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• Bose USB audio: crackling popping sound, eventually die

  - by Richard Barrett

  I've been trying to troubleshoot this issue for a while now. Any help would be much appreciated. I'm having trouble getting my Bose "Companion 5 multimedia speakers" working with my installation of Ubuntu 12.04 (link to Bose product here: http://www.bose.com/controller?url=/shop_online/digital_music_systems/computer_speakers/companion_5/index.jsp ). The issue seems to be low level (not just Ubuntu). What happens: When I boot into Ubuntu, I can get Rhythm box to play ok. However, if I try anything else (an .avi file, a webpage, or Clementine player with mp3 files) I get crackling, popping, or choppy sounds. If I move the mouse around, especially if it seems graphic intensive, the problem gets worse (more crackling noises). The more taxing it appears to be, the more likely it is that the sound will just die altogether until I reboot. For some reason the videos at www.bloomberg.com seem especially bad for it (my sound normally goes dead in under 45 seconds and won't work until reboot). Both my desktop running Ubuntu 12.04 and my laptop (running the same) have the same crackling problem. Troubleshooting so far: A friend of mine who knows linux well tried to solve it for me without any luck. He took pulseaudio out of the equation, but still had the problem just using AlSA. Among the many things he tried was adjusting the latency, but that didn't help either. I've also tried things like adjusting the USB device settings in the config file from -2 to -1 so that it will use my USB sound and I also commented out the lines that would stop that. These don't do anything. (That really seems like it's for someone who is getting no sound at all, so it's not surprising this won't work.) My friend's laptop running his Archlinux could play my Bose USB speakers without any problems. I also tried setting my daemon.conf file to use 6 channels (based on this http://lotphelp.com/lotp/configure-ubuntu-51-surround-sound ) but that didn't work either. I recently used a DVD to boot into Ubuntu Studio 12.04 (because it uses a live audio kernel) and this happened: I got perfect sound for a minute or two When I started moving windows around while sound was playing, the sound died again. Perhaps more interesting: There is a headphone out jack on the Bose system. When I use it, the audio is perfect for all applications (even the deadly bloomberg.com videos with .avi playing at the same time and moving around windows). Also, there is an audio-in jack on the Bose system. I can use a male-to-male mini jack to go from my soundcard's output to the Bose input and then all sound works perfectly. -However, it still requires the Bose to be plugged in to USB, otherwise I lose all sound. Any thoughts? Any suggestions for trouble shooting? (Or any suggestions for somewhere else to post to solve this?) Any logs or other files I can provide to help someone help me work this out? Your help is much appreciated! Rick BTW: I sometimes get people posting responses like "My Bose USB system works great with Ubuntu 12.04," without any more details. Is there anything I should ask such people to narrow down my problem? (It's kind of annoying to hear such a response because it doesn't help solve my problem.)

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• The Evolution of Television and Home Entertainment

  - by Bill Evjen

  This is a group that is focused on entertainment in the aviation industry. I am attending their conference for the first time as it relates to my job at Swank Motion Pictures and what we do for our various markets. I will post my notes here. The Evolution of Television and Home Entertainment by Patrick Cosson, Veebeam TV has been the center of living rooms for sometime. Conversations and culture evolve around the TV. The way we consume this content has dramatically been changing. After TV, we had the MTV revolution of TV. It has created shorter attention spans, it made us more materialistic, narcissistic, and not easily impressed. Then we came to the Internet. The amount of content has expanded. It contains a ton of user-generated content, provides filtering, organization, distribution. We now have a problem. We are in the age of digital excess. We can access whatever we want. In conjunction with this – we are moving. The challenge we have now is curation. The trends  we see: rapid shift from scheduled to on demand consumption. A move to Internet protocols from cable Rapid fragmentation of media a transition from the TV set to a variety of screens Social connections bring mediators and amplifiers. TiVo – the shift to on demand It is because of a time-crunch Provides personal experiences Once old consumption habits are changed, there is no way back! Experiences are that people are loading up content and then bringing it with them on planes, to hotels, etc. Rapid fragmentation of media sources Many new professional content sources and channels, the rise of digital distribution, and the rise of user-generated content contribute to the wealth of content sources and abundant choice. Netflix, BBC iPlayer, hulu, Pandora, iTunes, Amazon Video, Vudu, Voddler, Spotify (these companies didn’t exist 5 years ago). People now expect this kind of consumption. People are now thinking how to deliver all these tools. Transition from the TV set to multi-screens The TV screen has traditionally been the dominant consumption screen for TV and video. Now the PC, game consoles, and various mobile devices are rapidly becoming common video devices. Multi-screens are now the norm. Social connections becoming key mediators What increasingly funnels traffic on the web, social networking enablers, will become an integral part of the discovery, consumption and sharing model for Television. The revolution will be broadcasted on Facebook and Twitter. There is business disruption There are a lot of new entrants Rapid internationalization Increasing competition from existing media players A fragmenting audience base Web browser Freedom to access any site The fight over the walled garden Most devices are not powerful enough to support a full browser PC will always be present in the living room Wireless link between PC and TV Output 1080p, plays anything, secure Key players and their challenges Services Internet media is increasingly interconnected to social media and publicly shared UGC Content delivery moving to IPTV Rights management issues are creating silos and hindering a great user experience and growth Devices Devices are becoming people’s windows into all kinds of media from all kinds of sources There won’t be a consolidation of the device landscape, rather the opposite Finding the right niche makes the most sense. We are moving to an on demand world of streaming world. People want full access to anything.

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• Taking Your Business Scorecard Golfing

  - by tobyehatch

  Our workplace world is definitely changing. Not only are we taking work home, but we are working during odd hours in some very strange places.  I had the pleasure of interviewing Jacques Vigeant, Product Strategy Manager for Oracle Business Intelligence and Enterprise Performance Management, on a Podcast, and he enlightened me about how our mobile devices and business scorecards are enabling us to be more accountable and keep a watchful eye on business – even while on the golf course.Business scorecards have been around for many years - so I asked Jacques if he felt they had changed significantly due to technology. His answer was, “Yes, and no.”  Jacques agreed that scorecard enthusiasts are still passionate about executing the company strategy and monitoring Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), but scorecards and Business Intelligence (BI) as a whole have changed.  He explained that five to six years ago, people did BI work at the office and, for the most part, disconnected from their computer and workplace when they went home – with the exception of checking email and making a phone call or two. But now, that is no longer the case. People are virtually always connected with work and, more importantly, expect their BI and scorecards to be ‘always on,’ regardless of whether they are at their desk or somewhere else.Basically, the BI paradigm has changed from a 'pull' model, where employees are at their desks querying or pulling information from the system, to a 'push' model where employees expect their BI and scorecard systems to reach out (or push information) to them when there is something of note to learn or something on which they need to take action. I found this very interesting. However mobile devices do have their limitations with respect to screen sizes – does it really make sense to look at your strategy/scorecard on tiny devices? What kind of scorecard activities can you really expect to be able to do? Jacques’ answer was very logical. “When you think of a scorecard, it is really comprised of an organization of KPIs that are aligned with the strategic objectives of your company. KPIs are the heart of how you will execute your strategy. So, if you decompose that a little more, each KPI is well defined with the thresholds that you should keep an eye on and who is responsible for them. When we talk about scorecarding on a phone, we aren’t talking about surfing the strategy and exploring the strategy map like we do on the desktop. In a scorecarding context, we use the phone more as an alerting mechanism or simple monitoring device for your KPIs.”Jacques gave a great example of an inventory manager who took part of an afternoon off to go golfing before winter finally hit, and while on the front nine holes, his phone vibrated. His scorecard was alerting him that the inventory levels for one of the products was below some threshold that he had set.  From his phone, he had set up three options within Oracle Scorecard and Strategy Management (OSSM) for this type of situation:  1. Contact the warehouse manager directly by phone and work it out (standard phone function)  2. Tap/hold the KPI and add an annotation to the KPI in OSSM using the dictation capabilities of the phone and deal with it more fully when he gets back to the office  3. Tap/hold the KPI and invoke a business process from OSSM to transfer product from another warehouse with higher stock levels to the one that needs it  Being on a phone should still give you options to quickly deal with situations as needed, but mobile phones are not designed for nor should try to replicate the full desktop experience. We covered other interesting subjects in the interview, including how Oracle is keeping pace with mobile innovation and new devices such as Google Glasses, Galaxy Gear, Pebble Watches and more, and how Oracle is handling mobile security– which is great news for our mobile workforce. To listen to the entire Podcast, click here.To learn more about Oracle Scorecard and Strategy Management, click here.

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• No sound lenovo t60 alsa ad1981 iec958

  - by Nate

  Any help on getting the sound to come through my lenovo t60 build in speakers, headphones, or mic would greatly be appreciated. The three buttons to increase, decrease sound seem to work. Bios has sound card enabled and the buttons beep when pressed. When going to Utube or playing music, no sound is heard. Thanks Nate Feb 23 - Didn't see anything specific in the sys logs with Rhythmbox when connecting my ipod. Rhythmbox is playing, but still no sound. Here is the syslog details for today. Output is set to analog output. Feb 23 17:42:32 itgis01398 rsyslogd: [origin software="rsyslogd" swVersion="4.2.0" x-pid="824" x-info="http://www.rsyslog.com"] rsyslogd was HUPed, type 'lightweight'. Feb 23 17:42:33 itgis01398 rsyslogd: [origin software="rsyslogd" swVersion="4.2.0" x-pid="824" x-info="http://www.rsyslog.com"] rsyslogd was HUPed, type 'lightweight'. Feb 23 17:42:49 itgis01398 anacron[968]: Job `cron.daily' terminated Feb 23 17:42:49 itgis01398 anacron[968]: Job `cron.weekly' started Feb 23 17:42:49 itgis01398 anacron[12067]: Updated timestamp for job `cron.weekly' to 2011-02-23 Feb 23 17:42:53 itgis01398 anacron[968]: Job `cron.weekly' terminated Feb 23 17:42:53 itgis01398 anacron[968]: Normal exit (2 jobs run) Feb 23 18:01:19 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2731.324067] usb 1-5: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3 Feb 23 18:01:19 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2731.482879] Initializing USB Mass Storage driver... Feb 23 18:01:19 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2731.483061] usb-storage 1-5:1.0: Quirks match for vid 05ac pid 1205: 10 Feb 23 18:01:19 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2731.483116] scsi6 : usb-storage 1-5:1.0 Feb 23 18:01:19 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2731.483306] usbcore: registered new interface driver usb-storage Feb 23 18:01:19 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2731.483310] USB Mass Storage support registered. Feb 23 18:01:20 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2732.481116] scsi 6:0:0:0: Direct-Access Apple iPod 1.62 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0 Feb 23 18:01:20 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2732.482466] sd 6:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0 Feb 23 18:01:20 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2732.485095] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Adjusting the sector count from its reported value: 7999488 Feb 23 18:01:20 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2732.485110] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] 7999487 512-byte logical blocks: (4.09 GB/3.81 GiB) Feb 23 18:01:20 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2732.487933] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off Feb 23 18:01:20 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2732.487941] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 64 00 00 08 Feb 23 18:01:20 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2732.487947] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through Feb 23 18:01:20 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2732.489927] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Adjusting the sector count from its reported value: 7999488 Feb 23 18:01:20 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2732.491150] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through Feb 23 18:01:20 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2732.491163] sdb: sdb1 sdb2 Feb 23 18:01:20 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2732.510428] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Adjusting the sector count from its reported value: 7999488 Feb 23 18:01:20 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2732.511288] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through Feb 23 18:01:20 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2732.511297] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk Feb 23 18:01:21 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2733.746675] FAT: invalid media value (0x2f) Feb 23 18:01:21 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2733.746682] VFS: Can't find a valid FAT filesystem on dev sdb1. Feb 23 18:01:22 itgis01398 upstart-udev-bridge[330]: Env must be KEY=VALUE pairs Feb 23 18:02:07 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2780.115826] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Unhandled sense code Feb 23 18:02:07 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2780.115835] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE Feb 23 18:02:07 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2780.115844] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Sense Key : Medium Error [current] Feb 23 18:02:07 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2780.115855] Info fld=0x0 Feb 23 18:02:07 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2780.115859] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Add. Sense: Unrecovered read error Feb 23 18:02:07 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2780.115870] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] CDB: Read(10): 28 00 00 08 fd e9 00 00 f0 00 Feb 23 18:02:07 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2780.115892] end_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 589289 Feb 23 18:02:49 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2821.351464] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Unhandled sense code Feb 23 18:02:49 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2821.351473] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE Feb 23 18:02:49 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2821.351482] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Sense Key : Medium Error [current] Feb 23 18:02:49 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2821.351493] Info fld=0x0 Feb 23 18:02:49 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2821.351497] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Add. Sense: No additional sense information Feb 23 18:02:49 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2821.351507] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] CDB: Read(10): 28 00 00 08 fe d9 00 00 10 00 Feb 23 18:02:49 itgis01398 kernel: [ 2821.351530] end_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 589529 Feb 23 18:17:01 itgis01398 CRON[12709]: (root) CMD ( cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly) volume is all of the way up.

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• Windows Phone 8, possible tablets and what the latest update might mean

  - by Roger Hart

  Microsoft have just announced an update to Windows Phone 8. As one of the five, maybe six people who actually bought a WP8 handset I found this interesting. Then I read the blog post about it, and rushed off to write somewhat less than a thousand words about a single picture. The blog post announces an extra column of tiles on the start screen, and support for higher resolutions. If we ignore all the usual flummery about how this will make your life better, that (and the rotation lock) sounds a little like stage setting for tablets. Looking at the preview screenshot, I started to wonder. What it’s called Phablet_5F00_StartScreenProductivity_5F00_01_5F00_072A1240.jpg Pretty conclusive. If you can brand something a “phablet” and sleep at night you’re made of sterner stuff than I am, but that’s beside the point. It’s explicit in the post that Microsoft are expecting a broader range of form factors for WP8, but they stop short of quite calling out tablet size. The extra columns and resolution definitely back that up, so why stop at a 6 inch “phablet”? Sadly, the string of numbers there don’t really look like a Lumia model number – that would be a bit tendentious even for a speculative blog post about a single screenshot. “Productivity” is interesting too. I get into this a bit more below, but this is a pretty clear pitch for a business device. What it looks like Something that would look quite decent on a 7 inch screen, but something a bit too vertical to go toe-to-toe with the Surface. Certainly, it would look a lot better on a large-factor phone than any of the current models. Those tiles are going to get cramped and a bit ugly if the handsets aren’t getting bigger. What’s on it You have a bunch of missed calls, you rarely text, use a stocks app, and your budget spreadsheet and meeting notes are a thumb-reach away. Outlook is your main form of email. You care enough about LinkedIn to not only install its app but give it a huge live tile. There’s no beating about the bush here, the implicit persona is a corporate exec. With Nokia in the bag and Blackberry pushing daisies, that may not be a stupid play. There’s almost certainly a niche there if they can parlay their corporate credentials into filling it before BYOD (which functionally means an iPhone) reaches the late adopters. The really quite slick WP8 Office implementation ought to help here. This is the face they’ve chosen to present, the cultural milieu they’re normalizing for Windows Phone. It’s an iPhone for Serious Business Grown-ups. Could work, I guess. Does it mean anything? Is the latest WP8 update a sign that we can expect to see tablets running Windows Phone rather than WinRT? Well, WinRT tablets haven’t exactly taken off but I’m not quite going to make a leap like that just from a file name and a column of icons. I feel pretty safe, however, conjecturing that Microsoft would like to squeeze a WP8 “phablet” into the palm of every exec who’s ever grumbled about their Blackberry, and this release might get them a bit closer. If it works well incrementing up to larger devices, then that could be a fair hedge against WinRt crashing and burning any harder in the marketplace.

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• Some Original Expressions

  - by Phil Factor

  Guest Editorial for Simple-Talk newsletterIn a guest editorial for the Simple-Talk Newsletter, Phil Factor wonders if we are still likely to find some more novel and unexpected ways of using the newer features of Transact SQL: or maybe in some features that have always been there! There can be a great deal of fun to be had in trying out recent features of SQL Expressions to see if  they provide new functionality.  It is surprisingly rare to find things that couldn’t be done before, but in a different   and more cumbersome way; but it is great to experiment or to read of someone else making that discovery.  One such recent feature is the ‘table value constructor’, or ‘VALUES constructor’, that managed to get into SQL Server 2008 from Standard SQL.  This allows you to create derived tables of up to 1000 rows neatly within select statements that consist of  lists of row values.  E.g. SELECT Old_Welsh, number FROM (VALUES ('Un',1),('Dou',2),('Tri',3),('Petuar',4),('Pimp',5),('Chwech',6),('Seith',7),('Wyth',8),('Nau',9),('Dec',10)) AS WelshWordsToTen (Old_Welsh, number) These values can be expressions that return single values, including, surprisingly, subqueries. You can use this device to create views, or in the USING clause of a MERGE statement. Joe Celko covered  this here and here.  It can become extraordinarily handy to use once one gets into the way of thinking in these terms, and I’ve rewritten a lot of routines to use the constructor, but the old way of using UNION can be used the same way, but is a little slower and more long-winded. The use of scalar SQL subqueries as an expression in a VALUES constructor, and then applied to a MERGE, has got me thinking. It looks very clever, but what use could one put it to? I haven’t seen anything yet that couldn’t be done almost as  simply in SQL Server 2000, but I’m hopeful that someone will come up with a way of solving a tricky problem, just in the same way that a freak of the XML syntax forever made the in-line  production of delimited lists from an expression easy, or that a weird XML pirouette could do an elegant  pivot-table rotation. It is in this sort of experimentation where the community of users can make a real contribution. The dissemination of techniques such as the Number, or Tally table, or the unconventional ways that the UPDATE statement can be used, has been rapid due to articles and blogs. However, there is plenty to be done to explore some of the less obvious features of Transact SQL. Even some of the features introduced into SQL Server 2000 are hardly well-known. Certain operations on data are still awkward to perform in Transact SQL, but we mustn’t, I think, be too ready to state that certain things can only be done in the application layer, or using a CLR routine. With the vast array of features in the product, and with the tools that surround it, I feel that there is generally a way of getting tricky things done. Or should we just stick to our lasts and push anything difficult out into procedural code? I’d love to know your views.

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• I got my z-5 Logitech speakers to work, but whenever I restart, I have to reconfigure them

  - by The Bill

  This is the content of my alsa-base.conf file (for some reason, the entries preceded by # are bolded--anyway): autoloader aliases install sound-slot-0 /sbin/modprobe snd-card-0 install sound-slot-1 /sbin/modprobe snd-card-1 install sound-slot-2 /sbin/modprobe snd-card-2 install sound-slot-3 /sbin/modprobe snd-card-3 install sound-slot-4 /sbin/modprobe snd-card-4 install sound-slot-5 /sbin/modprobe snd-card-5 install sound-slot-6 /sbin/modprobe snd-card-6 install sound-slot-7 /sbin/modprobe snd-card-7 Cause optional modules to be loaded above generic modules install snd /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd $CMDLINE_OPTS && { /sbin/modprobe --quiet --use-blacklist snd-ioctl32 ; /sbin/modprobe --quiet --use-blacklist snd-seq ; } # Workaround at bug #499695 (reverted in Ubuntu see LP #319505) install snd-pcm /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd-pcm $CMDLINE_OPTS && { /sbin/modprobe --quiet --use-blacklist snd-pcm-oss ; : ; } install snd-mixer /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd-mixer $CMDLINE_OPTS && { /sbin/modprobe --quiet --use-blacklist snd-mixer-oss ; : ; } install snd-seq /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd-seq $CMDLINE_OPTS && { /sbin/modprobe --quiet --use-blacklist snd-seq-midi ; /sbin/modprobe --quiet --use-blacklist snd-seq-oss ; : ; } # install snd-rawmidi /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd-rawmidi $CMDLINE_OPTS && { /sbin/modprobe --quiet --use-blacklist snd-seq-midi ; : ; } Cause optional modules to be loaded above sound card driver modules install snd-emu10k1 /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd-emu10k1 $CMDLINE_OPTS && { /sbin/modprobe --quiet --use-blacklist snd-emu10k1-synth ; } install snd-via82xx /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd-via82xx $CMDLINE_OPTS && { /sbin/modprobe --quiet --use-blacklist snd-seq ; } Load saa7134-alsa instead of saa7134 (which gets dragged in by it anyway) install saa7134 /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install saa7134 $CMDLINE_OPTS && { /sbin/modprobe --quiet --use-blacklist saa7134-alsa ; : ; } Prevent abnormal drivers from grabbing index 0 options bt87x index=-2 options cx88_alsa index=-2 options saa7134-alsa index=-2 options snd-atiixp-modem index=-2 options snd-intel8x0m index=-2 options snd-via82xx-modem index=-2 options snd-usb-audio index=-2 options snd-usb-caiaq index=-2 options snd-usb-ua101 index=-2 options snd-usb-us122l index=-2 options snd-usb-usx2y index=-2 alias snd-card-0 snd-usb-audio alias snd-card-1 snd-hda-intel options snd-usb-audio index=0 options snd-hda-intel index=1 Ubuntu #62691, enable MPU for snd-cmipci options snd-cmipci mpu_port=0x330 fm_port=0x388 Keep snd-pcsp from being loaded as first soundcard options snd-pcsp index=-2 options snd-usb-audio index=-2 options snd-usb-audio index=0 alias snd-card-0 snd-usb-audio alias snd-card-1 snd-hda-intel options snd-hda-intel index=1 I deleted a line that said something like "#Keep usb-audio from being loaded as first soundcard" and that made the speakers work for the first time (before this, they never showed up). I also added the last four lines. Anyway, what can I add to this so that I don't have to reconfigure them each time I restart? Currently, I have to open Sound Settings, then under the hardware tab, select Analog Stereo Output, and then unplug my USB speakers and plug them back in. This makes them pop up so that I can see them. Otherwise, it will not show my Z-5 speakers as a device that can be configured.

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• Impressions of my ASUS eee slate EP121 - Dual core 4GB, 64GB SSD

  - by tonyrogerson

  This thing is lovely, very nice bluetooth keyboard that has nice feedback on the keypress, there is no mouse but you can use the stylus or get yourself a bluetooth mouse, me, I've opted for a Microsoft ARC mouse which is a delight to use, the USB doors are a pain to open for the first time if like me you don't have any finger nails. It came as a suprise that the slate shows four processors, Dual Core with multi-threading, I didn't really look at the processor I was more interested in the amount of memory and the SSD; you don't get the full 4GB even with the 64 bit version of Windows 7 installed (which I immediately upgraded to Ultimate through my MSDN subscription). The box is extremely responsive - extremely, it loads Winword in literally a second. I've got office 2010 and onenote 2010 on there now; one problem is that on applying all (43) windows updates since the upgrade the machine is still sat on step 3 of 3 on the start up configuring updates screen after about an hour, you can't turn this machine off without using a paper clip to reset it and as I have just found you need a paper clip :). Installing Windows 7 SP1 was effortless. One of the first things I did on it was to reduce the size of the font, by default its set at 125%, my eye sight is ok :) so I've set that back down. Amazon Kindle for the PC works really well, plenty of text on the screen when viewed portrait, the case it comes with also allows the slate to stand up in various positions - portrait, horizontal - seems stable enough. The wireless works well, seems to have a better signal than my other two laptop machines which is good news. The gadget passed the pose test at work :). I use offline files to keep a copy of all my work stuff locally, I'm not sure what it is, well, its probably my server but whenever I try and sync it runs for a couple of minutes then fails with network name no longer contactable, funnily enough its fine from my big laptop so I can only guess this may be a driver type issue on the EP121 itself - very odd and very annoying. I do a lot of presenting and need to plug into a VGA project because most sites that's all that is offered, the EP121 has a mini-hdmi output which is great except for this scenario, hdmi is digital, vga is analogue, you will struggle to find a cost effective solution, I found HDFury and also a device HP do, however, a better solution appears to be getting a USB graphics adapter for instance the one I've ordered is the ClimaxDigital USB 2.0 to DVI,VGA or HDMI Adaptor which gives everything I need - VGA and DVI output and great resolution as well - ok, so fingers crossed because I'm presenting next Wednesday in Edinburgh and not taking my 300kg lenovo w700 (I'm sure my back just sighed in relief) - it certainly works really well on my LED TV, the install was simple - it just works! One of the several reasons for buying this piece of kit was to use it on my LED TV to remote into my main machine to check stuff whilst sat in my living room, also to watch webcasts and lecture videos in comfort away from my office, because of the wireless speed and limitation I'm opting for a USB network adapter from Belkin - that will also allow me to take advantage of my home gigabit network, there are only 2 usb ports on the slate so I'm going to knock up a hub so connecting it in is straight forward and simple, I'm also going to purchase a second power supply so I don't have to faff about with that either.I now have the developer x64 edition of SQL Server 2008 R2, yes everything :) - about 16GB left to play with on the machine now but that will be fine, I'll put AdventureWorks on there so I can play and demo stuff which is all I'm after from this, my development machine is significantly more powerful and meets my storage needs too.Travel test this weekend and next week, I'm in Dundee for my final exam for the masters degree.

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• How to get bearable 2D and 3D performance on AMD Radeon HD 6950?

  - by l0b0

  I have had an AMD Radeon HD 6950 (i.e., Cayman series) for a couple years now, and I have tried a lot of combinations of drivers and settings with terrible results. I'm completely at a loss as to how to proceed. The open source driver has much better 2D performance, but it offloads all OpenGL rendering to the CPU. What I've tried so far: All the latest stable Ubuntu releases in the period, plus one Linux Mint release. All the latest stable AMD Catalyst Proprietary Display Drivers, and currently 13.1. The unofficial wiki installation instructions for every Ubuntu version and the semi-official Ubuntu instructions. All the tips and tweaks I could find for Minecraft (Optifine, reducing settings to minimum), VLC (postprocessing at minimum, rendering at native video size), Catalyst Control Center (flipped every lever in there) and X11 (some binary toggles I can no longer remember). Results: Typically 13-15 FPS in Minecraft, 30 max (100+ in Windows with the same driver version). Around 10 FPS in Team Fortress 2 using the official Steam client. Choppy video playback, in Flash and with VLC. CPU use goes through the roof when rendering video (150% for 1080p on YouTube in Chromium, 100% for 1080p H264 in VLC). glxgears shows 12.5 FPS when maximized. fgl_glxgears shows 10 FPS when maximized. Hardware details from lshw: Motherboard ASUS P6X58D-E CPU Intel Core i7 CPU 950 @ 3.07GHz (never overclocked; 64 bit) 6 GB RAM Video card product "Cayman PRO [Radeon HD 6950]", vendor "Hynix Semiconductor (Hyundai Electronics)" 2 x 1920x1200 monitors, both connected with HDMI. I feel I must be missing something absolutely fundamental here. Is there no accelerated support for anything on 64-bit architectures? Does a dual monitor completely mess up the driver? $ fglrxinfo display: :0 screen: 0 OpenGL vendor string: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. OpenGL renderer string: AMD Radeon HD 6900 Series OpenGL version string: 4.2.11995 Compatibility Profile Context $ glxinfo | grep 'direct rendering' direct rendering: Yes I am currently using the open source driver, with the following results: Full frame rate and low CPU load when playing 1080p video. Black screen (but music in the background) in Team Fortress 2. Similar performance in Minecraft as the Catalyst driver. In hindsight obvious, since both end up offloading the rendering to the CPU. My /var/log/Xorg.0.log after upgrading to AMD Catalyst 13.1. Some possibly important lines: (WW) Falling back to old probe method for fglrx (WW) fglrx: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:0@3:0:1) found The generated xorg.conf. The disabled "monitor" 0-DFP9 is actually an A/V receiver, which sometimes confuses the monitor drivers when turned on/off (but not in Windows). All three "monitor" devices are connected with HDMI. Edit: Chris Carter's suggestion to use the xorg-edgers PPA (Catalyst 13.1) resulted in some improvement, but still pretty bad performance overall: Minecraft stabilizes at 13-17 FPS, but at least the CPU load is "only" at 45-60%. Still 150% CPU use for 1080p video rendering on YouTube in Chromium. Massive improvement for 1080p H264 in VLC: 40-50% CPU use and no visible jitter glxgears performance about doubled to 25-30 FPS when maximized. fgl_glxgears still at ~10 FPS when maximized.

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• How do I use ffmpeg to take pictures with my web camera?

  - by user45583

  I want to use ffmpeg to store images taken by my USB web camera on my Ubuntu 11.10. lsusb outputs: Bus 002 Device 003: ID 0c45:6028 Microdia Typhoon Easycam USB 330K (older) The camera works fine using cheese but I want to use command line tools to make it scriptable but if I try: ffmpeg -i /dev/v4l/by-id/usb-0c45_USB_camera-video-index0 image.jpg The output is: user@box:~$ sudo ffmpeg -i /dev/v4l/by-id/usb-0c45_USB_camera-video-index0 image.jpg [sudo] password for user: ffmpeg version 0.7.3-4:0.7.3-0ubuntu0.11.10.1, Copyright (c) 2000-2011 the Libav developers built on Jan 4 2012 16:21:50 with gcc 4.6.1 configuration: --extra-version='4:0.7.3-0ubuntu0.11.10.1' --arch=i386 --prefix=/usr --enable-vdpau --enable-bzlib --enable-libgsm --enable-libschroedinger --enable-libspeex --enable-libtheora --enable-libvorbis --enable-pthreads --enable-zlib --enable-libvpx --enable-runtime-cpudetect --enable-vaapi --enable-gpl --enable-postproc --enable-swscale --enable-x11grab --enable-libdc1394 --enable-shared --disable-static WARNING: library configuration mismatch avutil configuration: --extra-version='4:0.7.3-0ubuntu0.11.10.1' --arch=i386 --prefix=/usr --enable-vdpau --enable-bzlib --enable-libgsm --enable-libschroedinger --enable-libspeex --enable-libtheora --enable-libvorbis --enable-pthreads --enable-zlib --enable-libvpx --enable-runtime-cpudetect --enable-vaapi --enable-gpl --enable-postproc --enable-swscale --enable-x11grab --enable-libdc1394 --shlibdir=/usr/lib/i686/cmov --cpu=i686 --enable-shared --disable-static --disable-ffmpeg --disable-ffplay avcodec configuration: --extra-version='4:0.7.3-0ubuntu0.11.10.1' --arch=i386 --prefix=/usr --enable-vdpau --enable-bzlib --enable-libgsm --enable-libschroedinger --enable-libspeex --enable-libtheora --enable-libvorbis --enable-pthreads --enable-zlib --enable-libvpx --enable-runtime-cpudetect --enable-vaapi --enable-gpl --enable-postproc --enable-swscale --enable-x11grab --enable-libdc1394 --shlibdir=/usr/lib/i686/cmov --cpu=i686 --enable-shared --disable-static --disable-ffmpeg --disable-ffplay avformat configuration: --extra-version='4:0.7.3-0ubuntu0.11.10.1' --arch=i386 --prefix=/usr --enable-vdpau --enable-bzlib --enable-libgsm --enable-libschroedinger --enable-libspeex --enable-libtheora --enable-libvorbis --enable-pthreads --enable-zlib --enable-libvpx --enable-runtime-cpudetect --enable-vaapi --enable-gpl --enable-postproc --enable-swscale --enable-x11grab --enable-libdc1394 --shlibdir=/usr/lib/i686/cmov --cpu=i686 --enable-shared --disable-static --disable-ffmpeg --disable-ffplay avdevice configuration: --extra-version='4:0.7.3-0ubuntu0.11.10.1' --arch=i386 --prefix=/usr --enable-vdpau --enable-bzlib --enable-libgsm --enable-libschroedinger --enable-libspeex --enable-libtheora --enable-libvorbis --enable-pthreads --enable-zlib --enable-libvpx --enable-runtime-cpudetect --enable-vaapi --enable-gpl --enable-postproc --enable-swscale --enable-x11grab --enable-libdc1394 --shlibdir=/usr/lib/i686/cmov --cpu=i686 --enable-shared --disable-static --disable-ffmpeg --disable-ffplay avfilter configuration: --extra-version='4:0.7.3-0ubuntu0.11.10.1' --arch=i386 --prefix=/usr --enable-vdpau --enable-bzlib --enable-libgsm --enable-libschroedinger --enable-libspeex --enable-libtheora --enable-libvorbis --enable-pthreads --enable-zlib --enable-libvpx --enable-runtime-cpudetect --enable-vaapi --enable-gpl --enable-postproc --enable-swscale --enable-x11grab --enable-libdc1394 --shlibdir=/usr/lib/i686/cmov --cpu=i686 --enable-shared --disable-static --disable-ffmpeg --disable-ffplay swscale configuration: --extra-version='4:0.7.3-0ubuntu0.11.10.1' --arch=i386 --prefix=/usr --enable-vdpau --enable-bzlib --enable-libgsm --enable-libschroedinger --enable-libspeex --enable-libtheora --enable-libvorbis --enable-pthreads --enable-zlib --enable-libvpx --enable-runtime-cpudetect --enable-vaapi --enable-gpl --enable-postproc --enable-swscale --enable-x11grab --enable-libdc1394 --shlibdir=/usr/lib/i686/cmov --cpu=i686 --enable-shared --disable-static --disable-ffmpeg --disable-ffplay postproc configuration: --extra-version='4:0.7.3-0ubuntu0.11.10.1' --arch=i386 --prefix=/usr --enable-vdpau --enable-bzlib --enable-libgsm --enable-libschroedinger --enable-libspeex --enable-libtheora --enable-libvorbis --enable-pthreads --enable-zlib --enable-libvpx --enable-runtime-cpudetect --enable-vaapi --enable-gpl --enable-postproc --enable-swscale --enable-x11grab --enable-libdc1394 --shlibdir=/usr/lib/i686/cmov --cpu=i686 --enable-shared --disable-static --disable-ffmpeg --disable-ffplay libavutil 51. 7. 0 / 51. 7. 0 libavcodec 53. 6. 0 / 53. 6. 0 libavformat 53. 3. 0 / 53. 3. 0 libavdevice 53. 0. 0 / 53. 0. 0 libavfilter 2. 4. 0 / 2. 4. 0 libswscale 2. 0. 0 / 2. 0. 0 libpostproc 52. 0. 0 / 52. 0. 0 /dev/v4l/by-id/usb-0c45_USB_camera-video-index0: Invalid data found when processing input How do I make this work?

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• 2013 Predictions for Retail

  - by David Dorf

  Its that time of year to roll out the predictions for next year.  I can't say I've really nailed it in the past, but feel free to look back at my 2012, 2011, and 2010 predictions.  I'm not expecting anything earth-shattering this year; just continued maturation of several technologies that are finally taking hold. 1. Next day delivery -- Amazon finally decided it wasn't worth fighting state taxes and instead decided to place distribution centers everywhere so they can potentially offer next-day deliveries.  Not to be outdone, Walmart is looking to leverage its huge physical presence to offer the same.  Clubs like ShopRunner are pushing delivery barriers as well, so the norm is shifting to free shipping in a few days or relatively cheap shipping overnight.  Retailers need be thinking about how to ship from physical stores. 2. Bring your own device -- Earlier this year Intuit bought AisleBuyer, a mobile self-checkout start-up, at least somewhat validating the BYOD approach.  Grocery stores, especially in Europe, have been supporting in-aisle self-scanning for a while and I'm betting it will find a home in certain verticals in the US too.  There's also the BYOD concept for employees.  Some retailers are considering issuing mobile devices at hiring along side the shirt and name-tag.  Employees become responsible for the hardware until they leave. 3. TV shopping -- Will Apple finally release a TV product in 2013?  Who knows?  But the industry isn't standing still. Companies like QVC and HSN are already successfully combining the TV and online experiences for shopping.  Comcast is partnering with Tivo to allow viewers to interact with ads with Paypal handing payment.  This will be a slow maturation, but expect TVs to get smarter and eventually become a new selling channel (pun intended) for retailers. 4. Privacy backlash -- It only takes one big incident to stir the public, and I'm betting we have one in 2013.  Facebook, Google, or Apple will test the boundaries of what the public is willing to accept.  It could involve a retailer using geo-location technology, or possibly video analytics.  And as is always the case, the offender will apologize, temporarily remove the technology, and wait 2-3 years for it to be generally accepted.  Privacy is a moving target. 5. More NFC -- I've come to the conclusion that adoption of any banking technology is going to be slow.  It was slow for credit cards, ATMs, and online billpay so why should it be any different for NFC?  Maybe, just maybe the iPhone 5S will have an NFC chip, but we're not going to see mainstream uptake for years.  Next year we'll continue to see incremental improvements from Isis, Google, and Paypal and a plethora of new startups, but don't toss your magstripe cards just yet. 6. In-store location -- The technologies for tracking people inside stores is really improving.  Retailers can track people using video cameras, infrared, and by the WiFi radios in mobile phones.  We're getting closer to the point where accuracy could be a shelf-facing, which will help retailers understand how people shop, where they spend time, and what displays attract them.  Expect CPG companies to get involved and partner with retailers, since the data benefits both parties.  Consumers will benefit by being directed right to the products they seek.  (In 2013 ARTS is forming a workteam to develop new standards in this area.) 7. M&A -- Looking back at 2012 there were some really big deals involving IBM, Oracle, JDA, and NCR and I expect that trend will likely continue as vendors add assets to bolster their portfolios.  Many retailers are due for an IT transformation to support anywhere, anytime shoppers, and one-stop-vendors can minimize complexity and costs. Predictions from other sources: Independent Retailer Stores Magazine IDC Insights Mobile Commerce Daily

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• Webcast Q&A: Demystifying External Authorization

  - by B Shashikumar

  Thanks to everyone who joined us on our webcast with SANS Institute on "Demystifying External Authorization". Also a special thanks to Tanya Baccam from SANS for sharing her experiences reviewing Oracle Entitlements Server. If you missed the webcast, you can catch a replay of the webcast here.  Here is a compilation of the slides that were used on today's webcast.  SANS Institute Product Review: Oracle Entitlements Server We have captured the Q&A from the webcast for those who couldn't attend. Q: Is Oracle ADF integrated with Oracle Entitlements Server (OES) ? A:  In Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g and later, Oracle ADF, Oracle WebCenter, Oracle SOA Suite and other middleware products are all built on Oracle Platform Security Services (OPSS). OPSS privodes many security functions like authentication, audit, credential stores, token validaiton, etc. OES is the authorization solution underlying OPSS. And OES 11g unifies different authorization mechanisms including Java2/ABAC/RBAC.  Q: Which portal frameworks support the use of OES policies for portal entitlement decisions? A:  Many portals including Oracle WebCenter 11g  run natively on top of OES. The authorization engine in WebCenter is OES. Besides, OES offers out of the box integration with Microsoft SharePoint. So SharePoint sites, sub sites, web parts, navigation items, document access control can all be secured with OES. Several other portals have also been secured with OES ex: IBM websphere portal Q:  How do we enforce Seperation of Duties (SoD) rules using OES (also how does that integrate with a product like OIA) ? A:  A product like OIM or OIA can be used to set up and govern SoD policies. OES enforces these policies at run time. Role mapping policies in OES can assign roles dynamically to users under certain conditions. So this makes it simple to enforce SoD policies inside an application at runtime. Q:  Our web application has objects like buttons, text fields, drop down lists etc. is there any ”autodiscovery” capability that allows me to use/see those web page objects so you can start building policies over those objects? or how does it work? A:  There ae few different options with OES. When you build an app, and make authorization calls with the app in the test environment, you can put OES in discovery mode and have OES register those authorization calls and decisions. Instead of doing  this after the fact, an application like Oracle iFlex has built-in UI controls where when the app is running, a script can intercept authorization calls and migrate those over to OES. And in Oracle ADF, a lot of resources are protected so pages, task flows and other resources be registered without OES knowing about them. Q: Does current Oracle Fusion application use OES ? The documentation does not seem to indicate it. A:  The current version of Fusion Apps is using a preview version of OES. Soon it will be repalced with OES 11g.  Q: Can OES secure mobile apps? A: Absolutely. Nowadays users are bringing their own devices such as a a smartphone or tablet to work. With the Oracle IDM platform, we can tie identity context into the access management stack. With OES we can make use of context to enforce authorization for users accessing apps from mobile devices. For example: we can take into account different elements like authentication scheme, location, device type etc and tie all that information into an authorization decision.  Q:  Does Oracle Entitlements Server (OES) have an ESAPI implementation? A:  OES is an authorization solution. ESAPI/OWASP is something we include in our platform security solution for all oracle products, not specifically in OES Q:  ESAPI has an authorization API. Can I use that API to access OES? A:  If the API supports an interface / sspi model that can be configured to invoke an external authz system through some mechanism then yes

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• Oracle is #1 in Life Sciences!

  - by Michael Snow

  Guest post today by: John Klinke, Senior Principal Product Manager, Oracle WebCenter Content 12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} Based on the announcement last week at EMC World about Documentum for Life Sciences, it looks like EMC is starting to have regrets about pulling out of the life sciences space over the last few years. Certainly their content management customers and partners in life sciences have noticed their retreat. Many of them are now talking to us about WebCenter Content since they’ve seen the writing on the wall regarding Documentum’s decline, including falling revenue, shrinking investment, departure of key executives, and EMC’s auditing of existing customers. While EMC has been neglecting the life sciences industry over the last few years, Oracle has been increasing its investment and commitment by providing best-of-breed solutions to enable pharmaceutical, medical device, biotech and CRO companies to improve productivity and drive innovation. As a result, according to IDC Health Insights, Oracle is #1 in life sciences. From research and development through clinical development and manufacturing to sales and marketing, Oracle provides the solutions that life sciences companies depend on to accelerate R&D, expedite clinical trials, and speed time to market. Specifically for Oracle WebCenter, our life sciences business is booming thanks to our comprehensive offerings led by Oracle WebCenter Content, our 21 CFR Part 11 compliant enterprise content management platform. Unlike Documentum, WebCenter Content is all about keeping the cost of ownership low - through simplicity, flexibility, and out-of-the-box integrations. WebCenter Content is a single, comprehensive ECM platform that can handle all your content management needs, from controlled documents to digital asset management, records management and document imaging and capture. And it is much more flexible, letting you do configuration changes instead of customizations to meet your business needs. It also saves you money by being pre-integrated with the rest of the Oracle Fusion Middleware technology stack and with leading enterprise applications like Siebel (including Siebel CTMS), Primavera, E-Business Suite, JD Edwards and PeopleSoft. So if you think EMC’s announcement last week was too little and too late, I’m happy to report that Oracle is here to help. Back in October, we announced our Move Off Documentum offer, which provides a 100% trade-in credit for your Documentum licenses when you purchase Oracle WebCenter, and the good news is, this offer is still available for a limited time. So stop maintaining Documentum and start innovating with Oracle WebCenter. For more details see www.oracle.com/moveoff/documentum.

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• Get Your Enterprise Working With Oracle On Track Communication 1.0

  - by Josh Lannin

  The On Track Development team is very pleased to announce that today On Track is available for our customers to download and evaluate.  To learn more about what On Track does start with our whitepaper and datasheet.   If you are a developer, take a look at our documentation and samples posted to our OTN page. For this first blog post, I’ll be speaking to several notable points about our product. Graceful Escalation via Conversations: On Track addresses the “Collaboration Problem” through a single guiding principle – graceful escalation – within the construct of a Conversation. In On Track, collaboration is based on a context (called a “Conversation”) that gracefully escalates in form, structure, and content, as dictated by the particular needs of a given collaboration.  Within that context, On Track provides a rich set of tools to choose from.  These tools provide for communication, coordination, content management, organization, decision making, and analysis -- all essential aspects of collaboration, but not all of them are essential all of the time.  Every collaborative interaction will evolve differently.  Some will evolve to represent work spreading over the course of years and involving a large, distributed team, while others may involve few people and not evolve at all.  Regardless, all collaborative contexts are built from the same parts, utilize the same concepts, and start the same way.  The principle of graceful escalation is that you only use the tools and structure you need; so you only incur the complexity you need. Purposeful Collaboration: Through application integration, On Track Conversations bring enterprise application users the communication and collaboration capabilities required to complete business process.  By association with specific processes or business objects conversations extend the possible interactions and broaden participation to internal or external non-application users and provide a sophisticated interaction experience, all the while enhancing the data set within the owning application.  Purposeful collaboration not only needs to happen in the context of applications, it must support a full range of real-time and long-running interactions to provide the greatest value. Multi Client, Multi Modal: This On Track 1.0 product release includes the same day availability of  multiple clients, including iPhone and iPad applications which are now available on the Apple Store, a fully capable and accessible Outlook Add-In, along with our browser web client.  With each client we have sought to leverage the strengths of each unique device- our iPhone client supports picture and voice posts, the iPad is optimized for meeting room situations and document viewing, and our Outlook add-in allows you to take emails in context and bring them into On Track.  In addition to supporting a diverse array of clients, On Track provides a unified multi modal experience support starting with basic messages moving through to integrated documents with live annotations, snapshots, application sharing, and voice. Next Generation Web Architecture: We believe On Track will help move the bar higher for what users can expect from all web applications, most notably ones that involve real-time activity.  On Track is built from the ground up with an innovative, real-time architecture that leverages the extensive push capabilities of our server.  Whether you are receiving a new message, viewing where crowds of people are collaborating, or doing live annotation on a document with a set of people, that information comes to you immediately without refreshes or moving back and forth between pages.  We’ve leveraged this core architecture across the product experience and raised the user experience bar for this type of application.  As well these capabilities are based on open standards and protocols, and are fully extensible by anyone- enabling sophisticated integrations to be created with a wide variety of both legacy and next-generation applications. Agile Product Development: As a product team we operate using continuous feedback and modified agile development methodologies.  We have thousands of active internal Oracle users who have helped pilot our product for critical business functions, and the On Track product development team uses our product as our primary vehicle for all our collaboration.  Additionally we been working with early access customers who are adopting our technology and providing us valuable feedback - which our process has rapidly realized in improvements to our software.  On Track agility extends to our server as well, which is built to scale, and is very simple to install and configure. We are pleased to make this product announcement and encourage you to join us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter, as well as checking back here for the latest product information.

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• Hey Retailers, Are You Ready For The Holiday Season?

  - by Jeri Kelley

  With online holiday spending reaching $35.3 billion in 2011 and American shoppers spending just under $750 on average on their holiday purchases this year, how ready is your business for the 2012 holiday season?   ?? Today’s shoppers do not take their purchases lightly.  They are more connected, interact with more resources to make decisions, diligently compare products and services, seek out the best deals, and ask for input from friends and family.   This holiday season, as consumers browse for apparel, tablets, toys, and much more, they will be bombarded with retailer communication - from emails and commercials to countless search engine results and social recommendations.  With a flurry of activity coming at consumers from every channel and competitor, your success this year will rely on communicating a consistent, personalized message no matter where your customers are shopping.  Here are a few ideas to help with your commerce strategy this holiday season: CONSISTENCY COUNTS FOR MULTICHANNEL SHOPPERS??According to a November 2011 study commissioned by Oracle, “Channel Commerce 2011: The Consumer View,” 54% of consumers in the U.S. and Canada regularly employ two or more channels before they make a purchase.  While each channel has its own unique benefit, user profile, and purpose, it’s critical that your shoppers have a consistent core experience wherever they’re looking for information or making a purchase.  Be sure consumers can consistently search and browse the same product information and receive the same promotions online, on their mobile devices, and in-store.? USE YOUR CUSTOMER’S CONTEXT TO SURFACE RELEVANT CONTENTYour Web site is likely the hub of your holiday activity.  According to a Monetate infographic, 39% of shoppers will visit your Web site directly to find out about the best holiday deals.   Use everything you know about your customers from past purchase data to browsing history to provide a relevant experience at every click, and assemble content in a context that entices shoppers to buy online, or influences an offline purchase.? TAKE ADVANTAGE OF MOBILE BEHAVIOR?Having a mobile program is no longer a choice.   Armed with smartphones and tablets, consumers now have access to more and more product information and can compare products and prices from anywhere.  In fact, approximately 52% of smartphone users will use their device to research products, redeem coupons and use apps to assist in their holiday gift purchase.  At a minimum, be sure your mobile environment has store information, consistent pricing and promotions, and simple checkout capabilities. ARM IN-STORE ASSOCIATES WITH TABLETS?According to RISNews.com, 31% of retailers plan to begin testing tablets in stores in 2012, 22% have already begun such testing and 6% had fully deployed tablets within stores.   Take advantage of this compelling sales tool to get shoppers interacting with videos, user reviews, how-to guides, side-by-side product comparisons, and specs.  Automatically trigger upsell and cross sell suggestions for store associates to recommend for each product or category, build in alerts for promotions, and allow associates to place orders and check inventory from their tablet.  ? WISDOM OF THE CROWDS IS GOOD, BUT WISDOM FROM FRIENDS IS BETTER?Shoppers who grapple with options are looking for recommendations; they’d rather get advice from friends, and they’re more likely to spend more while doing so.    In fact, according to an infographic by Mr. Youth, 66% of social media users made a purchase on Black Friday or Cyber Monday as a direct result of social media interactions with brands or family.   This holiday season, be sure you are leveraging your social channels from Facebook to Pinterest to drive consistent promotions and help your brand to become part of the conversation. So, are you ready for the holidays this year?  

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• What DX level does my graphics card support? Does it go to 11?

  - by Daniel Moth

  Recently I run into a situation that I have run into quite a few times. Someone encounters a machine and the question arises: "Is there a DirectX 11 card in this machine?". Typically the reason you are interested in that is because cards with DirectX 11 drivers fully support DirectCompute (and by extension C++ AMP) for GPGPU programming. The driver specifically is WDDM (1.1 on Windows 7 and Windows 8 introduces WDDM 1.2 with cool new capabilities). There are many ways for figuring out if you have a DirectX11 card, so here are the approaches that you can use, with a bonus right at the end of the post. Run DxDiag WindowsKey + R, type DxDiag and hit Enter. That is the DirectX diagnostic tool, which unfortunately, only tells you on the "System" tab what is the highest version of DirectX installed on your machine. So if it reports DirectX 11, that doesn't mean you have a DX11 driver! The "Display" tab has a promising "DDI version" label, but unfortunately that doesn't seem to be accurate on the machines I've tested it with (or I may be misinterpreting its use). Either way, this tool is not the one you want for this purpose, although it is good for telling you the WDDM version among other things. Use the Microsoft hardware page There is a Microsoft Windows 7 compatibility center, that lists all hardware (tip: use the advanced search) and you could try and locate your device there… good luck. Use Wikipedia or the hardware vendor's website Use the Wikipedia page for the vendor cards, for both nvidia and amd. Often this information will also be in the specifications for the cards on the IHV site, but is is nice that wikipedia has a single page per vendor that you can search etc. There is a column in the tables for API support where you can see the DirectX version. Check if it is one of these recommended DX11 cards You may not have a DirectX 11 card and are interested in purchasing one. While I am in no position to make recommendations, I will list here some cards from two big IHVs that we know are DirectX 11 capable. Some AMD (aka ATI) cards Low end, inexpensive DX11 hardware: Radeon 5450, 5550, 6450, 6570 Mid range (decent perf, single precision): Radeon 5750, 5770, 6770, 6790 High end (capable of double precision): Radeon 5850, 5870, 6950, 6970 Single precision APUs: AMD E-Series APUs AMD A-Series APUs Some NVIDIA cards Low end, inexpensive DX11 hardware: GeForce GT430, GT 440, GT520, GTS 450 Quadro 400, 600 Mid-range (decent perf, single precision): GeForce GTX 460, GTX 550 Ti, GTX 560, GTX 560 Ti Quadro 2000 High end (capable of double precision): GeForce GTX 480, GTX 570, GTX 580, GTX 590, GTX 595 Quadro 4000, 5000, 6000 Tesla C2050, C2070, C2075 Get the DirectX SDK and run DirectX Caps Viewer Download and install the June 2010 DirectX SDK. As part of that you now have the DirectX Capabilities Viewer utility (find it in your start menu by searching for "DirectX Caps Viewer", the filename is DXCapsViewer.exe). It will list all your devices (emulated, and real hardware ones) under the first node. Expand the hardware entries and then expand again the Direct3D 11 folder. If you see D3D_FEATURE_LEVEL_11_ under that, then your card supports feature level 11 which means it supports DirectCompute and C++ AMP. In the following screenshot of one of my old laptops, the card only goes to feature level 10. Run a utility from the web that just tells you! Of course, writing some C++ AMP code that enumerates accelerators and lists the ones that are capable is trivial. However that requires that you have redistributed the runtime, so a more broadly applicable approach is to use the DX APIs directly to enumerate the DX11 capable cards. That is exactly what the development lead for C++ AMP has done and he describes and shares that utility at this post. Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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• How to Convert Videos to 3GP for Mobile Phones

  - by DigitalGeekery

  Would you like to play videos on your phone, but the device only supports 3GP files? We’ll show you how to convert popular video files into 3GP mobile phone video format with Pazera Free Video to 3GP Converter. Download the Pazera Free Video to 3GP Converter (Download link below). It will allow you to convert popular video files (AVI, MPEG, MP4, FLV, MKV, and MOV) to work on your mobile phone. There is no installation to run. You’ll just need to unzip the download folder and double-click the videoto3gp.exe file to run the application. To add video files to the queue, click on the Add files button. Browse for your file, and click Open.   Your video will be added to the Queue. You can add multiple files to the queue and convert them all at one time. The converter comes with several pre-configured profiles for conversion settings. To load a profile, select one from the Profile drop down list and then click the Load button. The settings in the panels at the bottom of the application will be automatically updated.   If you are a more advanced user, the options on the lower panels allow for adjusting settings to your liking. You can choose between 3GP and 3G2 (for some older phones), H.263, MPEG-4, and XviD video codecs, AAC or AMR-NB audio codecs, as well as a variety of bitrates, resolutions, etc.  By default, the converted file will be output to the same location as the input directory. You can change it by clicking the text box input radio button and browsing for a different folder. Click Convert to start the conversion process. A conversion output box will open and display the progress. When finished, click Close.   Now you’re ready to load the video onto your phone and enjoy.     Conclusion Pazera Free Video to 3GP Converter is not exactly the ultimate video conversion tool, but it is quick and simple enough for the average user to convert most video formats to 3GP. Plus, it’s portable. You can copy the folder to a USB drive and take it with you. Do you have some 3GP video files you’d like to convert to more common formats? Check out our earlier article on how to convert 3GP to AVI and MPEG for free. Link Download Pazera Free Video to 3GP Converter Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Convert .3GP and .3G2 Files to AVI / MPEG for FreeExtract Audio from a Video File with Pazera Free Audio ExtractorConvert PDF Files to Word Documents and Other FormatsConvert YouTube Videos to MP3 with YouTube DownloaderFriday Fun: Watch HD Video Content with Meevid TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips VMware Workstation 7 Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Daily Motivator (Firefox) FetchMp3 Can Download Videos & Convert Them to Mp3 Use Flixtime To Create Video Slideshows Creating a Password Reset Disk in Windows Bypass Waiting Time On Customer Service Calls With Lucyphone MELTUP – "The Beginning Of US Currency Crisis And Hyperinflation"

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• HOWTO Turn off SPARC T4 or Intel AES-NI crypto acceleration.

  - by darrenm

  Since we released hardware crypto acceleration for SPARC T4 and Intel AES-NI support we have had a common question come up: 'How do I test without the hardware crypto acceleration?'. Initially this came up just for development use so developers can do unit testing on a machine that has hardware offload but still cover the code paths for a machine that doesn't (our integration and release testing would run on all supported types of hardware anyway).  I've also seen it asked in a customer context too so that we can show that there is a performance gain from the hardware crypto acceleration, (not just the fact that SPARC T4 much faster performing processor than T3) and measure what it is for their application. With SPARC T2/T3 we could easily disable the hardware crypto offload by running 'cryptoadm disable provider=n2cp/0'.  We can't do that with SPARC T4 or with Intel AES-NI because in both of those classes of processor the encryption doesn't require a device driver instead it is unprivileged user land callable instructions. Turns out there is away to do this by using features of the Solaris runtime loader (ld.so.1). First I need to expose a little bit of implementation detail about how the Solaris Cryptographic Framework is implemented in Solaris 11.  One of the new Solaris 11 features of the linker/loader is the ability to have a single ELF object that has multiple different implementations of the same functions that are selected at runtime based on the capabilities of the machine.  The alternate to this is having the application coded to call getisax() and make the choice itself.  We use this functionality of the linker/loader when we build the userland libraries for the Solaris Cryptographic Framework (specifically libmd.so, and the unfortunately misnamed due to historical reasons libsoftcrypto.so) The Solaris linker/loader allows control of a lot of its functionality via environment variables, we can use that to control the version of the cryptographic functions we run.  To do this we simply export the LD_HWCAP environment variable with values that tell ld.so.1 to not select the HWCAP section matching certain features even if isainfo says they are present.  For SPARC T4 that would be: export LD_HWCAP="-aes -des -md5 -sha256 -sha512 -mont -mpul" and for Intel systems with AES-NI support: export LD_HWCAP="-aes" This will work for consumers of the Solaris Cryptographic Framework that use the Solaris PKCS#11 libraries or use libmd.so interfaces directly.  It also works for the Oracle DB and Java JCE.  However does not work for the default enabled OpenSSL "t4" or "aes-ni" engines (unfortunately) because they do explicit calls to getisax() themselves rather than using multiple ELF cap sections. However we can still use OpenSSL to demonstrate this by explicitly selecting "pkcs11" engine  using only a single process and thread.  $ openssl speed -engine pkcs11 -evp aes-128-cbc ... type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes aes-128-cbc 54170.81k 187416.00k 489725.70k 805445.63k 1018880.00k $ LD_HWCAP="-aes" openssl speed -engine pkcs11 -evp aes-128-cbc ... type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes aes-128-cbc 29376.37k 58328.13k 79031.55k 86738.26k 89191.77k We can clearly see the difference this makes in the case where AES offload to the SPARC T4 was disabled. The "t4" engine is faster than the pkcs11 one because there is less overhead (again on a SPARC T4-1 using only a single process/thread - using -multi you will get even bigger numbers). $ openssl speed -evp aes-128-cbc ... type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes aes-128-cbc 85526.61k 89298.84k 91970.30k 92662.78k 92842.67k Yet another cool feature of the Solaris linker/loader, thanks Rod and Ali. Note these above openssl speed output is not intended to show the actual performance of any particular benchmark just that there is a significant improvement from using hardware acceleration on SPARC T4. For cryptographic performance benchmarks see the http://blogs.oracle.com/BestPerf/ postings.

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• How does interpolation actually work to smooth out an object's movement?

  - by user22241

  I've asked a few similar questions over the past 8 months or so with no real joy, so I am going make the question more general. I have an Android game which is OpenGL ES 2.0. within it I have the following Game Loop: My loop works on a fixed time step principle (dt = 1 / ticksPerSecond) loops=0; while(System.currentTimeMillis() > nextGameTick && loops < maxFrameskip){ updateLogic(dt); nextGameTick+=skipTicks; timeCorrection += (1000d/ticksPerSecond) % 1; nextGameTick+=timeCorrection; timeCorrection %=1; loops++; } render(); My intergration works like this: sprite.posX+=sprite.xVel*dt; sprite.posXDrawAt=sprite.posX*width; Now, everything works pretty much as I would like. I can specify that I would like an object to move across a certain distance (screen width say) in 2.5 seconds and it will do just that. Also because of the frame skipping that I allow in my game loop, I can do this on pretty much any device and it will always take 2.5 seconds. Problem However, the problem is that when a render frame skips, the graphic stutter. It's extremely annoying. If I remove the ability to skip frames, then everything is smooth as you like, but will run at different speeds on different devices. So it's not an option. I'm still not sure why the frame skips, but I would like to point out that this is Nothing to do with poor performance, I've taken the code right back to 1 tiny sprite and no logic (apart from the logic required to move the sprite) and I still get skipped frames. And this is on a Google Nexus 10 tablet (and as mentioned above, I need frame skipping to keep the speed consistent across devices anyway). So, the only other option I have is to use interpolation (or extrapolation), I've read every article there is out there but none have really helped me to understand how it works and all of my attempted implementations have failed. Using one method I was able to get things moving smoothly but it was unworkable because it messed up my collision. I can foresee the same issue with any similar method because the interpolation is passed to (and acted upon within) the rendering method - at render time. So if Collision corrects position (character now standing right next to wall), then the renderer can alter it's position and draw it in the wall. So I'm really confused. People have said that you should never alter an object's position from within the rendering method, but all of the examples online show this. So I'm asking for a push in the right direction, please do not link to the popular game loop articles (deWitters, Fix your timestep, etc) as I've read these multiple times. I'm not asking anyone to write my code for me. Just explain please in simple terms how Interpolation actually works with some examples. I will then go and try to integrate any ideas into my code and will ask more specific questions if need-be further down the line. (I'm sure this is a problem many people struggle with).

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• Ubuntu 10.04 and fedora 14 grub conflict

  - by sawren

  I tried to triple boot Windows xp, Fedora 14 and Ubuntu 10.04. I first installed Windows xp, then fedora followed by Ubuntu. The problem is that i don't get option to boot Ubuntu while Xp boots fine. It seems Ubuntu was unable to replace Fedora's grub with its own at MBR. Looking at their grub conf file, Fedora and Ubuntu identifies same harddisk as two different devices and i do have another 80 GB harddisk which doesn't have any OS. Below is the details on my partitions and partial information from grub files of both OS. Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 * 63 40965749 20482843+ 7 HPFS/NTFS /dev/sda2 102414436 312576704 105081134+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA) /dev/sda3 40965750 102414374 30724312+ 83 Linux - /Home (for fedora) /dev/sda5 102414438 204812684 51199123+ 7 HPFS/NTFS /dev/sda6 204812748 253634219 24410736 83 Linux -- ubuntu /dev/sda7 253634283 302455754 24410736 83 Linux -- fedora /dev/sda8 302455818 312576704 5060443+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris grub.cfg from ubuntu ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/10_linux ### menuentry 'Ubuntu, with Linux 2.6.32-21-generic' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os { recordfail insmod ext2 set root='(hd1,7)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set cd55e078-a2c1-4d8a-9e87-ae838b6f4a05 linux /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-21-generic root=UUID=cd55e078-a2c1-4d8a-9e87-ae838b6f4a05 ro quiet splash initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-21-generic } menuentry 'Ubuntu, with Linux 2.6.32-21-generic (recovery mode)' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os { recordfail insmod ext2 set root='(hd1,7)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set cd55e078-a2c1-4d8a-9e87-ae838b6f4a05 echo 'Loading Linux 2.6.32-21-generic ...' linux /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-21-generic root=UUID=cd55e078-a2c1-4d8a-9e87-ae838b6f4a05 ro single echo 'Loading initial ramdisk ...' initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-21-generic } ### END /etc/grub.d/10_linux ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/20_memtest86+ ### menuentry "Memory test (memtest86+)" { insmod ext2 set root='(hd1,7)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set cd55e078-a2c1-4d8a-9e87-ae838b6f4a05 linux16 /boot/memtest86+.bin } menuentry "Memory test (memtest86+, serial console 115200)" { insmod ext2 set root='(hd1,7)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set cd55e078-a2c1-4d8a-9e87-ae838b6f4a05 linux16 /boot/memtest86+.bin console=ttyS0,115200n8 } ### END /etc/grub.d/20_memtest86+ ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober ### menuentry "Microsoft Windows XP Professional (on /dev/sdb1)" { insmod ntfs set root='(hd1,1)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set cad48cc6d48cb5eb drivemap -s (hd0) ${root} chainloader +1 } menuentry "Fedora (2.6.35.14-96.fc14.i686) (on /dev/sdb6)" { insmod ext2 set root='(hd1,6)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set 6aee34cf-f77a-489a-9361-85d07194b84b linux /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.35.14-96.fc14.i686 ro root=UUID=6aee34cf-f77a-489a-9361-85d07194b84b rd_NO_LUKS rd_NO_LVM rd_NO_MD rd_NO_DM LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYBOARDTYPE=pc KEYTABLE=us rhgb quiet initrd /boot/initramfs-2.6.35.14-96.fc14.i686.img } menuentry "Fedora (2.6.35.6-45.fc14.i686) (on /dev/sdb6)" { insmod ext2 set root='(hd1,6)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set 6aee34cf-f77a-489a-9361-85d07194b84b linux /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.35.6-45.fc14.i686 ro root=UUID=6aee34cf-f77a-489a-9361-85d07194b84b rd_NO_LUKS rd_NO_LVM rd_NO_MD rd_NO_DM LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYBOARDTYPE=pc KEYTABLE=us rhgb quiet initrd /boot/initramfs-2.6.35.6-45.fc14.i686.img } ### END /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober ### grub.conf from fedora default=0 timeout=5 splashimage=(hd0,5)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz hiddenmenu title Fedora (2.6.35.14-96.fc14.i686) root (hd0,5) kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.35.14-96.fc14.i686 ro root=UUID=6aee34cf-f77a-489a-9361-85d07194b84b rd_NO_LUKS rd_NO_LVM rd_NO_MD rd_NO_DM LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYBOARDTYPE=pc KEYTABLE=us rhgb quiet initrd /boot/initramfs-2.6.35.14-96.fc14.i686.img title Fedora (2.6.35.6-45.fc14.i686) root (hd0,5) kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.35.6-45.fc14.i686 ro root=UUID=6aee34cf-f77a-489a-9361-85d07194b84b rd_NO_LUKS rd_NO_LVM rd_NO_MD rd_NO_DM LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYBOARDTYPE=pc KEYTABLE=us rhgb quiet initrd /boot/initramfs-2.6.35.6-45.fc14.i686.img title Other rootnoverify (hd0,0) chainloader +1

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• Review&ndash;Build Android and iOS apps in Visual Studio with Nomad

  - by Bill Osuch

  Nomad is a Visual Studio extension that allows you build apps for both Android and iOS platforms in Visual Studio using HTML5. There is no need to switch between .Net, Java and Objective-C to target different platforms - write your code once in HTML5 and build for all common mobile platforms and tablets. You have access to the native hardware functions (such as camera and GPS) through the PhoneGap library, UI libraries such as jQuery mobile allow you to create an impressive UI with minimal work. Nomad is still in an early access beta stage, so the documentation is a bit sparse. In fact, the only documentation is a simple series of steps on how to install the plug-in, set up a project, build and deploy it. You're going to want to be a least a little familiar with the PhoneGap library and jQuery mobile to really tap into the power of this. The sample project included with the download shows you just how simple it is to create projects in Visual Studio. The sample solution comes with an index.html file containing the HTML5 code, the Cordova (PhoneGap) library, jQuery libraries, and a JQuery style sheet: The html file is pretty straightforward. If you haven't experimented with JQuery mobile before, some of the attributes (such as data-role) might be new to you, but some quick Googling will fill in everything you need to know. The first part of the file builds a simple (but attractive) list with some links in it: The second part of the file is where things get interesting and it taps into the PhoneGap library. For instance, it gets the geolocation position by calling position.coords.latitude and position.coords.longitude: ...and then displays it in a simple span: Building is pretty simple, at least for Android (I'm not an iOS developer so I didn't look at that feature) - just configure the display name, version number, and package ID. There's no need to specify Android version; Nomad supports 2.2 and later. Enter these bits of information, click the new "Build for Android" button (not the regular Visual Studio Build link...) and you get a dialog box saying that your code is being built by their cloud build service (so no building while away from a WiFi signal apparently). After a couple minutes you wind up with a .apk file that can be copied over to your device. Applications built with Nomad for Android currently use a temporary certificate, so you can test the app on your devices but you cannot publish them in the Google Play Store (yet). And I love the "success" dialog box: Since Nomad is still in Beta, no pricing plans have been announced yet, so I'll be curious to see if this becomes a cost-effective solution to mobile app development. If it is, I may even be tempted to spring for the $99 iOS membership fee! In the meantime, I plan to work on porting some of my apps over to it and seeing how they work. My only quibble at this time is the lack of a centralized documentation location - I'd like to at least see which (if any) features of JQuery and PhoneGap are limited or not supported. Also, some notes on targeting different Android screen sizes would be nice, but it's relatively easy to find jQuery examples out on the InterWebs. Oh well, trial and error! You can download the Nomad extension for Visual Studio by going to their web site: www.vsnomad.com. Technorati Tags: Android, Nomad

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• Slow wired internet connection on Realtek RTL8168-8111 (Rev 6)

  - by Mark

  I keep on seeing issues people are having with their wireless. I am having an issue with being wired into my router. I installed Ubuntu 11.10 the other day, on my custom PC. The motherboard I have installed on this PC is an ASUS P8H61-M. The issue I am having is with my speed. I have a dual boot, windows 7 and the new Ubuntu. On my Windows install I am getting test speeds from Speakeasy at 17Mbps and actual downloads around 2-3MB/s. With Ubuntu, I am getting test speeds from Speakeasy at 1.14Mbps and actual downloads around 60KB/s. I have disabled IPv6 and am no using GoogleDNS for my DNS, but it hasn't resolved the issue. I have scanned my router (WRT54GS Linksys) to disable IPv6 connections, and I am not seeing any option for that. I cannot figure out why I am getting such sluggish internet connection. Any help to resolve would be great! I performed an iconfig -a with these results: mark@Mark-ASUS:~$ ifconfig -a eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr f4:6d:04:d1:2c:4e inet addr:192.168.1.103 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 inet6 addr: fe80::f66d:4ff:fed1:2c4e/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:21888 errors:0 dropped:21888 overruns:0 frame:21888 TX packets:21068 errors:0 dropped:90 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:26348337 (26.3 MB) TX bytes:2217140 (2.2 MB) Interrupt:46 Base address:0xc000 lo Link encap:Local Loopback inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0 inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1 RX packets:7 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:7 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:952 (952.0 B) TX bytes:952 (952.0 B) My specs are: mark@Mark-ASUS:~$ sudo lspci -nn 04:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller [10ec:8168] (rev 06) 06:00.0 PCI bridge [0604]: ASMedia Technology Inc. Device [1b21:1080] (rev 01) udev information: KERNEL[11.351405] add /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1c.2/0000:04:00.0/net/eth0 (net) UDEV_LOG=3 ACTION=add DEVPATH=/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1c.2/0000:04:00.0/net/eth0 SUBSYSTEM=net INTERFACE=eth0 IFINDEX=2 SEQNUM=1542 UDEV [11.363905] add /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1c.2/0000:04:00.0/net/eth0 (net) UDEV_LOG=3 ACTION=add DEVPATH=/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1c.2/0000:04:00.0/net/eth0 SUBSYSTEM=net INTERFACE=eth0 IFINDEX=2 SEQNUM=1542 ID_VENDOR_FROM_DATABASE=Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. ID_MODEL_FROM_DATABASE=RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller ID_BUS=pci ID_VENDOR_ID=0x10ec ID_MODEL_ID=0x8168 ID_MM_CANDIDATE=1 dmesg information: [ 2.855982] r8169 Gigabit Ethernet driver 2.3LK-NAPI loaded [ 2.856366] r8169 0000:04:00.0: eth0: RTL8168b/8111b at 0xffffc9000064c000, f4:6d:04:d1:2c:4e, XID 0c900800 IRQ 46 [ 12.540956] r8169 0000:04:00.0: eth0: link down [ 12.540961] r8169 0000:04:00.0: eth0: link down [ 12.541173] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): eth0: link is not ready I took out a lot of information that did not pertain to eth0, because the previous edits wouldn't save. If I need any more information, let me know. I would love to get this resolved. The other issue I am noticing is sometimes my connection disconnects all together, for about a minute, then it reconnects.

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• Windows Azure Recipe: Consumer Portal

  - by Clint Edmonson

  Nearly every company on the internet has a web presence. Many are merely using theirs for informational purposes. More sophisticated portals allow customers to register their contact information and provide some level of interaction or customer support. But as our understanding of how consumers use the web increases, the more progressive companies are taking advantage of social web and rich media delivery to connect at a deeper level with the consumers of their goods and services. Drivers Cost reduction Scalability Global distribution Time to market Solution Here’s a sketch of how a Windows Azure Consumer Portal might be built out: Ingredients Web Role – this will host the core of the solution. Each web role is a virtual machine hosting an application written in ASP.NET (or optionally php, or node.js). The number of web roles can be scaled up or down as needed to handle peak and non-peak traffic loads. Database – every modern web application needs to store data. SQL Azure databases look and act exactly like their on-premise siblings but are fault tolerant and have data redundancy built in. Access Control (optional) – if identity needs to be tracked within the solution, the access control service combined with the Windows Identity Foundation framework provides out-of-the-box support for several social media platforms including Windows LiveID, Google, Yahoo!, Facebook. It also has a provider model to allow integration with other platforms as well. Caching (optional) – for sites with high traffic with lots of read-only data and lists, the distributed in-memory caching service can be used to cache and serve up static data at higher scale and speed than direct database requests. It can also be used to manage user session state. Blob Storage (optional) – for sites that serve up unstructured data such as documents, video, audio, device drivers, and more. The data is highly available and stored redundantly across data centers. Each entry in blob storage is provided with it’s own unique URL for direct access by the browser. Content Delivery Network (CDN) (optional) – for sites that service users around the globe, the CDN is an extension to blob storage that, when enabled, will automatically cache frequently accessed blobs and static site content at edge data centers around the world. The data can be delivered statically or streamed in the case of rich media content. Training Labs These links point to online Windows Azure training labs where you can learn more about the individual ingredients described above. (Note: The entire Windows Azure Training Kit can also be downloaded for offline use.) Windows Azure (16 labs) Windows Azure is an internet-scale cloud computing and services platform hosted in Microsoft data centers, which provides an operating system and a set of developer services which can be used individually or together. It gives developers the choice to build web applications; applications running on connected devices, PCs, or servers; or hybrid solutions offering the best of both worlds. New or enhanced applications can be built using existing skills with the Visual Studio development environment and the .NET Framework. With its standards-based and interoperable approach, the services platform supports multiple internet protocols, including HTTP, REST, SOAP, and plain XML SQL Azure (7 labs) Microsoft SQL Azure delivers on the Microsoft Data Platform vision of extending the SQL Server capabilities to the cloud as web-based services, enabling you to store structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data. Windows Azure Services (9 labs) As applications collaborate across organizational boundaries, ensuring secure transactions across disparate security domains is crucial but difficult to implement. Windows Azure Services provides hosted authentication and access control using powerful, secure, standards-based infrastructure. See my Windows Azure Resource Guide for more guidance on how to get started, including links web portals, training kits, samples, and blogs related to Windows Azure.

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• Very slow KVM in Ubuntu 12.04

  - by Guy Fawkes

  I use Ubuntu 12.04 64-bit and KVM, my CPU is Core i5 3.3 GHz and I have 8 GB of DDR3 RAM. I run Windows 7 in KVM and it's extremely slow. My co-worker use Debian on the same PC configuration and can run Windows 7 extremely fast! Where can be my problem? sudo cat /etc/libvirt/qemu/windows.xml <!-- WARNING: THIS IS AN AUTO-GENERATED FILE. CHANGES TO IT ARE LIKELY TO BE OVERWRITTEN AND LOST. Changes to this xml configuration should be made using: virsh edit windows or other application using the libvirt API. --> <domain type='kvm'> <name>windows</name> <uuid>5c685175-baea-0ca6-591f-8269d923ffb8</uuid> <memory>2097152</memory> <currentMemory>2097152</currentMemory> <vcpu>1</vcpu> <os> <type arch='x86_64' machine='pc-1.0'>hvm</type> <boot dev='hd'/> </os> <features> <acpi/> <apic/> <pae/> </features> <clock offset='localtime'/> <on_poweroff>destroy</on_poweroff> <on_reboot>restart</on_reboot> <on_crash>restart</on_crash> <devices> <emulator>/usr/bin/kvm</emulator> <disk type='file' device='disk'> <driver name='qemu' type='raw'/> <source file='/var/lib/libvirt/images/windows.img'/> <target dev='hda' bus='ide'/> <address type='drive' controller='0' bus='0' unit='0'/> </disk> <controller type='ide' index='0'> <address type='pci' domain='0x0000' bus='0x00' slot='0x01' function='0x1'/> </controller> <interface type='network'> <mac address='52:54:00:94:63:91'/> <source network='default'/> <address type='pci' domain='0x0000' bus='0x00' slot='0x03' function='0x0'/> </interface> <serial type='pty'> <target port='0'/> </serial> <console type='pty'> <target type='serial' port='0'/> </console> <input type='tablet' bus='usb'/> <input type='mouse' bus='ps2'/> <graphics type='vnc' port='-1' autoport='yes'/> <sound model='ich6'> <address type='pci' domain='0x0000' bus='0x00' slot='0x04' function='0x0'/> </sound> <video> <model type='vga' vram='262144' heads='1'/> <address type='pci' domain='0x0000' bus='0x00' slot='0x02' function='0x0'/> </video> <memballoon model='virtio'> <address type='pci' domain='0x0000' bus='0x00' slot='0x05' function='0x0'/> </memballoon> </devices> </domain>

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• AccelerometerInput XNA GameComponent

  - by Michael B. McLaughlin

  Bad accelerometer controls kill otherwise good games. I decided to try to do something about it. So I create an XNA GameComponent called AccelerometerInput. It’s still a beta project but you are welcome to try it, use it, modify it, etc. I’m releasing under the terms of the Microsoft Public License. Important info: First, it only supports tilt-style controls currently. I have not implemented motion-style controls yet (and make no promises as to when I might find time to do so). Second, I commented it heavily so that you can (hopefully) understand what it is doing. Please read the comments and examine the sample game for a usage overview. There are configurable parameters which I encourage you to make use of (both by modifying the default values where your testing shows it to be appropriate and also by implementing a calibration mechanism in your game that lets the user adjust those configurable values based on his or her own circumstances). Third, even with this code, accelerometer controls are still a fairly advanced topic area; you will likely find nothing but disappointment if you simply plunk this into some project without testing it on a device (or preferably on several devices). Fourth, if you do try this code and find that something doesn’t work as expected on your phone, please let me know as I want to improve it and can only do so with your help. Let me know what phone model it is, what you tried doing, what you expected, and what result you had instead. I may or may not be able to incorporate it into the code, but I can let others know at the very least so that they can make appropriate modifications to their games (I’m hopeful that all phones are reasonably similar in their workings and require, at most, a slight calibration change, but I simply don’t know). Fifth, although I’ll do my best to answer any questions you may have about it, I’m very busy with a number of things currently so it might take a little while. Please look through the code and examine the comments and sample game first before asking any questions. It’s likely that the answer is in there. If not, or if you just aren’t really sure, ask away. Sixth, there are differences between a portrait-mode game and a landscape mode game (specifically in the appropriate default tilt adjustment for toward the user/away from the user calculations). This is documented and the default is set for landscape. If you use this for a portrait game, make the appropriate change (look for the TODO: comment in AccelerometerInput.cs). Seventh, no provision whatsoever is made for disabling screen locking. It is up to you to implement that and to take appropriate measures to detect when the user has been idle for too long and timeout the game. That code is very game-specific. If you have questions about such matters, consult the relevant MSDN documentation and, if you still have questions, visit the App Hub forums and ask there. I answer questions there a lot and so I may even stumble across your question and answer it. But that’s a much better forum than the comments section here for questions of that sort so I would appreciate it if you asked idle detection-related questions there (or on some other suitable site that you may be more familiar and comfortable with). Eighth, this is an XNA GameComponent intended for XNA-based games on WP7. A sufficiently knowledgeable Silverlight developer should have no problem adapting it for use in a Silverlight game or app. I may create a Silverlight version at some point myself. Right now I do not have the time, unfortunately. Ok. Without further ado: http://www.bobtacoindustries.com/developers/utils/AccelerometerInput.zip Have a great St. Patrick’s Day!

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