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• SEO to ensure visibility for a narrow, non-competitive, non-commercial site

  - by hen3ry

  I'm webmaster of a non-commercial site in English. A non-native-English speaker asked me why our site doesn't produce hits in Google searches she conducts for relevant keywords in her native language. I asked her for a list of keywords in her native language, and I naively tried inserting those into the META info in the page headers and waited a couple of weeks. No help. A little searching informed me that Google doesn't use the META info, and has not done so for a very long time. D'oh! To be entirely concrete, suppose the StackExchange folks want Russian speakers to find this site, Pro Webmasters. The direct translation in Russian of "webmaster" --thanks, Google Translator-- is: "?????????". (Not sure this will render properly, but that's not essential to my question.) Assuming Pro Webmasters has a common template for all pages it generates, inserting "?????????" into the Keywords META for that template won't help, it seems. What could StackExchange do to make this site visible to users searching with the Russian keyword "?????????" ? Pretty much all the advice I've seen boils down to this, if I understand correctly: use the desired search term often (but not too often) among site content, and the problem will be solved. That's great, but I don't think sprinkling "?????????" visibly all over Pro Webmasters is going to fly. Just for completeness, crawlers must be long immune to the invisible-to-visitors scheme, e.g, format "?????????" in a tiny text size in a color the same as an existing background, e.g. white-over-white. Or, put that text inside a div styled: ' style="visibility: hidden" '. Probably some other equivalents. I can only think of one slightly effective method, along these lines: place an unobtrusive link on the common template to a page titled "for international users" , and on that page list desired synonyms for "webmaster" in various languages on that page. A test case --admittedly, just one-- using my site implies that a Google search for "international users" ????????? will produce a hit for this page, and thus make the site minimally visible, despite the fact that the page will almost never be visited. At the moment, anyway. Note: All the SEO discussions I have found so far are about competitive and --almost certainly-- commercial sites. To repeat: my site is non-commercial, and it is about an obscure, narrow topic that is of interest to only a small number of people worldwide. This isn't about clawing our way to the top of competitive rankings, just making this content minimally visible to interested non-native-English speakers. Ideas? TIA

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• Circle-Rectangle collision in a tile map game

  - by furiousd

  I am making a 2D tile map based putt-putt game. I have collision detection working between the ball and the walls of the map, although when the ball collides at the meeting point between 2 tiles I offset it by 0.5 so that it doesn't get stuck in the wall. This aint a huge issue though. if(y % 20 == 0) { y+=0.5; } if(x % 20 == 0) { x+=0.5; } Collisions work as follows Find the closest point between each tile and the center of the ball If distance(ball_x, ball_y, close_x, close_y) <= ball_radius and the closest point belongs to a solid object, collision has occured Invert X/Y speed according to side of object collided with The next thing I tried to do was implement floating blocks in the middle of the map for the ball to bounce off of. When a ball collides with a corner of the block, it gets stuck in it. So I changed my determineRebound() function to treat corners as if they were circles. Here's that functon: `i and j are indexes of the solid object in the 2d map array. x & y are centre point of ball.` void determineRebound(int _i, int _j) { if(y > _i*tile_w && y < _i*tile_w + tile_w) { //Not a corner xs*=-1; } else if(x > _j*tile_w && x < _j*tile_w + tile_w) { //Not a corner ys*=-1; } else { //Corner float nx = x - close_x; float ny = y - close_y; float len = sqrt(nx * nx + ny * ny); nx /= len; ny /= len; float projection = xs * nx + ys * ny; xs -= 2 * projection * nx; ys -= 2 * projection * ny; } } This is where things have gotten messy. Collisions with 'floating' corners work fine, but now when the ball collides near the meeting point of 2 tiles, it detects a corner collision and does not rebound as expected. I'm a bit in over my head at this point. I guess I'm wondering if I'm going about making this sort of game in the right way. Is a 2d tile map the way to go? If so, is there a problem with my collision logic and where am I going wrong? Any advice/feedback would be great.

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• Alfa AWUS036H USB wireless adapter not recognized

  - by GFiasco

  The Alfa AWUS036H USB wireless adapter will not be recognized by my netbook (Ubuntu 14.04, Asus X201E). As I understand it, the drivers should already be built in to this version of Linux, but I tried a make/make install of the latest Realtek drivers (as mentioned on How do I install drivers for the Alfa AWUS036H USB wireless adapter?) and it didn't work. I then followed the advice of this thread (ALFA AWUS036NH driver) and did a make/make install of the most up-to-date backport of the drivers, but that didn't work. At this point I tried a series of commands from this thread (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2187780) in an attempt to identify the problem, but at no point could I get the laptop to ever recognize the USB adapter. I have also troubleshot the USB cable itself, tried both the USB 2.0 and 3.0 ports on the laptop, have never received an error message regarding a need to update the firmware, and have seemingly successfully installed all manner of variation of Realtek drivers which were supposed to make the adapter work. (I also tried to delete/clean up after each install, in the hope I wasn't making things worse.) Not sure what I should do next. Please let me know if I need to post any more information. Thanks very much for your help. EDIT: Before inserting Alpha USB adapter: :~$ lsusb Bus 002 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0bda:570c Realtek Semiconductor Corp. Bus 001 Device 026: ID 13d3:3393 IMC Networks Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub Bus 003 Device 002: ID 03f0:3112 Hewlett-Packard Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub After inserting Alpha USB adapter (USB 3.0 port, no change): :~$ lsusb Bus 002 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0bda:570c Realtek Semiconductor Corp. Bus 001 Device 026: ID 13d3:3393 IMC Networks Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub Bus 003 Device 002: ID 03f0:3112 Hewlett-Packard Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Ran tail -f /var/log/syslog, inserted device, no recognition (last entry is dated 16:17:01, so an hour ago). Going to check on an Ubuntu 14.04 laptop and Windows XP desktop. I'll update after. Thanks for your help to this point.

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• .Net Application & Database Modularity/Reuse

  - by Martaver

  I'm looking for some guidance on how to architect an app with regards to modularity, separation of concerns and re-usability. I'm working on an application (ASP.Net, C#) that has distinctly generic chunks of functionality, that I'd love to be able to lift out, all layers, into re-usable components. This means the module handles the database schema, data access, API, everything so that the next time I want to use it I can just register the module and hook into it. Developing modules of re-usable functionality is a no-brainer, but what is really confusing me is what to do when it comes to handling a core re-usable database schema that serves the module's functionality. In an ideal world, I would register a module and it would ensure that the associated database schema exists in the DB. I would code on the assumption that the tables exist, calling the module's functionality through the DLL, agnostic of the database layer. Kind of like Enterprise Library's Caching/Logging Application Block, which can create a DB schema in the target DB to use as a data store. My Questions is: What do you think is the best way to achieve this, firstly, in terms design architecture, and secondly solution structure. What patterns/frameworks do you know that exist & support this kind of thing? My thoughts so far: I mostly use Entity Framework and SQL Server DB Projects. I thought about a 'black box' approach to modules of functionality. I could use use a code-first approach in EF4, and use the ObjectContext to create a database when the module is initialized. However this means that all of the entities that my module encapsulates would be disconnected from the rest of the application because they belonged to an abstracted ObjectContext. Further - Creating appropriate indexes and references between domain entities and the module's entities would be impossible to do practically. I've thought of adopting Enterprise Library and creating my own Application Blocks. I'm not sure how this would play nice with Entity Framework (if at all) though. I like the idea of building on proven patterns & practices to encapsulate established, reusable functionality. I thought of abandoning Entity Framework for the Module, and just creating a separate DB schema for the module with its own set of stored procedures & ADO.Net. Then deploying the script at run-time if interrogation shows that it doesn't exist. But once again, for application developing outside of the application, I would want to use Entity Framework and I would have to use the module separately, disconnected from the domain ObjectContext. Has anyone had experience developing these sorts of full-stack modules? What advice can you offer? Am I biting off more than I can chew?

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• Parallel Port Problem in 12.04

  - by Frank Oberle

  I have a “dumb” printer attached to a parallel port in my machine which works fine under the “other” resident operating system (from Redmond) on the same machine. I recently added Ubuntu 12.04 as a dual boot on the machine, but Ubuntu doesn't seem to recognize the parallel port at all. All I need to set up a printer is a really plain-vanilla fixed pitch text-only generic driver, which is present, but no parallel ports show up. (The other printers, all on USB ports, seem to work just fine). Following what appeared to me to be the most reasonable of the many conflicting pieces of advice on the web, here's what I did: I added the following lines to /etc/modules parport_pc ppdev parport Then, after rebooting, I checked to see that the lines were still present, and they were. I ran dmesg | grep par and got the following references in the output that seemed like they might have to do with the parallel port: [ 14.169511] parport_pc 0000:03:07.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 21 (level, low) -> IRQ 21 [ 14.169516] PCI parallel port detected: 9710:9805, I/O at 0xce00(0xcd00), IRQ 21 [ 14.169577] parport0: PC-style at 0xce00 (0xcd00), irq 21, using FIFO [PCSPP,TRISTATE,COMPAT,ECP] [ 14.354254] lp0: using parport0 (interrupt-driven). [ 14.571358] ppdev: user-space parallel port driver [ 16.588304] type=1400 audit(1347226670.386:5): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_load" name="/usr/lib/cups/backend/cups-pdf" pid=964 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 16.588756] type=1400 audit(1347226670.386:6): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_load" name="/usr/sbin/cupsd" pid=964 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 16.673679] type=1400 audit(1347226670.470:7): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_load" name="/usr/lib/lightdm/lightdm/lightdm-guest-session-wrapper" pid=1010 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 16.675252] type=1400 audit(1347226670.470:8): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_load" name="/usr/lib/telepathy/mission-control-5" pid=1014 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 16.675716] type=1400 audit(1347226670.470:9): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_load" name="/usr/lib/telepathy/telepathy-*" pid=1014 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 16.676636] type=1400 audit(1347226670.474:10): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_replace" name="/usr/lib/cups/backend/cups-pdf" pid=1015 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 16.677124] type=1400 audit(1347226670.474:11): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_replace" name="/usr/sbin/cupsd" pid=1015 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 1545.725328] parport0: ppdev0 forgot to release port I have no idea what any of that means, but the line “parport0: ppdev0 forgot to release port ” seems unusual. I was still unable to add a printer for my old clunker, so I tried the direct approach, typing echo “Hello” > /dev/lp0 and received a Permission denied message. I then tried echo “Hello” > /dev/parport0 which didn't give me any message at all, but still didn't print anything. Running the command sudo /usr/lib/cups/backend/parallel gives the following: direct parallel:/dev/lp0 "unknown" "LPT #1" "" "" Checking the permissions for /dev/parport0, Owner, Group, and Other are all set to read and write. crw-rw---- 1 root lp 6, 0 Sep 9 16:37 /dev/lp0 crw-rw-rw- 1 root lp 99, 0 Sep 9 16:37 /dev/parport0 The output of the command lpinfo -v includes the following line: direct parallel:/dev/lp0 I've read several web postings that seem to suggest this has been a problem for several years, but the bug reports were closed because there wasn't enough information to address the issue (shades of Microsoft!). Any suggestions as to what I might be missing here?

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• How to manage a Closed Source High-Risk Project?

  - by abel

  I am currently planning to develop a J2EE website and wish to bring in 1 developer and 1 web designer to assist me. The project is a financial app with a niche market. I plan to keep the source closed . However, I fear that my would-be employees could easily copy the codebase and use it /sell it to a third party especially when they switch jobs. The app development will take 4-6months and perhaps more and I may have to bring in people after the app goes live. How do I keep the source to myself. Are there techniques companies use to guard their source. I foresee disabling pendrives and dvd writers on my development machines, but uploading data or attaching the code in one's mail would still be possible. My question is incomplete. But programmers who have been in my situation, please advice. How should I go about this? Building a team, maintaining code-secrecy,etc. I am looking forward to sign a secrecy contract with the employees if needed too. (Please add relevant tags) Update Thank you for all the answers. I certainly won't be disabling all USB ports and DVD writers now. But I think I should be logging activity(How exactly should I do that?) I am wary of scalpers who would join and then run off with the existing code. I haven't met any, but I have been advised to be wary of them. I would include a secrecy clause, but given this is a startup with almost no funding and in a highly competitive business niche with bigger players in the field, I doubt I would be able to detect or pursue any scalpers. How do I hire people I trust, when I don't know them personally. Their resume will be helpful but otherwise trust will develop only with time. But finally even if they do run away with the code, it is service that matters after the sale is made. So I am not really worried for the long term.

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• On the art of self-promotion

  - by Tony Davis

  I attended Brent Ozar's Building the Fastest SQL Servers session at Tech Ed last week, and found myself engulfed in a 'perfect storm' of excellent technical and presentational skills coupled with an astute awareness of the value of promoting one's work. I spend a lot of time at such events talking to developers and DBAs about the value of blogging and writing articles, and my impression is that some could benefit from a touch less modesty and a little more self-promotion. I sense a reticence in many would-be writers. Is what I have to say important enough? Haven't far more qualified and established commentators, MVPs and so on, already said it? While it's a good idea to pick reasonably fresh and interesting topics, it's more important not to let such fears lead to writer's block. In the eyes of any future employer, your published writing is an extension of your resume. They will not care that a certain MVP knows how to solve problem x, but they will be very interested to see that you have tackled that same problem, and solved it in your own way, and described the process in your own voice. In your current job, your writing is one of the ways you can express to your peers, and to the organization as a whole, the value of what you contribute. Many Developers and DBAs seem to rely on the idea that their work will speak for itself, and that their skill shines out from it. Unfortunately, this isn't always true. Many Development DBAs, for example, will be painfully aware of the massive effort involved in tuning and adding resilience to rapidly developed applications. However, others in the organization who are unaware of what's involved in getting an application that is 'done' ready for production may dismiss such efforts as fussiness or conservatism. At the dark end of the development cycle, chickens come home to roost, but their droppings tend to land on those trying to clear up the mess. My advice is this: next time you fix a bug or improve the resilience or performance of a database or application, make sure that you use team meetings, informal discussions and so on to ensure that people understand what the problem was and what you had to do to fix it. Use your blog to describe, generally, the process you adopted, the resources you used and the insights that came from your work. Encourage your colleagues to do the same. By spreading the art of self-promotion to everyone involved in an IT project, we get a better idea of the extent of the work and the value of the contribution of all the team members. As always, we'd love to hear what you think. This very week, Simple-talk launches its new blogging platform. If any of this has moved you to 'throw your hat into the ring', drop us a mail at [email protected]. Cheers, Tony.

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• What shall I include in a 10 week web technologies course?

  - by Iain

  In September I will be teaching a university module on web technologies. This session will be available to 1st year (freshman) students who don't necessarily have any programming knowledge or know how the web works. In the 2nd semester I will be teaching Flash, which is my specialism, so I know exactly what I am going to teach, but in the 1st semester I will be teaching them web standards technologies - HTML, CSS, JS, jQuery, PHP and MySQL. Where I need advice is how to proportion the emphasis for each part, and which parts of each technology to cover. Another real issue I'm struggling with is how much of the bad old ways should I teach them? Do they need to know about bold as well as strong, etc. UPDATE: based, on your feedback I will only be teaching the latest version of everything - CSS3, HTML5 etc. I'm not sure exactly how long the semester will be but I'm guessing about 10-12 weeks. Each session is a 2 hour lab. Obviously there's only so much I can cover in that time and it will be up to the students to go a research this stuff properly on W3 schools etc. My ideas so far were: Lesson 0 - Course intro and overview of the current tech landscape. What is out there, what will we be learning, what won't we. What is a web server, URL etc. Looking at different example websites and discussing how they work. Lesson 1 - HTML basics (head, body, title, img, table, a, lists, h1, strong etc) Lesson 2 - CSS for styling and layout - fonts, webfonts, float etc Lesson 3 - Intro to programming JS (variables, loops, conditionals, functions) Lesson 4 - more JS programming fundamentals, DOM manipulation Lesson 5 - jQuery - making things fly about and look cool Lesson 6 - XML and Ajax Lesson 7 - PHP basics - syntax, server-side principles Lesson 8 - PHP and MySQL - forms, logins, saving user info Lesson 9 - don't know Lesson 10 - don't know Please let me know if you think this is the right order, what have I missed, how to use any spare sessions etc. Thanks :) UPDATE BASED ON RESPONSES: Thanks for all your responses - some great stuff. To be absolutely clear, this is not a computer science course, it is a practical module on a creative technology course. The emphasis definitely has to be on making cool things work rather than understanding how the backbone of the internet works. That can come later, if the students are interested. At the end of the module I would like the students to be able to produce a web page or pages that does something cool, using some or all of the technologies I cover. Many of these topics are of course far beyond the scope of a 2 hour session, however I do not have the option of reducing the syllabus, I will just have to explain what the technology does and encourage the student to research it in their own time.

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• Software engineering project idea feedback [on hold]

  - by Chris Sewell

  I'm a third year student currently undergoing my project/dissertation section of my degree. I have drafted a proposal for my final year project and would appreciate any feedback. The feedback can be anything constructive either specific to this proposal, the area that I will be working and researching in or my ideas. I will accept all input. Aims My aim is to attempt a proof of concept and prototype a runtime-as-a-service (RaaS). This cloud based runtime will allow clients to dynamically offload tasks or create cloud applications. Currently software-as-a-service (SaaS) cloud applications are purpose built and have a predefined scope in which they can assist or serve the client; this scope cannot be changed without physical alteration to the client and server software. With RaaS the client potentially could define any task it wanted at any time depending on its environment variables, the client and server would then communicate parameters and returns for that task. For the client to utilize a RaaS it must be able to conceive and then define a task using an appropriate XML vocabulary. As the scope of the cloud solution is defined by the client at its runtime, the cloud solution only has to exist for as long as the client requires it to as opposed to a client using a dedicated service. Deliverables The crux of the project will require an XML vocabulary in which the client and server will communicate. I’ll prototype the server application that will dynamically create and manage cloud solutions. The solution will be coded using an interpreted language, such as python or javascript, which can evaluate expressions in runtime or a language that can dynamically compile such as C# or Java. As a further proof of concept I will also produce a mock client that offloads tasks to the server. The report will attempt to explain the different flavours of cloud computing solutions including infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and SaaS including real world examples and where the use of a RaaS could have improved the overall example solution. Disclaimer: I'm not requesting stakeholders in my project nor am I delegating work. Any materials other than feedback, advice or directions will not be utilized.

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• How to refactor my design, if it seems to require multiple inheritance?

  - by Omega

  Recently I made a question about Java classes implementing methods from two sources (kinda like multiple inheritance). However, it was pointed out that this sort of need may be a sign of a design flaw. Hence, it is probably better to address my current design rather than trying to simulate multiple inheritance. Before tackling the actual problem, some background info about a particular mechanic in this framework: It is a simple game development framework. Several components allocate some memory (like pixel data), and it is necessary to get rid of it as soon as you don't need it. Sprites are an example of this. Anyway, I decided to implement something ala Manual-Reference-Counting from Objective-C. Certain classes, like Sprites, contain an internal counter, which is increased when you call retain(), and decreased on release(). Thus the Resource abstract class was created. Any subclass of this will obtain the retain() and release() implementations for free. When its count hits 0 (nobody is using this class), it will call the destroy() method. The subclass needs only to implement destroy(). This is because I don't want to rely on the Garbage Collector to get rid of unused pixel data. Game objects are all subclasses of the Node class - which is the main construction block, as it provides info such as position, size, rotation, etc. See, two classes are used often in my game. Sprites and Labels. Ah... but wait. Sprites contain pixel data, remember? And as such, they need to extend Resource. But this, of course, can't be done. Sprites ARE nodes, hence they must subclass Node. But heck, they are resources too. Why not making Resource an interface? Because I'd have to re-implement retain() and release(). I am avoiding this in virtue of not writing the same code over and over (remember that there are multiple classes that need this memory-management system). Why not composition? Because I'd still have to implement methods in Sprite (and similar classes) that essentially call the methods of Resource. I'd still be writing the same code over and over! What is your advice in this situation, then?

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• OOF checklist

  - by Daniel Moth

  When going on vacation or otherwise being out of office (known as OOF in Microsoft), it is polite and professional that our absence creates the minimum disruption possible to the rest of the business, and especially our colleagues. Below is my OOF checklist - I try to do these as soon as I know I'll be OOF, rather than leave it for the night before. Let the relevant folks on the team know the planned dates of absence and check if anybody was expecting something from you during that timeframe. Reset expectations with them, and as applicable try to find another owner for individual activities that cannot wait. Go through your calendar for the OOF period and decline every meeting occurrence so the owner of the meeting knows that you won't be attending (similar to my post about responding to invites). If it is your meeting cancel it so that people don’t turn up without the meeting organizer being there. Do this even for meetings were the folks should know due to step #1. Over-communicating is a good thing here and keeps calendars all around up to date. Enter your OOF dates in whatever tool your company uses. Typically that is the notification to your manager. In your Outlook calendar, create a local Appointment (don't invite anyone) for the date range (All day event) setting the "Show As" dropdown to "Out of Office". This way, people won’t try to schedule meetings with you on that day. If you use Lync, set the status to "Off Work" for that period. If you won't be responding to email (which when on your vacation you definitely shouldn't) then in Outlook setup "Automatic Replies (Out of Office)" for that period. This way people won’t think you are rude when not replying to their emails. In your OOF message point to an alias (ideally of many people) as a fallback for urgent queries. If you want to proactively notify individuals of your OOFage then schedule and send a multi-day meeting request for the entire period. Remember to set the "Show As" to "Free" (so their calendar doesn’t show busy/oof to others), set the "Reminder" to "None" (so they don’t get a reminder about it), set "Low Importance", and uncheck both "Response Options" so if they don't want this on their calendar, it is just one click for them to get rid of it. Aside: I have another post with advice on sending invites. If you care about people who would not observe the above but could drop by your office, stick a physical OOF note at your office door or chair/monitor or desk. Have I missed any? Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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• The Internet Key Wave MW833UP is not recognized in Ubuntu

  - by gio900

  I can't use my Onda MW833UP... :( Any advice? Here is something that someone else may understand: ~$: lsb_release -a No LSB modules are available. Distributor ID: Ubuntu Description: Ubuntu 11.10 Release: 11.10 Codename: oneiric ~$: lsusb Bus 001 Device 005: ID 1ee8:0012 ~$: dmesg [ 22.709475] cdc_acm 1-1:1.0: ttyACM0: USB ACM device [ 22.714856] usbcore: registered new interface driver cdc_acm [ 22.714866] cdc_acm: USB Abstract Control Model driver for USB modems and ISDN adapters [ 23.520490] ieee80211 phy0: wl_ops_bss_info_changed: arp filtering: enabled true, count 1 (implement) [ 24.244530] usbcore: registered new interface driver usbserial [ 24.244575] USB Serial support registered for generic [ 24.244673] usbcore: registered new interface driver usbserial_generic [ 24.244681] usbserial: USB Serial Driver core [ 24.265879] USB Serial support registered for GSM modem (1-port) [ 24.285680] usbcore: registered new interface driver option [ 24.285691] option: v0.7.2:USB Driver for GSM modems [ 24.425878] EXT4-fs (sda9): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro,commit=600 [ 24.736540] EXT4-fs (sda8): re-mounted. Opts: commit=600 [ 35.705796] Easy slow down manager: checking for SABI support. [ 35.706002] Easy slow down manager: SABI is supported (f5189) [ 36.060099] usbcore: deregistering interface driver uvcvideo [ 139.508061] CE: hpet increased min_delta_ns to 20113 nsec [ 6798.378917] usb 1-1: USB disconnect, device number 5 [ 6809.108232] usb 1-1: new high speed USB device number 6 using ehci_hcd [ 6809.242692] scsi5 : usb-storage 1-1:1.0 [ 6810.241257] scsi 5:0:0:0: CD-ROM Onda Datacard CD-ROM 0001 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0 [ 6810.241841] scsi 5:0:0:1: Direct-Access Onda Storage 0001 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0 [ 6810.271410] sr0: scsi3-mmc drive: 0x/0x caddy [ 6810.272099] sr 5:0:0:0: Attached scsi CD-ROM sr0 [ 6810.272852] sr 5:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg1 type 5 [ 6810.279954] sd 5:0:0:1: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk [ 6810.281210] sd 5:0:0:1: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0 [ 6810.380591] sr0: CDROM (ioctl) error, command: Xpwrite, Read disk info 51 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 [ 6810.380617] sr: Sense Key : Hardware Error [current] [ 6810.380625] sr: Add. Sense: No additional sense information [ 6810.613937] sr0: CDROM (ioctl) error, command: Xpwrite, Read disk info 51 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 [ 6810.613972] sr: Sense Key : Hardware Error [current] [ 6810.613984] sr: Add. Sense: No additional sense information [ 6810.673716] usb 1-1: USB disconnect, device number 6 [ 6815.572142] usb 1-1: new high speed USB device number 7 using ehci_hcd [ 6815.706828] cdc_acm 1-1:1.0: ttyACM0: USB ACM device The last 3 lines are where I inserted the Internet key, then reconnected it. usb-device T: Bus=01 Lev=01 Prnt=01 Port=00 Cnt=01 Dev#= 7 Spd=480 MxCh= 0 D: Ver= 2.00 Cls=ef(misc ) Sub=02 Prot=01 MxPS=64 #Cfgs= 1 P: Vendor=1ee8 ProdID=0012 Rev=00.01 S: Manufacturer=Onda S: Product=MW833UP S: SerialNumber=9230B35D870F9CB7AE684EACC5C12BE5EC33B26E C: #Ifs= 2 Cfg#= 1 Atr=a0 MxPwr=500mA I: If#= 0 Alt= 0 #EPs= 1 Cls=02(commc) Sub=02 Prot=01 Driver=cdc_acm I: If#= 1 Alt= 0 #EPs= 2 Cls=0a(data ) Sub=00 Prot=00 Driver=cdc_acm Then there is /dev/ttyACM0. When the key is connected to the USB port, everything that will meant...

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• "static" as a semantic clue about statelessness?

  - by leoger

  this might be a little philosophical but I hope someone can help me find a good way to think about this. I've recently undertaken a refactoring of a medium sized project in Java to go back and add unit tests. When I realized what a pain it was to mock singletons and statics, I finally "got" what I've been reading about them all this time. (I'm one of those people that needs to learn from experience. Oh well.) So, now that I'm using Spring to create the objects and wire them around, I'm getting rid of static keywords left and right. (If I could potentially want to mock it, it's not really static in the same sense that Math.abs() is, right?) The thing is, I had gotten into the habit of using static to denote that a method didn't rely on any object state. For example: //Before import com.thirdparty.ThirdPartyLibrary.Thingy; public class ThirdPartyLibraryWrapper { public static Thingy newThingy(InputType input) { new Thingy.Builder().withInput(input).alwaysFrobnicate().build(); } } //called as... ThirdPartyLibraryWrapper.newThingy(input); //After public class ThirdPartyFactory { public Thingy newThingy(InputType input) { new Thingy.Builder().withInput(input).alwaysFrobnicate().build(); } } //called as... thirdPartyFactoryInstance.newThingy(input); So, here's where it gets touchy-feely. I liked the old way because the capital letter told me that, just like Math.sin(x), ThirdPartyLibraryWrapper.newThingy(x) did the same thing the same way every time. There's no object state to change how the object does what I'm asking it to do. Here are some possible answers I'm considering. Nobody else feels this way so there's something wrong with me. Maybe I just haven't really internalized the OO way of doing things! Maybe I'm writing in Java but thinking in FORTRAN or somesuch. (Which would be impressive since I've never written FORTRAN.) Maybe I'm using staticness as a sort of proxy for immutability for the purposes of reasoning about code. That being said, what clues should I have in my code for someone coming along to maintain it to know what's stateful and what's not? Perhaps this should just come for free if I choose good object metaphors? e.g. thingyWrapper doesn't sound like it has state indepdent of the wrapped Thingy which may itself be mutable. Similarly, a thingyFactory sounds like it should be immutable but could have different strategies that are chosen among at creation. I hope I've been clear and thanks in advance for your advice!

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• Think Before You Leap - Life is Dangerous for Change Agents

  - by technodrone

  So you want to introduce agile methods to your team... The following are some "lessons learned" when from someone who advocated agile/scrum to a group that was not ready for it. "Change agents, in my experience, face negative consequences. Sometimes, most of the time at the beginning, it's painful. This is the question you might have to ask yourself. Do you want to be a developer in scrum project or do you want be a scrum master managing the process? I think with proper mentoring/training, you can become good scrum master. But is that what you want? if yes, you can go ahead, take the training. if you want to be a developer, you may not need to be certified  as scrum master. You can just pick up from a book such as Mike Cohn new book Succeeding with Agile, I am reading it now. It's good. In my experience, I did waste my resources by trying to change the culture. It cost me lot. Instead, I should have focused on technical practices that are core to agile. Then look for teams that are good at agile. I would have saved lot of energy, and time. Try baby steps first yourself in the company, and next with the team, starting with technical practices like writing unit tests, SOLID principles, patterns, refactoring, continuous integration, pairing, and peer code reviews. These have inherent pull that can bring collaboration from a team.  Once you see team adaption in core practices, then you can introduce scrum concepts like user stories/task board etc.  This idea of Leading by example seems to be working for most of the agile folks. You can pitch core practices to the manager, and the team, and start showing them how you are doing.  You can put a road map for agile adaption and you can pitch to your manager. I would include need for scrum master training as part of the road map. " I thought about his advice for a couple of weeks and read about the pitfalls of technical debt and the team not having prior awareness of agile methods. The more I read and think about it the more I think he was right.  What do you think?

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• WHERE x = @x OR @x IS NULL

  - by steveh99999

  Every SQL DBA and developer should read the blog of MVP Erland Sommarskog – but particularly  his article on dynamic search conditions in T-SQL. I’ve linked above to his SQL 2005 article but his 2008 version is also a must-read. I seem to regularly come across uses of the SQL in the title above… Erland’s article explains in detail why this is inefficient, but I came across a nice example recently… A stored procedure contained the following code :- WHERE @Name is null or [Name] like @Name as a nonclustered index exists on the Name column, you might assume this would be handled efficiently by SQL Server. However, I got the following output from SET STATISTICS IO Table 'xxxxx'. Scan count 15, logical reads 47760, physical reads 9, read-ahead reads 13872, lob logical reads 0, lob physical reads 0, lob read-ahead reads 0. Note the high number of logical reads… After a bit of investigation, we found that @Name could never actually be set to NULL in this particular example. ie the @x IS NULL was spurious… So, we changed the call to WHERE  [Name] like @Name Now, how much more efficient is this code ? Table 'xxxxx'. Scan count 3, logical reads 24, physical reads 0, read-ahead reads 0, lob logical reads 0, lob physical reads 0, lob read-ahead reads 0 A nice easy win in this case…… a full index scan has been replaced by a significantly more efficient index seek. I managed to recreate the same behaviour on Adventureworks – here’s a quick query to demonstrate :- USE adventureworks SET STATISTICS IO ON DECLARE @id INT = 51721 SELECT * FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail WHERE @id IS NULL OR salesorderid = @id SELECT * FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail WHERE salesorderid = @id Take a look at the STATISTICS IO output and compare the actual query plans used to prove the impact of  WHERE @id IS NULL. And just to follow some of Erland’s advice – here’s how you could get similar performance if it was possible that @id could actually sometimes contain NULL. DECLARE @sql NVARCHAR(4000), @parameterlist NVARCHAR(4000) DECLARE @id INT = 51721 – or change to NULL to prove query is functionally correct SET @sql = 'SELECT * FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail WHERE 1 = 1' IF @id IS NOT NULL SET @sql = @sql + ' AND salesorderid = @id' IF @id IS NULL SET @sql = @sql + ' AND salesorderid IS NULL' SET @parameterlist = '@id INT' EXEC sp_executesql @sql, @parameterlist,@id Sometimes I think we focus too much on hardware and SQL Server configuration – when really the answer is focus on writing efficient SQL.

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• What is a good design model for my new class?

  - by user66662

  I am a beginning programmer who, after trying to manage over 2000 lines of procedural php code, now has discovered the value of OOP. I have read a few books to get me up to speed on the beginning theory, but would like some advice on practical application. So,for example, let's say there are two types of content objects - an ad and a calendar event. what my application does is scan different websites (a predefined list), and, when it finds an ad or an event, it extracts the data and saves it to a database. All of my objects will share a $title and $description. However, the Ad object will have a $price and the Event object will have $startDate. Should I have two separate classes, one for each object? Should I have a 'superclass' with the $title and $description with two other Ad and Event classes with their own properties? The latter is at least the direction I am on now. My second question about this design is how to handle the logic that extracts the data for $title, $description, $price, and $date. For each website in my predefined list, there is a specific regex that returns the desired value for each property. Currently, I have an extremely large switch statement in my constructor which determines what website I am own, sets the regex variables accordingly, and continues on. Not only that, but now I have to repeat the logic to determine what site I am on in the constructor of each class. This doesn't feel right. Should I create another class Algorithms and store the logic there for each site? Should the functions of to handle that logic be in this class? or specific to the classes whos properties they set? I want to take into account in my design two things: 1) I will add different content objects in the future that share $title and $description, but will have their own properties, so, I want to be able to easily grow these as needed. 2) I will add more websites constantly (each with their own algorithms for data extraction) so I would like to plan efficienty managing and working with these now. I thought about extending the Ad or Event class with 'websiteX' class and store its functions there. But, this didn't feel right either as now I have to manage 100s of little website specific class files. Note, I didn't know if this was the correct site or stackoverflow was the better choice. If so, let me know and I'll post there.

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• The Minimalist's Approach to Content Governance

  - by Kellsey Ruppel

  This week on the blog, we want to focus on the content lifecylce and how important it is to have the tools in place to be able to properly manage all te phases of the content lifecylce. John Brunswick has some great advice when it comes to this topic, so expect to hear a lot from him this week! Originally posted by John Brunswick. Let's be honest - content governance is far from an exciting topic. BUT the potential of a very small intranet team creating and maintaining a platform that provides an organization with relevant, high value information, helping workers to get their jobs done with greater accuracy and in less time is exciting. It is easy to quickly start producing content, but the challenge is ensuring that the environment is easy to navigate and use on the third week and during the third year.   What can be done to bridge this gap? Over the next few blog entries let's take a pragmatic, minimalistic view of a process that can help any team manage a wealth of unstructured information. Based on an earlier article that I wrote around Portal Governance, I am going to focus on using technology as much as possible to support the governance of content with minimal involvement from users. The only certainty about content production is that business users are not fans of maintaining content. Maintenance is overhead and is a long-term investment thats value will possibly not be realized under the current content creator's watch. To add context to how we will use technical tools in this process, each post will highlight one section of the content lifecycle process as outlined below Content Lifecycle Stages 1. Request - Understand the education, purpose, resource and success criteria for content 2. Create - Determine access and workflow for content 3. Manage - Understand ownership and review cycles 4. Retire - Act on thresholds established during the request stage Within each state we will also elaborate as to 1. Why - why would we entertain doing this? 2. How - the steps that are needed to make it happen 3. Impact - what is the net benefit or loss based on the process Over the course of this week, we will dive deep into the stages and the minimal amount of time, effort and process within each to make some meaningful gains in the improvement of user experience and productivity in their search for information. It might be a stretch to say that we can make content governance exciting, but hopefully it can end up being painless and paying dividends. And if you'd like to hear first hand from a customer that is managing their content lifecycle with Oracle WebCenter, be sure to join us on Wednesday for this webcast "ResCare Solves Content Lifecycle Challenges with Oracle WebCenter"!

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• Perfect is the enemy of “Good Enough”

  - by Daniel Moth

  This is one of the quotes that I was against, but now it is totally part of my core beliefs: "Perfect is the enemy of Good Enough" Folks used to share this quote a lot with me in my early career and my frequent interpretation was that they were incompetent people that were satisfied with mediocrity, i.e. I ignored them and their advice. (Yes, I went through an arrogance phase). I later "grew up" and "realized" that they were missing the point, so instead of ignoring them I would retort: "Of course we have to aim for perfection, because as human beings we'll never achieve perfection, so by aiming for perfection we will indeed achieve good enough results". (Yes, I went through a smart ass phase). Later I grew up a bit more and "understood" that what I was really being told is to finish my work earlier and move on to other things because by trying to perfect that one thing, another N things that I was responsible for were suffering by not getting my attention - all things on my plate need to move beyond the line, not just one of them to go way over the line. It is really a statement of increasing scale and scope. To put it in other words, getting PASS grades on 10 things is better than getting an A+ with distinction on 1-2 and a FAIL on the rest. Instead of saying “I am able to do very well these X items” it is best if you can say I can do well enough on these X * Y items”, where Y > 1. That is how breadth impact is achieved. In the future, I may grow up again and have a different interpretation, but for now - even though I secretly try to "perfect" things, I try not to do that at the expense of other responsibilities. This means that I haven't had anybody quote that saying to me in a while (or perhaps my quality of work has dropped so much that it doesn't apply to me any more - who knows :-)). Wikipedia attributes the quote to Voltaire and it also makes connections to the “Law of diminishing returns”, and to the “80-20 rule” or “Pareto principle”… it commonly takes 20% of the full time to complete 80% of a task while to complete the last 20% of a task takes 80% of the effort …check out the Wikipedia entry on “Perfect is the enemy of Good” and its links. Also use your favorite search engine to search and see what others are saying (Bing, Google) – it is worth internalizing this in a way that makes sense to you… Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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• I didn't mean to become a database developer, but now I am. Should I stop or try to get better?

  - by pretlow majette

  20 years ago I couldn't afford even a cheap POS program when I opened my first surf shop in the Virgin Islands. I bought a copy of Paradox (remember that?) in 1990 and spent months in a back room scratching out a POS application. Over many iterations, including a switch to Access (2000)/SQL Server (2003), I built a POS and backoffice solution that runs four stores with multiple cash registers, a warehouse and office. Until recently, all my stores were connected to the same LAN (in a small shopping center) and performance wasn't an issue. Now that we've opened a location in the States that's changed. Connecting to my local server via the internet has slowed that locations application to a crawl. This is partly due to the slow and crappy dsl service we have in the Virgin Islands, and partly due to my less-than-professional code and sql. With other far-away stores in the works, I need a better solution. I like my application. My staff knows it well, and I'm not inclined to take on the expense of a proper commercial solution. So where does that leave me? I should probably host my sql online to sidestep the slow dsl here. I think I can handle cleaning up my SQL querries to speed that up a bit. What about Access? My version seems so old, but I don't like the newer versions with the 'ribbon'. There are so many options... Should I be learning Visual Studio with an eye on moving completely to the web? Will my VBA skills help me at all there? I don't have the luxury of a year at the keyboard to figure it out anymore. What about dotnetnuke, sharepoint, or lightswitch? They all seem like possibilities, but even understanding their capabilities is daunting. I'm pretty deep into it, but maybe I should bail and hire a consultant or programmer. That sounds expensive tho, and there's no guarantee there either... Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Or, if anybody is interested in buying a small chain of surf shops...

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• Determining cause of random latency/loading issues

  - by Sherwin Flight

  I'm not sure exactly what details to post in regards to my issue, because I'm not sure what is relevant. Prior to the end of September my websites all loaded quickly, in almost all cases. Loading time wasn't usually more than a few seconds. However, since the end of September I noticed a big increase in page loading times. In some cases pages were taking 30 seconds or more to load. I do have a remote monitoring service monitoring some of the sites as well, and the image below shows the response times over the past month. The response times shown at the beginning of this graph were what the usual response times were prior to this issue occurring. You can see that there has been a significant increase in response times from the beginning to the end of this graph. The thing is, the problem is not happening 100% of the time. If I click through the site, or even just keep refreshing the page, about 25% of the time the pages load quickly, the remaining 75% of the time they load slowly. Sometimes the pages take so long to load that they time out, and don't load at all. I have contacted my hosting provider, and they said things at their end was fine. I don't believe the problem is my home internet provider, because all other websites load without a problem. The server is located in Texas, USA. This also raises another interesting point. My remote monitor checks my site from two locations, California, USA, and London, England. As you can see in the chart below the response time is actually shorter when checked from London, which doesn't seem to make sense, since the server is physically closer to the California monitoring location. I would have expected the London monitoring location to have higher response times since they are physically farther away. I should also point out that in some traceroute test I've done it seem like the first connection to the server seems to take the longest, then after that the rest of the page loads quickly. Below is a little chart showing the times for the first connection to the server. So, what could be causing this problem, and what steps can I take to resolve it or at least narrow down the problem? Sending the request to the server was very quick, and receiving the reply back seems pretty quick, but the WAIT time is really long. So it connects, sends the request, but then waits close to 30 seconds before it starts receiving data back. I am also aware that there are things I can do to speed up page loading times, like reducing the number of css/js files used on a page, compressing images, etc. This is not really what the source of the problem is though, because nothing has really changed on the site since before the problem started, and other sites on the same server are loading slowly as well. Any help or advice is much appreciated.

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• Homepage issue on Google [closed]

  - by nico

  We have recently updated our website www.blinds4uk.co.uk with a new homepage containing additional features and more on page content but since then we have lost primary keyword positions and the home page has disappeared completely. The only time it appears is for an exact search ‘blinds4uk’. Today I took snippets of 'unique content' from the homepage and put this into the 'google search' but our homepage was nowhere to be found. When I did the same in ‘Yahoo’ the homepage came up. Are we missing something? We ranked in the top 4 for primary kw terms 'blinds uk' & 'uk blinds' but now we don’t show anywhere for these terms. Our homepage has never ranked well for the primary kw 'blinds' yet our internal pages rank very well with many pages on page 1 of google uk. We employed an SEO firm for 9 months to help us establish issues with the homepage but they never could, so we got rid. We have been trying to get to the root cause of why the homepage ranks so poorly for a number of years and only yesterday we established that we had the meta tag directly below the tag and our title & meta description were further down the page; we have today corrected. Not sure what effect this would have on the way Google reads the homepage but we are trying everything to try and get the homepage ranking fro those primary kw's. Our current developers & ex SEO guys are all part of the same company and cannot pin-point anything other than saying carryon with their SEO team because it will take time but just comes across as a milking exercise. Another thing which I have found very strange is the data from our 'traffic audience'. We are a UK based website yet our traffic stats were showing as;- UK 36.6%, Denmark 35.8% and India 27.6%. – don’t make sense to me! Is there anybody out there that could simply point us in the right direction to the problem(s), so we can fix once and for all? Could there be anything within the code that is causing the home page not to display within google for our primary kw's terms such as blinds, window blinds etc. I would appreciate any advice at all that may help us in our quest to sort this homepage issue once and for all

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• ORACLE UK TECHNOLOGY “TEST FEST”

  - by mseika

  ORACLE UK TECHNOLOGY “TEST FEST” Join us at the UKOUG Conference at the ICC in Birmingham and Take your OPN Implementation Specialist Exam for Free! 3-5 December 2012, ICC Birmingham (UK) Dear Oracle Partner,** As a priority partner, we are sending you advance notice of these exclusive “Technology Test Fest” free examination sessions. Please note that this communication will be sent out to the wider community one week from today, so please register immediately to secure your place! ** We are delighted to offer you the exclusive opportunity to register and attend the Oracle UK “Technology Test Fest” being held as Part of the UKOUG Conference at the ICC in Birmingham in the Drawing Room at the Hyatt Regency hotel adjacent to the ICC venue, from 3rd to 5th December 2012.This is your opportunity to sit your chosen Oracle Technology Specialist Implementation Exam free of charge on this day. Four sessions are being run (10.00AM and 14.00PM), with just 15 places at each session – so register now to avoid disappointment! (Exams take about 1.5 hours to complete.) REGISTER - 3 December Afternoon Session - 2:00pm REGISTER - 4 December Morning Session 10:00am REGISTER - 4 December Afternoon Session - 2:00pm REGISTER - 5 December Morning Session - 10:00am Price: FREE Address:The Drawing Room Hyatt Regency Hotel Birmingham 2 Bridge Street Birmingham BI 2JZ 3 - 5 December 2012 Which Implementation Specialist Exams are available to take?Click here to see the list of exams available for you to sit for free at the Oracle UKOUG “Technology Test Fest”. The links also include the study guide for the particular exam. Please review the Specialization Guide as well. How do I register for the Oracle UK “Technology Test Fest”? Fill out the Pearson Vue profile HERE and complete it with your OPN Company ID. NB: Instructions on how to create/update the profile can be found HERE. Register for one of the 4 sessions using the registration links at the top of this page You will need to bring your own laptop with 'Windows OS' and a form of identification to be able to take any of the exams. Need Help or Advice?For more information about the tests and Get Specialized programme, please contact: [email protected] issues with your profile or any other OPN-related problems, please contact our Oracle Partner Business Centre: [email protected] or call 08705 194 194. We look forward to welcoming you to the Oracle UK “Technology Test Fest” on the 3rd- 5thDecember 2012! Book early to avoid disappointment.

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• “It Isn’t Easy At All; Otherwise, Everyone Would Be Doing It”

  - by Kathryn Perry

  A few months ago, JP Saunders (pictured left), who leads the go-to-market initiatives for the Oracle CX Service offering, kicked off a series of articles about modern customer service. He contends that to take care of customers?and the people that support those customers?companies need to make it easy to deliver consistently great experiences. But it’s not easy; it’s an art. The six posts in The Art of Easy series will help you better understand some of the customer service challenges you face and how to avoid common pitfalls. We pulled them all together here in one post for continuity and easy access. Saunders introduces the series with The Art of Easy: Make It Easy To Deliver Great Customer Service Experiences (Part 1). The Art of Easy: Offer Self Service With the Emphasis on Service (Part 2) by David Fulton (pictured left): David Fulton, Director of Product Management, Oracle Service Cloud, shares five tenets of customer self service that move an organization closer to becoming a modern customer service business. Easy Decisions For Complex Problems (Part 3) by Heike Lorenz (pictured right): Heike Lorenz, Director of Global Product Marketing, Policy Automation, writes about automating service policies to ensure that the correct decisions are being applied to the right people. The goal is to nurture the trusted relationships with customers during complex decision-making processes. Moving at the Speed of Easy (Part 4) by Chris Ulmand (pictured left): Chris Omland, Director of Product Management, Oracle Service Cloud, addresses the need for speed to keep up with customers’ expectations. His advice—start with a platform that enables agile innovation, respects a company’s unique needs, and has proven reliability to protect customer relationships. Knowledge Makes It Easy For Everyone (Part 5) by Nav Chakravarti (pictured rig: Vice President Nav Chakravarti, Oracle Service Cloud, talks about managing the knowledge that customers need and want. He coaches readers on delivering answers to customers’ questions easily, in context, with relevance, reliably, and accurately. Making Easy, Both Effective and Efficient (Part 6) by Melinda Uhland (pictured left): Melinda Uhland, Oracle CX Product Management teaches us that happy agents produce happy customers. A Modern Customer Service organization is one that invests in its agents and empowers them with tools to make them efficient and effective, which, in turn, improves customer results.

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• Best way to determine surface normal for a group of pixels?

  - by Paul Renton

  One of my current endeavors is creating a 2D destructible terrain engine for iOS Cocos2D (See https://github.com/crebstar/PWNDestructibleTerrain ). It is in an infant stages no doubt, but I have made significant progress since starting a couple weeks ago. However, I have run into a bit of a performance road block with calculating surface normals. Note: For my destructible terrain engine, an alpha of 0 is considered to not be solid ground. The method posted below works just great given small rectangles, such as n < 30. Anything above 30 causes a dip in the frame rate. If you approach 100x100 then you might as well read a book while the sprite attempts to traverse the terrain. At the moment this is the best I can come up with for altering the angle on a sprite as it roams across terrain (to get the angle for a sprite's orientation just take dot product of 100 * normal * (1,0) vector). -(CGPoint)getAverageSurfaceNormalAt:(CGPoint)pt withRect:(CGRect)area { float avgX = 0; float avgY = 0; ccColor4B color = ccc4(0, 0, 0, 0); CGPoint normal; float len; for (int w = area.size.width; w >= -area.size.width; w--) { for (int h = area.size.height; h >= -area.size.height; h--) { CGPoint pixPt = ccp(w + pt.x, h + pt.y); if ([self pixelAt:pixPt colorCache:&color]) { if (color.a != 0) { avgX -= w; avgY -= h; } // end inner if } // end outer if } // end inner for } // end outer for len = sqrtf(avgX * avgX + avgY * avgY); if (len == 0) { normal = ccp(avgX, avgY); } else { normal = ccp(avgX/len, avgY/len); } // end if return normal; } // end get My problem is I have sprites that require larger rectangles in order for their movement to look realistic. I considered doing a cache of all surface normals, but this lead to issues of knowing when to recalculate the surface normals and these calculations also being quite expensive (also how large should the blocks be?). Another smaller issue is I don't know how to properly treat the case when length is = 0. So I am stuck... Any advice from the community would be greatly appreciated! Is my method the best possible one? Or should I rethink the algorithm? I am new to game development and always looking to learn new tips and tricks.

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• How / Where can I host my Java web application? [closed]

  - by Huliax

  Possible Duplicate: How to find web hosting that meets my requirements? In case you want to skip to the crux of my inquiry just read the bold type. I just finished my CS degree (at 39 years old :-)). For my final project I designed and built a system that can provide local positioning / location awareness to mobile wifi devices (only have Android client thus far). The server receives data from clients, processes it, and responds to the clients with a messages containing information about their respective locations. I would like to continue the project (perhaps release as open source but that is a different discussion). Thus far my server application has been running on the CS department's hardware where I could pretty much do whatever I wanted. I'm getting kicked off that system in a few weeks so I have to find a new home for my server application. I need a host that will let me run my Java server (along w/ mySQL db) -- preferably on the cheap since I haven't yet got a job. I have very little experience with the "real world" of web development / hosting. I'm having trouble figuring out what kind of hosting service will let me run my application as is. If that turns out to be a tall order then I need to know what my options are for changing thing so that I can get up and running with some hosting. As an aside, I'm also researching whether or not I should rewrite this in a different language. Trying to figure out if there is a substantially better (for whatever reason) one for what I'm doing. This might also potentially have a bearing on my hosting needs. One possibility is to write the server in something more widely accepted by hosting services. I have been searching for answers to my question and haven't found quite what I'm looking for. Part of the problem might be that I don't know exactly what terminology to use. If there is a good answer to this question elsewhere please feel free to point me towards it. Thanks for help / advice.

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