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• Production Access Denied! Who caused this rule anyways?

  - by Matt Watson

  One of the biggest challenges for most developers is getting access to production servers. In smaller dev teams of less than about 5 people everyone usually has access. Then you hire developer #6, he messes something up in production... and now nobody has access. That is how it always starts in small dev teams. I think just about every rule of life there is gets created this way. One person messes it up for the rest of us. Rules are then put in place to try and prevent it from happening again.Breaking the rules is in our nature. In this example it is for good cause and a necessity to support our applications and troubleshoot problems as they arise. So how do developers typically break the rules? Some create their own method to collect log files off servers so they can see them. Expensive log management programs can collect log files, but log files alone are not enough. Centralizing where important errors are logged to is common. Some lucky developers are given production server access by the IT operations team out of necessity. Wait. That's not fair to all developers and knowingly breaks the company rule!  When customers complain or the system is down, the rules go out the window. Commonly lead developers get production access because they are ultimately responsible for supporting the application and may be the only person who knows how to fix it. The problem with only giving lead developers production access is it doesn't scale from a support standpoint. Those key employees become the go to people to help solve application problems, but they also become a bottleneck. They end up spending up to half of their time every day helping resolve application defects, performance problems, or whatever the fire of the day is. This actually the last thing you want your lead developers doing. They should be working on something more strategic like major enhancements to the product. Having production access can actually be a curse if you are the guy stuck hunting down log files all day. Application defects are good tasks for junior developers. They can usually handle figuring out simple application problems. But nothing is worse than being a junior developer who can't figure out those problems and the back log of them grows and grows. Some of them require production server access to verify a deployment was done correctly, verify config settings, view log files, or maybe just restart an application. Since the junior developers don't have access, they end up bugging the developers who do have access or they track down a system admin to help. It can take hours or days to see server information that would take seconds or minutes if they had access of their own. It is very frustrating to the developer trying to solve the problem, the system admin being forced to help, and most importantly your customers who are not happy about the situation. This process is terribly inefficient. Production database access is also important for solving application problems, but presents a lot of risk if developers are given access. They could see data they shouldn't.  They could write queries on accident to update data, delete data, or merely select every record from every table and bring your database to its knees. Since most of the application we create are data driven, it can be very difficult to track down application bugs without access to the production databases.Besides it being against the rule, why don't all developers have access? Most of the time it comes down to security, change of control, lack of training, and other valid reasons. Developers have been known to tinker with different settings to try and solve a problem and in the process forget what they changed and made the problem worse. So it is a double edge sword. Don't give them access and fixing bugs is more difficult, or give them access and risk having more bugs or major outages being created!Matt WatsonFounder, CEOStackifyAgile Support for Agile Developers

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• Apprentice Boot Camp in South Africa (Part 2)

  - by Tim Koekkoek

  By Maximilian Michel (DE), Jorge Garnacho (ES), Daniel Maull (UK), Adam Griffiths (UK), Guillermo De Las Nieves (ES), Catriona McGill (UK), Ed Dunlop (UK) Today we have the second part of the adventures of seven apprentices from all over Europe in South-Africa!  Kruger National Park & other experiences Going to the Kruger National Park was definitely an experience we will all remember for the rest of our lives. This trip,organised by Patrick Fitzgerald, owner of the Travellers Nest (where we all stayed), took us from the hustle and bustle of Joburg to experience what Africa is all about, the wild! Although the first week’s training we had prior to this trip to the Kruger was going very well, we all knew this was to be a very nice break before we started the second week of training. And we were right, the animals, scenery and sights we saw were just simply incredible and like I said something we will remember for the rest of our lives. To see lions, elephants, cheetahs and rhinos and many more in a zoo is one thing, but to see them in the wild, in their natural habitat is very special and I personally only realised this from the early 5 am start on the first morning in the Kruger, which was definitely worth it. Not only was it all about the safari, we ate some wonderful food, in particular on the Saturday night, Patrick made us a traditional South African Braai which was one of my favourite meals of the whole two weeks. After the Kruger National Park we had a whole day of traveling back to Johannesburg but even this was made to be a good day by our hosts. Despite the early start on the road it was all worth it by the time we reached God's Window. The walk to the top was made a lot harder by all the steaks we had eaten in the first week but the hard walk was worth it at the top, with views that stretched for miles. The Food The food in South Africa is typically meat and in big amounts, while there we ate a lot of big beef steaks, ribs and kudu sausage. All of the meat we ate was usually cooked with a sauce such as a Barbeque glaze. The restaurants we visited were: Upperdeck Restaurant, with live music and a great terrace to eat, the atmosphere was good for enjoying the music and eating our food. Most of us ate  Spare ribs that weighed 600 kg, with barbecue sauce that was delicious. Die Bosvelder Pub & Restaurant is a restaurant with a very surprising decor, this is because the walls had many of south Africa’s famous animals on them. The food was maybe the best we ate in South Africa. Our orders were: Springbokvlakte Lambs' Neck Stew, beef in gravy and steaks topped with cheese and then more meat on top! All meals were accompanied by a selection of white sauce cauliflower, spinach and zanhorias. Pepper Chair Restaurant, where the specialty is T-Bone steaks of 1.4 kg, but most of us were happy to attempt the 1 kg. Cooked with barbecue sauce over the meat, it was very good!  The only problem was their size causing the  the meat to get cold if you did not eat it very fast! We’re all waiting for our 1.0 kg t-bone steak including our Senior Director EMEA Systems Support Germany & Switzerland: Werner Hoellrigl The Godfather Restaurant, the food here was more meat in abundance. We ate: great ribs, hamburgers, steaks and all accompanied with a small plates of carrot and sauteed spinach, very good. We had two great weeks in South-Africa! If you want to join Oracle, then check http://campus.oracle.com 

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• database design help for game / user levels / progress

  - by sprugman

  Sorry this got long and all prose-y. I'm creating my first truly gamified web app and could use some help thinking about how to structure the data. The Set-up Users need to accomplish tasks in each of several categories before they can move up a level. I've got my Users, Tasks, and Categories tables, and a UserTasks table which joins the three. ("User 3 has added Task 42 in Category 8. Now they've completed it.") That's all fine and working wonderfully. The Challenge I'm not sure of the best way to track the progress in the individual categories toward each level. The "business" rules are: You have to achieve a certain number of points in each category to move up. If you get the number of points needed in Cat 8, but still have other work to do to complete the level, any new Cat 8 points count toward your overall score, but don't "roll over" into the next level. The number of Categories is small (five currently) and unlikely to change often, but by no means absolutely fixed. The number of points needed to level-up will vary per level, probably by a formula, or perhaps a lookup table. So the challenge is to track each user's progress toward the next level in each category. I've thought of a few potential approaches: Possible Solutions Add a column to the users table for each category and reset them all to zero each time a user levels-up. Have a separate UserProgress table with a row for each category for each user and the number of points they have. (Basically a Many-to-Many version of #1.) Add a userLevel column to the UserTasks table and use that to derive their progress with some kind of SUM statement. Their current level will be a simple int in the User table. Pros & Cons (1) seems like by far the most straightforward, but it's also the least flexible. Perhaps I could use a naming convention based on the category ids to help overcome some of that. (With code like "select cats; for each cat, get the value from Users.progress_{cat.id}.") It's also the one where I lose the most data -- I won't know which points counted toward leveling up. I don't have a need in mind for that, so maybe I don't care about that. (2) seems complicated: every time I add or subtract a user or a category, I have to maintain the other table. I foresee synchronization challenges. (3) Is somewhere in between -- cleaner than #2, but less intuitive than #1. In order to find out where a user is, I'd have mildly complex SQL like: SELECT categoryId, SUM(points) from UserTasks WHERE userId={user.id} & countsTowardLevel={user.level} groupBy categoryId Hmm... that doesn't seem so bad. I think I'm talking myself into #3 here, but would love any input, advice or other ideas. P.S. Sorry for the cross-post. I wrote this up on SO and then remembered that there was a game dev-focused one. Curious to see if I get different answers one place than the other....

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• Question on the implementation of my Entity System

  - by miguel.martin

  I am currently creating an Entity System, in C++, it is almost completed (I have all the code there, I just have to add a few things and test it). The only thing is, I can't figure out how to implement some features. This Entity System is based off a bit from the Artemis framework, however it is different. I'm not sure if I'll be able to type this out the way my head processing it. I'm going to basically ask whether I should do something over something else. Okay, now I'll give a little detail on my Entity System itself. Here are the basic classes that my Entity System uses to actually work: Entity - An Id (and some methods to add/remove/get/etc Components) Component - An empty abstract class ComponentManager - Manages ALL components for ALL entities within a Scene EntitySystem - Processes entities with specific components Aspect - The class that is used to help determine what Components an Entity must contain so a specific EntitySystem can process it EntitySystemManager - Manages all EntitySystems within a Scene EntityManager - Manages entities (i.e. holds all Entities, used to determine whether an Entity has been changed, enables/disables them, etc.) EntityFactory - Creates (and destroys) entities and assigns an ID to them Scene - Contains an EntityManager, EntityFactory, EntitySystemManager and ComponentManager. Has functions to update and initialise the scene. Now in order for an EntitySystem to efficiently know when to check if an Entity is valid for processing (so I can add it to a specific EntitySystem), it must recieve a message from the EntityManager (after a call of activate(Entity& e)). Similarly the EntityManager must know when an Entity is destroyed from the EntityFactory in the Scene, and also the ComponentManager must know when an Entity is created AND destroyed. I do have a Listener/Observer pattern implemented at the moment, but with this pattern I may remove a Listener (which is this case is dependent on the method being called). I mainly have this implemented for specific things related to a game, i.e. Teams, Tagging of entities, etc. So... I was thinking maybe I should call a private method (using friend classes) to send out when an Entity has been activated, deleted, etc. i.e. taken from my EntityFactory void EntityFactory::killEntity(Entity& e) { // if the entity doesn't exsist in the entity manager within the scene if(!getScene()->getEntityManager().doesExsist(e)) { return; // go back to the caller! (should throw an exception or something..) } // tell the ComponentManager and the EntityManager that we killed an Entity getScene()->getComponentManager().doOnEntityWillDie(e); getScene()->getEntityManager().doOnEntityWillDie(e); // notify the listners for(Mouth::iterator i = getMouth().begin(); i != getMouth().end(); ++i) { (*i)->onEntityWillDie(*this, e); } _idPool.addId(e.getId()); // add the ID to the pool delete &e; // delete the entity } As you can see on the lines where I am telling the ComponentManager and the EntityManager that an Entity will die, I am calling a method to make sure it handles it appropriately. Now I realise I could do this without calling it explicitly, with the help of that for loop notifying all listener objects connected to the EntityFactory's Mouth (an object used to tell listeners that there's an event), however is this a good idea (good design, or what)? I've gone over the PROS and CONS, I just can't decide what I want to do. Calling Explicitly: PROS Faster? Since these functions are explicitly called, they can't be "removed" CONS Not flexible Bad design? (friend functions) Calling through Listener objects (i.e. ComponentManager/EntityManager inherits from a EntityFactoryListener) PROS More Flexible? Better Design? CONS Slower? (virtual functions) Listeners can be removed, i.e. may be removed and not get called again during the program, which could cause in a crash. P.S. If you wish to view my current source code, I am hosting it on BitBucket.

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• PASS: International Travels

  - by Bill Graziano

  Nihao!  One of the largest changes PASS is going through is the the expansion outside the US and Canada.  We’ve had international chapters and events in Europe since the early 2000’s.  But nothing on the scale we’re seeing now.  Since January 1st there have been 18 SQL Saturday events outside North America and 19 events in North America.  We hope to have three international SQLRally events outside the US in FY13 (budget willing).  I don’t know the exact percentage of chapters outside the US but it’s got be 50% or higher. We recently started an effort to remake the Board to better reflect the growing global face of PASS.  This involves assigning some Board seats to geographic regions.  You can ask questions about this in our feedback forum, participate in a Twitter chat or ask questions directly of Board members.  You can email me at if you’d like to ask a question directly.  We’re doing this very slowly and deliberately in hopes that a long communication cycle gives us a chance to address all the issues that our members will raise. After the Summit we passed a budget exception allocating an extra $20,000 for Board members to travel to local events.  I think it’s important for Board members to visit new areas and talk to more of our members.  I sent out an email asking where people had attended events outside their home city.  Here’s the list I got back: Albuquerque, Amsterdam, Boston, Brisbane, Chicago, Colorado Springs, Columbus, Dallas, Houston, Jacksonville, Las Vegas, London, Louisville, Minneapolis, New York City, Orange County, Orlando, Pensacola, Perth, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Redmond, Seattle, Silicon Valley, Sydney, Tampa Bay, Vancouver, Washington DC and Wellington.  (Disclaimer: Some of this travel was paid for by employers or Board members themselves.  Some of this travel may have been completed before the Summit.  That’s still one heck of a list!) The last SQL Saturday event this fiscal year is SQL Saturday Shanghai.  And that’s one I’m attending.  This is our first event in China and is being put on in cooperation with the local Microsoft office.  Hopefully this event will be the start of a growing community in China that includes chapters, SQL Saturdays and maybe a SQLRally or two in the future.  I’m excited to speak with people that are just starting down this path and watching this community grow. I encourage you to visit the PASS Global Growth site and read through the material there.  This is the biggest change we’ve made to our governance since I’ve been on the Board.  You need to understand how it affects you and how it affects the organization. And wish me luck on the 15 hour flight to Shanghai on Friday afternoon.  Rob Farley flies from Australia to the US for PASS events multiple times per year and I don’t know how he does it so often.  I think one of these is going to wipe me out.  (And Nihao (knee-how) is Chinese for Hello.)

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• How to give my user permission to add/edit files on local apache server? [duplicate]

  - by Logan

  Possible Duplicate: How to make Apache run as current user I'm setting up my local test server again, and I seem to have forgotten how to successfully set up the LAMP server. I have installed LAMP server via tasksel command and I have configured the /var/www directory according to a guide I've found: After the lamp server installation you will need write permissions to the /var/www directory. Follow these steps to configure permissions. Add your user to the www-data group sudo usermod -a -G www-data <your user name> now add the /var/www folder to the www-data group sudo chgrp -R www-data /var/www now give write permissions to the www-data group sudo chmod -R g+w /var/www So logan user is now part of www-data group and the file/folder permissions look like the output below: logan@computer:/var/www$ ls -lart total 172 -rw-r--r-- 1 www-data www-data 1997 Oct 23 2010 wp-links-opml.php -rw-r--r-- 1 www-data www-data 3177 Nov 1 2010 wp-config-sample.php -rw-r--r-- 1 www-data www-data 3700 Jan 8 2012 wp-trackback.php -rw-r--r-- 1 www-data www-data 271 Jan 8 2012 wp-blog-header.php -rw-r--r-- 1 www-data www-data 395 Jan 8 2012 index.php -rw-r--r-- 1 www-data www-data 3522 Apr 10 2012 wp-comments-post.php -rw-r--r-- 1 www-data www-data 19929 May 6 2012 license.txt -rw-r--r-- 1 www-data www-data 18219 Sep 11 08:27 wp-signup.php -rw-r--r-- 1 www-data www-data 2719 Sep 11 16:11 xmlrpc.php -rw-r--r-- 1 www-data www-data 2718 Sep 23 12:57 wp-cron.php -rw-r--r-- 1 www-data www-data 7723 Sep 25 01:26 wp-mail.php -rw-r--r-- 1 www-data www-data 2408 Oct 26 15:40 wp-load.php -rw-r--r-- 1 www-data www-data 4663 Nov 17 10:11 wp-activate.php -rw-r--r-- 1 www-data www-data 9899 Nov 22 04:52 wp-settings.php -rw-r--r-- 1 www-data www-data 9175 Nov 29 19:57 readme.html -rw-r--r-- 1 www-data www-data 29310 Nov 30 08:40 wp-login.php drwxr-xr-x 14 root root 4096 Dec 24 17:41 .. drwx------ 9 www-data www-data 4096 Dec 26 16:11 wp-admin drwx------ 9 www-data www-data 4096 Dec 26 16:11 wp-includes -rw-rw-rw- 1 www-data www-data 3448 Dec 26 16:14 wp-config.php drwxrwxr-x 5 www-data www-data 4096 Dec 26 16:14 . drwx------ 6 www-data www-data 4096 Dec 26 16:19 wp-content Things work perfectly at http://localhost, I can view the website fine. The thing with this is that I will be working on a plugin for wordpress and I don't want to deal with separate owners under www directory to create or modify files/folders. When I give my user the ownership of /var/www recursively as logan:www-data I can create/modify files but cannot view the http://localhost. I get a Forbidden error. I'm assuming that this is because of the Apache's configuration? Which one is healthier or easier considering this is just a local test website, configuring apache to give user logan to view website and chmod /var/www logan:logan so that I can create files etc. without any sudo commands; or is it easier to configure user groups to get www-data user to act like my logan user? (Idk how that's possible, maybe putting www-data user under logan group?) Please shed some light to this subject. All I want is to be able to create/modifiy files under my user, and yet to be able to successfully view http://localhost I appreciate the help!

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• Changes in Language Punctuation [closed]

  - by Wes Miller

  More social curiosity than actual programming question... (I got shot for posting this on Stack Overflow. They sent me here. At least i hope here is where they meant.) Based on the few responses I got before the content police ran me off Stack Overflow, I should note that I am legally blind and neatness and consistency in programming are my best friends. A thousand years ago when I took my first programming class (Fortran 66) and a mere 500 years ago when I tokk my first C and C++ classes, there were some pretty standard punctuation practices across languages. I saw them in Basic (shudder), PL/1, PL/AS, Rexx even Pascal. Ok, APL2 is not part of this discussion. Each language has its own peculiar punctuation. Pascal's periods, Fortran's comma separated do loops, almost everybody else's semicolons. As I learned it, each language also has KEYWORDS (if, for, do, while, until, etc.) which are set off by whitespace (or the left margin) if, etc. Each language has function, subroutines of whatever they're called. Some built-in some user coded. They were set off by function_name( parameters );. As in sqrt( x ) or rand( y ); Lately, there seems to be a new set of punctuation rules. Especially in c++ where initializers get glued onto the end of variable declarations int x(0); or auto_ptr p(new gizmo); This usually, briefly fools me into thinking someone is declaring a function prototype or using a function as a integer. Then "if" and 'for' seems to have grown parens; if(true) for(;;), etc. Since when did keywords become functions. I realize some people think they ARE functions with iterators as parameters. But if "for" is a function, where did the arg separating commas go? And finally, functions seem to have shed their parens; sqrt (2) select (...) I know, I koow, loosening whitespace rules is good. Keep reading. Question: when did the old ways disappear and this new way come into vogue? Does anyone besides me find it irritating to read and that the information that the placement of punctuation used to convey is gone? I know full well that K&R put the { at the end of the "if" or "for" to save a byte here and there. Can't use that excuse here. Space as an excuse for loss of readability died as HDD space soared past 100 MiB. Your thoughts are solicited. If there is a good reason to do this, I'll gladly learn it and maybe in another 50 years I'll get used to it. Of course it's good that compilers recognize these (IMHO) typos and keep right on going, but just because you CAN code it that way doesn't mean you HAVE to, right?

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• your AdSense account poses a risk of generating invalid activity

  - by Karington

  i received a mail from the adsense team saying: I am not an adsense expert, im actually quite new to it. I spent a lot of time on my site http://www.media1.rs, its a news aggregator with tons of options. In the meantime i discovered the double click service that had a good option to turn on google ads when you don't have any other running so i joined up for google adsense with my company account. Everything went smooth until one day (21.Jul.2011) i got an email... Hello, After reviewing our records, we've determined that your AdSense account poses a risk of generating invalid activity. Because we have a responsibility to protect our AdWords advertisers from inflated costs due to invalid activity, we've found it necessary to disable your AdSense account. Your outstanding balance and Google's share of the revenue will both be fully refunded back to the affected advertisers. Please understand that we need to take such steps to maintain the effectiveness of Google's advertising system, particularly the advertiser-publisher relationship. We understand the inconvenience that this may cause you, and we thank you in advance for your understanding and cooperation. If you have any questions or concerns about the actions we've taken, how you can appeal this decision, or invalid activity in general, you can find more information by visiting http://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=57153. Sincerely, The Google AdSense Team At first i didn't have any idea why... but then it came to me that it was maybe the auto refresh script we had because we publish news very very often and it would be useful for visitors... but i removed it immediately after i got the mail... Then i thought it might be my friends clicking thinking that that will help me (i didn't tell them to do it and don't know if they did) or something like that but than it couldn't be that because everyone can organize 10 people and get anyone who is a start-up banned? right? Anyway i filled out the form that was on the answers page with the previously removed script and got this from them: Hello, Thank you for your appeal. We appreciate the additional information you've provided, as well as your continued interest in the AdSense program. However, after thoroughly re-reviewing your account data and taking your feedback into consideration, our specialists have confirmed that we're unable to reinstate your AdSense account. As a reminder, if you have any questions or concerns about your account, the actions we've taken, or invalid activity in general, you can find more information by visiting http://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=57153. I do understand them that they have to keep things secret in a way but i don't know what I'm supposed to do now? Is there a check list that i can go through and re-apply? Where do i re-apply on the same form? Please help as we are a small company and cant really have a budget for hiring a specialist + don't know any also... p.s. the current ads on the site are my own through doubleclick... Thanks in advance! Best, Karington

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• Is it worth to learn Experimental Languages?

  - by Xander Lamkins

  I'm a young programmer who desires to work in the field someday as a programmer. I know Java, VB.NET and C#. I want to learn a new language (as I programmer, I know that it is valuable to extend what I know - to learn languages that make you think differently). I took a look online to see what languages were common. Everybody knows C and C++ (even those muggles who know so little about computers in general), so I thought, maybe I should push for C. C and C++ are nice but they are old. Things like Haskell and Forth (etc. etc. etc.) are old and have lost their popularity. I'm scared of learning C (or even C++) for this same reason. Java is pretty old as well and is slow because it's run by the JVM and not compiled to native code. I've been a Windows developer for quite a while. I recently started using Java - but only because it was more versatile and spreadable to other places. The problem is that it doesn't look like a very usable language for these reasons: It's most used purpose is for web application and cellphone apps (specifically Android) As far as actual products made with it, the only things that come to mind are Netbeans, Eclipse (hurrah for making and IDE with the language the IDE is for - it's like making a webpage for writing HTML/CSS/Javascript), and Minecraft which happens to be fun but laggy and bipolar as far as computer spec. support. Other than that it's used for servers but heck - I don't only want to make/configure servers. The .NET languages are nice, however: People laugh if I even mention VB.NET or C# in a serious conversation. It isn't cross-platform unless you use MONO (which is still in development and has some improvements to be made). Lacks low level stuff because, like Java with the JVM, it is run/managed by the CLR. My first thought was learning something like C and then using it to springboard into C++ (just to make sure I would have a strong understanding/base), but like I said earlier, it's getting older and older by the minute. What I've Looked Into Fantom looks nice. It's like a nice middleman between my two favorite languages and even lets me publish between the two interchangeably, but, unlike what I want, it compiles to the CLR or JVM (depending on what you publish it to) instead of it being a complete compile. D also looks nice. It seems like a very usable language and from multiple sources it appears to actually be better than C/C++. I would jump right with it, but I'm still unsure of its success because it obviously isn't very mainstream at this point. There are a couple others that looked pretty nice that focused on other things such as Opa with web development and Go by GOOGLE. My Question Is it worth learning these "experimental" languages? I've read other questions that say that if you aren't constantly learning languages and open to all languages that you aren't in the right mindset for programming. I understand this and I still might not quite be getting it, but in truth, if a language isn't going to become mainstream, should I spend my time learning something else? I don't want to learn old (or any going to soon be old) programming languages. I know that many people see this as something important, *but would any of you ever actually consider (assuming you didn't already know) FORTRAN? My goal is to stay current to make sure I'm successful in the future. Disclaimer Yes, I am a young programmer, so I probably made a lot of naive statements in my question. Feel free to correct me on ANYTHING! I have to start learning somewhere so I'm sure a lot of my knowledge is sketchy enough to have caused to incorrect statements or flaws in my thinking. Please leave any feelings you have in the comments.

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• Ti Launchpad

  - by raysmithequip

  Just thought I would get a couple of notes up here for reference to anyone that is interested...it is now Feb 2011 and I have not been posting here enough to remember this blog. Back in Nov 2010 I ordered the Ti launchpad msp430, it is a little target board kit replete with a mini USB cable, two very inexpensive programmable mcu's and a couple of pin headers with a couple of led's on board, a spi connector some on board jumpers and two programmable micro switches....all for less than $5.00...INCLUDING SHIPPING!!....not bad when the ardruino's are running around 20.00 for the target board, atmega328 and cable off of eBay...I wont even mention the microchip pic right now.  Naw, for $5.00 the Ti launchpad kit is about the cheapest fun around...if-uns your a geek that is... Well, the launchpad was backordered for almost two months, came like Xmas eve in fact...I had almost forgotten it!! And really, it was way late and not my idea of an Xmas present for myself.  That would of been the web expressions 4 I bought a few weeks back.  With all the holidays, I did not even look at it till last week, in fact I passed the wrapped board around at my local ham club meeting during points of personal privilege....some oh's and ahhs but mostly duhs...I actually ordered it to avoid downloading the huge code compressor studio 4 (CCS) that was supposed to be included on the cd.  No cd.  I had already downloaded IAR  another programming IDE for these little micro bugs. In my spare time I toyed with IAR and the launchpad board but after about two days of playing delete the driver with windows I decided to just download CCS 4, the code limited version, and give that a shot......CCS 4, is a good rewrite from the earlier versions, it is based on Eclipse as an IDE and includes the drivers for the msp430 target board I received in the kit.  Once installed I quickly configured the debugger for the target chip which was already plugged into the dip socket at the factory, msp430G2131 from he drop down list and clicked ok...I was in!! The CCS4 is full of bells and whistles compared to the IAR, which I would of preferred for the simplicity.  But the code compressor studio really does have it all!!..the code limited version is free, and of all things will give you java script editor box.  The whole layout in debugger mode reminds me of any modern programmer IDE...I mean sure give me Tex anytime but you simply must admire all the boxes and options included in the GUI.  It was a simple matter to check the assembly code in the flash and ram memory that came preloaded for the launchpad kit.  Assembly.  I am right now looking for my old assembly textbooks...sure I remember how to use mov and add etc but a couple of the commands are a little more than vague anymore.  Still, these little mcu's are about 50 cents each and might just work in a couple of projects I have lined up for the near future.  I may document the code here.  Luckily, I plan to write the code in c++ for the main project but if it has to be assembly, no prob.  For reference, the program that came already on the 2131 in the kit was a temperature indicator that alternately flashed red and green leds and changed the intensity of either depending on whether the temp was rising or falling...neat.  Neat enough that it might be worthwhile banging out a little GUI in windows 7 to test the new user device system calls, maybe put a temp gauge widget up on the desktop...just to keep from getting bored.  If you see some assembly code on this blog, you know I was doing something with one of the many mcu's out there.....thats all for now, more to follow...a bit later, of course.

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• Games development with a game loop that's abstracted away

  - by Davy8

  Most game development happens with a main game loop. Are there any good articles/blog posts/discussions about games without a game loop? I imagine they'd mostly be web games, but I'd be interested in hearing otherwise. (As a side note, I think it's really interesting that the concept is almost exclusively used in gaming as far as I'm aware, perhaps that may be another question.) Edit: I realize there's probably a redraw loop somewhere. I guess what I really mean is a loop that is hidden to you. Frames are something you as the developer are not concerned with as you're working on a higher level of abstraction. E.g. someLootItem.moveTo(inventory, someAnimatationType) and that will move from the loot box to your inventory using the specified animation type without the game developer having to worry about the implementation details of that animation. Maybe that's how "real" games end up working, but from reading most tutorials they seem to imply a much more granular level of control is used, but that might just be an artifact of being a tutorial. Edit2: I think most people are misunderstanding what I'm trying to ask, likely because I'm having trouble describing exactly what I'm trying to ask. After some more thinking perhaps what I'm referring to is more along the lines of what I believe is referred to as "scripting" where you're working at a very high level and having some game engine take care of the low level details. For example, take custom maps in Starcraft II or Warcraft III. Many of the "maps" have gameplay that deviates enough from the primary game that they could be considered a separate game written on the same engine. What I'm referring to then is along those lines. I may be wrong because I only dabbed in the Warcraft III editor, but as far as I remember no where in the map editor do you control the game loop, and yet you can create many different games out of it. In my mind, these are games in their own right. If you're playing DotA you don't say you're playing Warcraft III, you say you're playing DotA because that's the actual game you're playing. Such a system may impose limitations that don't exist if you're creating a game from scratch, but it greatly reduces development time because much of the "hard" work has already been done for you. Hopefully that clarifies what I'm asking. Another example of what is I mean, is when you write a web app, of course it communicates through sockets and TCP. But does the average web developer doesn't explicitly write code for connecting sockets. They just need to know about receiving a request and sending a response. There are unique scenarios where you do occasionally need to use raw sockets, but it's generally rare in web development. In a similar fashion, it's very possible to write a game without directly using the game loop, even though one is used behind the scenes. Probably not a AAA title, but there must be hundreds of smaller scale games that can and possibly are written this way. Are there any good resources on writing these "simpler" games?

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• Open a File Browser From Your Current Command Prompt/Terminal Directory

  - by The Geek

  Ever been doing some work at the command line when you realized… it would be a lot easier if I could just use the mouse for this task? One command later, you’ll have a window open to the same place that you’re at. This same tip works in more than one operating system, so we’ll detail how to do it in every way we know how. Open a File Browser in Windows We’ve actually covered this before when we told you how to open an Explorer window from the command prompt’s current directory, but we’ll briefly review: Just type the follow command into your command prompt: explorer . Note: You could actually just type “start .” instead. And you’ll then see a file browsing window set to the same directory you were previous at. And yes, this screenshot is from Vista, but it works the same in every version of Windows. If that wasn’t good enough, you should really read how you can navigate in the File Open/Save dialogs with just the keyboard—now that’s a Stupid Geek Trick! Open a File Browser in Linux For this exercise, we’re going to assume that you’re using Gnome under a Linux flavor like Ubuntu, because that’s the most common. From your terminal window, just type in the following command: nautilus . And the next thing you know, you’ll have a file browser window open at the current location. You’ll see some type of error message at the prompt, but you can pretty much ignore that. You can also use “gnome-open .” if you want. Open Finder in Mac OS X All the Mac computers in this office are running Linux, so we haven’t had a chance to verify, but you should be able to use the following command on OS X to open Finder in the current terminal location: open . Open Dolphin on Linux KDE4 dolphin . Got any extra tips to help out your fellow readers? How do you do the same thing in KDE3? What about OS X? Leave your savvy advice in the comments, and maybe we’ll update the article. Or not. Either way, it’ll help somebody! Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Keyboard Ninja: Concatenate Multiple Text Files in WindowsStupid Geek Tricks: Open an Explorer Window from the Command Prompt’s Current DirectoryHow to automate FTP uploads from the Windows Command LineShell Geek: Rename Multiple Files At OnceAdd "Open with gedit" to the right click menu in Ubuntu 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 DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Home Networks – How do they look like & the problems they cause Check Your IMAP Mail Offline In Thunderbird Follow Finder Finds You Twitter Users To Follow Combine MP3 Files Easily QuicklyCode Provides Cheatsheets & Other Programming Stuff Download Free MP3s from Amazon

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• Slick2D Rendering Lots of Polygons

  - by Hazzard

  I'm writing an little isometric game using Slick. The world terrain is made up of lots of quadrilaterals. In a small world that is 128 by 128 squares, over 16,000 quadrilaterals need to be rendered. This puts my pretty powerful computer down to 30 fps. I've though about caching "chunks" of the world so only single chunks would ever need updating at a time, but I don't know how to do this, and I am sure there are other ways to optimize it besides that. Maybe I'm doing the whole thing wrong, surely fancy 3D games that run fine on my machine are more intensive than this. My question is how can I improve the FPS and am I doing something wrong? Or does it actually take that much power to render those polygons? -- Here is the source code for the render method in my game state. It iterates through a 2d array or heights and draws polygons based on the height. public void render(GameContainer container, StateBasedGame game, Graphics gfx) throws SlickException { gfx.translate(offsetX * d + container.getWidth() / 2, offsetY * d + container.getHeight() / 2); gfx.scale(d, d); for (int y = 0; y < placeholder.length; y++) {// x & y are isometric // diag for (int x = 0; x < placeholder[0].length; x++) { Polygon poly; int hor = TestState.TILE_WIDTH * (x - y);// hor and ver are orthagonal int W = TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y) - 1 * heights[y + 1][x];//points to go off of int S = TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y) - 1 * heights[y + 1][x + 1]; int E = TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y) - 1 * heights[y][x + 1]; int N = TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y) - 1 * heights[y][x]; if (placeholder[y][x] == null) { poly = new Polygon();//Create actual surface polygon poly.addPoint(-TestState.TILE_WIDTH + hor, W); poly.addPoint(hor, S + TestState.TILE_HEIGHT); poly.addPoint(TestState.TILE_WIDTH + hor, E); poly.addPoint(hor, N - TestState.TILE_HEIGHT); float z = ((float) heights[y][x + 1] - heights[y + 1][x]) / 32 + 0.5f; placeholder[y][x] = new Tile(poly, new Color(z, z, z)); //ShapeRenderer.fill(placeholder[y][x]); } if (true) {//ONLY draw tile if it's on screen gfx.setColor(placeholder[y][x].getColor()); ShapeRenderer.fill(placeholder[y][x]); //gfx.fill(placeholder[y][x]); //placeholder[y][x]. //DRAW EDGES if (y + 1 == placeholder.length) {//draw South foundation edges gfx.setColor(Color.gray); Polygon found = new Polygon(); found.addPoint(-TestState.TILE_WIDTH + hor, W); found.addPoint(hor, S + TestState.TILE_HEIGHT); found.addPoint(hor, TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y + 1)); found.addPoint(-TestState.TILE_WIDTH + hor, TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y)); gfx.fill(found); } if (x + 1 == placeholder[0].length) {//north gfx.setColor(Color.darkGray); Polygon found = new Polygon(); found.addPoint(TestState.TILE_WIDTH + hor, E); found.addPoint(hor, S + TestState.TILE_HEIGHT); found.addPoint(hor, TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y + 1)); found.addPoint(TestState.TILE_WIDTH + hor, TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y)); gfx.fill(found); }//*/ } } } }

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• Why is there no service-oriented language?

  - by Wolfgang

  Edit: To avoid further confusion: I am not talking about web services and such. I am talking about structuring applications internally, it's not about how computers communicate. It's about programming languages, compilers and how the imperative programming paradigm is extended. Original: In the imperative programming field, we saw two paradigms in the past 20 years (or more): object-oriented (OO), and service-oriented (SO) aka. component-based (CB). Both paradigms extend the imperative programming paradigm by introducing their own notion of modules. OO calls them objects (and classes) and lets them encapsulates both data (fields) and procedures (methods) together. SO, in contrast, separates data (records, beans, ...) from code (components, services). However, only OO has programming languages which natively support its paradigm: Smalltalk, C++, Java and all other JVM-compatibles, C# and all other .NET-compatibles, Python etc. SO has no such native language. It only comes into existence on top of procedural languages or OO languages: COM/DCOM (binary, C, C++), CORBA, EJB, Spring, Guice (all Java), ... These SO frameworks clearly suffer from the missing native language support of their concepts. They start using OO classes to represent services and records. This leads to designs where there is a clear distinction between classes that have methods only (services) and those that have fields only (records). Inheritance between services or records is then simulated by inheritance of classes. Technically, its not kept so strictly but in general programmers are adviced to make classes to play only one of the two roles. They use additional, external languages to represent the missing parts: IDL's, XML configurations, Annotations in Java code, or even embedded DSL like in Guice. This is especially needed, but not limited to, since the composition of services is not part of the service code itself. In OO, objects create other objects so there is no need for such facilities but for SO there is because services don't instantiate or configure other services. They establish an inner-platform effect on top of OO (early EJB, CORBA) where the programmer has to write all the code that is needed to "drive" SO. Classes represent only a part of the nature of a service and lots of classes have to be written to form a service together. All that boiler plate is necessary because there is no SO compiler which would do it for the programmer. This is just like some people did it in C for OO when there was no C++. You just pass the record which holds the data of the object as a first parameter to the procedure which is the method. In a OO language this parameter is implicit and the compiler produces all the code that we need for virtual functions etc. For SO, this is clearly missing. Especially the newer frameworks extensively use AOP or introspection to add the missing parts to a OO language. This doesn't bring the necessary language expressiveness but avoids the boiler platform code described in the previous point. Some frameworks use code generation to produce the boiler plate code. Configuration files in XML or annotations in OO code is the source of information for this. Not all of the phenomena that I mentioned above can be attributed to SO but I hope it clearly shows that there is a need for a SO language. Since this paradigm is so popular: why isn't there one? Or maybe there are some academic ones but at least the industry doesn't use one.

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• what differs a computer scientist/software engineer to regular people who learn programming language and APIs?

  - by Amumu

  In University, we learn and reinvent the wheel a lot to truly learn the programming concepts. For example, we may learn assembly language to understand, what happens inside the box, and how the system operates, when we execute our code. This helps understanding higher level concepts deeper. For example, memory management like in C is just an abstraction of manually managed memory contents and addresses. The problem is, when we're going to work, usually productivity is required more. I could program my own containers, or string class, or date/time (using POSIX with C system call) to do the job, but then, it would take much longer time to use existing STL or Boost library, which abstract all of those thing and very easy to use. This leads to an issue, that a regular person doesn't need to get through all the low level/under the hood stuffs, who learns only one programming language and using language-related APIs. These people may eventually compete with the mainstream graduates from computer science or software engineer and call themselves programmers. At first, I don't think it's valid to call them programmers. I used to think, a real programmer needs to understand the computer deeply (but not at the electronic level). But then I changed my mind. After all, they get the job done and satisfy all the test criteria (logic, performance, security...), and in business environment, who cares if you're an expert and understand how computer works or not. You may get behind the "amateurs" if you spend to much time learning about how things work inside. It is totally valid for those people to call themselves programmers. This makes me confuse. So, after all, programming should be considered an universal skill? Does programming language and concepts matter or the problems we solve matter? For example, many C/C++ vs Java and other high level language, one of the main reason is because C/C++ features performance, as well as accessing low level facility. One of the main reason (in my opinion), is coding in C/C++ seems complex, so people feel good about it (not trolling anyone, just my observation, and my experience as well. Try to google "C hacker syndrome"). While Java on the other hand, made for simplifying programming tasks to help developers concentrate on solving their problems. Based on Java rationale, if the programing language keeps evolve, one day everyone can map their logic directly with natural language. Everyone can program. On that day, maybe real programmers are mathematicians, who could perform most complex logic (including business logic and academic logic) without worrying about installing/configuring compiler, IDEs? What's our job as a computer scientist/software engineer? To solve computer specific problems or to solve problems in general? For example, take a look at this exame: http://cm.baylor.edu/ICPCWiki/attach/Problem%20Resources/2010WorldFinalProblemSet.pdf . The example requires only basic knowledge about the programming language, but focus more on problem solving with the language. In sum, what differs a computer scientist/software engineer to regular people who learn programming language and APIs? A mathematician can be considered a programmer, if he is good enough to use programming language to implement his formula. Can we programmer do this? Probably not for most of us, since we specialize about computer, not math. An electronic engineer, who learns how to use C to program for his devices, can be considered a programmer. If the programming languages keep being simplified, may one day the software engineers, who implements business logic and create softwares, be obsolete? (Not for computer scientist though, since many of the CS topics are scientific, and science won't change, but technology will).

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• apt-get upgrade stuck at the same package

  - by decibyte

  Current status I've started to suspect this is not an Ubuntu issue, but related to the internet connection here at my work. Until I'm sure, Im leaving my question below: Original question I'm stuck, can't upgrade my system. Running sudo apt-get upgrade gives me the following: mmm@alalunga:~$ sudo apt-get upgrade Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following packages have been kept back: ginn libgrip0 linux-generic-pae linux-headers-generic-pae linux-image-generic-pae The following packages will be upgraded: apport apport-gtk bind9-host build-essential dhcp3-client dhcp3-common dnsutils eog evince evince-common firefox firefox-branding firefox-dbg firefox-globalmenu firefox-gnome-support firefox-locale-en gimp gimp-data gir1.2-totem-1.0 glib-networking glib-networking-common glib-networking-services gnupg gpgv icedtea-6-jre-cacao icedtea-6-jre-jamvm icedtea-6-plugin icedtea-netx icedtea-netx-common icedtea-plugin isc-dhcp-client isc-dhcp-common libapache2-mod-php5 libart-2.0-2 libbind9-80 libdns81 libevince3-3 libgimp2.0 libisc83 libisccc80 libisccfg82 liblwres80 libssl-dev libssl-doc libssl1.0.0 libtotem0 linux-firmware linux-libc-dev openjdk-6-jre openjdk-6-jre-headless openjdk-6-jre-lib openssl php-pear php5-cli php5-common php5-curl php5-dev php5-gd php5-mysql php5-xsl policykit-1-gnome python-apport python-django python-gst0.10 python-problem-report resolvconf thunderbird thunderbird-globalmenu thunderbird-gnome-support totem totem-common totem-mozilla totem-plugins xserver-xorg-input-synaptics 74 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 5 not upgraded. Need to get 317 MB/327 MB of archives. After this operation, 1.481 kB of additional disk space will be used. Do you want to continue [Y/n]? Get:1 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates/main openjdk-6-jre-headless i386 6b24-1.11.4-1ubuntu0.12.04.1 [27,3 MB] Get:2 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates/main openjdk-6-jre-headless i386 6b24-1.11.4-1ubuntu0.12.04.1 [27,3 MB] Get:3 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates/main openjdk-6-jre-headless i386 6b24-1.11.4-1ubuntu0.12.04.1 [27,3 MB] Get:4 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates/main openjdk-6-jre-headless i386 6b24-1.11.4-1ubuntu0.12.04.1 [27,3 MB] Get:5 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates/main openjdk-6-jre-headless i386 6b24-1.11.4-1ubuntu0.12.04.1 [27,3 MB] Get:6 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates/main openjdk-6-jre-headless i386 6b24-1.11.4-1ubuntu0.12.04.1 [27,3 MB] Get:7 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates/main openjdk-6-jre-headless i386 6b24-1.11.4-1ubuntu0.12.04.1 [27,3 MB] 9% [7 openjdk-6-jre-headless 27,3 MB/27,3 MB 100%] It keeps downloading the package openjdk-6-jre-headless, then does nothing for a while (hanging on what's the last line above), then download the package again. It's at its 13th download attempt at the moment of writing. The actual downloads seem to be done just fine, but whatever it does after downloading seems to be failing. I tried removing openjdk-6, but then it wanted to install openjdk-7 instead, with the same result, hanging at openjdk-7-jre-headless instead. I also tried changing servers from my local (Danish) to the main server. No luck. It's also keeping me from upgrading alle the other packages. What to do? Update After following instructions in the answer by @lpanebr, it is now stuck at the linux-firmware package. So, maybe it's a more general problem than being related to specific package(s)? Although it did download some packages without problems before getting stuck at linux-firmware.

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• Dell 3721 Wifi problem Ubuntu 13.04

  - by Sebastian

  I have a Dell 3721 which comes original with windows 8. I managed it to install ubuntu 12.10 on this laptop, even there was no out of the box drivers. With 12.10 I was forces to install this .deb package couple of times. After installing it, it was ok for some weeks before I have to install it again. Maybe some security updates destroy something which made in necessary to install it again... http://jas.gemnetworks.com/debian/pool/main/w/wireless-bcm43142/wireless-bcm43142-dkms_6.20.55.19-1_amd64.deb My problem is, that this package isnt working with ubuntu 13.04 anymore. So I cant use Wifi now. Also my display is almost dark, I cant change the brightness level with ubuntu 13.04. Hope you can give me some advice. Dell:~$ sudo lspci -nn 00:00.0 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation 3rd Gen Core processor DRAM Controller [8086:0154] (rev 09) 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0166] (rev 09) 00:14.0 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family USB xHCI Host Controller [8086:1e31] (rev 04) 00:16.0 Communication controller [0780]: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family MEI Controller #1 [8086:1e3a] (rev 04) 00:1a.0 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller #2 [8086:1e2d] (rev 04) 00:1b.0 Audio device [0403]: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller [8086:1e20] (rev 04) 00:1c.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 1 [8086:1e10] (rev c4) 00:1c.1 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 2 [8086:1e12] (rev c4) 00:1d.0 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller #1 [8086:1e26] (rev 04) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge [0601]: Intel Corporation HM76 Express Chipset LPC Controller [8086:1e59] (rev 04) 00:1f.2 SATA controller [0106]: Intel Corporation 7 Series Chipset Family 6-port SATA Controller [AHCI mode] [8086:1e03] (rev 04) 00:1f.3 SMBus [0c05]: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family SMBus Controller [8086:1e22] (rev 04) 01:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller [10ec:8136] (rev 05) 02:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM43142 802.11b/g/n [14e4:4365] (rev 01) @Dell:~$ lsusb Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub Bus 002 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 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 003 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 001 Device 003: ID 0a5c:21d7 Broadcom Corp. Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0bda:0129 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. Bus 001 Device 005: ID 0c45:64ad Microdia @Dell:~$ lspci -nn | grep VGA 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0166] (rev 09) @Dell:~$ sudo lshw -class network *-network Beschreibung: Ethernet interface Produkt: RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller Hersteller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. Physische ID: 0 Bus-Informationen: pci@0000:01:00.0 Logischer Name: eth0 Version: 05 Seriennummer: xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx Größe: 100Mbit/s Kapazität: 100Mbit/s Breite: 64 bits Takt: 33MHz Fähigkeiten: pm msi pciexpress msix vpd bus_master cap_list ethernet physical tp mii 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd autonegotiation Konfiguration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=r8169 driverversion=2.3LK-NAPI duplex=full firmware=rtl_nic/rtl8105e-1.fw ip=192.168.2.103 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes port=MII speed=100Mbit/s Ressourcen: irq:42 ioport:2000(Größe=256) memory:c0404000-c0404fff memory:c0400000-c0403fff *-network UNGEFORDERT Beschreibung: Network controller Produkt: BCM43142 802.11b/g/n Hersteller: Broadcom Corporation Physische ID: 0 Bus-Informationen: pci@0000:02:00.0 Version: 01 Breite: 64 bits Takt: 33MHz Fähigkeiten: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list Konfiguration: latency=0 Ressourcen: memory:c0500000-c0507fff

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• How to solve conflicts with another programmer..

  - by Tio

  Hi all.. I've read this question, but I think it doesn't really applies in my case.. I started to work at new company about 2 months ago with the position of senior web developer, there was already one programmer there, my position is above his, but I'm not his boss.. I don't tell him what to do.. Since the day I started to work at the company, I managed to implement a kind of a test server which he refuses to use, implemented a project management tool which he refuses to use also, and I'm in the process of implementing version control using mercurial ( damn Mercurial that's giving me so much headaches ), which he is going to use.. He is a nice guy, but just the other day we had a big discussion about "best practices", and "coding standards".. for me it's absolutely necessary to have this two things, at the place I'm currently working... otherwise it's not going to work.. This discussion, basically revolved about using short tags and the echo shortcut, and how we shouldn't use it anymore ( because I sometimes use short tags ).. this went for about 15 minutes, until I finally dropped the subject because I had work to do.. and of course he didn't budge even a millimeter, he's continuing to use short tags, and the echo shortcut and he not even cares about what I think.. When I mentioned that we are a team, he told me: "We are not a team, you work on your projects and I work on mine".. Let's just say, that the switch in my brain flipped, I raised my voice, and I told him that he was going nuts.. this was the most improper way to deal it with, I know, but there are certain things that can't be said to me.. The question here, is how do I deal with this? I want, to implement more changes on our work workflow, and I know that it's going to be a pain, with him always complaining and saying things like this.. Our boss is going to intervene in a few days, I talked to him today, the other programmer send him an email the day we had the discussion complaining.. Just to clarify, when I talk about implementing changes, I just don't appear at work, the next day with a sheet of paper, and say: "This is our we are doing things from now on! And there is no discussion.." For example, when I was trying to implement the project management tool, I took the time to talk to everybody that was going to be involved in it, to see what they think about it.. everyone was positive except him, he responded that it was just a mean to control us even more.. Does anyone has any idea on how to deal with this? PS: Truth to be told, I didn't start the best way with him, in the 4º day of work at the company, I found a really bad piece of code on our custom CMS, one of those things that I only expect to find in code produced by a programmer that has only 1 month of training in programming, and I talked to my boss about it... he showed up at the time I saw that piece of code, he saw my face and asked about it, so I told him.. I know the worst thing that can be said to a programmer is saying that their code is awful, but I've already learned that my code isn't the best of the world, so I take criticism in a completely different way now.. maybe he doesn't..

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• (libgdx) Button doesn't work

  - by StercoreCode

  At the game I choose StopScreen. At this screen displays button. But if I click it - it doesn't work. What I expect - when I press button it must restart game. At this stage must display at least a message that the button is pressed. I tried to create new and clear project. Main class implement ApplicationListener. I put the same code in the appropriate methods. And it's works! But if i create this button in my game - it doesn't work. When i play and go to the StopScreen, i saw button. But if i click, or touch, nothing happens. I think that the proplem at the InputListener, although i set the stage as InputProcessor. Gdx.input.setInputProcessor(stage); I also try to addListener for Button as ClickListener. But it gave no results. Or it maybe problem that i implements Screen method - not ApplicationListener or Game. But if StopScreen implement ApplicationListener, at the mainGame I can't to setScreen. Just interests question: why button displays but nothing happens to it? Here is the code of StopScreen if it helps find my mistake: public class StopScreen implements Screen{ private OrthographicCamera camera; private SpriteBatch batch; public Stage stage; //** stage holds the Button **// private BitmapFont font; //** same as that used in Tut 7 **// private TextureAtlas buttonsAtlas; //** image of buttons **// private Skin buttonSkin; //** images are used as skins of the button **// public TextButton button; //** the button - the only actor in program **// public StopScreen(CurrusGame currusGame) { camera = new OrthographicCamera(); camera.setToOrtho(false, 800, 480); batch = new SpriteBatch(); buttonsAtlas = new TextureAtlas("button.pack"); //** button atlas image **// buttonSkin = new Skin(); buttonSkin.addRegions(buttonsAtlas); //** skins for on and off **// font = AssetLoader.font; //** font **// stage = new Stage(); stage.clear(); Gdx.input.setInputProcessor(stage); TextButton.TextButtonStyle style = new TextButton.TextButtonStyle(); style.up = buttonSkin.getDrawable("ButtonOff"); style.down = buttonSkin.getDrawable("ButtonOn"); style.font = font; button = new TextButton("PRESS ME", style); //** Button text and style **// button.setPosition(100, 100); //** Button location **// button.setHeight(100); //** Button Height **// button.setWidth(100); //** Button Width **// button.addListener(new InputListener() { public boolean touchDown(InputEvent event, float x, float y, int pointer, int button) { Gdx.app.log("my app", "Pressed"); return true; } public void touchUp(InputEvent event, float x, float y, int pointer, int button) { Gdx.app.log("my app", "Released"); } }); stage.addActor(button); } @Override public void render(float delta) { Gdx.gl.glClearColor(0, 1, 0, 1); Gdx.gl.glClear(GL20.GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT); stage.act(); batch.setProjectionMatrix(camera.combined); batch.begin(); stage.draw(); batch.end(); }

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• No external microphone Acer AO722

  - by Leeghwater

  The ACER AO722 comes with an external mic input, and this input is not recognised by Alsa mixer or Sound (in System Settings). There are various comments on this problem, but no real solutions. For example External Mic not working but Internal Mic works on an Acer Aspiron AO722. Using the internal mic is not an option, as I need to use skype professionally. I have tried everything in alsamixer (accessible through the Terminal Ctrl+Alt+t, command: alsamixer), and in Sound (under System Settings). I have also installed Pulseaudio. But to no avail. The headset is working normally under Skype in Windows. My AO722 came with Windows 7 on it, so I have installed Skype there too. My headset has separate connectors for ears and mic, and these go into the respective output and input on the right side of the laptop. This location: http://bernaerts.dyndns.org/linux/202-ubuntu-acer-ao722 sounds like an effective solution but it is for Ubuntu Natty 11.04. The solution suggested sounds drastic to me: replace the kernel 2.6.38-13 with version 2.6.38-12. I use Ubuntu 12.04, and my kernel is 3.2.0-30-generic-pae. Question: could I try this solution with Ubuntu 12.04? Is this a risky thing to do? I have found harware work around this problem. The audio output seems to be a combi output with also a microphone connection. I have made an adapter for this output. I used a 4 contacts 3,5 mm audio jack plug. To this plug I have soldered 2 female (common stereo) connectors, one for ears and one for the mic of my headset. The 4 contacts jack, which goes into the laptop (in audio OUTput) is wired as follows: tip = hot audio right; first sleeve after tip = hot audio left; second sleeve = common earth (for both ears and microphone); the 3rd sleeve = microphone signal input. In the connector which I could buy, the 3rd sleeve is not so much a sleeve, but part of the metal base of the connector; normally you would expect this one to be connect to earth. But connecting the mic signal to it works. Maybe ready made adapters of this kind and even headsets with a combi jack can simply be purchased; I didn't check. When I plug in the 4 contacts jack, Sound and Alsamixer immediately recognise an external microphone (even if no mic is connected to the adapter). In Sound, under the Input tab, 'Settings for internal microphone' changes into 'Setting for microphone'. The microphone comes through loud and clear, however there is a constant noise in the background. Others have reported this too. If I disconnect the external mic from the adapter, or shortcircuit the external microphone, the noise gets less but does not disappear. Therefore, it is not background noise from the room, but it comes from the computer itself. However, if you talk directly in the microphone of the headset, the noise level is acceptable for VOIP. The headset of my mobile phone Nokia C1 mobile comes wwith a 4 contacts combi 3,5mm jack plug. However, this one works (ear and mic) with the AO722 only if not inserted fully. Possibly the wiring of this headset jack is different. I cannot find detailed specs of the AO722, and don't know whether the audio 'output' was actually designed as a combi input/output. I have seen that at least one other AO model has a combi connector only. In any case, I do not believe that connecting your headset in this way will harm your computer. I would still appreciate a software solution. This must be possible, because the proper microphone input connector works under MS Windows.

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• Handling Configuration Changes in Windows Azure Applications

  - by Your DisplayName here!

  While finalizing StarterSTS 1.5, I had a closer look at lifetime and configuration management in Windows Azure. (this is no new information – just some bits and pieces compiled at one single place – plus a bit of reality check) When dealing with lifetime management (and especially configuration changes), there are two mechanisms in Windows Azure – a RoleEntryPoint derived class and a couple of events on the RoleEnvironment class. You can find good documentation about RoleEntryPoint here. The RoleEnvironment class features two events that deal with configuration changes – Changing and Changed. Whenever a configuration change gets pushed out by the fabric controller (either changes in the settings section or the instance count of a role) the Changing event gets fired. The event handler receives an instance of the RoleEnvironmentChangingEventArgs type. This contains a collection of type RoleEnvironmentChange. This in turn is a base class for two other classes that detail the two types of possible configuration changes I mentioned above: RoleEnvironmentConfigurationSettingsChange (configuration settings) and RoleEnvironmentTopologyChange (instance count). The two respective classes contain information about which configuration setting and which role has been changed. Furthermore the Changing event can trigger a role recycle (aka reboot) by setting EventArgs.Cancel to true. So your typical job in the Changing event handler is to figure if your application can handle these configuration changes at runtime, or if you rather want a clean restart. Prior to the SDK 1.3 VS Templates – the following code was generated to reboot if any configuration settings have changed: private void RoleEnvironmentChanging(object sender, RoleEnvironmentChangingEventArgs e) {     // If a configuration setting is changing     if (e.Changes.Any(change => change is RoleEnvironmentConfigurationSettingChange))     {         // Set e.Cancel to true to restart this role instance         e.Cancel = true;     } } This is a little drastic as a default since most applications will work just fine with changed configuration – maybe that’s the reason this code has gone away in the 1.3 SDK templates (more). The Changed event gets fired after the configuration changes have been applied. Again the changes will get passed in just like in the Changing event. But from this point on RoleEnvironment.GetConfigurationSettingValue() will return the new values. You can still decide to recycle if some change was so drastic that you need a restart. You can use RoleEnvironment.RequestRecycle() for that (more). As a rule of thumb: When you always use GetConfigurationSettingValue to read from configuration (and there is no bigger state involved) – you typically don’t need to recycle. In the case of StarterSTS, I had to abstract away the physical configuration system and read the actual configuration (either from web.config or the Azure service configuration) at startup. I then cache the configuration settings in memory. This means I indeed need to take action when configuration changes – so in my case I simply clear the cache, and the new config values get read on the next access to my internal configuration object. No downtime – nice! Gotcha A very natural place to hook up the RoleEnvironment lifetime events is the RoleEntryPoint derived class. But with the move to the full IIS model in 1.3 – the RoleEntryPoint methods get executed in a different AppDomain (even in a different process) – see here.. You might no be able to call into your application code to e.g. clear a cache. Keep that in mind! In this case you need to handle these events from e.g. global.asax.

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• Is there a theory for "transactional" sequences of failing and no-fail actions?

  - by Ross Bencina

  My question is about writing transaction-like functions that execute sequences of actions, some of which may fail. It is related to the general C++ principle "destructors can't throw," no-fail property, and maybe also with multi-phase transactions or exception safety. However, I'm thinking about it in language-neutral terms. My concern is with correctly designing error handling in C++ functions that must be reliable. I would like to know what the concepts below are called so that I can learn more about them. I'm sorry that I can't ask the question more directly. Since I don't know this area I have provided an example to explain my question. The question is at the end. Here goes: Consider a sequence of steps or actions executed sequentially, where actions belong to one of two classes: those that always succeed, and those that may fail. In the examples below: S stands for an action that always succeeds (called "no-fail" in some settings). F stands for an action that may fail (for example, it might fail to allocate memory or do I/O that could fail). Consider a sequences of actions (executed sequentially from left to right): S->S->S->S Since each action in the sequence above succeeds, the whole sequence succeeds. On the other hand, the following sequence may fail because the last action may fail: S->S->S->F So, claim: a sequence has the no-fail (S) property if and only if all of its actions are no-fail. Now, I'm interested in action sequences that form "atomic transactions", with "failure atomicity," i.e. where either the whole sequence completes successfully, or there is no effect. I.e. if some action fails, the earlier ones must be rolled back. This requires that any successfully executed actions prior to a failing action must always be able to be rolled back. Consider the sequence: S->S->S->F S<-S<-S In the example above, the first row is the forward path of the transaction, and the second row are inverse actions (executed from right to left) that can be used to roll back if the final top row actions fails. It seems to me that for a transaction to support failure atomicity, the following invariant must hold: Claim: To support failure atomicity (either completion or complete roll-back on failure) all actions preceding the latest failable (F) action on the forward path (marked * in the example below) must have no-fail (S) inverses. The following is an example of a sequence that supports failure atomicity: * S->F->F->F S<-S<-S Further, if we want the transaction to be able to attempt cancellation mid-way through, but still guarantee either full completion or full rollback then we need the following property: Claim: To support failure atomicity and cancellation mid-way through execution, in the face of errors in the inverse (cancellation) path, all actions following the earliest failable (F) inverse on the reverse path (marked *) must be no-fail (S). F->F->F->S->S S<-S<-F<-F * I believe that these two conditions guarantee that an abortable/cancelable transaction will never get "stuck". My questions are: What is the study and theory of these properties called? are my claims correct? and what else is there to know? UPDATE 1: Updated terminology: what I previously called "robustness" is called atomicity in the database literature. UPDATE 2: Added explicit reference to failure atomicity, which seems to be a thing.

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• BizTalk: Instance Subscription: Details

  - by Leonid Ganeline

  It has interesting behavior and it is not always what we are waiting for. An orchestration can be enlisted with many subscriptions. In other word it can have several Receive shapes. Usually the first Receive uses the Activation subscription but other Receives create the Instance subscriptions. [See “Publish and Subscribe Architecture” in MSDN] Here is a sample process. This orchestration has two receives. It is a typical Sequential Convoy. [See "BizTalk Server 2004 Convoy Deep Dive" in MSDN by Stephen W. Thomas]. Let's experiment started.   There are three typical scenarios. First scenario: everything is OK Activation subscription for the Sample message is created when the orchestration the SampleProcess is enlisted. The Instance subscription is created only when the SampleProcess orchestration instance is started and it is removed when the orchestration instance is ended. So far so good, the Message_2 was delivered exactly in this time interval and was consumed. Second scenario: no consumers Three Sample_2 messages were delivered. One was delivered before the SampleProcess was started and before the instance subscription was created. Second message was delivered in the correct time interval. The third one was delivered after the SampleProcess orchestration was ended and the instance subscription was removed. Note: ·         It was not the first Sample_2 was consumed. It was first in the queue but in was not waiting, it was suspended when it was delivered to the Message Box and didn’t have any subscribers at this moment. The first and the last Sample_2 messages were Suspended (Nonresumable) in the Message Box. For each of this message we have got two (!) service instances associated with this suspended message. One service instance has the ServiceClass of Messaging, and we can see its Error Description:   The second service instance has the ServiceClass of RoutingFailureReport, and we can see its Error Description:   Third scenario: something goes wrong Two Sample_2 messages were delivered. Both were delivered in the same interval when the SampleProcess orchestration was working and the instance subscription was created and was working too. First Sample_2 was consumed. The second Sample_2 has the subscription but the subscriber, the SampleProcess orchestration, will not consume it. After the SampleProcess orchestration is ended (And only after! I will discuss this in the next article.), it is suspended (Nonresumable). In this time only one service instance associated with this kind of scenario is suspended. This service instance has the ServiceClass of Orchestration, and we can see its Error Description: In the Message tab we will see the Sample_2 message in the Suspended (Resumable) status. Note: ·         This behavior looks ambiguous. We see here the orchestration consumes the extra message(s) and gets suspended together with those extra messages. These messages are not consumed in term of “processed by orchestration”. But they are consumed in term of the “delivered to the subscriber”. The receive shape in the orchestration is not received these extra messages. But these messages are routed to the orchestration.     Unified Sequential convoy  Now one more scenario. It is the unified sequential convoy. That means the activation subscription is for the same message type as it for the instance subscription. The Sample_2 message is now the Sample message. For simplicity the SampleProcess orchestration consumes only two Sample messages. Usually the orchestration consumes a lot of messages inside loop, but now it is only two of them. First message starts the orchestration, the second message goes inside this orchestration. Then the next pair of messages follows, and so on. But if the input messages follow in shorter intervals we have got the problem. We lost messages in unpredictable manner. Note: ·         Maybe the better behavior would be if the orchestration removes the instance subscription after the message is consumed, not in the end on the orchestration. Right now it is a “feature” of the BizTalk subscription mechanism.

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• How to get faster graphics in KVM? VNC is painfully slow with Haiku OS guest, Spice won't install and SDL doesn't work

  - by Don Quixote

  I've been coming up to speed on the Haiku operating system, an Open Source clone of BeOS 5 Pro. I'm using an Apple MacBook Pro as my development machine. Apple's BootCamp BIOS does not support more than four partitions on the internal hard drive. While I can set up extended and logical partitions, doing so will prevent any of the installed operating systems from booting. To run Haiku directly on the iron, I boot it off a USB stick. Using external storage is also helpful because I am perpetually out of filesystem space. While VirtualBox is documented to allow access to physical drives, I could not actually get it to work. Also VirtualBox can only use one of the host CPU's cores. While VB guests can be configured for more than one CPU, they are only emulated. A full build of the Haiku OS takes 4.5 under VB. I had the hope of reducing build times by using KVM instead, but it's not working nearly as well as VirtualBox did. The Linux Kernel Virtual Machine is broken in all manner of fundamental ways as seen from Haiku. But I'm a coder; maybe I could contribute to fixing some of those problems. The first problem I've got is that Haiku's video in virt-manager is quite painfully slow. When I drag Haiku windows around the desktop, they lag quite far behind where my mouse is. It's quite difficult to move a window to a precise position on the screen. Just imagine that the mouse was connected to the window title bar with a really stretchy spring. Also Haiku's mouse lags quite far behind where I have moved it. I found lots of Personal Package Archives that enable Spice from QEMU / KVM at the Ubuntu Personal Package Arhives. I tried a few of the PPAs but none of them worked; with one of them, the command "add-apt-repository" crashed with a traceback. There is a Wiki page about Spice, but it says that it only works on 64-bit. My Early 2006 MacBook Pro is 32-bit. Its Apple Model Identifier is MacBookPro1,1; these use Core Duos NOT Core 2 Duos. I don't mind building a source deb for 32-bit if I can expect it to work. Is there some reason that Spice should be 64-bit only? Does it need features of the x86_64 Instruction Set Architecture that x86 does not have? When I try using SDL from virt-manager, the configuration for Local SDL Window says "Xauth: /home/mike/.Xauthority". When I try to start my guest, virt-manager emits an error. When I Googled the error message, the usual solution was to make ~/.Xauthority readible. However, .Xauthorty does not exist in my home directory. Instead I have a $XAUTHORITY environment variable. There is no way to configure SDL in virt-manager to use $XAUTHORITY instead of ~/.Xauthority. Neither does it work to copy the value of $XAUTHORITY into the file. I am ready to scream, because I've been five fscking days trying to make KVM work for Haiku development. There is a whole lot more that is broken than the slow video. All I really want to do for now is speed up my full builds of Haiku by using "jam -j2" to use both cores in my CPU. I may try Xen next, but the last time I monkeyed with Xen it was far, far more broken than I am finding KVM to be. Just for now, I would be satisfied if there were some way to use my USB stick as a drive in VirtualBox. VB does allow me to configure /dev/sdb as a drive, but it always causes a fatal error when I try to launch the guest. Thank You For Any Advice You Can Give Me. -

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• Heterogeneous Datacenter Management with Enterprise Manager 12c

  - by Joe Diemer

  The following is a Guest Blog, contributed by Bryce Kaiser, Product Manager at Blue MedoraWhen I envision a perfect datacenter, it would consist of technologies acquired from a single vendor across the entire server, middleware, application, network, and storage stack - Apps to Disk - that meets your organization’s every IT requirement with absolute best-of-breed solutions in every category.   To quote a familiar motto, your datacenter would consist of "Hardware and Software, Engineered to Work Together".  In almost all cases, practical realities dictate something far less than the IT Utopia mentioned above.   You may wish to leverage multiple vendors to keep licensing costs down, a single vendor may not have an offering in the IT category you need, or your preferred vendor may quite simply not have the solution that meets your needs.    In other words, your IT needs dictate a heterogeneous IT environment.  Heterogeneity, however, comes with additional complexity. The following are two pretty typical challenges:1) No End-to-End Visibility into the Enterprise Wide Application Deployment. Each vendor solution which is added to an infrastructure may bring its own tooling creating different consoles for different vendor applications and platforms.2) No Visibility into Performance Bottlenecks. When multiple management tools operate independently, you lose diagnostic capabilities including identifying cross-tier issues with database, hung-requests, slowness, memory leaks and hardware errors/failures causing DB/MW issues. As adoption of Oracle Enterprise Manager (EM) has increased, especially since the release of Enterprise Manager 12c, Oracle has seen an increase in the number of customers who want to leverage their investments in EM to manage non-Oracle workloads.  Enterprise Manager provides a single pane of glass view into their entire datacenter.  By creating a highly extensible framework via the Oracle EM Extensibility Development Kit (EDK), Oracle has provided the tooling for business partners such as my company Blue Medora as well as customers to easily fill gaps in the ecosystem and enhance existing solutions.  As mentioned in the previous post on the Enterprise Manager Extensibility Exchange, customers have access to an assortment of Oracle and Partner provided solutions through this Exchange, which is accessed at http://www.oracle.com/goto/emextensibility.  Currently, there are over 80 Oracle and partner provided plug-ins across the EM 11g and EM 12c versions.  Blue Medora is one of those contributing partners, for which you will find 3 of our solutions including our flagship plugin for VMware.  Let's look at Blue Medora’s VMware plug-in as an example to what I'm trying to convey.  Here is a common situation solved by true visibility into your entire stack:Symptoms•    My database is bogging down, however the database appears okay internally.  Maybe it’s starved for resources?•    My OS tooling is showing everything is “OK”.  Something doesn’t add up. Root cause•    Through the VMware plugin we can see the problem is actually on the virtualization layer Solution•    From within Enterprise Manager  -- the same tool you use for all of your database tuning -- we can overlay the data of the database target, host target, and virtual machine target for a true picture of the true root cause. Here is the console view: Perhaps your monitoring conditions are more specific to your environment.  No worries, Enterprise Manager still has you covered.  With Metric Extensions you have the “Next Generation” of User-Defined Metrics, which easily bring the power of your existing management scripts into a single console while leveraging the proven Enterprise Manager framework. Simply put, Oracle Enterprise manager boasts a growing ecosystem that provides the single pane of glass for your entire datacenter from the database and beyond.  Bryce can be contacted at [email protected]

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