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Any reliable polygon normal calculation code?

- by Jenko

I'm currently calculating the normal vector of a polygon using this code, but for some faces here and there it calculates a wrong normal. I don't really know what's going on or where it fails but its not reliable. Do you have any polygon normal calculation that's tested and found to be reliable? // calculate normal of a polygon using all points var n:int = points.length; var x:Number = 0; var y:Number = 0; var z:Number = 0 // ensure all points above 0 var minx:Number = 0, miny:Number = 0, minz:Number = 0; for (var p:int = 0, pl:int = points.length; p < pl; p++) { var po:_Point3D = points[p] = points[p].clone(); if (po.x < minx) { minx = po.x; } if (po.y < miny) { miny = po.y; } if (po.z < minz) { minz = po.z; } } for (p = 0; p < pl; p++) { po = points[p]; po.x -= minx; po.y -= miny; po.z -= minz; } var cur:int = 1, prev:int = 0, next:int = 2; for (var i:int = 1; i <= n; i++) { // using Newell method x += points[cur].y * (points[next].z - points[prev].z); y += points[cur].z * (points[next].x - points[prev].x); z += points[cur].x * (points[next].y - points[prev].y); cur = (cur+1) % n; next = (next+1) % n; prev = (prev+1) % n; } // length of the normal var length:Number = Math.sqrt(x * x + y * y + z * z); // turn large values into a unit vector if (length != 0){ x = x / length; y = y / length; z = z / length; }else { throw new Error("Cannot calculate normal since triangle has an area of 0"); }

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Virtual Lab part 2–Templates, Patterns, Baselines

- by Geoff N. Hiten

Once you have a good virtualization platform chosen, whether it is a desktop, server or laptop environment, the temptation is to build “X”. “X” may be a SharePoint lab, a Virtual Cluster, an AD test environment or some other cool project that you really need RIGHT NOW. That would be doing it wrong. My grandfather taught woodworking and cabinetmaking for twenty-seven years at a trade school in Alabama. He was the first instructor hired at that school and the only teacher for the first two years. His students built tables, chairs, and workbenches so the school could start its HVAC courses. Visiting as a child, I also noticed many extra “helper” stands, benches, holders, and gadgets all built from wood. What does that have to do with a virtual lab, you ask? Well, that is the same approach you should take. Build stuff that you will use. Not for solving a particular problem, but to let the Virtual Lab be part of your normal troubleshooting toolkit. Start with basic copies of various Operating Systems. Load and patch server and desktop OS environments. This also helps build your collection of ISO files, another essential element of a virtual Lab. Once you have these “baseline” images, you can use your Virtualization software’s snapshot capability to freeze the image. Clone the snapshot and you have a brand new fully patched machine in mere moments. You may have to sysprep some of the Microsoft OS environments if you are going to create a domain environment or experiment with clustering. That is still much faster than loading and patching from scratch. So once you have a stock of raw materials (baseline images in this case) where should you start. Again, my grandfather’s workshop gives us the answer. In the shop it was workbenches and tables to hold large workpieces that made the equipment more useful. In a Windows environment the same role falls to the fundamental network services: DHCP, DNS, Active Directory, Routing, File Services, and Storage services. Plan your internal network setup. Build out an AD controller with all the features listed. Make the actual domain an isolated domain so it will not care about where you take it. Add the Microsoft iSCSI target. Once you have this single system, you can leverage it for almost any network environment beyond a simple stand-alone system. Having these templates and fundamental infrastructure elements ready to run means I can build a quick lab in minutes instead of hours. My solutions are well-tested, my processes fully documented with screenshots, and my plans validated well before I have to make any changes to client systems. the work I put in is easily returned in increased value and client satisfaction.

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Exadata at Oracle Openworld - A guide to sessions

- by Javier Puerta

A large number of sessions focusing on Exadata will be taking place during the week of Oracle Openworld in San Francisco. To help you organize your schedule I am including below a list of sessions and events around Exadata that you will find of interest. PARTNER SPECIFIC SESSIONS Date/Time/Location Session Sunday, Sep 30, 3:30 PM - 4:30 PM - Moscone South - 301 Building a Winning Services Practice with Oracle’s Engineered Systems.- This session kicks off a week-long session on Oracle’s engineered systems, from Oracle Database Appliance to Oracle Exadata, Oracle Exalogic, Oracle Exalytics, Oracle Big Data Appliance, and Oracle SPARC SuperCluster. Hear about what is to come in the week ahead in terms of engineered systems. As an ideal consolidation platform for database workloads, Oracle Exadata generates significant services opportunities. This session reviews the range of partner-led services that support Oracle Exadata deployments. Monday, October 1st, 2011 at 15:30 - 18:00 PST Grand Hyatt San Francisco 345 Stockton Street, San Francisco (Conference Theater) (It is a 15 minute walk from OOW Moscone Center. See directions here) Exadata & Manageability EMEA Partner Community Forum.- Listen to other partners share their experiences in selling and implementing Exadata and Manageability projects, and have a direct dialogue with some of the Oracle executives that are driving the strategy of the company in these areas. Agenda Welcome - Hans-Peter Kipfer, VP, Engineered Systems Oracle EMEA Next challenges in building and managing clouds - Javier Cabrerizo, VP, Business Development for Exadata, Oracle Corp. Partner Experiences: IT modernization, simplification and cost reduction: The case of a customer in Transportation & Logistics with custom applications and SAP. - Francisco Bermudez, Country Leader Infrastructure Services, Capgemini, Spain Nvision cloud project - Dmitry Krasilov, Head of Oracle Competence Center, Nvision Group, Russia From Exadata Ready to Exadata Optimized: An ISV Experience - Miguel Alves, Product Business Solutions Manager, WeDo Technologies, Portugal To confirm your participation send an email to [email protected] Wednesday, Oct 3, 11:45 AM - 12:45 PM - Marriott Marquis - Golden Gate B Building a Practice with Exadata Database Machine.- As an ideal consolidation platform for database workloads, Oracle’s Exadata Database Machine generates significant services opportunities. In this session, learn about the range of partner-led services that support Exadata Database Machine deployments. Other Engineered Systems sessions for Partners at the Oracle PartnerNetwork Exchange Click here.- OOW CUSTOMER SESSIONS Download the Focus On Exadata guide for a full list of Exadata OOW sessions.

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One Week To Go: OTN Architect Day: Cloud Computing

- by Bob Rhubart

One week remains until OTN Architect Day: Cloud Computing kicks of at the spectacular Oracle HQ campus in Redwood Shores, CA. The event is free, and there is still time to register. When: Tuesday July 9, 2013 8:30am - 12:30pm Where: Oracle Conference Center350 Oracle Pkwy Redwood City, CA 94065 Register now. It's free! Here's the latest update to the event agenda: 8:30am - 9:00am Registration and Continental Breakfast 9:00am - 9:45am Keynote 21st Century IT | Dr. James Baty VP, Global Enterprise Architecture Program, Oracle Imagine a time long, long ago. A time when servers were certified and dedicated to specific applications, when anything posted on an enterprise web site was from restricted, approved channels, and when we tried to limit the growth of 'dirty' data and storage. Today, applications are services running in the muti-tenant hybrid cloud. Companies beg their customers to tweet them, friend them, and publicly rate their products. And constantly analyzing a deluge of Internet, social and sensor data is the key to creating the next super-successful product, or capturing an evil terrorist. The old IT architecture was planned, dedicated, stable, controlled, with separate and well-defined roles. The new architecture is shared, dynamic, continuous, XaaS, DevOps. This keynote session describes the challenges and opportunities that the new business / IT paradigms present to the IT architecture and architects. 9:45am - 10:30am Technical Session Oracle Cloud: A Case Study in Building a Cloud | Anbu Krishnaswami Enterprise Architect, Oracle Building a Cloud can be challenging thanks to the complex requirements unique to Cloud computing and the massive scale typically associated with Cloud. Cloud providers can take an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) approach and build a cloud on virtualized commodity hardware, or they can take the Platform as a Service (PaaS) path, a service-oriented approach based on pre-configured, integrated, engineered systems. This presentation uses the Oracle Cloud itself as a case study in the use of engineered systems, demonstrating how the technical design of engineered systems is leveraged for building PaaS and SaaS Cloud services and a Cloud management infrastructure. The presentation will also explore the principles, patterns, best practices, and architecture views provided in Oracle's Cloud reference architecture. 10:30 am -10:45 am Break 10:45am-11:30am Technical Session Database as a Service | Markus Michalewicz Senior Principal Product Manager Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) New applications are now commonly built in a Cloud model, where the database is consumed as a service, and many established business processes are beginning to migrate to database as a service (DBaaS). This adoption of DBaaS is made possible by the availability of new capabilities in the database that enable resource pooling, dynamic resource management, model-based provisioning, metered use, and effective quality-of-service controls. This session will examine the catalog of database services at a large commercial bank to understand how these capabilities are enabling DBaaS for a wide range of needs within the enterprise. 11:30 am - 12:00 pm Panel Q&A Dr. James Baty, Anbu Krishnaswami, and Markus Michalewicz respond to audience questions. Registration is free, but seating is limited, so register now.

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One Week To Go: OTN Architect Day: Cloud Computing

- by Bob Rhubart

One week remains until OTN Architect Day: Cloud Computing kicks of at the spectacular Oracle HQ campus in Redwood Shores, CA. The event is free, and there is still time to register. When: Tuesday July 9, 2013 8:30am - 12:30pm Where: Oracle Conference Center350 Oracle Pkwy Redwood City, CA 94065 Register now. It's free! Here's the latest update to the event agenda: 8:30am - 9:00am Registration and Continental Breakfast 9:00am - 9:45am Keynote 21st Century IT | Dr. James Baty VP, Global Enterprise Architecture Program, Oracle Imagine a time long, long ago. A time when servers were certified and dedicated to specific applications, when anything posted on an enterprise web site was from restricted, approved channels, and when we tried to limit the growth of 'dirty' data and storage. Today, applications are services running in the muti-tenant hybrid cloud. Companies beg their customers to tweet them, friend them, and publicly rate their products. And constantly analyzing a deluge of Internet, social and sensor data is the key to creating the next super-successful product, or capturing an evil terrorist. The old IT architecture was planned, dedicated, stable, controlled, with separate and well-defined roles. The new architecture is shared, dynamic, continuous, XaaS, DevOps. This keynote session describes the challenges and opportunities that the new business / IT paradigms present to the IT architecture and architects. 9:45am - 10:30am Technical Session Oracle Cloud: A Case Study in Building a Cloud | Anbu Krishnaswami Enterprise Architect, Oracle Building a Cloud can be challenging thanks to the complex requirements unique to Cloud computing and the massive scale typically associated with Cloud. Cloud providers can take an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) approach and build a cloud on virtualized commodity hardware, or they can take the Platform as a Service (PaaS) path, a service-oriented approach based on pre-configured, integrated, engineered systems. This presentation uses the Oracle Cloud itself as a case study in the use of engineered systems, demonstrating how the technical design of engineered systems is leveraged for building PaaS and SaaS Cloud services and a Cloud management infrastructure. The presentation will also explore the principles, patterns, best practices, and architecture views provided in Oracle's Cloud reference architecture. 10:30 am -10:45 am Break 10:45am-11:30am Technical Session Database as a Service | Markus Michalewicz Senior Principal Product Manager Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) New applications are now commonly built in a Cloud model, where the database is consumed as a service, and many established business processes are beginning to migrate to database as a service (DBaaS). This adoption of DBaaS is made possible by the availability of new capabilities in the database that enable resource pooling, dynamic resource management, model-based provisioning, metered use, and effective quality-of-service controls. This session will examine the catalog of database services at a large commercial bank to understand how these capabilities are enabling DBaaS for a wide range of needs within the enterprise. 11:30 am - 12:00 pm Panel Q&A Dr. James Baty, Anbu Krishnaswami, and Markus Michalewicz respond to audience questions. Registration is free, but seating is limited, so register now.

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Suggestions for getting an open source electron beam tracking code going

- by Boaz

I work in the field of accelerator physics and synchrotron radiation. High energy electrons circulating in large rings of magnets produce x-rays that are used for a variety of different kinds of science. Running and improving these facilities requires controlling and modelling the electron beam as it circulates in the ring. A code to model this basically requires trackers to follow the electrons through the elements (something called a symplectic integrator), and then the computation of different parameters associated with this motion. The problem with these codes is that every facility has there own. In principle the code is not so complex. And as a modelling project, one might think it has some general interest. Who doesn't want to be able to create a track in space out of magnets and watch the electrons circulate? There is a Matlab based code to do this called Accelerator Toolbox, but the creator of the code is no longer in the field. I put the code in Sourceforge under the name atcollab. The basic resource is in C- it is the set of symplectic integrators. These are available in the atcollab code here. It has been useful to put the code on Sourceforge in order to exchange code, but the community of users is quite small and most are too busy to put that much time into collaboration. So in terms of really improving the code, I don't think it has been so successful. Any piece of this picture could be recreated without that much difficulty, but overall it is a bit complex, and because each lab has their own installation with lots of add-on Matlab code, people find it hard to really work together and share code. Somehow I think we need to involve a wider community in our development, or just use some standard tools. But for that, I suppose it needs to be of some general interest. I think symplectic integrators may have some general interest. And the part about a plug-in architecture to build up the ring ought to fit other patterns. Or the other option is to just accept that this is not a problem of general interest, and work harder within our small community. Suggestions, or anecdotes of analogous experience would be appreciated.

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2011 - ALMs for your development team and the people they work with.

- by David V. Corbin

Welcome to 2011, it is already shaping up to be a very exciting year. The title of the post is not about charitable giving, although that is also a great topic. Application Lifecycle Management and the Systems that support the environment is, and 2011 will be a year where I expect many teams to invest heavily in this area. For those not familiar with ALM, it can be simplified down to "A comprehensive view of all of the iteas, requirements, activities and artifacts that impact an application over the course of its lifecycle, from concept until decommissioning". Obviously, this encompases a large number of different areas even for relatively small and medium sized projects. In recent years, many teams have adapted methodoligies which address individual aspects of this; but the majority of this adoption has resulted in "islands of improvement" rather than the desired comprehensive outcome...Until now! Last year Microsoft released Team Foundation Server 2010 along with Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate Edition, and with these two in combination the situation has drastically changed. At last there is a single environment that is capable of handling all aspects of ALM, and is also capable of dealing with migration and integration with existing systems to make the transition to a single solution much easier. Thse possibilities (and practicalities) are nothing short of amazing, Architecture thru Testing integration? YES. Being able to correlate specific requirement items (and their history) to actual code (and code history)? YES. Identification of which tests will be potentially impacted by a given code change? YES. Resiliant Automated Testing of User Interfaces? YES. Automatic Deployment Management? YES. Integraton Level testing as part of (designated) Builds? YES. I could easily double or triple the above list, but these items should be enough to get you thinking about the "pain points" your team and organization currently face and the fact that there IS a way to relieve the pain. Over the course of the year, I am hoping to bring together some of the "best of breed" information, along with hosting (and participating in) discussions with various experts in the field. There are already a number of groups (including many on LinkedIn) that have an ALM focus, and I encourage everyone out to check them out. I will be posting a list of the ones I find most helpful in the not too distant future. As I said at the beginning, 2011 is shaping up to be a very interesting (and productive) year. Why wait to start investigating and adopting ALM? ps: For those interested in becoming an "Alms Giver" in the charitable sense, I highly recommend checking out GiveCamp. A group of developers, designers and others get together to create a solution for a charity in just under 48 hours. I will be attending the GiveCamp in New York City on Jan 14-16, more information is available at nycgivecamp.org/

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How to get tens of millions of pages indexed by Google bot?

- by Chris Adragna

We are currently developing a site that currently has 8 million unique pages that will grow to about 20 million right away, and eventually to about 50 million or more. Before you criticize... Yes, it provides unique, useful content. We continually process raw data from public records and by doing some data scrubbing, entity rollups, and relationship mapping, we've been able to generate quality content, developing a site that's quite useful and also unique, in part due to the breadth of the data. It's PR is 0 (new domain, no links), and we're getting spidered at a rate of about 500 pages per day, putting us at about 30,000 pages indexed thus far. At this rate, it would take over 400 years to index all of our data. I have two questions: Is the rate of the indexing directly correlated to PR, and by that I mean is it correlated enough that by purchasing an old domain with good PR will get us to a workable indexing rate (in the neighborhood of 100,000 pages per day). Are there any SEO consultants who specialize in aiding the indexing process itself. We're otherwise doing very well with SEO, on-page especially, besides, the competition for our "long-tail" keyword phrases is pretty low, so our success hinges mostly on the number of pages indexed. Our main competitor has achieved approx 20MM pages indexed in just over one year's time, along with an Alexa 2000-ish ranking. Noteworthy qualities we have in place: page download speed is pretty good (250-500 ms) no errors (no 404 or 500 errors when getting spidered) we use Google webmaster tools and login daily friendly URLs in place I'm afraid to submit sitemaps. Some SEO community postings suggest a new site with millions of pages and no PR is suspicious. There is a Google video of Matt Cutts speaking of a staged on-boarding of large sites, too, in order to avoid increased scrutiny (at approx 2:30 in the video). Clickable site links deliver all pages, no more than four pages deep and typically no more than 250(-ish) internal links on a page. Anchor text for internal links is logical and adds relevance hierarchically to the data on the detail pages. We had previously set the crawl rate to the highest on webmaster tools (only about a page every two seconds, max). I recently turned it back to "let Google decide" which is what is advised.

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Developing for 2005 using VS2008!

- by Vincent Grondin

I joined a fairly large project recently and it has a particularity… Once finished, everything has to be sent to the client under VS2005 using VB.Net and can target either framework 2.0 or 3.0… A long time ago, the decision to use VS2008 and to target framework 3.0 was taken but people knew they would need to establish a few rules to ensure that each dev would use VS2008 as if it was VS2005… Why is that so? Well simply because the compiler in VS2005 is different from the compiler inside VS2008… I thought it might be a good idea to note the things that you cannot use in VS2008 if you plan on going back to VS2005. Who knows, this might save someone the headache of going over all their code to fix errors… - Do not use LinQ keywords (from, in, select, orderby…). - Do not use LinQ standard operators under the form of extension methods. - Do not use type inference (in VB.Net you can switch it OFF in each project properties). o This means you cannot use XML Literals. - Do not use nullable types under the following declarative form: Dim myInt as Integer? But using: Dim myInt as Nullable(Of Integer) is perfectly fine. - Do not test nullable types with Is Nothing use myInt.HasValue instead. - Do not use Lambda expressions (there is no Lambda statements in VB9) so you cannot use the keyword “Function”. - Pay attention not to use relaxed delegates because this one is easy to miss in VS2008 - Do not use Object Initializers - Do not use the “ternary If operator” … not the IIf method but this one If(confition, truepart, falsepart). As a side note, I talked about not using LinQ keyword nor the extension methods but, this doesn’t mean not to use LinQ in this scenario. LinQ is perfectly accessible from inside VS2005. All you need to do is reference System.Core, use namespace System.Linq and use class “Enumerable” as a helper class… This is one of the many classes containing various methods that VS2008 sees as extensions. The trick is you can use them too! Simply remember that the first parameter of the method is the object you want to query on and then pass in the other parameters needed… That’s pretty much all I see but I could have missed a few… If you know other things that are specific to the VS2008 compiler and which do not work under VS2005, feel free to leave a comment and I’ll modify my list accordingly (and notify our team here…) ! Happy coding all!

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How do you manage extensibility in your multi-tenant systems?

- by Brian MacKay

I've got a few big web based multi-tenant products now, and very soon I can see that there will be a lot of customizations that are tenant specific. An extra field here or there, maybe an extra page or some extra logic in the middle of a workflow - that sort of thing. Some of these customizations can be rolled into the core product, and that's great. Some of them are highly specific and would get in everyone else's way. I have a few ideas in mind for managing this, but none of them seem to scale well. The obvious solution is to introduce a ton of client-level settings, allowing various 'features' to be enabled on per-client basis. The downside with that, of course, is massive complexity and clutter. You could introduce a truly huge number of settings, and over time various types of logic (presentation, business) could get way out of hand. Then there's the problem of client-specific fields, which begs for something cleaner than just adding a bunch of nullable fields to the existing tables. So what are people doing to manage this? Force.com seems to be the master of extensibility; obviously they've created a platform from the ground up that is super extensible. You can add on to almost anything with their web-based UI. FogBugz did something similiar where they created a robust plugin model that, come to think of it, might have actually been inspired by Force. I know they spent a lot of time and money on it and if I'm not mistaken the intention was to actually use it internally for future product development. Sounds like the kind of thing I could be tempted to build but probably shouldn't. :) Is a massive investment in pluggable architecture the only way to go? How are you managing these problems, and what kind of results are you seeing? EDIT: It does look as though FogBugz handled the problem by building a fairly robust platform and then using that to put together their screens. To extend it you create a DLL containing classes that implement interfaces like ISearchScreenGridColumn, and that becomes a module. I'm sure it was tremendously expensive to build considering that they have a large of devs and they worked on it for months, plus their surface area is perhaps 5% of the size of my application. Right now I am seriously wondering if Force.com is the right way to handle this. And I am a hard core ASP.Net guy, so this is a strange position to find myself in.

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Why is my class worse than the hierarchy of classes in the book (beginner OOP)?

- by aditya menon

I am reading this book. The author is trying to model a lesson in a college. The goal is to output the Lesson Type (Lecture or Seminar), and the Charges for the lesson depending on whether it is a hourly or fixed price lesson. So the output should be: lesson charge 20. Charge type: hourly rate. lesson type seminar. lesson charge 30. Charge type: fixed rate. lesson type lecture. When the input is as follows: $lessons[] = new Lesson('hourly rate', 4, 'seminar'); $lessons[] = new Lesson('fixed rate', null, 'lecture'); I wrote this: class Lesson { private $chargeType; private $duration; private $lessonType; public function __construct($chargeType, $duration, $lessonType) { $this->chargeType = $chargeType; $this->duration = $duration; $this->lessonType = $lessonType; } public function getChargeType() { return $this->getChargeType; } public function getLessonType() { return $this->getLessonType; } public function cost() { if($this->chargeType == 'fixed rate') { return "30"; } else { return $this->duration * 5; } } } $lessons[] = new Lesson('hourly rate', 4, 'seminar'); $lessons[] = new Lesson('fixed rate', null, 'lecture'); foreach($lessons as $lesson) { print "lesson charge {$lesson->cost()}."; print " Charge type: {$lesson->getChargeType()}."; print " lesson type {$lesson->getLessonType()}."; print "<br />"; } But according to the book, I am wrong (I am pretty sure I am, too). The author gave a large hierarchy of classes as the solution instead. In a previous chapter, the author stated the following 'four signposts' as the time when I should consider changing my class structure: Code Duplication The Class Who Knew Too Much About His Context The Jack of All Trades - Classes that try to do many things Conditional Statements The only problem I can see is Conditional Statements, and that too in a vague manner - so why refactor this? What problems do you think might arise in the future that I have not foreseen?

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Using machine learning to aim mirrors in a solar array?

- by Buttons840

I've been thinking about solar collectors where several independent mirrors to focus the light on a solar collector, similar to the following design from Energy Innovations. Because there will be flaws in the assembly of this solar array, I am proceeding with the following assumptions (or lack thereof): The software knows the "position" of each mirror, but doesn't know how this position relates to the real world or to other mirrors. This will account for poor mirror calibration or other environmental factors which may effect one mirror but not the others. If a mirror moves 10 units in one direction, and then 10 units in the opposite direction, it will end up where it originally started. I would like to use machine learning to position the mirrors correctly and focus the light on the collector. I expect I would approach this as an optimization problem, optimizing the mirror positions to maximize the heat inside the collector and the power output. The problem is finding a small target in a noisy high-dimensional space (considering each mirror has 2 axis of rotation). Some of the problems I anticipate are: cloudy days, even if you stumble upon the perfect mirror alignment, it might be cloudy at the time noisy sensor data the sun is a moving target, it moves along a path, and follows a different path every day - although you could calculate the exact position of the sun at any time, you wouldn't know how that position relates to your mirrors My question isn't about the solar array, but possible machine learning techniques that would help in this "small target in a noisy high dimensional-space" problem. I mentioned the solar array because it was the catalyst for this question and a good example. What machine learning techniques can find such a small target in a noisy high-dimensional space? EDIT: A few additional thoughts: Yes, you can calculate the suns position in the real world, but you don't know how the mirrors position is related to the real world (unless you've learned it somehow). You might know the suns azimuth is 220 degrees, and the suns elevation is 60 degrees, and you might know a mirror is at position (-20, 42); now tell me, is that mirror correctly aligned with the sun? You don't know. Lets assume you have some very sophisticated heat measurements, and you know "with this heat level, there must be 2 mirrors correctly aligned". Now the question is, which two mirrors (out of 25 or more) are correctly aligned? One solution I considered was to approximate the correct "alignment function" using a neural network which would take the suns azimuth and elevation as input and output a large array with 2 values for each mirror which correspond to the 2 axis of each mirror. I'm not sure what the best training method is though.

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EPM 11.1.2.2.000 release - considerations

- by THE

(guest Article by Nancy) Please be aware with the upcoming release of EPM v11.1.2.2.000, it is highly recommended you first read the"ORACLE® ENTERPRISE PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM 11.1.2.2.000 Readme" prior to installing this release. We want to highlight the "Installation Information" section which includes the following late-breaking information: Business Rules Migration to Calculation Manager Oracle Hyperion Calculation Manager has replaced Oracle Hyperion Business Rules as the mechanism for designing and managing business rules, therefore, Business Rules is no longer released with EPM System Release 11.1.2.2. If you are applying 11.1.2.2 as a maintenance release, or upgrading to Release 11.1.2.2, and have been using Business Rules in an earlier release, you must migrate to Calculation Manager rules in Release 11.1.2.2. (See Oracle Enterprise Performance Management System Installation and Configuration Guide.) Planning User Interface Enhancements This release of Planning includes a large number of user interface enhancements, as described in Oracle Hyperion Planning New Features. To optimize performance with these new features, you must implement the following recommended configuration. Server: 64-bit, 16 GB physical RAM Client: Optimized for Internet Explorer 9 and Firefox 10 or higher Client-to-Server Connectivity: High-speed internet connection or VPN connection between client and server, client-to-server ping time < 150 milliseconds for best performance The new, improved Planning user interface requires efficient browsers to handle interactivity provided through Web 2.0 like functionality. In our testing, Internet Explorer 7, Internet Explorer 8, and Firefox 3.x are not sufficient to handle such interactivity, and the responsiveness in these versions of browsers is not as fast as the user interface in the previous releases of Planning. For this reason, we strongly recommend that you upgrade your browser to Internet Explorer 9 or Firefox 10 to get responsiveness similar to what you experienced in previous releases. In some instances, the response times in Internet Explorer 7, Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox 3.x could be acceptable. Hence, we suggest that you uptake the new user interface only after you conduct an end user response test and you are satisfied with the results of these tests for these versions of browsers. Please note that it is still possible to leverage the old user interface and features from Planning Release 11.1.2.1. (For more information, see “Using the Planning Release 11.1.2.1 User Interface and Features” in the Oracle Hyperion Planning Administrator's Guide.) IBM HTTP Server and IIS Default Ports Both IBM HTTP Server and IIS Web Server use 80 as their default port. If you are using WebSphere, you must change one of these defaults so that there is no port conflict. If you have further questions, please utilize the Planning or Essbase MOS Community.

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C++ Accelerated Massive Parallelism

- by Daniel Moth

At AMD's Fusion conference Herb Sutter announced in his keynote session a technology that our team has been working on that we call C++ Accelerated Massive Parallelism (C++ AMP) and during the keynote I showed a brief demo of an app built with our technology. After the keynote, I go deeper into the technology in my breakout session. If you read both those abstracts, you'll get some information about what C++ AMP is, without being too explicit since we published the abstracts before the technology was announced. You can find the official online announcement at Soma's blog post. Here, I just wanted to capture the key points about C++ AMP that can serve as an introduction and an FAQ. So, in no particular order… C++ AMP lowers the barrier to entry for heterogeneous hardware programmability and brings performance to the mainstream, without sacrificing developer productivity or solution portability. is designed not only to help you address today's massively parallel hardware (i.e. GPUs and APUs), but it also future proofs your code investments with a forward looking design. is part of Visual C++. You don't need to use a different compiler or learn different syntax. is modern C++. Not C or some other derivative. is integrated and supported fully in Visual Studio vNext. Editing, building, debugging, profiling and all the other goodness of Visual Studio work well with C++ AMP. provides an STL-like library as part of the existing concurrency namespace and delivered in the new amp.h header file. makes it extremely easy to work with large multi-dimensional data on heterogeneous hardware; in a manner that exposes parallelization. introduces only one core C++ language extension. builds on DirectX (and DirectCompute in particular) which offers a great hardware abstraction layer that is ubiquitous and reliable. The architecture is such, that this point can be thought of as an implementation detail that does not surface to the API layer. Stay tuned on my blog for more over the coming months where I will switch from just talking about C++ AMP to showing you how to use the API with code examples… Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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More on PHP and Oracle 11gR2 Improvements to Client Result Caching

- by christopher.jones

Oracle 11.2 brought several improvements to Client Result Caching. CRC is way for the results of queries to be cached in the database client process for reuse. In an Oracle OpenWorld presentation "Best Practices for Developing Performant Application" my colleague Luxi Chidambaran had a (non-PHP generated) graph for the Niles benchmark that shows a DB CPU reduction up to 600% and response times up to 22% faster when using CRC. Sometimes CRC is called the "Consistent Client Cache" because Oracle automatically invalidates the cache if table data is changed. This makes it easy to use without needing application logic rewrites. There are a few simple database settings to turn on and tune CRC, so management is also easy. PHP OCI8 as a "client" of the database can use CRC. The cache is per-process, so plan carefully before caching large data sets. Tables that are candidates for caching are look-up tables where the network transfer cost dominates. CRC is really easy in 11.2 - I'll get to that in a moment. It was also pretty easy in Oracle 11.1 but it needed some tiny application changes. In PHP it was used like: $s = oci_parse($c, "select /*+ result_cache */ * from employees"); oci_execute($s, OCI_NO_AUTO_COMMIT); // Use OCI_DEFAULT in OCI8 <= 1.3 oci_fetch_all($s, $res); I blogged about this in the past. The query had to include a specific hint that you wanted the results cached, and you needed to turn off auto committing during execution either with the OCI_DEFAULT flag or its new, better-named alias OCI_NO_AUTO_COMMIT. The no-commit flag rule didn't seem reasonable to me because most people wouldn't be specific about the commit state for a query. Now in Oracle 11.2, DBAs can now nominate tables for caching, either with CREATE TABLE or ALTER TABLE. That means you don't need the query hint anymore. As well, the no-commit flag requirement has been lifted. Your code can now look like: $s = oci_parse($c, "select * from employees"); oci_execute($s); oci_fetch_all($s, $res); Since your code probably already looks like this, your DBA can find the top queries in the database and simply tune the system by turning on CRC in the database and issuing an ALTER TABLE statement for candidate tables. Voila. Another CRC improvement in Oracle 11.2 is that it works with DRCP connection pooling. There is some fine print about what is and isn't cached, check the Oracle manuals for details. If you're using 11.1 or non-DRCP "dedicated servers" then make sure you use oci_pconnect() persistent connections. Also in PHP don't bind strings in the query, although binding as SQLT_INT is OK.

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Partner Blog Series: PwC Perspectives - The Gotchas, The Do's and Don'ts for IDM Implementations

- by Tanu Sood

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mso-tstyle-border-bottom-themecolor:accent6; font-family:"Arial Narrow","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Georgia; mso-ascii-theme-font:major-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:major-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Georgia; mso-hansi-theme-font:major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:major-bidi;} table.MsoTableMediumList1Accent6LastRow {mso-style-name:"Medium List 1 - Accent 6"; mso-table-condition:last-row; mso-style-priority:65; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-tstyle-border-top:1.0pt solid #E0301E; mso-tstyle-border-top-themecolor:accent6; mso-tstyle-border-bottom:1.0pt solid #E0301E; mso-tstyle-border-bottom-themecolor:accent6; color:#968C6D; mso-themecolor:text2; mso-ansi-font-weight:bold; mso-bidi-font-weight:bold;} table.MsoTableMediumList1Accent6FirstCol {mso-style-name:"Medium List 1 - Accent 6"; mso-table-condition:first-column; mso-style-priority:65; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-ansi-font-weight:bold; mso-bidi-font-weight:bold;} table.MsoTableMediumList1Accent6LastCol {mso-style-name:"Medium List 1 - Accent 6"; mso-table-condition:last-column; mso-style-priority:65; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-tstyle-border-top:1.0pt solid #E0301E; mso-tstyle-border-top-themecolor:accent6; mso-tstyle-border-bottom:1.0pt solid #E0301E; mso-tstyle-border-bottom-themecolor:accent6; mso-ansi-font-weight:bold; mso-bidi-font-weight:bold;} table.MsoTableMediumList1Accent6OddColumn {mso-style-name:"Medium List 1 - Accent 6"; mso-table-condition:odd-column; mso-style-priority:65; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-tstyle-shading:#F7CBC7; mso-tstyle-shading-themecolor:accent6; mso-tstyle-shading-themetint:63;} table.MsoTableMediumList1Accent6OddRow {mso-style-name:"Medium List 1 - Accent 6"; mso-table-condition:odd-row; mso-style-priority:65; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-tstyle-shading:#F7CBC7; mso-tstyle-shading-themecolor:accent6; mso-tstyle-shading-themetint:63;} It is generally accepted among business communities that technology by itself is not a silver bullet to all problems, but when it is combined with leading practices, strategy, careful planning and execution, it can create a recipe for success. This post attempts to highlight some of the best practices along with dos & don’ts that our practice has accumulated over the years in the identity & access management space in general, and also in the context of R2, in particular. Best Practices The following section illustrates the leading practices in “How” to plan, implement and sustain a successful OIM deployment, based on our collective experience. Planning is critical, but often overlooked A common approach to planning an IAM program that we identify with our clients is the three step process involving a current state assessment, a future state roadmap and an executable strategy to get there. It is extremely beneficial for clients to assess their current IAM state, perform gap analysis, document the recommended controls to address the gaps, align future state roadmap to business initiatives and get buy in from all stakeholders involved to improve the chances of success. When designing an enterprise-wide solution, the scalability of the technology must accommodate the future growth of the enterprise and the projected identity transactions over several years. Aligning the implementation schedule of OIM to related information technology projects increases the chances of success. As a baseline, it is recommended to match hardware specifications to the sizing guide for R2 published by Oracle. Adherence to this will help ensure that the hardware used to support OIM will not become a bottleneck as the adoption of new services increases. If your Organization has numerous connected applications that rely on reconciliation to synchronize the access data into OIM, consider hosting dedicated instances to handle reconciliation. Finally, ensure the use of clustered environment for development and have at least three total environments to help facilitate a controlled migration to production. If your Organization is planning to implement role based access control, we recommend performing a role mining exercise and consolidate your enterprise roles to keep them manageable. In addition, many Organizations have multiple approval flows to control access to critical roles, applications and entitlements. If your Organization falls into this category, we highly recommend that you limit the number of approval workflows to a small set. Most Organizations have operations managed across data centers with backend database synchronization, if your Organization falls into this category, ensure that the overall latency between the datacenters when replicating the databases is less than ten milliseconds to ensure that there are no front office performance impacts. Ingredients for a successful implementation During the development phase of your project, there are a number of guidelines that can be followed to help increase the chances for success. Most implementations cannot be completed without the use of customizations. If your implementation requires this, it’s a good practice to perform code reviews to help ensure quality and reduce code bottlenecks related to performance. We have observed at our clients that the development process works best when team members adhere to coding leading practices. Plan for time to correct coding defects and ensure developers are empowered to report their own bugs for maximum transparency. Many organizations struggle with defining a consistent approach to managing logs. This is particularly important due to the amount of information that can be logged by OIM. We recommend Oracle Diagnostics Logging (ODL) as an alternative to be used for logging. ODL allows log files to be formatted in XML for easy parsing and does not require a server restart when the log levels are changed during troubleshooting. Testing is a vital part of any large project, and an OIM R2 implementation is no exception. We suggest that at least one lower environment should use production-like data and connectors. Configurations should match as closely as possible. For example, use secure channels between OIM and target platforms in pre-production environments to test the configurations, the migration processes of certificates, and the additional overhead that encryption could impose. Finally, we ask our clients to perform database backups regularly and before any major change event, such as a patch or migration between environments. In the lowest environments, we recommend to have at least a weekly backup in order to prevent significant loss of time and effort. Similarly, if your organization is using virtual machines for one or more of the environments, it is recommended to take frequent snapshots so that rollbacks can occur in the event of improper configuration. Operate & sustain the solution to derive maximum benefits When migrating OIM R2 to production, it is important to perform certain activities that will help achieve a smoother transition. At our clients, we have seen that splitting the OIM tables into their own tablespaces by categories (physical tables, indexes, etc.) can help manage database growth effectively. If we notice that a client hasn’t enabled the Oracle-recommended indexing in the applicable database, we strongly suggest doing so to improve performance. Additionally, we work with our clients to make sure that the audit level is set to fit the organization’s auditing needs and sometimes even allocate UPA tables and indexes into their own table-space for better maintenance. Finally, many of our clients have set up schedules for reconciliation tables to be archived at regular intervals in order to keep the size of the database(s) reasonable and result in optimal database performance. For our clients that anticipate availability issues with target applications, we strongly encourage the use of the offline provisioning capabilities of OIM R2. This reduces the provisioning process for a given target application dependency on target availability and help avoid broken workflows. To account for this and other abnormalities, we also advocate that OIM’s monitoring controls be configured to alert administrators on any abnormal situations. Within OIM R2, we have begun advising our clients to utilize the ‘profile’ feature to encapsulate multiple commonly requested accounts, roles, and/or entitlements into a single item. By setting up a number of profiles that can be searched for and used, users will spend less time performing the same exact steps for common tasks. We advise our clients to follow the Oracle recommended guides for database and application server tuning which provides a good baseline configuration. It offers guidance on database connection pools, connection timeouts, user interface threads and proper handling of adapters/plug-ins. All of these can be important configurations that will allow faster provisioning and web page response times. Many of our clients have begun to recognize the value of data mining and a remediation process during the initial phases of an implementation (to help ensure high quality data gets loaded) and beyond (to support ongoing maintenance and business-as-usual processes). A successful program always begins with identifying the data elements and assigning a classification level based on criticality, risk, and availability. It should finish by following through with a remediation process. Dos & Don’ts Here are the most common dos and don'ts that we socialize with our clients, derived from our experience implementing the solution. Dos Don’ts Scope the project into phases with realistic goals. Look for quick wins to show success and value to the stake holders. Avoid “boiling the ocean” and trying to integrate all enterprise applications in the first phase. Establish an enterprise ID (universal unique ID across the enterprise) earlier in the program. Avoid major UI customizations that require code changes. Have a plan in place to patch during the project, which helps alleviate any major issues or roadblocks (product and database). Avoid publishing all the target entitlements if you don't anticipate their usage during access request. Assess your current state and prepare a roadmap to address your operations, tactical and strategic goals, align it with your business priorities. Avoid integrating non-production environments with your production target systems. Defer complex integrations to the later phases and take advantage of lessons learned from previous phases Avoid creating multiple accounts for the same user on the same system, if there is an opportunity to do so. Have an identity and access data quality initiative built into your plan to identify and remediate data related issues early on. Avoid creating complex approval workflows that would negative impact productivity and SLAs. Identify the owner of the identity systems with fair IdM knowledge and empower them with authority to make product related decisions. This will help ensure overcome any design hurdles. Avoid creating complex designs that are not sustainable long term and would need major overhaul during upgrades. Shadow your internal or external consulting resources during the implementation to build the necessary product skills needed to operate and sustain the solution. Avoid treating IAM as a point solution and have appropriate level of communication and training plan for the IT and business users alike. Conclusion In our experience, Identity programs will struggle with scope, proper resourcing, and more. We suggest that companies consider the suggestions discussed in this post and leverage them to help enable their identity and access program. This concludes PwC blog series on R2 for the month and we sincerely hope that the information we have shared thus far has been beneficial. For more information or if you have questions, you can reach out to Rex Thexton, Senior Managing Director, PwC and or Dharma Padala, Director, PwC. We look forward to hearing from you. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:12.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:12.0pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Arial; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Arial; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Meet the Writers: Dharma Padala is a Director in the Advisory Security practice within PwC. He has been implementing medium to large scale Identity Management solutions across multiple industries including utility, health care, entertainment, retail and financial sectors. Dharma has 14 years of experience in delivering IT solutions out of which he has been implementing Identity Management solutions for the past 8 years. Praveen Krishna is a Manager in the Advisory Security practice within PwC. Over the last decade Praveen has helped clients plan, architect and implement Oracle identity solutions across diverse industries. His experience includes delivering security across diverse topics like network, infrastructure, application and data where he brings a holistic point of view to problem solving. Scott MacDonald is a Director in the Advisory Security practice within PwC. He has consulted for several clients across multiple industries including financial services, health care, automotive and retail. Scott has 10 years of experience in delivering Identity Management solutions. John Misczak is a member of the Advisory Security practice within PwC. He has experience implementing multiple Identity and Access Management solutions, specializing in Oracle Identity Manager and Business Process Engineering Language (BPEL).

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The Numbers of Customer Experience

- by Christie Flanagan

This week, we’ll be continuing our conversations about Customer Experience (CX) on the Oracle WebCenter blog. While we all know that customer experience is critically important for acquiring new customers and engendering long term brand loyalty, I thought we could kick this week off by taking a look at the numbers of customer experience. I’m sure you’ll agree that nothing quite puts things into perspective like numbers and figures. A whopping 86% of consumers say that they are willing to pay more for a better customer experience. But many companies are failing to step up to the challenge. And when companies fail deliver on customer experience expectations, they leave money on the table. A huge percentage of customers, 89%, begin doing business with a competitor following a poor customer experience. Breaking up isn’t hard to do and today’s empowered customers have no qualms about taking their business elsewhere when their expectations for customer experience are not met. Over a quarter of consumers, 26%, posted a negative comment on a social networking site like Facebook or Twitter following a poor customer experience. Today, individual customer service failures have the ability to easily snowball. An unsatisfied customer has the ability to easily share their rancor with their entire social network and chip away at your brand’s reputation. A large number of consumers, 79%, who shared complaints about poor customer experience online had their complaints ignored. Companies ignore customer complaints at their own peril. And unsatisfied customers, when handled effectively, have the potential to become advocates for your brand. Of the 21% of consumers who did get responses to complaints, more than half had positive reactions to the same company about which they were previously complaining. Half of consumers will give a brand only a week to respond to a question before they stop doing business with them. The clock is ticking when customers have questions about your brand and a week is an eternity in the realm of customer experience. The source for these stats is the 2011 Customer Experience Impact (CEI) Report, which explores the relationship between consumers and brands. The report is based on a survey commissioned by RightNow (acquired by Oracle in 2012) and conducted by Harris Interactive. If you’re interested in seeing more facts and figures about customer experience, download the full report.

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CMS vs Admin Panel?

- by Bob

Okay, so this probably seems like an unusual, more grammar related question, but I was unsure of what to call it. If you use a software such as vBulletin or MyBB or even Blogger and you're the administrator (or other, lesser position such as moderator) of the forum, or publisher/author of the blog, you generally have access to something of an "admin panel". For example, vBulletin's admin panel looks like this and Blogger's admin panel looks something like this. While they both look different and do different things, the goal is fundamentally the same: to provide the user with a method for adding, modifying, or deleting content... to let them control and administrate their forum or blog. Also, they're both made specifically by the company for use in a specific product. Now, there's also options like Drupal. It seems to offer quite a bit more and be quite a bit more generalized. How does something like this work? If you were freelancing, would you deploy a website with Drupal, or would it be something the client might already have installed on their own server? I've never really used Drupal, only heard about it, so please let me know. Also, there seems to be other options like cPanel, a sort of global CMS that allows you to administrate over your entire website. How do those work in comparison to Drupal, or the administrative panels with vBulletin? They seem to serve related, but different purposes. Basically, what is the norm? If I'm developing a web application for a group that needs to be able to edit their website without the need to go into the code or the database (or rather, wants to act in a graphical, easy-to-use content-management/admin panel), would it also be necessary to write my own miniature admin panel? Or would I be able to send them off knowing that they have cPanel? Or could something like Drupal fill this void? Again, I'm a little new to web development, and I'm working on planning out my first, real, large website. So I need a little advice on the standards and expectations for web development - security and coding practices aside, what should I be looking for as far as usability and administration for the client (who will be running the site once I'm done creating the website)? Any extra tips would also be appreciated! Oh, and just a little bit: I'm writing the website using Ruby on the Sinatra framework (both Ruby and Sinatra are things I'm fairly comfortable with) and I'm not being paid to make the website (and I will also be a user, and one of the three administrators of the website) - it's being built for a club I'm in.

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JavaOne: Parleys.com, Spring Vs. Java EE and HTML5 tooling

- by delabassee

Parleys.com, a 2012 Duke's Choice Award winner, is an E-Learning platform that host content from different sources (conferences, JUGs meetings, etc.). There is a lot of technical content available for online but also offline consumption, including many sessions on Java EE. Parleys has just released, for free, all the Devoxx 2011 sessions (video and slides sync'ed!). From a technical point of view, Parleys.com is interesting as they have switched from Spring to Java EE 6 to avoid being locked in a proprietary framework. During the GlassFish Community BoF, Stephan Janssen (Parleys.com and Devoxx founder) also presented how GlassFish is used to support 2000 concurrent Parleys users over a cluster of 2 GlassFish instances. Talking about Java EE and/or Spring, Harshad Oak has posted an update on the 'Spring Vs. Java EE' panel discussion that took place on Tuesday. As Arun said standards such as Java EE does not necessarily refrain innovation: "JBoss Forge & Arquillian from RedHat are great examples of innovation in the JavaEE community. Standardization is important but innovation does continue even within that framework." Simplicity, productivity along with HTML5 are the driving themes of Java EE 7. In terms of simplicity and productivity, the developer experience can also be improved by the tooling. Every NetBeans release comes with a large set of improvements, the just released NetBeans 7.3 beta is no exception. The goal of ‘NB 7.3’s Project Easel’ is to improve HTML5 development, something that will be handy for Java EE 7 developers. Project Easel can, for example, communicate directly to Chrome's WebKit engine, this feature was shown during Sunday's Technical Keynote at the end of the Java EE section. In this beta release, Chrome and the embedded JavaFX browser are the only supported browsers but the NetBeans team plan to add support, over time, for other WebKit based browsers. NetBans 7.3 beta NetBeans 7.3 screenscasts Today (i.e. Wednesday 3rd) is also the final exhibition day, so make sure to visit the Java EE and the GlassFish pods on the Java DEMOgrounds (Hilton Grand Ballroom, 9:30 am - 5:00 pm). Finally, here are some Java EE and GlassFish related activities worth attending today if you are at JavaOne : Wednesday October 3rd Time Title Location 8:30-9:30am What's New in Servlet 3.1: An Overview Parc 55 Mission 8:30-9:30am Bean Validation 1.1: What's New Under the Hood Parc 55Cyril Magnin II/III 10:00-11:00am JSR 353: Java API for JSON Processing Parc 55 Mission 10:00-12:00pm Tutorial : Integrating Your Service into the GlassFish PaaS Platform Parc 55 Devisidero 11:30-12:30pm What's New in JSF: A Complete Tour of JSF 2.2 Parc 55Cyril Magnin I 11:30-12:30pm Best of Both Worlds: Java Persistence with NoSQL and SQL Parc 55 Mission 1:00-2:00pm Sharding Middleware to Achieve Elasticity and High Availability in the Cloud Parc 55Market Street 1:00-2:00pm Pimp My RESTful Java Applications Parc 55Cyril Magnin I 3:00-4:00pm Migrating Spring to Java EE Parc 55Cyril Magnin II/III 4:30-5:30pm JavaEE.Next(): Java EE 7, 8, and Beyond Parc 55Cyril Magnin II/III 4:30-5:30pm HTML5 WebSocket and Java Parc 55Cyril Magnin I 4:30-5:30pm Easy Middleware for Your Embedded Device Nikko Ballroom II/III

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How to access files on a drive from an older system, mounted in a new system?

- by David Thomas

I've recently built a new system, after a rather large physical injury was sustained by my previous system (a precarious balance, and gravity, were not a happy mix). Surprisingly the /home drive of that system appears to have more-or-less survived the trauma. However... I decided to use a fresh drive for / (and swap) partition(s), and another fresh drive for the new /home. Now that's working, I decided to install the old /home drive (that I had assumed until now would be entirely dead and without capacity for use) into the new system to recover the files and data (so far as is possible). At this point I've run into a snag: I have no idea how to go about this (with Windows it was relatively easy, the new drive would be the latest character of the alphabet, and go from there). With 'disk utility' (System - Administration - Disk Utitlity) I've worked out which drive it is (/dev/sda) but clicking on 'mount' produces an error: 1: helper failed with: mount: according to mtab, /dev/sdb1 is already mounted on / mount failed ...if it is mounted on / I can't see it. I'm also moderately confused by the disk (device /dev/sda) being referred to as /dev/sdb1. Any and all insights would be incredibly welcome (I've already voted for: Idea #9063: New internal hard drives default automount at Brainstorm). Edited in response to Roland's request for a screenshot of disk utility: Details (so far as I know them): 40GB disk is / and swap, 1.0 TB Samsung is /home 1.0 TB Hitachi is from the old system (and was the old /home drive). Output from sudo fdisk -l pasted below: Disk /dev/sda: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x000bef00 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 1 121601 976760001 83 Linux Disk /dev/sdb: 40.0 GB, 40018599936 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4865 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x00037652 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdb1 * 1 4742 38084608 83 Linux /dev/sdb2 4742 4866 993281 5 Extended /dev/sdb5 4742 4866 993280 82 Linux swap / Solaris Disk /dev/sdc: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x000e8d46 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdc1 1 121602 976760832 83 Linux

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Recovering an Ubuntu installation - Ubuntu eats itself after 'sudo apt-get install -f'

- by Tony Martin

Updater (I assume) put a no entry style alert icon on the panel which informed me that certain package dependencies were not up to snuff. Upgrades were thereafter only partial. The dialogue advised that I sudo apt-get install -f. I did this hoping that app-get would fulfil dependencies and replace corrupted files and watched it systematically remove every component of linux, both the stuff I had installed and the core ubuntu packages. I could only assume at this stage that this was in preparation for a fresh install but, of course, I know better now - if you find yourself with apt-get warning you that you are about to remove several hundred packages and asking you to type an involved confirmation string seek advice before proceeding. I digress. This was a 64 bit install of 12.04. All that is left is grub pointing to a couple of windows recovery partitions on the hard drive. Thankfully the Ext4 partition is reachable from a stick boot. EDIT: I've logged onto the machine with a 64 bit stick and can see the file structure left behind by apt-get after {ahem} fixing. My first instinct was to run install from the stick but it seemed to want to do another install rather than a repair. My question then: is there a way to recover the current installation so that if I reinstall the packages I had they will pick up the original settings? I'm particularly worried about losing email from evolution - the rest I could probably lash back together. As for the use of PPA I'm not sure what you're driving at. I generally use Ubuntu Software Centre to install software, though I have used terminal scripts to add new repositories and software successfully following guidance on various websites. The most recent change I made was a downgrade of Wine in an attempt to install and run excel2007 (a necessity, I think, as I have VBA work to do). The installer had stalled and had to be killed. I wonder if that corrupted whatever database holds a model of the package installation structure. I would also be interested to know how this disaster came about. I see people in the know recommending the sudo apt-get install -f as a fairly innocuous cure in similar circumstances. Thanks for your attention, Tony Martin p.s. Do please forgive the rant aspects of the original post. It's hard to write rationally with a large hole in the pit of your stomach.

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VS2010 Launch Presentations

Last week I was in Vegas to present at the DevConnections / VS2010 Launch event. The show was well-attended and everybody I spoke to agreed it was educational and enjoyable. My three talks were all on Wednesday, 14 April 2010, including one at 8am for which I was impressed to see a large turnout in attendance. Pragmatic ASP.NET Tips, Tricks, and Tools My first session was on tips, tricks, and tools for ASP.NET developers. This is a talk Ive given in past years, but which I refine every time. I usually like to have a full session to devote to tools, and a separate talk just for Tips and Tricks, but for this show I was only given the one 75-minute slot, so I had to cut some materials to make things fit. The talk went well, all the demos work, and the attendees seemed to enjoy it, and I like giving it, so hopefully I can continue to present on this topic in future DevConnections shows. Download the ASP.NET Tips, Tricks, and Tools slides and demos. Whats New in ASP.NET MVC 2 My second talk of the day followed immediately after the Tips and Tricks talk, and was a brand new talk for me. I have to throw out a thank-you to Phil for letting me see his MIX slide deck before he gave his talk, as that was a big help. The official whats new document online is also worth checking out if youre interested in this subject. Download the Whats New in ASP.NET MVC 2 slides and demos. SOLIDify Your ASP.NET MVC 2 Application Just because youre using a ASP.NET MVC doesnt mean your code cant still end up being a big ball of mud. This session describes a number of principles of software design that can help ensure applications remain loosely-coupled and malleable even as they age and increase in features and complexity. This was my last talk of the day and did have one minor demo failure involving a database constraint. Ive given this talk many times before, and in this case I had to fit it into a 60-minute timeslot, so Im not sure I had quite enough time to drive home all of the concepts to everyone in the audience. That said, I did hear a number of positive comments on how the talk went, so thats encouraging. Download the SOLIDify Your ASP.NET MVC 2 Application slides and demos. In my sessions, I promised to have these posted by the end of the weekend theyre going up at 10pm Sunday night (my time) 2 hours to spare! Enjoy! Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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How can a solo programmer become a good team player?

- by Nick

I've been programming (obsessively) since I was 12. I am fairly knowledgeable across the spectrum of languages out there, from assembly, to C++, to Javascript, to Haskell, Lisp, and Qi. But all of my projects have been by myself. I got my degree in chemical engineering, not CS or computer engineering, but for the first time this fall I'll be working on a large programming project with other people, and I have no clue how to prepare. I've been using Windows all of my life, but this project is going to be very unix-y, so I purchased a Mac recently in the hopes of familiarizing myself with the environment. I was fortunate to participate in a hackathon with some friends this past year -- both CS majors -- and excitingly enough, we won. But I realized as I worked with them that their workflow was very different from mine. They used Git for version control. I had never used it at the time, but I've since learned all that I can about it. They also used a lot of frameworks and libraries. I had to learn what Rails was pretty much overnight for the hackathon (on the other hand, they didn't know what lexical scoping or closures were). All of our code worked well, but they didn't understand mine, and I didn't understand theirs. I hear references to things that real programmers do on a daily basis -- unit testing, code reviews, but I only have the vaguest sense of what these are. I normally don't have many bugs in my little projects, so I have never needed a bug tracking system or tests for them. And the last thing is that it takes me a long time to understand other people's code. Variable naming conventions (that vary with each new language) are difficult (__mzkwpSomRidicAbbrev), and I find the loose coupling difficult. That's not to say I don't loosely couple things -- I think I'm quite good at it for my own work, but when I download something like the Linux kernel or the Chromium source code to look at it, I spend hours trying to figure out how all of these oddly named directories and files connect. It's a programming sin to reinvent the wheel, but I often find it's just quicker to write up the functionality myself than to spend hours dissecting some library. Obviously, people who do this for a living don't have these problems, and I'll need to get to that point myself. Question: What are some steps that I can take to begin "integrating" with everyone else? Thanks!

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Ubuntu won't connect to wired network

- by djeikyb

I'm running 10.04, upgraded from 9.10, maybe, but probably not upgraded from 9.04. I have two wifi routers. Zeus is connected to the dsl modem. Hermes uses a wds bridge with Zeus to extend the network. My desktop (Daedalus) is ethernetted to Hermes. My laptop (Clyde) is wifi, switching to Hermes or Zeus as needed. Occasionally, as in whenever I transfer a large file from desktop to laptop, the wds bridge will die. Fixing it means restarting both routers, though it seems Hermes should boot first. This is ridiculous, and eventually I'll get around to asking you guys to help me stop it from happening. More importantly is that my desktop requires a reboot to get back on the network. WTF. ifconfig shows my nic has no ip. /etc/init.d/networking restart doesn't do anything, not even give me a lousy ip. dhcpcd eth1 grants me an ip address, but doesn't help with internet access. route -n shows what looks like my normal routing table, but pinging google.com informs me it's an unknown host. jake@daedalus:~$ route -n Kernel IP routing table Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface 10.1.1.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth1 169.254.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.0.0 U 0 0 0 eth1 0.0.0.0 10.1.1.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth1 It may be worth noting that I can ping both Zeus (10.1.1.1) and Hermes (10.1.1.4) and my laptop (10.1.1.55). Much obliged for any help. Rebooting is, well, trivial in this instance. But it's stupid. I switched to linux because I like the idea that if one part breaks, you fix it instead of reboot reboot reboot. I've left my poor desktop in disarray, confining myself to my little netbook. My desktop is broken, awaiting magical commands from you brilliant folk. (and yes, i know clyde the netbook should be named icarus. it was its original name. ironically the ssd burned out, and i felt it wasn't right when it came to reinstalling)

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Fraud and Anomaly Detection using Oracle Data Mining YouTube-like Video

- by chberger

I've created and recorded another YouTube-like presentation and "live" demos of Oracle Advanced Analytics Option, this time focusing on Fraud and Anomaly Detection using Oracle Data Mining. [Note: It is a large MP4 file that will open and play in place. The sound quality is weak so you may need to turn up the volume.] Data is your most valuable asset. It represents the entire history of your organization and its interactions with your customers. Predictive analytics leverages data to discover patterns, relationships and to help you even make informed predictions. Oracle Data Mining (ODM) automatically discovers relationships hidden in data. Predictive models and insights discovered with ODM address business problems such as: predicting customer behavior, detecting fraud, analyzing market baskets, profiling and loyalty. Oracle Data Mining, part of the Oracle Advanced Analytics (OAA) Option to the Oracle Database EE, embeds 12 high performance data mining algorithms in the SQL kernel of the Oracle Database. This eliminates data movement, delivers scalability and maintains security. But, how do you find these very important needles or possibly fraudulent transactions and huge haystacks of data? Oracle Data Mining’s 1 Class Support Vector Machine algorithm is specifically designed to identify rare or anomalous records. Oracle Data Mining's 1-Class SVM anomaly detection algorithm trains on what it believes to be considered “normal” records, build a descriptive and predictive model which can then be used to flags records that, on a multi-dimensional basis, appear to not fit in--or be different. Combined with clustering techniques to sort transactions into more homogeneous sub-populations for more focused anomaly detection analysis and Oracle Business Intelligence, Enterprise Applications and/or real-time environments to "deploy" fraud detection, Oracle Data Mining delivers a powerful advanced analytical platform for solving important problems. With OAA/ODM you can find suspicious expense report submissions, flag non-compliant tax submissions, fight fraud in healthcare claims and save huge amounts of money in fraudulent claims and abuse. This presentation and several brief demos will show Oracle Data Mining's fraud and anomaly detection capabilities.

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