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  • Creating the Completely Customized World Just for YOU

    - by divya.malik
    OK so not a customized world, but do you know what goes into creating that customized web store front for you? How do you get those additional offers from vendors when you call in for service or when you are browsing a storefront. This is what is has been happening behind the scenes.  When a customer calls in a contact center for service, at the end of the conversation, they are offered a new product, or service. But what just transpired was that the CRM system that was in place had routed the call to the right agent, the agent got the pop up screen with the customer information, and the call request  was handled. Then came the decision point to cross-sell and up-sell, The agent got some recommended offers that were created based on analyzed data (this data had been put into a data warehouse, modeled, profiled and rules were implemented e.g.. People with profile X like product Y).  But with this system, what happens is that analytics can be applied to a very small subset. Now comes Real Time Decisioning (RTD), this helps companies make optimal decisions in the context of transactional systems. It enables companies to improve business processes with real time intelligence on every single transaction. RTD is like a service plug-in that you put at the back of your transactional systems and that you  ping to get a recommendation.  It listens to business process flows and data moving through the process, getting all that data, processes all that you can do with that data, and gives out out various offers. It takes a process centric view of analytics rather than just a data centric view. It continuously observes and learns from ever-changing customer behavior and applies those insights to providing real-time decisions and recommendations at any customer touch point. At Oracle we define Real Time Decisioning as “ The solution that addresses a business issue faced by all organizations : how to make accurate decisions, using the most up to date information, in real time…consistently and in large volumes”. Here is a video on recommendation engines that are benefiting from real time decisioning today and see how it is helping online vendors.

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  • My Website (ports) Have Been Hijacked!

    - by ChrisD
    This is one of the scary problems that turns out to have a pretty easy solution. I tried to view one of my websites hosted by IIS on my primary workstation and the site wouldn’t render.   I checked IIS Admin and the site was there, but I couldn’t access it on either port 443 or port 80. In reviewing the event log I found the following entry: The World Wide Web Publishing Service (WWW Service) did not register the URL prefix http://x.x.x.x:80/ for site 1. The site has been disabled. The data field contains the error number I disabled the IIS Service (issued Net Stop W3svc from an admin command prompt) and then scanned for anything listening on port 80. C:\Users\cdarrigo>netstat -ano |findstr 80   TCP    0.0.0.0:80             0.0.0.0:0              LISTENING       3124 This confirmed that something had hijacked my ports.  I had another process that was listening on port 80 and it was preventing IIS from serving up my site.   A quick phone call to a friend taught me that the last number shown above (3124) is the process id of the process that's listening on the port.  So whatever process had PID 3124 had to be stopped. I scanned my process list, and determined it was, much to my surprise, Skype.  I exited the Skype application and restarted the IIS service, then manually restarted the web site.  This time, browsing to my site resulted in successfully viewing my site. So why was Skype listening on those ports?  A quick Google search revealed the answer: “Skype listens on those ports to increase quality.” really? “you might become a supernode if those ports are open.” No thanks.  I’m not sure how accurate those statements are, but I want to disable this behavior in Skype none the less. Fortunately Skype provides a configuration option to turn off this behavior.   Launch Skype and log in.  From the Tools menu, select Options Select the Advanced options and then Connection Uncheck the box Use Port 80 and 443 as alternatives for incoming connections Back to development bliss.

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  • What's Old is New Again

    - by David Dorf
    Last night I told my son he could stream music to his tablet "from the cloud" (in this case, the Amazon Cloud).  He paused, then said, "what is the cloud?"  I replied, "a bunch of servers connected to the internet."  Apparently he had visions of something much more magnificent.  Another similar term is "big data."  These marketing terms help to quickly convey topics but are oversimplifications that are open to many interpretations.  At their core, those terms a shiny packages holding recycled ideas. I see many headlines declaring big data changes everything, but it doesn't.  Savvy retailers have been dealing with large volumes of data since the electronic cash register was invented.  But the there have a been a few changes to the landscape that make big data a topic of conversation: 1. Computing power has caught up to storage volumes. Its now possible to more thoroughly analyze the copious volumes of data retailers have been squirreling away.  CPUs are faster, sold state drives more plentiful, and new ways to store and search data are available.  My iPhone is more power than the computer used in the Apollo mission to the moon. 2. Unstructured data is everywhere.  The Web used to be where retailers published product information, but now users are generating the bulk of the content in the form of comments, videos, and "likes."  The variety of information available to retailers is huge, and it meaning difficult to discern. 3. Everything is connected.  Looking at a report from my router, there are no less than 20 active devices on my home network.  We can track the location of mobile phones, tag products with RFID, and set our thermostats (I love my Nest) from a thousand miles away.  Not only is there more data, but its arriving at higher velocity. Careful readers will note the three Vs that help define so-called big data: volume, variety, and velocity. We now have more volume, more variety, and more velocity and different technologies to deal with them.  But at the heart, the objectives are still the same: Informed decisions Accurate forecasts Improved optimizations So don't let the term "big data" throw you off the scent.  Retailers still need to execute on the basics.  But do take a fresh look at the data that's available and the new technologies to process it.  The landscape will continue to change and agile organizations will always be reevaluating their approaches.  You can just add some more weapons to the arsenal.

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  • BI&EPM in Focus April 2012

    - by Mike.Hallett(at)Oracle-BI&EPM
    General News Oracle OpenWorld call for papers now open, now through April 9 (link) Oracle Announces Availability of Oracle Exalytics In-Memory Machine (link) Oracle EPM and BI Support Newsletter Current Edition - Volume 3 : March 2012 (link) Customers Asiana Airlines Improves Passenger Management with Near-Real-Time Reservation and Ticketing Information  Centraal Boekhuis Delivers Faster with Oracle BI 11g Essatto Software Speeds Data Aggregation Tenfold; Integrates BI, Performance Management, and Data Warehousing for Midsize Businesses Grupo WTorre Supports Management's Decision-Making with OBIEE, Ensuring Uniform, Reliable, and Consistent Data Indian Overseas Bank Cuts Planning Schedule by 45 Worker Days per Year, Assesses Market Risk Instantly with Business Intelligence System Kentucky Community and Technical College System Enables Data-Driven Decision-Making Using Integrated System with Management Dashboards National Australia Bank Achieves 200% ROI, Improves Data Quality and Reporting Integrity with Oracle Hyperion DRM R.L. Polk & Co. Enhances Business Intelligence Capabilities, Optimizes System Performance with Extreme Analytics Machine Test ResCare, Inc. Transforms Reporting to Improve Healthcare Service Performance with Oracle Business Analytics  Rochester City School District Uses OBIEE to Track Student Achievement, Identify Areas for Improvement, Accelerate Reporting  Société Générale Standardizes, Accelerates, and Improves Budget Planning Accuracy across Global Enterprise The State Accounting Office of Georgia Integrates Financial Information, Shortens Financial Closings and Streamlines Reporting across 175 Organizations   Events 4-day Oracle Real-Time Decisions Hands-on Technical Workshop for Partners (PTS, Free) May 14-17, 2012: Colombes, Paris, France Nordic events : “Latest Release of Oracle Hyperion EPM and BI Suites Helps Organizations Plan through Uncertainty, Improve Decision-Making and Meet Regulatory Requirements” (April 17, Sweden | April 18, Norway | April 19, Denmark | April 24, Finland) Webcast Replay from Balaji Yelamanchili and Paul Rodwick: “Analytics Without Limits - The Latest on Oracle Exalytics In-Memory Machine and Oracle Business Intelligence”  (link)  Wednesday, April 04, 2012: Business Analytics launch webcast: Invite your customers to register (link) Big Data Online Forum now available on Demand (link)  Enterprise Performance Management Webcast Replay: Accurate Forecasting within the Business Planning Cycle (link) Oracle Hyperion Profitability and Cost Management (HPCM) Master Support Note (link) Business  Intelligence Whitepaper: Driving Innovation Through Analytics (link) Gartner: CIOs Identify BI as the No. 1 Technology Priority for 2012 (link) Webcast Replay: Exalytics in Action: Airlines, US Census and Federal Spending Demo Applications  (link) NEWLY RELEASED Walk-in Video for Exalytics - Use This to Start Customer/Partner Meetings! (link) IDC Insight Paper: “Oracle's All-Out Assault on the Big Data Market: Offering Hadoop, R, Cubes, and Scalable IMDB in Familiar Packages” (link) System Requirements and Supported Platforms for Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition 11gR1 Certification Matrix now published to include OBIEE 11.1.1.6.0 (link) Maintenance Release Guide (List of Bugs Fixed) for Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) 11.1.1.6.0  (link) OBIEE 11.1.1.6: Is OBIEE 11.1.1.6 Certified With OBI Apps 7.9.6.3?  (link) Information Center: Troubleshooting Oracle Business Intelligence Applications (support login req'd)  (link)      

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  • Chargeback and showback...both a 'throw back'

    - by llaszews
    Been getting asked again by customers and partners about chargeback and showback in the cloud so thought I would blog on my response to this question. Charge Back background, information and industry analysis: Cloud computing is all about shared resources. These shared resources are computer servers (including memory and CPU), network devices, hard disk storage, database servers, application servers, cooling, floor space, electricity and more. These resources are shared by departments within a company, or by a number of companies, when resources are hosted in the public or hybrid cloud. Currently, hosting providers that run other companies on their cloud platforms do not have an accurate way to measure the shared computing resources used by a specific user let alone used by a specific customer. Additionally, companies running their own cloud data centers, for private or hybrid clouds, have no way of measure and charging back the departments in the company that are using these shared cloud resources. In both cases, the lack of determine shared resource costs and to charge them back to the company, department or user that is using this resources is limited a clear measure of business benefit and impacting company’s ability to measure the Return on Investment (ROI). An IT chargeback system is an accounting strategy that applies the costs of IT services, hardware or software to the business unit in which they are used. This system contrasts with traditional IT accounting models in which a centralized department bears all of the IT costs in an organization and those costs are treated simply as corporate overhead. Showback involves showing the IT costs to a department or customer but not actually charging them for their IT usage. Showback is a gradual method of introducing chargeback into an enterprise. Most companies implement a show back mechanism before a full chargeback system is put in place. Oracle chargeback product: Oracle Enterprise Manager provides tools for defining detailed Chargeback plans spanning different metrics collected for each type of resources as well as defining Cost Centers for grouping costs across multiple developers. Chargeback plans can use not only usage based costs, but also configuration based costs (e.g. version of the platform) or fixed costs (e.g. flat-rate management fee). Chargeback has rich out of the box reports. Trending reports show how charge and resource consumption varies over time, while Summary reports show the breakdown of charges or usage by different dimensions such as Cost Center or Target Type. These reports help consumers in understanding how their charges relate to their consumption and also assist the IT department with budgeting and planning activities. With BI Publisher, the reports can be made available in a variety of formats such as PDF, HTML, Word, Excel or PowerPoint.

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  • Book review: Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams

    - by DigiMortal
       Peopleware by Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister is golden classic book that can be considered as mandatory reading for software project managers, team leads, higher level management and board members of software companies. If you make decisions about people then you cannot miss this book. If you are already good on managing developers then this book can make you even better – you will learn new stuff about successful development teams for sure. Why peopleware? Peopleware gives you very good hints about how to build up working environment for project teams where people can really do their work. Book also covers team building topics that are also important reading. As software developer I found practically all points in this book to be accurate and valid. Many times I have found my self thinking about same things and Peopleware made me more confident about my opinions. Peopleware covers also time management and planning topics that help you do way better job on using developers time effectively by minimizing the amount of interruptions by phone calls, pointless meetings and i-want-to-know-what-are-you-doing-right-now questions by managers who doesn’t write code anyway. I think if you follow suggestions given by Peopleware your developers are very happy. I suggest you to also read another great book – Death March by Edward Yourdon. Death March describes you effectively what happens when good advices given by Peopleware are totally ignored or worse yet – people are treated exactly opposite way. I consider also Death March as golden classics and I strongly recommend you to read this book too. Table of Contents Acknowledgments Preface to the Second Edition Preface to the First Edition Part 1: Managing the Human Resource Chapter 1: Somewhere Today, a Project Is Failing Chapter 2: Make a Cheeseburger, Sell a Cheeseburger Chapter 3: Vienna Waits for You Chapter 4: Quality-If Time Permits Chapter 5: Parkinson's Law Revisited Chapter 6: Laetrile Part II: The Office Environment Chapter 7: The Furniture Police Chapter 8: "You Never Get Anything Done Around Here Between 9 and 5" Chapter 9: Saving Money on Space Intermezzo: Productivity Measurement and Unidentified Flying Objects Chapter 10: Brain Time Versus Body Time Chapter 11: The Telephone Chapter 12: Bring Back the Door Chapter 13: Taking Umbrella Steps Part III: The Right People Chapter 14: The Hornblower Factor Chapter 15: Hiring a Juggler Chapter 16: Happy to Be Here Chapter 17: The Self-Healing System Part IV: Growing Productive Teams Chapter 18: The Whole Is Greater Than the Sum of the Parts Chapter 19: The Black Team Chapter 20: Teamicide Chapter 21: A Spaghetti Dinner Chapter 22: Open Kimono Chapter 23: Chemistry for Team Formation Part V: It't Supposed to Be Fun to Work Here Chapter 24: Chaos and Order Chapter 25: Free Electrons Chapter 26: Holgar Dansk Part VI: Son of Peopleware Chapter 27: Teamicide, Revisited Chapter 28: Competition Chapter 29: Process Improvement Programs Chapter 30: Making Change Possible Chapter 31: Human Capital Chapter 32:Organizational Learning Chapter 33: The Ultimate Management Sin Is Chapter 34: The Making of Community Notes Bibliography Index About the Authors

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  • How can I convert a 2D bitmap (Used for terrain) to a 2D polygon mesh for collision?

    - by Megadanxzero
    So I'm making an artillery type game, sort of similar to Worms with all the usual stuff like destructible terrain etc... and while I could use per-pixel collision that doesn't give me collision normals or anything like that. Converting it all to a mesh would also mean I could use an existing physics library, which would be better than anything I can make by myself. I've seen people mention doing this by using Marching Squares to get contours in the bitmap, but I can't find anything which mentions how to turn these into a mesh (Unless it refers to a 3D mesh with contour lines defining different heights, which is NOT what I want). At the moment I can get a basic Marching Squares contour which looks something like this (Where the grid-like lines in the background would be the Marching Squares 'cells'): That needs to be interpolated to get a smoother, more accurate result but that's the general idea. I had a couple ideas for how to turn this into a mesh, but many of them wouldn't work in certain cases, and the one which I thought would work perfectly has turned out to be very slow and I've not even finished it yet! Ideally I'd like whatever I end up using to be fast enough to do every frame for cases such as rapidly-firing weapons, or digging tools. I'm thinking there must be some kind of existing algorithm/technique for turning something like this into a mesh, but I can't seem to find anything. I've looked at some things like Delaunay Triangulation, but as far as I can tell that won't correctly handle concave shapes like the above example, and also wouldn't account for holes within the terrain. I'll go through the technique I came up with for comparison and I guess I'll see if anyone has a better idea. First of all interpolate the Marching Squares contour lines, creating vertices from the line ends, and getting vertices where lines cross cell edges (Important). Then, for each cell containing vertices create polygons by using 2 vertices, and a cell corner as the 3rd vertex (Probably the closest corner). Do this for each cell and I think you should have a mesh which accurately represents the original bitmap (Though there will only be polygons at the edges of the bitmap, and large filled in areas in between will be empty). The only problem with this is that it involves lopping through every pixel once for the initial Marching Squares, then looping through every cell (image height + 1 x image width + 1) at least twice, which ends up being really slow for any decently sized image...

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  • 0xC0017011 and other error messages - what is the error message text?

    Recently there was a bug raised against BIDS Helper which originated in my Expression Editor control. Thankfully the person that raised it kindly included a screenshot, so I had the error code (HRESULT 0xC0017011) and a stack trace that pointed the finger firmly at my control, but no error message text. The code itself looked fine so I searched on the error code but got no results. I’d expected to get a hit from Books Online with the Integration Services Error and Message Reference topic at the very least, but no joy. There is however a more accurate and definitive reference, namely the header file that defines all these codes dtsmsg.h which you can find at- C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server\110\SDK\Include\dtsmsg.h Looking the code up in the header file gave me a much more useful error message. //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// // The parameter is sensitive // // MessageId: DTS_E_SENSITIVEPARAMVALUENOTALLOWED // // MessageText: // // Accessing value of the parameter variable for the sensitive parameter "%1!s!" is not allowed. Verify that the variable is used properly and that it protects the sensitive information. // #define DTS_E_SENSITIVEPARAMVALUENOTALLOWED ((HRESULT)0xC0017011L) Unfortunately I’d forgotten all about this. By the time I had remembered about it, the person who raised the issue had managed to narrow it down to something to do with having  sensitive parameter. Putting that together with the error message I’d finally found, a quick poke around in the code and I found the new GetSensitiveValue method which seemed to do the trick. The HResult fields are also listed online but it only shows the short error message, and it doesn’t include that all so important HRESULT value itself. So let this be a lesson to you (and me!), if you need to check  SSIS error go straight to the horses mouth - dtsmsg.h. This is particularly true when working with early builds, or CTP releases when we expect the documentation to be a bit behind. There is also a programmatic approach to getting better SSIS error messages. I should to take another look at the error handling in the control, or the way it is hosted in BIDS Helper. I suspect that if I use an implementation of Microsoft.SqlServer.Dts.Runtime.Wrapper.IDTSInfoEvents100 I could catch the error itself and get the full error message text which I could then report back. This would obviously be a better user experience and also make it easier to diagnose any issues like this in the future. See ExprssionEvaluator.cs for an example of this in use in the Expression Editor control.

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  • Outlying DBAs

    - by steveh99999
    Read an interesting book recently, ‘Outliers – the story of success’ by Malcolm Gladwell. There’s a good synopsis of the book here on wikipedia. I don’t want to write in detailed review of the book, but it’s well worth a read. There were a couple of sections which I thought were possibly relevant to IT professionals and DBAs in particular. Firstly, ‘the 10,000 hour rule’, in this section Gladwell asserts that to be a real ‘elite performer’ takes 10,000 hours of practice. ‘Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good, it’s the thing you do that makes you good’.  He gives many interesting examples – the Beatles, Bill Gates etc – but I was wondering could this be applied to DBAs ? If it takes 10,000 hours to be a really elite DBA – how long does that really take ? 8 hours a day makes 1250 days. If we assume that most DBAs work around 230 days a year – then it takes around 5 and a half years to become an elite DBA.   But how much time per day does a DBA spend actually doing DBA work ? Certainly it’s my experience that the more experienced I get as a DBA, the less time I seem to spend actually doing DBA work – ie meetings, change-control meetings, project planning, liasing with other teams, appraisals etc.  Is it more accurate to assume that a DBA spends half their time actually doing ‘real’ DBA work – or is that just my bad luck ?   So, in reality, I’d argue it can take at least 5 1/2 and more likely closer to 10 years to become an elite DBA. Why do I keep receiving CVs for senior DBAs with 2-4 years actual DBA experience ? In the second section I found particularly interesting, Gladwell writes about analysis of plane crashes and the importance of in-cockpit communications. He describes a couple of crashes involving Korean Airlines – where co-pilots were often deferrential to pilots, and unwilling to openly criticise their more senior colleagues or point out errors when things were going badly wrong… There’s a better summary of Gladwell’s concepts on mitigation  here – but to apply this to a DBA role… If you are a DBA and you do not agree with  a decision of one of your superiors, then it’s your duty as a DBA to say what you think is wrong, before it’s too late…  Obviously there’s a fine line between constructive criticism and moaning, but a good senior DBA or manager should be able to take well-researched criticism\debate from a more junior DBA.   Is this really possible ?

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  • Android Touch Event Collision Detection

    - by chrissb
    I'm relatively new to both Java and Android, so hopefully the problem I'm having is stemming from something pretty minor that I've overlooked. I've got a (very early stage) game that I've started working on, for Android using Java. At this stage, when the user touches the screen, if they touched a point at which there is an enemy, the enemies health is decreased and they become immobile (for the current implementation at least). The issue that I'm having is that the touch detection doesn't always seem to work. I've got a testing sprite set up that goes to the eventX and eventY coordinates of the touch down event, and it always seems to collide with the enemy object. Yet, the enemy doesn't always register as being hit, and sometimes a hit is registered when the sprite indicates the touch coordinates were outside of the enemies bounding box. I realise that this probably doesn't mean much without any code, so here's what I've got so far. Be gentle, as this is literally my first attempt at something more than basic movement etc. First off, the MainGamePanel class registers the touch event, and informs the levelmanager class (which is what I set up to monitor/handle enemies) public boolean onTouchEvent(MotionEvent event) { if (event.getAction() == MotionEvent.ACTION_DOWN){ levelManager.handleActionDown((int)event.getX(), (int)event.getY()); targetX=event.getX(); targetY=event.getY(); } if (event.getAction() == MotionEvent.ACTION_MOVE) { //the gestures } if (event.getAction() == MotionEvent.ACTION_UP) { //touch was released } return true; } From there, in the levelmanager class the touch event is passed on to all of the enemies within a list array: public static void handleActionDown(int eventX,int eventY){ hit=false; for (enemy1 en : enemy1array){ en.handleActionDown(eventX, eventY); } } The rest of the collision code is handled within the enemies handleActionDown function: public void handleActionDown(int eventX, int eventY) { if(eventX>this.x-enemy1bitmap.getWidth() && eventX<this.x+enemy1bitmap.getWidth() && eventY>this.y-enemy1bitmap.getHeight() && eventY<this.x+enemy1bitmap.getHeight()){ takeDamage(1); levelmanager.setHit(); } } I should probably be using getWidth()/2 and getHeight()/2 for it to be more accurate, but I expanded the area to test this - although I've noticed no improvement. At this stage, the games detection over whether or not the enemy is hit is spotty at best. Generally it takes two or three attempts before a collision is successfully registered, even though the sprite that is being used for testing and set to the eventX and eventY coordinates always indicates that the collision should have worked. Hopefully someone can steer me in the right direction here, and if more information is needed, ask away! Cheers, -Chris

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  • Coordinate based travel through multi-line path over elapsed time

    - by Chris
    I have implemented A* Path finding to decide the course of a sprite through multiple waypoints. I have done this for point A to point B locations but am having trouble with multiple waypoints, because on slower devices when the FPS slows and the sprite travels PAST a waypoint I am lost as to the math to switch directions at the proper place. EDIT: To clarify my path finding code is separate in a game thread, this onUpdate method lives in a sprite like class which happens in the UI thread for sprite updating. To be even more clear the path is only updated when objects block the map, at any given point the current path could change but that should not affect the design of the algorithm if I am not mistaken. I do believe all components involved are well designed and accurate, aside from this piece :- ) Here is the scenario: public void onUpdate(float pSecondsElapsed) { // this could be 4x speed, so on slow devices the travel moved between // frames could be very large. What happens with my original algorithm // is it will start actually doing circles around the next waypoint.. pSecondsElapsed *= SomeSpeedModificationValue; final int spriteCurrentX = this.getX(); final int spriteCurrentY = this.getY(); // getCoords contains a large array of the coordinates to each waypoint. // A waypoint is a destination on the map, defined by tile column/row. The // path finder converts these waypoints to X,Y coords. // // I.E: // Given a set of waypoints of 0,0 to 12,23 to 23, 0 on a 23x23 tile map, each tile // being 32x32 pixels. This would translate in the path finder to this: // -> 0,0 to 12,23 // Coord : x=16 y=16 // Coord : x=16 y=48 // Coord : x=16 y=80 // ... // Coord : x=336 y=688 // Coord : x=336 y=720 // Coord : x=368 y=720 // // -> 12,23 to 23,0 -NOTE This direction change gives me trouble specifically // Coord : x=400 y=752 // Coord : x=400 y=720 // Coord : x=400 y=688 // ... // Coord : x=688 y=16 // Coord : x=688 y=0 // Coord : x=720 y=0 // // The current update index, the index specifies the coordinate that you see above // I.E. final int[] coords = getCoords( 2 ); -> x=16 y=80 final int[] coords = getCoords( ... ); // now I have the coords, how do I detect where to set the position? The tricky part // for me is when a direction changes, how do I calculate based on the elapsed time // how far to go up the new direction... I just can't wrap my head around this. this.setPosition(newX, newY); }

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  • Walmart's Mobile Self-Checkout

    - by David Dorf
    Reuters recently reported that Walmart was testing an iPhone-based self-checkout at a store near its headquarters.  Consumers scan items as they're placed in the physical basket, then the virtual basket is transferred to an existing self-checkout station where payment is tendered.  A very solid solution, but not exactly original. Before we go further, let's look at the possible cost savings for Walmart.  According to the article: Pushing more shoppers to scan their own items and make payments without the help of a cashier could save Wal-Mart millions of dollars, Chief Financial Officer Charles Holley said on March 7. The company spends about $12 million in cashier wages every second at its Walmart U.S. stores. Um, yeah. Using back-of-the-napkin math, I calculated Walmart's cashiers are making $157k per hour.  A more accurate statement would be saving $12M per year for each second saved on the average transaction time.  So if this self-checkout approach saves 2 seconds per transaction on average, Walmart would save $24M per year on labor.  Maybe.  Sometimes that savings will be used to do other tasks in the store, so it may not directly translate to less employees. When I saw this approach demonstrated in Sweden, there were a few differences, which may or may not be in Walmart's plans.  First, the consumers were identified based on their loyalty card.  In order to offset the inevitable shrink, retailers need to save on labor but also increase basket size, typically via in-aisle promotions.  As they scan items, retailers should target promos, and that's easier to do if you know some shopping history.  Last I checked, Walmart had no loyalty program. Second, at the self-checkout station consumers were randomly selected for an audit in which they must re-scan all the items just like you do at a typical self-checkout.  If you were found to be stealing, your ability to use the system can be revoked.  That's a tough one in the US, especially when the system goes wrong, either by mistake or by lying.  At least in my view, the Swedes are bit more trustworthy than the people of Walmart. So while I think the idea of mobile self-checkout has merit, perhaps its not right for Walmart.

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  • Sustainability Activities at Oracle OpenWorld

    - by Evelyn Neumayr
    Close to 50,000 participants will come to San Francisco for Oracle OpenWorld and JavaOne events, held September 30-October 4, 2012 at Moscone Center. Oracle is very conscious of the impact that these events have on the environment and, as part of its ongoing commitment to sustainability, has developed a sustainable event program-now in its fifth year-that aims to maximize positive benefits and minimize negative impacts in a variety of ways. Click here for more details. At the Oracle OpenWorld conference, there will be many sessions and even a hands-on lab which discuss the sustainability solutions that Oracle provides for our customers. I wanted to highlight a few of those sessions here so if you will be at Oracle OpenWorld, you can make sure to attend them. One of the most compelling sessions promises to be our “Eco-Enterprise Innovation Awards and the Business Case for Sustainability” session on Wednesday, October 3 from 10:15 a.m. to 11:15 a.m. in Moscone West 3005. Oracle Chairman of the Board Jeff Henley, Chief Sustainability Officer Jon Chorley, and other Oracle executives will honor select customers with Oracle's Eco-Enterprise Innovation award. This award recognizes customers and their respective partners who rely on Oracle products to support their green business practices in order to reduce their environmental impact, while improving business efficiencies and reducing costs. Another interesting session is the “Tracking, Reporting, and Reducing Environmental Impact with Oracle Solutions” which occurs on Monday, October 1 from 4:45 p.m. to 5:45 p.m. in Moscone West Room 2022. This session covers Oracle’s overall sustainability strategy as well as Oracle Environmental Accounting and Reporting (EA&R), which leverages Oracle ERP and BI solutions for accurate, efficient tracking of energy, emissions, and other environmental data. If you want more details, make sure to visit the hands-on lab titled “Oracle Environmental Accounting & Reporting for Integrated Sustainability Reporting”. This hour-long lab will take place on Tuesday, October 2 at 5:00 p.m. in the Marriott Marquis Hotel-Nob Hill CD. Here you can learn how to use Oracle EA&R to collect sustainability-related data in an efficient and reliable manner as part of existing business processes in Oracle E-Business Suite or JD Edwards Enterprise One. Register for this hands-on lab here.  

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  • Is Cygwin or Windows Command Prompt preferable for getting a consistent terminal experience for development?

    - by Paul Hazen
    The question: Which is better, installing cygwin or one of its cousins on all my windows machines to have a consistent terminal experience across all my development machines, or becoming well trained in the skill of mentally switching from linux terminal to windows command prompt? Systems I use: OSX Lion on a Macbook Air Windows 8 on a desktop Windows 7 on the same desktop Fedora 16 on the same desktop What I'm trying to accomplish Configure an entirely consistent (or consistent enough) terminal experience across all my machines. "enough" in this context is clearly subjective. Please be clear in your answer why the configuration you suggest is consistent enough. One more thing to keep in mind: While I do write a lot of code intended to run on Windows (actually code that runs on Windows Phone which necessitates a windows machine), I also write a lot of Java code, and prefer to do so in vim. I test a local repo in Java on my windows machine, and push to another test machine running ubuntu later in the development stage. When I push to the ubuntu machine, I'm exclusively in terminal, since I'm accessing it via SSH. Summary, with more accurate question: Is there a good way to accomplish what I'm trying to do, or is it better to get accustomed to remembering different commands based on the system I'm on? Which (if either) is considered "best practice" by the development community? Alternatively, for a consistent development experience, would it be better to write all my code SSHed into another machine, and move things to windows for compile / build only when I needed to? That seems like too much work... but could be a solution. Update: While there are insightful responses below, I have yet to hear an answer that talks about why any given solution is superior. Cygwin/GnuWin32 is certainly a way to accomplish a similar experience on all platforms, but since I'm just learning all things command line, I don't want to set myself up to do a lot of relearning/unlearning in the future. Cygwin/GnuWin32 has its peculiarities I would imagine, and being aware of how that set up works on Windows is a learning curve. Additionally, using Cygwin/GnuWin32 robs me of learning the benefits of PowerShell. As a newcomer to working in a command line, which path should I choose to minimize having to relearn/unlearn things in the future? or as my first paragraph poses: [is it better to use Cygwin] ...or [become] well trained in the skill of mentally switching from linux terminal to windows command prompt?

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  • Driving Growth through Smarter Selling

    - by Samantha.Y. Ma
    With the proliferation of social media and mobile technologies, the world of selling and buying has drastically changed, as buyers now have access to more information than they did in the past. In fact, studies have shown that buyers complete 60 percent of the buying process before they even engage with a salesperson. The old models of selling no longer work effectively; and the new way of selling is driven by customer insights. To succeed, sales need to be proactive, not reactive. They need to engage with the customer early, sometimes even before the customer’s needs are fully understood. In fact, the best sales reps prescribe a solution that the customer doesn't even know they need, often by leveraging social media to listen, engage and collaborate with peers. And they fully tap into the power of analytics and data to drive results.  Let’s look at some stats regarding challenges facing sales today. According to recent studies, sales reps spend 78 percent of their time doing administrative things -- such as planning, searching for information, data entry -- and only 22 percent of the time actually selling. Furthermore, 40 percent of B2B sales reps miss their quota, and only 3 percent of companies can say with confidence that their forecasts are “always accurate.” How do you drive growth in this modern day and age? It's not just getting your sales teams to work harder; it's helping them work smarter and providing them with a solution they want to use, on the device(s) they already know, giving them critical insights and tools to be more productive, increase win rates, and close deals faster. Oracle Sales Cloud was designed to do exactly that. It enables smarter selling that allows reps to sell more, managers to know more, and companies to grow more.  Let’s face it—if all CRM solutions worked well, sales executives wouldn’t be having the same headaches as they had in the past. Join Oracle’s Thomas Kurian and Doug Clemmans on Tuesday, October 22 as they explain: • How today’s sales processes have rendered many CRM systems obsolete • The secrets to smarter selling, leveraging mobile, social, and big data • How Oracle Sales Cloud enables smarter selling—as proven by Oracle and its customers Take the first step down the path toward smarter selling. With Oracle Sales Cloud, reps sell more, managers know more, and companies grow more.

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  • ITT Corporation Goes Live on Oracle Sales and Marketing Cloud Service (Fusion CRM)!

    - by Richard Lefebvre
    Back in Q2 of FY12, a division of ITT invited Oracle to demo our CRM On Demand product while the group was considering Salesforce.com. Chris Porter, our Oracle Direct sales representative learned the players and their needs and began to develop relationships. We lost that deal, but not Chris's persistence. A few months passed and Chris called on the ITT Shape Cutting Division's Director of Sales to see how things were going. Chris was told that the plan was for the division to buy more Salesforce.com. In fact, he informed Chris that he had just sent his team to Salesforce.com training. During the conversation, Chris mentioned that our new Oracle Sales Cloud Service could run with Outlook. This caused the ITT Sales Director to reconsider the plan to move forward with our competition. Oracle was invited back to demo the Oracle Sales and Marketing Cloud Service (Fusion CRM) and after it concluded, the Director stated, "That just blew your competition away." The deal closed on June 5th , 2012 Our Oracle Platinum Partner, Intelenex, began the implementation with ITT on July 30th. We are happy to report that on September 18th, the ITT Shape Cutting Division successfully went live on Oracle Sales and Marketing Cloud Service (Fusion CRM). About: ITT is a diversified leading manufacturer of highly engineered critical components and customized technology solutions for growing industrial end-markets in energy infrastructure, electronics, aerospace and transportation. Building on its heritage of innovation, ITT partners with its customers to deliver enduring solutions to the key industries that underpin our modern way of life. Founded in 1920, ITT is headquartered in White Plains, NY, with 8,500 employees in more than 30 countries and sales in more than 125 countries. The ITT Shape Cutting Division provides plasma lasers and controls with the Burny, Kaliburn, and AMC brands. Oracle Fusion Products: Oracle Sales and Marketing Cloud Service (Fusion CRM) including: • Fusion CRM Base • Fusion Sales Cloud • Fusion Mobile and Desktop Integration • Automated Forecasting Adoption Model: SaaS Partner: Intelenex Business Drivers: The ITT Shape Cutting Division wanted to: better enable its Sales Force with email and mobile CRM capabilities simplify and automate its complex sales processes centrally manage and maintain customer contact information Why We Won: ITT was impressed with the feature-rich capabilities of Oracle Sales and Marketing Cloud Service (Fusion CRM), including sales performance management and integration. The company also liked the product's flexibility and scalability for future growth. Expected Benefits: Streamlined accurate forecasting Increased customer manageability Improved sales performance Better visibility to customer information

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  • Incorrect results for frustum cull

    - by DeadMG
    Previously, I had a problem with my frustum culling producing too optimistic results- that is, including many objects that were not in the view volume. Now I have refactored that code and produced a cull that should be accurate to the actual frustum, instead of an axis-aligned box approximation. The problem is that now it never returns anything to be in the view volume. As the mathematical support library I'm using does not provide plane support functions, I had to code much of this functionality myself, and I'm not really the mathematical type, so it's likely that I've made some silly error somewhere. As follows is the relevant code: class Plane { public: Plane() { r0 = Math::Vector(0,0,0); normal = Math::Vector(0,1,0); } Plane(Math::Vector p1, Math::Vector p2, Math::Vector p3) { r0 = p1; normal = Math::Cross((p2 - p1), (p3 - p1)); } Math::Vector r0; Math::Vector normal; }; This class represents one plane as a point and a normal vector. class Frustum { public: Frustum( const std::array<Math::Vector, 8>& points ) { planes[0] = Plane(points[0], points[1], points[2]); planes[1] = Plane(points[4], points[5], points[6]); planes[2] = Plane(points[0], points[1], points[4]); planes[3] = Plane(points[2], points[3], points[6]); planes[4] = Plane(points[0], points[2], points[4]); planes[5] = Plane(points[1], points[3], points[5]); } Plane planes[6]; }; The points are passed in order where (the inverse of) each bit of the index of each point indicates whether it's the left, top, and back of the frustum, respectively. As such, I just picked any three points where they all shared one bit in common to define the planes. My intersection test is as follows (based on this): bool Intersects(Math::AABB lhs, const Frustum& rhs) const { for(int i = 0; i < 6; i++) { Math::Vector pvertex = lhs.TopRightFurthest; Math::Vector nvertex = lhs.BottomLeftClosest; if (rhs.planes[i].normal.x <= -0.0f) { std::swap(pvertex.x, nvertex.x); } if (rhs.planes[i].normal.y <= -0.0f) { std::swap(pvertex.y, nvertex.y); } if (rhs.planes[i].normal.z <= -0.0f) { std::swap(pvertex.z, nvertex.z); } if (Math::Dot(rhs.planes[i].r0, nvertex) < 0.0f) { return false; } } return true; } Also of note is that because I'm using a left-handed co-ordinate system, I wrote my Cross function to return the negative of the formula given on Wikipedia. Any suggestions as to where I've made a mistake?

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  • What is 'Ubuntu Unity' (for the Desktop)?

    - by Martin
    Ok, so there's the buzz of Canonical (wanting to) switch for new Ubuntu version from the GNOME default desktop to their own Unity shell. (I hope that's accurate.) It seems I can not totally fathom what Unity actually is. For looking at its homepage it currently is firmly targeted at netbooks and the somehow different usage model on these. Is it a classical desktop? -- Taskbar? Shortcuts? Is the difference between Ubuntu(GNOME)+Unity more/less pronounced than the difference between Ubuntu and Kubuntu? Will "my parents" be able to get the interface if they've been using the classical gnome desktop so far? Edit: I would not like to split this up into more specific questions, as What is Unity? is exactly what the people I set up Ubuntu boxes for will ask me if they hear that the newer Ubuntu version is using that instead of the Desktop -- and it might well happen someone phrases it like that :-) I will certainly not give them the link to the HP as the explanation there does not lay out if it is a desktop or something more or something less: (It does not for me - therefore I'm asking here.) Unity is designed for netbooks and related touch-based devices. It includes [...] that makes it fast and easy to access [...] while removing screen elements that are rarely used in mobile and netbook computing. (emphasis mine) -- the explanation there doesn't even mention the desktop-PC! Unity has a vertical task management panel on the left-hand side and a menu panel at the top of the screen. [...] This sounds like a re-themed normal desktop. Clicking on an icon will give the target application focus if it is already running or launch it if it is not already running. If you click the ... Aha. Sounds like Windows 7. ... icon of an application that already has focus, Unity will activate an Expose-style view of all the open windows associated with that application. No clue what that's supposed to be. So it would really be nice if someone could explain for non desktop-design-terms experts what Unity is.

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  • WebCenter Customer Spotlight: Regency Centers Corporation

    - by me
    Author: Peter Reiser - Social Business Evangelist, Oracle WebCenter  Solution SummaryRegency Centers Corporation, based in Jacksonville, FL, is a leading national owner, operator, and developer of grocery-anchored and community shopping centers. Regency grew rapidly over much of the last decade. To keep up with the monthly and yearly administrative processes required to manage thousands of tenants, including reconciling yearly pass-through expenses, the customer upgraded to Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Version 9.0 and deployed Oracle WebCenter Imaging, Process Management and Oracle BI Publisher, to streamline invoice processing and reporting. Using Oracle WebCenter Imaging - Regency accelerated and improved vendor invoice accuracy  which increases process integrity by identifying potential duplicate bills while enabling rapid approval of electronic invoice documents. Company Overview Regency Centers Corporation, based in Jacksonville, FL,  is a leading national owner, operator, and developer of grocery-anchored and community shopping centers. The company owns 367 centers, totaling nearly 50 million square feet, located in top markets throughout the United States. Founded in 1963 and operating as a fully integrated real estate company, Regency is a qualified real estate investment trust that is self-administered and self-managed, operating from 17 regional offices around the country.  Business Challenges Ensure continued support of vital business applications that drive the real estate developer’s key business processes, including property management and tenant payment processing Streamline year-end expense recognition and calculation, enabling faster tenant billing Move to a Web-based platform to deliver greater mobility and convenience to employees Minimize system customizations to reduce IT management costs and burden moving forward Solution DeployedRecency Centers Corporation worked with the  Oracle Partner ICS to upgrade to Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Version 9.0, migrating to a more user-friendly, Web-based platform and realizing numerous new efficiencies in property management and tenant payment processing. They accelerated and improved vendor invoice accuracy with Oracle WebCenter Imaging, which increases process integrity by identifying potential duplicate bills while enabling rapid approval of electronic invoice documents. Business Results Enabled faster and more accurate tenant billing for year-end expenses, accelerating collections of millions of dollars in revenue Gained full audit and drill-down capabilities that facilitate understanding various aspects of calculations for expense participation generation Increases process integrity by identifying potential duplicate bills while enabling rapid approval of electronic invoice documents Helped to ensure on-time payments to hundreds of vendors, including contractors and utilities "We have realized numerous efficiencies with Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 9.0, particularly around tenant billings. It accelerates our year-end expense reconciliation process and enables us to create and process billings more quickly.” James Chiang, Vice President of Real Estate Accounting Regency Centers Corporation Additional Information Regency Centers Corporation Customer Snapshot Oracle WebCenter Imaging JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Financials 9.0 JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Project Costing JD Edwards EnterpiseOne Real Estate Management Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher Oracle Essbase

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  • Architecture for a template-building, WYSIWIG application

    - by Sam Selikoff
    I'm building a WYSIWYG designer in Ember.js. The designer will allow users to create campaigns - think MailChimp. To build a campaign, users will choose an existing template. The template will have a defined layout. The user will then be taken to the designer, where he will be able to edit the text and style, and additionally change some layout options. I've been thinking about how best to go about structuring this app, and there are a few hurdles. Specifically, the output of the campaign will be dynamic: eventually, it will be published somewhere, and when the consumers (not my users, but the people clicking on the campaign that my user created) visit the campaign, certain pieces of data will change, depending on the type of consumer viewing the campaign. That means the ultimate output of the designer will be a dynamic site. The data that is dynamic for this site - the end product - will not be manipulated by the user in the designer. However, the data that will be manipulated by the user in the designer are things like copy, styles, layout options, etc. I'll call the first set of variables server-side data, and the second client-side data. It seems, then, that the process will go something like this: I'll need to create templates for this designer that have two dynamic segments. For instance, the server-side data could be Liquid expressions, and the client-side data Handlebars expressions. When the user creates a campaign, I would compile the template on the back end using some dummy data for the server-side variables, and serve up a handlebars template to the Ember app. The user would then edit the template, and the Ember app would save all his edits to the JS variables that were powering the template. This way he'd be able to preview the template. When he saves, he'll send back the selected template, along with all the data and options he's made. When it comes time to publish, the back-end system will have to do two things: compile the template with Handlebars using the campaign data, and then compile the template with Liquid using the server-side data Is my thinking roughly accurate about this, or is there a simpler way?

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  • Data Model Dissonance

    - by Tony Davis
    So often at the start of the development of database applications, there is a premature rush to the keyboard. Unless, before we get there, we’ve mapped out and agreed the three data models, the Conceptual, the Logical and the Physical, then the inevitable refactoring will dog development work. It pays to get the data models sorted out up-front, however ‘agile’ you profess to be. The hardest model to get right, the most misunderstood, and the one most neglected by the various modeling tools, is the conceptual data model, and yet it is critical to all that follows. The conceptual model distils what the business understands about itself, and the way it operates. It represents the business rules that govern the required data, its constraints and its properties. The conceptual model uses the terminology of the business and defines the most important entities and their inter-relationships. Don’t assume that the organization’s understanding of these business rules is consistent or accurate. Too often, one department has a subtly different understanding of what an entity means and what it stores, from another. If our conceptual data model fails to resolve such inconsistencies, it will reduce data quality. If we don’t collect and measure the raw data in a consistent way across the whole business, how can we hope to perform meaningful aggregation? The conceptual data model has more to do with business than technology, and as such, developers often regard it as a worthy but rather arcane ceremony like saluting the flag or only eating fish on Friday. However, the consequences of getting it wrong have a direct and painful impact on many aspects of the project. If you adopt a silo-based (a.k.a. Domain driven) approach to development), you are still likely to suffer by starting with an incomplete knowledge of the domain. Even when you have surmounted these problems so that the data entities accurately reflect the business domain that the application represents, there are likely to be dire consequences from abandoning the goal of a shared, enterprise-wide understanding of the business. In reading this, you may recall experiences of the consequence of getting the conceptual data model wrong. I believe that Phil Factor, for example, witnessed the abandonment of a multi-million dollar banking project due to an inadequate conceptual analysis of how the bank defined a ‘customer’. We’d love to hear of any examples you know of development projects poleaxed by errors in the conceptual data model. Cheers, Tony

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  • JavaOne Session Report - Java ME SDK 3.2

    - by Janice J. Heiss
    Oracle Product Manager for Java ME SDK, Sungmoon Cho, presented a session, "Developing Java Mobile and Embedded Applications with Java ME SDK 3.2,” wherein he covered the basic new features of the Java ME Platform SDK 3.2, a state-of-the-art toolbox for developing mobile and embedded applications. The session began with a summary of the four main components of Java ME SDK. A device emulator allows developers to quickly run and test applications before commercialization. It supports CLDC/MIDP CLDC/IMP.NG and CLC/AGUI. A development environment assists writing, running debugging and deploying and enables on-device debugging. Samples provide developers with useful codes and frameworks. IDE Plugins – NetBeans and Eclipse – equip developers with CPU Profiler, Memory Monitor, Network Monitor, and Device Selector. This means that manual integration is no longer necessary. Cho then talked about the Java ME SDK’s on-device tooling architecture: * Java ME SDK provides an architecture ideal for on-device-debugging.* Device Manager plays the central role by managing different devices whether it is the emulator or a device that Oracle provides or recommends or a third party device as long as the devices have a Java Runtime that supports the protocol that is designated.* The Emulator provides an accurate emulation, since it uses the same code base used in Oracle’s Java ME runtime.* The Universal Emulator Interface (UEI) makes it easy for IDEs to detect the platform.He then focused on the Java ME SDK release highlights, which include: * Implementation and support for the new Oracle® Java Wireless Client 3.2 runtime and the Oracle® Java ME Embedded runtime. A full emulation for the runtime is provided.* Support for JSR 228, the Information Module Profile-Next Generation API (IMP-NG). This is a new profile for embedded devices. * A new Custom Device Skin Creator.* An Eclipse plugin for CLDC/MIDP.* Profiling, Network monitoring, and Memory monitoring are now integrated with the NetBeans profiling tools.* Java ME SDK Update CenterCho summarized the main features: IDE Integration (NetBeans and Eclipse) enables developers to write, run, profile, and debug their applications on their favorite IDE. CPU ProfilerThis enables developers to more quickly detect the hot spot and where CPU time is being used. They can double click the method to jump directly into the source code.Memory Monitor Developers can monitor objects and memory usage in real time.Debugger on the Emulator and DeviceDevelopers can run their applications step by step, and inspect the variables to pinpoint the problem. The debugging can take place either on the emulator or the device.Embedded Application DevelopmentIMP-NG, Device Access, Logging, and AMS API Support are now available.On-Device ToolingConnect your device to your computer, and run and debug the application right on your device.Custom Device Skin CreatorDefine your own device and test on an environment that is closest to your target device. The informative session concluded with a demo that showed more concretely how to apply the new features in Java ME SDK 3.2.

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  • How to make sprint planning fun

    - by Jacob Spire
    Not only are our sprint planning meetings not fun, they're downright dreadful. The meetings are tedious, and boring, and take forever (a day, but it feels like a lot longer). The developers complain about it, and dread upcoming plannings. Our routine is pretty standard (user story inserted into sprint backlog by priority story is taken apart to tasks tasks are estimated in hours repeat), and I can't figure out what we're doing wrong. How can we make the meetings more enjoyable? ... Some more details, in response to requests for more information: Why are the backlog items not inserted and prioritized before sprint kickoff? User stories are indeed prioritized; we have no idea how long they'll take until we break them down into tasks! From the (excellent) answers here, I see that maybe we shouldn't estimate tasks at all, only the user stories. The reason we estimate tasks (and not stories) is because we've been getting story-estimates terribly wrong -- but I guess that's the subject for an altogether different question. Why are developers complaining? Meetings are long. Meetings are monotonous. Story after story, task after task, struggling (yes, struggling) to estimate how long it will take and what it involves. Estimating tasks makes user-story-estimation seem pointless. The longer the meeting, the less focus in the room. The less focused colleagues are, the longer the meeting takes. A recursive hate-spiral develops. We've considered splitting the meeting into two days in order to keep people focused, but the developers wouldn't hear of it. One day of planning is bad enough; now we'll have two?! Part of our problem is that we go into very small detail (in order to get more accurate estimations). But when we estimate roughly, we go way off the mark! To sum up the question: What are we doing wrong? What additional ways are there to make the meeting generally more enjoyable?

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  • Understanding the levels of computing

    - by RParadox
    Sorry, for my confused question. I'm looking for some pointers. Up to now I have been working mostly with Java and Python on the application layer and I have only a vague understanding of operating systems and hardware. I want to understand much more about the lower levels of computing, but it gets really overwhelming somehow. At university I took a class about microprogramming, i.e. how processors get hard-wired to implement the ASM codes. Up to now I always thought I wouldn't get more done if learned more about the "low level". One question I have is: how is it even possible that hardware gets hidden almost completely from the developer? Is it accurate to say that the operating system is a software layer for the hardware? One small example: in programming I have never come across the need to understand what L2 or L3 Cache is. For the typical business application environment one almost never needs to understand assembler and the lower levels of computing, because nowadays there is a technology stack for almost anything. I guess the whole point of these lower levels is to provide an interface to higher levels. On the other hand I wonder how much influence the lower levels can have, for example this whole graphics computing thing. So, on the other hand, there is this theoretical computer science branch, which works on abstract computing models. However, I also rarely encountered situations, where I found it helpful thinking in the categories of complexity models, proof verification, etc. I sort of know, that there is a complexity class called NP, and that they are kind of impossible to solve for a big number of N. What I'm missing is a reference for a framework to think about these things. It seems to me, that there all kinds of different camps, who rarely interact. The last few weeks I have been reading about security issues. Here somehow, much of the different layers come together. Attacks and exploits almost always occur on the lower level, so in this case it is necessary to learn about the details of the OSI layers, the inner workings of an OS, etc.

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  • WCF Routing Service Filter Generator

    - by Michael Stephenson
    Recently I've been working with the WCF routing service and in our case we were simply routing based on the SOAP Action. This is a pretty good approach for a standard redirection of the message when all messages matching a SOAP Action will go to the same endpoint. Using the SOAP Action also lets you be specific about which methods you expose via the router. One of the things which was a pain was the number of routing rules I needed to create because we were routing for a lot of different methods. I could have explored the option of using a regular expression to match the message to its routing but I wanted to be very specific about what's routed and not risk exposing methods I shouldn't via the router. I decided to put together a little spreadsheet so that I can generate part of the configuration I would need to put in the configuration file rather than have to type this by hand. To show how this works download the spreadsheet from the following url: https://s3.amazonaws.com/CSCBlogSamples/WCF+Routing+Generator.xlsx In the spreadsheet you will see that the squares in green are the ones which you need to amend. In the below picture you can see that you specify a prefix and suffix for the filter name. The core namespace from the web service your generating routing rules for and the WCF endpoint name which you want to route to. In column A you will see the green cells where you add the list of method names which you want to include routing rules for. The spreadsheet will workout what the full SOAP Action would be then the name you will use for that filter in your WCF Routing filters. In column D the spreadsheet will have generated the XML snippet which you can add to the routing filters section in your configuration file. In column E the spreadsheet will have created the XML snippet which you can add to the routing table to send messages matching each filter to the appropriate WCF client endpoint to forward the message to the required destination. Hopefully you can see that with this spreadsheet it would be very easy to produce accurate XML for the WCF Routing configuration if you had a large number of routing rules. If you had additional methods in other services you can simply copy the worksheet and add multiple copies to the Excel workbook. One worksheet per service would work well.

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