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• links for 2011-01-12

  - by Bob Rhubart

  WebCenter Spaces 11g PS2 Template Customization (Javier Ductor's Blog) "Recently, we have been involved in a WebCenter Spaces customization project. A customer sent us a prototype website in HTML, and we had to transform Spaces to set the same look and feel as in the prototype..." Javier Ductor (tags: oracle otn webcenter enteprise2.0) Matt Carter: Risky Business "Incorporating risk detection and mitigation capabilities into apps is becoming all the rage. There are plenty of real-life examples of cases where prevention of cyber-security threats and fraudsters might have kept governments and companies out of the news, and with more money in their accounts." (tags: oracle otn security middleware) John Brunswick: 5 Surprisingly Good Benefits of Corporate Blogs "Some may still propose that not all corporations are going to be able to provide the five benefits above and are more focused around shameless self promotion of products and services.  If that is the case, that corporation is most likely not producing something of high value." - John Brunswick (tags: oracle otn enterprise2.0 blogging) InfoQ: IT And Architecture: Inside-Out Perspectives The software industry is in disarray, costs are escalating, and quality is diminishing. Promises of newer technologies and processes and methodologies in IT are still far from materializing on any significant scale. Bruce Laidlaw and Michael Poulin - each with more than 30 years of experience compared notes on the past and present of IT and provide insights on what IT needs to make progress. (tags: ping.fm) SOA & Middleware: Canceling a running composite instance - example Useful tips from Niall Commiskey. (tags: soa middleware oracle) BPEL 11.1.1.2 Certified for Prebuilt E-Business Suite 12.1.3 SOA Integrations (Oracle E-Business Suite Technology) "A new certification was released simultaneously with the E-Business Suite 12.1.3 Maintenance Pack late last year: the use of BPEL 11g Version 11.1.1.2 with E-Business Suite 12.1.3." -- Steven Chan (tags: oracle bpel) Marc Kelderman: OSB: Deploy Service Level Agreement (SLA), aka Alert Rule "The big issue with these SLAs is the deployment. If you have dozens of services, with multiple operations, and you have a lot of environments it takes a while to create them...[But] I have a nice workaround." - Mark Kelderman  (tags: oracle otn soa osb sla) @myfear: Java EE 7 - what's coming up for 2012? First hints. "Even if the actual Java EE 6 version is still not too widespread, we already have seen the first signs of the next EE 7 version written to the sky." -- Markus "myfear" Eisele (tags: oracle otn oracleace java)

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• SQL Saturday 43 (Redmond, WA) Review

  - by BuckWoody

  Last Saturday (June 12th) we held a “SQL Saturday” (more about those here) event in Redmond, Washington. The event was held at the Microsoft campus, at the Mixer in our new location called the “Commons”. This is a mall-like area that we have on campus, and the Mixer is a large building with lots of meeting rooms, so it made a perfect location for the event. There was a sign to find the parking, and once there they had a sign to show how to get to the building. Since it’s a secure facility, Greg Larsen and crew had a person manning the door so that even late arrivals could get in. We had about 400 sign up for the event, and a little over 300 attend (official numbers later). I think we would have had a lot more, but the sun was out – and you just can’t underestimate the effect of that here in the Pacific Northwest. We joke a lot about not seeing the sun much, but when a day like what we had on Saturday comes around, and on a weekend at that, you’d cancel your wedding to go outside to play in the sun. And your spouse would agree with you for doing it. We had some top-notch speakers, including Clifford Dibble and Kalen Delany. The food was great, we had multiple sponsors (including Confio who seems to be at all of these) and the attendees were from all over the professional spectrum, from developers to BI to DBA’s. Everyone I saw was very engaged, and when I visited room-to-room I saw almost no one in the halls – everyone was in the sessions. I also saw a much larger Microsoft presence this year, especially from Dan Jones’ team. I had a great turnout at my session, and yes, I was wearing an Oracle staff shirt. I did that because I wanted to show that the session I gave on “SQL Server for the Oracle DBA” was non-marketing – I couldn’t exactly bash Oracle wearing their colors! These events are amazing. I can’t emphasize enough how much I appreciate the volunteers and how much work they put into these events, and to you for coming. If you’re reading this and you haven’t attended one yet, definitely find out if there is one in your area – and if not, start one. It’s a lot of work, but it’s totally worth it.       Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Why is my laptop so sluggish? Or Damn You Facebook and Twitter! Or All Hail Chrome!

  - by John Conwell

  In the past three weeks, I've noticed that my laptop (dual core 2.1GHz, 2Gb RAM) has become amazingly sluggish.  I only uses for communications and data lookup workflows, so the slowness was tolerable.  But today I finally got fed up with the suckyness and decided to get to the root of the problem (I do have strong performance roots after all). It actually didn't take all that long to figure it out.  About a year ago I converted to Google Chrome (away from FireFox).  One of the great tools Chrome has is a "Task Manager" tool, that gives you Windows Task Manager like details for all the tabs open in the browser (Shift + Esc).  Since every tab runs in its own process, its easy from Task Manager (both Windows or Chrome) to identify and kill a single performance offending tab.  This is unlike IE, where you only get aggregate data about all tabs open.  Anyway, I digress.  Today my laptop sucked.  Windows Task Manager told me that I had two memory hogging Chrome tabs, but couldn't tell me which web page those tabs are showing.  Enter Chrome Task Manager which tells you the page title, along with CPU, memory and network utilization of each tab.  Enter my amazement.  Turns out Facebook was using just shy of half a Gb of RAM.  Half a Gigabyte!  That's 512 Megabytes!524,288 Kilobytes! 536,870,912 Bytes!  Or 4,294,967,296 Bits!  In other words, that's a frackin boat load of memory.  Now consider that Facebook is running on pretty much 96.3% (statistics based on absolutely nothing) of every house hold desktop, laptop, netbook, and mobile device in America, that is pretty horrific! And I wasn't playing any Facebook games like FarmWars or MafiaVille.  I just had my normal, default home page up showing me who just had breakfast, or just got finished with their morning run. I'm sorry...let me say that again...HALF A GIG OF RAM!  That is just unforgivable. I can just see my mom calling me up:  Mom: "John...I think I need a new computer.  Mine is really slow these days" John: "What do you have running?" Mom: "Oh, just Facebook" John: "Ok, close Facebook and tell me how fast your computer feels" Mom: "Well...I don't know how fast it is.  All I do is use Facebook" John: "Ok Mom, I'll send you a new computer by Tuesday" Oh yea...and the other offending web page?  It was Twitter, using a quarter of a Gigabyte. God I love social networks!

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• Registering domain during christmas holydays

  - by arkascha

  One of the domain names I tried to register previously has been blocked by a domain grabber two days prior to my own attempt. That was about 1 year ago. The attempt to buy the domain from that person failed due to a totally exaggerated price. So I dropped the issue and watched the domain (offered at sedo.com). As expected there were no more offers, the domain was not sold. Now I learn from the whois database that the registration of that domain name ends on 25.12.2012 (christmas holyday). This raises two questions for me, I fail to find reliable answers on the internet. So maybe someone experienced here can drop a statement or a hint: is it reasonable that the domain name in question really will be free again when that date mentioned in the whois database up to when the domain is registered has passed? I certainly know that the registration can be prolonged, that is not what I mean. I expect (hope) that that domain grabber does not extend the registration, since it costs money and effort and he failed to sell the domain. Provided this is the case and the domain registration is not prolonged, is that date mentioned reliable? Or might it just be some 'default' date? I would like to try to register that domain name as soon as it is unregistered. Since that domain grabber registered that domain only two days before my own registration attempt I would like to prevent such annoying interference next time. So I ask myself: is it possible to register a domain name on a holyday? I mean not to send an email to my provider to do so on that day or before, but to actually have to process taking place as not to wait for 1-2 days after the unregistration? My own provider which I am very happy with does not offer such service on a holyday (which is perfectly understandable). They are 'still checking' if they can offer something automatic. I researched and did not find an answer to the question if that is possible at all. Is an autoomatic registration attempt on a holyday possible? Where can I do that? Is that reliable? Thanks for any reply!

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• Car animations in Frogger on Javascript

  - by Mijoro Nicolas Rasoanaivo

  I have to finish a Frogger game in Javascript for my engineering school degree, but I don't know how to animate the cars. Right now I tried to manipulate the CSS, the DOM, I wrote a script with a setTimeout(), but none of them works.Can I have some help please? Here's my code and my CSS: <html> <head> <title>Image d&eacute;filante</title> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="map_style.css"/> </head> <body onload="start()"> <canvas id="jeu" width="800" height="450"> </canvas> <img id="voiture" class="voiture" src="car.png" onload="startTimerCar()"> <img id="voiture2" class="voiture" src="car.png" onload="startTimerCar()"> <img id="voiture3" class="voiture" src="car.png" onload="startTimerCar()"> <img id="bigrig" class="bigrig" src="bigrig.png" onload="startTimerBigrig()"> <img id="bigrig2" class="bigrig" src="bigrig.png" onload="startTimerBigrig()"> <img id="bigrig3" class="bigrig" src="bigrig.png" onload="startTimerBigrig()"> <img id="hotrod" src="hotrod.png" onload="startTimerHotrod()"> <img id="hotrod2" src="hotrod.png" onload="startTimerHotrod()"> <img id="turtle" src="turtles_diving.png" onload="startTimerTurtle()"> <img id="turtle2" src="turtles_diving.png" onload="startTimerTurtle()"> <img id="turtle3" src="turtles_diving.png" onload="startTimerTurtle()"> <img id="small" src="log_small.png" onload="startTimerSmall()"> <img id="small2" src="log_small.png" onload="startTimerSmall()"> <img id="small3" src="log_small.png" onload="startTimerSmall()"> <img id="small4" src="log_small.png" onload="startTimerSmall()"> <img id="med" src="log_medium.png" onload="startTimerMedium()"> <img id="med2" src="log_medium.png" onload="startTimerMedium()"> <img id="med3" src="log_medium.png" onload="startTimerMedium()"> <script type="text/javascript"> var X = 1; var timer; function start(){ setInterval(init,10); document.onkeydown = move; var canvas = document.getElementById('jeu'); var context = canvas.getContext('2d'); var frog = document.getElementById('frog'); var posX_frog = 415; var posY_frog = 400; var voiture = [document.getElementById('voiture'),document.getElementById('voiture2'),document.getElementById('voiture3')]; var bigrig = [document.getElementById('bigrig'),document.getElementById('bigrig2'),document.getElementById('bigrig3')]; var hotrod = [document.getElementById('hotrod'),document.getElementById('hotrod2')]; var turtle = [document.getElementById('turtle'),document.getElementById('turtle2'),document.getElementById('turtle3')]; var small = [document.getElementById('small'),document.getElementById('small2'),document.getElementById('small3'),document.getElementById('small4')]; var med = [document.getElementById('med'),document.getElementById('med2'),document.getElementById('med3')]; function init() { context.fillStyle = "#AEEE00"; context.fillRect(0,0,800,50); context.fillRect(0,200,800,50); context.fillRect(0,400,800,50); context.fillStyle = "#046380"; context.fillRect(0,50,800,150); context.fillStyle = "#000000"; context.fillRect(0,250,800,150); var img= new Image(); img.src="./frog.png"; context.drawImage(img,posX_frog, posY_frog, 46, 38); } function move(event){ if (event.keyCode == 39){ if( posX_frog < 716 ){ posX_frog += 50; } } if(event.keyCode == 37){ if( posX_frog >25 ){ posX_frog -= 50; } } if (event.keyCode == 38){ if( posY_frog > 10 ){ posY_frog -= 50; } } if(event.keyCode == 40){ if( posY_frog <400 ){ posY_frog += 50; } } } } </script> </body> And my map_css: #jeu{ z-index:10; width: 800px; height: 450px; border: 2px black solid; overflow: hidden; position: relative; transition:width 2s; -moz-transition:width 2s; /* Firefox 4 */ -webkit-transition:width 2s; /* Safari and Chrome */ } #voiture{ z-index: 100; position: absolute; top: 315px; left: 48px; transition-timing-function: linear; -webkit-transition-timing-function: linear; -moz-transition-timing-function: linear; } #voiture2{ z-index: 100; position: absolute; top: 315px; left: 144px; } #voiture3{ z-index: 100; position: absolute; top: 315px; left: 240px; } #bigrig{ z-index: 100; position: absolute; top: 365px; left: 200px; } #bigrig2{ z-index: 100; position: absolute; top: 365px; left: 400px; } #bigrig3{ z-index: 100; position: absolute; top: 365px; left: 600px; } #hotrod{ z-index: 100; position: absolute; top: 265px; left: 200px; } #hotrod2{ z-index: 100; position: absolute; top: 265px; left: 500px; } #hotrod3{ z-index: 100; position: absolute; top: 265px; left: 750px; } #turtle{ z-index: 100; position: absolute; top: 175px; left: 50px; } #turtle2{ z-index: 100; position: absolute; top: 175px; left: 450px; } #turtle3{ z-index: 100; position: absolute; top: 175px; left: 250px; } #small{ z-index: 100; position: absolute; top: 125px; left: 20px; } #small2{ z-index: 100; position: absolute; top: 125px; left: 220px; } #small3{ z-index: 100; position: absolute; top: 125px; left: 420px; } #small4{ z-index: 100; position: absolute; top: 125px; left: 620px; } #med{ z-index: 100; position: absolute; top: 75px; left: 120px; } #med2{ z-index: 100; position: absolute; top: 75px; left: 320px; } #med3{ z-index: 100; position: absolute; top: 75px; left: 520px; } I had to say that I'm in the obligation to code in HTML5, CSS3, and Javascript but not jQuery, who is way more easier, I already created games in jQuery... It takes me too much time and too much code lines right here.

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• What to do when opensource project starts to tear apart? (or a manager tries to write code and than shouts at the team)

  - by Kabumbus

  Imagine there is an open source cross-platform project on Google code. It has lots of revisions (1000). It concentrates in itself lots technological stuff - rare stuff - it mixes top tech. It contains server, and more than one client. The project was created by a well-connected team of developers (friends) and a manager that was sponsoring project at its start up during its first few months (project now is more than a year old-sponsoring oss project is a big good deal- also gave the idea of project to developers). The project was growing in complexity and effort reqiered to continue development. Once upon a time a manager - team leader started trying to write code (he was a programmer in some other projects - not the best, but he felt like he was one). He started because one of the developers suggested an idea at the team meeting and he felt he just needed to do it on his own. He failed, and he told the dev team about it. The dev team did what he failed to do in a few days. After that, the manager feels that team codes with out him perfectly and gets the job done in short time. He felt sorry and lost and he started to crash like an old bad PC. Firstly, he started to scream (in forms of messages not in voice) he tried to tell developers that what they were doing was a bad, not-needed thing - developers kindly told him that his "beginnings" were not compilable while dev team product worked as needed. He told the developers that all work they do should be firstly discussed with him. Here is the part where we need to mention that all team members are "project owners" and logically have equal rights. The team leader suggested to the developers these options: change their dev process to go through him, or be moved from project owners to contributers. So what are our options as developers? What arguments we can provide to the team leader/manager for him to calm down? Is it possible to save the project or is it better to fork out now? An important issue is that lately we had no active ticket system, and I personally think that this was the reason the mess appeared. So... any ideas?

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• Proper Usage of Arrays and Functions [closed]

  - by Ssegawa Victor

  Can some one help me write a C code that solves the following problem. PROBLEM Consider the faculty registrar who has to process results for 1st year 1st semester students. Students offer five courses CSC 1100, CSK 1101, CSC 1104, CSC 1105 and CSC 1106. The courses have credit units 4,4,4,3 and 3 respectively. Lecturers provide course work and exam marks. For each course, course work constitutes 40% of the final mark while the exam constitutes 60% of the final mark. The role of the registrar is to Compute the final mark for each student for each course. The final mark must be a whole number Compute the grade and grade point of the students for each course they offered. According to senate regulations, grades and grade points are awarded to final marks according to the following criteria Range Grade Grade Point 90 – 100 A+ 5.0 80 – 89 A 5.0 75 – 79 B+ 4.5 70 – 74 B 4.0 65 – 69 C+ 3.5 60 – 64 C 3.0 55 – 59 D+ 2.5 50 – 54 D 2.0 45 – 49 E 1.5 40 – 44 E- 1.0 0 – 39 F 0.0 Put a comment ‘Retake’ to a student for every course where the Grade Point is less than 2.0 Compute the cumulative grade point average CGPA for each student. The senate formula for CGPA is GGPA =(?_(i=1)^(i=N)¦?CU _i×GP _i ?)/(?_(i=1)^(i=N)¦CU i) Put a comment “Progress” for any student whose GGPA is greater than 2 and “Stay Put” on a student whose CGPA is less than 2 You are required to create a c program that considers a class of 25 students and: 1.Initializes an array ‘student’ which stores student names 2.Initializes arrays for course work and exam for each course. ‘cw_csc_1100’ and ‘ex_csc_1100’ store course work and exam marks (respectively) for CSC 1100. The same approach is considered for all other courses 3.Initializes the coursework and exam marks arrays with marks between 0 and 99 4.Write appropriate functions that will generate the final marks, generate grades, generate grade points, generate cumulative grade points, generate comments for students and comments for courses per student 5.Create appropriate arrays for final marks and insert the data there using the appropriate functions 6.Without having to create any extra arrays, use the functions created to generate a report per student that looks like the one bellow. Student Name: Ngubiri Course Unit Final mark Grade Grade Point Course Comment CSC 1100 43 E- 1.0 Retake CSK 1101 50 D 2.0 CSC 1104 59 D+ 2.5 CSC 1105 70 B 4.0 CSC 1106 65 C+ 3.5 CGPA 2.47 Overall Comment Progress NB It is advisable that the indices are used to identify the owners. Eg if student[x] is John, then cs_csc_100[x] should be a mark for John since the index is the same

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• Turnkey with LightSwitch

  - by Laila

  Microsoft has long wanted to find a replacement for Microsoft Access. The best attempt yet, which is due out in, or before, September is Visual Studio LightSwitch, with which it is said to be as 'easy as flipping a switch' to use Silverlight to create simple form-driven business applications. It is easy to get confused by the various initiatives from Microsoft. No, this isn't WebMatrix. There is no 'Razor', for this isn't meant for cute little ecommerce sites, but is designed to build simple database-applications of the card-box type. It is more clearly a .NET-based solution to the problem that every business seems to suffer from; the plethora of Access-based, and Excel-based 'private' and departmental database-applications. These are a nightmare for any IT department since they are often 'stealth' applications built by the business in the teeth of opposition from the IT Department zealots. As they are undocumented, it is scarily easy to bring a whole department into disarray by decommissioning a PC tucked under a desk somewhere. With LightSwitch, it is easy to re-write such applications in a standard, maintainable, way, using a SQL Server database, deployed somewhere reasonably safe such as Azure. Even Sharepoint or Windows Communication Foundation can be used as data sources. Oracle's ApEx has taken off remarkably well, and has shaken the perception that, for the business user, Oracle must remain a mystic force accessible only to the priests and acolytes. Microsoft, by comparison had only Access, which was first released in 1992, the year of the Madonna conical bustier. It looks just as dated. Microsoft badly needed an entirely new solution to the same business requirement that led to Access's and Foxpro's long-time popularity, but which had the same allure as ApEx. LightSwitch is sound in its ideas, and comfortingly conventional in its architecture. By giving an easy access to SQL Server databases, and providing a 'thumb and blanket' migration path to Access-heads, LightSwitch seems likely to offer a simple way of pulling more Microsoft users into the .NET community. If Microsoft puts its weight behind it, then it will give some glimmer of hope to the many Silverlight developers that Microsoft is capable of seeing through its .NET revolution.

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• Gamification in the enterprise updates, September edition

  - by erikanollwebb

  Things have been a little busy here at GamifyOracle.  Last week, I attended a small conference in San Diego on Enterprise Gamification.  Mario Herger of SAP, Matt Landes of Google and I were on a panel discussion about how to introduce and advocate gamification in your organization.  I gave a talk as well as a workshop on gamification.  The workshop was a new concept, to take our Design Jam from Applications User Experience and try it with people outside of user experience.  I have to say, the whole thing was a great success, in great part because I had some expert help from Teena Singh from Apps UX.  We took a flow from expense reporting and created a scenario about sales reps who are on the road a lot and how we needed them to get their expense reports filed by the end of the fiscal year.  We divided the attendees into groups and gave them a little over two hours to work out how they might use game mechanics to gamify the flows.   We even took the opportunity to re-use the app our fab dev team in our Mexico Development Center put together to gamify the event including badges, points, prizes and a leaderboard.  Since I am a firm believer that you can't gamify everything (or at least, not everything well), I focused my talk prior to the workshop on when it works, and when it might not, including pitfalls to gamifying badly.  I was impressed that the teams all considered what might go wrong with gamifying expenses and built into their designs some protections against that.  I can't wait to take this concept on the road again, it really was a fun day. Now that we have gotten through that set of events, we're wildly working on our next project for next week.  I'm doing a focus group at Oracle OpenWorld on Gamification in the Enterprise.  To do that, Andrea Cantu and I are trying to kill as many trees as possible while we work out some gamification concepts to present (see proof below!).  It should be a great event and I'm hoping we learn a lot about what our customers think about the use of gamification in their companies and in the products they use. So that's the news so far from GamifyOracle land.  I'll try to get more out about those events and more after next week. And if you will be at OOW, ping me and we can discuss in person!  I'd love to know what everyone is thinking in the area.

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• TouchDevelop: The Fast Path to Windows 8 and Phone Apps

  - by Clint Edmonson

  Are you looking for a little extra cash for the upcoming holidays? Then you might be interested in creating some cool apps to sell in the Windows Store. Or maybe you’re simply curious and want to try your hand at developing for Windows 8 and Windows Phone. In either case, the newly released TouchDevelop Web App is for you. TouchDevelop Web App is a development environment to create apps on your tablet or smartphone, without requiring a separate PC. Scripts written by using TouchDevelop can access data, media, and sensors on the phone, tablet, and PC. The script can interact with cloud services, including storage, computing, and social networks. TouchDevelop lets you quickly create fun games and useful tools, turning your scripts into true Windows Phone and Windows 8 apps. A year ago, Microsoft Research released TouchDevelop for Windows Phone, which is being used by enthusiasts, students, and researchers to program their phones in fun, inventive, and interesting ways. These scripts are available at TouchDevelop for anyone to download and use. Ever since we released TouchDevelop, we’ve been eyeing the tablet form factor and working on a version for the browser. Now, with the release of TouchDevelop Web App, the wait is over: the tablet version is ready, so go play around with it. All TouchDevelop scripts that are developed on the smartphone can be downloaded to the tablet and run (if hardware allows). Any script that is developed on the tablet can also be accessed on the phone. And scripts can be converted to Windows Phone or Windows 8 apps and submitted to the Windows Phone Store or Windows Store, respectively. TouchDevelop Web App’s editor and programming language have been designed for tablet devices with touchscreens, but you can also use a keyboard and a mouse. So grab your web-enabled device and give the TouchDevelop Web App a try. It’s fun and easy, and could even put a little cash in your holiday-depleted wallet. Or at least give you bragging rights at family get-togethers. Are you interested in further tips on Windows 8 development?  Sign up for the 30 to launch program which will help you build a Windows Store application in 30 days.  You will receive a tip per day for 30 days, along with potential free design consultations and technical support from a Windows 8 expert. As always, stay tuned to my twitter feed for Windows 8, Windows Azure and other Microsoft announcements, updates, and links: @clinted

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• Started wrong with a project. Should I start over?

  - by solidsnake

  I'm a beginner web developer (one year of experience). A couple of weeks after graduating, I got offered a job to build a web application for a company whose owner is not much of a tech guy. He recruited me to avoid theft of his idea, the high cost of development charged by a service company, and to have someone young he can trust onboard to maintain the project for the long run (I came to these conclusions by myself long after being hired). Cocky as I was back then, with a diploma in computer science, I accepted the offer thinking I can build anything. I was calling the shots. After some research I settled on PHP, and started with plain PHP, no objects, just ugly procedural code. Two months later, everything was getting messy, and it was hard to make any progress. The web application is huge. So I decided to check out an MVC framework that would make my life easier. That's where I stumbled upon the cool kid in the PHP community: Laravel. I loved it, it was easy to learn, and I started coding right away. My code looked cleaner, more organized. It looked very good. But again the web application was huge. The company was pressuring me to deliver the first version, which they wanted to deploy, obviously, and start seeking customers. Because Laravel was fun to work with, it made me remember why I chose this industry in the first place - something I forgot while stuck in the shitty education system. So I started working on small projects at night, reading about methodologies and best practice. I revisited OOP, moved on to object-oriented design and analysis, and read Uncle Bob's book Clean Code. This helped me realize that I really knew nothing. I did not know how to build software THE RIGHT WAY. But at this point it was too late, and now I'm almost done. My code is not clean at all, just spaghetti code, a real pain to fix a bug, all the logic is in the controllers, and there is little object oriented design. I'm having this persistent thought that I have to rewrite the whole project. However, I can't do it... They keep asking when is it going to be all done. I can not imagine this code deployed on a server. Plus I still know nothing about code efficiency and the web application's performance. On one hand, the company is waiting for the product and can not wait anymore. On the other hand I can't see myself going any further with the actual code. I could finish up, wrap it up and deploy, but god only knows what might happen when people start using it. What do you think I should do?

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• A Bite With No Teeth&ndash;Demystifying Non-Compete Clauses

  - by D'Arcy Lussier

  *DISCLAIMER: I am not a lawyer and this post in no way should be considered legal advice. I’m also in Canada, so references made are to Canadian court cases. I received a signed letter the other day, a reminder from my previous employer about some clauses associated with my employment and entry into an employee stock purchase program. So since this is in effect for the next 12 months, I guess I’m not starting that new job tomorrow. I’m kidding of course. How outrageous, how presumptuous, pompous, and arrogant that a company – any company – would actually place these conditions upon an employee. And yet, this is not uncommon. Especially in the IT industry, we see time and again similar wording in our employment agreements. But…are these legal? Is there any teeth behind the threat of the bite? Luckily, the answer seems to be ‘No’. I want to highlight two cases that support this. The first is Lyons v. Multari. In a nutshell, Dentist hires younger Dentist to be an associate. In their short, handwritten agreement, a non-compete clause was written stating “Protective Covenant. 3 yrs. – 5mi” (meaning you can’t set up shop within 5 miles for 3 years). Well, the young dentist left and did start an oral surgery office within 5 miles and within 3 years. Off to court they go! The initial judge sided with the older dentist, but on appeal it was overturned. Feel free to read the transcript of the decision here, but let me highlight one portion from section [19]: The general rule in most common law jurisdictions is that non-competition clauses in employment contracts are void. The sections following [19] explain further, and discuss Elsley v. J.G. Collins Insurance Agency Ltd. and its impact on Canadian law in this regard. The second case is Winnipeg Livestock Sales Ltd. v. Plewman. Desmond Plewman is an auctioneer, and worked at Winnipeg Livestock Sales. Part of his employment agreement was that he could not work for a competitor for 18 months if he left the company. Well, he left, and took up an important role in a competing company. The case went to court and as with Lyons v. Multari, the initial judge found in favour of the plaintiffs. Also as in the first case, that was overturned on appeal. Again, read through the transcript of the decision, but consider section [28]: In other words, even though Plewman has a great deal of skill as an auctioneer, Winnipeg Livestock has no proprietary interest in his professional skill and experience, even if they were acquired during his time working for Winnipeg Livestock.  Thus, Winnipeg Livestock has the burden of establishing that it has a legitimate proprietary interest requiring protection.  On this key question there is little evidence before the Court.  The record discloses that part of Plewman’s job was to “mingle with the … crowd” and to telephone customers and prospective customers about future prospects for the sale of livestock.  It may seem reasonable to assume that Winnipeg Livestock has a legitimate proprietary interest in its customer connections; but there is no evidence to indicate that there is any significant degree of “customer loyalty” in the business, as opposed to customers making choices based on other considerations such as cost, availability and the like. So are there any incidents where a non-compete can actually be valid? Yes, and these are considered “exceptional” cases, meaning that the situation meets certain circumstances. Michael Carabash has a great blog series discussing the above mentioned cases as well as the difference between a non-compete and non-solicit agreement. He talks about the exceptional criteria: In summary, the authorities reveal that the following circumstances will generally be relevant in determining whether a case is an “exceptional” one so that a general non-competition clause will be found to be reasonable: - The length of service with the employer. - The amount of personal service to clients. - Whether the employee dealt with clients exclusively, or on a sustained or     recurring basis. - Whether the knowledge about the client which the employee gained was of a   confidential nature, or involved an intimate knowledge of the client’s   particular needs, preferences or idiosyncrasies. - Whether the nature of the employee’s work meant that the employee had   influence over clients in the sense that the clients relied upon the employee’s   advice, or trusted the employee. - If competition by the employee has already occurred, whether there is   evidence that clients have switched their custom to him, especially without   direct solicitation. - The nature of the business with respect to whether personal knowledge of   the clients’ confidential matters is required. - The nature of the business with respect to the strength of customer loyalty,   how clients are “won” and kept, and whether the clientele is a recurring one. - The community involved and whether there were clientele yet to be exploited   by anyone. I close this blog post with a final quote, one from Zvulony & Co’s blog post on this subject. Again, all of this is not official legal advice, but I think we can see what all these sources are pointing towards. To answer my earlier question, there’s no teeth behind the threat of the bite. In light of this list, and the decisions in Lyons and Orlan, it is reasonably certain that in most employment situations a non-competition clause will be ineffective in protecting an employer from a departing employee who wishes to compete in the same business. The Courts have been relatively consistent in their position that if a non-solicitation clause can protect an employer’s interests, then a non-competition clause is probably unreasonable. Employers (or their solicitors) should avoid the inclination to draft restrictive covenants in broad, catch-all language. Or in other words, when drafting a restrictive covenant – take only what you need! D

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• Multiple country-specific domains or one global domain [closed]

  - by CJM

  Possible Duplicate: How should I structure my urls for both SEO and localization? My company currently has its main (English) site on a .com domain with a .co.uk alias. In addition, we have separate sites for certain other countries - these are also hosted in the UK but are distinct sites with a country-specific domain names (.de, .fr, .se, .es), and the sites have differing amounts of distinct but overlapping content, For example, the .es site is entirely in Spanish and has a page for every section of the UK site but little else. Whereas the .de site has much more content (but still less than the UK site), in German, and geared towards our business focus in that country. The main point is that the content in the additional sites is a subset of the UK, is translated into the local language, and although sometimes is simply only a translated version of UK content, it is usually 'tweaked' for the local market, and in certain areas, contains unique content. The other sites get a fraction of the traffic of the UK site. This is perfectly understandable since the biggest chunk of work comes from the UK, and we've been established here for over 30 years. However, we are wanting to build up our overseas business and part of that is building up our websites to support this. The Question: I posed a suggestion to the business that we might consider consolidating all our websites onto the .com domain but with /en/de/fr/se/etc sections, as plenty of other companies seem to do. The theory was that the non-english sites would benefit from the greater reputation of the parent .com domain, and that all the content would be mutually supporting - my fear is that the child domains on their own are too small to compete on their own compared to competitors who are established in these countries. Speaking to an SEO consultant from my hosting company, he feels that this move would have some benefit (for the reasons mentioned), but they would likely be significantly outweighed by the loss of the benefits of localised domains. Specifically, he said that since the Panda update, and particularly the two sets of changes this year, that we would lose more than we would gain. Having done some Panda research since, I've had my eyes opened on many issues, but curiously I haven't come across much that mentions localised domain names, though I do question whether Google would see it as duplicated content. It's not that I disagree with the consultant, I just want to know more before I make recommendations to my company. What is the prevailing opinion in this case? Would I gain anything from consolidating country-specific content onto one domain? Would Google see this as duplicate content? Would there be an even greater penalty from the loss of country-specific domains? And is there anything else I can do to help support the smaller, country-specific domains?

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• TechEd 2012: Recap

  - by Tim Murphy

  TechEd this week was a great experience and I wanted to wrap it up with a summary post. First let me say a thank you to John and Jeff from GWB for supplying power, connectivity and a place to work in between sessions.  The blogging hub was a great experience in itself.  Getting to talk with other bloggers and other conference goers turned into a series of interesting conversations.  And where else can you almost end up in the day 1 highlights video? The sessions at TechEd were a mixed bag of value.  The Keynotes rocked, both figuratively and literally and most of the sessions that I want to were a good experience and had gems of information to take away.  There were a few exceptions though.  A couple of the sessions turned out to be sales jobs.  Nothing turns me off more than that (there will be some really honest comments on those surveys). TechEd re-enforced for me that much of the value is not in the sessions, but in the networking opportunities. I got to talk with several Microsoft team members and MVPs as well as some of the vendor representative for companies like Inrule and ComponentOne. Also got to expand both my local and extended community with discussions at meal times and waiting for sessions to start. I think this is one of the benefits that a lot of people don’t take advantage of in these conferences that should be a bigger part of the advertising. Exposure to a wide variety of topics, many of which I had not been able to make time for up to this point was envigorating.  The list of topic includes: Office 365, Windows Server 2012, Windows 8, Metro, Azure.  I can’t wait to get back to work and dig into these subjects in more depth. The one complaint that I had and heard from other attendees was that there weren’t enough sessions that were actually about development.  I realize that TechEd started as an event for IT Pros, but there needs to be more value for the Devs.  It all went by too fast and it will take a couple more days to digest the material, but the batteries are and I’m ready to leverage what I’ve learned.  Hopefully we will do it again next year. del.icio.us Tags: TechEd,TechEd 2012

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• 50 Billion Served: Java Embedded on Devices

  - by Tori Wieldt

  It doesn't matter if it is 50 billion or 24 billion, just suffice it to stay that there will be MANY connected devices in the year 2020. With just 24 billion devices, they will outnumber humans six to one! So as a developer, you don't want to ignore this opportunity. What if you could use your Java skills and deploy an app to a fraction of these devices (don't be greedy, how about just, say, 118,000 of them)? Fareed Suliman, Java ME Product Manager had lots of good news for Java Developers in his presentation Modernizing the Explosion of Advanced Microcontrollers with Embedded Java at ARM TechCon in Santa Clara, CA last week. "A radical architecture shift is underway in this space, from proprietary to standards-based," he explained.  He pointed out several advantages to using Embedded Java for devices: Java is a proven and open standard. Java provides connectivity, encryption, location, and web services APIs. You don't have to focus on and keep reinventing the plumbing below the JVM. Abstracting the software from the hardware allows you to repeat your app across many devices. Abstracting the software from the hardware allows allows parallel development so you can get your app done more quickly. You already know Java (or you can hire lots of Java talent). Java is a full ecosystem, with Java Embedded plugins for IDEs like Eclipse and NetBeans. Java ME allows for in-field software upgrades. Suliman mentioned two ways developers can start using Java Embedded today:  Java ME Embedded Suite 7.0 Oracle Java Embedded Suite is a new packaged solution from Oracle (including Java DB, GlassFish for Embedded Suite, Jersey Web Services Framework, and Oracle Java SE Embedded 7 platform), created to provide value added services for collecting, managing, and transmitting data to embedded devices such as gateways and concentrators. Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 is designed and optimized to meet the unique requirements of small embedded, low power devices such as micro-controllers and other resource-constrained hardware without screens or user interfaces. Think tiny. Really tiny. And think big.  Read more about Java Embedded at the Oracle Technology Network, and read The Java Source blog Java Embedded Releases from September.

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• The Buzz at the JavaOne Bookstore

  - by Janice J. Heiss

  I found my way to the JavaOne bookstore, a hub of activity. Who says brick and mortar bookstores are dead? I asked what was hot and got two answers: Hadoop in Practice by Alex Holmes was doing well. And Scala for the Impatient by noted Java Champion Cay Horstmann also seemed to be a fast seller. Hadoop in PracticeHadoop is a framework that organizes large clusters of computers around a problem. It is touted as especially effective for large amounts of data, and is use such companies as  Facebook, Yahoo, Apple, eBay and LinkedIn. Hadoop in Practice collects nearly 100 Hadoop examples and presents them in a problem/solution format with step by step explanations of solutions and designs. It’s very much a participatory book intended to make developers more at home with Hadoop.The author, Alex Holmes, is a senior software engineer with more than 15 years of experience developing large-scale distributed Java systems. For the last four years, he has gained expertise in Hadoop solving Big Data problems across a number of projects. He has presented at JavaOne and Jazoon and is currently a technical lead at VeriSign.At this year’s JavaOne, he is presenting a session with VeriSign colleague, Karthik Shyamsunder called “Java: A Perfect Platform for Data Science” where they will explain how the Java platform has emerged as a perfect platform for practicing data science, and also talk about such technologies as Hadoop, Hive, Pig, HBase, Cassandra, and Mahout. Scala for the ImpatientSan Jose State University computer science professor and Java Champion Cay Horstmann is the principal author of the highly regarded Core Java. Scala for the Impatient is a basic, practical introduction to Scala for experienced programmers. Horstmann has a presentation summarizing the themes of his book on at his website. On the final page he offers an enticing summary of his conclusions:* Widespread dissatisfaction with Java + XML + IDEs               --Don't make me eat Elephant again * A separate language for every problem domain is not efficient               --It takes time to master the idioms* ”JavaScript Everywhere” isn't going to scale* Trend is towards languages with more expressive power, less boilerplate* Will Scala be the “one ring to rule them”?* Maybe              --If it succeeds in industry             --If student-friendly subsets and tools are created The popularity of both books echoed comments by IBM Distinguished Engineer Jason McGee who closed his part of the Sunday JavaOne keynote by pointing out that the use of Java in complex applications is increasingly being augmented by a host of other languages with strong communities around them – JavaScript, JRuby, Scala, Python and so forth. Java developers increasingly must know the strengths and weaknesses of such languages going forward.

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• Iterative and Incremental Principle Series 2: Finding Focus

  - by llowitz

  Welcome back to the second blog in a five part series where I recount my personal experience with applying the Iterative and Incremental principle to my daily life.  As you recall from part one of the series, a conversation with my son prompted me to think about practical applications of the Iterative and Incremental approach and I realized I had incorporated this principle in my exercise regime.    I have been a runner since college but about a year ago, I sustained an injury that prevented me from exercising.  When I was sufficiently healed, I decided to pick it up again.  Knowing it was unrealistic to pick up where I left off, I set a goal of running 3 miles or approximately for 30 minutes.    I was excited to get back into running and determined to meet my goal.  Unfortunately, after what felt like a lifetime, I looked at my watch and realized that I had 27 agonizing minutes to go!  My determination waned and my positive “I can do it” attitude was overridden by thoughts of “This is impossible”.   My initial focus and excitement was not sustained so I never met my goal.   Understanding that the 30 minute run was simply too much for me mentally, I changed my approach.   I decided to try interval training.  For each interval, I planned to walk for 3 minutes, then jog for 2 minutes, and finally sprint for 1 minute, and I planned to repeat this pattern 5 times.  I found that each interval set was challenging, yet achievable, leaving me excited and invigorated for my next interval.  I easily completed five intervals – or 30 minutes!!  My sense of accomplishment soared. What does this have to do with OUM?  Have you heard the saying -- “How do you eat an elephant?  One bite at a time!”?  This adage certainly applies in my example and in an OUM systems implementation.  It is easier to manage, track progress and maintain team focus for weeks at a time, rather than for months at a time.   With shorter milestones, the project team focuses on the iteration goal.  Once the iteration goal is met, a sense of accomplishment is experience and the team can be re-focused on a fresh, yet achievable new challenge.  Join me tomorrow as I expand the concept of Iterative and incremental by taking a step back to explore the recommended approach for planning your iterations.

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• Why would you dual-run an app on Azure and AWS?

  - by Elton Stoneman

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/EltonStoneman/archive/2013/11/10/why-would-you-dual-run-an-app-on-azure-and-aws.aspxI had this question from a viewer of my Pluralsight course, Implementing the Reactive Manifesto with Azure and AWS, and thought I’d publish the response. So why would you dual-run your cloud app by hosting it on Azure and AWS? Sounds like a lot of extra development and management overhead. Well the most compelling reasons are reliability and portability. In 2012 I was working for a client who was making a big investment in the cloud, and at the end of the year we published their first external API for business partners. It was hosted in Azure and used some really nice features to route back into existing on-premise services. We were able to publish a clean, simple API to partners, and hide away the underlying complexity of the internal services while still leveraging them to do all the work. Two days after we went live, we were hit by the Azure SSL certificate expiry outage, and our API was unavailable for the best part of 3 days. Fortunately we had planned a gradual roll-out to partners, so the impact was minimal, but we’d been intending to ramp up quickly, and if the outage had happened a week or two later we would have been in a very bad place. Not least because our app could only run on Azure, we couldn’t package it up for another service without going back and reworking the code. More recently AWS had an issue with a networking device in one of their data centres which caused an outage that took the best part of a day to resolve. In both scenarios the SLAs are worthless, as you’ll get back a small percentage of your cloud expenditure, which is going to be negligible compared to your costs in dealing with the outage. And if your app is built specifically for AWS or Azure then if there’s an extended outage you can’t just deploy it onto a new set of kit from a different supplier. And the chances are pretty good there will be another extended outage, both for Microsoft and for Amazon. But the chances are small that it will happen to both at the same time. So my basic guidance has been: ignore the SLAs, go for better uptime by using two clouds. As soon as you need to scale beyond a single instance, start by scaling out to another cloud. Then scale out to different data centres in both clouds. Then you’ve got dual-cloud, quadruple-datacentre redundancy, so any more scaling you need can be left to the clouds to auto-scale themselves. By running in both clouds, you’ve made your app portable, so in the highly unlikely event that both AWS and Azure go down in multiple regions, you’ll have a deployment package which will let you spin up a new stack on yet another cloud, without having to rework your solution.

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• Revenue Recognition: Performance Obligation Pass a Hurdle

  - by Theresa Hickman

  I met up with Seamus Moran, our resident accounting expert, to get his thoughts about the latest happenings with IFRS. Last week, on March 13,  the comment period on the FASB and IASB exposure draft “Revenue From Contracts with Customers” closed.  FASB and IASB have just over 20 comment letters – a very small number.  The implication is that that the exposure draft does reflect general acceptance, and therefore will be published as both a US and Internationally Generally Accepted Accounting Standard. At a recent conference call, FASB and IASB expected to complete their report to both Boards on the comments by early summer, complete their deliberation of the comments by the fall and draft the final standard text by late this year. It is assumed the concept of Performance Obligations would become US GAAP and IFRS in place of the existing standards.  They confirmed that all existing US GAAP and IFRS guidelines would be withdrawn, and that they were in dialogue with the SEC on withdrawing the SEC guidelines on the revenue issue as well.The open question is when will Performance Obligations become effective?  The Boards have said that they would like this Revenue Recognition standard and the the Lease Accounting standard to be effective at the same time because what isn’t either insurance, interest, or a lease is a revenue arrangement.  However, ascertaining what is generally acceptable in respect of Leases is proving a little elusive, and the Boards have recently diverged a little on the P&L side of the accounting (although both are in agreement that there will be no off-balance sheet leases).  It is therefore likely that the Lease standard might be delayed. One wonders if the Boards will  define effectivity of the Revenue standard independently of the Lease standard or if they will stick with their resolve to make them co-effective.  The Boards have also said that neither standard will be effective before June 2015.Here is the gist of the new Revenue Recognition principle and the steps to apply it:Recognize revenue to depict the transfer of goods or services in an amount that reflects the consideration expected to be entitled in exchange for those goods and services.Steps to apply the core principles: Identify the contract with the customer Identify the separate performance obligations Determine the transaction price Allocate the the transaction price Recognize Revenue when a performance obligation is satisfied  

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• Oracle At QCon SF 2012

  - by Cassandra Clark - OTN

  Oracle Technology Network is a Platinum sponsor at QCon San Francisco.  (qconsf.com).  Don’t miss these great developer focused sessions: Shay ShmeltzerHow we simplified Web, Mobile and Cloud development for our own developers? - the Oracle StoryOver the past several years, Oracle has beendeveloping a new set of enterprise applications in what is probably one of thelargest Java based development project in the world. How do you take 3000 developers and make them productive? How do you insure the delivery of cutting edge UIs for both Mobile and Web channels? How do you enable Cloud baseddevelopment and deployment?  Come and learn how we did it at Oracle, and see how the same technologies and methodologies can apply to your development efforts. Dan SmithProject Lambda in Java 8Java SE 8 will include major enhancements to the Java Programming Language and its core libraries.  This suite of new features, known as Project Lambda in the OpenJDK community, includes lambda expressions, default methods, and parallel collections (and much more!).  The result will be a next-generation Java programming experience with more flexibility and better abstractions.   This talk will introduce the new Java features and offer a behind-the-scenes view of how they evolved and why they work the way that they do. Arun GuptaJSR 356: Building HTML5 WebSocket Applications in JavaThe family of HTML5 technologies has pushed the pendulum away from rich client technologies and toward ever-more-capable Web clients running on today’s browsers. In particular, WebSocket brings new opportunities for efficient peer-to-peer communication, providing the basis for a new generation of interactive and “live” Web applications. This session examines the efforts under way to support WebSocket in the Java programming model, from its base-level integration in the Java Servlet and Java EE containers to a new, easy-to-use API and toolset that are destined to become part of the standard Java platform. The full conference schedule is here: http://qconsf.com/sf2012/schedule/wednesday.jsp But wait, there’s more!  At the Oracle booth, we’ll also be covering: ·         Oracle ADF Mobile·         Oracle Developer Cloud Service·         Oracle ADF Essentials·         NetBeans Project Easel Lastly we’ll share the results of a short cloud survey at QConSF ater this week.  If you attended this year's Oracle OpenWorld and JavaOne conferences, it would be hard not to notice that Oracle is clearly "all-in" when it comes to the Cloud.  With Cloud computing being such a hot topic on many OTN members' minds, we'd like to know what you're doing in the cloud and invite you to take this short cloud survey.

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• Ubuntu 11.10 crashes all browsers often

  - by murat

  I have been using ubuntu 11.10 for 1 year,today it made me surprised. When I open google chrome it just closes itself. Firstly i thought that it is just for chrome and tried Firefox : It also closes itself and one thing more : I tried desktop programs such as image viewer it also closes itself.I restarted it but there is no changing.What can do this ? is it virus or another system problem ? I did not have any problem like this until today.. $ google-chrome (google-chrome:7064): Gtk-WARNING **: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "pixmap", (google-chrome:7064): Gtk-WARNING **: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "pixmap", (google-chrome:7064): Gtk-WARNING **: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "pixmap", (google-chrome:7064): Gtk-WARNING **: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "pixmap", --2012-04-04 19:33:14-- https://clients2.google.com/cr/report Resolving clients2.google.com... 173.194.70.100, 173.194.70.101, 173.194.70.102, ... Connecting to clients2.google.com|173.194.70.100|:443... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK Length: unspecified [text/html] 2012-04-04 19:33:19 (888 KB/s) - `/dev/fd/3' saved [16] (exe:7166): Gtk-WARNING **: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "pixmap", (exe:7166): Gtk-WARNING **: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "pixmap", (exe:7166): Gtk-WARNING **: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "pixmap", (exe:7166): Gtk-WARNING **: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "pixmap", Moonlight: 3.99.0.3 Moonlight: Attempting to load libmoonloaderxpi (exe:7201): Gtk-WARNING **: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "pixmap", (exe:7201): Gtk-WARNING **: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "pixmap", (exe:7201): Gtk-WARNING **: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "pixmap", (exe:7201): Gtk-WARNING **: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "pixmap", Failed to open VDPAU backend libvdpau_nvidia.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory Segmentation fault After trying to install libvdpau1 error is changed : google-chrome --2012-04-04 20:05:03-- https://clients2.google.com/cr/report Resolving clients2.google.com... 173.194.70.113, 173.194.70.138, 173.194.70.139, ... Connecting to clients2.google.com|173.194.70.113|:443... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... Moonlight: 3.99.0.3 Moonlight: Attempting to load libmoonloaderxpi 200 OK Length: unspecified [text/html] Saving to: `/dev/fd/3' [<=> ] 0 --.-K/s f4c55117d1b4656e [ <= ] 16 --.-K/s in 0s 2012-04-04 20:05:12 (337 KB/s) - `/dev/fd/3' saved [16] Segmentation fault

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• The only metric with any value

  - by Malcolm Anderson

  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-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} There's a lot of talk in the Scrum world about metrics. What's the velocity? How big is a story point?  How many story points is that team producing per man hour?   People are sadly missing the whole point.  Take your measurements up a level or two.  When you get down to it, the only metric that makes any difference, is ROI.   The problem is that often times, the developers work in a dark hole, far removed from the realities of how exactly they get paid.  A bigger problem is that mid-level managers tend to be further removed from the realities of ROI.  A lot of times mid-level managers get tasked with tracking their teams "productivity" using things like, "lines of code", or "completeness of the productivity reports."   Monetize your projects and then track your velocity against business value (real dollars).    When your development teams can say, "Last year, our team cost the business 2 million dollars and we know that because of our efforts, the company saved 2 million dollars in waste and increased revenues by another 4 million dollars." At that point you have just moved your development team from a cost center, to a profit center.  You might have to give them a raise, but they have demonstrated that they have earned it.

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• SQL Saturday 43 (Redmond, WA) Review

  - by BuckWoody

  Last Saturday (June 12th) we held a “SQL Saturday” (more about those here) event in Redmond, Washington. The event was held at the Microsoft campus, at the Mixer in our new location called the “Commons”. This is a mall-like area that we have on campus, and the Mixer is a large building with lots of meeting rooms, so it made a perfect location for the event. There was a sign to find the parking, and once there they had a sign to show how to get to the building. Since it’s a secure facility, Greg Larsen and crew had a person manning the door so that even late arrivals could get in. We had about 400 sign up for the event, and a little over 300 attend (official numbers later). I think we would have had a lot more, but the sun was out – and you just can’t underestimate the effect of that here in the Pacific Northwest. We joke a lot about not seeing the sun much, but when a day like what we had on Saturday comes around, and on a weekend at that, you’d cancel your wedding to go outside to play in the sun. And your spouse would agree with you for doing it. We had some top-notch speakers, including Clifford Dibble and Kalen Delany. The food was great, we had multiple sponsors (including Confio who seems to be at all of these) and the attendees were from all over the professional spectrum, from developers to BI to DBA’s. Everyone I saw was very engaged, and when I visited room-to-room I saw almost no one in the halls – everyone was in the sessions. I also saw a much larger Microsoft presence this year, especially from Dan Jones’ team. I had a great turnout at my session, and yes, I was wearing an Oracle staff shirt. I did that because I wanted to show that the session I gave on “SQL Server for the Oracle DBA” was non-marketing – I couldn’t exactly bash Oracle wearing their colors! These events are amazing. I can’t emphasize enough how much I appreciate the volunteers and how much work they put into these events, and to you for coming. If you’re reading this and you haven’t attended one yet, definitely find out if there is one in your area – and if not, start one. It’s a lot of work, but it’s totally worth it.       Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• An invitation to join a JDeveloper and ADF productivity clinic (and more!) at KScope

  - by Chris Muir

  Would you like a chance to influence Oracle's decisions on tool usability and productivity? If you're attending ODTUG's Kaleidoscope conference this year in San Antonio, Oracle would like to invite you to participate in our Usability Activity Research and separately our JDeveloper and ADF Productivity Clinics with our experienced user experience teams.  The teams are keen to hear what you have to say about your experiences with our tools in general and specifically JDeveloper and ADF.  The details of each event are described below. Invitation to Usability Activity - Sunday June 24th to Wednesday June 27th Oracle is constantly working on new tools and new features for developers, and invites YOU to become a key part of the process!  As a special addition to Kscope 12, Oracle will be conducting onsite usability research in the Alyssum room, from Sunday June 24 to Wednesday June 27. Usability activities are scheduled ahead of time for participants' convenience.  If you would like to take part, please fill out this form to let us know of the session(s) that you would like to attend and your development experience. You will be emailed with your scheduled session before the start of the conference. JDeveloper and ADF Productivity Clinic - Thursday June 28th Are you concerned that Java, Oracle ADF or JDeveloper is difficult? Is JDeveloper making you jump through hoops?  Do you hate a particular dialog or feature of JDeveloper? Well, come and get things off your chest! Oracle is hosting a product management and user experience clinic where we want to hear about your issues and concerns. What's difficult to use?  What doesn't work the way you want, and how would you want it to work?  What isn't behaving like your current favorite tool?  If we can't help on you the spot, we'll take your feedback and use it to improve the product experience.  A great opportunity to get answers, or get improvements. Drop by the Alyssum room, anytime from 8:30 to 10:30 on Thursday, June 28. We look forward to seeing you at KScope soon! 

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• CES 2011–Microsoft Keynote Impressions

  - by guybarrette

  Microsoft has been kicking off the CES for a number of years by doing a keynote the evening of the event first day.  This year, SteveB talked about Xbox, Kinect, Windows 7 new laptops, Surface 2 and Windows vNext running on the ARM architecture. Some of the design of the new laptops showed are quite amazing.  This one has a dual screen with no physical keyboard.  The image is split between both screens.  A software keyboard appears when you place your 10 fingers on the lower screen. This one from Samsung has a sliding keyboard somewhat like numerous cell phones have. What I found the most amazing is that Intel was able to miniaturized a full Intel architecture (CPU, motherboard, memory) in a tiny form factor.  Imagine having the power of a full PC running .NET apps in a Zune/iPod form factor! They also showed V2 of the Surface device.  This one is called the Samsung SUR40 for Surface PC.  It’s much sleeker and it will likely loose the BAT (Big Ass Table) moniker  More info here SteveB announced that Windows vNext will run on ARM chips.  I’m intrigued by this announcement (you can read about it here) and I have many questions: -In the past ARM devices were slow, what now makes the ARM architecture able to run Windows? -ARM is 32-bit only, I think. -Does this mean that Intel wasn't able to provide such a lightweight architecture or simply that they weren't interested? -From what I understand, apps would need to be recompiled for ARM. Will we need to do that from an ARM PC or could it be done natively on Intel or on an Intel PC running in an ARM VM?  VS 2012? Ahhhh, smells like a cool PDC is coming up    Clearly it looks like PC have enough power for most of us right now and that the race is now about miniaturization, power consumption and battery life. You can watch the Microsoft CES 2011 keynote here var addthis_pub="guybarrette";

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