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  • Windows Azure Event

    - by Blog Author
    Get cloud ready with Windows Azure The cloud is everywhere and here at Microsoft we’re flying high with our cloud computing release, Windows Azure. As most of you saw at the Professional Developers Conference, the reaction to Windows Azure has been nothing short of “wow” – and based on your feedback, we’ve organized this special, all-day Windows Azure Firestarter event to help you take full advantage of the cloud. Maybe you've already watched a webcast, attended a recent MSDN Event on the topic, or done your own digging on Azure. Well, here's your chance to go even deeper. This one-of-a-kind event will focus on helping developers get ‘cloud ready’ with concrete details and hands-on tactics. We’ll start by revealing Microsoft’s strategic vision for the cloud, and then offer an end-to-end view of the Windows Azure platform from a developer’s perspective. We’ll also talk about migrating your data and existing applications (regardless of platform) onto the cloud. We’ll finish up with an open panel and lots of time to ask questions. Following this event, please join us for an engaging conversation about any and all Cloud Computing topics. This FREE event is hosted by Northwest Cloud, the cloud agnostic community group, and sponsored by Microsoft. http://www.nwcloud.org/redmond/2010-04-06

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  • New Book: Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud Handbook

    - by user12608550
    Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud Handbook, by Tom Plunkett, TJ Palazzolo, and Tejas Joshi, Oracle Press. The well-known characteristics and tiers of cloud computing have spawned myriad implementations by a host of vendors and system integrators. One of these, Oracle's Exalogic Elastic Cloud, part of Oracle's family of Engineered Systems, is a key component of Oracle's public and private cloud computing solutions, providing critical PaaS (Platform as a Service) features for cloud developers. These developers need guidance to take advantage of Exalogic's extensive capabilities, and the Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud Handbook, written by three highly experienced Oracle technologists, provides that guidance. Part One of the book covers Exalogic's hardware and software components, and includes a very useful chapter on deployment examples, describing best practices for scalabiity, availability, backup and recovery, and multi-tenant security, including integration with other Oracle Engineered Systems and products such as Exadata and storage subsystems. Part Two is a thorough guide to Exalogic installation features, configuration and monitoring, packaged application software management, and scalable application development. The book also provides an extensive list of online resources, including pointers to Web sites, whitepapers, instructional videos, and other Oracle documentation. So, if you're planning to implement Exalogic as part of your cloud infrastructure, or are considering such, you'll find lots of sage advice and best practices in this handbook.

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  • Join our webinar: What CFOs Want From IT -- Unlocking Growth with Emerging Technologies

    - by Di Seghposs
    According to the 2012 Gartner-FEI research, big data, analytics, and new mobile, social & cloud computing platforms are increasingly on the CFOs radar screen because of their potential to unlock new growth opportunities. Join Oracle Chair Jeff Henley, & Oracle's Reggie Bradford & Rich Clayton as they explore CFO strategies & best practices for driving real value from IT investments in these areas: Why CFOs should get involved in big data and business analytics projects, and what best practices they can adopt to ensure their success How CFOs are leveraging new mobile and cloud computing platforms to address enterprise demands quickly and cost effectively How CFOs can partner with CMOs to maximize the value of IT investments in social technologies that can help create new growth opportunities CFOs have more responsibility over IT than ever before.  Learn how Oracle unlocks the transformative power of IT to take your business to the next level of performance.   Date:Tuesday, November 27, 2012 Time:8:00 a.m. PST / 11:00 a.m. EST Register now.

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  • AllSparkCube Packs 4,096 LEDs into a Giant Computer Controlled Display

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    LED matrix cubes are nothing new, but this 16x16x16 monster towers over the tiny 4x4x4 desktop variety. Check out the video to see it in action. Sound warning: the music starts off very loud and bass-filled; we’d recommend turning down the speakers if you’re watching from your cube. So what compels someone to build a giant LED cube driven by over a dozen Arduino shields? If you’re the employees at Adaptive Computing, you do it to dazzles crowds and show off your organizational skills: Every time I talk about the All Spark Cube people ask “so what does it do?” The features of the All Spark are the reason it was built and sponsored by Adaptive Computing. The Cube was built to catch peoples’ attention and to demonstrate how Adaptive can take a chaotic mess and inject order, structure and efficiency. We wrote several examples of how the All Spark Cube can demonstrate the effectiveness of a complex data center. If you’re interested in building a monster of your own, hit up the link below for more information, schematics, and videos. How Hackers Can Disguise Malicious Programs With Fake File Extensions Can Dust Actually Damage My Computer? What To Do If You Get a Virus on Your Computer

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  • Are you ready to take a walk in the clouds?

    - by Steve Loethen
    Cloud computing is here, whether we want it or not.  When I say "a walk in the clouds” I am not talking about a pleasant romantic comedy, but a real alternative to hosting applications on-premise.  For years we have had the power to host our web sites on remote systems.  Sure, challenges existed.  Mostly web sites.  I could, with a few clicks, create a account at a myriad of web host sites, put my site in the hands of a remote hosting company, and boom, I was a site on the internet.  But choices, power, and management was limited. Now, we have a set of services to let us approach and power and control we love, but with scalability of the data center.  My personal web site is hosted on a laptop running hyperV in my basement.  I have to manage the machine, patch it, make sure it is powered up.  This is fine for the “hello, this is my dog skippy site” that I maintain. If the football pool I run has an issue, one of the 10 users I have calls or emails me and I go check it out.  All is well. But this falls well below the needs of even the simplest of enterprises.  A business needs a stronger datacenter, a better pipe to the world.  Do I really want to base my business on a dynamic dns and a dsl line from the local phone company? Cloud computing gives us most of what I value (control, a db of my own, updating my site from Visual Studio). Come learn how this technology can transform your business.  If you are a Microsoft shop, or are interested in Microsoft in the cloud, on April 8 and 9, a 2 day free Azure training class is being conducted in Kansas City.  http://www.azurebootcamp.com/city/kansascity Hope to see you there.  If you come, make sure you look me up.

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  • Best peer-to-peer game architecture

    - by Dejw
    Consider a setup where game clients: have quite small computing resources (mobile devices, smartphones) are all connected to a common router (LAN, hotspot etc) The users want to play a multiplayer game, without an external server. One solution is to host an authoritative server on one phone, which in this case would be also a client. Considering point 1 this solution is not acceptable, since the phone's computing resources are not sufficient. So, I want to design a peer-to-peer architecture that will distribute the game's simulation load among the clients. Because of point 2 the system needn't be complex with regards to optimization; the latency will be very low. Each client can be an authoritative source of data about himself and his immediate environment (for example bullets.) What would be the best approach to designing such an architecture? Are there any known examples of such a LAN-level peer-to-peer protocol? Notes: Some of the problems are addressed here, but the concepts listed there are too high-level for me. Security I know that not having one authoritative server is a security issue, but it is not relevant in this case as I'm willing to trust the clients. Edit: I forgot to mention: it will be a rather fast-paced game (a shooter). Also, I have already read about networking architectures at Gaffer on Games.

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  • How to document requirements for an API systematically?

    - by Heinrich
    I am currently working on a project, where I have to analyze the requirements of two given IT systems, that use cloud computing, for a Cloud API. In other words, I have to analyze what requirements these systems have for a Cloud API, such that they would be able to switch it, while being able to accomplish their current goals. Let me give you an example for some informal requirements of Project A: When starting virtual machines in the cloud through the API, it must be possible to specify the memory size, CPU type, operating system and a SSH key for the root user. It must be possible to monitor the inbound and outbound network traffic per hour per virtual machine. The API must support the assignment of public IPs to a virtual machine and the retrieval of the public IPs. ... In a later stage of the project I will analyze some Cloud Computing standards that standardize cloud APIs to find out where possible shortcomings in the current standards are. A finding could and will probably be, that a certain standard does not support monitoring resource usage and thus is not currently usable. I am currently trying to find a way to systematically write down and classify my requirements. I feel that the way I currently have them written down (like the three points above) is too informal. I have read in a couple of requirements enineering and software architecture books, but they all focus too much on details and implementation. I do really only care about the functionalities provided through the API/interface and I don't think UML diagrams etc. are the right choice for me. I think currently the requirements that I collected can be described as user stories, but is that already enough for a sophisticated requirements analysis? Probably I should go "one level deeper" ... Any advice/learning resources for me?

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  • Relationship between SOA and OOA

    - by TheSilverBullet
    Thomas Erl defines SOA as follows in his site: Service-oriented computing represents a new generation distributed computing platform. As such, it encompasses many things, including its own design paradigm and design principles, design pattern catalogs, pattern languages, a distinct architectural model, and related concepts, technologies, and frameworks. This definitely sounds like a whole new category which is parallel to object orientation. Almost one in which you would expect an entirely new language to exist for. Like procedural C and object oriented C#. Here is my understanding: In real life, we don't have entirely new language for SOA. And most application which have SOA architecture have an object oriented design underneath it. SOA is a "strategy" to make the entire application/service distributed and reliable. SOA needs OOPS working underneath it. Is this correct? Where does SOA (if at all it does) fit in with object oriented programming practices? Edit: I have learnt through answers that OOA and SOA work with each other and cannot be compared (in a "which is better" way). I have changed the title to "Relationship between SOA and OOA" rather than "comparison".

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  • Ternary and Artificial Intelligence

    - by user2957844
    Not much of a programmer myself, however I have been thinking about the future of AI. If a fully functional AI is programmed in a binary environment as is used in current computing, would that create a bit of a black and white personality? As in just yes/no, on/off, 1/0? I will use the Skynet computer from the Terminator series as a bad analogy; it is brought online and comes to the conclusion that humanity should just be destroyed so the problem is resolved, basically its only options were; fire the missiles or not. (The films do not really go into what its moves would be after doing such a thing, but that goes into the realms of AI evolution so does not really fit with this question.) It may also have been badly programmed. Now, the human mind has been akin to a ternary system which allows our "out of the box" thinking along with all the other wonderful things our minds can do. So, would it not be more prudent to create a functional ternary system and program an AI using it so the resulting personality would be able to benefit from the third "maybe" (so to speak) option? I understand that in binary there are ways to get around the whole yes/no etc. way of things, however the basic operations are still just 1's and 0's. Again with using the above bad Skynet analogy; if it could have had that third "maybe" option as part of its core system, it may have decided to not launch due to being able to make sense of the intricacies of human nature and the politics of such a move etc. In effect, my question is; Would an AI benefit more from ternary computing as opposed to binary due to the inclusion of -1, or 2, dependent on the system ("maybe," as I call it)?

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  • Would having an undergraduate certificate in Computer Science help me get employed as a computer programmer? [on hold]

    - by JDneverSleeps
    I am wondering how would employers perceive the Universtiy Certificate in Computing and Information Systems offered by Athabasca University (a distance education institution... The university is legit and accredited by the Government of Alberta, Canada). I already have a BSc in Statistics from University of Alberta (a classic brick and mortar public university in Alberta, Canada)...so I can state in my resume that I have a "university degree"..... Luckily, I was able to secure a very good employment in my field after the graduation from the U of A. The main reason why I am interested in taking the certificate program through Athabasca is because knowing how to program can increase the chance for promotion in my current job. I also believe that if something turns out bad in my current job and if I ever need to look for a new place to work, having the certificate in computer science will help me get employed as a computer programmer (i.e. my choice for the new job wouldn't be restricted to the field of Statistics). Athabasca University is claiming that the certificate program is meant to be equivalent to the undergraduate minor in computing science. I carefully looked at the certificate's curriculum and as far as I am concerned, the certificate program does have the same level of rigour as the undergraduate minor in Computer Science programs offered by other Canadian universities. I am also confident that the certificate program will get me to pick up enough skills/background to start a career as a computer programmer. The reasons why I am not 100% sure on getting the certificate is worth the tuition are: Athabasca University is a distance education institution (accredited by government but still) The credential that I will receive is "university certificate", not a "undergraduate degree" Do you think it's a good idea for me to pursue the certificate, given the two facts above? again, I already have my Bachelor's degree - although it is not in CS Thanks,

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  • So You Want To Build a SPARC Cloud

    - by user12601629
    Did you ever wish you could get the industrial strength power of UNIX/RISC with the flexibility of cloud computing?  Well, now you can!  With recent advances from Oracle it's possible to build an incredibly high-performance, flexible, available virtualized infrastructure based on Solaris and SPARC.  Here's the recipe! Authored in collaboration across the Oracle "Systems Group" team, we now have a complete best practice guide for you.  Click below to download it: Best Practices for Building a Virtualized SPARC Computing Environment Inside you'll find recommendations for how and when to leverage technologies like: SPARC T4 OVM for SPARC hypervisor (version 2.2 and newer) Solaris 11 Ops Center 12c ZFS Storage Appliance Oracle network switches Based on following these best practices, you'll be able to construct a dynamic, virtualized infrastructure that allows for: Easy, GUI-based provisioning on new VMs Automated HA failover in the event of physical server failures Automatic load balancing across a cluster of VM hosts Complete end-to-end monitoring You should download this paper and check it out.  Even if you aren't planning on buying all new hardware, and instead want to transform some existing gear into a dynamic virtualized environment then this paper will give you concrete info on what to do and the trade-offs you'll make. Have fun getting started on your journey to build a SPARC cloud!

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  • Converting Openfire IM datetime values in SQL Server to / from VARCHAR(15) and DATETIME data types

    - by Brian Biales
    A client is using Openfire IM for their users, and would like some custom queries to audit user conversations (which are stored by Openfire in tables in the SQL Server database). Because Openfire supports multiple database servers and multiple platforms, the designers chose to store all date/time stamps in the database as 15 character strings, which get converted to Java Date objects in their code (Openfire is written in Java).  I did some digging around, and, so I don't forget and in case someone else will find this useful, I will put the simple algorithms here for converting back and forth between SQL DATETIME and the Java string representation. The Java string representation is the number of milliseconds since 1/1/1970.  SQL Server's DATETIME is actually represented as a float, the value being the number of days since 1/1/1900, the portion after the decimal point representing the hours/minutes/seconds/milliseconds... as a fractional part of a day.  Try this and you will see this is true:     SELECT CAST(0 AS DATETIME) and you will see it returns the date 1/1/1900. The difference in days between SQL Server's 0 date of 1/1/1900 and the Java representation's 0 date of 1/1/1970 is found easily using the following SQL:   SELECT DATEDIFF(D, '1900-01-01', '1970-01-01') which returns 25567.  There are 25567 days between these dates. So to convert from the Java string to SQL Server's date time, we need to convert the number of milliseconds to a floating point representation of the number of days since 1/1/1970, then add the 25567 to change this to the number of days since 1/1/1900.  To convert to days, you need to divide the number by 1000 ms/s, then by  60 seconds/minute, then by 60 minutes/hour, then by 24 hours/day.  Or simply divide by 1000*60*60*24, or 86400000.   So, to summarize, we need to cast this string as a float, divide by 86400000 milliseconds/day, then add 25567 days, and cast the resulting value to a DateTime.  Here is an example:   DECLARE @tmp as VARCHAR(15)   SET @tmp = '1268231722123'   SELECT @tmp as JavaTime, CAST((CAST(@tmp AS FLOAT) / 86400000) + 25567 AS DATETIME) as SQLTime   To convert from SQL datetime back to the Java time format is not quite as simple, I found, because floats of that size do not convert nicely to strings, they end up in scientific notation using the CONVERT function or CAST function.  But I found a couple ways around that problem. You can convert a date to the number of  seconds since 1/1/1970 very easily using the DATEDIFF function, as this value fits in an Int.  If you don't need to worry about the milliseconds, simply cast this integer as a string, and then concatenate '000' at the end, essentially multiplying this number by 1000, and making it milliseconds since 1/1/1970.  If, however, you do care about the milliseconds, you will need to use DATEPART to get the milliseconds part of the date, cast this integer to a string, and then pad zeros on the left to make sure this is three digits, and concatenate these three digits to the number of seconds string above.  And finally, I discovered by casting to DECIMAL(15,0) then to VARCHAR(15), I avoid the scientific notation issue.  So here are all my examples, pick the one you like best... First, here is the simple approach if you don't care about the milliseconds:   DECLARE @tmp as VARCHAR(15)   DECLARE @dt as DATETIME   SET @dt = '2010-03-10 14:35:22.123'   SET @tmp = CAST(DATEDIFF(s, '1970-01-01 00:00:00' , @dt) AS VARCHAR(15)) + '000'   SELECT @tmp as JavaTime, @dt as SQLTime If you want to keep the milliseconds:   DECLARE @tmp as VARCHAR(15)   DECLARE @dt as DATETIME   DECLARE @ms as int   SET @dt = '2010-03-10 14:35:22.123'   SET @ms as DATEPART(ms, @dt)   SET @tmp = CAST(DATEDIFF(s, '1970-01-01 00:00:00' , @dt) AS VARCHAR(15))           + RIGHT('000' + CAST(@ms AS VARCHAR(3)), 3)   SELECT @tmp as JavaTime, @dt as SQLTime Or, in one fell swoop:   DECLARE @dt as DATETIME   SET @dt = '2010-03-10 14:35:22.123'   SELECT @dt as SQLTime     , CAST(DATEDIFF(s, '1970-01-01 00:00:00' , @dt) AS VARCHAR(15))           + RIGHT('000' + CAST( DATEPART(ms, @dt) AS VARCHAR(3)), 3) as JavaTime   And finally, a way to simply reverse the math used converting from Java date to SQL date. Note the parenthesis - watch out for operator precedence, you want to subtract, then multiply:   DECLARE @dt as DATETIME   SET @dt = '2010-03-10 14:35:22.123'   SELECT @dt as SQLTime     , CAST(CAST((CAST(@dt as Float) - 25567.0) * 86400000.0 as DECIMAL(15,0)) as VARCHAR(15)) as JavaTime Interestingly, I found that converting to SQL Date time can lose some accuracy, when I converted the time above to Java time then converted  that back to DateTime, the number of milliseconds is 120, not 123.  As I am not interested in the milliseconds, this is ok for me.  But you may want to look into using DateTime2 in SQL Server 2008 for more accuracy.

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  • Comparing Apples and Pairs

    - by Tony Davis
    A recent study, High Costs and Negative Value of Pair Programming, by Capers Jones, pulls no punches in its assessment of the costs-to- benefits ratio of pair programming, two programmers working together, at a single computer, rather than separately. He implies that pair programming is a method rushed into production on a wave of enthusiasm for Agile or Extreme Programming, without any real regard for its effectiveness. Despite admitting that his data represented a far from complete study of the economics of pair programming, his conclusions were stark: it was 2.5 times more expensive, resulted in a 15% drop in productivity, and offered no significant quality benefits. The author provides a more scientific analysis than Jon Evans’ Pair Programming Considered Harmful, but the theme is the same. In terms of upfront-coding costs, pair programming is surely more expensive. The claim of productivity loss is dubious and contested by other studies. The third claim, though, did surprise me. The author’s data suggests that if both the pair and the individual programmers employ static code analysis and testing, then there is no measurable difference in the resulting code quality, in terms of defects per function point. In other words, pair programming incurs a massive extra cost for no tangible return in investment. There were, inevitably, many criticisms of his data and his conclusions, a few of which are persuasive. Firstly, that the driver/observer model of pair programming, on which the study bases its findings, is far from the most effective. For example, many find Ping-Pong pairing, based on use of test-driven development, far more productive. Secondly, that it doesn’t distinguish between “expert” and “novice” pair programmers– that is, independently of other programming skills, how skilled was an individual at pair programming. Thirdly, that his measure of quality is too narrow. This point rings true, certainly at Red Gate, where developers don’t pair program all the time, but use the method in short bursts, while tackling a tricky problem and needing a fresh perspective on the best approach, or more in-depth knowledge in a particular domain. All of them argue that pair programming, and collective code ownership, offers significant rewards, if not in terms of immediate “bug reduction”, then in removing the likelihood of single points of failure, and improving the overall quality and longer-term adaptability/maintainability of the design. There is also a massive learning benefit for both participants. One developer told me how he once worked in the same team over consecutive summers, the first time with no pair programming and the second time pair-programming two-thirds of the time, and described the increased rate of learning the second time as “phenomenal”. There are a great many theories on how we should develop software (Scrum, XP, Lean, etc.), but woefully little scientific research in their effectiveness. For a group that spends so much time crunching other people’s data, I wonder if developers spend enough time crunching data about themselves. Capers Jones’ data may be incomplete, but should cause a pause for thought, especially for any large IT departments, supporting commerce and industry, who are considering pair programming. It certainly shouldn’t discourage teams from exploring new ways of developing software, as long as they also think about how to gather hard data to gauge their effectiveness.

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  • Investigating Strategies For Functional Decomposition

    - by Liam McLennan
    Introducing Functional Decomposition Before I begin I must apologise. I think I am using the term ‘functional decomposition’ loosely, and probably incorrectly. For the purpose of this article I use functional decomposition to mean the recursive splitting of a large problem into increasingly smaller ones, so that the one large problem may be solved by solving a set of smaller problems. The justification for functional decomposition is that the decomposed problem is more easily solved. As software developers we recognise that the smaller pieces are more easily tested, since they do less and are more cohesive. Functional decomposition is important to all scientific pursuits. Once we understand natural selection we can start to look for humanities ancestral species, once we understand the big bang we can trace our expanding universe back to its origin. Isaac Newton acknowledged the compositional nature of his scientific achievements: If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants   The Two Strategies For Functional Decomposition of Computer Programs Private Methods When I was working on my undergraduate degree I was taught to functionally decompose problems by using private methods. Consider the problem of painting a house. The obvious solution is to solve the problem as a single unit: public void PaintAHouse() { // all the things required to paint a house ... } We decompose the problem by breaking it into parts: public void PaintAHouse() { PaintUndercoat(); PaintTopcoat(); } private void PaintUndercoat() { // everything required to paint the undercoat } private void PaintTopcoat() { // everything required to paint the topcoat } The problem can be recursively decomposed until a sufficiently granular level of detail is reached: public void PaintAHouse() { PaintUndercoat(); PaintTopcoat(); } private void PaintUndercoat() { prepareSurface(); fetchUndercoat(); paintUndercoat(); } private void PaintTopcoat() { fetchPaint(); paintTopcoat(); } According to Wikipedia, at least one computer programmer has referred to this process as “the art of subroutining”. The practical issues that I have encountered when using private methods for decomposition are: To preserve the top level API all of the steps must be private. This means that they can’t easily be tested. The private methods often have little cohesion except that they form part of the same solution. Decomposing to Classes The alternative is to decompose large problems into multiple classes, effectively using a class instead of each private method. The API delegates to related classes, so the API is not polluted by the sub-steps of the problem, and the steps can be easily tested because they are each in their own highly cohesive class. Additionally, I think that this technique facilitates better adherence to the Single Responsibility Principle, since each class can be decomposed until it has precisely one responsibility. Revisiting my previous example using class composition: public class HousePainter { private undercoatPainter = new UndercoatPainter(); private topcoatPainter = new TopcoatPainter(); public void PaintAHouse() { undercoatPainter.Paint(); topcoatPainter.Paint(); } } Summary When decomposing a problem there is more than one way to represent the sub-problems. Using private methods keeps the logic in one place and prevents a proliferation of classes (thereby following the four rules of simple design) but the class decomposition is more easily testable and more compatible with the Single Responsibility Principle.

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  • Can aptitude for learning Programming paradigms be influenced by culture or native language's gramma

    - by DVK
    It is well known that different people have different aptitudes regarding various programming paradigms (e.g. some people have trouble learning non-procedural, especially functional languages. Some people have trouble understanding pointers - see Joel Spolsky's blog for musings on that. Some people have trouble grasping recursion). I was recently reading about a study that looked at how the grammar of someone's native language affected their speed of learning math. Can't find that article now but a quick googling found this reference. That led me to wondering whether someone's native culture or first language might affect their aptitude towards various programming paradigms. I'm more curious about positive influences - e.g. some trait that make it easier/faster for someone to learn a particular paradigm, for example native language grammar being very recursion-oriented. To be clear, I'm looking for how culture/language grammare may affect the difference between aptitude of the same person towards various paradigms as opposed to how it affects overall aptitude towards programming between different persons. Important: the only answers I'm interested in are either references to scientific studies, or personal observations from someone intimately familiar with a particular culture/language, including from their own experience. E.g. I'm not interested in your opinion of how Chinese being your first language affects anything unless you speak Chinese or worked with extremely large set of Chinese-native programmers extensively. I'm OK with your guesstimates not based on scientific studies, but please be sure to supply your reasoning about plausible causes of your observation. I'm not interested in culture-bashing (any such commends will be deleted or flagged for deletion). I'm also not particularly interested in culture-building - we all know Linus is from Finland and Tetris was written in Russia and Larry Wall is an American. Any culture/nation can produce a brilliant mind in any discipline. I'm interested in averages.

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  • Stop Excel from changing cell contents, ever

    - by Enable Manual-Correct
    I work with card numbers, like credit card and ID numbers. We do not do any calculations with card numbers, obviously. They are "text." I format them as text, I type them like text. I know how that works. Excel doesn't care. 16 digit card numbers get their last digit turned into a zero, changed into scientific notation, stupid stuff that I did not tell Excel to do. I need to do things like Find/Remove spaces from cells in files downloaded from our currently imperfect web-system. The system sends me files with 16 digit numbers, cells formatted as text, but due to bugs there are spaces at the end. I do Find/Remove all spaces and all my card numbers are transformed into scientific notation and the last digit turned into a 0. THEY ARE TEXT, they are formatted as text, I yelled into the screen that they are text, why does Excel refuse to acknowledge that they are text? (I would rather find a way to stop Excel's action than find a way to tell our programmers to put an apostrophe in every cell) How do I make it so that Excel just STOPS doing anything that I didn't tell it to do? Or at least stop it from doing anything to numbers it doesn't like. Maybe I can write a macro for whenever it discovers "Uhoh I should change that number to something different!" I'll make it format that cell to text a thousand times instead. Give me an error when I try calculating with a number larger than 15 digits, make my computer explode violently, that's fine. Just stop changing the numbers. Is it possible? I have many thousands of numbers that need changing in many different scenarios. I just want to stop it from trying to help. I can't understand why that would be difficult. I have 2007, but answers for other versions would be great as well. Thank you!

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  • format, iomanip, c++

    - by Crystal
    I'm trying to learn to use namespaces declarations more definitive than not just say "using namespace std". I'm trying to format my data to 2 decimal places, and set the format to be fixed and not scientific. This is my main file: #include <iostream> #include <iomanip> #include "SavingsAccount.h" using std::cout; using std::setprecision; using std::ios_base; int main() { SavingsAccount *saver1 = new SavingsAccount(2000.00); SavingsAccount *saver2 = new SavingsAccount(3000.00); SavingsAccount::modifyInterestRate(.03); saver1->calculateMonthlyInterest(); saver2->calculateMonthlyInterest(); cout << ios_base::fixed << "saver1\n" << "monthlyInterestRate: " << saver1->getMonthlyInterest() << '\n' << "savingsBalance: " << saver1->getSavingsBalance() << '\n'; cout << "saver2\n" << "monthlyInterestRate: " << saver2->getMonthlyInterest() << '\n' << "savingsBalance: " << saver2->getSavingsBalance() << '\n'; } On Visual Studio 2008, when I run my program, I get an output of "8192" before the data I want. Is there a reason for that? Also, I don't think I am setting the fixed part or 2 decimal places correctly since I seem to get scientific notation once I added the setprecision(2). Thanks.

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  • Mixed Emotions: Humans React to Natural Language Computer

    - by Applications User Experience
    There was a big event in Silicon Valley on Tuesday, November 15. Watson, the natural language computer developed at IBM Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York, and its inventor and principal research investigator, David Ferrucci, were guests at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California for another round of the television game Jeopardy. You may have read about or watched on YouTube how Watson beat Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, two top Jeopardy competitors, last February. This time, Watson swept the floor with two Silicon Valley high-achievers, one a venture capitalist with a background  in math, computer engineering, and physics, and the other a technology and finance writer well-versed in all aspects of culture and humanities. Watson is the product of the DeepQA research project, which attempts to create an artificially intelligent computing system through advances in natural language processing (NLP), among other technologies. NLP is a computing strategy that seeks to provide answers by processing large amounts of unstructured data contained in multiple large domains of human knowledge. There are several ways to perform NLP, but one way to start is by recognizing key words, then processing  contextual  cues associated with the keyword concepts so that you get many more “smart” (that is, human-like) deductions,  rather than a series of “dumb” matches.  Jeopardy questions often require more than key word matching to get the correct answer; typically several pieces of information put together, often from vastly different categories, to come up with a satisfactory word string solution that can be rephrased as a question.  Smarter than your average search engine, but is it as smart as a human? Watson was especially fast at descrambling mixed-up state capital names, and recalling and pairing movie titles where one started and the other ended in the same word (e.g., Billion Dollar Baby Boom, where both titles used the word Baby). David said they had basically removed the variable of how fast Watson hit the buzzer compared to human contestants, but frustration frequently appeared on the faces of the contestants beaten to the punch by Watson. David explained that top Jeopardy winners like Jennings achieved their success with a similar strategy, timing their buzz to the end of the reading of the clue,  and “running the board”, being first to respond on about 60% of the clues.  Similar results for Watson. It made sense that Watson would be good at the technical and scientific stuff, so I figured the venture capitalist was toast. But I thought for sure Watson would lose to the writer in categories such as pop culture, wines and foods, and other humanities. Surprisingly, it held its own. I was amazed it could recognize a word definition of a syllogism in the category of philosophy. So what was the audience reaction to all of this? We started out expecting our formidable human contestants to easily run some of their categories; however, they started off on the wrong foot with the state capitals which Watson could unscramble so efficiently. By the end of the first round, contestants and the audience were feeling a little bit, well, …. deflated. Watson was winning by about $13,000, and the humans had gone into negative dollars. The IBM host said he was going to “slow Watson down a bit,” and the humans came back with respectable scores in Double Jeopardy. This was partially thanks to a very sympathetic audience (and host, also a human) providing “group-think” on many questions, especially baseball ‘s most valuable players, which by the way, couldn’t have been hard because even I knew them.  Yes, that’s right, the humans cheated. Since Watson could speak but not hear us (it didn’t have speech recognition capability), it was probably unaware of this. In Final Jeopardy, the single question had to do with law. I was sure Watson would blow this one, but all contestants were able to answer correctly about a copyright law. In a career devoted to making computers more helpful to people, I think I may have seen how a computer can do too much. I’m not sure I’d want to work side-by-side with a Watson doing my job. Certainly listening and empathy are important traits we humans still have over Watson.  While there was great enthusiasm in the packed room of computer scientists and their friends for this standing-room-only show, I think it made several of us uneasy (especially the poor human contestants whose egos were soundly bashed in the first round). This computer system, by the way , only took 4 years to program. David Ferrucci mentioned several practical uses for Watson, including medical diagnoses and legal strategies. Are you “the expert” in your job? Imagine NLP computing on an Oracle database.   This may be the user interface of the future to enable users to better process big data. How do you think you’d like it? Postscript: There were three little boys sitting in front of me in the very first row. They looked, how shall I say it, … unimpressed!

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  • College Courses through distance learning

    - by Matt
    I realize this isn't really a programming question, but didn't really know where to post this in the stackexchange and because I am a computer science major i thought id ask here. This is pretty unique to the programmer community since my degree is about 95% programming. I have 1 semester left, but i work full time. I would like to finish up in December, but to make things easier i like to take online classes whenever I can. So, my question is does anyone know of any colleges that offer distance learning courses for computer science? I have been searching around and found a few potential classes, but not sure yet. I would like to gather some classes and see what i can get approval for. Class I need: Only need one C SC 437 Geometric Algorithms C SC 445 Algorithms C SC 473 Automata Only need one C SC 452 Operating Systems C SC 453 Compilers/Systems Software While i only need of each of the above courses i still need to take two more electives. These also have to be upper 400 level classes. So i can take multiple in each category. Some other classes I can take are: CSC 447 - Green Computing CSC 425 - Computer Networking CSC 460 - Database Design CSC 466 - Computer Security I hoping to take one or two of these courses over the summer. If not, then online over the regular semester would be ok too. Any help in helping find these classes would be awesome. Maybe you went to a college that offered distance learning. Some of these classes may be considered to be graduate courses too. Descriptions are listed below if you need. Thanks! Descriptions Computer Security This is an introductory course covering the fundamentals of computer security. In particular, the course will cover basic concepts of computer security such as threat models and security policies, and will show how these concepts apply to specific areas such as communication security, software security, operating systems security, network security, web security, and hardware-based security. Computer Networking Theory and practice of computer networks, emphasizing the principles underlying the design of network software and the role of the communications system in distributed computing. Topics include routing, flow and congestion control, end-to-end protocols, and multicast. Database Design Functions of a database system. Data modeling and logical database design. Query languages and query optimization. Efficient data storage and access. Database access through standalone and web applications. Green Computing This course covers fundamental principles of energy management faced by designers of hardware, operating systems, and data centers. We will explore basic energy management option in individual components such as CPUs, network interfaces, hard drives, memory. We will further present the energy management policies at the operating system level that consider performance vs. energy saving tradeoffs. Finally we will consider large scale data centers where energy management is done at multiple layers from individual components in the system to shutting down entries subset of machines. We will also discuss energy generation and delivery and well as cooling issues in large data centers. Compilers/Systems Software Basic concepts of compilation and related systems software. Topics include lexical analysis, parsing, semantic analysis, code generation; assemblers, loaders, linkers; debuggers. Operating Systems Concepts of modern operating systems; concurrent processes; process synchronization and communication; resource allocation; kernels; deadlock; memory management; file systems. Algorithms Introduction to the design and analysis of algorithms: basic analysis techniques (asymptotics, sums, recurrences); basic design techniques (divide and conquer, dynamic programming, greedy, amortization); acquiring an algorithm repertoire (sorting, median finding, strong components, spanning trees, shortest paths, maximum flow, string matching); and handling intractability (approximation algorithms, branch and bound). Automata Introduction to models of computation (finite automata, pushdown automata, Turing machines), representations of languages (regular expressions, context-free grammars), and the basic hierarchy of languages (regular, context-free, decidable, and undecidable languages). Geometric Algorithms The study of algorithms for geometric objects, using a computational geometry approach, with an emphasis on applications for graphics, VLSI, GIS, robotics, and sensor networks. Topics may include the representation and overlaying of maps, finding nearest neighbors, solving linear programming problems, and searching geometric databases.

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  • Declarative Architectures in Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

    - by BuckWoody
    I deal with computing architectures by first laying out requirements, and then laying in any constraints for it's success. Only then do I bring in computing elements to apply to the system. As an example, a requirement might be "world-side availability" and a constraint might be "with less than 80ms response time and full HA" or something similar. Then I can choose from the best fit of technologies which range from full-up on-premises computing to IaaS, PaaS or SaaS. I also deal in abstraction layers - on-premises systems are fully under your control, in IaaS the hardware is abstracted (but not the OS, scale, runtimes and so on), in PaaS the hardware and the OS is abstracted and you focus on code and data only, and in SaaS everything is abstracted - you merely purchase the function you want (like an e-mail server or some such) and simply use it. When you think about solutions this way, the architecture moves to the primary factor in your decision. It's problem-first architecting, and then laying in whatever technology or vendor best fixes the problem. To that end, most architects design a solution using a graphical tool (I use Visio) and then creating documents that  let the rest of the team (and business) know what is required. It's the template, or recipe, for the solution. This is extremely easy to do for SaaS - you merely point out what the needs are, research the vendor and present the findings (and bill) to the business. IT might not even be involved there. In PaaS it's not much more complicated - you use the same Application Lifecycle Management and design tools you always have for code, such as Visual Studio or some other process and toolset, and you can "stamp out" the application in multiple locations, update it and so on. IaaS is another story. Here you have multiple machines, operating systems, patches, virus scanning, run-times, scale-patterns and tools and much more that you have to deal with, since essentially it's just an in-house system being hosted by someone else. You can certainly automate builds of servers - we do this as technical professionals every day. From Windows to Linux, it's simple enough to create a "build script" that makes a system just like the one we made yesterday. What is more problematic is being able to tie those systems together in a coherent way (as a solution) and then stamp that out repeatedly, especially when you might want to deploy that solution on-premises, or in one cloud vendor or another. Lately I've been working with a company called RightScale that does exactly this. I'll point you to their site for more info, but the general idea is that you document out your intent for a set of servers, and it will deploy them to on-premises clouds, Windows Azure, and other cloud providers all from the same script. In other words, it doesn't contain the images or anything like that - it contains the scripts to build them on-premises or on a cloud vendor like Microsoft. Using a tool like this, you combine the steps of designing a system (all the way down to passwords and accounts if you wish) and then the document drives the distribution and implementation of that intent. As time goes on and more and more companies implement solutions on various providers (perhaps for HA and DR) then this becomes a compelling investigation. The RightScale information is here, if you want to investigate it further. Yes, there are other methods I've found, but most are tied to a single kind of cloud, and I'm not into vendor lock-in. Poppa Bear Level - Hands-on EvaluateRightScale at no cost.  Just bring your Windows Azurecredentials and follow the these tutorials: Sign Up for Windows Azure Add     Windows Azure to a RightScale Account Windows Azure Virtual Machines     3-tier Deployment Momma Bear Level - Just the Right level... ;0)  WindowsAzure Evaluation Guide - if you are new toWindows Azure Virtual Machines and new to RightScale, we recommend that youread the entire evaluation guide to gain a more complete understanding of theWindows Azure + RightScale solution.    WindowsAzure Support Page @ support.rightscale.com - FAQ's, tutorials,etc. for  Windows Azure Virtual Machines (Work in Progress) Baby Bear Level - Marketing WindowsAzure Page @ www.rightscale.com - find overview informationincluding solution briefs and presentation & demonstration videos   Scale     and Automate Applications on Windows Azure  Solution Brief     - how RightScale makes Windows Azure Virtual Machine even better SQL     Server on Windows Azure  Solution Brief   -       Run Highly Available SQL Server on Windows Azure Virtual Machines

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  • Google Docs not importing CSVs consistently

    - by nick
    Hey everyone, I'm trying to import some csv data into google docs spreadsheet. The data I am entering is all made up of 16 digit integers. About 90% of them are imported perfectly but 10% are rewritten automatically into scientific notation. How do I turn this feature of. I just want all the numbers kept in their standard form. Kind Regards Nick

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  • What super-calculator do you use?

    - by Jeremy Rudd
    Windows Calculator can switch into a "Scientific" mode, getting more math and logical operators, but that's not good enough. I know there are tons of features its missing, such as the ones we see in the Windows 7 calc, or simply making things more visual. Its been years and I still haven't found a good calculator replacement. Suggestions? And hopefully your calc replaces MS Calc when I press the dedicated "calculator key" on my Keyboard, so I don't have to hunt around for a shortcut.

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  • On Linux, why does directory tab completion add a \ to a path starting with ~

    - by crobar
    On my work scientific linux 6.2 machine, I often start typing in a directory like below and use tab completion to finish it: ~/mydir But when I hit tab, it becomes e.g. \~/mydirectory/ With an extra forward slash at the start. Why is this, and can I prevent it? It's a pain because using cd etc. doesn't work with the extra slash, I have to start from the actual home directory which is something like /home/username/ On these PCs.

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  • Cross-platform restart of Apache

    - by l0b0
    I'd like to have a single command that'll restart Apache on any *nix OS. Currently I'm working with Ubuntu, which has /usr/sbin/apache2ctl /usr/sbin/service no apachectl no httpd and Scientific Linux CERN 5, which has /usr/sbin/apachectl /etc/init.d/httpd no apache2ctl no service I'd like to avoid using a hack like which service 2>/dev/null || which /etc/init.d/httpd

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