entity groups - Page 247

XMPP— openfire,PHP and python web service

- by mlakhara

I am planning to integrate real time notifications into a web application that I am currently working on. I have decided to go with XMPP for this and selected openfire server which i thought to be suitable for my needs. The front end uses strophe library to fetch the notifications using BOSH from my openfire server. However the notices are the notifications and other messages are to be posted by my application and hence I think this code needs to reside at the backend. Initially I thougt of going with PHP XMPP libraries like XMPHP and JAXL but then I think that this would cause much overhead as each script will have to do same steps like connection, authentication etc. and I think this would make the PHP end a little slow and unresponsive. Now I am thinking of creating a middle-ware application acting as a web service that the PHP will call and this application will handle the stuff with XMPP service. The benefit with this is that this app(a server if you will) will have to connect just once and the it will sit there listening on a port. also I am planning to build it in a asynchronous way such that It will first take all the requests from my PHp app and then when there are no more requests; go about doing the notification publishing stuff. I am planninng to create this service in Python using SleekXMPP. This is just what I planned. I am new to XMPP and this whole web service stuff ans would like to take your comments on this regarding issues like memory and CPU usage, advantages, disadvantages, scalability issues,security etc. Thanks in advance. PS:-- also if something like this already exists(although I didn't find after a lot of Googling) Please direct me there. EDIT --- The middle-level service should be doing the following(but not limited to): 1. Publishing notifications for different level of groups and community pages. 2. Notification for single user on some event. 3. User registration(can be done using user service plugin though). EDIT --- Also it should like to create pub-sub nodes and subscribe and unsubscribe users from these pub-sub nodes. Also I want to store the notifications and messages in a database(openfire doesn't). Would that be a good choice?

Read the article

How to bill a client for frequently-interrupted time

- by Greg

I find that when I'm working on hourly-billable projects (in particular, those that are research/design/architecture-oriented as opposed to straight coding) that I'm easily distracted by any number of things (email, grab a drink (loss of focus, but nature happens), link off the webpage I was reading, wandering mind (easy when the job calls for a lot of thinking), etc.) This results in very fragmented time, far too incremental IMO to accurately track with a timeclock, and some time very gray. I frequently end up billing for only some fraction of the elapsed time I spent in order to feel fair, but sometimes it takes a really long time to put in an 8-hour day. By contrast, when I've worked for salary I've not worried about whether I'm actively working at any given minute, I just get the job done, and I've never had anything but stellar reviews/feedback from past salaried employers, so I think I get the job done well. I personally believe in an 80/20 cycle: I get 80% of my work done during an inspired 20% of my time. But I have to screw around the other 80% of the time in order to get that first 20%. So the question: what billing/time-tracking policy can I adopt in order to be fair to my hourly customers without having to write off my own less-productive 80% that a salaried employer is willing to overlook in light of the complete package? Note: This question is not about how to be more productive or focused. It's about how to work around whatever salient limitations that I have in a way that's both fair to me and to my customers. Update: A little clarification (to pre-emptively stop some righteous indignation): I currently have a half dozen different project/client groups. It's not a great situation and I'm working at reducing it down to two, but that's my current reality. It's very easy to get off on a thread related to a different project than the one I'm clocking, and I'm not always conscious of it at the time. [I did not intend the question to mean that I was off playing games or making personal calls, etc., and have adjusted wording above to be clearer. Most of the time. I am only human, and sometimes the mind does force you to take a break! :-)]

Read the article

User Group Meeting Summary - April 2010

- by Michael Stephenson

Thanks to everyone who could make it to what turned out to be an excellent SBUG event. First some thanks to: Speakers: Anthony Ross and Elton Stoneman Host: The various people at Hitachi who helped to organise and arrange the venue. Session 1 - Getting up and running with Windows Mobile and the Windows Azure Service Bus In this session Anthony discussed some considerations for using Windows Mobile and the Windows Azure Service Bus from a real-world project which Hitachi have been working on with EasyJet. Anthony also walked through a simplified demo of the concepts which applied on the project. In addition to the slides and demo it was also very interesting to discuss with the guys involved on this project to hear about their real experiences developing with the Azure Service Bus and some of the limitations they have had to work around in Windows Mobiles ability to interact with the service bus. On the back of this session we will look to do some further activities around this topic and the guys offered to share their wish list of features for both Windows Mobile and Windows Azure which we will look to share for user group discussion. Another interesting point was the cost aspects of using the ISB which were very low. Session 2 - The Enterprise Cache In the second session Elton used a few slides which are based around one of his customer scenario's where they are looking into the concept of an Enterprise Cache within the organisation. Elton discusses this concept and also a codeplex project he is putting together which allows you to take advantage of a cache with various providers such as Memcached, AppFabric Caching and Ncache. Following the presentation it was interesting to hear peoples thoughts on various aspects such as the enterprise cache versus an out of process application cache. Also there was interesting discussion around how people would like to search the cache in the future. We will again look to put together some follow-up activity on this Meeting Summary Following the meeting all slide decks are saved in the skydrive location where we keep content from all meetings: http://cid-40015ea59a1307c8.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/.Public/SBUG/SBUG%20Meetings/2010%20April Remember that the details of all previous events are on the following page. http://uksoabpm.org/Events.aspx Competition We had three copies of the Windows Identity Foundation Patterns and Practices book that were raffles on the night, it would be great to hear any feedback on the book from those who won it. Recording The user group meeting was recorded and we will look to make this available online sometime soon. UG Business The following things were discussed as general UG topics: We will change the name of the user group to the UK Connected Systems User Group to we are more inline with other user groups who cover similar topics and we believe this will help us to attract more members. The content or focus of the user group is not expected to change. The next meeting is 26th May and can be registered at the following link: http://sbugmay2010.eventbrite.com/

Read the article

Watching Green Day and discovering Sitecore, priceless.

- by jonel

I’m feeling inspired and I’d like to share a technique we’ve implemented in Sitecore to address a URL mapping from our legacy site that we wanted to carry over to the new beautiful Littelfuse.com. The challenge is to carry over all of our series URLs that have been published in our datasheets, we currently have a lot of series and having to create a manual mapping for those could be really tedious. It has the format of http://www.littelfuse.com/series/series-name.html, for instance, http://www.littelfuse.com/series/flnr.html. It would have been easier if we have our information architecture defined like this but that would have been too easy. I took a solution that is 2-fold. First, I need to create a URL rewrite rule using the IIS URL Rewrite Module 2.0. Secondly, we need to implement a handler that will take care of the actual lookup of the actual series. It will be amazing after we’ve gone over the details. Let’s start with the URL rewrite. Create a new blank rule, you can name it with anything you wish. The key part here to talk about is the Pattern and the Action groups. The Pattern is nothing but regex. Basically, I’m telling it to match the regex I have defined. In the Action group, I am telling it what to do, in this case, rewrite to the redirect.aspx webform. In this implementation, I will be using Rewrite instead of redirect so the URL sticks in the browser. If you opt to use Redirect, then the URL bar will display the new URL our webform will redirect to. Let me explain one small thing, the (\w+) in my Pattern group’s regex, will actually translate to {R:1} in my Action’s group. This is where the magic begins. Now let’s see what our Redirect.aspx contains. Remember our {R:1} above which becomes the query string variable s? This are basic .Net code. The only thing that you will probably ask is the LFSearch class. It’s our own implementation of addressing finding items by using a field search, we supply the fieldname, the value of the field, the template name of the item we are after, and the value of true or false if we want to do an exact search, or not. If eureka, then redirect to that item’s Path (Url). If not, tell the user tough luck, here’s the 404 page as a consolation. Amazing, ain’t it?

Read the article

Defining Social Media Terms

- by David Dorf

As I talk about social in the context of retail, I sometimes get tripped up on different terms. I know what I mean, but the audience may have something else in mind. So I decided to see if I could find some well accepted definitions for common terms. While there are definitions on the Internet, I'm not sure they are well accepted. After reviewing several, here's what I came up with: Social Network: a structure of individuals and groups connected together by commonality. That seems pretty straightforward. A group of friends, co-workers, music fans, etc. The key here is that they have something in common that connects them. Social Media: Internet channels that support the collaborative publishing of information by and for social networks. The key here is to differentiate between traditional one-way media, and conversational social media. When its social its two-way, allowing both the publishing and consuming of information. Examples are blogs, wikis, Twitter, Facebook, etc. Social Marketing: the use of social media for marketing, public relations, and customer service. Wikipedia actually includes "selling" here but I think that's separate from marketing, as you'll see further down below. Most people look at social media as entertainment, but the marketing angle adds business value. This is where retailers discover and engage customers to build a relationship. Social Merchandising: the integration of social media and product discovery. Whereas marketing is focused more on brand image, customer engagement, and promotions, merchandising is more directly trying to convert browsers into purchases. This includes deciding what customers want, often by asking the social network, and deciding how to position products to the social network. Social Selling: the incorporation of e-commerce into social media. While on a social media site, social selling enables the purchasing of goods/services in the user's context, without leaving the social media channel. If a user clicks on an advertisement and is taken to an e-commerce site, then that's really just web advertising and not social selling. Well, do these terms and definitions make sense? Let me know what you think.

Read the article

Book review: Microsoft System Center Enterprise Suite Unleashed

- by BuckWoody

I know, I know – what’s a database guy doing reading a book on System Center? Well, I need it from time to time. System Center is actually a collection of about 7 different products that you can use to manage and monitor your software and hardware, from drive space through Microsoft Office, UNIX systems, and yes, SQL Server. It’s that last part I care about the most, and so I’ve dealt with Data Protection Manager and System Center Operations Manager (I call it SCOM) in SQL Server. But I wasn’t familiar with the rest of the suite nor was I as familiar as I needed to be with the “Essentials” release – a separate product that groups together the main features of System Center into a single offering for smaller organizations. These companies usually run with a smaller IT shop, so they sometimes opt for this product to help them monitor everything, including SQL Server. So I picked up “Microsoft System Center Enterprise Suite Unleashed” by Chris Amaris and a cast of others. I don’t normally like to get a technical book by multiple authors – I just find that most of the time it’s quite jarring to switch from author to author, but I think this group did pretty well here. The first chapter on introducing System Center has helped me talk with others about what the product does, and which pieces fit well together with SQL Server. The writing is well done, and I didn’t find a jump from author to author as I went along. The information is sequential, meaning that they lead you from install to configuration and then use. It’s very much a concepts-and-how-to book, and a big one at that – over 950 pages of learning! It was a pretty quick read, though, since I skipped the installation parts and there are lots of screenshots. While I’m not sure you’d be an expert on the product when you finish reading this book, but I would say you’re more than halfway there. I would say it suits someone that learns through examples the best, since they have a lot of step-by-step examples I do recommend that you take a look if you have to interact with this product, or even if you are a smaller shop and you’re the primary IT resource. The last few chapters deal with System Center Essentials, and honestly it was the best part of the book for me. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

Read the article

How Microsoft listens

- by Stacy Vicknair

This being my freshman year as an MVP, I had a realization that I perhaps should be embarrassed hasn’t happened sooner. The realization comes much like the iconic M&Ms commercial where the M&Ms run into Santa and exclaim, “He does exist!” My personal realization arguably has a greater implication: Microsoft does listen. This is the most important lesson that I received this year attending the MVP Summit. My hope is that I can convince you that we are empowered to make a difference. Instead of using “Man I hate how this works / doesn’t work!” as cooler conversation, we can use it as true interaction with Microsoft. We as customers to Microsoft need to stop asking the question “Will this work for me?” and instead ask “How can this work for me?” There are three quick resources that the average developer has access to today that they can use to be heard by the product teams, and by no means should you think twice if you have a concern that you’d like a real response on. MVPs MVPs are members of your community who have a deep relationship with Microsoft and will have connections to their associated product group. Don’t think of them as just a resource for answers, but also as your ambassador for getting your experiences heard. You can find your local MVPs by browsing the directory at: https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/communities/mvp.aspx Evangelists Evangelists are employees of Microsoft who work to foster and grow communities in their assigned region. They are first-class citizens of Microsoft and are often deeply involved with the product groups. As a result, they will be more than glad to direct your questions or concerns to those who can answer them most expertly. With that said, evangelists are also very busy people (who do amazing things for the community) and might not be able to get you that conversation as quickly as a local MVP. You can find your local evangelist at the following website: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/bb905078.aspx Microsoft Connect This is one of the resources that I haven’t used enough, but it cannot be understated. Connect is the starting point of the social conversation that happens between Microsoft and the community daily. Connect acts as a portal where you can provide new feedback as well as comment and rate the feedback provided by others. Power is in numbers when it comes to Connect, so the exposure that your feedback can get not only lets you know that you aren’t the only one who wants change, but also lets Microsoft know the same. https://connect.microsoft.com Technorati Tags: Microsoft,MVP,Feedback,Connect

Read the article

Windows Azure Use Case: High-Performance Computing (HPC)

- by BuckWoody

This is one in a series of posts on when and where to use a distributed architecture design in your organization's computing needs. You can find the main post here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/buckwoody/archive/2011/01/18/windows-azure-and-sql-azure-use-cases.aspx Description: High-Performance Computing (also called Technical Computing) at its most simplistic is a layout of computer workloads where a “head node” accepts work requests, and parses them out to “worker nodes'”. This is useful in cases such as scientific simulations, drug research, MatLab work and where other large compute loads are required. It’s not the immediate-result type computing many are used to; instead, a “job” or group of work requests is sent to a cluster of computers and the worker nodes work on individual parts of the calculations and return the work to the scheduler or head node for the requestor in a batch-request fashion. This is typical to the way that many mainframe computing use-cases work. You can use commodity-based computers to create an HPC Cluster, such as the Linux application called Beowulf, and Microsoft has a server product for HPC using standard computers, called the Windows Compute Cluster that you can read more about here. The issue with HPC (from any vendor) that some organization have is the amount of compute nodes they need. Having too many results in excess infrastructure, including computers, buildings, storage, heat and so on. Having too few means that the work is slower, and takes longer to return a result to the calling application. Unless there is a consistent level of work requested, predicting the number of nodes is problematic. Implementation: Recently, Microsoft announced an internal partnership between the HPC group (Now called the Technical Computing Group) and Windows Azure. You now have two options for implementing an HPC environment using Windows. You can extend the current infrastructure you have for HPC by adding in Compute Nodes in Windows Azure, using a “Broker Node”. You can then purchase time for adding machines, and then stop paying for them when the work is completed. This is a common pattern in groups that have a constant need for HPC, but need to “burst” that load count under certain conditions. The second option is to install only a Head Node and a Broker Node onsite, and host all Compute Nodes in Windows Azure. This is often the pattern for organizations that need HPC on a scheduled and periodic basis, such as financial analysis or actuarial table calculations. References: Blog entry on Hybrid HPC with Windows Azure: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ignitionshowcase/archive/2010/12/13/high-performance-computing-on-premise-and-in-the-windows-azure-cloud.aspx Links for further research on HPC, includes Windows Azure information: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ncdevguy/archive/2011/02/16/handy-links-for-hpc-and-azure.aspx

Read the article

The curious case of SOA Human tasks' automatic completion

- by Kavitha Srinivasan

A large south-Asian insurance industry customer using Oracle BPM and SOA ran into this. I have survived this ordeal previously myself but didnt think to blog it then. However, it seems like a good idea to share this knowledge with this reader community and so here goes.. Symptom: A human task (in a SOA/BPEL/BPM process) completes automatically while it should have been assigned to a proper user.There are no stack traces, no related exceptions in the logs. Why: The product is designed to treat human tasks that don't have assignees as one that is eligible for completion. And hence no warning/error messages are recorded in the logs. Usecase variant: A variant of this usecase, where an assignee doesnt exist in the repository is treated as a recoverable error. One can find this in the 'pending recovery' instances in EM and reactivate the task by changing the assignees in the bpm workspace as a process owner /administrator. But back to the usecase when tasks get completed automatically... When: This happens when the users/groups assigned to a task are 'empty' or null. This has been seen only on tasks whose assignees are derived from an assignment expression - ie at runtime an XPath is used to determine who to assign the task to. (This should not happen if task assignees are populated via swim-lane roles.) How to detect this in EM For instances that are auto-completed thus, one will notice in the Audit Trail of such instances, that the 'outcome' of the task is empty. The 'acquired by' element will also show as empty/null. Enabling the oracle.soa.services.workflow.* logger in em should print more verbose messages about this. How to fix this The application code needs two fixes: input to HT: The XSLT/XPath used to set the task 'assignee' and the process itself should be enhanced to handle nulls better. For eg: if no-data-found, set assignees to alternate value, force default assignees etc. output from HT: Additionally, in the application code, check that the 'outcome' of the HT is not-null. If null, route the task to be performed again after setting the assignee correctly. Beginning PS4FP, one should be able to use 'grab' to route back to the task to fire again. Hope this helps.

Read the article

Microsoft MVP Award Nomination

- by Mark A. Wilson

I am extremely honored to announce that I have been nominated to receive the Microsoft MVP Award for my contributions in C#! Hold on; I have not won the award yet. But to be nominated is really humbling. Thank you very much! For those of you who may not know, here is a high-level summary of the MVP award: The Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Program recognizes and thanks outstanding members of technical communities for their community participation and willingness to help others. The program celebrates the most active community members from around the world who provide invaluable online and offline expertise that enriches the community experience and makes a difference in technical communities featuring Microsoft products. MVPs are credible, technology experts from around the world who inspire others to learn and grow through active technical community participation. While MVPs come from many backgrounds and a wide range of technical communities, they share a passion for technology and a demonstrated willingness to help others. MVPs do this through the books and articles they author, the Web sites they manage, the blogs they maintain, the user groups they participate in, the chats they host or contribute to, the events and training sessions where they present, as well as through the questions they answer in technical newsgroups or message boards. - Microsoft MVP Award Nomination Email I guess I should start my nomination acceptance speech by profusely thanking Microsoft as well as everyone who nominated me. Unfortunately, I’m not completely certain who those people are. While I could guess (in no particular order: Bill J., Brian H., Glen G., and/or Rob Z.), I would much rather update this post accordingly after I know for certain who to properly thank. I certainly don’t want to leave anyone out! Please Help My next task is to provide the MVP Award committee with information and descriptions of my contributions during the past 12 months. For someone who has difficulty remembering what they did just last week, trying to remember something that I did 12 months ago is going to be a real challenge. (Yes, I should do a better job blogging about my activities. I’m just so busy!) Since this is an award about community, I invite and encourage you to participate. Please leave a comment below or send me an email. Help jog my memory by listing anything and everything that you can think of that would apply and/or be important to include in my reply back to the committee. I welcome advice on what to say and how to say it from previous award winners. Again, I greatly appreciate the nomination and welcome any assistance you can provide. Thanks for visiting and till next time, Mark A. Wilson Mark's Geekswithblogs Blog Enterprise Developers Guild Technorati Tags: Community,Way Off Topic

Read the article

Ubuntu Preseed set Norwegian Keyboard?

- by Vangelis Tasoulas

It's been a couple of days now that I am trying to make a fully automated unattended installation. I managed to make it work with Ubuntu/Cobbler and a preseed file, but I cannot set the correct keyboard layout which is Norwegian in this case. I am doing the tests on a virtual machine and when I am going with a normal manual installation (no preseed) everything is working fine. When I am using the preseed file, I always end up with an "English (US)" keyboard no matter the many different options I have tried. I can change it manually with the "dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration" command, but that's not the case. It should be handled automatically using the preseed file. I am using DEBCONF_DEBUG=5 when the grub is loading, and as I see in "/var/log/installer/syslog" file after the installation has finished, the preseeding commands are accepted. Can anyone help on this? The preseed file I am using is following: d-i debian-installer/country string NO d-i debian-installer/language string en_US:en d-i debian-installer/locale string en_US.UTF-8 d-i console-setup/ask_detect boolean false d-i keyboard-configuration/layout select Norwegian d-i keyboard-configuration/variant select Norwegian d-i keyboard-configuration/modelcode string pc105 d-i keyboard-configuration/layoutcode string no d-i keyboard-configuration/xkb-keymap select no d-i netcfg/choose_interface select auto d-i netcfg/get_hostname string myhostname d-i netcfg/get_domain string simula.no d-i hw-detect/load_firmware boolean true d-i mirror/country string manual d-i mirror/http/hostname string ftp.uninett.no d-i mirror/http/directory string /ubuntu d-i mirror/http/proxy string http://10.0.1.253:3142/ d-i mirror/codename string precise d-i mirror/suite string precise d-i clock-setup/utc boolean true d-i time/zone string Europe/Oslo d-i clock-setup/ntp boolean true d-i clock-setup/ntp-server string 10.0.1.254 d-i partman-auto/method string lvm partman-auto-lvm partman-auto-lvm/new_vg_name string vg0 d-i partman-auto/purge_lvm_from_device boolean true d-i partman-lvm/device_remove_lvm boolean true d-i partman-md/device_remove_md boolean true d-i partman-lvm/confirm boolean true d-i partman-lvm/confirm_nooverwrite boolean true d-i partman-auto-lvm/guided_size string max d-i partman-auto/choose_recipe select 30atomic d-i partman/default_filesystem string ext4 d-i partman-partitioning/confirm_write_new_label boolean true d-i partman/choose_partition select finish d-i partman/confirm boolean true d-i partman/confirm_nooverwrite boolean true d-i partman/mount_style select uuid d-i passwd/root-login boolean false d-i passwd/make-user boolean true d-i passwd/user-fullname string vangelis d-i passwd/username string vangelis d-i passwd/user-password-crypted password $6$asdafdsdfasdfasdf d-i passwd/user-uid string d-i user-setup/allow-password-weak boolean false d-i passwd/user-default-groups string adm cdrom dialout lpadmin plugdev sambashare d-i user-setup/encrypt-home boolean false d-i apt-setup/restricted boolean true d-i apt-setup/universe boolean true d-i apt-setup/backports boolean true d-i apt-setup/services-select multiselect security d-i apt-setup/security_host string security.ubuntu.com d-i apt-setup/security_path string /ubuntu tasksel tasksel/first multiselect Basic Ubuntu server, OpenSSH server d-i pkgsel/include string build-essential htop vim nmap ntp d-i pkgsel/upgrade select safe-upgrade d-i pkgsel/update-policy select none d-i pkgsel/updatedb boolean true d-i grub-installer/only_debian boolean true d-i grub-installer/with_other_os boolean true d-i finish-install/keep-consoles boolean false d-i finish-install/reboot_in_progress note d-i cdrom-detect/eject boolean true d-i debian-installer/exit/halt boolean false d-i debian-installer/exit/poweroff boolean false

Read the article

Taking the fear out of a Cloud initiative through the use of security tools

- by user736511

Typical employees, constituents, and business owners interact with online services at a level where their knowledge of back-end systems is low, and most of the times, there is no interest in knowing the systems' architecture. Most application administrators, while partially responsible for these systems' upkeep, have very low interactions with them, at least at an operational, platform level. Of greatest interest to these groups is the consistent, reliable, and manageable operation of the interfaces with which they communicate. Introducing the "Cloud" topic in any evolving architecture automatically raises the concerns for data and identity security simply because of the perception that when owning the silicon, enterprises are not able to manage its content. But is this really true? In the majority of traditional architectures, data and applications that access it are physically distant from the organization that owns it. It may reside in a shared data center, or a geographically convenient location that spans large organizations' connectivity capabilities. In the end, very often, the model of a "traditional" architecture is fairly close to the "new" Cloud architecture. Most notable difference is that by nature, a Cloud setup uses security as a core function, and not as a necessary add-on. Therefore, following best practices, one can say that data can be safer in the Cloud than in traditional, stove-piped environments where data access is segmented and difficult to audit. The caveat is, of course, what "best practices" consist of, and here is where Oracle's security tools are perfectly suited for the task. Since Oracle's model is to support very large organizations, it is fundamentally concerned about distributed applications, databases etc and their security, and the related Identity Management Products, or DB Security options reflect that concept. In the end, consumers of applications and their data are to be served more safely in a controlled Cloud environment, while realizing the many cost savings associated with it. Having very fast resources to serve them (such as the Exa* platform) makes the concept even more attractive. Finally, if a Cloud strategy does not seem feasible, consider the pros and cons of a traditional vs. a Cloud architecture. Using the exact same criteria and business goals/traditions, and with Oracle's technology, you might be hard pressed to justify maintaining the technical status quo on security alone. For additional information please visit Oracle's Cloud Security page at: http://www.oracle.com/us/technologies/cloud/cloud-security-428855.html

Read the article

Voxel Face Crawling (Mesh simplification, possibly using greedy)

- by Tim Winter

This is in regards to a Minecraft-like terrain engine. I store blocks in chunks (16x256x16 blocks in a chunk). When I generate a chunk, I use multiple procedural techniques to set the terrain and to place objects. While generating, I keep one 1D array for the full chunk (solid or not) and a separate 1D array of solid blocks. After generation, I iterate through the solid blocks checking their neighbors so I only generate block faces that don't have solid neighbors. I store which faces to generate in their own list (that's 6 lists, one per possible face). When rendering a chunk, I render all lists in the camera's current chunk and only the lists facing the camera in all other chunks. Using a 2D atlas with this little shader trick Andrew Russell suggested, I want to merge similar faces together completely. That is, if they are in the same list (same normal), are adjacent to each other, have the same light level, etc. My assumption would be to have each of the 6 lists sorted by the axis they rest on, then by the other two axes (the list for the top of a block would be sorted by it's Y value, then X, then Z). With this alone, I could quite easily merge strips of faces, but I'm looking to merge more than just strips together when possible. I've read up on this greedy meshing algorithm, but I am having a lot of trouble understanding it. To even use it, I would think I'd need to perform a type of flood-fill per sorted list to get the groups of merge-able faces. Then, per group, perform the greedy algorithm. It all sounds awfully expensive if I would ever want dynamic terrain/lighting after initial generation. So, my question: To perform merging of faces as described (ignoring whether it's a bad idea for dynamic terrain/lighting), is there perhaps an algorithm that is simpler to implement? I would also quite happily accept an answer that walks me through the greedy algorithm in a much simpler way (a link or explanation). I don't mind a slight performance decrease if it's easier to implement or even if it's only a little better than just doing strips. I worry that most algorithms focus on triangles rather than quads and using a 2D atlas the way I am, I don't know that I could implement something triangle based with my current skills. PS: I already frustum cull per chunk and as described, I also cull faces between solid blocks. I don't occlusion cull yet and may never.

Read the article

Oracle WebCenter: Social Networking & Collaboration

- by kellsey.ruppel(at)oracle.com

We’ve talked in previous weeks about the key goals of the new release of WebCenter are providing a Modern User Experience, unparalleled Application Integration, converging all the best of the existing portal platforms into WebCenter and delivering a Common User Experience Architecture. We’ve provided an overview of Oracle WebCenter and discussed some of the other key goals in previous weeks, and this week, we’ll focus on how the new release of Oracle WebCenter provides unprecedented Social Networking and Collaboration.We recently talked with Carin Chan, Principal Product Manager at Oracle, around the topic of Social Networking and Collaboration. In today’s work environment, employees have come to expect social and collaborative services to augment their work environment. Whether it is to post a blog or to poll fellow coworkers, employees expect and demand access to highly integrated, collaborative work environments that allow them to quickly contribute at work -- whether it is to make informed decisions, contribute on projects, or share knowledge.Social and collaborative services from Oracle WebCenter add an immeasurable amount of value to achieving a modern user experience. Oracle WebCenter Services provides rich and comprehensive social computing services that include services such as wikis, blogs, instant messaging, presence, activity streams and graphs, and polls/surveys that offer employees access to rich collaborative services to work efficiently.Employees can create pages or spaces that mix and match collaborative services while bringing in data from other applications to share with groups, teams, or organizations. These out of the box social and collaborative services include: People Connections and Activity Streams enable users to quickly assemble and visualize their social business networks and track user activities.Activity Graphs tracks all user activities in real-time and gathers intelligence about these users, their connections and the way they use information to make educated recommendations and provide on the spot information discovery.Wikis and blogs enable the community authoring of documents and sharing of ideas and also allow for the gathering of feedback and comments on those ideas.Tags and links allow users to easily mark, connect and share information with others.RSS feeds are available to track new or changed information related to discussion forums, processes or activities in an Oracle WebCenter environment.Discussion forums enable sharing of group knowledge and easy creation of communities around specific topics.Announcements allow you to manage and publish important news to your user base.Instant Messaging and Presence enable real-time awareness and communication with available users in the context of a business task.Web and Voice Conferencing enables real-time communication with internal and external business users.Lists provide a way to manage list data directly on the web as well as export and import it from and to Microsoft Excel.Oracle WebCenter Analytics provides comprehensive reporting metrics on activity and content usage within portals or composite applications.Activity Streams allow you to track activities and visualize your business networks.While being able to integrate into your portal deployment, these services are also integrated into how users are already working. This includes integration with software such as Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Office and mobile devices such as the Apple iPhone. These services are just a tip of the iceberg regarding social and collaborative services that Oracle WebCenter has to offer your employees. Be sure to keep checking back this week for in future posts, we’ll delve deeper into a few of these collaborative services and discuss how a combination of collaborative services offer a better portal deployment to empower business users. Technorati Tags: UXP, collaboration, enterprise 2.0, modern user experience, oracle, portals, webcenter, social, activity streams, blogs, wikis

Read the article

So long Oracle ...

- by arungupta

... and thanks for all the fish! This Friday (October 18, 2013) is my last day at Oracle. After Publishing almost 1400 blog entries with 5500+ comments on them Working in the Java EE team since inception Visiting 35+ countries and several cities around the world Speaking at all major Java conferences and lots of Java User Groups 15-year alumni of JavaOne as staff Meeting and working with best of the best in the Java community Most importantly having lots of fun Its time for me to move on! No new blog entries will be posted on this blog. Feel free to subscribe to The Aquarium for latest updates on Java EE and GlassFish. I'll continue to publish all the excellent content that you've been used to at blog.arungupta.me now onwards. Read my new blog to learn about my new adventures! Here are some of the conference badges collected over the past years ... And the cities visited ... View Cities Visited by "Miles To Go..." in a larger map The comments on this blog are disabled as I'll not be able to respond to them. Feel free to leave comments on the new blog and I'd love to follow up with you there. Thank you very much for all the support that has been shown on this blog. I'd like to conclude with a Hindi song that I've been humming for the past few days now ... Abhi alvida mat kaho doston ... Na jaane kahan phir mulaqaat ho ... Kyonki ... Beete huye lamhon ki kasak saath to hogi ... Khawabon mein hi ho chahe mulaqaat to hogi ... For my non-Hindi readers, here is my paraphrased meaning ... Don't say goodbye yet my friends ... We'll likely meet somewhere else ... Because ... We'll always have the memories of the wonderful time spent together ... May be in dreams but we will meet again ... With that, over and out, and see you at blog.arungupta.me!

Read the article

rkhunter 1.4 different results than version before?

- by dschinn1001

with rkhunter version before ubuntu-update from 12.04 to 12.10 I had NOT these warnings like listed here: Performing file properties checks Checking for prerequisites [ Warning ] /usr/sbin/adduser [ Warning ] /usr/sbin/chroot [ Warning ] /usr/sbin/cron [ Warning ] /usr/sbin/groupadd [ Warning ] /usr/sbin/groupdel [ Warning ] /usr/sbin/groupmod [ Warning ] /usr/sbin/grpck [ Warning ] /usr/sbin/nologin [ Warning ] /usr/sbin/pwck [ Warning ] /usr/sbin/rsyslogd [ Warning ] /usr/sbin/tcpd [ Warning ] /usr/sbin/useradd [ Warning ] /usr/sbin/userdel [ Warning ] /usr/sbin/usermod [ Warning ] /usr/sbin/vipw [ Warning ] /usr/bin/awk [ Warning ] /usr/bin/basename [ Warning ] /usr/bin/chattr [ Warning ] /usr/bin/curl [ Warning ] /usr/bin/cut [ Warning ] /usr/bin/diff [ Warning ] /usr/bin/dirname [ Warning ] /usr/bin/dpkg [ Warning ] /usr/bin/dpkg-query [ Warning ] /usr/bin/du [ Warning ] /usr/bin/env [ Warning ] /usr/bin/file [ Warning ] /usr/bin/find [ Warning ] /usr/bin/GET [ Warning ] /usr/bin/groups [ Warning ] /usr/bin/head [ Warning ] /usr/bin/id [ Warning ] /usr/bin/killall [ Warning ] /usr/bin/last [ Warning ] /usr/bin/lastlog [ Warning ] /usr/bin/ldd [ Warning ] /usr/bin/less [ Warning ] /usr/bin/locate [ Warning ] /usr/bin/logger [ Warning ] /usr/bin/lsattr [ Warning ] /usr/bin/lsof [ Warning ] /usr/bin/lynx [ Warning ] /usr/bin/mail [ Warning ] /usr/bin/md5sum [ Warning ] /usr/bin/mlocate [ Warning ] /usr/bin/newgrp [ Warning ] /usr/bin/passwd [ Warning ] /usr/bin/perl [ Warning ] /usr/bin/pgrep [ Warning ] /usr/bin/pkill [ Warning ] /usr/bin/pstree [ Warning ] /usr/bin/rkhunter [ Warning ] /usr/bin/rpm [ Warning ] /usr/bin/runcon [ Warning ] /usr/bin/sha1sum [ Warning ] /usr/bin/sha224sum [ Warning ] /usr/bin/sha256sum [ Warning ] /usr/bin/sha384sum [ Warning ] /usr/bin/sha512sum [ Warning ] /usr/bin/size [ Warning ] /usr/bin/sort [ Warning ] /usr/bin/stat [ Warning ] /usr/bin/strace [ Warning ] /usr/bin/strings [ Warning ] /usr/bin/sudo [ Warning ] /usr/bin/tail [ Warning ] /usr/bin/test [ Warning ] /usr/bin/top [ Warning ] /usr/bin/touch [ Warning ] /usr/bin/tr [ Warning ] /usr/bin/uniq [ Warning ] /usr/bin/users [ Warning ] /usr/bin/vmstat [ Warning ] /usr/bin/w [ Warning ] /usr/bin/watch [ Warning ] /usr/bin/wc [ Warning ] /usr/bin/wget [ Warning ] /usr/bin/whatis [ Warning ] /usr/bin/whereis [ Warning ] /usr/bin/which [ Warning ] /usr/bin/who [ Warning ] /usr/bin/whoami [ Warning ] /usr/bin/unhide.rb [ Warning ] /usr/bin/gawk [ Warning ] /usr/bin/lwp-request [ Warning ] /usr/bin/heirloom-mailx [ Warning ] /usr/bin/w.procps [ Warning ] /sbin/depmod [ Warning ] /sbin/fsck [ Warning ] /sbin/ifconfig [ Warning ] /sbin/ifdown [ Warning ] /sbin/ifup [ Warning ] /sbin/init [ Warning ] /sbin/insmod [ Warning ] /sbin/ip [ Warning ] /sbin/lsmod [ Warning ] /sbin/modinfo [ Warning ] /sbin/modprobe [ Warning ] /sbin/rmmod [ Warning ] /sbin/route [ Warning ] /sbin/runlevel [ Warning ] /sbin/sulogin [ Warning ] /sbin/sysctl [ Warning ] /bin/bash [ Warning ] /bin/cat [ Warning ] /bin/chmod [ Warning ] /bin/chown [ Warning ] /bin/cp [ Warning ] /bin/date [ Warning ] /bin/df [ Warning ] /bin/dmesg [ Warning ] /bin/echo [ Warning ] /bin/ed [ Warning ] /bin/egrep [ Warning ] /bin/fgrep [ Warning ] /bin/fuser [ Warning ] /bin/grep [ Warning ] /bin/ip [ Warning ] /bin/kill [ Warning ] /bin/less [ Warning ] /bin/login [ Warning ] /bin/ls [ Warning ] /bin/lsmod [ Warning ] /bin/mktemp [ Warning ] /bin/more [ Warning ] /bin/mount [ Warning ] /bin/mv [ Warning ] /bin/netstat [ Warning ] /bin/ping [ Warning ] /bin/ps [ Warning ] /bin/pwd [ Warning ] /bin/readlink [ Warning ] /bin/sed [ Warning ] /bin/sh [ Warning ] /bin/su [ Warning ] /bin/touch [ Warning ] /bin/uname [ Warning ] /bin/which [ Warning ] /bin/dash [ Warning ] It seems that rkhunter 1.4 is oversensitive somehow about changed bin-files ? chkrootkit finds nothing and no warnings too.

Read the article

Rails link to PDF version of show.html.erb

- by Danny McClelland

Hi Everyone, I have created a pdf version of our rails application using the Prawn plugin, the page in question is part of the Kase model - the link to the kase is /kases/1 and the link to the pdf version is /kases/1.pdf. How can I add a link within the show.html.erb to the PDF file so whichever page is being viewed it updates the URL to the correct case id? <% content_for :header do -%> <%=h @kase.jobno %> | <%=h @kase.casesubject %> <% end -%>  <% content_for :sidebar do -%> <% if @kase.avatar.exists? then %> <%= image_tag @kase.avatar.url %> <% else %> <p style="font-size:smaller"> You can upload an icon for this case that will display here. Usually this would be for the year number icon for easy recognition.</p> <% end %> <% end %>  <ul id="kases_showlist"> <li>Date Instructed: <span><%=h @kase.dateinstructed %></span></li> <li>Client Company: <span><%=h @kase.clientcompanyname %></span></li> <li>Client Reference: <span><%=h @kase.clientref %></span></li> <li>Case Subject: <span><%=h @kase.casesubject %></span></li> <li>Transport<span><%=h @kase.transport %></span></li> <li>Goods<span><%=h @kase.goods %></span></li> <li>Case Status: <span><%=h @kase.kase_status %></span></li> <li>Client Company Address: <span class="address"><%=h @kase.clientcompanyaddress %></span></li> <li>Client Company Fax: <span><%=h @kase.clientcompanyfax %></span></li> <li>Case Handler: <span><%=h @kase.casehandlername %></span></li> <li>Case Handler Tel: <span><%=h @kase.casehandlertel %></span></li> <li>Case Handler Email: <span><%=h @kase.casehandleremail %></span></li> <li>Claimant Name: <span><%=h @kase.claimantname %></span></li> <li>Claimant Address: <span class="address"><%=h @kase.claimantaddress %></span></li> <li>Claimant Contact: <span><%=h @kase.claimantcontact %></span></li> <li>Claimant Tel: <span><%=h @kase.claimanttel %></span></li> <li>Claiment Mob: <span><%=h @kase.claimantmob %></span></li> <li>Claiment Email: <span><%=h @kase.claimantemail %></span></li> <li>Claimant URL: <span><%=h @kase.claimanturl %></span></li> <li>Comments: <span><%=h @kase.comments %></span></li> </ul>  <div id="kase_finances"> <div class="js_option"> <h2>Financial Options</h2><p class="finance_showhide"><%= link_to_function "Show","Element.show('finance_showhide');" %> / <%= link_to_function "Hide","Element.hide('finance_showhide');" %></p> </div> <div id="finance_showhide" style="display:none"> <ul id="kases_new_finance"> <li>Invoice Number<span><%=h @kase.invoicenumber %></span></li> <li>Net Amount<span><%=h @kase.netamount %></span></li> <li>VAT<span><%=h @kase.vat %></span></li> <li>Gross Amount<span><%=h @kase.grossamount %></span></li> <li>Date Closed<span><%=h @kase.dateclosed %></span></li> <li>Date Paid<span><%=h @kase.datepaid %></span></li> </ul></div> </div>  <%= link_to 'Edit Case', edit_kase_path(@kase) %> | <%= link_to 'Back', kases_path %> | <a href="#">Top</a> <div style="width:120%; height: 50px; background-color: black; margin: 10px 0 0 -19px; padding: 0; background-color: #d4d4d4;"> </div> <div class="js_option_kaseemails"> <%= link_to_function "Show", "Element.show('newinstructionemail1');" %> / <%= link_to_function "Hide", "Element.hide('newinstructionemail1');" %> </div> <h3>New Instruction Email</h3> <div id="newinstructionemail1" style="display:none"> <p class="kase_email_output"> Hi,<br /> <br /> Many thanks for your instructions in the subject matter.<br /> <br /> We have allocated reference number <%=h @kase.jobno %> to the above claim.<br /> <br /> We have started our inquiries and will be in touch.<br /> <br /> Best Regards,<br /> <br /> <strong><%=h current_user.name %></strong> <br /> McClelland & Co<br /> PO Box 149<br /> Southport<br /> PR8 4GZ<br /> <br /> Tel: +(0) 1704 569871<br /> Fax: +(0) 1704 562234<br /> Mob: <%=h current_user.mobile %><br /> E-mail: <%= current_user.email %><br /> <br /> This e-mail and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you receive this e-mail in error please notify the originator of the message. <br /><br /> McClelland & Co has taken every reasonable precaution to ensure that any attachment to this e-mail has been checked for viruses but it is strongly recommended that you carry out your own virus check before opening any attachment. McClelland & Co cannot accept liability for any damage sustained as a result of software virus infection. </p> <%= link_to 'Edit Case', edit_kase_path(@kase) %> | <%= link_to 'Back', kases_path %> | <a href="#">Top</a> </div> <div style="width:120%; height: 20px; background-color: black; margin: 10px 0 0 -19px; padding: 0; background-color: #d4d4d4;"> </div> <div class="js_option_kaseemails"> <%= link_to_function "Show", "Element.show('newinstructionemail');" %> / <%= link_to_function "Hide", "Element.hide('newinstructionemail');" %> </div> <h3>New Instruction Email</h3> <div id="newinstructionemail" style="display:none"> <p class="kase_email_output"> Hi,<br /> <br /> Many thanks for your instructions in the subject matter.<br /> <br /> We have allocated reference number <%=h @kase.jobno %> to the above claim.<br /> <br /> We have started our inquiries and will be in touch.<br /> <br /> Best Regards,<br /> <br /> <strong><%=h current_user.name %></strong> <br /> McClelland & Co<br /> PO Box 149<br /> Southport<br /> PR8 4GZ<br /> <br /> Tel: +(0) 1704 569871<br /> Fax: +(0) 1704 562234<br /> Mob: <%=h current_user.mobile %><br /> E-mail: <%= current_user.email %><br /> <br /> This e-mail and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you receive this e-mail in error please notify the originator of the message. <br /><br /> McClelland & Co has taken every reasonable precaution to ensure that any attachment to this e-mail has been checked for viruses but it is strongly recommended that you carry out your own virus check before opening any attachment. McClelland & Co cannot accept liability for any damage sustained as a result of software virus infection. </p> <%= link_to 'Edit Case', edit_kase_path(@kase) %> | <%= link_to 'Back', kases_path %> | <a href="#">Top</a> </div> <div style="width:120%; height: 20px; background-color: black; margin: 10px 0 0 -19px; padding: 0; background-color: #d4d4d4;"> </div> <div class="js_option_kaseemails"> <%= link_to_function "Show", "Element.show('newinstructionemail2');" %> / <%= link_to_function "Hide", "Element.hide('newinstructionemail2');" %> </div> <h3>New Instruction Email</h3> <div id="newinstructionemail2" style="display:none;"> <p class="kase_email_output"> Hi,<br /> <br /> Many thanks for your instructions in the subject matter.<br /> <br /> We have allocated reference number <%=h @kase.jobno %> to the above claim.<br /> <br /> We have started our inquiries and will be in touch.<br /> <br /> Best Regards,<br /> <br /> <strong><%=h current_user.name %></strong> <br /> McClelland & Co<br /> PO Box 149<br /> Southport<br /> PR8 4GZ<br /> <br /> Tel: +(0) 1704 569871<br /> Fax: +(0) 1704 562234<br /> Mob: <%=h current_user.mobile %><br /> E-mail: <%= current_user.email %><br /> <br /> This e-mail and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you receive this e-mail in error please notify the originator of the message. <br /><br /> McClelland & Co has taken every reasonable precaution to ensure that any attachment to this e-mail has been checked for viruses but it is strongly recommended that you carry out your own virus check before opening any attachment. McClelland & Co cannot accept liability for any damage sustained as a result of software virus infection. </p> <%= link_to 'Edit Case', edit_kase_path(@kase) %> | <%= link_to 'Back', kases_path %> | <a href="#">Top</a> </div> Thanks, Danny

Read the article

Passing data between android ListActivities in Java

- by Will Janes

I am new to Android! I am having a problem getting this code to work... Basically I Go from one list activity to another and pass the text from a list item through the intent of the activity to the new list view, then retrieve that text in the new list activity and then preform a http request based on value of that list item. Log Cat 04-05 17:47:32.370: E/AndroidRuntime(30135): FATAL EXCEPTION: main 04-05 17:47:32.370: E/AndroidRuntime(30135): java.lang.ClassCastException:android.widget.LinearLayout 04-05 17:47:32.370: E/AndroidRuntime(30135): at com.thickcrustdesigns.ufood.CatogPage$1.onItemClick(CatogPage.java:66) 04-05 17:47:32.370: E/AndroidRuntime(30135): at android.widget.AdapterView.performItemClick(AdapterView.java:284) 04-05 17:47:32.370: E/AndroidRuntime(30135): at android.widget.ListView.performItemClick(ListView.java:3731) 04-05 17:47:32.370: E/AndroidRuntime(30135): at android.widget.AbsListView$PerformClick.run(AbsListView.java:1959) 04-05 17:47:32.370: E/AndroidRuntime(30135): at android.os.Handler.handleCallback(Handler.java:587) 04-05 17:47:32.370: E/AndroidRuntime(30135): at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:92) 04-05 17:47:32.370: E/AndroidRuntime(30135): at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:130) 04-05 17:47:32.370: E/AndroidRuntime(30135): at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:3691) 04-05 17:47:32.370: E/AndroidRuntime(30135): at java.lang.reflect.Method.invokeNative(Native Method) 04-05 17:47:32.370: E/AndroidRuntime(30135): at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:507) 04-05 17:47:32.370: E/AndroidRuntime(30135): at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(ZygoteInit.java:907) 04-05 17:47:32.370: E/AndroidRuntime(30135): at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:665) 04-05 17:47:32.370: E/AndroidRuntime(30135): at dalvik.system.NativeStart.main(Native Method) ListActivity 1 package com.thickcrustdesigns.ufood; import java.util.ArrayList; import org.apache.http.NameValuePair; import org.apache.http.message.BasicNameValuePair; import org.json.JSONException; import org.json.JSONObject; import android.app.ListActivity; import android.content.Intent; import android.os.Bundle; import android.view.View; import android.widget.AdapterView; import android.widget.AdapterView.OnItemClickListener; import android.widget.Button; import android.widget.ListView; import android.widget.TextView; public class CatogPage extends ListActivity { ListView listView1; Button btn_bk; @Override public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); setContentView(R.layout.definition_main); btn_bk = (Button) findViewById(R.id.btn_bk); listView1 = (ListView) findViewById(android.R.id.list); ArrayList<NameValuePair> nvp = new ArrayList<NameValuePair>(); nvp.add(new BasicNameValuePair("request", "categories")); ArrayList<JSONObject> jsondefs = Request.fetchData(this, nvp); String[] defs = new String[jsondefs.size()]; for (int i = 0; i < jsondefs.size(); i++) { try { defs[i] = jsondefs.get(i).getString("Name"); } catch (JSONException e) { // TODO Auto-generated catch block e.printStackTrace(); } } uFoodAdapter adapter = new uFoodAdapter(this, R.layout.definition_list, defs); listView1.setAdapter(adapter); ListView lv = getListView(); lv.setOnItemClickListener(new OnItemClickListener() { @Override public void onItemClick(AdapterView<?> parent, View view, int position, long id) { TextView tv = (TextView) view; String p = tv.getText().toString(); Intent i = new Intent(getApplicationContext(), Results.class); i.putExtra("category", p); startActivity(i); } }); btn_bk.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() { public void onClick(View arg0) { Intent i = new Intent(getApplicationContext(), UFoodAppActivity.class); startActivity(i); } }); } } **ListActivity 2** package com.thickcrustdesigns.ufood; import java.util.ArrayList; import org.apache.http.NameValuePair; import org.apache.http.message.BasicNameValuePair; import org.json.JSONException; import org.json.JSONObject; import android.app.ListActivity; import android.os.Bundle; import android.widget.ListView; public class Results extends ListActivity { ListView listView1; enum Category { Chicken, Beef, Chinese, Cocktails, Curry, Deserts, Fish, ForOne { public String toString() { return "For One"; } }, Lamb, LightBites { public String toString() { return "Light Bites"; } }, Pasta, Pork, Vegetarian } @Override public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); this.setContentView(R.layout.definition_main); listView1 = (ListView) findViewById(android.R.id.list); Bundle data = getIntent().getExtras(); String category = data.getString("category"); Category cat = Category.valueOf(category); String value = null; switch (cat) { case Chicken: value = "Chicken"; break; case Beef: value = "Beef"; break; case Chinese: value = "Chinese"; break; case Cocktails: value = "Cocktails"; break; case Curry: value = "Curry"; break; case Deserts: value = "Deserts"; break; case Fish: value = "Fish"; break; case ForOne: value = "ForOne"; break; case Lamb: value = "Lamb"; break; case LightBites: value = "LightBites"; break; case Pasta: value = "Pasta"; break; case Pork: value = "Pork"; break; case Vegetarian: value = "Vegetarian"; } ArrayList<NameValuePair> nvp = new ArrayList<NameValuePair>(); nvp.add(new BasicNameValuePair("request", "category")); nvp.add(new BasicNameValuePair("cat", value)); ArrayList<JSONObject> jsondefs = Request.fetchData(this, nvp); String[] defs = new String[jsondefs.size()]; for (int i = 0; i < jsondefs.size(); i++) { try { defs[i] = jsondefs.get(i).getString("Name"); } catch (JSONException e) { // TODO Auto-generated catch block e.printStackTrace(); } } uFoodAdapter adapter = new uFoodAdapter(this, R.layout.definition_list, defs); listView1.setAdapter(adapter); } } Request package com.thickcrustdesigns.ufood; import java.io.BufferedReader; import java.io.InputStream; import java.io.InputStreamReader; import java.util.ArrayList; import org.apache.http.HttpEntity; import org.apache.http.HttpResponse; import org.apache.http.NameValuePair; import org.apache.http.client.HttpClient; import org.apache.http.client.entity.UrlEncodedFormEntity; import org.apache.http.client.methods.HttpPost; import org.apache.http.impl.client.DefaultHttpClient; import org.json.JSONArray; import org.json.JSONObject; import android.content.Context; import android.util.Log; import android.widget.Toast; public class Request { @SuppressWarnings("null") public static ArrayList<JSONObject> fetchData(Context context, ArrayList<NameValuePair> nvp) { ArrayList<JSONObject> listItems = new ArrayList<JSONObject>(); InputStream is = null; try { HttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient(); HttpPost httppost = new HttpPost( "http://co350-11d.projects02.glos.ac.uk/php/database.php"); httppost.setEntity(new UrlEncodedFormEntity(nvp)); HttpResponse response = httpclient.execute(httppost); HttpEntity entity = response.getEntity(); is = entity.getContent(); } catch (Exception e) { Log.e("log_tag", "Error in http connection" + e.toString()); } // convert response to string String result = ""; try { BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader( is, "iso-8859-1"), 8); InputStream stream = null; StringBuilder sb = null; while ((result = reader.readLine()) != null) { sb.append(result + "\n"); } stream.close(); result = sb.toString(); } catch (Exception e) { Log.e("log_tag", "Error converting result " + e.toString()); } try { JSONArray jArray = new JSONArray(result); for (int i = 0; i < jArray.length(); i++) { JSONObject jo = jArray.getJSONObject(i); listItems.add(jo); } } catch (Exception e) { Toast.makeText(context.getApplicationContext(), "None Found!", Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show(); } return listItems; } } Any help would be grateful! Many Thanks EDIT Sorry very tired so missed out my 2nd ListActivity package com.thickcrustdesigns.ufood; import java.util.ArrayList; import org.apache.http.NameValuePair; import org.apache.http.message.BasicNameValuePair; import org.json.JSONException; import org.json.JSONObject; import android.app.ListActivity; import android.os.Bundle; import android.widget.ListView; public class Results extends ListActivity { ListView listView1; enum Category { Chicken, Beef, Chinese, Cocktails, Curry, Deserts, Fish, ForOne { public String toString() { return "For One"; } }, Lamb, LightBites { public String toString() { return "Light Bites"; } }, Pasta, Pork, Vegetarian } @Override public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); this.setContentView(R.layout.definition_main); listView1 = (ListView) findViewById(android.R.id.list); Bundle data = getIntent().getExtras(); String category = data.getString("category"); Category cat = Category.valueOf(category); String value = null; switch (cat) { case Chicken: value = "Chicken"; break; case Beef: value = "Beef"; break; case Chinese: value = "Chinese"; break; case Cocktails: value = "Cocktails"; break; case Curry: value = "Curry"; break; case Deserts: value = "Deserts"; break; case Fish: value = "Fish"; break; case ForOne: value = "ForOne"; break; case Lamb: value = "Lamb"; break; case LightBites: value = "LightBites"; break; case Pasta: value = "Pasta"; break; case Pork: value = "Pork"; break; case Vegetarian: value = "Vegetarian"; } ArrayList<NameValuePair> nvp = new ArrayList<NameValuePair>(); nvp.add(new BasicNameValuePair("request", "category")); nvp.add(new BasicNameValuePair("cat", value)); ArrayList<JSONObject> jsondefs = Request.fetchData(this, nvp); String[] defs = new String[jsondefs.size()]; for (int i = 0; i < jsondefs.size(); i++) { try { defs[i] = jsondefs.get(i).getString("Name"); } catch (JSONException e) { // TODO Auto-generated catch block e.printStackTrace(); } } uFoodAdapter adapter = new uFoodAdapter(this, R.layout.definition_list, defs); listView1.setAdapter(adapter); } } Sorry again! Cheers guys!

Read the article

The Social Business Thought Leaders - Ray Wang

- by kellsey.ruppel

It seems both consumers and businesses are at the peak of the social hype. Overwhelmed by social media channels, platforms, and processes both in their private and professional life, many early adopters are starting to feel the social fatigue. Mirroring what happened with email and web sites during the late 1990's - early 2000's, more and more managers are looking to move from ubiquitous social media tactics to the most appropriate business use case and processes. This step becomes even more important considering the year over year contraction in IT budgets and the consequent need to maximize return on every dollar spent in new technologies. Ray Wang, CEO and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, suggests engagement through collaborative technologies both as a conceptual model and a transformational tool for enterprises to reap business value. Without participation - the reasoning goes - there is no value and good technology alone is not enough to guarantee employee and customer adoption. Enterprise gamification is a new lever to succeed with Social Business by directing a critical mass of participation towards desired outcomes. What kind of outcomes? A recent study from Constellation Research (see 2012 Q1 Gamification Early Adopters Best Practices) highlights how Marketing, Customer Service and HR are leading the pack with gamification in processes such as: Sustaining long term customer loyalty (76.4%) Improving response in campaign to lead (74.5%) Right channeling incidents for resolution in social media (67.3%) Growing the number service and support incidents resolved by the community (63.6%) Improving employee referral rates and effective recruiting (43.6%) Driving on-boarding success with new hires (20%) More than simply adding badges, points and leaderboards to existing processes, enterprise gamification should be holistically embedded into employee and customer experience to stimulate specific behaviors. According to Ray Wang this can be done at three core levels: Measurable actions. The behaviors we want to facilitate consist of granular actions (i.e likes, comments, posts, recommendations, etc) and more complex actions (i.e projects, initiatives, programmes) attributed to individuals, groups and/or external actors Reputation. The reputation an individual has earned through his actions is a key factor in building motivation among others and it is determined by its identity, social standing status and competitiveness Incentives or the intrinsic and extrinsic rewards that motivate behaviors and drive actions Listen to Ray Wang's video-interview to learn more about the dynamics that are shaping the future of collaboration and how gamification can help organizations attain new levels of engagement.

Read the article

Running Multiple Queries in Oracle SQL Developer

- by thatjeffsmith

There are two methods for running queries in SQL Developer: Run Statement Run Statement, Shift+Enter, F9, or this button Run Script No grids, just script (SQL*Plus like) ouput is fine, thank you very much! What’s the Difference? There are some obvious differences between the two features, the most obvious being the format of the output delivered. But there are some other, more subtle differences here, primarily around fetching. What is Fetch? After you run send your query to Oracle, it has to do 3 things: Parse Execute Fetch Technically it has to do at least 2 things, and sometimes only 1. But, to get the data back to the user, the fetch must occur. If you have a 10 row query or a 1,000,000 row query, this can mean 1 or many fetches in groups of records. Ok, before I went on the Fetch tangent, I said there were two ways to run statements in SQL Developer: Run Statement Run statement brings your query results to a grid with a single fetch. The user sees 50, 100, 500, etc rows come back, but SQL Developer and the database know that there are more rows waiting to be retrieved. The process on the server that was used to execute the query is still hanging around too. To alleviate this, increase your fetch size to 500. Every query ran will come back with the first 500 rows, and rows will be continued to be fetched in 500 row increments. You’ll then see most of your ad hoc queries complete with a single fetch. Scroll down, or hit Ctrl+End to force a full fetch and get all your rows back. Run Script Run Script runs the contents of the worksheet (or what’s highlighted) as a ‘script.’ What does that mean exactly? Think of this as being equivalent to running this in SQL*Plus: @my_script.sql; Each statement is executed. Also, ALL rows are fetched. So once it’s finished executing, there are no open cursors left around. The more obvious difference here is that the output comes back formatted as plain old text. Run one or more commands plus SQL*Plus commands like SET and SPOOL The Trick: Run Statement Works With Multiple Statements! It says ‘run statement,’ but if you select more than one with your mouse and hit the button – it will run each and throw the results to 1 grid for each statement. If you mouse hover over the Query Result panel tab, SQL Developer will tell you the query used to populate that grid. This will work regardless of what you have this preference set to: DATABASE – WORKSHEET – SHOW QUERY RESULTS IN NEW TABS Mind the fetch though! Close those cursors by bring back all the records or closing the grids when you’re done with them.

Read the article

How to refactor a Python “god class”?

- by Zearin

Problem I’m working on a Python project whose main class is a bit “God Object”. There are so friggin’ many attributes and methods! I want to refactor the class. So Far… For the first step, I want to do something relatively simple; but when I tried the most straightforward approach, it broke some tests and existing examples. Basically, the class has a loooong list of attributes—but I can clearly look over them and think, “These 5 attributes are related…These 8 are also related…and then there’s the rest.” getattr I basically just wanted to group the related attributes into a dict-like helper class. I had a feeling __getattr__ would be ideal for the job. So I moved the attributes to a separate class, and, sure enough, __getattr__ worked its magic perfectly well… At first. But then I tried running one of the examples. The example subclass tries to set one of these attributes directly (at the class level). But since the attribute was no longer “physically located” in the parent class, I got an error saying that the attribute did not exist. @property I then read up about the @property decorator. But then I also read that it creates problems for subclasses that want to do self.x = blah when x is a property of the parent class. Desired Have all client code continue to work using self.whatever, even if the parent’s whatever property is not “physically located” in the class (or instance) itself. Group related attributes into dict-like containers. Reduce the extreme noisiness of the code in the main class. For example, I don’t simply want to change this: larry = 2 curly = 'abcd' moe = self.doh() Into this: larry = something_else('larry') curly = something_else('curly') moe = yet_another_thing.moe() …because that’s still noisy. Although that successfully makes a simply attribute into something that can manage the data, the original had 3 variables and the tweaked version still has 3 variables. However, I would be fine with something like this: stooges = Stooges() And if a lookup for self.larry fails, something would check stooges and see if larry is there. (But it must also work if a subclass tries to do larry = 'blah' at the class level.) Summary Want to replace related groups of attributes in a parent class with a single attribute that stores all the data elsewhere Want to work with existing client code that uses (e.g.) larry = 'blah' at the class level Want to continue to allow subclasses to extend, override, and modify these refactored attributes without knowing anything has changed Is this possible? Or am I barking up the wrong tree?

Read the article

Thank you Geeks With Blogs for letting me join your community!

- by GreeNTUG

First, a link to the blog I can no longer edit because Office Live blew away my digital identity and so I can no longer log into it (the source of a loooong blog about protecting your digital identity sometime when I have more time and after it has played out to the end) http://greentug.spaces.live.com/ The following are the communities I participate in: Green & Sustainability. I run a virtual user group on Green and Sustainability as it relates to developers and software architects. It was located at greentug.groups.live.com, and we will need to find a new digital location for it, because I am locked out of that site as well. BizSpark Tampa Bay: I run a BizSpark group for Microsoft technologists (meetup.com, search for BizSpark Tampa Bay) and speak at Code Camps about "No Better Time to Start Your Own Tech Business". The meetup group facilitates a balanced presentation that is respectful to anyone wanting to start their own business, whether part-time or full-time, whether micro (just you), sustainable (grow to 2-25-ish, self-funded), high growth (get venture capital or other funding, grow it, sell it within 5 years, do it again), or hybrid (the new model going forward). It is an "action" group, with assignments and homework if you want to get the most out of it. At the end of a year you will either have your business on the path to where you want it to be, or you will know the steps you need to do to get it there. Women in Technology Have been participating in the Women in Technology community since 2008, my main interests in this area are mentoring women in the workplace to have them believe they can become geeks and double their income, and to mentor them with respect to starting and running their own business. Access 2010/SharePoint 2010. This is a game-changer with respect to the Access community (the ap both devs and IT Pros love to hate, the other a-word that's not a fruit). I conducted Lunch n Learns and Brunch n Learns around this topic before the Office 2010/SharePoint 2010 launch, and spoke on the topic at SharePoint Saturday Tampa in Nov 2009. Interested in learning more about: Using Silverlight HD Streaming out in the non-technical world (horses and equestrian sport). Migrating to Access Web Services and VB .Net from VBA (see the Access 2010/SharePoint 2010 interest above) Windows Phone 7! Exciting opportunities both for Green and Sustainability and for my "day job" of Environmental, Health & Safety (EHS). My day job is Environmental, Health & Safetey (EHS) consulting and software solutions, where that interfaces with the developer world is with respect to opportunities around Green and Sustainability, The SmartGrid and Juval Lowy's EnergyNet, both of which will require a lot of technology and software to make them work, The new Microsoft Partner competency for "Digital Home", and The Y2K kind of deadline around how managing chemicals in ERP systems is changing because of Global Harmonization, which hits the EU with a hard deadline on 11/30/10 (yes, this year), and hits the USA about 15 months later. Hope you enjoy my contributions to the digital geek community, and feel free to email me, [email protected] (the email leftover after my digital identity was blown away), and [email protected] (this one could go away at some future point) Best, Kathy Malone

Read the article

apt-get install is not able to access /etc

- by HorusKol

I put together an ubuntu 12.04 server a couple of weeks ago and everything seemed fine until this morning. Suddenly, I'm having trouble installing new packages - at first I thought there was something wrong with tinyproxy and so I tried installing squid instead. However, I get similar results: Starting tinyproxy: tinyproxy: Could not open config file "/etc/tinyproxy.conf".\ ... /var/lib/dpkg/info/squid3.postinst: 1: /var/lib/dpkg/info/squid3.postinst: cannot open /etc/squid3/squid.conf: No such file It seems that apt-get is not creating the configuration files needed for these programs. I haven't modified any configuration or user groups since the last successful update/install of packages. /etc is present, and is populated with a nice healthy tree of configuration files. It is owned and grouped to root, and has the properties drwxr-xr-x - all the files and folders inside seem to be fine to, as far as I can tell. I've even been able to edit/save a couple as sudo. Full output from installing tinyproxy: Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following NEW packages will be installed: tinyproxy 0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded. Need to get 0 B/61.6 kB of archives. After this operation, 201 kB of additional disk space will be used. Selecting previously unselected package tinyproxy. (Reading database ... 58916 files and directories currently installed.) Unpacking tinyproxy (from .../tinyproxy_1.8.3-1_amd64.deb) ... Processing triggers for ureadahead ... Processing triggers for man-db ... Setting up tinyproxy (1.8.3-1) ... Starting tinyproxy: tinyproxy: Could not open config file "/etc/tinyproxy.conf". invoke-rc.d: initscript tinyproxy, action "start" failed. dpkg: error processing tinyproxy (--configure): subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 70 Errors were encountered while processing: tinyproxy E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1) Result of strace after installation: 18467 open("/etc/ld.so.cache", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = 3 18467 open("/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = 3 18467 read(3, "\177ELF\2\1\1\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\3\0>\0\1\0\0\0\200\30\2\0\0\0\0\0"..., 832) = 832 18467 open("/etc/tinyproxy.conf", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)

Read the article

SQL SERVER – How to easily work with Database Diagrams

- by Pinal Dave

Databases are very widely used in the modern world. Regardless of the complexity of a database, each one requires in depth designing. To practice along please Download dbForge Studio now. The right methodology of designing a database is based on the foundations of data normalization, according to which we should first define database’s key elements – entities. Afterwards the attributes of entities and relations between them are determined. There is a strong opinion that the process of database designing should start with a pencil and a blank sheet of paper. This might look old-fashioned nowadays, because SQL Server provides a much wider functionality for designing databases – Database Diagrams. When using SSMS for working with Database Diagrams I realized two things – on the one hand, visualization of a scheme allows designing a database more efficiently; on the other – when it came to creating a big scheme, some difficulties occurred when designing with SSMS. The alternatives haven’t taken long to wait and dbForge Studio for SQL Server is one of them. Its functions offer more advantages for working with Database Diagrams. For example, unlike SSMS, dbForge Studio supports an opportunity to drag-and-drop several tables at once from the Database Explorer. This is my opinion but personally I find this option very useful. Another great thing is that a diagram can be saved as both a graphic file and a special XML file, which in case of identical environment can be easily opened on the other server for continuing the work. During working with dbForge Studio it turned out that it offers a wide set of elements to operate with on the diagram. Noteworthy among such elements are containers which allow aggregating diagram objects into thematic groups. Moreover, you can even place an image directly on the diagram if the scheme design is based on a standard template. Each of the development environments has a different approach to storing a diagram (for example, SSMS stores them on a server-side, whereas dbForge Studio – in a local file). I haven’t found yet an ability to convert existing diagrams from SSMS to dbForge Studio. However I hope Devart developers will implement this feature in one of the following releases. All in all, editing Database Diagrams through dbForge Studio was a nice experience and allowed speeding-up the common database designing tasks. Download dbForge Studio now. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Utility, T SQL

Read the article

JCP EC Nomination Materials for 2012

- by heathervc

The nomination period of the 2012 Annual JCP EC Elections will begin at the end of September 2012. The JCP will be accept self-nominations for 2 seats on what will become the merged JCP EC, starting 28 September, with the nomination period ending on Thursday, 11 October. JCP Members (JSPA 2 primary contacts) will receive messages with instructions for nominating and their login credentials via email. You will need this credential information to login and complete the nomination.The JCP EC Special Election schedule is posted online in the JCP calendar, highlights are below:Nominations for elected seats: 28 September-11 OctoberBallot (ratified and elected): 16-29 OctoberNew members take office: 13 November The ballot with nominees for ratified and nominated seats begins on 16 October. The results will also be available on jcp.org on 30 October. If you are attending JavaOne 2012 in San Francisco, there are several events happening that you may be interested in attending, in particular the following BOF session.Meet the JCP Executive Committee CandidatesSession ID: BOF6307Location: Hilton San Francisco - Golden Gate 3/4/5Date and Time: 10/2/12, 4:30 PM - 5:15 PM We will also be hosting a call for all of the candidates following the nomination period. The following information is required for self-nomination.1) Contact information/Biography Each EC seat is represented by two people - a primary and alternate representative. Provide the following information for each representative: - Name - Title - Email Address - Mailing Address - Phone Number - Fax - A brief biography (3-5 sentences/~100-200 words) for primary contact - Photograph (prefer jpg format, head only shot) for primary contactBios and photos for the EC members are posted here:http://jcp.org/en/press/news/ec-feature_MEhttp://jcp.org/en/press/news/ec-feature_SE2) Qualification StatementA brief (2-3 paragraph) description of your qualifications for an EC seat; this is a Qualification Statement for the organization you represent. It should include the value and perspective you bring to the EC, your interests in the JCP program, as well as a summary of your current participation or planned participation in the JCP program (your entire organization)--JSRs, participation on Expert Groups, meetings/events attended, etc. This statement will appear on the ballot and will convince community members that they should vote for you, so please include relevant information about your experience within the JCP program and your investments in Java technology.A few sample qualification statements are available here.3) Position PaperOne of the pieces of information we make available to the JCP membership for voting purposes is a position paper. If you would like to provide this type of information for the ballot, please prepare in pdf format for posting. This would be more detail on areas that you would put focus into during your tenure on the JCP EC.You can read more about some of the topics under discussion in the EC here, including links to JCP.Next materials. If you have an interest in participating in the JCP EC, please start preparing these materials now. We look forward to a successful election process.

Search Results

Search found 8349 results on 334 pages for 'entity groups'.

Page 247/334 | < Previous Page | 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 | Next Page >

- by mlakhara

- by Greg

- by Michael Stephenson

- by jonel

- by David Dorf

- by BuckWoody

- by Stacy Vicknair

- by BuckWoody

- by Kavitha Srinivasan

- by Mark A. Wilson

- by Vangelis Tasoulas

- by user736511

- by Tim Winter

- by kellsey.ruppel(at)oracle.com

- by arungupta

- by dschinn1001

- by Danny McClelland

- by Will Janes

- by kellsey.ruppel

- by thatjeffsmith

- by Zearin

- by GreeNTUG

- by HorusKol

- by Pinal Dave

- by heathervc

< Previous Page | 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 | Next Page >