which is parsed into a database, and made available for querying, transformation, and reporting. Experimental data sets are large and have many layers of metadata. A given experimental data record might have a foreign key relationship with a table that describes this data point's assay. Assays can cover multiple genes, which can have multiple transcript, which can have multiple mutations, which can affect multiple signaling pathways, etc. Users need to approach this data from any point in those layers in the metadata. Since all data sets for a given data type can run over a billion rows, this results in some large, dynamic queries that are hard to predict. New data sets are added on a weekly basis (~1GB per set). Experimental data is never updated, but the associated metadata can be updated weekly for a few records and yearly for most others. For every data set insert the system sees, there will be between 10 and 100 selects run against it and associated data. It is okay for updates and inserts to run slow, so long as queries run quick and are as up-to-date as possible. The application continues to grow in size and scope and is already starting to run slower than I like. I am worried that we have about outgrown Pipeline Pilot, and perhaps Oracle (as the sole database). Would a NoSQL database or an OLAP system be appropriate here? What web application frameworks work well with systems like this? I'd like the solution to be something scalable, portable and supportable X-years down the road. Here is the current state of the application: Web Server/Data Processing: Pipeline Pilot on Windows Server + IIS Database: Oracle 10g, ~1TB of data, ~180 tables with several billion-plus row tables Network Storage: Isilon, ~50TB of low-priority raw data

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• Block Fortress is an Awesome Tower Defense Game

  - by Akemi Iwaya

  What do you get when you mix Minecraft, tower defense, and a first-person shooter together? Block Fortress! This awesome game combines the best aspects of three game types into one unique, action-packed romp for survival and victory. Keep in mind that the game has quite a bit going on, so we will only be able to offer a quick glimpse with our post. Also, it may take a few minutes to become familiar with how to maneuver around in the game area using various gestures on your device’s screen. From the Block Fortress homepage: It offers more than 30 different building blocks, 16 different turret blocks, and tons of additional items to build (including mining blocks, lumber blocks, storage crates, power generators, and much more). It also includes many different weapon and item upgrades for your character – all brought to bear against the relentless attacks of the Goblocks! Block Fortress currently comes with three modes of game play: Survival, Quickstart, and Sandbox. As you can see, there should be more modes available at a later date. There are many types of terrain to choose from, or if you wish you can select Random for a nice surprise. For our example we chose Snowy Hills. Time to have a look around and find a nice spot to set up our barracks… This spot looks like it will do rather nicely… Just for fun we set up a castle-style set of walls and entry point for our barracks. Now on to fun and adventure! You can see what the game looks like in action with the official launch trailer… Price: 0.99 (U.S.) Block Fortress [iTunes App Store] Block Fortress Homepage Official Block Fortress Launch Trailer [YouTube]    

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• An end to the static &hellip;

  - by Dave Oliver

  Last October I learnt my company wanted to put together a new blog/social networking policy. I decided that out of respect for my employer I wouldn’t blog until this was sorted out. This was perhaps was an easy decision to make as I was separating from my ex-wife at the time and frankly needed the time to concentrate on other things. So now the company has a brand new policy and I’m back into the dating game I thought I would blow off the cobwebs and get back to what I enjoy doing. First and foremost SQL Server 2008 R2 is almost here and to mark that fact I will be in London on Thursday at the Microsoft UK Tech-Day’s event. The subjects I most want to see are … Power Pivot – this is such an exciting technology! I’ve been a fan of Qlikview for years so it will be good to see how it compares SQL Azure – Cloud Computing is big right now, so it will be interesting to see what the RTM product can do. I have afew ideas for its use and will be interesting to see if SQL Azure is the right product … more on this in the next few weeks. Master Data Services – This is one of those technologies that Microsoft hasn’t been making much noise about … and frankly should have because it is a game changer. Hmmm, queue future “What is … ?” post StreamInsight – An exciting events technology, again another “What is … ?” post is around the corner on that. So, you thought that SQL Server 2008 R2 was just a release to make sure the years between SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2010 weren’t so long? I am however disappointed that Clustering across Subnets didn’t make it and not sure if Control Points made it but all will be revealed later on this week. Till then I will have to wait! Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Techdays,SQL Server 2008 R2

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• Is OpenTK Dead?

  - by ashes999

  Looking at OpenTK, I notice some disturbing signs: The last news item was posted on December 31st, 2010 The main forum gets about one post a day On SourceForge, the last nightly build was in March, and the last release was 2010. Does OpenTK exist anymore, or is it abandonware now? Edit: Some people have expressed concern at my use of "ambiguous" and "loaded terms" like "dead," "abandonware," and others. What I'm asking is this: software projects comprise of many pieces: The actual software project (such as OpenTK) A group of people who maintain the software (project leads, core developers) Some vehicle by which users can find and consume the latest versions (such as releasing daily builds) A community (can I ask questions about it? Get answers?) Updates (are there new features? New releases? Active development? A roadmap?) Some projects have all of these things. Most have a few. Some have nothing, other than maybe the actual software project itself. Is OpenTK one of these? Because it seems like: The actual software project is stable The maintainers don't contribute to it anymore There are no more latest versions (daily builds), not since 2010 (2+ years) The community is very low-traffic (nobody is asking/answering questions, who is actually using this anyway?) There are no updates since 2010

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• Consolidating and Virtualizing with Oracle&rsquo;s Network Fabric

  - by Ferhat Hatay

  Server, storage and operating system virtualization technologies are already widely  deployed within datacenters, and are considered an integral component to drive cost  savings and agility. These technologies are now being combined with network  virtualization to usher in a new era of cloud computing. Oracle provides a networking fabric that delivers cloud-ready network services based on  Ethernet or InfiniBand fabrics that are tightly integrated with application infrastructure. Oracle’s network fabric provides the performance and manageability required for any  Oracle application environment or private cloud infrastructure. Logical architecture of Oracle’s network fabric. Oracle’s unique ability to deliver extreme performance and scale by tightly integrating  network services across application infrastructure is demonstrated in the Oracle Exalogic  Elastic Cloud and the Oracle Exadata Database Machine. These engineered solutions  offer up to 5X and 10X performance gains respectively compared to traditional multivendor architectures where the offerings are not engineered to work together. By integrating advanced networking capabilities across the entire hardware and software  stack, Oracle’s network fabric can help maximize application performance and scale,  reduce the number of network components, and simplify datacenter operations through  integrated network management and orchestration. The resulting business benefits are: Reduced acquisition costs Lower power and cooling costs Reduced management costs Faster deployment Greater agility in meeting changing business needs For more information see the whitepaper: Consolidating and Virtualizing Datacenter Networks with Oracle's Network Fabric.

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• How many different servers are needed to keep a website running with no downtime? [closed]

  - by Mason Wheeler

  Machines go down. It's a fact of life. They may need to be rebooted for some reason, or they may have a hardware failure, or a power outage. So if I wanted to deploy a website with a server backed by a SQL database, putting the whole thing on one server wouldn't be good enough. It obviously needs at least two servers, so that if one goes down, the other can pick up the slack until the first comes back up. Of course, if I have the server software on two machines, either one of which could go down, I can't place the database on either of those two machines, because it could go down. So the database needs its own server. But that server can go down, so I need a backup database server and some sort of replication system to keep it in sync so the main can fail-over to it. So far, that's a bare minimum of 4 machines to keep one website running with a reasonable chance of no downtime. (Assuming no catastrophic events take place that take down both front-end servers at once or both DB servers at once, and no hacks, DDOS attacks, etc. Am I missing any other factors, or should I consider 4 servers to be the minimum for running a website with a goal of continuing operation without downtime even when a server goes down?

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• I want to make video games, but I hate coding

  - by hoper

  I know this sounds eally crazy. However, I just want to ask. Now, I am studying C++ code in my school (My major is computer programming). Honestly, my grade is not so good, and assignments are really hard. Sometimes, I feel sad that I will spend 8~10 hours per day for coding (which is stressful) at the future for my job. But, I still want to make video games. Maybe this is the only one reason why I am taking all of stressful courses. I always write down plots, stories, characters, fictional gaming worlds. Once, I thought I should study artistic technology such as game design program not computer technology such as C++, C#, etc. However, most of popular game designers(or directors) such as Kojima, Miyamoto Shigeru, etc used to be good programmers. And, companies actaully assign programmers to directors because they understand how to make a game. I try to find other colleges or universities where teach game design program. However, one article that lists rank 10 game design schools in North America seems untrustful because the survey company only scores it from intervews of students. (Once, I tried to attend Art Institute of Vancouver which is rank 7 according to that article. However, one programmer who used to be an instructor in there told me the truth. That is the employement rate of graduated students is low) Do you guys have any advice for me?

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• What are the best ways to cope with «one of those days»? [closed]

  - by Júlio Santos

  I work in a fast-paced startup and am absolutely in love with what I do. Still, I wake up to a bad mood as often as the next guy. I find that forcing myself to play out my day as usual doesn't help — in fact, it only makes it worse, possibly ruining my productivity for the rest of the week. There are several ways I can cope with this, for instance: dropping the current task for the day and getting that awesome but low-priority feature in place; doing some pending research for future development (i.e. digging up ruby gems); spending the day reading and educating myself; just taking the day off. The first three items are productive in themselves, and taking the day off recharges my coding mana for the rest of the week. Being a young developer, I'm pretty sure there's a multitude of alternatives that I haven't come across yet. How can programmers cope with off days? Edit: I am looking for answers related specifically to this profession. I therefore believe that coping with off days in our field is fundamentally different that doing so in other areas. Programmers (especially in a start-up) are a unique breed in this context in the sense that they tend to have a multitude of tasks at hand on any given moment, so they can easily switch between these without wreaking too much havoc. Programmers also tend to work based on clear, concise objectives — provided they are well managed either by themselves or a third party — and hence have a great deal of flexibility when it comes to managing their time. Finally, our line of work creates the opportunity — necessity, if you will — to fit a plethora of tasks not directly related to the current one, such as research and staying on top of new releases and software updates.

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• In what URL segment do you have language? /en/admin/dashboard or /admin/en/dashboard?

  - by Shimmi

  maybe you are thinking that this is another dump question about language in URL, but I hope it is not! I've red many articles on this, but non of them was dealing with "sections of site" (described bellow). I am programming a new application platform in laravel/php and I am still not 100% convinced where to put language slug. There are many places where you can put it - some of them are better some are worse: example.com/en/article en.example.com/article example.com/article?lang=en My personal choice is to put language after the domain - so the first option in above list. But what if you are in some special secion like admin or api? where do you put language then? example.com/en/admin/dashboard example.com/en/api/v1/user/login or example.com/admin/en/dashboard example.com/api/v1/en/user/login (in frontend it is left the same: example.com/en/some-article) what do you preffer? what are cons and pros? One thing is using language in first segments is far more easier to programm than when it have some variants... P.S. whould you recoment using only en, cs or do it in full power with cz-CZ, en-US ? thanks for any thoughts! J.

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• Oracle Outsourced Repair Solution: The “Control Tower” for the Reverse Supply Chain

  - by John Murphy

  By Hannes Sandmeier, Vice President of cMRO and Depot Repair Development Smart businesses are increasing their focus on core competencies and aggressively cutting costs in their supply chains. Outsourcing repairs can enable a business to focus on what they do best and most profitably while delivering top-notch customer service through partners that specialize in reverse logistics and repair. A well managed “virtual service organization” can deliver fast turn times, lower costs and high customer satisfaction. A poorly managed partner network can deliver disaster for your business. Managing a virtual service organization requires accurate, real-time information and collaboration tools that enable smart, informed and immediate corrective action. To meet this need, Oracle has released the Oracle Outsourced Repair Solution to provide the “control tower” for managing outsourced reverse supply chain operations from customer complaint through remediation to partner claim settlement. The new solution provides real-time visibility to return status, location, turn time, discrepancies and partner performance. Additionally, its web portals allow partners and carriers to view assigned work, request parts, enter data, capture time and submit claims. Leveraging the combined power of Oracle E-Business Suite and Oracle E-Business Suite Extensions for Oracle Endeca, the Oracle Outsourced Repair Solution provides a comprehensive set of tools that range from quick online partner registration to partner claim reconciliation, from capturing parts and labor to Oracle Cost Management and Financials integration, and from part requisition to waste and hazmat controls. These tools empower service operations managers to: · Increase customer satisfaction Ensure customers are satisfied by holding partners accountable for the speed and quality of repairs, and taking immediate corrective action when things go wrong · Reduce costs: Remove waste from the repair process using accurate job cost and cost breakdown data · Increase return velocity: Users have the tools to view all orders in flight and immediately know the current location, status, owner and contact point for repairs so as to be able to remove bottlenecks, resolve discrepancies and manage escalations The Oracle Outsourced Repair Solution further demonstrates Oracle’s commitment to helping supply chain professionals and service managers deliver high customer satisfaction at the lowest cost. For more information on the Oracle Outsourced Repair Solution, visit here. 

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• Why is IaaS important in Azure&hellip;

  - by Steve Loethen

  Three weeks ago, Microsoft released the next phase of Azure.  I have had several clients waiting on this release.  The fact that they have been waiting and are now more receptive to looking at the cloud.  Customers expressed fear of the unknown.  And a fear of lack of control, even when that lack of control also means a huge degree of flexibility to innovate with concerns about the underlying infrastructure.  I think IaaS will be that “gateway drug” to get customers who have been hesitant to take another look at the cloud.  The dialog can change from the cloud being this big scary unknown to a resource for workloads.  The conversations should have always been, and can know be even stronger, geared toward the following points: 1) The cloud is not unicorns and glitter, the cloud is resources.  Compute, storage, db’s, services bus, cache…..  Like many of the resources we have on-premise.  Not magic, just another resource with advantages and obstacles like any other resource. 2) The cloud should be part of the conversation for any new project.  All of the same criteria should be applied, on-premise or off.  Cost, security, reliability, scalability, speed to deploy, cost of licenses, need to customize image, complex workloads.  We have been having these discussions for years when we talk about on-premise projects.  We make decisions on OS’s, Databases, ESB’s, configuration and products based on a myriad of factors.  We use the same factors but now we have a additional set of resources to consider in our process. 3) The cloud is a great solution looking for some interesting problems.  It is our job to recognize the right problems that fit into the cloud, weigh the factors and decide what to do. IaaS makes this discussion easier, offers more choices, and often choices that many enterprises will find more better than PaaS.  Looking forward to helping clients realize the power of the cloud.

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• Back From Microsoft Web Camps Beijing

  - by Dixin

  I am just back from Microsoft Web Camps, where Web developers in Beijing had a good time for 2 days with 2 fantastic speakers, Scott Hanselman and James Senior. On day 1, Scott and James talked about Web Platform Installer, ASP.NET core runtime, ASP.NET MVC, Entity Framework, Visual Studio 2010, … They were humorous and smart, and everyone was excited! On day 2, developers were organized into teams to build Web applications. At the end of day 2, each team had a chance of presentation. Before ending, I also demonstrated my so-called “WebOS”, a tiny but funny Web website developed with ASP.NET MVC and jQuery, which looks like an operating system, to show the power of ASP.NET MVC and jQuery. Scott, James and me were joking there, and people cannot help laughing and applauding… You can play with it here: http://www.coolwebos.com/, if interested. I talked with Scott and James about Web and ASP.NET, and asked some questions. I also helped on some English / Chinese translation. At the end Scott gave me a fabulous gift, which I will post to blog later. Hope Microsoft can have more and more events like this!

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• OTN Developer Days (Review) - San Juan, PR - April 29, 2010

  - by dana.singleterry

  A quick update on the San Juan, PR event. First off it was a great success with the Keynote audience of 200+. Mickey Ralat, Managing Director Oracle Caribbean, kicked off the event with a quick introduction followed by me delivering the Keynote Message - The Fusion Development Platform which is the first session in the regular OTN DD events that we run in North America. Following this session was a partner, SDT, basically marketing their services which covers the Oracle stack and then following was a very brief presentation on APEX. After this we broke out into the various tracks of Java, (APEX) DB SQL Developer, .NET on Oracle. After the breakout we ran the following sessions in the Java track: Developing with JDBC, UCP, and Java in Database, Rich Internet Applications in Web 2.0, Development Made Simple Without Coding: Developing Reusable Business Components. As expected with the various tracks, we ended up with 50 - 70 in the various sessions within the JAVA track and the audience was very impressed with the power of JDeveloper/ADF 11g and we got a number of questions from licensing cost to upgrading / integrating from Forms. As for the Forms questions, I fielded a number of them and for those I couldn't, I pointed them towards Grants resources which seemed to suffice. They were all, for the most part, unaware of the recent 11.1.1.3 release which occurred only a couple of days prior to the event. The indication was that they were going to download it and use it for the lab that was included on the DVD which we did not have the time for them to even start on. For those of you that attended the event, you can download the updated presentations as follows: Keynote - The Fusion Development Platform Rich Internet Applications in Web 2.0 Development Made Simple Without Coding - Developing Reusable Business Components

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• Online scoreboard in Python?

  - by CorundumGames

  So my friend and I are working on an arcade-style game in Python and Pygame. We're beginning to look at the feasibility of an online leaderboard, given our current programming backgrounds. Such a leaderboard would have the following requirements/features; The ability to search through demographics like region, country, platform, game mode, recentness ("best scores this month") and difficulty. (e.g. to make it possible for someone to say "I'm the best player in Italy!" or "I'm the best Linux player in South America!") Our game will not have online multiplayer, so no need to worry about that. We don't expect the game to be a million-dollar hit. We want the scores to be accessible both from in-game and the website. We would like some semblance of security to make sure no one plugs fake scores into the system. This is our present situation; Neither I nor my friend have any network programming background. All I really know is that sockets are low-level, HTTP is high-level. I happen to know that the Google App Engine might be useful for something like this, and I'm really thinking about going with that. We're not sure how we would store all the high score data. Our game will be free and open source (though we might keep the components that submit the high scores closed-source). Aside from all of this, we don't really have any idea where to begin. Any thoughts?

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• TFS Build Server not finding 'Microsoft.Expression.Interactions&rsquo;

  - by Chris Skardon

  We’ve been trying to get the build server to pick up the Microsoft.Expression.Interactions.dll needed so we can use things like the ExtendedVisualStateManager and the DataStateBehavior. Adding the DataStateBehavior in Blend adds the reference to the project, so it all compiles fine on the local machine. Checking in the code into a CI server throws up some ugliness: d:\Builds\6\Source\MyFile.xaml (290): The tag 'DataStateBehavior' does not exist in XML namespace 'http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/2010/interactions'. Errr, it should do…?? The reference is there, so… ahhhhh! A quick check of the properties and we’re using the dll from the c:\program files (x86)\ location, no wonder the build server can’t find it – let’s add the dll into our (ever expanding) ‘lib’ folder, reference that version, and check that bad boy in… No. Still No. Still get the same error. What the??? The reference is still pointing to the program files location?? Ok, so let’s modify the csproj file using the wonderful notepad, changing the reference from <Reference Include="Microsoft.Expression.Interactions, /* loadsa shizzle here */ /> to <Reference Include="Microsoft.Expression.Interactions">     <HintPath>..\Lib\Microsoft.Expression.Interactions.dll</HintPath> </Reference> Check that in, aaaand… Success!!! The reason for this (from what I can gather from here) is that we’re using the Productivity Power Tools, and they try to be clever about referencing dlls, and changed what we’d asked (i.e. for the local version) to use the original program files location.. Editing the file in notepad (sweet sweet notepad) gets around this issue… Irritating, took a while to figure this out… Meh :)

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• Keep Oracle VM 3 Up to Date

  - by Honglin Su

  More and more customers turn to Oracle VM 3 to virtualize their enterprise applications. Oracle VM support subscription is an integrated part of their successes. Customers enjoy the benefit of the industry-leading global support 24x7 for their server virtualization implementation, and receive access to patches, fixes, and updates via Unbreakable Linux Network (ULN). For customers running Oracle systems, Oracle VM support is included in Oracle Premium Support for Systems at no extra cost, and customers receive comprehensive systems coverage that includes single point accountability for Oracle server and storage hardware; integrated software (for example, firmware); and operating system software (Oracle Solaris, Oracle Linux, and Oracle VM). To run a successful virtualization infrastructure, it's important to keep Oracle VM 3 environment up to date by leveraging Oracle VM support resources.  Oracle VM Server Updates: You can easily upgrade Oracle VM Server using a Yum repository. You can download the latest server patch updates from ULN. To receive notification on the software update delivered to Oracle ULN for Oracle VM, you can sign up here. For information on setting up an Oracle VM Server Yum repository and using Oracle VM Manager to perform the upgrade of Oracle VM Servers, see Updating and Upgrading Oracle VM Servers in the Oracle VM User's Guide .  Oracle VM Manager Updates: Get the download instructions at OTN, and apply latest Oracle VM Manager patch. Be sure to review the patch README before you apply the patches. Support customers have access to extremely valuable knowledge notes from My Oracle Support. They are the first to receive useful tips to help address issues in Oracle VM deployments. For example, Upgrade to Oracle VM 3.1.1 using Yum Repository may cause network configuration scripts to be renamed causing network failure after reboot (Doc ID 1464126.1) Oracle VM server reboots after network becomes unresponsive due to deep C-State power management setting (Doc ID 1440197.1) For more information about Oracle's virtualization, visit oracle.com/virtualization.

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