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  • Bumblebee [ERROR]Cannot access secondary GPU - error: [XORG]

    - by Lunchbox
    Though this may seem like a duplicate question, none of the suggestions I've seen have worked for me, however nearly all posters get good results. I'll start with hardware: Metabox W350ST notebook Intel Core i7 4700 16GB RAM GTX 765M (with Optimus) 128GB SSD 1TB SSHD My initial error output when trying to optirun a game is: [ERROR]Cannot access secondary GPU - error: [XORG] (EE) NVIDIA(0): Failed to initialize the NVIDIA GPU at PCI:1:0:0. Please [133.973920] [ERROR]Aborting because fallback start is disabled. If anything else is needed to troubleshoot this just let me know. Adding bumblebee.conf: # Configuration file for Bumblebee. Values should **not** be put between quotes ## Server options. Any change made in this section will need a server restart # to take effect. [bumblebeed] # The secondary Xorg server DISPLAY number VirtualDisplay=:8 # Should the unused Xorg server be kept running? Set this to true if waiting # for X to be ready is too long and don't need power management at all. KeepUnusedXServer=false # The name of the Bumbleblee server group name (GID name) ServerGroup=bumblebee # Card power state at exit. Set to false if the card shoud be ON when Bumblebee # server exits. TurnCardOffAtExit=false # The default behavior of '-f' option on optirun. If set to "true", '-f' will # be ignored. NoEcoModeOverride=false # The Driver used by Bumblebee server. If this value is not set (or empty), # auto-detection is performed. The available drivers are nvidia and nouveau # (See also the driver-specific sections below) Driver=nvidia # Directory with a dummy config file to pass as a -configdir to secondary X XorgConfDir=/etc/bumblebee/xorg.conf.d ## Client options. Will take effect on the next optirun executed. [optirun] # Acceleration/ rendering bridge, possible values are auto, virtualgl and # primus. Bridge=auto # The method used for VirtualGL to transport frames between X servers. # Possible values are proxy, jpeg, rgb, xv and yuv. VGLTransport=proxy # List of paths which are searched for the primus libGL.so.1 when using # the primus bridge PrimusLibraryPath=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/primus:/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/primus # Should the program run under optirun even if Bumblebee server or nvidia card # is not available? AllowFallbackToIGC=false # Driver-specific settings are grouped under [driver-NAME]. The sections are # parsed if the Driver setting in [bumblebeed] is set to NAME (or if auto- # detection resolves to NAME). # PMMethod: method to use for saving power by disabling the nvidia card, valid # values are: auto - automatically detect which PM method to use # bbswitch - new in BB 3, recommended if available # switcheroo - vga_switcheroo method, use at your own risk # none - disable PM completely # https://github.com/Bumblebee-Project/Bumblebee/wiki/Comparison-of-PM-methods ## Section with nvidia driver specific options, only parsed if Driver=nvidia [driver-nvidia] # Module name to load, defaults to Driver if empty or unset KernelDriver=nvidia PMMethod=auto # colon-separated path to the nvidia libraries LibraryPath=/usr/lib/nvidia-current:/usr/lib32/nvidia-current # comma-separated path of the directory containing nvidia_drv.so and the # default Xorg modules path XorgModulePath=/usr/lib/nvidia-current/xorg,/usr/lib/xorg/modules XorgConfFile=/etc/bumblebee/xorg.conf.nvidia ## Section with nouveau driver specific options, only parsed if Driver=nouveau [driver-nouveau] KernelDriver=nouveau PMMethod=auto XorgConfFile=/etc/bumblebee/xorg.conf.nouveau DRIVER VERSION - Output of jockey-text -l: nvidia_304_updates - nvidia_304_updates (Proprietary, Enabled, Not in use)

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  • Web Developer - How to enhance my skillset?

    - by atif089
    First of all pardon my English. I am not a native English speaker I have been a Web Developer for the past 4 years. In these 4 years I have spent my time on the internet to learn things. My current skillset comprises of HTML CSS PHP MySQL jQuery (I would not say js and rather say jQuery because I am good at using jQuery and bad with plain javascript.) The above things seemed like an easier part of my life as I quickly learned them. But now I would really like to enhance my skillset and I am pretty confused which way to move ahead considering that I have to learn things using the web and references on my own. Design My first option is towards design. Shall I get started with design and start using Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, Flash, Flex. Designing along with my previous skills looks like a money maker to me. As both are co-related to each other when web design is considered. And its easier to learn the first 2 and I hope I can get tutorials for the last 2 as well. Marketing A lot of my existing clients asked me if I do SEO. So this looked as a good field to me as well. I cannot estimate the scope of SEO but I assume it has a long future. Since I am business minded as well and there are a lot of tutorials around, should I start with SEO, SEM, Social Media, PPC or whatever it consists of. Software Development The complex plight and hardest thing (perhaps) but the easiest way to find a decent job in my location. If I go for software development what platform should be that I should be ideally going after? Should it be C# for windows development, or ASP.NET (once again enhances my skill set), J2EE (there are a lot of jobs for J2EE developers here) or plain C and C++. Also I think it is difficult to learn software languages right from Hello World, using internet? I have no clue how I learned PHP but I am sort of a pro now, but these other languages seems like a disaster to me? I cant figure out the reason if its because PHP is easier or there was a lot of tutorials around for PHP. Anyways is it also possible to learn software development right from Hello World using the web? Database / Server (Linux) / Network Administration Seems like a job with a decent pay but less number of jobs and a bit harder to learn online. (not sure) What should be the right track I should move ahead. P.S - Age is not a constraint for me as I am between 20-21, and I come from an IT background. I know quite little basics about C (upto structures) C++ (upto objects, I was not able to understand templates) Core Java (some basics and OOP concept) RDBMS Visual Basic 6 (used to do this long back) UNIX (a bunch of commands like who, finger, chmod, ls and a bit of #bash) Or is there anything else that I left out? I need you guys to please give me a feedback and the reason why I should select that field.

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  • ARTS Reference Model for Retail

    - by Sanjeev Sharma
    Consider a hypothetical scenario where you have been tasked to set up retail operations for a electronic goods or daily consumables or a luxury brand etc. It is very likely you will be faced with the following questions: What are the essential business capabilities that you must have in place?  What are the essential business activities under-pinning each of the business capabilities, identified in Step 1? What are the set of steps that you need to perform to execute each of the business activities, identified in Step 2? Answers to the above will drive your investments in software and hardware to enable the core retail operations. More importantly, the choices you make in responding to the above questions will several implications in the short-run and in the long-run. In the short-term, you will incur the time and cost of defining your technology requirements, procuring the software/hardware components and getting them up and running. In the long-term, as you grow in operations organically or through M&A, partnerships and franchiser business models  you will invariably need to make more technology investments to manage the greater complexity (scale and scope) of business operations.  "As new software applications, such as time & attendance, labor scheduling, and POS transactions, just to mention a few, are introduced into the store environment, it takes a disproportionate amount of time and effort to integrate them with existing store applications. These integration projects can add up to 50 percent to the time needed to implement a new software application and contribute significantly to the cost of the overall project, particularly if a systems integrator is called in. This has been the reality that all retailers have had to live with over the last two decades. The effect of the environment has not only been to increase costs, but also to limit retailers' ability to implement change and the speed with which they can do so." (excerpt taken from here) Now, one would think a lot of retailers would have already gone through the pain of finding answers to these questions, so why re-invent the wheel? Precisely so, a major effort began almost 17 years ago in the retail industry to make it less expensive and less difficult to deploy new technology in stores and at the retail enterprise level. This effort is called the Association for Retail Technology Standards (ARTS). Without standards such as those defined by ARTS, you would very likely end up experiencing the following: Increased Time and Cost due to resource wastage arising from re-inventing the wheel i.e. re-creating vanilla processes from scratch, and incurring, otherwise avoidable, mistakes and errors by ignoring experience of others Sub-optimal Process Efficiency due to narrow, isolated view of processes thereby ignoring process inter-dependencies i.e. optimizing parts but not the whole, and resulting in lack of transparency and inter-departmental finger-pointing Embracing ARTS standards as a blue-print for establishing or managing or streamlining your retail operations can benefit you in the following ways: Improved Time-to-Market from parity with industry best-practice processes e.g. ARTS, thus avoiding “reinventing the wheel” for common retail processes and focusing more on customizing processes for differentiations, and lowering integration complexity and risk with a standardized vocabulary for exchange between internal and external i.e. partner systems Lower Operating Costs by embracing the ARTS enterprise-wide process reference model for developing and streamlining retail operations holistically instead of a narrow, silo-ed view, and  procuring IT systems in compliance with ARTS thus avoiding IT budget marginalization While parity with industry standards such as ARTS business process model by itself does not create a differentiation, it does however provide a higher starting point for bridging the strategy-execution gap in setting up and improving retail operations.

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  • E-Business Suite : Role of CHUNK_SIZE in Oracle Payroll

    - by Giri Mandalika
    Different batch processes in Oracle Payroll flow have the ability to spawn multiple child processes (or threads) to complete the work in hand. The number of child processes to fork is controlled by the THREADS parameter in APPS.PAY_ACTION_PARAMETERS view. THREADS parameter The default value for THREADS parameter is 1, which is fine for a single-processor system but not optimal for the modern multi-core multi-processor systems. Setting the THREADS parameter to a value equal to or less than the total number of [virtual] processors available on the system may improve the performance of payroll processing. However on the down side, since multiple child processes operate against the same set of payroll tables in HR schema, database may experience undesired consequences such as buffer busy waits and index contention, which results in giving up some of the gains achieved by using multiple child processes/threads to process the work. Couple of other action parameters, CHUNK_SIZE and CHUNK_SHUFFLE, help alleviate the database contention. eg., Set a value for THREADS parameter as shown below. CONNECT APPS/APPS_PASSWORD UPDATE PAY_ACTION_PARAMETERS SET PARAMETER_VALUE = DESIRED_VALUE WHERE PARAMETER_NAME = 'THREADS'; COMMIT; (I am not aware of any maximum value for THREADS parameter) CHUNK_SIZE parameter The size of each commit unit for the batch process is controlled by the CHUNK_SIZE action parameter. In other words, chunking is the act of splitting the assignment actions into commit groups of desired size represented by the CHUNK_SIZE parameter. The default value is 20, and each thread processes one chunk at a time -- which means each child process inserts or processes 20 assignment actions at any time. When multiple threads are configured, each thread picks up a chunk to process, completes the assignment actions and then picks up another chunk. This is repeated until all the chunks are exhausted. It is possible to use different chunk sizes in different batch processes. During the initial phase of processing, CHUNK_SIZE number of assignment actions are inserted into relevant table(s). When multiple child processes are inserting data at the same time into the same set of tables, as explained earlier, database may experience contention. The default value of 20 is mostly optimal in such a case. Experiment with different values for the initial phase by +/-10 for CHUNK_SIZE parameter and observe the performance impact. A larger value may make sense during the main processing phase. Again experimentation is the key in finding the suitable value for your environment. Start with a large value such as 2000 for the chunk size, then increment or decrement the size by 500 at a time until an optimal value is found. eg., Set a value for CHUNK_SIZE parameter as shown below. CONNECT APPS/APPS_PASSWORD UPDATE PAY_ACTION_PARAMETERS SET PARAMETER_VALUE = DESIRED_VALUE WHERE PARAMETER_NAME = 'CHUNK_SIZE'; COMMIT; CHUNK_SIZE action parameter accepts a value that is as low as 1 or as high as 16000. CHUNK SHUFFLE parameter By default, chunks of assignment actions are processed sequentially by all threads - which may not be a good thing especially given that all child processes/threads performing similar actions against the same set of tables almost at the same time. By saying not a good thing, I mean to say that the default behavior leads to contention in the database (in data blocks, for example). It is possible to relieve some of that database contention by randomizing the processing order of chunks of assignment actions. This behavior is controlled by the CHUNK SHUFFLE action parameter. Chunk processing is not randomized unless explicitly configured. eg., Set chunk shuffling as shown below. CONNECT APPS/APPS_PASSWORD UPDATE PAY_ACTION_PARAMETERS SET PARAMETER_VALUE = 'Y' WHERE PARAMETER_NAME = 'CHUNK SHUFFLE'; COMMIT; Finally I recommend checking the following document out for additional details and additional pay action tunable parameters that may speed up the processing of Oracle Payroll.     My Oracle Support Doc ID: 226987.1 Oracle 11i & R12 Human Resources (HRMS) & Benefits (BEN) Tuning & System Health Checks Also experiment with different combinations of parameters and values until the right set of action parameters and values are found for your deployment.

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  • Open Source MariaDB, the MySQL fork to replace MySQL?

    - by Jenson
    Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Frankly speaking, I’ve been out of touch with the Open source world for quite some time. Until recently, after I’ve joined the new government agency, I managed to do some research while given time to learn new technologies and languages. I started reading tech blogs and tech news again (since I’m not as busy as before where I need to rush for project deadlines in and out), and I spotted this MariaDB that really attracts my attention, this is the link to ZDNet article - http://www.zdnet.com/open-source-mariadb-a-mysql-fork-challenges-oracle-7000008311/ Open-Source MariaDB, a MySQL fork, challenges Oracle Yes, you’re right, MariaDB is a MySQL fork, and as mentioned in the article, MariaDB is run by the founder of MySQL, Michael ‘Monty’ Widenius, and he claims MariaDB is faster, more secure and has more features than MySQL. I’m actually very excited to know that the code is maintained by the same dedicated core team of MySQL in the past 18 years. They even bother to form a foundation, the MariaDB Foundation, to promote MariaDB. Already, there’s a lot of open source software officially supporting MariaDB, such as  Drupal, Jelastic – Java in the cloud, Kajona, MediaWiki, phpMyAdmin, Plone, SaltOs, WordPress, and Zend Framework. But the hosting service provider might not be readily supporting MariaDB in their hosting solution. Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;} Time will tell whether MariaDB would be the real replacement for MySQL, I’m sorry I don’t think I should use alternative here ;-) For more information, please visit MariaDB official site. /* 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:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;}

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  • In hindsight, is basing XAML on XML a mistake or a good approach?

    - by romkyns
    XAML is essentially a subset of XML. One of the main benefits of basing XAML on XML is said to be that it can be parsed with existing tools. And it can, to a large degree, although the (syntactically non-trivial) attribute values will stay in text form and require further parsing. There are two major alternatives to describing a GUI in an XML-derived language. One is to do what WinForms did, and describe it in real code. There are numerous problems with this, though it’s not completely advantage-free (a question to compare XAML to this approach). The other major alternative is to design a completely new syntax specifically tailored for the task at hand. This is generally known as a domain-specific language. So, in hindsight, and as a lesson for the future generations, was it a good idea to base XAML on XML, or would it have been better as a custom-designed domain-specific language? If we were designing an even better UI framework, should we pick XML or a custom DSL? Since it’s much easier to think positively about the status quo, especially one that is quite liked by the community, I’ll give some example reasons for why building on top of XML might be considered a mistake. Basing a language off XML has one thing going for it: it’s much easier to parse (the core parser is already available), requires much, much less design work, and alternative parsers are also much easier to write for 3rd party developers. But the resulting language can be unsatisfying in various ways. It is rather verbose. If you change the type of something, you need to change it in the closing tag. It has very poor support for comments; it’s impossible to comment out an attribute. There are limitations placed on the content of attributes by XML. The markup extensions have to be built "on top" of the XML syntax, not integrated deeply and nicely into it. And, my personal favourite, if you set something via an attribute, you use completely different syntax than if you set the exact same thing as a content property. It’s also said that since everyone knows XML, XAML requires less learning. Strictly speaking this is true, but learning the syntax is a tiny fraction of the time spent learning a new UI framework; it’s the framework’s concepts that make the curve steep. Besides, the idiosyncracies of an XML-based language might actually add to the "needs learning" basket. Are these disadvantages outweighted by the ease of parsing? Should the next cool framework continue the tradition, or invest the time to design an awesome DSL that can’t be parsed by existing tools and whose syntax needs to be learned by everyone? P.S. Not everyone confuses XAML and WPF, but some do. XAML is the XML-like thing. WPF is the framework with support for bindings, theming, hardware acceleration and a whole lot of other cool stuff.

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  • BI&EPM in Focus November 2012

    - by Mike.Hallett(at)Oracle-BI&EPM
    Customers ·       San Diego Unified School District Harnesses Attendance, Procurement, and Operational Data with Oracle Exalytics, Generating $4.4 Million in Savings ·       NilsonGroup chooses Oracle Exalytics In-Memory Machine as their solution to access critical data to keep its stores competitive with real-time Mobile BI:  Video ·       Nykredit, in the Danish Financial Sector, describes their experiences from testing the Exalytics Business Intelligence Machine: Video  ·       Sodexo chose Oracle Exalytics as their business analytics platform:  Video ·       AstraZeneca (US, Canada, MedImmune) Improves Insight, Analytics, and Reporting, Enterprisewide with Unified Planning on a Single Platform ·       Experian Consolidates Reporting Systems for One, Global View of Financial Data and Improves Planning for Continued Growth ·       Munchkin Gives its Line of Children’s Products Plenty of Room to Grow in an Upgraded Enterprise Application Environment ·       Top 20 EPM Customer Snapshots, in One Handy Booklet (link) ·       Customer and Partner Successes: Link to Complete Archive Enterprise Performance Management ·       Nov 15: Is Hope and Email the Core of your Reconciliation Process? (link) ·       Replay: Integrated Business Planning, Featuring Leggett & Platt (link) ·       Whitepaper: The New Competitive Advantage - Strategic CIO's Embrace the Cloud (link) ·       Press: Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Driving Significant Improvements in Budget Management and Reporting for Public Sector Organizations (link) ·       Enterprise Performance Management Video Feature Overviews, Now Available on YouTube (link) ·       NEW Solution Brief - Oracle Hyperion Planning on the Oracle Exalytics In-Memory Machine (link) ·       For Insurance sector: Datasheet for new release V2.0 - Oracle Quantitative Management and Reporting for Solvency II (link) ·       Whitepaper FSN 2012: Managing Risk and Uncertainty, an Executive's Guide to Integrated Business Planning (link) ·       NEW Datasheet for Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service (link) ·       Blog: Planning in the Cloud - For Real Business Intelligence ·       Press: Latest Release of Oracle Exalytics In-Memory Machine Software Enables Customers to View and Analyze Data at the Speed of Business (link) ·       Press: New Release (11.1.1.6.2BP1) of Oracle Business Intelligence Enables Users to Quickly Access and Analyze Key Business Information, Anytime, Anywhere (link) ·       Mark Hurd Interviewed on USA Today about Big Data & Analytics (link) ·       Whitepaper: Mastering Big Data - CFO Strategies to Transform Insight into Opportunity (link) ·       Nov 15: Improve Asset Utilization. Achieve Greater Profitability: Oracle Enterprise Asset Management Analytics (link) ·       Replay: Oracle Enterprise Asset Mgmt Analytics and Oracle Manufacturing Analytics (link) ·       Overload to Impact: An Industry Scorecard on Big Data Business Challenges (link) ·       Webcast Replay: Overview of Oracle Endeca Informational Discovery (link) ·       OBIEE 11g: Required and Recommended Patches and Patch Sets (link)

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  • With a little effort you can &ldquo;SEMI&rdquo;-protect your C# assemblies with obfuscation.

    - by mbcrump
    This method will not protect your assemblies from a experienced hacker. Everyday we see new keygens, cracks, serials being released that contain ways around copy protection from small companies. This is a simple process that will make a lot of hackers quit because so many others use nothing. If you were a thief would you pick the house that has security signs and an alarm or one that has nothing? To so begin: Obfuscation is the concealment of meaning in communication, making it confusing and harder to interpret. Lets begin by looking at the cartoon below:     You are probably familiar with the term and probably ignored this like most programmers ignore user security. Today, I’m going to show you reflection and a way to obfuscate it. Please understand that I am aware of ways around this, but I believe some security is better than no security.  In this sample program below, the code appears exactly as it does in Visual Studio. When the program runs, you get either a true or false in a console window. Sample Program. using System; using System.Diagnostics; using System.Linq;   namespace ObfuscateMe {     class Program     {                static void Main(string[] args)         {               Console.WriteLine(IsProcessOpen("notepad")); //Returns a True or False depending if you have notepad running.             Console.ReadLine();         }             public static bool IsProcessOpen(string name)         {             return Process.GetProcesses().Any(clsProcess => clsProcess.ProcessName.Contains(name));         }     } }   Pretend, that this is a commercial application. The hacker will only have the executable and maybe a few config files, etc. After reviewing the executable, he can determine if it was produced in .NET by examing the file in ILDASM or Redgate’s Reflector. We are going to examine the file using RedGate’s Reflector. Upon launch, we simply drag/drop the exe over to the application. We have the following for the Main method:   and for the IsProcessOpen method:     Without any other knowledge as to how this works, the hacker could export the exe and get vs project build or copy this code in and our application would run. Using Reflector output. using System; using System.Diagnostics; using System.Linq;   namespace ObfuscateMe {     class Program     {                static void Main(string[] args)         {               Console.WriteLine(IsProcessOpen("notepad"));             Console.ReadLine();         }             public static bool IsProcessOpen(string name)         {             return Process.GetProcesses().Any<Process>(delegate(Process clsProcess)             {                 return clsProcess.ProcessName.Contains(name);             });         }       } } The code is not identical, but returns the same value. At this point, with a little bit of effort you could prevent the hacker from reverse engineering your code so quickly by using Eazfuscator.NET. Eazfuscator.NET is just one of many programs built for this. Visual Studio ships with a community version of Dotfoscutor. So download and load Eazfuscator.NET and drag/drop your exectuable/project into the window. It will work for a few minutes depending if you have a quad-core or not. After it finishes, open the executable in RedGate Reflector and you will get the following: Main After Obfuscation IsProcessOpen Method after obfuscation: As you can see with the jumbled characters, it is not as easy as the first example. I am aware of methods around this, but it takes more effort and unless the hacker is up for the challenge, they will just pick another program. This is also helpful if you are a consultant and make clients pay a yearly license fee. This would prevent the average software developer from jumping into your security routine after you have left. I hope this article helped someone. If you have any feedback, please leave it in the comments below.

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  • Top Three Reasons to Move to the Cloud Before Your Next Upgrade

    - by yaldahhakim
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";} 1) Reduced Cost - During major upgrades, most organizations typically need to replace or invest in extra hardware and other IT resources to support the upgrade. With the Cloud, this can become more of an Op-ex discussion. The flexibility and scalability of the cloud also allows for new business solution to be set up more quickly with the ability to scale IT resources to closely map to changing business requirements. . This enables more and faster innovation because you are spending money to focus on core business initiatives instead of setting up complex environments. 2) Reduced Risk- This is especially true when you are working with a cloud provider that possesses substantial in-house expertise. Oracle Managed Cloud Services has been hosting and managing customer’s business applications for over a decade and has help hundreds of customers upgrade and adopt new technologies faster and better. Customer have access to over 15,000 Oracle experts in operation centers around the world that can work around the clock and have direct access Oracle Development to optimize our customers’ upgrade experience. 3) Reduced Downtime - Whether a customer is looking to upgrade their E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, JD-Edwards, or Fusion applications, we’ve developed standardized best practices and tools across the technology stack to accelerate the upgrade and migration with substantially reduced timelines and risk. And because the process is repeatable, customer stay more current on the latest releases, continuously taking advantage of the newest innovations – without the headache.. By leveraging the economies and expertise of scale that belong to Oracle, you can sleep better at night knowing that your next major application upgrade is taken care of. Check out the video of this Managed Cloud Services customer to learn more about their experience.

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  • Internet of Things Becoming Reality

    - by kristin.jellison
    The Internet of Things is not just on the radar—it’s becoming a reality. A globally connected continuum of devices and objects will unleash untold possibilities for businesses and the people they touch. But the “things” are only a small part of a much larger, integrated architecture. A great example of this comes from the healthcare industry. Imagine an expectant mother who needs to watch her blood pressure. She lives in a mountain village 100 miles away from medical attention. Luckily, she can use a small “wearable” device to monitor her status and wirelessly transmit the information to a healthcare hub in her village. Now, say the healthcare hub identifies that the expectant mother’s blood pressure is dangerously high. It sends a real-time alert to the patient’s wearable device, advising her to contact her doctor. It also pushes an alert with the patient’s historical data to the doctor’s tablet PC. He inserts a smart security card into the tablet to verify his identity. This ensures that only the right people have access to the patient’s data. Then, comparing the new data with the patient’s medical history, the doctor decides she needs urgent medical attention. GPS tracking devices on ambulances in the field identify and dispatch the closest one available. An alert also goes to the closest hospital with the necessary facilities. It sends real-time information on her condition directly from the ambulance. So when she arrives, they already have a treatment plan in place to ensure she gets the right care. The Internet of Things makes a huge difference for the patient. She receives personalized and responsive healthcare. But this technology also helps the businesses involved. The healthcare provider achieves a competitive advantage in its services. The hospital benefits from cost savings through more accurate treatment and better application of services. All of this, in turn, translates into savings on insurance claims. This is an ideal scenario for the Internet of Things—when all the devices integrate easily and when the relevant organizations have all the right systems in place. But in reality, that can be difficult to achieve. Core design principles are required to make the whole system work. Open standards allow these systems to talk to each other. Integrated security protects personal, financial, commercial and regulatory information. A reliable and highly available systems infrastructure is necessary to keep these systems running 24/7. If this system were just made up of separate components, it would be prohibitively complex and expensive for almost any organization. The solution is integration, and Oracle is leading the way. We’re developing converged solutions, not just from device to datacenter, but across devices, utilizing the Java platform, and through data acquisition and management, integration, analytics, security and decision-making. The Internet of Things (IoT) requires the predictable action and interaction of a potentially endless number of components. It’s in that convergence that the true value of the Internet of Things emerges. Partners who take the comprehensive view and choose to engage with the Internet of Things as a fully integrated platform stand to gain the most from the Internet of Things’ many opportunities. To discover what else Oracle is doing to connect the world, read about Oracle’s Internet of Things Platform. Learn how you can get involved as a partner by checking out the Oracle Java Knowledge Zone. Best regards, David Hicks

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  • PHP-FPM stops responding and dies [migrated]

    - by user12361
    I'm running Drupal 6 with Nginx 1.5.1 and PHP-FPM (PHP 5.3.26) on a 1GB single core VPS with 3GB of swap space on SSD storage. I just switched from shared hosting to this unmanaged VPS because my site was getting too heavy, so I'm still learning the ropes. I have moderately high traffic, I don't really monitor it closely but Google Adsense usually record close to 30K page views/day. I usually have 50 to 80 authenticated users logged in and a few hundred more anonymous users hitting the Boost static HTML cache at any given moment. The problem I'm having is that PHP-FPM frequently stops responding, resulting in Nginx 502 or 504 errors. I swear I have read every page on the internet about this issue, which seems fairly common, and I've tried endless combinations of configurations, and I can't find a good solution. After restarting Nginx and PHP-FPM, the site runs really fast for a while, and then without warning it simply stops responding. I get a white screen while the browser waits on the server, and after about 30 seconds to a minute it throws an Nginx 502 or 504 error. Sometimes it runs well for 2 minutes, sometimes 5 minutes, sometimes 5 hours, but it always ends up hanging. When I find the server in this state, there is still plenty of free memory (500MB or more) and no major CPU usage, the control and worker PHP-FPM processes are still present, and the server is still pingable and usable via SSH. A reload of PHP-FPM via the init script revives it again. The hangups don't seem to correspond to the amount of traffic, because I observed this behavior consistently when I was testing this configuration on a development VPS with no traffic at all. I've been constantly tweaking the settings, but I can't definitively eliminate the problem. I set Nginx workers to just 1. In the PHP-FPM config I have tried all three of the process managers. "Dynamic" is definitely the least reliable, consistently hanging up after only a few minutes. "Static" also has been unreliable and unpredictable. The least buggy has been "ondemand", but even that is failing me, sometimes after as much as 12 to 24 hours. But I can't leave the server unattended because PHP-FPM dies and never comes back on its own. I tried adjusting the pm.max_children value from as low as 3 to as high as 50, doesn't make a lot of difference, but I currently have it at 10. Same thing for the spare servers values. I also have set pm.max_requests anywhere from 30 to unlimited, and it doesn't seem to make a difference. According to the logs, the PHP-FPM processes are not exiting with SIGSEGV or SIGBUS, but rather with SIGTERM. I get a lot of lines like: WARNING: [pool www] child 3739, script '/var/www/drupal6/index.php' (request: "GET /index.php") execution timed out (38.739494 sec), terminating and: WARNING: [pool www] child 3738 exited on signal 15 (SIGTERM) after 50.004380 seconds from start I actually found several articles that recommend doing a graceful reload of PHP-FPM via cron every few minutes or hours to circumvent this issue. So that's what I did, "/etc/init.d/php-fpm reload" every 5 minutes. So far, it's keeping the lights on. But it feels like a dreadful hack. Is PHP-FPM really that unreliable? Is there anything else I can do? Thanks a lot!

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  • The best computer ever

    - by Jeff
    (This is a repost from my personal blog… wow… I need to write more technical stuff!) About three years and three months ago, I bought a 17" MacBook Pro, and it turned out to be the best computer I've ever owned. You might think that every computer with better specs is automatically better than the last, but that hasn't been my experience. My first one was a Sony, back in the Pentium III days, and it cost an astonishing $2,500. That was even more ridiculous in 1999 dollars. It had a dial-up modem, and a CD-ROM, built-in! It may have even played DVD's. A few years later I bought an HP, and it ended up being a pile of shit. The power connector inside came loose from the board, and on occasion would even short. In 2005, I bought a Dell, and it wasn't bad. It had a really high resolution screen (complete with dead pixels, a problem in those days), and it was the first laptop I felt I could do real work on. When 2006 rolled around, Apple started making computers with Intel CPU's, and I bought the very first one the week it came out. I used Boot Camp to run Windows. I still have it in its box somewhere, and I used it for three years. The current 17" was new in 2009. The goodness was largely rooted in having a big screen with lots of dots. This computer has been the source of hundreds of blog posts, tens of thousands of lines of code, video and photo editing, and of course, a whole lot of Web surfing. It connected to corpnet at Microsoft, WiFi in Hawaii and has presented many a deck. It has traveled with me tens of thousands of miles. Last year, I put a solid state drive in it, and it was like getting a new computer. I can boot up a Windows 7 VM in about 19 seconds. Having 8 gigs of RAM has always been fantastic. Everything about it has been fast and fun. When new, the battery (when not using VM's) could get as much as 10 hours. I can still do 7 without much trouble. After 460 charge cycles, the battery health is still between 85 and 90%. The only real negative has been the size and weight. It's only an inch thick, but naturally it's pretty big with a 17" screen. You don't get battery life like that without a huge battery, either, so it's heavy. It was never a deal breaker, but sometimes a long haul across a large airport, you know you're carrying it. Today, Apple announced a new, thinner and lighter 15" laptop, with twice the RAM and CPU cores, and four times the screen resolution. It basically handles my size and weight issues while retaining the resolution, and it still costs less than my 17" did. So I ordered one. Three years is an excellent run, but I kind of budgeted for a new workhorse this year anyway. So if you're interested in a 17" MacBook Pro with a Core 2 Duo 2.66 GHz CPU, 8 gigs of RAM and a 320 gig hard drive (sorry, I'm keeping the SSD), I have one to sell. They've apparently discontinued the 17", which is going to piss off the video community. It's in excellent condition, with a few minor scratches, but I take care of my stuff.

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  • How do I get 5.1 surround sound working on an Acer Aspire 5738ZG?

    - by kbargais_LV
    I got a problem with sound. I tried everything but no results. :( I got 3 sound ports. my daemon: # This file is part of PulseAudio. # # PulseAudio is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify # it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by # the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or # (at your option) any later version. # # PulseAudio is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but # WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of # MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU # General Public License for more details. # # You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public License # along with PulseAudio; if not, write to the Free Software # Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 # USA. ## Configuration file for the PulseAudio daemon. See pulse-daemon.conf(5) for ## more information. Default values are commented out. Use either ; or # for ## commenting. ; daemonize = no ; fail = yes ; allow-module-loading = yes ; allow-exit = yes ; use-pid-file = yes ; system-instance = no ; local-server-type = user ; enable-shm = yes ; shm-size-bytes = 0 # setting this 0 will use the system-default, usually 64 MiB ; lock-memory = no ; cpu-limit = no ; high-priority = yes ; nice-level = -11 ; realtime-scheduling = yes ; realtime-priority = 5 ; exit-idle-time = 20 ; scache-idle-time = 20 ; dl-search-path = (depends on architecture) ; load-default-script-file = yes ; default-script-file = /etc/pulse/default.pa ; log-target = auto ; log-level = notice ; log-meta = no ; log-time = no ; log-backtrace = 0 resample-method = speex-float-1 ; enable-remixing = yes ; enable-lfe-remixing = no flat-volumes = no ; rlimit-fsize = -1 ; rlimit-data = -1 ; rlimit-stack = -1 ; rlimit-core = -1 ; rlimit-as = -1 ; rlimit-rss = -1 ; rlimit-nproc = -1 ; rlimit-nofile = 256 ; rlimit-memlock = -1 ; rlimit-locks = -1 ; rlimit-sigpending = -1 ; rlimit-msgqueue = -1 ; rlimit-nice = 31 ; rlimit-rtprio = 9 ; rlimit-rttime = 1000000 ; default-sample-format = s16le ; default-sample-rate = 44100 ; default-sample-channels = 6 ; default-channel-map = front-left,front-right default-fragments = 8 default-fragment-size-msec = 10 ; enable-deferred-volume = yes ; deferred-volume-safety-margin-usec = 8000 ; deferred-volume-extra-delay-usec = 0

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  • When things go awry

    - by Phil Factor
    The moment the Entrepreneur opened his mouth on prime-time national TV, spelled out the URL and waxed big on how exciting ‘his’ new website was, I knew I was in for a busy night. I’d designed and built it. All at once, half a million people tried to log into the website. Although all my stress-testing paid off, I have to admit that the network locked up tight long before there was any danger of a database or website problem. Soon afterwards, the Entrepreneur and the Big Boss were there in the autopsy meeting. We picked through all our systems in detail to see how they’d borne the unexpected strain. Mercifully, in view of the sour mood of the Big Boss, it turned out that the only thing we could have done better was buy a bigger pipe to and from the internet. We’d specified that ‘big pipe’ when designing the system. The Big Boss had then railed at the cost and so we’d subsequently compromised. I felt that my design decisions were vindicated. The Big Boss brooded for a while. Then he made the significant comment: “What really ****** me off is the fact that, for ten minutes, we couldn’t take people’s money.” At that point I stopped feeling smug. Had the internet connection been better, the system would have reached its limit and failed rather precipitously, and that wasn’t what he wanted. Then it occurred to me that what had gummed up the connection was all those images on the site, that had made it so impressive for the visitors. If there had been a way to automatically pare down the site to the bare essentials under stress… Hmm. I began to consider disaster-recovery in the broadest sense – maintaining a service in spite of unusual or unexpected events. What he said makes a lot of sense: sacrifice whatever isn’t essential to keep the core service running when we approach the capacity limits. Maybe in IT we should borrow (or revive) the business concept of the ‘Skeleton service’, maintaining only the priority parts under stress, using a process that is well-prepared and carefully rehearsed. How might this work? Whatever the event we have to prepare for, it is all about understanding the priorities; knowing what one can dispense with when the going gets tough. In the event of database disaster, it’s much faster to deploy a skeletal system with only the essential data than to restore the entire system, though there would have to be a reconciliation process to update the revived database retrospectively, once the emergency was over. It isn’t just the database that could be designed for resilience. One could prepare for unusually high traffic in a website by designing a system that degraded gradually to a ‘skeletal’ site, one that maintained the commercial essentials without fat images, JavaScript libraries and razzmatazz. This is all what the Big Boss scathingly called ‘a mere technicality’. It seems to me that what is needed first is a culture of application and database design which acknowledges that we live in a very imperfect world, and react accordingly when things go awry.

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  • What Counts For a DBA – Depth

    - by Louis Davidson
    SQL Server offers very simple interfaces to many of its features. Most people could open up SSMS, connect to a server, write a simple query and see the results. Even several of the core DBA tasks are deceptively straightforward. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to perform a basic database backup or run a trace (even using the newfangled Extended Events!). However, appearances can be deceptive, and often times it is really important that a DBA understands not just the basics of how to perform a task, but why we do a task, and how that task works. As an analogy, consider a child walking into a darkened room. Most would know that they need to turn on the light, and how to do it, so they flick the switch. But what happens if light fails to shine forth. Most would immediately tell you that you need to consider changing the light bulb. So you hop in the car and take them to the local home store and instruct them to buy a replacement. Confronted with a 40 foot display of light bulbs, how will they decide which of the hundreds of types of bulbs, of different types, fittings, shapes, colors, power and efficiency ratings, is the right choice? Obviously the main lesson the child is going to learn this day is how to use their cell phone as a flashlight so they don’t have to ask for help the next time. Likewise, when the metaphorical toddlers who use your database server have issues, they will instinctively know something is wrong, and may even have some idea what caused it, but will have no depth of knowledge to figure out the right solution. That is where the DBA comes in and attempts to save the day. However, when one looks beneath the shiny UI, SQL Server has its own “40 foot display of light bulbs”, in the form of the tremendous number of tools and the often-bewildering amount of information they can present to the DBA, to help us find issues. Unfortunately, resorting to guesswork, to trying different “bulbs” over and over, hoping to stumble on the answer. This is where the right depth of knowledge goes a long way. If we need to write a SELECT statement, then knowing the syntax and where to find the data is not enough. Knowledge of indexes and query plans is essential. Without it, we might hit on a query that “works”, but we are basically still a user, not a programmer, because we have no real control over our platform. Is that level of knowledge deep enough? Probably not, since knowledge of the underlying metadata and structures would be very useful in helping us make sense of any query plan. Understanding the structure of an index makes the “key lookup” operator not sound like what you do when someone tapes your car key to the ceiling. So is even this level of understanding deep enough? Do we need to understand the memory architecture used to process the query? It might be a comforting level of knowledge, and will doubtless come in handy at some point, but is not strictly necessary in most cases. Beyond that lies (more or less) full knowledge of SQL language and the intricacies of every step the SQL Server engine takes to process our query. My personal theory is that, as a professional, our knowledge of a given task should extend, at a minimum, one level deeper than is strictly necessary to perform the task. Anything deeper can be left to the ridiculously smart, or obsessive, or both. As an example. tasked with storing an integer value between 0 and 99999999, it’s essential that I know that choosing an Integer over Decimal(8,0) will likely offer performance benefits. It is then useful that I also understand the value of adding a CHECK constraint, to make sure the values are valid to the desired range; and comforting that I know a little about the underlying processors, registers and computer math. Anything further, I leave to the likes of Joe Chang, whose recent blog post on the topic offers depth by the bucketful!  

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  • Customer Loyalty vs. Customer Engagement: Who Cares?

    - by Jeb Dasteel-Oracle
    Have you read the recent Forbes OracleVoice blog titled Customer Loyalty is Dead. Long Live Engagement!? If you haven’t, take a look. This article prompted lots of conversation in the social realm. Many who read the article voiced their reactions to the headline and now I’m jumping in to add my view. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE Customer loyalty is still key. It’s the effect and engagement is the cause. We at least know that to be true for our customers. We are in an age where customers are demanding to be heard. We need them to be actively involved – or engaged – as well. Greater levels of customer engagement, properly targeted, positively correlate with satisfaction. Our data has shown us this over and over. Satisfied customers are more loyal and more willing to vocalize their satisfaction through referencing, and are more likely to purchase again, all of which in turn drives incremental revenue – from the customer doing the referencing AND the customer on the receiving end of that reference. Turning this around completely, if we begin to see the level of a customer’s engagement start to wane, this is an indicator that their satisfaction, loyalty, and future revenue are likely at risk. At Oracle, we’ve put in place many programs to target, encourage, and then track engagement, allowing us to measure engagement as a determinant of loyalty. Some of these programs include our Key Accounts, solution design and architectural, Executive Sponsorship, as well as executive advisory boards. Specific programs allow us to engage specific contacts within specific customer organizations (based on role) and then systematically track their engagement activities over time, along side of tracking customer satisfaction, loyalty, referenceability, and incremental revenue contribution. Continuous measurement of engagement allows us to better understand customer views of what it means to partner with a provider and adjust program participation to better meet the needs of the partnership. We can also track across customer segments, and design new programs that are even more effective than the ones we have in place today. In case you missed any of my previous Forbes articles, I’ve included links below for easy access. Award-Winning Companies Put Customers First The Power of Peer Networks: 5 Reasons to Get (and Stay) Involved Technology At Work: Traveling In Style Customer Central: 8 Strategies for Putting Customers at the Core of Your Business Technology at Work: Five Companies Doing IT Right /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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  • Thinking Local, Regional and Global

    - by Apeksha Singh-Oracle
    The FIFA World Cup tournament is the biggest single-sport competition: it’s watched by about 1 billion people around the world. Every four years each national team’s manager is challenged to pull together a group players who ply their trade across the globe. For example, of the 23 members of Brazil’s national team, only four actually play for Brazilian teams, and the rest play in England, France, Germany, Spain, Italy and Ukraine. Each country’s national league, each team and each coach has a unique style. Getting all these “localized” players to work together successfully as one unit is no easy feat. In addition to $35 million in prize money, much is at stake – not least national pride and global bragging rights until the next World Cup in four years time. Achieving economic integration in the ASEAN region by 2015 is a bit like trying to create the next World Cup champion by 2018. The team comprises Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. All have different languages, currencies, cultures and customs, rules and regulations. But if they can pull together as one unit, the opportunity is not only great for business and the economy, but it’s also a source of regional pride. BCG expects by 2020 the number of firms headquartered in Asia with revenue exceeding $1 billion will double to more than 5,000. Their trade in the region and with the world is forecast to increase to 37% of an estimated $37 trillion of global commerce by 2020 from 30% in 2010. Banks offering transactional banking services to the emerging market place need to prepare to repond to customer needs across the spectrum – MSMEs, SMEs, corporates and multi national corporations. Customers want innovative, differentiated, value added products and services that provide: • Pan regional operational independence while enabling single source of truth at a regional level • Regional connectivity and Cash & Liquidity  optimization • Enabling Consistent experience for their customers  by offering standardized products & services across all ASEAN countries • Multi-channel & self service capabilities / access to real-time information on liquidity and cash flows • Convergence of cash management with supply chain and trade finance While enabling the above to meet customer demands, the need for a comprehensive and robust credit management solution for effective regional banking operations is a must to manage risk. According to BCG, Asia-Pacific wholesale transaction-banking revenues are expected to triple to $139 billion by 2022 from $46 billion in 2012. To take advantage of the trend, banks will have to manage and maximize their own growth opportunities, compete on a broader scale, manage the complexity within the region and increase efficiency. They’ll also have to choose the right operating model and regional IT platform to offer: • Account Services • Cash & Liquidity Management • Trade Services & Supply Chain Financing • Payments • Securities services • Credit and Lending • Treasury services The core platform should be able to balance global needs and local nuances. Certain functions need to be performed at a regional level, while others need to be performed on a country level. Financial reporting and regulatory compliance are a case in point. The ASEAN Economic Community is in the final lap of its preparations for the ultimate challenge: becoming a formidable team in the global league. Meanwhile, transaction banks are designing their own hat trick: implementing a world-class IT platform, positioning themselves to repond to customer needs and establishing a foundation for revenue generation for years to come. Anand Ramachandran Senior Director, Global Banking Solutions Practice Oracle Financial Services Global Business Unit

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  • Does *every* project benefit from written specifications?

    - by nikie
    I know this is holy war territory, so please read the question to the end before answering. There are many cases where written specifications make a lot of sense. For example, if you're a contractor and you want to get paid, you need written specs. If you're working in a team with 20 persons, you need written specs. If you're writing a programming language compiler or interpreter (and it's not perl), you'll usually write a formal specification. I don't doubt that there are many more cases where written specifications are a really good idea. I just think that there are cases where there's so little benefit in written specs, that it doesn't outweigh the costs of writing and maintaining them. EDIT: The close votes say that "it is difficult to say what is asked here", so let me clarify: The usefulness of written, detailed specifications is often claimed like a dogma. (If you want examples, look at the comments.) But I don't see the use of them for the kind of development I'm doing. So what is asked here is: How would written specifications help me? Background information: I work for a small company that's developing vertical market software. If our product is easier to use and has better performance than the competition, it sells. If it's harder to use, even if it behaves 100% as the specification says, it doesn't sell. So there are no "external forces" for having written specs. The advantage would have to be somewhere in the development process. Now, I can see how frozen specifications would make a developer's life easier. But we'll never have frozen specs. If we see in the middle of development that feature X is not intuitive to use the way it's specified, then we can only choose between changing the specification or developing a product that won't sell. You'll probably ask by now: How do you know when you're done? Well, we're continually improving our product. The competition does the same. So (hopefully) we're never done. We keep improving the software, and when we reach a point when the benefits of the improvements we've added since the last release outweigh the costs of an update, we create a new release that is then tested, localized, documented and deployed. This also means that there's rarely any schedule pressure. Nobody has to do overtime to make a deadline. If the feature isn't done by the time we want to release the next version, it'll simply go into the next version. The next question might be: How do your developers know what they're supposed to implement? The answer is: They have a lot of domain knowledge. They know the customers business well enough, so a high-level description of the feature (or even just the problem that the customer needs solved) is enough to implement it. If it's not clear, the developer creates a few fake screens to get feedback from marketing/management or customers, but this is nowhere near the level of detail of actual specifications. This might be inefficient for larger teams, but for a small team with low turnover it works quite well. It has the additional benefit that the developer in question often comes up with a better solution than the person writing the specs might have. This question is already getting very long, but let me address one last point: Testing. Like I said in the beginning, if our software behaves 100% like the spec says, it still can be crap. In fact, if it's so unintuitive that you need a spec to know how to test it, it probably is crap. It makes sense to have fixed, written tests for some core functionality and for regression bugs, but again, this is nowhere near a full written spec of how the software should behave when. The main test is: hand the software to a user who doesn't know it yet and tell him to use the new feature X. If she can figure out how to use it and it works, it works.

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  • Migrating VB6 to HTML5 is not a fiction - Customer success story

    - by Webgui
    All of you VB developers in the present or past would probably find it hard to believe that the old VB code can be migrated and modernized into the latest .NET based HTML5 without having to rewrite the application. But we have been working on such tools for the past couple of years and already have several real world applications that were fully 'transposed' from VB6. The solution is called Instant CloudMove and its main tool is called the TranspositionStudio. It is a unique solution that relies on the concept of transposition. Transposition comes from mathematics and music and refers to exchanging elements while everything else remains the same or moving an element as is from one environment to another. This means that we are taking the source code and put it in a modern technological environment with relatively few adjustments.The concept is based on a set of Mapping Expressions which are basically links between an element in the source environment and one in the target environment that has the same functionality. About 95% of the code is usually mapped out-of-the-box and the rest is handled with easy-to-use mapping tools designed for Visual Studio developers providing them with a familiar environment and concepts for completing the mapping and allowing them to extend and customize existing mapping expressions. The solution is also based on a circular workflow that enables developers to make any changes as required until the result is satisfying.As opposed to existing migration solutions that offer automation are usually a “black box” to the user, the transposition concept enables full visibility, flexibility and control over the code and process at all times allowing to also add/change functionalities or upgrade the UI within the process and tools.This is exactly the case with our customer’s aging VB6 PMS (Property Management System) which needed a technological update as well as a design refresh. The decision was to move the VB6 application which had about 1 million lines of code into the latest web technology. Since the application was initially written 13 years ago and had many upgrades since the code must be very patchy and includes unused sections. As a result, the company Mihshuv Group considered rewriting the entire application in Java since it already had the knowledge. Rewrite would allow starting with a clean slate and designing functionality, database architecture, UI without any constraints. On the other hand, rewrite entitles a long and detailed specification work as well as a thorough QA and this translates into a long project with high risk and costs.So the company looked for a migration solution as an alternative; the research lead to Gizmox and after examining the technology it was decided to perform a hybrid project which would include an automatic transposition of the core of the VB6 application (200,000 lines of code) while they redesigning the UI, adding new functionality, deleting unused code and rewriting about 140 reports with Crystal Reports will be done manually using Visual WebGui development tools.The migration part of the project was completed in 65 days by 3 developers from Mihshuv Group guided by Gizmox migration experts while the rewrite and UI upgrade tasks took about the same. So in only a few months period Mihshuv Group generated an up-to-date product, written in the latest Web technology with modern, friendly UI and improved functionality. Guest selection screen of the original VB6 PMS Guest selection screen on the new web–based PMS Compared to the initial plan to rewrite the entire application in Java, the hybrid migration/rewrite approach taken by Mihshuv Group using Gizmox technology proved as a great decision. In terms of time and cost there were substantial savings; from a project that was priced for at least a year (without taking into account the huge risk and uncertainty) it became a few months project only. More about this and other customer stories can be found here

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  • Cloud Adoption Challenges

    - by Herve Roggero
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/hroggero/archive/2013/11/07/cloud-adoption-challenges.aspxWhile cloud computing makes sense for most organizations and countless projects, I have seen customers significantly struggle with cloud adoption challenges. This blog post is not an attempt to provide a generic assessment of cloud adoption; rather it is an account of personal experiences in the field, some of which may or may not apply to your organization. Cloud First, Burst? In the rush to cloud adoption some companies have made the decision to redesign their core system with a cloud first approach. However a cloud first approach means that the system may not work anymore on-premises after it has been redesigned, specifically if the system depends on Platform as a Service (PaaS) components (such as Azure Tables). While PaaS makes sense when your company is in a position to adopt the cloud exclusively, it can be difficult to leverage with systems that need to work in different clouds or on-premises. As a result, some companies are starting to rethink their cloud strategy by designing for on-premises first, and modify only the necessary components to burst when needed in the cloud. This generally means that the components need to work equally well in any environment, which requires leveraging Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) or additional investments for PaaS applications, or both.  What’s the Problem? Although most companies can benefit from cloud computing, not all of them can clearly identify a business reason for doing so other than in very generic terms. I heard many companies claim “it’s cheaper”, or “it allows us to scale”, without any specific metric or clear strategy behind the adoption decision. Other companies have a very clear strategy behind cloud adoption and can precisely articulate business benefits, such as “we have a 500% increase in traffic twice a year, so we need to burst in the cloud to avoid doubling our network and server capacity”. Understanding the problem being solved through by adopting cloud computing can significantly help organizations determine the optimum path and timeline to adoption. Performance or Scalability? I stopped counting the number of times I heard “the cloud doesn’t scale; our database runs faster on a laptop”.  While performance and scalability are related concepts, they are nonetheless different in nature. Performance is a measure of response time under a given load (meaning with a specific number of users), while scalability is the performance curve over various loads. For example one system could see great performance with 100 users, but timeout with 1,000 users, in which case the system wouldn’t scale. However another system could have average performance with 100 users, but display the exact same performance with 1,000,000 users, in which case the system would scale. Understanding that cloud computing does not usually provide high performance, but instead provides the tools necessary to build a scalable system (usually using PaaS services such as queuing and data federation), is fundamental to proper cloud adoption. Uptime? Last but not least, you may want to read the Service Level Agreement of your cloud provider in detail if you haven’t done so. If you are expecting 99.99% uptime annually you may be in for a surprise. Depending on the component being used, there may be no associated SLA at all! Other components may be restarted at any time, or services may experience failover conditions weekly ( or more) based on current overall conditions of the cloud service provider, most of which are outside of your control. As a result, for PaaS cloud environments (and to a certain extent some IaaS systems), applications need to assume failure and gracefully retry to be successful in the cloud in order to provide service continuity to end users. About Herve Roggero Herve Roggero, Windows Azure MVP, is the founder of Blue Syntax Consulting (http://www.bluesyntax.net). Herve's experience includes software development, architecture, database administration and senior management with both global corporations and startup companies. Herve holds multiple certifications, including an MCDBA, MCSE, MCSD. He also holds a Master's degree in Business Administration from Indiana University. Herve is the co-author of "PRO SQL Azure" and “PRO SQL Server 2012 Practices” from Apress, a PluralSight author, and runs the Azure Florida Association.

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  • College Ratings via the Federal Government

    - by user9147039
    A few weeks back you might remember news about a higher education rating system proposal from the Obama administration. As I've discussed previously, political and stakeholder pressures to improve outcomes and increase transparency are stronger than ever before. The executive branch proposal is intended to make progress in this area. Quoting from the proposal itself, "The ratings will be based upon such measures as: Access, such as percentage of students receiving Pell grants; Affordability, such as average tuition, scholarships, and loan debt; and Outcomes, such as graduation and transfer rates, graduate earnings, and advanced degrees of college graduates.” This is going to be quite complex, to say the least. Most notably, higher ed is not monolithic. From community and other 2-year colleges, to small private 4-year, to professional schools, to large public research institutions…the many walks of higher ed life are, well, many. Designing a ratings system that doesn't wind up with lots of unintended consequences and collateral damage will be difficult. At best you would end up potentially tarnishing the reputation of certain institutions that were actually performing well against the metrics and outcome measures that make sense in their "context" of education. At worst you could spend a lot of time and resources designing a system that would lose credibility with its "customers". A lot of institutions I work with already have in place systems like the one described above. They are tracking completion rates, completion timeframes, transfers to other institutions, job placement, and salary information. As I talk to these institutions there are several constants worth noting: • Deciding on which metrics to measure is complicated. While employment and salary data are relatively easy to track, qualitative measures are more difficult. How do you quantify the benefit to someone who studies in one field that may not compensate him or her as well as another field but that provides huge personal fulfillment and reward is a difficult measure to quantify? • The data is available but the systems to transform the data into actual information that can be used in meaningful ways are not. Too often in higher ed information is siloed. As such, much of the data that need to be a part of a comprehensive system sit in multiple organizations, oftentimes outside the reach of core IT. • Politics and culture are big barriers. One of the areas that my team and I spend a lot of time talking about with higher ed institutions all over the world is the imperative to optimize for student success. This, like the tracking of the students’ achievement after graduation, requires a level or organizational capacity that does not currently exist. The primary barrier is the culture of "data islands" in higher ed, and the need for leadership to drive out the divisions between departments, schools, colleges, etc. and institute academy-wide analytics and data stewardship initiatives that will enable student success. • Data quality is a very big issue. So many disparate systems exist (some on premise, some "in the cloud") that keep data about "persons" using different means to identify them. Establishing a single source of truth about an individual and his or her data is difficult without some type of data quality policy and tools. Good tools actually exist but are seldom leveraged. Don't misunderstand - I think it's a great idea to drive additional transparency and accountability into the system of higher education. And not just at home, but globally. Students and parents need access to key data to make informed, responsible choices. The tools exist to not only enable this kind of information to be shared but to capture the very metrics stakeholders care most about and in a way that makes sense in the context of a given institution's "place" in the overall higher ed panoply.

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  • Software Center seems to freeze system when installing, syslog has "blocked for more than 120 seconds" errors

    - by nbm
    12.04 (precise) 64-bit Kernel Linux 3.2.0-39 3.6GB memory Intel Core 2 Duo CPU @ 2.40GHz x2 WUBI-installed Ubuntu running on a MacBook Pro 7.1 with OSX running Vista via Boot Camp (hey, I like lots of OS's m'kay?) When installing from Ubuntu software center my system very frequently freezes. This has happened 4 of the last 5 installs. Most recently I was installing the Google Earth .deb from Google's website: clicking the .deb file automatically opens Software Center (otherwise I would have used Synaptic, as I've grown to expect Software Center to freeze my system and I'm rather tired of it.) By "freeze" I mean nothing works: no dash, no launcher, no mouse movement, no alt-tab, can't open terminal (keyboard does not work). Software center does show the "installing" icon but after that it greys out and I can't click anything. REISUB has no effect but a cold power-down and restart is possible. Occasionally, after 5-10 minutes, I'll be able to move the mouse / use the keyboard and run a launcher command or two, although other open apps (Chrome and Software Center) will still be greyed-out/frozen. (I've never waited longer than that - if still unresponsive after 15 minutes I just power down and restart.) Most recently, which is why I am finally posting a question, I waited about 15 minutes and was finally able to open System Monitor while this was going on. Processes tells me that System Monitor is using about 20% of CPU, and nothing else is using much (zeros mostly). In fact I didn't even see Software Center listed? However at this point the system finally partially unfroze, the installation completed, and while I wasn't about to close Software Center I was able to do a system shutdown and fresh restart and I went and took a look at the syslog. In /var/log/syslog I see a lot of ":blocked for more than 120 seconds" messages. Similar to ubuntu hang out with this message :blocked for more than 120 seconds Which has not been answered, and I'm not running a virtual machine. My full syslog with stack traces looks very, very similar to this: Why do tasks on Amazon Xen instance block for over 120 seconds causing server to hang? Note that that question was solved, but that's because the problem was being caused by Amazon and Amazon fixed the bug. I'm not running anything Amazon-related. My syslog does look very similar, however. My question is also similar to this: Troubleshooting server hang But the referenced "duplicate" in that question is about how to kill processes/restart when the system freezes. I know how to kill processes and restart. I want to figure out what is causing the problem so I can try to fix it. I realize that I could just use Synaptic instead of Ubuntu Software Center, but I'd like to try to solve the problem if possible. I'm thinking I should perhaps submit a bug report, but I wanted to first see if anyone else was having any similar problems, and if so what you all did to fix it. I see a number of questions about Software Center freezing and others, including those I linked, about the "blocked for more than 120 seconds" log error, but I didn't see any question that links the two. I did save a copy of the syslog report if anyone wants to see it, but as mentioned it's quite similar to the one posted in the Amazon-related question...and I didn't want to take up even more space unnecessarily as, my apologies - this question has already become extremely verbose!

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  • Identity in .NET 4.5&ndash;Part 3: (Breaking) changes

    - by Your DisplayName here!
    I recently started porting a private build of Thinktecture.IdentityModel to .NET 4.5 and noticed a number of changes. The good news is that I can delete large parts of my library because many features are now in the box. Along the way I found some other nice additions. ClaimsIdentity now has methods to query the claims collection, e.g. HasClaim(), FindFirst(), FindAll(). ClaimsPrincipal has those methods as well. But they work across all contained identities. Nice! ClaimsPrincipal.Current retrieves the ClaimsPrincipal from Thread.CurrentPrincipal. Combined with the above changes, no casting necessary anymore. SecurityTokenHandler now has read and write methods that work directly with strings. This makes it much easier to deal with non-XML tokens like SWT or JWT. A new session security token handler that uses the ASP.NET machine key to protect the cookie. This makes it easier to get started in web farm scenarios. No need for a custom service host factory or the federation behavior anymore. WCF can be switched into “WIF mode” with the useIdentityConfiguration switch (odd name though). Tooling has become better and the new test STS makes it very easy to get started. On the other hand – and that was kind of expected – to bring claims into the core framework, there are also some breaking changes for WIF code. If you want to migrate (and I would recommend that), most changes to your code are mechanical. The following is a brain dump of the changes I encountered. Assembly Microsoft.IdentityModel is gone. The new functionality is now in mscorlib, System.IdentityModel(.Services) and System.ServiceModel. All the namespaces have changed as well. No IClaimsPrincipal and IClaimsIdentity anymore. Configuration section has been split into <system.identityModel /> and <system.identityModel.services />. WCF configuration story has changed as well. Claim.ClaimType is now Claim.Type. ClaimCollection is now IEnumerable<Claim>. IsSessionMode is now IsReferenceMode. Bootstrap token handling is different now. ClaimsPrincipalHttpModule is gone. This is not really needed anymore, apart from maybe claims transformation (see here). Various factory methods on ClaimsPrincipal are gone (e.g. ClaimsPrincipal.CreateFromIdentity()). SecurityTokenHandler.ValidateToken now returns a ReadOnlyCollection<ClaimsIdentity>. Some lower level helper classes are gone or internal now (e.g. KeyGenerator). The WCF WS-Trust bindings are gone. I think this is a pity. They were *really* useful when doing work with WSTrustChannelFactory. Since WIF is part of the Windows operating system and also supported in future versions of .NET, there is no urgent need to migrate to the 4.5 claims model. But obviously, going forward, at some point you want to make the move.

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  • Modern OpenGL context failure [migrated]

    - by user209347
    OK, I managed to create an OpenGL context with wglcreatecontextattribARB with version 3.2 in my attrib struct (So I have initialized a 3.2 opengl context). It works, but the strange thing is, when I use glBindBuffer e,g. I still get unreferenced linker error, shouldn't a newer context prevent this? I'm on windows BTW, Linux doesn't have to deal with older and newer contexts (it directly supports the core of its version). The code: PIXELFORMATDESCRIPTOR pfd; HGLRC tmpRC; int iFormat; if (!(hDC = GetDC(hWnd))) { CMsgBox("Unable to create a device context. Program will now close.", "Error"); return false; } ZeroMemory(&pfd, sizeof(pfd)); pfd.nSize = sizeof(pfd); pfd.nVersion = 1; pfd.dwFlags = PFD_DRAW_TO_WINDOW | PFD_SUPPORT_OPENGL | PFD_DOUBLEBUFFER; pfd.iPixelType = PFD_TYPE_RGBA; pfd.cColorBits = attribs->colorbits; pfd.cDepthBits = attribs->depthbits; pfd.iLayerType = PFD_MAIN_PLANE; if (!(iFormat = ChoosePixelFormat(hDC, &pfd))) { CMsgBox("Unable to find a suitable pixel format. Program will now close.", "Error"); return false; } if (!SetPixelFormat(hDC, iFormat, &pfd)) { CMsgBox("Unable to initialize the pixel formats. Program will now close.", "Error"); return false; } if (!(tmpRC=wglCreateContext(hDC))) { CMsgBox("Unable to create a rendering context. Program will now close.", "Error"); return false; } if (!wglMakeCurrent(hDC, tmpRC)) { CMsgBox("Unable to activate the rendering context. Program will now close.", "Error"); return false; } strncpy(vers, (char*)glGetString(GL_VERSION), 3); vers[3] = '\0'; if (sscanf(vers, "%i.%i", &glv, &glsubv) != 2) { CMsgBox("Unable to retrieve the OpenGL version. Program will now close.", "Error"); return false; } hRC = NULL; if (glv > 2) // Have OpenGL 3.+ support { if ((wglCreateContextAttribsARB = (PFNWGLCREATECONTEXTATTRIBSARBPROC)wglGetProcAddress("wglCreateContextAttribsARB"))) { int attribs[] = {WGL_CONTEXT_MAJOR_VERSION_ARB, glv, WGL_CONTEXT_MINOR_VERSION_ARB, glsubv,WGL_CONTEXT_FLAGS_ARB, 0,0}; hRC = wglCreateContextAttribsARB(hDC, 0, attribs); wglMakeCurrent(NULL, NULL); wglDeleteContext(tmpRC); if (!wglMakeCurrent(hDC, hRC)) { CMsgBox("Unable to activate the rendering context. Program will now close.", "Error"); return false; } moderncontext = true; } } if (hRC == NULL) { hRC = tmpRC; moderncontext = false; }

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  • installer can't find partition, but fdisk can find them

    - by pxd
    I'm installing ubuntu 12.04, my system had install 2 system -- winxp and ubuntu 10.10. Now, I want to update ubuntu to 12.04. I use usb disk to install 12.04. But, the installer can't not find my partition in my harddisk. But, the fdisk can find them. Can you help me? How to do? ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo lshw -short H/W path Device Class Description system HP 2230s (NN868PA#AB2) /0 bus 3037 /0/9 memory 64KiB BIOS /0/0 processor Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T6570 @ 2.10GHz /0/0/1 memory 2MiB L2 cache /0/0/3 memory 32KiB L1 cache /0/0/0.1 processor Logical CPU /0/0/0.2 processor Logical CPU /0/2 memory 32KiB L1 cache /0/4 memory 2GiB System Memory /0/4/0 memory SODIMM [empty] /0/4/1 memory 2GiB SODIMM DDR2 Synchronous 800 MHz (1.2 ns) /0/100 bridge Mobile 4 Series Chipset Memory Controller Hub /0/100/2 display Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller /0/100/2.1 display Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller /0/100/1a bus 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 /0/100/1a.1 bus 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 /0/100/1a.2 bus 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #6 /0/100/1a.7 bus 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 /0/100/1b multimedia 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller /0/100/1c bridge 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 1 /0/100/1c.1 bridge 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 2 /0/100/1c.1/0 wlan1 network PRO/Wireless 5100 AGN [Shiloh] Network Connection /0/100/1c.2 bridge 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 3 /0/100/1c.4 bridge 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 5 /0/100/1c.5 bridge 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 6 /0/100/1c.5/0 eth1 network 88E8072 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller /0/100/1d bus 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 /0/100/1d.1 bus 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 /0/100/1d.2 bus 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 /0/100/1d.7 bus 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 /0/100/1e bridge 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge /0/100/1f bridge ICH9M LPC Interface Controller /0/100/1f.2 scsi0 storage 82801IBM/IEM (ICH9M/ICH9M-E) 4 port SATA Controller [AHCI mode] /0/100/1f.2/0 /dev/sda disk 500GB WDC WD5000BEVT-0 /0/100/1f.2/0/1 /dev/sda1 volume 48GiB Windows NTFS volume /0/100/1f.2/0/2 /dev/sda2 volume 416GiB Extended partition /0/100/1f.2/0/2/5 /dev/sda5 volume 97GiB HPFS/NTFS partition /0/100/1f.2/0/2/6 /dev/sda6 volume 198GiB HPFS/NTFS partition /0/100/1f.2/0/2/7 /dev/sda7 volume 27GiB Linux filesystem partition /0/100/1f.2/0/2/8 /dev/sda8 volume 93GiB Linux filesystem partition /0/100/1f.2/1 /dev/cdrom disk CDDVDW TS-L633M /0/1 scsi6 storage /0/1/0.0.0 /dev/sdb disk 15GB STORAGE DEVICE /0/1/0.0.0/0 /dev/sdb disk 15GB /0/1/0.0.0/0/1 /dev/sdb1 volume 14GiB Windows FAT volume /1 power HZ04037 ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders, total 976773168 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x31263125 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 * 63 102277727 51138832+ 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT /dev/sda2 102277728 976784129 437253201 f W95 Ext'd (LBA) /dev/sda5 102277791 307078127 102400168+ 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT /dev/sda6 307078191 724141151 208531480+ 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT /dev/sda7 724142080 781459455 28658688 83 Linux /dev/sda8 781461504 976771071 97654784 83 Linux Disk /dev/sdb: 15.9 GB, 15931539456 bytes 64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 15193 cylinders, total 31116288 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x0009eb92 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id Systemfile:///home/ubuntu/Pictures/Screenshot%20from%202012-07-07%2010:25:40.png /dev/sdb1 * 32 31115263 15557616 c W95 FAT32 (LBA) ubuntu 12.04 installer can't find the partition in my hard disk, only find device - /dev/sda.(sorry, I'm new user, so can't send image.)

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