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  • Combined Likelihood Models

    - by Lukas Vermeer
    In a series of posts on this blog we have already described a flexible approach to recording events, a technique to create analytical models for reporting, a method that uses the same principles to generate extremely powerful facet based predictions and a waterfall strategy that can be used to blend multiple (possibly facet based) models for increased accuracy. This latest, and also last, addition to this sequence of increasing modeling complexity will illustrate an advanced approach to amalgamate models, taking us to a whole new level of predictive modeling and analytical insights; combination models predicting likelihoods using multiple child models. The method described here is far from trivial. We therefore would not recommend you apply these techniques in an initial implementation of Oracle Real-Time Decisions. In most cases, basic RTD models or the approaches described before will provide more than enough predictive accuracy and analytical insight. The following is intended as an example of how more advanced models could be constructed if implementation results warrant the increased implementation and design effort. Keep implemented statistics simple! Combining likelihoods Because facet based predictions are based on metadata attributes of the choices selected, it is possible to generate such predictions for more than one attribute of a choice. We can predict the likelihood of acceptance for a particular product based on the product category (e.g. ‘toys’), as well as based on the color of the product (e.g. ‘pink’). Of course, these two predictions may be completely different (the customer may well prefer toys, but dislike pink products) and we will have to somehow combine these two separate predictions to determine an overall likelihood of acceptance for the choice. Perhaps the simplest way to combine multiple predicted likelihoods into one is to calculate the average (or perhaps maximum or minimum) likelihood. However, this would completely forgo the fact that some facets may have a far more pronounced effect on the overall likelihood than others (e.g. customers may consider the product category more important than its color). We could opt for calculating some sort of weighted average, but this would require us to specify up front the relative importance of the different facets involved. This approach would also be unresponsive to changing consumer behavior in these preferences (e.g. product price bracket may become more important to consumers as a result of economic shifts). Preferably, we would want Oracle Real-Time Decisions to learn, act upon and tell us about, the correlations between the different facet models and the overall likelihood of acceptance. This additional level of predictive modeling, where a single supermodel (no pun intended) combines the output of several (facet based) models into a single prediction, is what we call a combined likelihood model. Facet Based Scores As an example, we have implemented three different facet based models (as described earlier) in a simple RTD inline service. These models will allow us to generate predictions for likelihood of acceptance for each product based on three different metadata fields: Category, Price Bracket and Product Color. We will use an Analytical Scores entity to store these different scores so we can easily pass them between different functions. A simple function, creatively named Compute Analytical Scores, will compute for each choice the different facet scores and return an Analytical Scores entity that is stored on the choice itself. For each score, a choice attribute referring to this entity is also added to be returned to the client to facilitate testing. One Offer To Predict Them All In order to combine the different facet based predictions into one single likelihood for each product, we will need a supermodel which can predict the likelihood of acceptance, based on the outcomes of the facet models. This model will not need to consider any of the attributes of the session, because they are already represented in the outcomes of the underlying facet models. For the same reason, the supermodel will not need to learn separately for each product, because the specific combination of facets for this product are also already represented in the output of the underlying models. In other words, instead of learning how session attributes influence acceptance of a particular product, we will learn how the outcomes of facet based models for a particular product influence acceptance at a higher level. We will therefore be using a single All Offers choice to represent all offers in our combined likelihood predictions. This choice has no attribute values configured, no scores and not a single eligibility rule; nor is it ever intended to be returned to a client. The All Offers choice is to be used exclusively by the Combined Likelihood Acceptance model to predict the likelihood of acceptance for all choices; based solely on the output of the facet based models defined earlier. The Switcheroo In Oracle Real-Time Decisions, models can only learn based on attributes stored on the session. Therefore, just before generating a combined prediction for a given choice, we will temporarily copy the facet based scores—stored on the choice earlier as an Analytical Scores entity—to the session. The code for the Predict Combined Likelihood Event function is outlined below. // set session attribute to contain facet based scores. // (this is the only input for the combined model) session().setAnalyticalScores(choice.getAnalyticalScores); // predict likelihood of acceptance for All Offers choice. CombinedLikelihoodChoice c = CombinedLikelihood.getChoice("AllOffers"); Double la = CombinedLikelihoodAcceptance.getChoiceEventLikelihoods(c, "Accepted"); // clear session attribute of facet based scores. session().setAnalyticalScores(null); // return likelihood. return la; This sleight of hand will allow the Combined Likelihood Acceptance model to predict the likelihood of acceptance for the All Offers choice using these choice specific scores. After the prediction is made, we will clear the Analytical Scores session attribute to ensure it does not pollute any of the other (facet) models. To guarantee our combined likelihood model will learn based on the facet based scores—and is not distracted by the other session attributes—we will configure the model to exclude any other inputs, save for the instance of the Analytical Scores session attribute, on the model attributes tab. Recording Events In order for the combined likelihood model to learn correctly, we must ensure that the Analytical Scores session attribute is set correctly at the moment RTD records any events related to a particular choice. We apply essentially the same switching technique as before in a Record Combined Likelihood Event function. // set session attribute to contain facet based scores // (this is the only input for the combined model). session().setAnalyticalScores(choice.getAnalyticalScores); // record input event against All Offers choice. CombinedLikelihood.getChoice("AllOffers").recordEvent(event); // force learn at this moment using the Internal Dock entry point. Application.getPredictor().learn(InternalLearn.modelArray, session(), session(), Application.currentTimeMillis()); // clear session attribute of facet based scores. session().setAnalyticalScores(null); In this example, Internal Learn is a special informant configured as the learn location for the combined likelihood model. The informant itself has no particular configuration and does nothing in itself; it is used only to force the model to learn at the exact instant we have set the Analytical Scores session attribute to the correct values. Reporting Results After running a few thousand (artificially skewed) simulated sessions on our ILS, the Decision Center reporting shows some interesting results. In this case, these results reflect perfectly the bias we ourselves had introduced in our tests. In practice, we would obviously use a wider range of customer attributes and expect to see some more unexpected outcomes. The facetted model for categories has clearly picked up on the that fact our simulated youngsters have little interest in purchasing the one red-hot vehicle our ILS had on offer. Also, it would seem that customer age is an excellent predictor for the acceptance of pink products. Looking at the key drivers for the All Offers choice we can see the relative importance of the different facets to the prediction of overall likelihood. The comparative importance of the category facet for overall prediction might, in part, be explained by the clear preference of younger customers for toys over other product types; as evident from the report on the predictiveness of customer age for offer category acceptance. Conclusion Oracle Real-Time Decisions' flexible decisioning framework allows for the construction of exceptionally elaborate prediction models that facilitate powerful targeting, but nonetheless provide insightful reporting. Although few customers will have a direct need for such a sophisticated solution architecture, it is encouraging to see that this lies within the realm of the possible with RTD; and this with limited configuration and customization required. There are obviously numerous other ways in which the predictive and reporting capabilities of Oracle Real-Time Decisions can be expanded upon to tailor to individual customers needs. We will not be able to elaborate on them all on this blog; and finding the right approach for any given problem is often more difficult than implementing the solution. Nevertheless, we hope that these last few posts have given you enough of an understanding of the power of the RTD framework and its models; so that you can take some of these ideas and improve upon your own strategy. As always, if you have any questions about the above—or any Oracle Real-Time Decisions design challenges you might face—please do not hesitate to contact us; via the comments below, social media or directly at Oracle. We are completely multi-channel and would be more than glad to help. :-)

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  • Spirent Communications Improves Customer Experience with Knowledge Management

    - by Tony Berk
    Spirent Communications plc is a global leader in test and measurement inspiring innovation within development labs, communication networks and IT organizations. The world’s leading communications companies rely on Spirent to help design, develop, validate, and deliver world-class network, devices, and services. Spirent’s customers require high levels of support for a diverse and complex product portfolio, and the company is committed to delivering on this requirement. Spirent needed a solution to help its customers get the information they need quickly and at their convenience through its Web site. After evaluating several solutions, Spirent selected and deployed Oracle Knowledge for Web Self Service Enterprise Edition. Oracle Knowledge Management uses natural language processing to understand the true intent of each inquiry logged via the support portal’s search function. The Spirent Knowledge Base on the company’s Customer Support Center (CSC) finds the best possible answer using search enhancement features?such as communications industry-specific libraries and federation to search external sources. Spirent has reduced contact center call volume while better serving its customers. Each time a customer uses the knowledge base, they find answers faster than by calling, and it saves Spirent an average of US$210 per call?which is significant when multiplied across the thousands of calls received monthly. Oracle Knowledge also helps support engineers find answers more quickly, enabling the company to scale without adding additional support engineers. Oracle Knowledge is integrated with Spirent's Siebel Contact Center implementation to provide an integrated desktop for CRM and agent intelligence, avoiding the need for contact center personnel to toggle between various screens to address customer inquiries, thereby accelerating customer service. Click here to learn more about Sprient's use of Siebel CRM and Oracle Knowledge Management.

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  • What type of career path / jobs for a developer to have best work life balance?

    - by programmx10
    I know some people may look down on a question like this but I've been thinking lately a lot about what direction I can take my career to have a good work life balance, since I have been working for a startup where hours tend to drag on, etc and I find it often drains the life out of me. I have been going to interviews and some other companies are also startups / new companies and seem to have a similar attitude about working long hours. Maybe its the technologies I use, the type of development, I don't know but I'm curious if anyone can offer advice on what a path is to be a programmer / developer but work for a company that respects a regular work week and would only rarely find the need to move past this. I realize this won't lead to being the highest paid in my field but I'm ok with that and feel the tradeoff would be worth it as it would also give me time for my own projects, etc. I know some people may say this is too general but I believe it is a programmer specific question because I believe there tends to be a higher than average rate of working overtime, etc and people working in "startup" venture situations than in many other fields and there is definitely a mindset among a lot of people in the field of working long hours that doesn't exist in every industry.

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  • WolframAlpha Can Now Do In-depth Analysis of Your Facebook Account

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    If you’re a big fan of WolframAlpha’s ability to crunch the numbers on just about anything–and we certainly are–you’ll likely be just as delighted as we were to watch it massage the data from your Facebook account. Find out your most liked, discussed, and shared posts, see your Facebook habits, and other neat trends. I unleashed it on my account this morning, not sure what to expect from the results. Within the results tabulation WolframAlpha provided me with all sorts of neat data break downs. I now know exactly how many days it is to my next birthday, the composition of my aggregate posting habits (how many posts are status updates, links, or photos), the time of day when I do the most posting (and what the composition of those posts is), and my average post length. I also know my most liked post and my most commented on post. It will even crunch the numbers on your network of friends (60.6% of my friends are married, for example). By far one of the more interesting data analysis it does on the friendship data, however, is organizing all your friends into relationship clusters so you can see who in your Facebook network is friends with other people in your Facebook network. The service from WolframAlpha is free: simply visit the WolframAlpha search portal and type in “Facebook report” to start the process. You’ll be prompted to create a WolframAlpha account if you don’t have one and to authorize the WolframAlpha Facebook app to access your data. Your Facebook data is cached to your WolframAlpha account for one hour in order to crunch the numbers and display the results. WolframAlpha HTG Explains: How Windows Uses The Task Scheduler for System Tasks HTG Explains: Why Do Hard Drives Show the Wrong Capacity in Windows? Java is Insecure and Awful, It’s Time to Disable It, and Here’s How

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  • What Poor Project Management Might Be Costing You

    - by Sylvie MacKenzie, PMP
    For project-intensive organizations, capital investment decisions define both success and failure. Getting them wrong—the risk of delays and schedule and cost overruns are ever present—introduces the potential for huge financial losses. The resulting consequences can be significant, and directly impact both a company’s profit outlook and its share price performance—which in turn is the fundamental measure of executive performance. This intrinsic link between long-term investment planning and short-term market performance is investigated in the independent report Stock Shock, written by a consultant from Clarity Economics and commissioned by the EPPM Board. A new international steering group organized by Oracle, the EPPM Board brings together senior executives from leading public and private sector organizations to explore the critical role played by enterprise project and portfolio management (EPPM). Stock Shock reviews several high-profile recent project failures, and combined with other research reviews the lessons to be learned. It analyzes how portfolio management is an exercise in balancing risk and reward, a process that places the emphasis firmly on executives to correctly determine which potential investments will deliver the greatest value and contribute most to the bottom line. Conversely, it also details how poor evaluation decisions can quickly impact the overall value of an organization’s project portfolio and compromise long-range capital planning goals. Failure to Deliver—In Search of ROI The report also cites figures from the Economist Intelligence Unit survey that found that more organizations (12 percent) expected to deliver planned ROI less than half the time, than those (11 percent) who claim to deliver it 90 percent or more of the time. This fact is linked to a recent report from Booz & Co. that shows how the average tenure of a global chief executive has fallen from 8.1 years to 6.3 years. “Senior executives need to begin looking at effective project delivery not as a bonus, but as an essential facet of business success,” according to Stock Shock author Phil Thornton. “Consolidated and integrated visibility into individual projects is the most practical solution to overcoming these challenges, which explains the increasing popularity of PPM technologies as an effective oversight and delivery platform.” Stock Shock is available for download on the EPPM microsite at http://www.oracle.com/oms/eppm/us/stock-shock-report-1691569.html

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  • Moodle 2 pages loading up to 2000% faster

    - by TJ
    On average our Moodle 2 pages were loading in 2.8 seconds, now they load in as little as 0.12 seconds, so that’s like 2333.333% faster!What was it I hear you say?Well it was the database connection, or more correctly the database library. I was using FreeTDS http://docs.moodle.org/22/en/Installing_MSSQL_for_PHP, but now I’m using the new Microsoft Drivers 3.0 for PHP for SQL Server http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=20098. I’m in a Windows Server IT department, and in both our live and development environments, we have Moodle 2.2.3, IIS 7.5, and PHP 5.3.10 running on two Windows Server 2008 R2 servers and using MS Network Load Balancing.Since moving to Moodle 2, the pages have always loaded much more slowly than they did in Moodle 1.9, I’ve been chasing this issue for quite a while. I had previously tried the Microsoft Drivers for PHP for SQL Server 2.0, but my testing showed it was slower than the FreeTDS driver.Then yesterday I found Microsoft had released the new version, Microsoft Drivers 3.0 for PHP for SQL Server, so I thought I’d give it a run, and wow what a difference it made.Pages that were loading in 2.8 seconds, now they load in as little as 0.12 seconds, 2333.333% faster…I have more testing to do, but so far it’s looking good, I have scheduled multi user load testing for early next week (fingers crossed).To make the change all I need to do was,download the driverscopy the relevant files to PHP\ext (for us they were php_pdo_sqlsrv_53_nts.dll and php_sqlsrv_53_nts.dll) install the Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Native Client x64 http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=29065 add to PHP.ini, extension=php_pdo_sqlsrv_53_nts.dll, extension=php_sqlsrv_53_nts.dllremove form PHP.ini, extension=php_dblib.dllvchange in PHP.ini, mssql.textlimit = 20971520 and mssql.textsize = 20971520change Moodle config.php, $CFG->dbtype = 'sqlsrv'; and 'dbpersist' => Trueand then reboot and test…I've browsed courses, backed up/restored some really large and complicated courses, deleted courses etc. etc. all good.Still more testing to do but, hey this is good start...Hope this helps anyone experiencing the same slowness…

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  • Watch the Geminid Meteors Tonight

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    Tonight is the peak of the Geminid Meteor shower, if you don’t mind braving the cold and have a spot relatively free from light pollution to stretch out in you’ll be able to enjoy one of the more brilliant and busy meteor showers of the year. Sky and Telescope magazine reports on the Geminid Meteor shower: If it’s clear late Thursday night, December 13th, 2012, keep a lookout high overhead for the shooting stars of the Geminid meteor shower. The Geminids are usually one of the two best meteor showers of the year, often beating out the Perseids of August. And this year there’s no moonlight to interfere. Under a clear, dark sky, you may see at least one Geminid per minute on average from roughly 10 p.m. Thursday until dawn Friday morning. If you live under the artificial skyglow of light pollution your numbers will be less, but the brightest meteors will still shine through. Hit up the link below to read the full article and learn more about the Geminid Meteor shower. Secure Yourself by Using Two-Step Verification on These 16 Web Services How to Fix a Stuck Pixel on an LCD Monitor How to Factory Reset Your Android Phone or Tablet When It Won’t Boot

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  • Cloud computing - database loading question

    - by workwise
    Following is the situation, I want to know whether what I want is possible in cloud computing and is it the best way for me: 1) My main site has a Database with tables with millions of rows, and entries are added almost every second. 2) I will setup a mysql mirror, so there will be a backup database always in sync with the main one. 3) There are few tens of thousands of images- growing. So say total size of images few tens of gigabytes. I will be keeping the image data also in sync on the backup server. 4) There can be short periods where traffic can go 100X the average traffic. 5) I will be using memcache heavily - most database and even frequently used disk files/images will be in RAM. I want that the main site runs on a dedicated server. The backup server is say an Amazon EC2 instance. Now note that since it is live backup, I need to run a small instance continuously. I want that when I anticipate high traffic, I should be able to run a large instance on the cloud and transfer the traffic there. The main point is - I do not want to spend time in "loading" the database on the large instance, as it typically can take few minutes or even hours (experience). So is it possible to just scale the memory/CPU on demand, and not having to load the database or sync up the filesystem? I want to setup my backup scripts etc just ONCE. Thanks JP

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  • Managing Social Relationships for the Enterprise – Part 1

    - by Michael Hylton
    By Reggie Bradford, Senior Vice President, Oracle  Today, Mark Hurd, President of Oracle, Thomas Kurian, Executive Vice President of Oracle and I discussed the strategic importance of how social media is impacting the enterprise and how it is changing the way customers, prospects employees and investors interact with brands worldwide.  Oracle understands that the consumer is in control and as such, brands must evolve and change to meet growing needs. In addition, according to social media thought leader and Analyst from Altimeter Group, Jeremiah Owyang, companies now average 178 corporate-owned social media accounts. When Oracle added leading social marketing, listening analytics and development tools from Vitrue, Collective Intellect and Involver to its Oracle’s Cloud Services Suite we went beyond providing a single set of tools. We developed an entire framework to include a comprehensive social relationship management suite to help companies move beyond the social enterprise and achieve the social-enabled enterprise.  The fundamental shift from transaction to engagement means that enterprises need not only a social strategy, but should also ensure that the information and data received from social initiatives flow back to marketing, sales, support and service. Doing so enables companies to deliver a proactive and compelling experience and provides analytics to turn engagement into opportunity – and ultimately that opportunity into revenue.  On September 13, 2012, I am delighted to sit down with Jeremiah to further the discussion about how enterprises are addressing social media strategies and managing content.  In addition, we will be taking your questions after the webinar via Twitter (@Oracle, @ReggieBradford, @cfinn, @jowyang). Use #oracle and #socbiz to submit questions and follow the conversation. I look forward to speaking with you and answering your questions online.  For more information about becoming a social-enabled enterprise, visit www.oracle.com/social. And don’t miss the insights of other social business thought leaders at www.oracle.com/goto/socialbusiness.

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  • hProduct-microformats not work in google

    - by silverfox
    I'm trying to work with hProduct was testing tool for google microformats (http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets), but it is not recognizing the data: does not recognize the photo does not recognize the price does not recognize the category only recognizes the rating HTML: <div class="hproduct"> <span class="brand">ACME</span> <span class="fn">Executive Anvil</span> <img class="photo" src="http://microformats.org/wiki/skins/Microformats/images/logo.gif" /> <span class="review hreview-aggregate"> Average rating: <span class="rating">4.4</span>, based on <span class="count">89 </span> reviews </span> Regular price: $179.99 Sale: $<span class="price">119.99</span> (Sale ends 5 November!) <span class="description">Sleeker than ACME's Classic Anvil, the Executive Anvil is perfect for the business traveler looking for something to drop from a height.</span> Category: <span class="category"> <span class="value-title" title="Hardware > Tools > Anvils">Anvils</span> </span> </div> and still shows this warning: waring: In order to generate a preview with rich snippets, either price or review or availability needs to be present. I used google's own example: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=186036 I also tested the microformas.org: http://microformats.org/wiki/google-rich-snippets-examples

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  • How can I make an MMORPG appeal to casual players?

    - by Philipp
    I believe that there is a significant market of players who would enjoy the exploration and interaction aspects of MMORPGs, but simply don't have the time for the endless grinding marathons which are part of the average MMORPG. MMORPGs are all about interaction between players. But when different players have different amounts of time to invest into a game, those with less time to spend will soon lack behind their power-leveling friends and won't be able to interact with them anymore. One way to solve this would be to limit the progress a player can achieve per day, so that it simply doesn't make sense to play more than one or two hours a day. But even the busiest casual players sometimes like to spend a whole sunday afternoon playing a video game. Just stopping them after two hours would be really frustrating. It also creates a pressure to use the daily progress limit every day, because otherwise the player would feel like wasting something. This pressure would be detrimental for casual gamers. What else could be done to level the playing field between those players who play 40+ hours a week and those who can't play more than 10?

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  • How to explain a layperson why a developer should not be interrupted while neck-deep in coding?

    - by András Szepesházi
    If you just consider the second part of my question, "Why a developer should not be interrupted while neck-deep in coding", that has been discussed a number of times by smart people. Heck, even the co-founder of SO, Joel Spolsky, wrote a blog post about "getting in the zone" and "being knocked out of the zone" and why it takes an average of 15 minutes to achieve productivity when participating in complex, software development related tasks. So I think the why has been established. What I'm interested in is how to explain all that to somebody who doesn't know beans about Beans (khmm I mean software development). How to tell the wife, or the funny guy from accounting at the workplace, or the long time friend who pings you on Skype every 30 minutes with a "Wazzzzzzup?!", that all the interruptions have a much deeper impact on your work than the obvious 30 seconds they took from your time. Obviously you can't explain it by sentences like "I have to juggle a lot of variable names in my short term memory" unless you want to be the target of blank stares or friendly abuse. I'd like to be able to explain all that to non-developers in a way that will make them clearly understand - without being offensive, elitist or too technical.

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  • Would adding award points or game features to workplace software be viewed poorly amongst the programming community?

    - by Eric P
    So one of my responsibilities at work is to build an internal tool that helps the workers enter in all their information. It's an enterprise application that is similar to a Windows forms database tool. So it's not much different than like developing a Word + Excel combo application, but the average person in this workgroup is a 20-40 year old woman or a random chatty male type. Plus I know all of these people are heavily involved with Facebook on a daily basis. How bad would it be if I styled my new interface to be similar to what Facebook does. People could get award points and stuff when they fill out different types of forms and basically compete against each other like it was a game. When people had completed one, it would be posted on their wall and everyone could comment/like stuff just like in Facebook. And it would be like they are doing peer reviewing for fun. The rewards would be outstanding I would imagine. These people are so into Facebook and Facebook games that productivity would rise due to them trying to compete and earn points and achievements. Would this be taking advantage of the people by 'tricking them into working harder by giving them a game' or would it be viewed as something that would improve happiness at work?

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  • links for 2011-03-09

    - by Bob Rhubart
    Is there a Telecommunications Reference Architecture? (Telecommunications Architecture Corner) The answer is "yes," and Raul Goycoolea shares the details. (tags: oracle otn enterprisearchitecture) Oracle@info360: Advance Beyond Point Solutions To An Enterprise Content Strategy (Oracle Enterprise 2.0 Blog) Kellsey Ruppel shares information on some of the speakers at the upcoming info360/AIIM conference. (tags: oracle otn enterprise2.0 aiim info360) ERP in the Cloud for Local Government | Oracle Blog | Capgemini | Consulting, Technology, Outsourcing In these times of austerity, Local Authorities are facing significant reductions in budgets (on average over 30%). Now that the easier savings have been realised, Councils are faced with two options, cutting services or revolutionary changes to the way they do things today. (tags: oracle capgemini cloud) Mobile HR Apps "Good, so we have we have plenty of commercial applications making use of the smart phone," says Raheel Khan. "But what about core backend business applications?" (tags: oracle mobilecomputing) Policy Administration is the Top 2011 IT Priority for Insurers (Oracle Insurance) "Insurers can no longer rely on inflexible policy administration systems that impede their ability to rapidly configure and bring to innovative new products, add riders, support changing business processes and take advantage of market opportunities." - Helen Pitts (tags: oracle otn enterprisearchitecture) Free: Oracle Technology Network Architect Day - Denver - March 23 The live one-day event in Denver brings together architects from a broad range of disciplines and domains to share insights and expertise in the use of Oracle technologies to meet the challenges today’s architects regularly face. The event is free, but seating is limited. (tags: oracle otn enterprisearchitecture cloud optimization) InfoQ: Randy Shoup on Evolvable Systems Randy Shoup discusses evolvable systems: how to run different versions of a system in parallel during migrations, decoupling a system with events, schemas at eBay and much more. (tags: ping.fm)

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  • Mobile and Social for Retail

    - by David Dorf
    I've got two speaking gigs in the next few weeks, so I thought I'd preview both here. First I'll be at eTail West on February 24th to talk about mobile. I'll be previewing a new study of how shoppers are using mobile phones. Here's a sneak peek at one of the slides: It should be no surprise that as more consumers adopt smartphones, more are finding ways to use them to help with shopping. Sometimes that's to find a store, download a coupon, or do price comparisons. I'll also be discussing the NRF Mobile Blueprint, and will walk through an example of mobile impacting the in-store experience. Retailers need to look upon mobile as the method of bringing the digital assets of e-commerce into the aisles to enhance shopping. On March 9th I'll be at NRF Innovate co-presenting with Jon Kubo of Wet Seal on social strategies. Jon is a retail innovation rock-star and I always learn something new from every conversation with him. Below is a another slide preview: I cheated a little on the top 10 most popular retailer pages by not including Victoria's Secret Pink. VC is already represented, so I didn't include them a second time. The most interesting statistic I found was that the average user spends 55 minutes on Facebook a day. Wow! I also decided to use the old "Like" and "Fan" icons just because I like them better (pun intended). Wet Seal has been collecting interesting statistics on liked products, so I hope Jon will share lots (I'm on a roll). Hope to see you at both events.

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  • Silverlight Cream Top Posted Authors July to December, 2010

    - by Dave Campbell
    It's past the first of January, and it's now time to recognize devs that have a large number of posts in Silverlight Cream. Ground Rules I pick what posts are on the blog Only posts that go in the database are included The author has to appear in SC at least 4 of the 6 months considered I averaged the monthly posts and am only showing Authors with an average greater than 1. Here are the Top Posted Authors at Silverlight Cream for July 1, 2010 through December 31, 2010: It is my intention to post a new list sometime shortly after the 1st of every month to recognize the top posted in the previous 6 months, so next up is January 1! Some other metrics for Silverlight Cream: At the time of this posting there are 7304 articles aggregated and searchable by partial Author, partial Title, keywords (in the synopsis), or partial URL. There are also 118 tags by which the articles can be searched. This is an increase of 317 posts over last month. At the time of this posting there are 783 articles tagged wp7dev. This is an increase of 119 posts over last month, or over a third of the posts added. Stay in the 'Light!

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  • Efficient mapping layout in 2D side-scroller, and collisions between character and the world

    - by Jack
    I haven't touched Visual Studio for a couple months now, but I was playing a game from the '90s toady and had an epiphany: I was looking for something what i didn't need, and I wasn't using what I knew correctly. One of those realizations was collision, so let me tell you a bit about my project that I was working on. The project's graphics looks like Mario or Dangerous Dave, etc., you get the idea - old-school pixels. So anyway I remember trying to think of something else than AABB for character form, but I couldn't think of anything. Perhaps I could get a suggestion for this? Another thing is the world - I don't want it to be just linear world, I want mountains, etc.. My idea is to use triangles, and no idea yet what to do if I want just part of the cube, say 3/4 or 2/4 or whatever. Hard-coding such things seems inefficient. P.S. I am not looking at the precision level offered by Box2D. Actually I remember trying to implement it at first, but I failed as my understanding of C++ wasn't advanced enough, as it'll be mentioned below. P.P.S. I am programming in C++, and I haven't done it for a couple months now. I have no means of testing it either, as my PC is broken down, and this one can barely run games from late '90s, not to speak about a compiler or a program with inefficient resource management... I am also not an expert (obviously), I don't even know if I can consider myself an average programmer. In short, I am simply curious about my thoughts and my past experience when programming the game. I may come back to it when my PC is fixed, I'm already filling a note about these things.

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  • How broad should a computer science/engineering student go?

    - by AskQuestions
    I have less than 2 years of college left and I still don't know what to focus on. But this is not about me, this is about being a future developer. I realize that questions like "Which language should I learn next?" are not really popular, but I think my question is broader than that. I often see people write things like "You have to learn many different things. Being a developer is not about learning one programming language / technology and then doing that for the rest of your life". Well, sure, but it's impossible to really learn everything thoroughly. Does that mean that one should just learn the basics of everything and then learn some things more thoroughly AFTER getting a particular job? I mean, the best way to learn programming is by actually programming stuff... But projects take time. Does an average developer really switch between (for example) being a web developer, doing artificial intelligence and machine learning related stuff and programming close to the hardware? I mean, I know a lot of different things, but I don't feel proficient in any of those things. If I want to find a job as a web developer (that's just an example) after I finish college, shouldn't I do some web related project (maybe using something I still don't know) rather than try to learn functional programming? So, the question is: How broad should a computer science student's field of focus be? One programming language is surely far too narrow, but what is too broad?

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  • Why does 'top' say my machine is only 50% idle?

    - by Chris Moore
    What's going on here? I'm running nothing on the system, iotop and iftop show the network and hard drive are both idle, and top (sorted by %CPU) shows nothing running. So why is the system only 50% idle? What's the other 50% waiting for? How can I find out? top - 12:01:05 up 3 days, 15:03, 1 user, load average: 6.00, 6.01, 6.05 Tasks: 179 total, 1 running, 178 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie Cpu(s): 0.7%us, 0.0%sy, 0.0%ni, 49.7%id, 49.7%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Mem: 2053996k total, 1992600k used, 61396k free, 81680k buffers Swap: 4092924k total, 10740k used, 4082184k free, 1338636k cached PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 1042 deb 20 0 21468 1412 1000 R 1 0.1 0:00.03 top 1 root 20 0 24188 1952 1152 S 0 0.1 0:01.44 init 2 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.05 kthreadd Update: dmesg shows the printer driver misbehaving: [28858.561847] cnijnetprn[1503]: segfault at 29 ip 00007f56cf3480f7 sp 00007fffb964ec30 error 4 in libcnnet.so.1.2.0[7f56cf345000+9000] [68851.187802] cnijnetprn[9180]: segfault at 29 ip 00007ffe7636a0f7 sp 00007fff9a8b1990 error 4 in libcnnet.so.1.2.0[7ffe76367000+9000] [155412.107826] cnijnetprn[19966]: segfault at 29 ip 00007fc31de770f7 sp 00007fffc03aa8e0 error 4 in libcnnet.so.1.2.0[7fc31de74000+9000] and also some issue with cp: [248041.172067] INFO: task cp:27488 blocked for more than 120 seconds. [248041.172071] "echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/hung_task_timeout_secs" disables this message. [248041.172075] cp D ffffffff81805120 0 27488 27345 0x00000004 [248041.172080] ffff880078d57a38 0000000000000046 ffff880078d579d8 ffffffff81032a79 [248041.172085] ffff880078d57fd8 ffff880078d57fd8 ffff880078d57fd8 0000000000012a40 [248041.172090] ffff88007b818000 ffff880069acc560 ffff880078d57a18 ffff88007f8532c0 [248041.172095] Call Trace: [248041.172104] [<ffffffff81032a79>] ? default_spin_lock_flags+0x9/0x10 [248041.172109] [<ffffffff8110a360>] ? __lock_page+0x70/0x70 [248041.172114] [<ffffffff815f0ecf>] schedule+0x3f/0x60 I did try copying something to the USB stick that's plugged into the router and mounted onto this computer using mount.cifs. That almost always causes everything to lock up, so I'm guessing that's the problem. I'll reboot and stop using mount.cifs.

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  • App to make a video from photos?

    - by chtfn
    I was wondering what could be a good app (with a GUI ;) ) for making a video from a bunch of photos or images, to create a time-lapse video, or a stop-motion animation, or even a video like this one. The idea is to set a really small time between each photo, but also to be able to change this time every so often, or add some effects, to make the succession smoother in particular. What would be perfect is a function that allows automatic cropping of the photos as well as exposure adjustment so they all have the same background and so the time-lapse video looks smoother. I know about the slide show app "Imagination" but the interval can not go under one second. Cheers! Edit: here is my progress, also thanks to the first answer: I tried Luciole, it is really simple and promessing, but pretty buggy, and I only could export an average video in .dv format (mpg2 and avi don't work). Apparently, it has difficulties when changing the fps. I also tried StopMotion: also pretty buggy, I had to go into preferences and modify the encoding commands to get a result, but it's the best result I got so far. But none of those has effects to make transitions smoother... I tried several diaporama apps: Imagination doesn't handle more than 1 image per second; PhotoFilmStrip (repo version and latest version from website): same problem even though you can go down to 0.1 second per image, it still behaves wierdly (going back to 1 second automatically); Videoporama: doesn't start at all on 12.04. Any other idea, folks?

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  • Why is Ubuntu's clock getting slower or faster?

    - by ændrük
    Ubuntu's clock is off by about a half hour: Where do I even start troubleshooting this? It's allegedly being set "automatically from the Internet". How can I verify that "the Internet" knows what time it is? Details Ubuntu has had plenty of time to communicate with the Internet: $ date; uptime Fri May 18 05:56:00 PDT 2012 05:56:00 up 12 days, 10:48, 2 users, load average: 0.61, 0.96, 1.15 This time server I found via a web search does appear to know the correct time: $ date; ntpdate -q north-america.pool.ntp.org Fri May 18 05:56:09 PDT 2012 server 208.38.65.37, stratum 2, offset 1752.625337, delay 0.10558 server 46.166.138.172, stratum 2, offset 1752.648597, delay 0.10629 server 205.189.158.228, stratum 3, offset 1752.672466, delay 0.11829 18 May 05:56:18 ntpdate[29752]: step time server 208.38.65.37 offset 1752.625337 sec There aren't any reported errors related to NTP: $ grep -ic ntp /var/log/syslog 0 After rebooting, the time was automatically corrected and the following appeared in /var/log/syslog: May 18 17:58:12 aux ntpdate[1891]: step time server 91.189.94.4 offset 1838.497277 sec A log of the offset reported by ntpdate reveals that the clock is drifting by about 9 seconds every hour: $ while true; do ntpdate-debian -q | tail -n 1 >> 'drift.log'; sleep 16m; done ^C $ r -e ' attach(read.table("drift.log", header=FALSE)) clock <- as.POSIXct(paste(V1, V2, V3), format="%d %b %H:%M:%S") fit <- lm(V10~clock) png("drift.png") plot(clock, V10, xlab="Clock time", ylab="Time server offset (s)") abline(fit) mtext(sprintf("Drift rate: %.2f s/hr", fit$coefficients[[2]]*3600)) '

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  • How often does Dreamhost change IP Addresses

    - by pjreddie
    So I just migrated our site to dreamhost because they are free for non-profits. However, right after I switched the nameservers over to them they changed the IP address of the site. So first they propagated out IP address x.x.x.180, then they switched it to x.x.x.178 and had to propagate that out. Point being it meant a lot of downtime since a lot of big DNS servers (like google) thought the address was still x.x.x.180 for up to 5 hours after they switched it. This is compounded by the fact that most our visitors to the site live here in Unalaska and we have local DNS servers that take a LONG time to update (like a day or more) since we get all our internet over satellite. So every time Dreamhost changes our IP address it can mean a day of downtime for us in our community. So my question is, how often do these changes take place? I asked Dreamhost support and they gave me a vague response: I wish I could say, however those changes happen at random times. They're not that frequent, maybe even months between updates, but there's no way to know for sure. First, I hardly believe that they don't know their own system well enough to give me at least some estimate or average. Second, is it worth looking at other providers so that I can get a static IP address? We were hosting the site here originally and hadn't run into this problem since we have a static IP here. We don't get a ton of traffic but usually around 500 hits a day or so, sometimes more if our stories are featured on statewide or national news broadcasts. So hours of downtime every time Dreamhost "randomly" decides to move our server location can be bad for our readership.

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  • Silverlight Cream Top Posted Authors August, 2010 to January, 2011

    - by Dave Campbell
    It's *way* past the first of February, and it's now time to recognize devs that have a large number of posts in Silverlight Cream. Ground Rules I pick what posts are on the blog Only posts that go in the database are included The author has to appear in SC at least 4 of the 6 months considered I averaged the monthly posts and am only showing Authors with an average greater than 1. Here are the Top Posted Authors at Silverlight Cream for August 1, 2010 through January 31, 2011: It is my intention to post a new list sometime shortly after the 1st of every month to recognize the top posted in the previous 6 months, so next up is March 1! Some other metrics for Silverlight Cream: At the time of this posting there are 7304 articles aggregated and searchable by partial Author, partial Title, keywords (in the synopsis), or partial URL. There are also 118 tags by which the articles can be searched. This is an increase of 265 posts over last month. At the time of this posting there are 783 articles tagged wp7dev. This is an increase of 155 posts over last month, or over half of the posts added. Stay in the 'Light!

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  • Lessons From OpenId, Cardspace and Facebook Connect

    - by mark.wilcox
    (c) denise carbonell I think Johannes Ernst summarized pretty well what happened in a broad sense in regards to OpenId, Cardspace and Facebook Connect. However, I'm more interested in the lessons we can take away from this. First  - "Apple Lesson" - If user-centric identity is going to happen it's going to require not only technology but also a strong marketing campaign. I'm calling this the "Apple Lesson" because it's very similar to how Apple iPad saw success vs the tablet market. The iPad is not only a very good technology product but it was backed by a very good marketing plan. I know most people do not want to think about marketing here - but the fact is that nobody could really articulate why user-centric identity mattered in a way that the average person cared about. Second - "Facebook Lesson" - Facebook Connect solves a number of interesting problems that is easy for both consumer and service providers. For a consumer it's simple to log-in without any redirects. And while Facebook isn't perfect on privacy - no other major consumer-focused service on the Internet provides as much control about sharing identity information. From a developer perspective it is very easy to implement the SSO and fetch other identity information (if the user has given permission). This could only happen because a major company just decided to make a singular focus to make it happen. Third - "Developers Lesson" -  Facebook Social Graph API is by far the simplest API for accessing identity information which also is another reason why you're seeing such rapid growth in Facebook enabled Websites. By using a combination of URL and Javascript - the power a single HTML page now gives a developer writing Web applications is simply amazing. For example It doesn't get much simpler than this "http://api.facebook.com/mewilcox" for accessing identity. And while I can't yet share too much publicly about the specifics - the social graph API had a profound impact on me in designing our next generation APIs.  Posted via email from Virtual Identity Dialogue

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  • PHP file_put_contents File Locking

    - by hozza
    The Senario: You have a file with a string (average sentence worth) on each line. For arguments sake lets say this file is 1Mb in size (thousands of lines). You have a script that reads the file, changes some of the strings within the document (not just appending but also removing and modifying some lines) and then overwrites all the data with the new data. The Questions: Does 'the server' PHP, OS or httpd etc. already have systems in place to stop issues like this (reading/writing half way through a write)? i. If it does, please explain how it works and give examples or links to relevant documentation. ii. If not, are there things I can enable or set-up, such as locking a file until a write is completed and making all other reads and/or writes fail until the previous script has finished writing? My Assumptions and Other Information: The server in question is running PHP and Apache or Lighttpd. If the script is called by one user and is halfway through writing to the file and another user reads the file at that exact moment. The user who reads it will not get the full document, as it hasn't been written yet. (If this assumption is wrong please correct me) I'm only concerned with PHP writing and reading to a text file, and in particular, the functions "fopen"/"fwrite" and mainly "file_put_contents". I have looked at the "file_put_contents" documentation but have not found the level of detail or a good explanation of what the "LOCK_EX" flag is or does. The senario is an EXAMPLE of a worst case senario where I would assume these issues are more likely to occur, due to the large size of the file and the way the data is edited. I want to learn more about these issues and don't want or need answers or comments such as "use mysql" or "why are you doing that" because I'm not doing that, I just want to learn about file read/writing with PHP and don't seem to be looking in the right places/documentation and yes I understand PHP is not the perfect language for working with files in this way...

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