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• Team Foundation Server Setup/Access

  - by Angel Brighteyes

  What I need: A TFS 2010 Setup that allows 2 application developers to access the TFS from remote locations. How it is setup: Server 2008 Standard 2g Ram 300g HD space SharePoint Server 2007, using SQL Server 2005 SQL Server 2008 Standard Team Foundation Server 2010 IIS 7 Sharepoint Bindings: TFS.DynAccount.Me:80; TFS:80 TFS Bindings: TFS.DynAccount.Me:8080; TFS:8080 Using DynDNS service to account for the dynamic ip address being used, this is a requirement for the moment until I can get a better isp package. Access using Local Accounts Server is not setup on a domain, or as a domain. Consequently I did not setup AD services. Problem: When logged into TFS using my credentials TFS\AdminUser through the DynDNS account TFS.DynAccount.Me I recieve the 'Red X of Death' on the Documents and Reports folder. When logged into the TFS through the local peer to peer network using the same credentials TFS\AdminUser I do not receive the 'Red X of Death' problem. Further Troubleshooting: When users 'Right Click' the 'TeamProject1' Click 'Show Project Portal' it tries to take them to http://TFS:8080 instead of http://TFS.DynAccount.Me:8080, which doing further research I am assuming that it is because team foundation server was setup with a local name of TFS instead of 'TFS.DynAccount.Me' as specified here in Visual Studio Magazines: The Red X of Death. Users can Access the Team Portal for SharePoint via http://TFS.DynAccount.Me/TeamCollection/TeamProject so it is not like we are dead in the water or anything. However, as most employees/staff are prone to do, they have expressed a great distaste for having to do it this way and just be patient until the current project is finished since we are under a very strict deadline. Is there a way to set this up differently, or change some settings someplace, reinstall it, point a CName record for our domain website to the DynAccount (e.g. TFS.OurDomain.com points to TFS.DynAccount.Me, which consequently does allow access to the http site without issues), or something. I really don't feel like after all the time and effort I have spent into, first the cost, second the bloody install, third learning SharePoint well enough, fourth the hours into days spent on this, fifth more troubleshooting, sixth employee headaches to just let it lay where it is at. I figure in my spare/off time I would keep trying to get this to work. So I really appreciate any help any one can give me. I know this is probably something really stupid simple that I will 'Face Palm' over, but at the moment the stress and frustration just has me beat. Thank you again, this community has always been a great help.

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• Authorizing a computer to access a web application

  - by HackedByChinese

  I have a web application, and am tasked with adding secure sign-on to bolster security, akin to what Google has added to Google accounts. Use Case Essentially, when a user logs in, we want to detect if the user has previously authorized this computer. If the computer has not been authorized, the user is sent a one-time password (via email, SMS, or phone call) that they must enter, where the user may choose to remember this computer. In the web application, we will track authorized devices, allowing users to see when/where they logged in from that device last, and deauthorize any devices if they so choose. We require a solution that is very light touch (meaning, requiring no client-side software installation), and works with Safari, Chrome, Firefox, and IE 7+ (unfortunately). We will offer x509 security, which provides adequate security, but we still need a solution for customers that can't or won't use x509. My intention is to store authorization information using cookies (or, potentially, using local storage, degrading to flash cookies, and then normal cookies). At First Blush Track two separate values (local data or cookies): a hash representing a secure sign-on token, as well as a device token. Both values are driven (and recorded) by the web application, and dictated to the client. The SSO token is dependent on the device as well as a sequence number. This effectively allows devices to be deauthorized (all SSO tokens become invalid) and mitigates replay (not effectively, though, which is why I'm asking this question) through the use of a sequence number, and uses a nonce. Problem With this solution, it's possible for someone to just copy the SSO and device tokens and use in another request. While the sequence number will help me detect such an abuse and thus deauthorize the device, the detection and response can only happen after the valid device and malicious request both attempt access, which is ample time for damage to be done. I feel like using HMAC would be better. Track the device, the sequence, create a nonce, timestamp, and hash with a private key, then send the hash plus those values as plain text. Server does the same (in addition to validating the device and sequence) and compares. That seems much easier, and much more reliable.... assuming we can securely negotiate, exchange, and store private keys. Question So then, how can I securely negotiate a private key for authorized device, and then securely store that key? Is it more possible, at least, if I settle for storing the private key using local storage or flash cookies and just say it's "good enough"? Or, is there something I can do to my original draft to mitigate the vulnerability I describe?

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• Windows Service HTTPListener Memory Issue

  - by crawshaws

  Hi all, Im a complete novice to the "best practices" etc of writing in any code. I tend to just write it an if it works, why fix it. Well, this way of working is landing me in some hot water. I am writing a simple windows service to server a single webpage. (This service will be incorperated in to another project which monitors the services and some folders on a group of servers.) My problem is that whenever a request is recieved, the memory usage jumps up by a few K per request and keeps qoing up on every request. Now ive found that by putting GC.Collect in the mix it stops at a certain number but im sure its not meant to be used this way. I was wondering if i am missing something or not doing something i should to free up memory. Here is the code: Public Class SimpleWebService : Inherits ServiceBase 'Set the values for the different event log types. Public Const EVENT_ERROR As Integer = 1 Public Const EVENT_WARNING As Integer = 2 Public Const EVENT_INFORMATION As Integer = 4 Public listenerThread As Thread Dim HTTPListner As HttpListener Dim blnKeepAlive As Boolean = True Shared Sub Main() Dim ServicesToRun As ServiceBase() ServicesToRun = New ServiceBase() {New SimpleWebService()} ServiceBase.Run(ServicesToRun) End Sub Protected Overrides Sub OnStart(ByVal args As String()) If Not HttpListener.IsSupported Then CreateEventLogEntry("Windows XP SP2, Server 2003, or higher is required to " & "use the HttpListener class.") Me.Stop() End If Try listenerThread = New Thread(AddressOf ListenForConnections) listenerThread.Start() Catch ex As Exception CreateEventLogEntry(ex.Message) End Try End Sub Protected Overrides Sub OnStop() blnKeepAlive = False End Sub Private Sub CreateEventLogEntry(ByRef strEventContent As String) Dim sSource As String Dim sLog As String sSource = "Service1" sLog = "Application" If Not EventLog.SourceExists(sSource) Then EventLog.CreateEventSource(sSource, sLog) End If Dim ELog As New EventLog(sLog, ".", sSource) ELog.WriteEntry(strEventContent) End Sub Public Sub ListenForConnections() HTTPListner = New HttpListener HTTPListner.Prefixes.Add("http://*:1986/") HTTPListner.Start() Do While blnKeepAlive Dim ctx As HttpListenerContext = HTTPListner.GetContext() Dim HandlerThread As Thread = New Thread(AddressOf ProcessRequest) HandlerThread.Start(ctx) HandlerThread = Nothing Loop HTTPListner.Stop() End Sub Private Sub ProcessRequest(ByVal ctx As HttpListenerContext) Dim sb As StringBuilder = New StringBuilder sb.Append("<html><body><h1>Test My Service</h1>") sb.Append("</body></html>") Dim buffer() As Byte = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(sb.ToString) ctx.Response.ContentLength64 = buffer.Length ctx.Response.OutputStream.Write(buffer, 0, buffer.Length) ctx.Response.OutputStream.Close() ctx.Response.Close() sb = Nothing buffer = Nothing ctx = Nothing 'This line seems to keep the mem leak down 'System.GC.Collect() End Sub End Class Please feel free to critisise and tear the code apart but please BE KIND. I have admitted I dont tend to follow the best practice when it comes to coding.

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• Personal Project - Next practical language/tech to learn

  - by Paul Nathan

  I'm working on a personal project doing some finance analysis. It's a totally new field for me, and I'm really having fun with it so far, plus working in the high-level language arena is a great break from my embedded systems daytime work. I have a MySQL backend on a non-local server with a pile of stock data. My task now is to do some analysis of the stocks and produce something approximating a useful result. There are a couple technical difficulties. (1) I have a lot of records. To be precise, I believe I'm near 100K records right now, and this number grows by 6.1K each weekday. I need to create a way to rummage through these fields and do data analysis - based on a given computation, go look at this other set. Fine and dandy, nothing too outre. But this means I could really use a straightforward API for talking to MySQL. (2) Ideally, it runs on OS X 10.4.11. No Windows/Linux machine at home. (3) I can use PHP, C++, Perl, etc. I even have an R installation. I'm pretty flexible with stuff, so long as it runs on OS X. (Lots of options here, pick water, H20, or dihydrogen monoxide ;-) ) (4)Lack of hassle. While I like clever and fun ways of doing things, I'm trying to get some analysis done, not spend ten hours doing installation work and scratching my head figuring out a theoretical syntax question needed to spout out "hello world". What's the question? I'd like to dig into something different than my usual PHP/C++/C toolset. I'm looking for recommendations for languages/technologies that will assist me and meet the above requirements. In particular, I've heard a lot of buzz about F# and Python on SO. I've used CLISP for small problems before, and kinda liked it. I'm seeking opinions about those in particular. edit:since I rent the DB server and have a limited amount of CPU time online, I'm trying to do the analysis on a local machine.

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• How do I reward my developers for the little things they get right?

  - by Nat

  I am in a tech lead role and my developers get stuff right most of the time. How do I communicate to them thier value to me? (I.e. they have value because I do not have to go through and point out mistakes which means I do not have to watch them like a hawk which frees me to do more useful things). In summary For doing the mundane well on a day to day basis, it is good to recognise the developers effort verbally to them. An honest thankyou that mentions the specific behaviour and its positive repercussions to you personally will be well received, adjust the language to suite each individual. (Note that other developers within earshot may also respond to this by increasing their efforts in this specific activity.) Other things that should be done regularly are: Team drinks In many cultures this is an entirely worthy way of giving the team some time to socialise and relax. Be sure that you do not exclude people who do not drink or are not keen on pub culture. Shared meals are another option. Formal written (email) acknowledgment and praise to senior managers of the teams efforts and successes. (Note that acknowledging individuals alone may damage team spirit) Work the hours you expect your team to do. If they absolutely must work late for a deadline, be there in support Go to bat for the team. Refuse to let them be forced to work long periods of overtime without compensation. Protect them from level politics and stress. Give your team the best equipment you can afford. Good tools show respect and improve productivity. Small or large team rewards where appropriate can consist of many interesting activities/ items. If it allows the team to get together in a fun and even lightly competitive manner it will work (foosball table, go-karting, darts board, video game console etc). Don’t forget to listen to what the team wants, each team will have different ideas. Ensure they are getting a fair deal financially from the company. While different people may have different expectations of their pay, someone being paid unfairly will rot morale for the entire team

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• Should I use Python or Assembly for a super fast copy program

  - by PyNEwbie

  As a maintenance issue I need to routinely (3-5 times per year) copy a repository that is now has over 20 million files and exceeds 1.5 terabytes in total disk space. I am currently using RICHCOPY, but have tried others. RICHCOPY seems the fastest but I do not believe I am getting close to the limits of the capabilities of my XP machine. I am toying around with using what I have read in The Art of Assembly Language to write a program to copy my files. My other thought is to start learning how to multi-thread in Python to do the copies. I am toying around with the idea of doing this in Assembly because it seems interesting, but while my time is not incredibly precious it is precious enough that I am trying to get a sense of whether or not I will see significant enough gains in copy speed. I am assuming that I would but I only started really learning to program 18 months and it is still more or less a hobby. Thus I may be missing some fundamental concept of what happens with interpreted languages. Any observations or experiences would be appreciated. Note, I am not looking for any code. I have already written a basic copy program in Python 2.6 that is no slower than RICHCOPY. I am looking for some observations on which will give me more speed. Right now it takes me over 50 hours to make a copy from a disk to a Drobo and then back from the Drobo to a disk. I have a LogicCube for when I am simply duplicating a disk but sometimes I need to go from a disk to Drobo or the reverse. I am thinking that given that I can sector copy a 3/4 full 2 terabyte drive using the LogicCube in under seven hours I should be able to get close to that using Assembly, but I don't know enough to know if this is valid. (Yes, sometimes ignorance is bliss) The reason I need to speed it up is I have had two or three cycles where something has happened during copy (fifty hours is a long time to expect the world to hold still) that has caused me to have to trash the copy and start over. For example, last week the water main broke under our building and shorted out the power.

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• What is a good dumbed-down, safe template system for PHP?

  - by Wilhelm

  (Summary: My users need to be able to edit the structure of their dynamically generated web pages without being able to do any damage.) Greetings, ladies and gentlemen. I am currently working on a service where customers from a specific demographic can create a specific type of web site and fill it with their own content. The system is written in PHP. Many of the users of this system wish to edit how their particular web site looks, or, more commonly, have a designer do it for them. Editing the CSS is fine and dandy, but sometimes that's not enough. Sometimes they want to shuffle the entire page structure around by editing the raw HTML of the dynamically created web pages. The templating system used by WordPress is, as far as I can see, perfect for my use. Except for one thing which is critically important. In addition to being able to edit how comments are displayed or where the menu goes, someone editing a template can have that template execute arbitrary PHP code. As the same codebase runs all these different sites, with all content in the same databse, allowing my users to run arbitrary code is clearly out of the question. So what I need, is a dumbed-down, idiot-proof templating system where my users can edit most of the page structure on their own, pulling in the dynamic sections wherever, without being able to even echo 1+1;. Observe the following psuedocode: <!DOCTYPE html> <title><!-- $title --></title> <!-- header() --> <!-- menu() --> <div>Some random custom crap added by the user.</div> <!-- page_content() --> That's the degree of power I'd like to grant my users. They don't need to do their own loops or calculations or anything. Just include my variables and functions and leave the rest to me. I'm sure I'm not the only person on the planet that needs something like this. Do you know of any ready-made templating systems I could use? Thanks in advance for your reply.

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• Workflow for statistical analysis and report writing

  - by ws

  Does anyone have any wisdom on workflows for data analysis related to custom report writing? The use-case is basically this: Client commissions a report that uses data analysis, e.g. a population estimate and related maps for a water district. The analyst downloads some data, munges the data and saves the result (e.g. adding a column for population per unit, or subsetting the data based on district boundaries). The analyst analyzes the data created in (2), gets close to her goal, but sees that needs more data and so goes back to (1). Rinse repeat until the tables and graphics meet QA/QC and satisfy the client. Write report incorporating tables and graphics. Next year, the happy client comes back and wants an update. This should be as simple as updating the upstream data by a new download (e.g. get the building permits from the last year), and pressing a "RECALCULATE" button, unless specifications change. At the moment, I just start a directory and ad-hoc it the best I can. I would like a more systematic approach, so I am hoping someone has figured this out... I use a mix of spreadsheets, SQL, ARCGIS, R, and Unix tools. Thanks! PS: Below is a basic Makefile that checks for dependencies on various intermediate datasets (w/ ".RData" suffix) and scripts (".R" suffix). Make uses timestamps to check dependencies, so if you 'touch ss07por.csv', it will see that this file is newer than all the files / targets that depend on it, and execute the given scripts in order to update them accordingly. This is still a work in progress, including a step for putting into SQL database, and a step for a templating language like sweave. Note that Make relies on tabs in its syntax, so read the manual before cutting and pasting. Enjoy and give feedback! http://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/html%5Fnode/index.html#Top R=/home/wsprague/R-2.9.2/bin/R persondata.RData : ImportData.R ../../DATA/ss07por.csv Functions.R $R --slave -f ImportData.R persondata.Munged.RData : MungeData.R persondata.RData Functions.R $R --slave -f MungeData.R report.txt: TabulateAndGraph.R persondata.Munged.RData Functions.R $R --slave -f TabulateAndGraph.R report.txt

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• Load on page inside another onClick

  - by Robin I Knight

  Hello, I need to include the content, scripts, forms and dynamic abilities of one page in another onClick. Take a look at http://www.divethegap.com/scuba-diving-programmes-dive-the-gap/dahab-master-scuba-diver.html Then follow one of the links that says 'Beginner' 'Open Water Diver' etc.... You will find a PHP page with a series of options. It is an adaption of the wordpress blog system to produce only specific options for specific programmes by considering each type of each diving programme a category and then displaying only results from that category. You will see that each option is also a collapsible panel and there are also several javascripts that calculate durations, quantities and prices. There is also a validating webform at the end. Now go back to the first page. What I would like to do is include all the content from the second page after the main header inside tabbed panels on the first page so that the customers can immidietly see everything that is included. Essentially the options on the first page would become a series of tabs. The only way I can see to do this is with an iFrame as each option would need a unique URL ending (that is .php?cat=26 or .php?cat=27). THe problem is that the collapsible panels will not work with an iFrame as the iFrame will not resize when the panels open. There were also some calculation problems, but I think that was more down to me staring at the screen for the last 3 hours not remembering to include everything. I have tried it with resizing iframe SSI scripts and have got nowhere. I tried actually embedding it in the page better with a ajax script, but that left behind all the scripts that make it work. I checked with full URL's on everything and it would not take work with any scripts. I know that you could just make the whole page reload but then the user would be at the top of the page again, and even if another script was applied to slowly bring them down again it would not be anything near as easy to use as if it was like tabbed panels. Any ideas. Kind Regards,

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• WTF is wtf? (in WebKit code base)

  - by Motti

  I downloaded Chromium's code base and ran across the WTF namespace. namespace WTF { /* * C++'s idea of a reinterpret_cast lacks sufficient cojones. */ template<typename TO, typename FROM> TO bitwise_cast(FROM in) { COMPILE_ASSERT(sizeof(TO) == sizeof(FROM), WTF_wtf_reinterpret_cast_sizeof_types_is_equal); union { FROM from; TO to; } u; u.from = in; return u.to; } } // namespace WTF Does this mean what I think it means? Could be so, the bitwise_cast implementation specified here will not compile if either TO or FROM is not a POD and is not (AFAIK) more powerful than C++ built in reinterpret_cast. The only point of light I see here is the nobody seems to be using bitwise_cast in the Chromium project. I see there's some legalese so I'll put in the little letters to keep out of trouble. /* * Copyright (C) 2008 Apple Inc. All Rights Reserved. * * Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without * modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions * are met: * 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright * notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. * 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright * notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the * documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. * * THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY APPLE INC. ``AS IS'' AND ANY * EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE * IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR * PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL APPLE INC. OR * CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, * EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, * PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR * PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY * OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT * (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE * OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. */

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• Please help me debug my SQL query.

  - by bob09

  I have a query: Select n_portions, dish_name from food_order, dish where n_portions= (select max (n_portions) FROM food_order); It's meant to return: fish pie 3 steak and chips 1 pasta bake 2 stuffed peppers 1 But i get: Pasta bake 35 Fish pie 35 Steak and chips 35 Stuffed peppers 35 Ham and rice 35 Lamb curry 35 Why is this happing? table data table data Insert into customer_order values ('00001', '03-Apr-09', '07-apr-09','St. Andrew St'); Insert into customer_order values ('00002', '05-Apr-09', '01-May-09', 'St. Andrew St'); Insert into customer_order values ('00003', '12-Apr-09', '27-Apr-09', 'Union St'); Insert into customer_order values ('00004', '12-Apr-09', '17-Apr-09', 'St. Andrew St'); Insert into Dish values ('D0001', 'Pasta bake', 'yes', '6.00'); Insert into Dish values ('D0002', 'Fish pie', 'no', '9.00'); Insert into Dish values ('D0003', 'Steak and chips', 'no', '14.00'); Insert into Dish values ('D0004', 'Stuffed peppers', 'yes', '11.50'); Insert into Dish values ('D0005', 'Ham and rice' , 'no', '7.25'); Insert into Dish values ('D0006', 'Lamb curry' , 'no', '8.50'); Insert into Drink values ('DR0001', 'Water', 'soft', '1.0'); Insert into Drink values ('DR0002', 'Coffee', 'hot', '1.70'); Insert into Drink values ('DR0003', 'Wine' , 'alcoholic', '3.00'); Insert into Drink values ('DR0004', 'Beer' , 'alcoholic', '2.30'); Insert into Drink values ('DR0005', 'Tea' , 'hot' , '1.50'); Insert into food_order values ('F000001', '000001', 'D0003', '6'); Insert into food_order values ('F000002', '000001', 'D0001', '4'); Insert into food_order values ('F000003', '000001', 'D0004', '3'); Insert into food_order values ('F000004', '000002', 'D0001', '10'); Insert into food_order values ('F000005', '000002', 'D0002', '10'); Insert into food_order values ('F000006', '000003', 'D0002', '35'); Insert into food_order values ('F000007', '000004', 'D0002', '23'); Insert into drink_order values ('D000001', '000001', 'DR0001', '13'); Insert into drink_order values ('D000002', '000001', 'DR0002', '13'); Insert into drink_order values ('D000003', '000001', 'DR0004', '13'); Insert into drink_order values ('D000004', '000002', 'DROOO1', '20'); Insert into drink_order values ('D000005', '000002', 'DR0003', '20'); Insert into drink_order values ('D000006', '000002', 'DR0004', '15'); Insert into drink_order values ('D000007', '000003', 'DR0002', '35'); Insert into drink_order values ('D000008', '000004', 'DR0001', '23'); Insert into drink_order values ('D000009', '000004', 'DR0003', '15'); Insert into drink_order values ('D0000010', '000004', 'DR0004', '15');

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• Vacuum spread in a tile-based space game (like in Faster Than Light game)

  - by Reeze

  I've a space game with tilemap that looks like this (simplified): Map view - from top (like in SimCity 1) 0 - room space, 1 - some kind of wall, 8 - "lock" beetween rooms public int[,] _layer = new int[,] { { 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}, { 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}, { 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}, { 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}, { 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}, { 1, 1, 8, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}, { 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}, { 0, 1, 0, 8, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}, { 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}, { 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}, { 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}, }; Each tile contains Air property (100 = air, 0 = vacuum). I made a little helper method to take tiles near tile with vacuum (to "suck air"): Point[] GetNearCells(Point cell, int distance = 1, bool diag = false) { Point topCell = new Point(cell.X, cell.Y - distance); Point botCell = new Point(cell.X, cell.Y + distance); Point leftCell = new Point(cell.X - distance, cell.Y); Point rightCell = new Point(cell.X + distance, cell.Y); if (diag) { return new[] { topCell, botCell, leftCell, rightCell }; } Point topLeftCell = new Point(cell.X - distance, cell.Y - distance); Point topRightCell = new Point(cell.X + distance, cell.Y + distance); Point botLeftCell = new Point(cell.X - distance, cell.Y - distance); Point botRightCell = new Point(cell.X - distance, cell.Y - distance); return new[] { topCell, botCell, leftCell, rightCell, topLeftCell, topRightCell, botLeftCell, botRightCell }; } What is the best practice to fill rooms with vacuum (decrease air) from some point? Should i use some kind of water flow? Thank you for any help!

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• Flickering Image in Java?

  - by Noah Cagle

  OK so I am coding a game right now to prepair for Ludum Dare SharkJam, and I am using a new method for programming, because the last method I had crashes my PC, so this one should work. Well it does work and all, better too, but the images that I put in it flicker. Here is the whole main class (where the images are drawn) package me.NoahCagle.watermaze; import java.awt.Color; import java.awt.Graphics; import java.awt.Image; import java.awt.image.BufferedImage; import javax.swing.JFrame; import me.NoahCagle.watermaze.entity.EntityShark; import me.NoahCagle.watermaze.entity.Player; import me.NoahCagle.watermaze.input.Keys; import me.NoahCagle.watermaze.map.Map; public class Game extends JFrame { private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L; Map map = new Map(0, 0); Player player = new Player(50, 30); static EntityShark shark = new EntityShark(400, 400); public Image dbImage; public Game() { setSize(800, 600); setDefaultCloseOperation(EXIT_ON_CLOSE); setLocationRelativeTo(null); setVisible(true); setTitle("Water Maze"); setResizable(false); setBackground(Color.blue); addKeyListener(new Keys()); } public static void main(String[] args) { new Game(); Thread s = new Thread(shark); s.start(); } public void paint(Graphics g) { dbImage = new BufferedImage(getWidth(), getHeight(), BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_RGB); g.drawImage(dbImage, map.x, map.y, null); g.drawImage(player.player, player.x, player.y, this); g.drawImage(shark.shark, shark.x, shark.y, this); repaint(); } } What this code does for me is makes the Images work correctly, just flickering, alot. Can anyone help me with my issue? EDIT: I think it has something to do with where I call the repaint method in the paint method, so look there.

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• How should I ask for help in getting my emails to stop bouncing?

  - by Gregg Williams

  For several months, people have been telling me that emails they sent to me have been bouncing back, marked as undeliverable. The bounce message would contain portions like this: Final-Recipient: rfc822;[email protected] Action: failed Status: 5.7.1 Diagnostic-Code: smtp;550 5.7.1 <[email protected]>... Recipient declines email from 69.64.159.2, <spamhaus-xbl>, Ref: http://www.spamhaus.org/query/bl?ip=69.64.159.2 Clicking the link on the last line, the destination page told me that "this IP address is infected with/emitting spamware/spamtrojan traffic and needs to be fixed." I could temporarily de-list this node by clicking a link on that page, but it would get back on the list and more emails to me to bounce. I own a domain, innerpaths.net, and I normally use [email protected] for my email. I have my domain registrar, namecheap.com, forward all email from innerpaths.net to the email account [email protected]. (BTW, I had this same problem at a former registrar. I changed registrars, hoping that would fix the problem. It didn't.) Trying to isolate the problem, I asked namecheap.com what I should do. Their answer, though substantial, left me scratching my head: We have received feedback from our upstream provider which informed us that the mail server that you are trying to email subscribes to a 3rd party blacklist service which they appear to be listed on at the present time and is causing destination mail server to reject the messages. Being blocked with one of these services can happen to anyone for many reasons and is something that is beyond our control. 3rd party blacklist services require companies whose mail servers they have blacklisted, pay fees in order to be removed from their lists. As we cannot pay fees to blacklist services which require them for removal, you should contact your email provider and have them whitelist our mail server IP address: 69.64.157.73. My best guess is that I should email my ISP, sonic.net, tell them what is going on and ask them to whitelist the IP address 69.64.157.73. (If not, please let me know.) But I want to know what is going on and how email works. I understand that there's a device at location 69.64.159.2 that is doing something bad that causes the "destination mail server [sonic.net's, I assume --gw] to reject the messages." I know that email is sent through multiple devices in a way that eventually gets it to its destination. Beyond that, here are my questions: 1) I thought the Internet "routed around damage." Why does email starting at namecheap.com always (or is it 'sometimes'?) go through 69.64.159.2? 2) Who is the "upstream provider" that the namecheap.com representative mentions, and what is their role? 3) How does having sonic.net's whitelisting namecheap.com's mail server prevent my email being bounced by 69.64.159.2? I've searched the Internet for answers but have found nothing useful. Thanks for whatever answers you can provide.

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• Is it possible to repair a Cisco 3500 XL (3548) switch with POST Error messages?

  - by Alex

  I've got an old Cisco 3500 XL, and it seems to have hardware issues. I've loaded the latest IOS and cleared all config. Does anyone have any experience fixing the switch core? I'm a reasonably competent SMD solderer, can I replace/reflow some chips? I've checked the power supply voltages and it's all within tolerance, and no visible signs of any component damage. Some chips are hot to the touch. I understand that these were EOL as of 2007, but should have a lifetime warranty for the electronics. I don't have a Cisco support contract, so I can't file a ticket. What should I do? Console output: switch: dir flash: Directory of flash:/ 2 -rwx 1811584 <date> c3500xl-c3h2s-mz.120-5.WC17.bin 1799680 bytes available (1812992 bytes used) switch: boot Loading "flash:c3500xl-c3h2s-mz.120-5.WC17.bin"...################################################################################################################################################################################### File "flash:c3500xl-c3h2s-mz.120-5.WC17.bin" uncompressed and installed, entry point: 0x3000 executing... Restricted Rights Legend Use, duplication, or disclosure by the Government is subject to restrictions as set forth in subparagraph (c) of the Commercial Computer Software - Restricted Rights clause at FAR sec. 52.227-19 and subparagraph (c) (1) (ii) of the Rights in Technical Data and Computer Software clause at DFARS sec. 252.227-7013. cisco Systems, Inc. 170 West Tasman Drive San Jose, California 95134-1706 Cisco Internetwork Operating System Software IOS (tm) C3500XL Software (C3500XL-C3H2S-M), Version 12.0(5)WC17, RELEASE SOFTWARE (fc1) Copyright (c) 1986-2007 by cisco Systems, Inc. Compiled Tue 13-Feb-07 15:04 by antonino Image text-base: 0x00003000, data-base: 0x00352924 Initializing C3500XL flash... flashfs[1]: 1 files, 1 directories flashfs[1]: 0 orphaned files, 0 orphaned directories flashfs[1]: Total bytes: 3612672 flashfs[1]: Bytes used: 1812992 flashfs[1]: Bytes available: 1799680 flashfs[1]: flashfs fsck took 3 seconds. flashfs[1]: Initialization complete. ...done Initializing C3500XL flash. C3500XL POST: System Board Test: Passed C3500XL POST: Daughter Card Test: Passed C3500XL POST: CPU Buffer Test: Passed C3500XL POST: CPU Notify RAM Test: Passed C3500XL POST: CPU Interface Test: Passed C3500XL POST: Testing Switch Core: Passed Error with Switch Core BIST test Phase 0. Returns: Test Complete Low : 0x0FFFFFFF, Test Complete High : 0xFFFFFFFE Test Phase Low : 0x00000040, Test Phase High : 0x00000000 Test Phase Third : 0x00000000, Test Complete Third : 0x000001F8 C3500XL POST FAILURE: Testing Switch Core: Failed C3500XL POST FAILURE: Testing Buffer Table: Failed C3500XL POST FAILURE: Data Buffer Test: Failed C3500XL POST FAILURE: Configuring Switch Parameters: Failed C3500XL POST FAILURE: Switch Core BIST failed. C3500XL POST FAILURE: Cannot test Modules due to failure of Switch Core POST Del Mar Failure (0th Del Mar): req system failed to init C3500XL POST FAILURE: C3500XL POST FAILURE: ATM: required system failed to init C3500XL POST: Ethernet Controller Test: Passed C3500XL POST FAILURE: MII Test: Failed C3500XL POST FAILURE: Error waiting for Ethernet Controller and SW_PARAMS C3500XL POST FAILURE: Initialization/POST failed C3500XL POST FAILURE: AT: Failing because system POST failed Exception (8192)! Debug Exception (Could be NULL pointer dereference) CPU Register Context: Vector = 0x00002000 PC = 0x000F36F4 MSR = 0x00029200 CR = 0x22000024 LR = 0x000F6964 CTR = 0x001DE46C XER = 0x00000000 R0 = 0x00000000 R1 = 0x004E2580 R2 = 0x00000000 R3 = 0x00000000 R4 = 0x00000001 R5 = 0x00000000 R6 = 0x004E2718 R7 = 0x004E2718 R8 = 0x00000008 R9 = 0x00000000 R10 = 0x0000FFFF R11 = 0x00480000 R12 = 0x42000024 R13 = 0x00000000 R14 = 0x00000000 R15 = 0x00000000 R16 = 0x00000000 R17 = 0x00000000 R18 = 0x00000000 R19 = 0x00000000 R20 = 0x00000000 R21 = 0x00000000 R22 = 0x00000000 R23 = 0x00000000 R24 = 0x00000000 R25 = 0x00000020 R26 = 0x004E2718 R27 = 0x004E2718 R28 = 0x00000020 R29 = 0x00002513 R30 = 0x00000001 R31 = 0x00000000 Stack trace: PC = 0x000F36F4, SP = 0x004E2580 Frame 00: SP = 0x004E25A0 PC = 0x40000016 Frame 01: SP = 0x004E2618 PC = 0x000F6964 Frame 02: SP = 0x004E26A8 PC = 0x000F76DC Frame 03: SP = 0x004E26C8 PC = 0x000E8114 Frame 04: SP = 0x004E26F0 PC = 0x001F5BF8 Frame 05: SP = 0x004E2710 PC = 0x001F5CF4 Frame 06: SP = 0x004E2748 PC = 0x0023F4DC Frame 07: SP = 0x004E2750 PC = 0x0023E650 Frame 08: SP = 0x004E27C8 PC = 0x0023E89C Frame 09: SP = 0x004E27E0 PC = 0x0028AF34 Frame 10: SP = 0x004E27E8 PC = 0x001E38F8 Frame 11: SP = 0x004E2808 PC = 0x001E39A8 Frame 12: SP = 0x004E2820 PC = 0x0014E220 Frame 13: SP = 0x004E28C8 PC = 0x0014E39C Frame 14: SP = 0x00000000 PC = 0x001EB510

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• Strange Upload Problem on Hyper-V

  - by Ring0

  Hi, This one is driving me totally nuts. I have being trying to upload a file to www.virustotal.com (its a harmless exe I have since found out - DiskWipe.exe from diskwipe.org). Using IE8. From Win 7 and Win 2008 R2 Datacenter (which I select to boot from vhd's) onto my main machine hardware, and also on another Win 7 PC elsewhere on my network, when I upload the file to virustotal.com it works perfectly. So, using my native NIC's everything is fine. Using another machine also perfect. Right. OK, from my boot menu the default is my main development machine - the one I'm typing on now. This runs on the metal and has Hyper-V role and I have some guests. All guests are not running. Amazingly, from my console (root partition to be exact) or any guest OS 2003 /XP / 2008 R2 etc. My upload to virustotal.com slows at 32% then HANGS at 38.something% & never finishes!! Here is the kicker. I have another box (my main server) running Hyper-V on the metal and three live guests. Identical H/W to my main dev machine in another room. (Except OS is Datacenter - Mine is Enterprise). If I try and upload from its bare metal console or any guest this file to virustotal.com using IE8 it stops exactly in the same place!! As for "steps I have tried etc." are kind-of blown out of the water as my server box is doing the precise same thing as the machine in my room here. OK, comonalities: Mobo: Gigabyte GA-X58-UD5, 12GB Kingston RAM, Corei7 920 4 cores hyperthreading = 8 & Realtek RTL8168D/8111D Family PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet NIC's. All 3 machines have this same motherboard - revision F11 Bios, all have 12GB RAM, all have the Realtek Nic's. All x64 by the way as I mentioned before I have a Win 7 box also with the UD5 m/Board, 12 GB RAM - bit of an overkill. :-) All these machines when NOT running Hyper-V can upload this file. Perhaps you may like to try it on a Hyepr-v (2008 R2) yourselves with IE8 and the desktop experience is on. See if it works or fails for you. Root OS or any guest. So, looking like its the NIC + Hyper-V = Cannot upload this file (any file I must add.) Realtek Nic is Ver 7.002.1125.2008. Using IE8 I see in the nic settings there are the usual parameters for Jumbo frames / Checksum offloading etc. several others. Should I fiddle with these? I ran Netmon 3.3 in a guest and the TCP session halted as the upload failed. I suppose I could study that further. I dont have Netmon on the root partition machine (yet)! All OS's fully patched - including todays defender files. My box running Office 2007 - but identical server in another room is not. Also, if I fire up a VPN to a distant client and do the upload it works! Of course its a different network path. Suggestions welcome please. If I left out anything important - please yell at me. Many Thanks,

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• Ubuntu 14.04, OpenLDAP TLS problems

  - by larsemil

  So i have set up an openldap server using this guide here. It worked fine. But as i want to use sssd i also need TLS to be working for ldap. So i looked into and followed the TLS part of the guide. And i never got any errors and slapd started fine again. BUT. It does not seem to work when i try to use ldap over tls. root@server:~# ldapsearch -x -ZZ -H ldap://83.209.243.253 -b dc=daladevelop,dc=se ldap_start_tls: Protocol error (2) additional info: unsupported extended operation Ganking up the debug level some notches returns some more information: root@server:~# ldapsearch -x -ZZ -H ldap://83.209.243.253 -b dc=daladevelop,dc=se -d 5 ldap_url_parse_ext(ldap://83.209.243.253) ldap_create ldap_url_parse_ext(ldap://83.209.243.253:389/??base) ldap_extended_operation_s ldap_extended_operation ldap_send_initial_request ldap_new_connection 1 1 0 ldap_int_open_connection ldap_connect_to_host: TCP 83.209.243.253:389 ldap_new_socket: 3 ldap_prepare_socket: 3 ldap_connect_to_host: Trying 83.209.243.253:389 ldap_pvt_connect: fd: 3 tm: -1 async: 0 ldap_open_defconn: successful ldap_send_server_request ber_scanf fmt ({it) ber: ber_scanf fmt ({) ber: ber_flush2: 31 bytes to sd 3 ldap_result ld 0x7f25df51e220 msgid 1 wait4msg ld 0x7f25df51e220 msgid 1 (infinite timeout) wait4msg continue ld 0x7f25df51e220 msgid 1 all 1 ** ld 0x7f25df51e220 Connections: * host: 83.209.243.253 port: 389 (default) refcnt: 2 status: Connected last used: Fri Jun 6 08:52:16 2014 ** ld 0x7f25df51e220 Outstanding Requests: * msgid 1, origid 1, status InProgress outstanding referrals 0, parent count 0 ld 0x7f25df51e220 request count 1 (abandoned 0) ** ld 0x7f25df51e220 Response Queue: Empty ld 0x7f25df51e220 response count 0 ldap_chkResponseList ld 0x7f25df51e220 msgid 1 all 1 ldap_chkResponseList returns ld 0x7f25df51e220 NULL ldap_int_select read1msg: ld 0x7f25df51e220 msgid 1 all 1 ber_get_next ber_get_next: tag 0x30 len 42 contents: read1msg: ld 0x7f25df51e220 msgid 1 message type extended-result ber_scanf fmt ({eAA) ber: read1msg: ld 0x7f25df51e220 0 new referrals read1msg: mark request completed, ld 0x7f25df51e220 msgid 1 request done: ld 0x7f25df51e220 msgid 1 res_errno: 2, res_error: <unsupported extended operation>, res_matched: <> ldap_free_request (origid 1, msgid 1) ldap_parse_extended_result ber_scanf fmt ({eAA) ber: ldap_parse_result ber_scanf fmt ({iAA) ber: ber_scanf fmt (}) ber: ldap_msgfree ldap_err2string ldap_start_tls: Protocol error (2) additional info: unsupported extended operation ldap_free_connection 1 1 ldap_send_unbind ber_flush2: 7 bytes to sd 3 ldap_free_connection: actually freed So no good information there neither. In /var/log/syslog i get: Jun 6 08:55:42 master slapd[21383]: conn=1008 fd=23 ACCEPT from IP=83.209.243.253:56440 (IP=0.0.0.0:389) Jun 6 08:55:42 master slapd[21383]: conn=1008 op=0 EXT oid=1.3.6.1.4.1.1466.20037 Jun 6 08:55:42 master slapd[21383]: conn=1008 op=0 do_extended: unsupported operation "1.3.6.1.4.1.1466.20037" Jun 6 08:55:42 master slapd[21383]: conn=1008 op=0 RESULT tag=120 err=2 text=unsupported extended operation Jun 6 08:55:42 master slapd[21383]: conn=1008 op=1 UNBIND Jun 6 08:55:42 master slapd[21383]: conn=1008 fd=23 closed If i portscan the host i get the following: Starting Nmap 6.40 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2014-06-06 08:56 CEST Nmap scan report for h83-209-243-253.static.se.alltele.net (83.209.243.253) Host is up (0.0072s latency). Not shown: 996 closed ports PORT STATE SERVICE 22/tcp open ssh 80/tcp open http 389/tcp open ldap 636/tcp open ldapssl But when i check certs root@master:~# openssl s_client -connect daladevelop.se:636 -showcerts -state CONNECTED(00000003) SSL_connect:before/connect initialization SSL_connect:unknown state 140244859233952:error:140790E5:SSL routines:SSL23_WRITE:ssl handshake failure:s23_lib.c:177: --- no peer certificate available --- No client certificate CA names sent --- SSL handshake has read 0 bytes and written 317 bytes --- New, (NONE), Cipher is (NONE) Secure Renegotiation IS NOT supported Compression: NONE Expansion: NONE --- And i feel like i am clearly out in deep water not knowing at all where to go from here. Anny hints appreciated on what to do or to get better debug logging... EDIT: This is my config slapcated from cn=config and it does not mention at all anything about TLS. I have inserted my certinfo.ldif: root@master:~# cat certinfo.ldif dn: cn=config add: olcTLSCACertificateFile olcTLSCACertificateFile: /etc/ssl/certs/cacert.pem - add: olcTLSCertificateFile olcTLSCertificateFile: /etc/ssl/certs/daladevelop_slapd_cert.pem - add: olcTLSCertificateKeyFile olcTLSCertificateKeyFile: /etc/ssl/private/daladevelop_slapd_key.pem and when doing that i only got this as an answer. root@master:~# sudo ldapmodify -Y EXTERNAL -H ldapi:/// -f certinfo.ldif SASL/EXTERNAL authentication started SASL username: gidNumber=0+uidNumber=0,cn=peercred,cn=external,cn=auth SASL SSF: 0 modifying entry "cn=config" So still no wiser.

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• Do hard drive enclosures fail/is it the HDD or enclosure?

  - by x0a

  I'm having a whole host of problems with an external hard drive that was working just fine a couple of hours ago. I've had this problem before once, and that was about 3 months ago, here's what I documented: So a couple of hours ago I turned off all my computers and shut off the power to all my devices in my room, then went and turned the power off at the main switch so I could change an outlet. A couple hours later, after I've already slowly turned everything back on, I go to my xbox to try and watch a movie and it can't seem to list any of the movies I've got. So I go to my desktop to find that my external hard drive isn't there.. even though it's on and connected. It's also stationary and hidden behind something so there's not a whole lot of tampering/physical wear to that external. I plug it into my laptop to try and see what's going on. It starts making this endless loud screeching noise. None of that clicking that's usually associated with hd damage. It's not listed in my computers, and it shows up in Disk Management as "uninitialized" asking me to choose between two different partition types. After carefully disconnecting it and connecting it back, it asks me to format it, which I cancel. I start googling about my issue, starting to accept the situation, torn as hell and helpless and just about ready to toss the thing. Suddenly the screeching stops, after almost 45 minutes of it going, and Disk Management lists the drive as "Online" and "Healthy". Explorer pops up with all my files! I'm still being really careful with it and weary and treating it as though it's in fragile shape. I've downloaded some S.M.A.R.T. software to read the values and everything is listed as "OK" . No reallocated sectors, no read errors, no seek errors. I also ran a quick self-test, which completed without error. Everything seems fine. It looks to be a perfectly healthy external hard drive. So what the hell was that about? Was it doing some sort of maintenance or self-test? How am I supposed to tell the difference? I would've undoubtedly killed the drive for sure if had it gone on a bit longer. I've got the same problem now, with one exception: it doesn't magically reappear after the screeching stops. Occasionally I manage to get some S.M.A.R.T. diagnostics information, which basically reads everything as fine. The only problem is that my HD isn't initializing (so I can't access anything in it). I'm able to successfully run a quick smart test but not an extended one (I've only tried it once but got conflicting indications as to whether it was actually making any progress or not (was stuck on Random read test). So, final question (if all else fails): Could the hard drive enclosure be failing rather than the HDD? Is this a likely possibility at all? How would I know?

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• Thursday Community Keynote: "By the Community, For the Community"

  - by Janice J. Heiss

  Sharat Chander, JavaOne Community Chairperson, began Thursday's Community Keynote. As part of the morning’s theme of "By the Community, For the Community," Chander noted that 60% of the material at the 2012 JavaOne conference was presented by Java Community members. "So next year, when the call for papers starts, put-in your submissions," he urged.From there, Gary Frost, Principal Member of Technical Staff, AMD, expanded upon Sunday's Strategy Keynote exploration of Project Sumatra, an OpenJDK project targeted at bringing Java to heterogeneous computing platforms (which combine the CPU and the parallel processor of the GPU into a single piece of silicon). Sumatra entails enhancing the JVM to make maximum use of these advanced platforms. Within this development space, AMD created the Aparapi API, which converts Java bytecode into OpenCL for execution on such GPU devices. The Aparapi API was open sourced in September 2011.Whether it was zooming-in on a Mandelbrot set, "the game of life," or a swarm of 10,000 Dukes in a space-bound gravitational dance, Frost's demos, using an Aparapi/OpenCL implementation, produced stunningly faster display results. He indicated that the Java 9 timeframe is where they see Project Sumatra coming to ultimate fruition, employing the Lamdas of Java 8.Returning to the theme of the keynote, Donald Smith, Director, Java Product Management, Oracle, explored a mind map graphic demonstrating the importance of Community in terms of fostering innovation. "It's the sharing and mixing of culture, the diversity, and the rapid prototyping," he said. Within this topic, Smith, brought up a panel of representatives from Cloudera, Eclipse, Eucalyptus, Perrone Robotics, and Twitter--ideal manifestations of community and innovation in the world of Java.Marten Mickos, CEO, Eucalyptus Systems, explored his company's open source cloud software platform, written in Java, and used by gaming companies, technology companies, media companies, and more. Chris Aniszczyk, Operations Engineering,Twitter, noted the importance of the JVM in terms of their multiple-language development environment. Mike Olson, CEO, Cloudera, described his company's Apache Hadoop-based software, support, and training. Mike Milinkovich, Executive Director, Eclipse Foundation, noted that they have about 270 tools projects at Eclipse, with 267 of them written in Java. Milinkovich added that Eclipse will even be going into space in 2013, as part of the control software on various experiments aboard the International Space Station. Lastly, Paul Perrone, CEO, Perrone Robotics, detailed his company's robotics and automation software platform built 100% on Java, including Java SE and Java ME--"on rat, to cat, to elephant-sized systems." Milinkovic noted that communities are by nature so good at innovation because of their very openness--"The more open you make your innovation process, the more ideas are challenged, and the more developers are focused on justifying their choices all the way through the process."From there, Georges Saab, VP Development Java SE OpenJDK, continued the topic of innovation and helping the Java Community to "Make the Future Java." Martijn Verburg, representing the London Java Community (winner of a Duke's Choice Award 2012 for their activity in OpenJDK and JCP), soon joined Saab onstage. Verburg detailed the LJC's "Adopt a JSR" program--"to get day-to-day developers more involved in the innovation that's happening around them."  From its London launching pad, the innovative program has spread to Brazil, Morocco, Latvia, India, and more.Other active participants in the program joined Verburg onstage--Ben Evans, London Java Community; James Gough, Stackthread; Bruno Souza, SOUJava; Richard Warburton, jClarity; and Cecelia Borg, Oracle--OpenJDK Onboarding. Together, the group explored the goals and tasks inherent in the Adopt a JSR program--from organizing hack days (testing prototype implementations), to managing mailing lists and forums, to triaging issues, to evangelism—all with the goal of fostering greater community/developer involvement, but equally importantly, building better open standards. “Come join us, and make your ecosystem better!" urged Verburg.Paul Perrone returned to profile the latest in his company's robotics work around Java--including the AARDBOTS family of smaller robotic vehicles, running the Perrone MAX platform on top of the Java JVM. Perrone took his "Rumbles" four-wheeled robot out for a spin onstage--a roaming, ARM-based security-bot vehicle, complete with IR, ultrasonic, and "cliff" sensors (the latter, for the raised stage at JavaOne). As an ultimate window into the future of robotics, Perrone displayed a "head-set" controller--a sensor directed at the forehead to monitor brainwaves, for the someday-implementation of brain-to-robot control.Then, just when it seemed this might be the end of the day's futuristic offerings, a mystery voice from offstage pronounced "I've got some toys"--proving to be guest-visitor James Gosling, there to explore his cutting-edge work with Liquid Robotics. While most think of robots as something with wheels or arms or lasers, Gosling explained, the Liquid Robotics vehicle is an entirely new and innovative ocean-going 'bot. Looking like a floating surfboard, with an attached set of underwater wings, the autonomous devices roam the oceans using only the energy of ocean waves to propel them, and a single actuated rudder to steer. "We have to accomplish all guidance just by wiggling the rudder," Gosling said. The devices offer applications from self-installing weather buoy, to pollution monitoring station, to marine mammal monitoring device, to climate change data gathering, to even ocean life genomic sampling. The early versions of the vehicle used C code on very tiny industrial micro controllers, where they had to "count the bytes one at a time."  But the latest generation vehicles, which just hit the water a week or so ago, employ an ARM processor running Linux and the ARM version of JDK 7. Gosling explained that vehicle communication from remote locations is achieved via the Iridium satellite network. But because of the costs of this communication path, the data must be sent in very small bursts--using SBD short burst data. "It costs $1/kb, so that rules everything in the software design,” said Gosling. “If you were trying to stream a Netflix video over this, it would cost a million dollars a movie. …We don't have a 'big data' problem," he quipped. There are currently about 150 Liquid Robotics vehicles out traversing the oceans. Gosling demonstrated real time satellite tracking of several vehicles currently at sea, noting that Java is actually particularly good at AI applications--due to the language having garbage collection, which facilitates complex data structures. To close-out his time onstage, Gosling of course participated in the ceremonial Java tee-shirt toss out to the audience…In parting, Chander passed the JavaOne Community Chairperson baton to Stephen Chin, Java Technology Evangelist, Oracle. Onstage in full motorcycle gear, Chin noted that he'll soon be touring Europe by motorcycle, meeting Java Community Members and streaming live via UStream--the ultimate manifestation of community and technology!  He also reminded attendees of the upcoming JavaOne Latin America 2012, São Paulo, Brazil (December 4-6, 2012), and stated that the CFP (call for papers) at the conference has been extended for one more week. "Remember, December is summer in Brazil!" Chin said.

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• South Florida Code Camp 2010 &ndash; VI &ndash; 2010-02-27

  - by Dave Noderer

  Catching up after our sixth code camp here in the Ft Lauderdale, FL area. Website at: http://www.fladotnet.com/codecamp. For the 5th time, DeVry University hosted the event which makes everything else really easy! Statistics from 2010 South Florida Code Camp: 848 registered (we use Microsoft Group Events) ~ 600 attended (516 took name badges) 64 speakers (including speaker idol) 72 sessions 12 parallel tracks Food 400 waters 600 sodas 900 cups of coffee (it was cold!) 200 pounds of ice 200 pizza's 10 large salad trays 900 mouse pads Photos on facebook Dave Noderer: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/album.php?aid=190812&id=693530361 Joe Healy: http://www.facebook.com/devfish?ref=mf#!/album.php?aid=202787&id=720054950 Will Strohl:http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/album.php?aid=2045553&id=1046966128&ref=mf Veronica Gonzalez: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/album.php?aid=150954&id=672439484 Florida Speaker Idol One of the sessions at code camp was the South Florida Regional speaker idol competition. After user group level competitions there are five competitors. I acted as MC and score keeper while Ed Hill, Bob O’Connell, John Dunagan and Shervin Shakibi were judges. This statewide competition is being run by Roy Lawsen in Lakeland and the winner, Jeff Truman from Naples will move on to the state finals to be held at the Orlando Code Camp on 3/27/2010: http://www.orlandocodecamp.com/. Each speaker has 10 minutes. The participants were: Alex Koval Jeff Truman Jared Nielsen Chris Catto Venkat Narayanasamy They all did a great job and I’m working with each to make sure they don’t stop there and start speaking at meetings. Thanks to everyone involved! Volunteers As always events like this don’t happen without a lot of help! The key people were: Ed Hill, Bob O’Connell – DeVry For the months leading up to the event, Ed collects all of the swag, books, etc and stores them. He holds meeting with various DeVry departments to coordinate the day, he works with the students in the days  before code camp to stuff bags, print signs, arrange tables and visit BJ’s for our supplies (I go and pay but have a small car!). And of course the day of the event he is there at 5:30 am!! We took two SUV’s to BJ’s, i was really worried that the 36 cases of water were going to break his rear axle! He also helps with the students and works very hard before and after the event. Rainer Haberman – Speakers and Volunteer of the Year Rainer has helped over the past couple of years but this time he took full control of arranging the tracks. I did some preliminary work solicitation speakers but he took over all communications after that. We have tried various organizations around speakers, chair per track, central team but having someone paying attention to the details is definitely the way to go! This was the first year I did not have to jump in at the last minute and re-arrange everything. There were lots of kudo’s from the speakers too saying they felt it was more organized than they have experienced in the past from any code camp. Thanks Rainer! Ray Alamonte – Book Swap We saw the idea of a book swap from the Alabama Code Camp and thought we would give it a try. Ray jumped in and took control. The idea was to get people to bring their old technical books to swap or for others to buy. You got a ticket for each book you brought that you could then turn in to buy another book. If you did not have a ticket you could buy a book for $1. Net proceeds were $153 which I rounded up and donated to the Red Cross. There is plenty going on in Haiti and Chile! I don’t think we really got a count of how many books came in. I many cases the books barely hit the table before being picked up again. At the end we were left with a dozen books which we donated to the DeVry library. A great success we will definitely do again! Jace Weiss / Ratchelen Hut – Coffee and Snacks Wow, this was an eye opener. In past years a few of us would struggle to give some attention to coffee, snacks, etc. But it was always tenuous and always ended up running out of coffee. In the past we have tried buying Dunkin Donuts coffee, renting urns, borrowing urns, etc. This year I actually purchased 2 – 100 cup Westbend commercial brewers plus a couple of small urns (30 and 60 cup we used for decaf). We got them both started early (although i forgot to push the on button on one!) and primed it with 10 boxes of Joe from Dunkin. then Jace and Rachelen took over.. once a batch was brewed they would refill the boxes, keep the area clean and at one point were filling cups. We never ran out of coffee and served a few hundred more than last  year. We did look but next year I’ll get a large insulated (like gatorade) dispensing container. It all went very smoothly and having help focused on that one area was a big win. Thanks Jace and Rachelen! Ken & Shirley Golding / Roberta Barbosa – Registration Ken & Shirley showed up and took over registration. This year we printed small name tags for everyone registered which was great because it is much easier to remember someone’s name when they are labeled! In any case it went the smoothest it has ever gone. All three were actively pulling people through the registration, answering questions, directing them to bags and information very quickly. I did not see that there was too big a line at any time. Thanks!! Scott Katarincic / Vishal Shukla – Website For the 3rd?? year in a row, Scott was in charge of the website starting in August or September when I start on code camp. He handles all the requests, makes changes to the site and admin. I think two years ago he wrote all the backend administration and tunes it and the website a bit but things are pretty stable. The only thing I do is put up the sponsors. It is a big pressure off of me!! Thanks Scott! Vishal jumped into the web end this year and created a new Silverlight agenda page to replace the old ajax page. We will continue to enhance this but it is definitely a good step forward! Thanks! Alex Funkhouser – T-shirts/Mouse pads/tables/sponsors Alex helps in many areas. He helps me bring in sponsors and handles all the logistics for t-shirts, sponsor tables and this year the mouse pads. He is also a key person to help promote the event as well not to mention the after after party which I did not attend and don’t want to know much about! Students There were a number of student volunteers but don’t have all of their names. But thanks to them, they stuffed bags, patrolled pizza and helped with moving things around. Sponsors We had a bunch of great sponsors which allowed us to feed people and give a way a lot of great swag. Our major sponsors of DeVry, Microsoft (both DPE and UGSS), Infragistics, Telerik, SQL Share (End to End, SQL Saturdays), and Interclick are very much appreciated. The other sponsors Applied Innovations (also supply code camp hosting), Ultimate Software (a great local SW company), Linxter (reliable cloud messaging we are lucky to have here!), Mediascend (a media startup), SoftwareFX (another local SW company we are happy to have back participating in CC), CozyRoc (if you do SSIS, check them out), Arrow Design (local DNN and Silverlight experts),Boxes and Arrows (a local SW consulting company) and Robert Half. One thing we did this year besides a t-shirt was a mouse pad. I like it because it will be around for a long time on many desks. After much investigation and years of using mouse pad’s I’ve determined that the 1/8” fabric top is the best and that is what we got!   So now I get a break for a few months before starting again!

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• You are probably NOT a SharePoint Development Expert if&hellip;

  - by Mark Rackley

  So, all you aspiring SharePoint experts out there (especially those of you who put “expert” in your resumes).  It’s time for a cold cool splash of reality. More than likely you are NOT an expert (I know I’m not). Yes, you may have some expertise in certain aspects in SharePoint (it’s questionable if I have THAT some days), but make sure you’ve got the basics down before you start throwing that word “expert” around. I know that it becomes frustrating to those looking to hire SharePoint people and having to sift through all the resumes of those who think very highly of themselves and their skills only to find those gaping holes in common best practices. I’m much more willing to hire a decent dev who KNOWS they are not an expert than to hire a decent+ dev who THINKS they are an expert.  So… I’ve compiled a small reality check for you SharePoint Devs. and a “red flag” check for those of you wishing to hire a SharePoint developer. If any of these apply to you, you are probably not a SharePoint Development Expert. You are not a SharePoint Development Expert if you manually copy your DLLs Seriously, I don’t care if you write the best code in the world. If you are manually copying files to each web front end you are NOT a SharePoint Development expert. Yes, I realize the admins are generally the ones who do the actual deployments, but if you don’t know how to create solution packages for your admins, you are going to end up doing more damage than good some day. There are TONS of tools out there to help generate deployable solutions for you. You have ZERO excuse. You are not a SharePoint Development expert if you can’t tell me the main artifacts of a solution package Directly related to the first one. If you don’t know what the Manifest, DDF, WSP, and Feature files are and how they are used in a solution package, you are NOT a SharePoint development expert. I’m not asking you to be able to write them all from scratch (heck, I can’t even do that), but you MUST know what they are and how to tweak them if necessary. You are not a SharePoint Development expert if you don’t know what a Content Type or a Site Column is You would be absolutely amazed at how many “Expert” SharePoint Developers have NEVER EVER created a Content Type or Site Column or even know what they are. I mean, why would you ever want to create those when you can just do everything as a custom list or custom field? right???? (that’s sarcasm). You also need to know how to package a Content Type and a Site Column into a deployable package by the way. You are not a SharePoint Development expert if you have not created at least one Web Part, Workflow, Timer Job, and Event Handler. If you haven’t written at least one of each, you don’t fully understand what they do or their limitations. Again, I expect NO ONE to be able to write these things blind. I think the last time I wrote an application from scratch without copying and pasting from another project I had done before was back in 1994? Seriously, coding is like a Sour Dough starter, you get it from someone else and keep adding to it. You are not a SharePoint Development expert if you don’t know how to properly dispose of objects Another biggie with zero excuse for getting it wrong. It is so well known that you must dispose of your SPWeb and SPSite objects that if you aren’t doing it then you are not an expert. Heck, if you utilize “using” when handling SPWeb and SPSite objects and don’t realize that it disposes of those objects for you, then you are not a SharePoint Development expert. You are not a SharePoint Development expert if you do not know how to properly elevate privileges Just one of those development basics that any decent SharePoint Developer has got to have down and understand how and why it’s used You are not a SharePoint Development expert if you don’t know all of the development options available to SharePoint and when they should be used Okay… so all you hard core .NET SharePoint dev geeks take a moment to listen. You may be the most top not SharePoint .NET developer in the world, but if you are opening Visual Studio to solve every problem in SharePoint, then you are NOT a SharePoint development expert. The SharePoint developer’s tool kit is growing every day with tools like Visual Studio, Data View Web Parts, XSL, jQuery, SPServices, etc. etc… If you don’t have the ability to at least recognize that “hey, you can basically do the same thing here but just dropping in Easy Tabs instead of writing some weird web part” then you are NOT a SharePoint Development expert AND you are doing a huge disservice to your clients and customers. You are probably NOT a SharePoint Development expert if you call yourself an Expert So, truth telling time. I’m not an expert. There, I said it. I feel so much better. Now, I realize the word “expert” has been used with my name before, but I am quick to point out that I KNOW the experts and know that they will help me if I need it, but I’m not an expert in all things SharePoint. The minute you take on that moniker you are setting yourself up for a fall. It’s too big, there’s too much to know, and there’s WAY too much you can do wrong. You are not a SharePoint Development expert if you are not involved in the community I expect to get the most flack for this one, but it’s always a huge red flag for me when someone says they are an expert and has ZERO knowledge of the SharePoint community. The SharePoint community is ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL to be an effective SharePoint developer, admin, architect, power user or whatever the heck you are!! The community keeps you sane, tells you when you are NOT using a best practice, recommends the best practice, and even knows when Microsoft is giving you the wrong information (*gasp* it does happen). If you can’t tell me who you are following on twitter, who's blog you read, what conferences you attend, or name the experts who you monitor to make sure you are not doing something stupid, then you are probably doing something stupid. Again, not asking you to be a speaker, blogger, or the least bit extroverted but you should be at LEAST stalking the experts. So… what’s the point? So… yeah… what’s my point in all this. Well, first of all let me point out that this is by far not a finished list and I could come up with a LOT more specific “deep dive” questions, but these should be high enough level that even non experts can recognize and ask them. If you have some common ones you run into let me know and add them in the comments below. Also, keep in mind I’m not saying you as a developer HAVE to know EVERYTHING, but you DO need to know what you don’t know and proudly and honestly state “I don’t know, but I’ll learn and find out”.  Those of us hiring SharePoint developers and know and have a passion for SharePoint are not looking for that elusive “expert” who knows everything. We are looking for someone who “gets it”, has a similar passion, great attitude, an understanding that they DON’T know everything, and a desire to do it right.  I would bet money that most SharePoint development disasters happen because of “experts” who think they know everything rather than the developer who is cautious and knows he doesn’t. Lastly, I know there’s a raging debate over what a “SharePoint Developer” is (I should know, as I keep bringing it up). So, obviously this blog post is more closely tied to the .NET side of SharePoint development and less towards the client side, middle tier, or whatever you want to call it. So, let’s please not get that argument going here as well…  Thanks

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• A Look Back at 2010 Predictions

  - by David Dorf

  Now is the time of year people make their predictions for next year, but before I start thinking about 2011 it's worth a look back to see how my predictions for 2010 fared. 1. Borders and Blockbuster bite the dust. I would have never predicted a strong brand such as Circuit City could die, but now I know it can happen to anyone. Borders has lost the battle with Barnes & Noble and Blockbuster has lost to Netflix. And just to be sure, Amazon put an extra nail in each coffin. Borders received additional investment from Bennett LeBow to keep it afloat, but the stock is down around $1.25 with no profits in sight. Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy back in September. 2. Every retailer finally has a page on Facebook... but very few figure out how to keep fans engaged. Retailer postings become noise, and fans start to unsubscribe. Twitter goes in the same direction. A few standout retailers will figure out how to use social media, and the rest will remain dumbfounded. Most retailers are on the Facebook bandwagon, and their fan bases seem to be increasing thanks to promotions like The Gap's logo redesign, Lowes' black Friday sneak peak, and Walmart's Crowd Savers. There are several examples of f-commerce advancements, including some interesting integrations from Amazon.3. Smartphones consolidate and grow. More and more people will step-up to smartphones, most of which will choose iPhone, Blackberry, and Android phones. Other smartphones will vanish, and networks will start to strain. But retailers will finally embrace mobile as the next big channel. Retail marketing departments will build mobile apps without the help of their IT department, and eventually they will get into a bind. Android has been on a tear lately stealing market share from Blackberry. Palm and Microsoft are trending down, and Apple is holding steady. Smartphone sales are up 15% and expected to continue. Retailers understand the importance of mobile, and some innovative applications have been produced this year. 4. Google helps the little guys. Google will push its Favorite Places project to help give exposure to small retailers and restaurants. They will enable small retailers to act like big ones by providing storefronts, detailed product information, and coupons for consumers. Google will find a way to bring augmented reality to the masses. I can't say I've seen much new from Google regarding Favorite Places, but they've continued to push local product search. From the PC or smartphone, consumers can search for products and see which nearby stores have it stock. Oracle Retail even productized an integration to Google to support this effort. I suppose if Google ever buys Groupon then it will bring them even closer to local shopping. Google talked about augmented humanity, but that has nothing to do with augmented reality. 5. Steve Jobs Is Bugs Bunny and Steve Ballmer is Elmer Fudd. (OK, I stole that headline from an InformationWeek article. I couldn't resist.) Both Apple and Microsoft will continue to open new stores, but only Apple will show real growth. POSReady 2009 (formerly WEPOS) will continue to share the POS market with Linux. The iPhone and iPod will continue to capture market share, but there won't be an Apple tablet. There won't be an Apple tablet? What was I thinking? While Apple has well over 300 stores, there are less than 10 Microsoft stores. Initial impressions show that even though Microsoft is locating its store near Apple Stores, they are not converting customers, with shoppers citing a lack of assortment and high prices. 6. Consolidation of e-commerce software providers. Software vendors in the areas of search, reviews, online call-centers, payments, and e-commerce will consolidate, partly driven by the success of m-commerce and SaaS. Amazon will find someone else to buy, and eBay will continue to lose momentum. Consolidation of e-commerce providers continued with IBM acquiring Sterling Commerce and CoreMetrics, and Oracle recently announcing the acquisition of ATG. Amazon grabbed Zappos, Woot, and Diapers.com to continue its dominance of online selling. While eBay's Marketplace growth may have slowed, its PayPal division is doing quite well, fueled in part by demand for mobile payments. 7. Book publishers mirror music labels. Just as the iPod brought digital downloads to the masses, the Kindle and Nook will power the e-book revolution. Books will continue to use DRM for a few more years before following the path of music. Publishers will try to preserve the margins of hardbacks by associating e-book releases with paperbacks. Amazon has done a good job providing e-reader clients for smartphones, PCs, and tablets. Competition from Barnes & Noble has forced Amazon to support book loaning, and both companies are making it easier for people to publish ebooks (with or without DRM). Progress is slow but steady. 8. NFC makes inroads, RFID treads water. Near Field Communications start to appear in mobile phones, and retailers beta test its use for payments and loyalty programs. RFID tag costs come down a bit, but not enough to spur accelerated adoption.Nokia announced plans to offer NFC-enabled phones in 2011, and rumors are swirling about NFC in the upcoming iPhone.  I think NFC is heading in the right direction, and I've heard more interest from retailers about specialized uses for RFID.9. Digital Signage goes the way of augmented reality. People use their camera phones to leave geo-tagged notes all over cities, rating stores and restaurants, and "painting" graffiti. But people get tired of holding their phones in front of their faces, so AR glasses are offered in much the same way bluetooth headsets emerged. Retailers experiement with in-store advertising using AR. Several retailers like Pizza Hut, Benetton, and Target have experimented with AR but its still somewhat of a gimmick used by marketing.  I think this prediction is a year or two too early. 10. JDA flip-flops again. After announcing their embracing of the .Net architecture, then switching to J2EE after the Manugistics acquisition, JDA will finally decide to standardize on Apple's Objective C. Everything will be ported to the iPhone and be available on the AppStore. After all, there's not much left to try. This was, of course, a joke but the sentiment is still valid.  JDA seems more supply-chain focused than retail focused, which is a an outcrop if their i2 acquisition.  Of the 10 predictions, I'm going to say I got 6 somewhat correct.  (Don't you just love grading your own paper?)  Soon I'll post my predictions for 2011 so be on the lookout.  Until then here's one more prediction:  Va Tech beats Stanford in the Orange Bowl -- count on it!

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• Life Technologies: Making Life Easier to Manage

  - by Michael Snow

  12.00 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-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} When we’re thinking about customer engagement, we’re acutely aware of all the forces at play competing for our customer’s attention. Solutions that make life easier for our customers draw attention to themselves. We tend to engage more when there is a distinct benefit and we can take a deep breath and accept that there is hope in the world and everything isn’t designed to frustrate us and make our lives miserable. (sigh…) When products are designed to automate processes that were consuming hours of our time with no relief in sight, they deserve to be recognized. One of our recent Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation Award Winners in the WebCenter category, Life Technologies, has recently posted a video promoting their “award winning” solution. The Oracle Innovation Awards are part of the overall Oracle Excellence awards given to customers for innovation with Oracle products. More info here. Their award nomination included this description: Life Technologies delivered the My Life Service Portal as part of a larger Digital Hub strategy. This Portal is the first of its kind in the biotechnology service providing industry. The Portal provides access to Life Technologies cloud based service monitoring system where all customer deployed instruments can be remotely monitored and proactively repaired. The portal provides alerts from these cloud based monitoring services directly to the customer and to Life Technologies Field Engineers. The Portal provides insight into the instruments and services customers purchased for the purpose of analyzing and anticipating future customer needs and creating targeted sales and service programs. This portal not only provides benefits for Life Technologies internal sales and service teams but provides customers a central place to track all pertinent instrument information including: instrument service history instrument status and previous activities instrument performance analytics planned service visits warranty/contract information discussion forums social networks for lab management and collaboration alerts and notifications on all of the above team scheduling for instrument usage promote optional reagents required to keep instruments performing From their website The Life Technologies Instruments & Services Portal Helps You Save Time and Gain Peace of Mind Introducing the new, award-winning, free online tool that enables easier management of your instrument use and care, faster response to requests for service or service quotes, and instant sharing of key instrument and service information with your colleagues. Now – this unto itself is obviously beneficial for their customers who were previously burdened with having to do all of these tasks separately, manually and inconsistently by nature. Now – all in one place and free to their customers – a portal that ties it all together. They now have built the platform to give their customers yet another reason to do business with them – Their headline on their product page says it all: “Life is now easier to manage - All your instrument use and care in one place – the no-cost, no-hassle Instruments and Services Portal.” Of course – it’s very convenient that the company name includes “Life” and now can also promote to their clients and prospects that doing business with them is easy and their sophisticated lab equipment is easy to manage. In an industry full of PhD’s – “Easy” isn’t usually the first word that comes to mind, but Life Technologies has now tied the word to their brand in a very eloquent way. Between our work lives and family or personal lives, getting any mono-focused minutes of dedicated attention has become such a rare occurrence in our current era of multi-tasking that those moments of focus are highly prized. So – when something is done really well – so well that it becomes captivating and urges sharing impulses – I take notice and dig deeper and most of the time I discover other gems not so hidden below the surface. And then I share with those I know would enjoy and understand. In the spirit of full disclosure, I must admit here that the first person I shared the videos below with was my daughter. She’s in her senior year of high school in the midst of her college search. She’s passionate about her academics and has already decided that she wants to study Neuroscience in college and like her mother will be in for the long haul to a PhD eventually. In a summer science program at Smith College 2 summers ago – she sent the family famous text to me – “I just dissected a sheep’s brain – wicked cool!” – This was followed by an equally memorable text this past summer in a research mentorship in Neuroscience at UConn – “Just sliced up some rat brain. Reminded me of a deli slicer at the supermarket… sorry I forgot to call last night…” So… needless to say – I knew I had an audience that would enjoy and understand these videos below and are now being shared among her science classmates and faculty. And evidently - so does Life Technologies! They’ve done a great job on these making them fun and something that will easily be shared among their customers social networks. They’ve created a neuro-archetypal character, “Ph.Diddy” and know that their world of clients in academics, research, and other institutions would understand and enjoy the “edutainment” value in this series of videos on their YouTube channel that pokes fun at the stereotypes while also promoting their products at the same time. They use their Facebook page for additional engagement with their clients and as another venue to promote these videos. Enjoy this one as well! More to be found here: http://www.youtube.com/lifetechnologies Stay tuned to this Oracle WebCenter blog channel. Tomorrow we'll be taking a look at another winner of the Innovation Awards, LADWP - helping to keep the citizens of Los Angeles engaged with their Water and Power provider.

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• Building KPIs to monitor your business Its not really about the Technology

  When I have discussions with people about Business Intelligence, one of the questions the inevitably come up is about building KPIs and how to accomplish that. From a technical level the concept of a KPI is very simple, almost too simple in that it is like the tip of an iceberg floating above the water. The key to that iceberg is not really the tip, but the mass of the iceberg that is hidden beneath the surface upon which the tip sits. The analogy of the iceberg is not meant to indicate that the foundation of the KPI is overly difficult or complex. The disparity in size in meant to indicate that the larger thing that needs to be defined is not the technical tip, but the underlying business definition of what the KPI means. From a technical perspective the KPI consists of primarily the following items: Actual Value This is the actual value data point that is being measured. An example would be something like the amount of sales. Target Value This is the target goal for the KPI. This is a number that can be measured against Actual Value. An example would be $10,000 in monthly sales. Target Indicator Range This is the definition of ranges that define what type of indicator the user will see comparing the Actual Value to the Target Value. Most often this is defined by stoplight, but can be any indicator that is going to show a status in a quick fashion to the user. Typically this would be something like: Red Light = Actual Value more than 5% below target; Yellow Light = Within 5% of target either direction; Green Light = More than 5% higher than Target Value Status\Trend Indicator This is an optional attribute of a KPI that is typically used to show some kind of trend. The vast majority of these indicators are used to show some type of progress against a previous period. As an example, the status indicator might be used to show how the monthly sales compare to last month. With this type of indicator there needs to be not only a definition of what the ranges are for your status indictor, but then also what value the number needs to be compared against. So now we have an idea of what data points a KPI consists of from a technical perspective lets talk a bit about tools. As you can see technically there is not a whole lot to them and the choice of technology is not as important as the definition of the KPIs, which we will get to in a minute. There are many different types of tools in the Microsoft BI stack that you can use to expose your KPI to the business. These include Performance Point, SharePoint, Excel, and SQL Reporting Services. There are pluses and minuses to each technology and the right technology is based a lot on your goals and how you want to deliver the information to the users. Additionally, there are other non-Microsoft tools that can be used to expose KPI indicators to your business users. Regardless of the technology used as your front end, the heavy lifting of KPI is in the business definition of the values and benchmarks for that KPI. The discussion about KPIs is very dependent on the history of an organization and how much they are exposed to the attributes of a KPI. Often times when discussing KPIs with a business contact who has not been exposed to KPIs the discussion tends to also be a session educating the business user about what a KPI is and what goes into the definition of a KPI. The majority of times the business user has an idea of what their actual values are and they have been tracking those numbers for some time, generally in Excel and all manually. So they will know the amount of sales last month along with sales two years ago in the same month. Where the conversation tends to get stuck is when you start discussing what the target value should be. The actual value is answering the What and How much questions. When you are talking about the Target values you are asking the question Is this number good or bad. Typically, the user will know whether or not the value is good or bad, but most of the time they are not able to quantify what is good or bad. Their response is usually something like I just know. Because they have been watching the sales quantity for years now, they can tell you that a 5% decrease in sales this month might actually be a good thing, maybe because the salespeople are all waiting until next month when the new versions come out. It can sometimes be very hard to break the business people of this habit. One of the fears generally is that the status indicator is not subjective. Thus, in the scenario above, the business user is going to be fearful that their boss, just looking at a negative red indicator, is going to haul them out to the woodshed for a bad month. But, on the flip side, if all you are displaying is the amount of sales, only a person with knowledge of last month sales and the target amount for this month would have any idea if $10,000 in sales is good or not. Here is where a key point about KPIs needs to be communicated to both the business user and any user who might be viewing the results of that KPI. The KPI is just one tool that is used to report on business performance. The KPI is meant as a quick indicator of one business statistic. It is not meant to tell the entire story. It does not answer the question Why. Its primary purpose is to objectively and quickly expose an area of the business that might warrant more review. There is always going to be the need to do further analysis on any potential negative or neutral KPI. So, hopefully, once you have convinced your business user to come up with some target numbers and ranges for status indicators, you then need to take the next step and help them answer the Why question. The main question here to ask is, Okay, you see the indicator and you need to discover why the number is what is, where do you go?. The answer is usually a combination of sources. A sales manager might have some of the following items at their disposal (Marketing report showing a decrease in the promotional discounts for the month, Pricing Report showing the reduction of prices of older models, an Inventory Report showing the discontinuation of a particular product line, or a memo showing the ending of a large affiliate partnership. The answers to the question Why are never as simple as a single indicator value. Bring able to quickly get to this information is all about designing how a user accesses the KPIs and then also how easily they can get to the additional information they need. This is where a Dashboard mentality can come in handy. For example, the business user can have a dashboard that shows their KPIs, but also has links to some of the common reports that they run regarding Sales Data. The users boss may have the same KPIs on their dashboard, but instead of links to individual reports they are going to have a link to a status report that was created by the user that pulls together all the data about the KPI in a summary format the users boss can review. So some of the key things to think about when building or evaluating KPIs for your organization: Technology should not be the driving factor KPIs are of little value without some indicator for whether a value is good, bad or neutral. KPIs only give an answer to the Is this number good\bad? question Make sure the ability to drill into the Why of a KPI is close at hand and relevant to the user who is viewing the KPI. The KPI is a key business tool when defined properly to help monitor business performance across the enterprise in an objective and consistent manner. At times it might feel like the process of defining the business aspects of a KPI can sometimes be arduous, the payoff in the end can far outweigh the costs. Some of the benefits of going through this process are a better understanding of the key metrics for an organization and the measure of those metrics and a consistent snapshot of business performance that can be utilized across the organization. And I think that these are benefits to any organization regardless of the technology or the implementation.Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• techniques for an AI for a highly cramped turn-based tactics game

  - by Adam M.

  I'm trying to write an AI for a tactics game in the vein of Final Fantasy Tactics or Vandal Hearts. I can't change the game rules in any way, only upgrade the AI. I have experience programming AI for classic board games (basically minimax and its variants), but I think the branching factor is too great for the approach to be reasonable here. I'll describe the game and some current AI flaws that I'd like to fix. I'd like to hear ideas for applicable techniques. I'm a decent enough programmer, so I only need the ideas, not an implementation (though that's always appreciated). I'd rather not expend effort chasing (too many) dead ends, so although speculation and brainstorming are good and probably helpful, I'd prefer to hear from somebody with actual experience solving this kind of problem. For those who know it, the game is the land battle mini-game in Sid Meier's Pirates! (2004) and you can skim/skip the next two paragraphs. For those who don't, here's briefly how it works. The battle is turn-based and takes place on a 16x16 grid. There are three terrain types: clear (no hindrance), forest (hinders movement, ranged attacks, and sight), and rock (impassible, but does not hinder attacks or sight). The map is randomly generated with roughly equal amounts of each type of terrain. Because there are many rock and forest tiles, movement is typically very cramped. This is tactically important. The terrain is not flat; higher terrain gives minor bonuses. The terrain is known to both sides. The player is always the attacker and the AI is always the defender, so it's perfectly valid for the AI to set up a defensive position and just wait. The player wins by killing all defenders or by getting a unit to the city gates (a tile on the other side of the map). There are very few units on each side, usually 4-8. Because of this, it's crucial not to take damage without gaining some advantage from it. Units can take multiple actions per turn. All units on one side move before any units on the other side. Order of execution is important, and interleaving of actions between units is often useful. Units have melee and ranged attacks. Melee attacks vary widely in strength; ranged attacks have the same strength but vary in range. The main challenges I face are these: Lots of useful move combinations start with a "useless" move that gains no immediate advantage, or even loses advantage, in order to set up a powerful flank attack in the future. And, since the player units are stronger and have longer range, the AI pretty much always has to take some losses before they can start to gain kills. The AI must be able to look ahead to distinguish between sacrificial actions that provide a future benefit and those that don't. Because the terrain is so cramped, most of the tactics come down to achieving good positioning with multiple units that work together to defend an area. For instance, two defenders can often dominate a narrow pass by positioning themselves so an enemy unit attempting to pass must expose itself to a flank attack. But one defender in the same pass would be useless, and three units can defend a slightly larger pass. Etc. The AI should be able to figure out where the player must go to reach the city gates and how to best position its few units to cover the approaches, shifting, splitting, or combining them appropriately as the player moves. Because flank attacks are extremely deadly (and engineering flank attacks is key to the player strategy), the AI should be competent at moving its units so that they cover each other's flanks unless the sacrifice of a unit would give a substantial benefit. They should also be able to force flank attacks on players, for instance by threatening a unit from two different directions such that responding to one threat exposes the flank to the other. The AI should attack if possible, but sometimes there are no good ways to approach the player's position. In that case, the AI should be able to recognize this and set up a defensive position of its own. But the AI shouldn't be vulnerable to a trivial exploit where the player repeatedly opens and closes a hole in his defense and shoots at the AI as it approaches and retreats. That is, the AI should ideally be able to recognize that the player is capable of establishing a solid defense of an area, even if the defense is not currently in place. (I suppose if a good unit allocation algorithm existed, as needed for the second bullet point, the AI could run it on the player units to see where they could defend.) Because it's important to choose a good order of action and interleave actions between units, it's not as simple as just finding the best move for each unit in turn. All of these can be accomplished with a minimax search in theory, but the search space is too large, so specialized techniques are needed. I thought about techniques such as influence mapping, but I don't see how to use the technique to great effect. I thought about assigning goals to the units. This can help them work together in some limited way, and the problem of "how do I accomplish this goal?" is easier to solve than "how do I win this battle?", but assigning good goals is a hard problem in itself, because it requires knowing whether the goal is achievable and whether it's a good use of resources. So, does anyone have specific ideas for techniques that can help cleverize this AI? Update: I found a related question on Stackoverflow: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3133273/ai-for-a-final-fantasy-tactics-like-game The selected answer gives a decent approach to choosing between alternative actions, but it doesn't seem to have much ability to look into the future and discern beneficial sacrifices from wasteful ones. It also focuses on a single unit at a time and it's not clear how it could be extended to support cooperation between units in defending or attacking.

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