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  • what's the point of method overloading?

    - by David
    I am following a textbook in which I have just come across method overloading. It briefly described method overloading as: when the same method name is used with different parameters its called method overloading. From what I've learned so far in OOP is that if I want different behaviors from an object via methods, I should use different method names that best indicate the behavior, so why should I bother with method overloading in the first place?

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  • how to be a web developer [closed]

    - by David
    Well, I'm 34 years old, and I have a master degree in computer science, for some how I cannot get a job as a programmer when I was younger, so I got a job related to computer. Recently I work in content management system, and updating the content of web portals. I'm trying to be a web programmer, so I started learning the techniques for web development, and CMS. I have a good knowledge of PHP and Wordpress, but I have a problem when I apply for a job I got the answer "sorry, you have no experience!" how can I solve that, and get a career in programming and web development?

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  • sp_help

    - by David-Betteridge
    One of the nice things about SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) is that you can highlight a table name in a script and press Alt + F1 to perform sp_help on it. Unfortunately I've never been able to use that feature as the majority of the tables in our product belong to a schema other than dbo.    On a long train journey back to York I wondered if I could solve this problem by writing my own replacement for sp_help (which I’ve called sp_help_table_schemas).  My version works by first checking the system tables to find out which schemas the table belongs to SELECT s.Name   --Find the schema FROM sys.schemas s  JOIN sys.tables t on t.schema_id = s.schema_id  WHERE t.name = 'Orders'It then dynamically calls the standard sp_help method but this time supplying the table owner as well.SET @cmd = 'EXEC sp_help ''' + QUOTENAME(@SchemaName) + '.' + QUOTENAME(@ObjectName) + ''' ;' ;           EXEC ( @cmd )Once I had proved the basics worked I wrapped it up into a stored procedure and deployed it to the master database on my laptop.  It was then just a question of going into Tools à Options within SSMS and defining the keyboard short cutA couple of notes You can’t amend the existing Alt+F1 entry to I went with Ctrl+F1.  You need to open new query window for the change to be picked upSo I can now highlight a table name and press Ctrl+F1 The completed script is attached.   Thanks go to Martin Bell who reviewed my stored procedure and give some valuable advice.

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  • Can't get activate_uri signal working when making a lens

    - by pub.david
    I'm trying to develop a lens for unity in ubuntu 11.10 and I can not get activate_uri signal working. This is an extract of my code: def _on_activate_uri (self, scop, uri): print "----> " + uri + "<-" ret=Unity.ActivationResponse.new(Unity.HandledType.HIDE_DASH,'') return ret and this is what I get back: TypeError: can't convert return value to desired type ../lens/appslens.py:230: Warning: g_object_get_qdata: assertion G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed GObject.MainLoop().run() ../lens/appslens.py:230: Warning: g_object_set_qdata_full: assertionG_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed GObject.MainLoop().run() ../lens/appslens.py:230: Warning: g_object_unref: assertion `G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed GObject.MainLoop().run() Does anyone has an idea where is my mistake ? Thanks in advance for your help

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  • Turning Supply Data Into Savings- (Almost) Everything You Need to Know in 12 Minutes

    - by David Hope-Ross
    Strategic sourcing and supplier management analytics are easy. The hard part is getting reliable data that provide an accurate record of suppliers, spend, invoices, expenses, and so on. In this new AppsCast, e-Three’s Amy Joshi provides an extraordinarily cogent explanation of key challenges, technologies, and tactics for improving spend visibility. Take twelve minutes to listen and learn. The techniques that Amy outlines can add millions to your organization’s bottom line.

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  • External table and preprocessor for loading LOBs

    - by David Allan
    I was using the COLUMN TRANSFORMS syntax to load LOBs into Oracle using the Oracle external which is a handy way of doing several stuff - from loading LOBs from the filesystem to having constants as fields. In OWB you can use unbound external tables to define an external table using your own arbitrary access parameters - I blogged a while back on this for doing preprocessing before it was added into OWB 11gR2. For loading LOBs using the COLUMN TRANSFORMS syntax have a read through this post on loading CLOB, BLOB or any LOB, the files to load can be specified as a field that is a filename field, the content of this file will be the LOB data. So using the example from the linked post, you can define the columns; Then define the access parameters - if you go the unbound external table route you can can put whatever you want in here (your external table get out of jail free card); This will let you read the LOB files fromn the filesystem and use the external table in a mapping. Pushing the envelope a little further I then thought about marrying together the preprocessor with the COLUMN TRANSFORMS, this would have let me have a shell script for example as the preprocessor which listed the contents of a directory and let me read the files as LOBs via an external table. Unfortunately that doesn't quote work - there is now a bug/enhancement logged, so one day maybe. So I'm afraid my blog title was a little bit of a teaser....

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  • Static "LoD" hack opinions

    - by David Lively
    I've been playing with implementing dynamic level of detail for rendering a very large mesh in XNA. It occurred to me that (duh) the whole point of this is to generate small triangles close to the camera, and larger ones far away. Given that, rather than constantly modifying or swapping index buffers based on a feature's rendered size or distance from the camera, it would be a lot easier (and potentially quite a bit faster), to render a single "fan" or flat wedge/frustum-shaped planar mesh that is tessellated into small triangles close to the near or small end of the frustum and larger ones at the far end, sort of like this (overhead view) (Pardon the gap in the middle - I drew one side and mirrored it) The triangle sizes are chosen so that all are approximately the same size when projected. Then, that mesh would be transformed to track the camera so that the Z axis (center vertical in this image) is always aligned with the view direction projected into the XZ plane. The vertex shader would then read terrain heights from a height texture and adjust the Y coordinate of the mesh to match a height field that defines the terrain. This eliminates the need for culling (since the mesh is generated to match the viewport dimensions) and the need to modify the index and/or vertex buffers when drawing the terrain. Obviously this doesn't address terrain with overhangs, etc, but that could be handled to a certain extent by including a second mesh that defines a sort of "ceiling" via a different texture. The other LoD schemes I've seen aren't particularly difficult to implement and, in some cases, are a lot more flexible, but this seemed like a decent quick-and-dirty way to handle height map-based terrain without getting into geometry manipulation. Has anyone tried this? Opinions?

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  • Getting xsession-errors after Unity Lens install

    - by David
    I apologize in advance if I am leaving something out here. Please let me know what additional info is required, and i will be happy to post it. Can you tell me what these error messages are, and how I can go about resolving them? WARN 2012-02-02 14:02:56 unity.glib.dbusproxy GLibDBusProxy.cpp:255 Cannot call method InfoRequest proxy /net/launchpad/lens/utilities does not exist WARN 2012-02-02 14:02:56 unity.glib.dbusproxy GLibDBusProxy.cpp:255 Cannot call method SetActive proxy /net/launchpad/lens/utilities does not exist WARN 2012-02-02 14:02:56 unity.iconloader IconLoader.cpp:509 Unable to load contents of file:///usr/share/icons/unity-icon-theme/places/svg/category-installed.svg: Error opening file: No such file or directory WARN 2012-02-02 14:02:56 unity.iconloader IconLoader.cpp:509 Unable to load contents of file:///usr/share/icons/unity-icon-theme/places/svg/category-available.svg: Error opening file: No such file or directory WARN 2012-02-02 14:02:56 unity.glib.dbusproxy GLibDBusProxy.cpp:255 Cannot call method InfoRequest proxy /net/launchpad/lens/askubuntu does not exist WARN 2012-02-02 14:02:56 unity.glib.dbusproxy GLibDBusProxy.cpp:255 Cannot call method SetActive proxy /net/launchpad/lens/askubuntu does not exist I am also getting Nautilus errors logged here. I do not remember what lenses I installed, or from where (Software Center, manual install, etc).

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  • Mobile Shopping Alerts

    - by David Dorf
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} It’s been popular to offer coupons when people check-in to a store, because you’re catching them at the best possible time – they’re presumably in a shopping state-of-mind, and they’re at your store.  But wouldn’t it be even better to catch the people walking by your store and entice them to visit?  That’s the concept of geo-fences.  When people enter a geographic zone, they are sent a relevant text message alerting them about something nearby. I wrote about Placecast doing this for The North Face, noting that the messages were a unique combination of both offers and useful information about outdoor activities. After creating a program with European carrier O2, Placecast recently entered into an agreement to provide similar services to AT&T customers.  The ShopAlerts program allows AT&T customers in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, and San Francisco opt-in to receive these messages.  The program will be expanded nationwide as early as this summer. It’s a much better model for customers (and Placecast) to sign-up once with the carrier instead of each individual retailer, but I hope the messages aren’t restricted to advertising.  I really the like the idea of providing other information, such as nearby special events, races, and perhaps even things to avoid like construction.

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  • I need help with algorithms, how do I improve?

    - by David Burr
    I usually do well at figuring out solutions to programming assignments but for some reason, I'm really struggling in my Algorithms class. I'm not failing but I know I can do better. When I'm confronted with problems like "Divide the array to 2 subarrays so that the sum of each subarray is equal to the other subarray," I feel like my brain won't cooperate and think and I end up not being able to solve it. Some of the things I'm doing right now to help myself: reading CLR (1st ed.) -- it takes a lot of time for stuff to sink in and I can't understand most of it solving some problems -- no matter how much I try, most of the time, I end up googling for the solution before I understand how to solve it I know that good algorithmic skills are very important because lots of good companies ask these sorts of questions in their interview process so I'm a bit worried right now. What else can can I do to improve my algorithmic/problem solving skills? Any advice on how to deal with this?

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  • C# creating a simple snake game

    - by Guy David
    I was thinking about creating a snake game with C#, so I ran ideas in my head, and some problems came up. How can I track and output in the correct location the blocks that run after the snake's head? If the snake is built of five blocks, and the user starts going in a circle, how can I print the snake body in the right location? Also, how can I create an action that will run on the background, which will move the snake forward, no matter what the user does? What structure should my code have? (code design structure) This should be a console application, since it's the only framework I am familiar with. I am not looking for finished code, since I want to really understand how it should work.

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  • Isis Finally Rolls Out

    - by David Dorf
    Google has rolled their wallet out for several chains; I see the NFC readers in Walgreen's when I'm sent their for milk.  But Isis has been relatively quiet until now.  As of last week they have finally launched in their two test cities: Austin, and Salt Lake City.  Below are the supported carriers and phones as of now, but more phones will be added later. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} AT&T supports: HTC One™ X, LG Escape™, Samsung Galaxy Exhilarate™, Samsung Galaxy S® III, Samsung Galaxy Rugby Pro™ T-Mobile supports: Samsung Galaxy S® II, Samsung Galaxy S® III, Samsung Galaxy S® Relay 4G Verizon supports: Droid Incredible 4G LTE. Of course iPhone owners have no wallet since Apple didn't included an NFC chip. To start using Isis, you have to take your NFC-capable phone to your carrier's store to get the SIM replaced with a more sophisticated one that has a secure element configured for Isis.  The "secure element" is the cryptographic logic that secures mobile payments.  Carriers like the secure element in the SIM while non-carriers (like Google) prefer the secure element in the phone's electronics. (I'm not entirely sure if you could support both Isis and Google Wallet on the same phone.  Anybody know?) Then you can download the Isis app from Google Play and load your cards.  Most credit cards are supported, and there's a process to verify the credit cards are valid.  Then you can select from the list of participating retailers to "follow."  Selecting a retailer allows that retailer to give you offers via the app. The app is well done and easy to use.  You can select a default payment type and also switch between them easily.  When the phone is tapped on the reader, there are two exchanges of information.  The payment information is transferred, and then the Isis "SmartTap" information which includes optional loyalty number and digital coupons.  Of course the value of mobile wallets comes from the ease of handling all three data types (i.e. payment, loyalty, offers). There are several advertisements for Isis running now, and my favorite is below.

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  • Making a Background Scrolling in Stacking Game

    - by David Dimalanta
    Hmmm...Is it a good idea to use a LibGDX parallax background for making a stacking game (i.e. PAPA STACKer Lite)? For example, I'm starting to use the blocks to drag-n-drop it. Next, when the next piece reaches the top of the screen, it automatically scrolls to the next one where the available space left. Aside from that, is it also involved with the camera code (Orthographic Camera) that the screen size appeared like 720x1280 but actually it's 1440x2560 for example? And another thing, does the background scrolling have the option to scroll from start to finish and infinite?

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  • Robust line of sight test on the inside of a polygon with tolerance

    - by David Gouveia
    Foreword This is a followup to this question and the main problem I'm trying to solve. My current solution is an hack which involves inflating the polygon, and doing most calculations on the inflated polygon instead. My goal is to remove this step completely, and correctly solve the problem with calculations only. Problem Given a concave polygon and treating all of its edges as if they were walls in a level, determine whether two points A and B are in line of sight of each other, while accounting for some degree of floating point errors. I'm currently basing my solution on a series of line-segment interection tests. In other words: If any of the end points are outside the polygon, they are not in line of sight. If both end points are inside the polygon, and the line segment from A to B crosses any of the edges from the polygon, then they are not in line of sight. If both end points are inside the polygon, and the line segment from A to B does not cross any of the edges from the polygon, then they are in line of sight. But the problem is dealing correctly with all the edge cases. In particular, it must be able to deal with all the situations depicted below, where red lines are examples that should be rejected, and green lines are examples that should be accepted. I probably missed a few other situations, such as when the line segment from A to B is colinear with an edge, but one of the end points is outside the polygon. One point of particular interest is the difference between 1 and 9. In both cases, both end points are vertices of the polygon, and there are no edges being intersected, but 1 should be rejected while 9 should be accepted. How to distinguish these two? I could check some middle point within the segment to see if it falls inside or not, but it's easy to come up with situations in which it would fail. Point 7 was also pretty tricky and I had to to treat it as a special case, which checks if two points are adjacent vertices of the polygon directly. But there are also other chances of line segments being col linear with the edges of the polygon, and I'm still not entirely sure how I should handle those cases. Is there any well known solution to this problem?

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  • Can I assume interface oriented programming as a good object oriented programming?

    - by david
    I have been programming for decades but I have not been used to object oriented programming. But for recenet years, I had a great opportunity to learn OOP, its principles, and a lot of patterns that are great. Since I've learned OOP, I tried to apply them to a couple of projects and found those projects successful. Unfortunately I didn't follow extreme programming that suggests writing test first, mainly because their time frame were tight. What I did for those projects were Identify all necessary classes and create them with proper properties and methods whenever there is dependency between classes, write interface between them see if there is any patterns for certain relationships between classes to replace By successful, I meant that it was quick development effort, the classes can be reused better, and flexible enough so that another programmer does not have to change something else to fix another part. But I wonder if this is a good practice. Of course, I know I need to put writing unit tests first in my work process. But other than that, is there any problem with this approach - creating lots of interfaces - in long term?

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  • Oracle Retail Mobile Point-of-Service

    - by David Dorf
    When most people discuss mobile in retail, they immediately go to shopping applications.  While I agree the consumer side of mobile is huge, I believe its also important to arm store associates with mobile tools.  There are around a dozen major roll-outs of mobile POS to chain retailers, and all have been successful.  This does not, however, signal the demise of traditional registers.  Retailers will adopt mobile POS slowly and reduce the number of fixed registers over time, but there's likely to be a combination of both for the foreseeable future.  Even Apple retains at least one fixed register in every store, you just have to know where to look. The business benefits for mobile POS are pretty straightforward: 1. Faster checkout.  Walmart's CFO recently reported that for every second they shave off the average transaction time, they can potentially save $12M a year in labor.  I think its more likely that labor will be redeployed to enhance the customer experience. 2. Smarter associates.  The sales associates on the floor need the same access to information that consumers have, if not more.  They need ready access to product details, reviews, inventory, etc. to meet consumer expectations.  In a recent study, 40% of consumers said a savvy store associate can impact their final product selection more than a website. 3. Lower costs.  Mobile POS hardware (iPod touch + sled) costs about a fifth of fixed registers, not to mention the reclaimed space that can be used for product displays. But almost all Mobile POS solutions can claim those benefits equally.  Where there's differentiation is on the technical side.  Oracle recently announced availability of the Oracle Retail Mobile Point-of-Service, and it has three big technology advantages in the market: 1. Portable. We used a popular open-source component called PhoneGap that abstracts the app from the underlying OS and hardware so that iOS, Android, and other platforms could be supported.  Further, we used Web technologies such as HTML5 and JavaScript, which are commonly known by many programmers, as opposed to ObjectiveC which is more difficult to find.  The screen can adjust to different form-factors and sizes, just like you see with browsers.  In the future when a new, zippy device gets released, retailers will have the option to move to that device more easily than if they used a native app. 2. Flexible.  Our Mobile POS is free with the Oracle Retail Point-of-Service product.  Retailers can use any combination of fixed and mobile registers, and those ratios can change as required.  Perhaps start with 1 mobile and 4 fixed per store, then transition over time to 4 mobile and 1 fixed without any additional software licenses.  Our scalable solution supports lots of combinations. 3. Consistent.  Because our Mobile POS is fully integrated to our traditional POS, the same business logic is reused.  Third-party Mobile POS solutions often handle pricing, promotions, and tax calculations separately leading to possible inconsistencies within the store.  That won't happen with Oracle's solution. For many retailers, Mobile POS can lower costs, increase customer service, and generally enhance a consumer's in-store experience.  Apple led the way, but lots of other retailers are discovering the many benefits of adding mobile capabilities in their stores.  Just be sure to examine both the business and technology benefits so you get the most value from your solution for the longest period of time.

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  • Big Data Appliance

    - by David Dorf
    Today Oracle announced the next release of it's Big Data Appliance, an engineered system composed of hardware and software targeting the efficient processing of big data.  The solution leverages 288 Intel cores running Cloudera's distribution of Apache Hadoop in 1.1 TB of main memory.  This monster helps companies acquire, organize, and analyze large volumes of structured and un-structured data. Additionally a new versions of the Oracle Big Data Connectors and Oracle NoSQL Database were released. Why is this important to retailers?  As the infographic below conveys, mobile and social have added even more data to the already huge collections of POS transactions and e-commerce weblogs.  Retailers know that mining that data will help them make better decisions that lead to increased sales, better customer service, and ultimately a successful retail business. Monetate

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  • How can I handle copyrighted music?

    - by David Dimalanta
    I have a curious question regarding on musics used in music rhythm game. In Guitar Hero for example, they used all different music albums in one program. Then, each album requires to ask permission to the owner, composer of the music, or the copyright owner of the music. Let's say, if you used 15 albums for the music rhythm game, then you have to contact 15 copyright owners and it might be that, for the game developer, that the profit earned goes to the copyright owner or owner of this music. For the independent game developers, was it okay if either used the copyright music by just mentioning the name of the singer included in the credits and in the music select screen or use the non-popular/old music that about 50 years ago? And, does still earn money for the indie game developers by making free downloadable game?

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  • Commerce, Anyway You Want It

    - by David Dorf
    I believe our industry is finally starting to realize the importance of letting consumers determine how, when, and where to interact with retailers.  Over the last few months I've seen several articles discussing the importance of removing the barriers between existing channels. Paula Rosenblum of RSR first brought the term omni-channel to my attention back in September. She stated, "omni-channel retail isn’t the merging of channels – rather, it’s the use of all possible channels (present and future) to enhance the customer experience in a profitable way." I added to her thoughts in this blog posting in which I said, "For retailers to provide an omni-channel experience, there needs to be one logical representation of products, prices, promotions, and customers across all channels. The only thing that varies is the presentation of the content based on the delivery mechanism (e.g. shelf labels, mobile phone, web site, print, etc.) and often these mechanisms can be combined in various ways." More recently Brian Walker of Gartner suggested we stop using the term multi-channel and begin thinking more about consumer touch-points. "It is time for organizations to leave their channel-oriented ways behind, and enter the era of agile commerce--optimizing their people, processes and technology to serve today's empowered, ever-connected customers across this rapidly evolving set of customer touch points." Now Jason Goldberg, better known as RetailGeek, says we should start breaking down the channel silos by re-casting the VP of E-Commerce as the VP of Digital Marketing, and change his/her focus to driving sales across all channels using digital media. This logic is based on the fact that consumers switch between channels, or touch-points as Brian prefers, as part of their larger buying process. Today's smart consumer leverages the Web, mobile, and stores to provide the best shopping experience, so retailers need to make this easier. Regardless of what we call it, the key take-away is that "multi-channel" is not only an antiquated term but also an idea who's time has passed.  Today, retailers must look at e-commerce, m-commerce, f-commerce, catalogs, and traditional store sales collectively and through the consumers' eyes.  The goal is not to drive sales through each channel but rather to just drive sales -- using whatever method the customer prefers.  There really should be just one cart.

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  • how to remove update repo that always fails

    - by David M. Karr
    A week or so ago I tried to add a new package repo that supposedly had a package I wanted. Unfortunately, the information about it was out of date, and I found that it fails to connect to it each time. I'd like to just remove the new repo, but I'm not sure how to do that. For context, when I update, I get this: W:Failed to fetch http://ppa.launchpad.net/geod/ppa-geod/ubuntu/dists/precise/main/source/Sources 404 Not Found [IP: 135.214.42.30 8080] , W:Failed to fetch http://ppa.launchpad.net/geod/ppa-geod/ubuntu/dists/precise/main/binary-amd64/Packages 404 Not Found [IP: 135.214.42.30 8080] , W:Failed to fetch http://ppa.launchpad.net/geod/ppa-geod/ubuntu/dists/precise/main/binary-i386/Packages 404 Not Found [IP: 135.214.42.30 8080] , E:Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored, or old ones used instead.

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  • History of Mobile Technology

    - by David Dorf
    Over the last ten years, mobile phones have gone through several incremental technology leaps that have added capabilities that impact the retail industry.  I've listed the six major ones below, along with their long-lasting impact. 1. Location In the US, the FCC required mobile phones to implement E911 (emergency calls) by 2006, requiring the caller to be located to within 300 meters.  Back in 2000, GPS was opened up for civilian use, and by 2004 Qualcomm had figured out how to use GPS in mobile phones.  So mobile operators moved from cell tower triangulation to GPS, principally for E911.  But then lots of other uses became apparent, especially navigation.  The earliest mobile apps from retailers made it easy to find nearby stores, and companies are looking at ways to use WiFi triangulation inside stores. 2. Computer Vision In 1997 Philippe Kahn shared a photo of his newborn using a mobile phone thus launching the popularity of instant visual communications.  Over the years the quality of the cameras got better, reaching the point where barcodes could be read around 2008.  That's when Occipital came on the scene with their Red Laser application, which was eventually acquired by eBay.  This opened up the ability for consumers to easily price compare inside stores.  Other interesting apps included Tesco's Wine Finder and Amazon's Price Checker, both allowing products to be identified by picture. 3. Augmented Reality Once the mobile phone had GPS, a video camera, and compass functionality it was suddenly possible to overlay digital information on the screen in real-time.  Yelp, which was using GPS to find nearby merchants, created a backdoor called Monocle on the iPhone that showed nearby merchants overlayed on the video camera view.  Today AR apps are mostly used by retailers for marketing, like Moosejaw's app that undresses models in their catalog. 4. Geo-Fencing So if we're able to track the location of a mobile phone, why not use that context to offer timely information?  My first experience with geo-fencing came courtesy of North Face, the outdoor enthusiast store. When a mobile phone enters a predetermined area, like near a store, a text message is sent to phone with an offer or useful information.  Of course retailers can geo-fence their competitors as well and find out which customers are aren't so loyal. 5. Digital Wallet Mobile payments leverage different technologies such as NFC, QRCodes, bluetooth, and SMS to facilitate communication between the consumers's phone and the retailer's point-of-sale. The key here is the potential to consolidate loyalty cards, coupons, and bank cards into the mobile phone and enable faster checkout.  Nobody does this better than Starbucks today, but McDonald's and Duncan Donuts aren't far behind.  Google, Isis, Paypal, Square, and MCX are all vying for leadership in this area.  If NFC does finally take off, it will be leveraged by retailers in more places than just the POS. 6. Voice Response Mobile Phones have had the ability to interpret simple voice commands for a while, but Google and Amazon were the first to use voice to allow searches for products.  Allowing searches by text, barcode, and voice makes it easy to comparison shop in the aisles.  Walmart even uses voice to build shopping lists, and if the Siri API is even opened we could see lots more innovation in this area.

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  • Comparing Isis, Google, and Paypal

    - by David Dorf
    Back in 2010 I was sure NFC would make great strides, but here we are two years later and NFC doesn't seem to be sticking. The obvious reason being the chicken-and-egg problem.  Retailers don't want to install the terminals until the phones support NFC, and vice-versa. So consumers continue to sit on the sidelines waiting for either side to blink and make the necessary investment.  In the meantime, EMV is looking for a way to sneak into the US with the help of the card brands. There are currently three major solutions that are battling in the marketplace.  All three know that replacing mag-stripe alone is not sufficient to move consumers.  Long-term it's the offers and loyalty programs combined with tendering that make NFC attractive. NFC solutions cross lots of barriers, so a strong partner system is required.  The solutions need to include the carriers, card brands, banks, handset manufacturers, POS terminals, and most of all lots of merchants.  Lots of coordination is necessary to make the solution seamless to the consumer. Google Wallet Google's problem has always been that only the Nexus phone has an NFC chip that supports their wallet.  There are a couple of additional phones out there now, but adoption is still slow.  They acquired Zavers a while back to incorporate digital coupons, but the the bulk of their users continue to be non-NFC.  They have taken an open approach by not specifying particular payment brands.  Google is piloting in San Francisco and New York, supporting both MasterCard PayPass and stored value. I suppose the other card brands may eventually follow.  There's no cost for consumers or merchants -- Google will make money via targeted ads. Isis Not long after Google announced its wallet, AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile announced a joint venture called Isis.  They are in the unique position of owning the SIM in the phones they issue.  At first it seemed Isis was a vehicle for the carriers to compete with the existing card brands, but Isis later switched to a generic wallet that supports the major card brands.  Isis reportedly charges issuers a $5 fee per customer per year.  Isis will pilot this summer in Salt Lake City and Austin. PayPal PayPal, the clear winner in the online payment space beyond traditional credit cards, is trying to move into physical stores.  After negotiations with Google to provide a wallet broke off, PayPal decided to avoid NFC altogether, at least for now, and focus on payments without any physical card or phone.  By avoiding NFC, consumers don't need an NFC-enabled phone and merchants don't need a new reader.  Consumers must enter their phone number and PIN in the merchant's existing device, or they can enter their PIN in the PayPal inStore app running on their phone, then show the merchant a unique barcode which authorizes payment. Paypal is free for consumers and charges a fee for merchants.  Its not clear, at least to me, how PayPal handles fraudulent transactions and whether the consumer is protected. The wildcard is, of course, Apple.  Their mobile technologies set the standard, so incorporating NFC chips would certainly accelerate adoption of many payment solutions.  Their announcement today of the iOS Passbook is a step in the right direction, but stops short of handling payments. For those retailers that have invested in modern terminals, it seems the best strategy is to support all the emerging solutions and let the consumers choose the winner.

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  • LibreOffice: Open in current program by default?

    - by David Oneill
    I often need to open pipe delimited .txt files in LibreOffice Calc. However, once I have Calc running, if I do File Open and select a spreadsheet with the extension .txt, it opens it in Writer instead. Is there a way to tell the file I'm trying to open using whatever program instead of trying to pick which one to use? Barring that, is there a way I tell it to always use Calc for .txt files (when I open them from the open dialog in Calc)? I still want them to open in GEdit like they currently do if I double click them from Thunar.

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  • ubuntu box just redisplaying login screen after update

    - by David M. Karr
    My Ubuntu 12.04 box has been working fine. A recent update may have messed something up. I normally run remote windows on it, and I noticed that my windows were failing to start up. I then tried logging into it directly from the GUI console, and I'm seeing that after I press enter on the (valid) password, the page just redisplays. It's not a password error, as that would give me an inline error. I see some messages appear and disappear quickly between the login screen going away and then redisplaying, but they go away too quickly to read. I was able to run the non-gui login, and I did an update and upgrade, and then rebooted, but it's doing the same thing. I have a Samba connection from my Windows box, and that's still working. If it matters, here's my uname output (somewhat elided): Linux ... 3.2.0-26-generic #41-Ubuntu SMP Thu Jun 14 17:49:24 UTC 2012 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux What can I do to troubleshoot this? Note that when I select "Guest Session", it lets me log in and displays the window manager. This seems significant to me. Does this mean that something specific to my login is causing it to fail? Note: If it matters, here's the output from /var/log/dmesg. The line about gdm seems interesting: [ 9.815883] Bluetooth: RFCOMM TTY layer initialized [ 9.815887] Bluetooth: RFCOMM socket layer initialized [ 9.815888] Bluetooth: RFCOMM ver 1.11 [ 9.879088] [PCSPP,TRISTATE] [ 9.879092] parport0: irq 7 detected [ 9.883935] type=1400 audit(1341871177.871:10): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_load" name="/usr/lib/lightdm/lightdm/lightdm-guest-session-wrapper" pid=845 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 9.884365] type=1400 audit(1341871177.871:11): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_replace" name="/usr/sbin/ntpd" pid=851 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 9.950397] e1000e 0000:00:19.0: irq 42 for MSI/MSI-X [ 9.961160] init: gdm main process (907) killed by TERM signal [ 9.966358] lp0: using parport0 (polling).

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  • A Big Week for Oracle Procurement- In the Cloud and On the Web

    - by David Hope-Ross
    It has been quite a week for Oracle Procurement. On June 6th, CEO Larry Ellison announced the availability ERP Cloud Services- inclusive of Procurement and Inventory. For a replay of the announcement click here. For more information on Oracle Cloud ERP Services click here. Stay tuned as we’ll be providing updates and further details in coming weeks. We hope you noticed, but we also expanded Oracle Fusion Procurement’s presence on oracle.com. We’ve upgraded the Oracle Fusion Procurement overview page and provided some drill down product information, including screenshots and datasheets. For more information check out individual product pages for Purchasing, Self Service Procurement, Sourcing, Procurement Contracts, and Supplier Portal.    

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