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• How do I take responsibility for my code when colleague makes unnecessary improvements without notice?

  - by Jesslyn

  One of my teammates is a jack of all trades in our IT shop and I respect his insight. However, sometimes he reviews my code (he's second in command to our team leader, so that's expected) without a heads up. So sometimes he reviews my changes before they complete the end goal and makes changes right away... and has even broken my work once. Other times, he has made unnecessary improvements to some of my code that is 3+ months old. This annoys me for a few reasons: I am not always given a chance to fix my mistakes He has not taken the time to ask me what I was trying to accomplish when he is confused, which could affect his testing or changes I don't always think his code is readable Deadlines are not an issue and his current workload doesn't require any work in my projects other than reviewing my code changes. Anyways, I have told him in the past to please keep me posted if he sees something in my work that he wants to change so that I could take ownership of my code (maybe I should have said "shortcomings") and he's not been responsive. I fear that I may come off as aggressive when I ask him to explain his changes to me. He's just a quiet person who keeps to himself, but his actions continue. I don't want to banish him from making code changes (not like I could), because we are a team--but I want to do my part to help our team. Added clarifications: We share 1 development branch. I do not wait until all my changes complete a single task because I risk losing some significant work--so I make sure my changes build and do not break anything. My concern is that my teammate doesn't explain the reason or purpose behind his changes. I don't think he should need my blessing, but if we disagree on an approach I thought it would be best to discuss the pros and cons and make a decision once we both understand what is going on. I have not discussed this with our team lead yet as I would prefer to resolve personal disagreements without getting management involved unless it is necessary. Since my concern seemed more of personal issue than a threat to our work, I chose to not bother the team lead. I am working on code review process ideas--to help promote the benefits of more organized code reviews without making it all about my pet peeves.

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• Styling Windows Phone Silverlight Applications

  - by Tim Murphy

  If you have not developed with styles in Silverlight/XAML then it can be challenging and resources can be sparse depending on how deep you get.  One thing that you need to understand is what level you can apply styles and how much they can cascade.  What I am finding is that this doesn’t go to the level that we are used to in HTML and CSS. While styles can be defined at a page level if you want to share styles throughout your application they should be defined in the App.xaml file.  This is of course analogous to placing a style in your HTML file versus an external CSS file.  This is the type of style I will concentrate on in this post. The first thing to look it how styles associate to elements.  TargetType defines the object type that your style will apply to.  In the example below the style is targeting the TextBlock object type. <Style x:Key="TextBlockSmallGray" TargetType="TextBlock"> Next we use a Setter which allows you to apply values for specific attributes of the target object type.  The setters can be a simple value or complex.  The first example here is simply applying a color to the background property of the target. <Setter Property="Background" Value="White"/> The second setter example here is for the same property, but we are applying a the definition of a LinearGradientBrush. <Setter Property="Background"> <Setter.Value> <LinearGradientBrush> <GradientStop Offset="0" Color="Black"/> <GradientStop Offset="1" Color="White"/> </LinearGradientBrush> </Setter.Value> </Setter> The last thing I want to cover here is that you can leverage the system styles and then override or extend them.  The BasedOn attribute of the Style tag allows this sort of inheritance.  In the example below I am going to start with the PhoneTextTitleStyle and then override properties as needed. <Style x:Key="TextBlockTitle" BasedOn="{StaticResource PhoneTextTitle1Style}" TargetType="TextBlock"> So now that we have our styles defined applying it is fairly straight forward.  Add the style name as a static resource to the style property of the element in your page and off you go. <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Style="{StaticResource PageGridStyle}"> So this is one step in creating consistency in your application’s look.  In future posts I will dig a little deeper. del.icio.us Tags: windows phone 7,mobile development,windows phone 7 development,.NET,software development,design,UX

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• [JAVA]How to make my Oracle update/insert action through JAVA faster?

  - by gunbuster363

  [JAVA]How to make my Oracle update/insert action through JAVA faster? Hi everyone, I am facing a problem in my company that is - our program's speed is not fast enough. To be more specific, we are telecommunication company and this program handle call/internet serfing transaction made by every mobile phone users in our city. Because the amount of download content made by the iphone users is just too much, our program cannot handle them fast enough. The situation is, the amount of transaction made by users are double of the transaction processed by our program. Most of the running time of the program are dominated by DB transactions. I've search through the internet and browsed some sites ( for example: http://www.javaperformancetuning.com/tips/rawtips.shtml ) talking about java performace in DB, but I cannot find a suggestion suitable for us. these advices are not applicable/already used, for instance: 1)Use prepared statements. Use parametrized SQL Already used prepared statement. Each time will use different parameter by clear parameters and set parameters. 2)Tune the SQL to minimize the data returned (e.g. not 'SELECT *'). Sure, already used. 3)Use connection pooling. We hold a single connection during the program's execution. And I doubt that pooling cannot solve the problem because our program act as 1 user, so there are no problem for concurrent access to DB. If anyone of you think pooling is good, please tell me why. Thanks. 4)Try to combine queries and batch updates. Cannot do it. Every query/insert/update is depend on the database's information. For example, we look up the DB for the client's information, if we cannot find his usage, we insert the usage into DB, otherwise we do update. 5)Close resources (Connections, Statements, ResultSets) when finished Sure. 6)Select the fastest JDBC driver. I don't know. I've search on the internet about the type of driver available and I am very confused. We use oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver and we use thin instead of oci, that's all I know. In addition, our program is a two-tier way ( java <- oracle ) 7)turn off auto-commit already done that. Looking forwards to any helps, thank you very much.

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• Focusing on Mobile @ Oracle OpenWorld

  - by Carlos Chang

  Plenty of exciting trends in the industry today: Cloud, Big Data, Mobile, etc. The first two are amazing of course, but for me, it's mobile, mobile and... MOBILE.   Why? Think back to the mozilla browser (Marc Andreessen's mozilla, not today's mozilla.org), Netscape and the nascent beginnings of the World Wide Web. Amazing times. Companies were just starting to set up their home pages, basic HTML, hyperlinks, images, ooooh, aaaah.  Yahoo! was *the* search engine back then. :-\   Anywhoo, I would pose that mobile today, we are in a similar junction. Sure, there's millions of apps on Apple's App Store and Google Play, but within the enterprise, it's just getting started. I'm talking about going beyond the simple, tactical apps such as calendaring, contacts or directory service lookup. And while mobile first a common mantra, I'm referring to mobile plus which includes and looks upon the whole enterprise holistically and adds new parameters, such as your GPS location, perhaps even your vital signs. (Apple's health kit?)  Everything is going mobile. Everything connected. But with the enterprise - scalability, security, integration, app management, user management, etc. Amazing times ahead. Ok, got that off my mind. Oracle OpenWorld 2014 - Going Mobile!  If you're coming to the big dance, I've highlighted some key mobile sessions below. And if you see me around, and there's a bar within reach, high five me for a beer. I mean, if you read this far, and didn't already jump to the list below, I think you deserve one.   Cheers!  Monday, 9/29/14 at 10:15 AM - General Session: Time for You to Rethink Mobile? Oracle Mobile Strategy and Roadmap Tuesday, 9/30/14 @ 12:00 PM; MW3020 - Develop and Deploy Mobile Applications with Oracle’s Mobile Wednesday, 10/1/2014 @10:15 AM; MW 3022 Introduction to Oracle Mobile Application Framework Wednesday, 10/1/2014 @11:30 AM Accelerate Enterprise Mobility with Oracle Mobile Cloud Service Click here to view the complete Focus on Mobile sessions at this years Oracle OpenWorld 2014, and don't forget to follow @OracleMobile on Twitter. 

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• Best way to remote restart Ubuntu from Windows machine

  - by robsoft

  Background: I'm looking to put a series of Ubuntu machines into retail locations, they're being used as dumb kiosks to show a series of slides onto large LCD panel TV screens. Once installed, they won't have a keyboard or mouse connected but will have a fixed IP on the local network. Everything is configured to auto-start, no automatic updates, no power saving etc - I think we're pretty-much good to go apart from one thing. I need the retail staff to be able to restart the boxes if a problem arises. We have VNC running (now that we've turned off desktop enhancements!) so that we can remotely get into the machines if we need to, but that's not something we would allow the retail staff to do. The machines are going to be physically 'out of the way' (probably in the ceiling space) so the power button is not easily accessible!. I'd like to have some means of allowing the retail staff to restart the Ubuntu machine, from the desktop of one of their Windows terminals. I don't really want to give them some kind of raw terminal access (the command line will frighten them!) and I don't want them to use VNC (as stated above). Ideally there would be an icon on the Windows desktop, they double-click it, reply to a simple 'are you sure?' prompt, and then the Ubuntu box is told to restart. The Windows side of that won't be a problem, we can write something using Delphi, Python & Qt4, whatever - it's the Ubuntu side of it I'm stuck with. Out of sight/view, could I have a Windows program open a terminal across the network and tell Ubuntu to restart? Is this what SSH could be used for (I have never set that kind of thing up). The Windows programming side isn't really an issue, it's just that I'm a total Ubuntu noob and don't know where to start from the platform point of view. The other thing we considered is also having the machine automatically restart itself at a set time each day (obviously out of store hours!). To me, that seems a bit unnecessary (though forcing a restart once a week/month might be worthwhile). Any thoughts or suggestions? Being able to restart the box on demand across the network is my prime requirement.

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• Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon support

  - by Robottinosino

  I am considering selling my Mac to get money towards a Lenovo Thinkpad X1 because what I really want to do is to be running an Ubuntu system all the time. Is this machine completely supported in Ubuntu, with no tiny little feature missing just because I am "going Linux"? Optional user story section, skip to the question below if you don't have time: I have a friend who bought a "works on Ubuntu" system a year ago and has hated the fact ever since: battery lasts less than if he boots in Windows (which he despises) and he ascribes that to "no good OS/harware integration and support for advanced chipset power management features", odd behaviour on suspend/resume/hibernate (says: "when it works 90% of the time and the other 10% it makes you lose your work is as good as broken - 90% is the same as 0% he says), some occasional graphics card glitches he can perfectly well live with and has almost grown affectionate to, and finally, and that is what would make him undo his choice if he could, bad "input device drivers". He says: trackpoint and trackpad just "feel different", "so much better" on Windows and that was impossible to know from the website brochure. That story makes me very doubtful... but I want to abandon this "walled garden" of prison that is my Mac and go Ubuntu all the way, no doubt about that! My dilemma at this time is just: "I don't want to live with those eternal frustrations for sure"! Here's a directly answerable phrasing of my question: Is the Lenovo Thinkpad X1 supported on Ubuntu? Yes/no, which version? Which hardware features are not supported? Provide a list Optionally: sort the list in descending order of frustration from your experience Optionally: mention if there are acceptable workarounds to the "out-of-the-box" condition described in the earlier points and whether this ameliorates frustration at least to "tolerable" levels Comment: the Ubuntu hardware certification page is so not-for-end-users it's unreal. Whoa. What would make it end-user friendly is: Link to "buy here and you'll be just fine, this is the right configuration for you, it'll work as long as you press BUY on that page and don't browse further" Remove mentions of may and might not work. Just tell it straight: press buy here and you will get a working system with the exception of A, B, C (so that I can decide whether the philosophical "freedom pleasure" I get from escaping an Apple world is enough to off-balance the loss, for instance, of Bluetooth capabilities (something that I of course use on my Mac) but "could" lose to use free (as in freedom) software The certification page fails to dispel doubts in me as an end-user. I don't feel "eased into Ubuntu", I feel "partially informed".

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• Problem animating in Unity/Orthello 2D. Can't move gameObject

  - by Nelson Gregório

  I have a enemy npc that moves left and right in a corridor. It's animated with 2 sprites using Orthello 2D Framework. If I untick the animation's play on start and looping, the npc moves correctly. If I turn it on, the npc tries to move but is pulled back to his starting position again and again because of the animation loop. If I turn looping off during runtime, the npc moves correctly again. What did I do wrong? Here's the npc code if needed. using UnityEngine; using System.Collections; public class Enemies : MonoBehaviour { private Vector2 movement; public float moveSpeed = 200; public bool started = true; public bool blockedRight = false; public bool blockedLeft = false; public GameObject BorderL; public GameObject BorderR; void Update () { if (gameObject.transform.position.x < BorderL.transform.position.x) { started = false; blockedRight = false; blockedLeft = true; } if (gameObject.transform.position.x > BorderR.transform.position.x) { started = false; blockedLeft = false; blockedRight = true; } if(started) { movement = new Vector2(1, 0f); movement *= Time.deltaTime*moveSpeed; gameObject.transform.Translate(movement.x,movement.y, 0f); } if(!blockedRight && !started && blockedLeft) { movement = new Vector2(1, 0f); movement *= Time.deltaTime*moveSpeed; gameObject.transform.Translate(movement.x,movement.y, 0f); } if(!blockedLeft && !started && blockedRight) { movement = new Vector2(-1, 0f); movement *= Time.deltaTime*moveSpeed; gameObject.transform.Translate(movement.x,movement.y, 0f); } } }

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• New ZFS Encryption features in Solaris 11.1

  - by darrenm

  Solaris 11.1 brings a few small but significant improvements to ZFS dataset encryption.  There is a new readonly property 'keychangedate' that shows that date and time of the last wrapping key change (basically the last time 'zfs key -c' was run on the dataset), this is similar to the 'rekeydate' property that shows the last time we added a new data encryption key. $ zfs get creation,keychangedate,rekeydate rpool/export/home/bob NAME PROPERTY VALUE SOURCE rpool/export/home/bob creation Mon Mar 21 11:05 2011 - rpool/export/home/bob keychangedate Fri Oct 26 11:50 2012 local rpool/export/home/bob rekeydate Tue Oct 30 9:53 2012 local The above example shows that we have changed both the wrapping key and added new data encryption keys since the filesystem was initially created.  If we haven't changed a wrapping key then it will be the same as the creation date.  It should be obvious but for filesystems that were created prior to Solaris 11.1 we don't have this data so it will be displayed as '-' instead. Another change that I made was to relax the restriction that the size of the wrapping key needed to match the size of the data encryption key (ie the size given in the encryption property).  In Solaris 11 Express and Solaris 11 if you set encryption=aes-256-ccm we required that the wrapping key be 256 bits in length.  This restriction was unnecessary and made it impossible to select encryption property values with key lengths 128 and 192 when the wrapping key was stored in the Oracle Key Manager.  This is because currently the Oracle Key Manager stores AES 256 bit keys only.  Now with Solaris 11.1 this restriciton has been removed. There is still one case were the wrapping key size and data encryption key size will always match and that is where they keysource property sets the format to be 'passphrase', since this is a key generated internally to libzfs and to preseve compatibility on upgrade from older releases the code will always generate a wrapping key (using PKCS#5 PBKDF2 as before) that matches the key length size of the encryption property. The pam_zfs_key module has been updated so that it allows you to specify encryption=off. There were also some bugs fixed including not attempting to load keys for datasets that are delegated to zones and some other fixes to error paths to ensure that we could support Zones On Shared Storage where all the datasets in the ZFS pool were encrypted that I discussed in my previous blog entry. If there are features you would like to see for ZFS encryption please let me know (direct email or comments on this blog are fine, or if you have a support contract having your support rep log an enhancement request).

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• Zenoss Setup for Windows Servers

  - by Jay Fox

  Recently I was saddled with standing up Zenoss for our enterprise.  We're running about 1200 servers, so manually touching each box was not an option.  We use LANDesk for a lot of automated installs and patching - more about that later.The steps below may not necessarily have to be completed in this order - it's just the way I did it.STEP ONE:Setup a standard AD user.  We want to do this so there's minimal security exposure.  Call the account what ever you want "domain/zenoss" for our examples.***********************************************************STEP TWO:Make the following local groups accessible by your zenoss account.Distributed COM UsersPerformance Monitor UsersEvent Log Readers (which doesn't exist on pre-2008 machines)Here's the Powershell script I used to setup access to these local groups:# Created to add Active Directory account to local groups# Must be run from elevated prompt, with permissions on the remote machine(s).# Create txt file should contain the names of the machines that need the account added, one per line.# Script will process machines line by line.foreach($i in (gc c:\tmp\computers.txt)){# Add the user to the first group$objUser=[ADSI]("WinNT://domain/zenoss")$objGroup=[ADSI]("WinNT://$i/Distributed COM Users")$objGroup.PSBase.Invoke("Add",$objUser.PSBase.Path)# Add the user to the second group$objUser=[ADSI]("WinNT://domain/zenoss")$objGroup=[ADSI]("WinNT://$i/Performance Monitor Users")$objGroup.PSBase.Invoke("Add",$objUser.PSBase.Path)# Add the user to the third group - Group doesn't exist on < Server 2008#$objUser=[ADSI]("WinNT://domain/zenoss")#$objGroup=[ADSI]("WinNT://$i/Event Log Readers")#$objGroup.PSBase.Invoke("Add",$objUser.PSBase.Path)}**********************************************************STEP THREE:Setup security on the machines namespace so our domain/zenoss account can access itThe default namespace for zenoss is:  root/cimv2Here's the Powershell script:#Grant account defined below (line 11) access to WMI Namespace#Has to be run as account with permissions on remote machinefunction get-sid{Param ($DSIdentity)$ID = new-object System.Security.Principal.NTAccount($DSIdentity)return $ID.Translate( [System.Security.Principal.SecurityIdentifier] ).toString()}$sid = get-sid "domain\zenoss"$SDDL = "A;;CCWP;;;$sid" $DCOMSDDL = "A;;CCDCRP;;;$sid"$computers = Get-Content "c:\tmp\computers.txt"foreach ($strcomputer in $computers){    $Reg = [WMIClass]"\\$strcomputer\root\default:StdRegProv"    $DCOM = $Reg.GetBinaryValue(2147483650,"software\microsoft\ole","MachineLaunchRestriction").uValue    $security = Get-WmiObject -ComputerName $strcomputer -Namespace root/cimv2 -Class __SystemSecurity    $converter = new-object system.management.ManagementClass Win32_SecurityDescriptorHelper    $binarySD = @($null)    $result = $security.PsBase.InvokeMethod("GetSD",$binarySD)    $outsddl = $converter.BinarySDToSDDL($binarySD[0])    $outDCOMSDDL = $converter.BinarySDToSDDL($DCOM)    $newSDDL = $outsddl.SDDL += "(" + $SDDL + ")"    $newDCOMSDDL = $outDCOMSDDL.SDDL += "(" + $DCOMSDDL + ")"    $WMIbinarySD = $converter.SDDLToBinarySD($newSDDL)    $WMIconvertedPermissions = ,$WMIbinarySD.BinarySD    $DCOMbinarySD = $converter.SDDLToBinarySD($newDCOMSDDL)    $DCOMconvertedPermissions = ,$DCOMbinarySD.BinarySD    $result = $security.PsBase.InvokeMethod("SetSD",$WMIconvertedPermissions)     $result = $Reg.SetBinaryValue(2147483650,"software\microsoft\ole","MachineLaunchRestriction", $DCOMbinarySD.binarySD)}***********************************************************STEP FOUR:Get the SID for our zenoss account.Powershell#Provide AD User get SID$objUser = New-Object System.Security.Principal.NTAccount("domain", "zenoss") $strSID = $objUser.Translate([System.Security.Principal.SecurityIdentifier]) $strSID.Value******************************************************************STEP FIVE:Modify the Service Control Manager to allow access to the zenoss AD account.This command can be run from an elevated command line, or through Powershellsc sdset scmanager "D:(A;;CC;;;AU)(A;;CCLCRPRC;;;IU)(A;;CCLCRPRC;;;SU)(A;;CCLCRPWPRC;;;SY)(A;;KA;;;BA)(A;;CCLCRPRC;;;PUT_YOUR_SID_HERE_FROM STEP_FOUR)S:(AU;FA;KA;;;WD)(AU;OIIOFA;GA;;;WD)"******************************************************************In step two the script plows through a txt file that processes each computer listed on each line.  For the other scripts I ran them on each machine using LANDesk.  You can probably edit those scripts to process a text file as well.That's what got me off the ground monitoring the machines using Zenoss.  Hopefully this is helpful for you.  Watch the line breaks when copy the scripts.

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• How do we provide valid time estimates during Sprint Planning without doing "too much" design?

  - by Michael Edenfield

  My team is getting up to speed with Scrum, but most of us are more familiar with non-agile or "pseudo-"agile methodologies. The part that is the biggest hurdle for us is running an efficient Sprint Planning meeting where we break our backlog items into tasks, and estimate hours. (I'm using the terminology from the VS2010 Scrum Template; apologies if I use the wrong word somewhere.) When we try to figure out how long a task is going to take, we often fall into the trap of designing the feature at the code level -- table layout, interfaces, etc -- in order to figure out how long that's going to take. I'm pretty sure this is not the appropriate place to be doing that kind of design. We should be scheduling tasks for these design meetings during the sprint. However, we are having trouble figuring out how else to come up with meaningful estimates for the tasks. Are there any practical habits/techniques/etc. for making a judgement call about how long a feature is going to take, without knowing how you plan to implement it? If our time estimates are going to change significantly once the design has been completed, how can we properly budget our Sprint backlog ahead of time? EDIT: Just to clarify, since some of the comments/answers are very valid but I think addressing the wrong question. We know that what we're doing is not right, and that we should be building time into the sprint for this design. Conceptually all of the developers understand that. We also also bringing in a team member with Scrum experience to keep us on track if we start going off into the weeds. The problem is that, without going through this design process, we are finding it difficult to provide concrete time estimates for anything. We are constantly saying things like "well if we design it this way it might take 8 hours but if we end up having to do this other way instead that will take about 32 but it might not be as bad once we start trying to write it...". I also assume that this process will get better once we have some historical velocity to work from, but many of the technologies and architectural patterns we are using are new to us. But if potentially-wildly-wrong estimates are just a natural part of adapting this process then we will just need to recondition ourselves to accept that :)

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• Professional immigration

  - by etranger

  Hello all, Does anyone here have a practical advice on professional relocation from Russia to Europe? The reasons behind making such a decision are far beyond the subject, perhaps, so I'll stick to the practical part. Having done some of the "common stuff" for finding a job, I am now facing two serious problems: I am a "dual-class" person, with university degree in marketing, and multiple years of self-studied computer competence (hence my writing here). Have professional experience in both areas. I don't currently hold a European work permit. From what I can see, this results in normal HR person throwing out my CV as either being "overqualified" or "too much trouble with making the permit". I do have the skills and character to start my own business, but it requires start-up capital that I don't have, over the last years I had to pay high bills for medical treatment of my family member, who had deceased. Now, I'm almost out of debts. As you can probably guess, English is not a problem, and I'm open to new languages, but first steps of entering the market, or the society, is the problematic part. I live close to Norway, and am trying to get some professional contacts there, but it hasn't got me any practical perspective so far. Any advice is greatly appreciated. EDIT: I am currently making my living off web site development, and occasional consulting services both in IT and marketing. For purely geographic reasons I'm dealing with clients that reside in the same city where I live, pop. 350 000. Being quite local, market requirements for web sites are simple and stable — clients need to control navigation, write articles in a word-like editor, upload illustrations and place ad banners, all with no additional programming. As many web developers do, I'm using my own content management system that fits these expectations. I have also started developing a newer version of this system that has better support for international environments, but I'm too distant from the real market demand in Europe to speak of the right track here. Technically it's based on php/mysql and uses xslt for templating. It allows for quick website deployment, and has architectural neatness, lack of which made me abandon similar opensource solutions (Joomla and the like). Deploying time from rasterized design proofs is normally under 6-8 working hours, don't know how that compares to the world practice. EDIT 2: Can anyone share what Norwegian (Scandinavian) web solutions market currently demands?

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• How to enable and connect to RDP on a Windows Azure Web Role Instance?

  - by Enrique Lima

  We all know there have been some updates to Windows Azure, and one of the biggest I would say is the capability of being able to remote into the “OS level” of the image running a role.  And I am not talking about VM Role, I am talking about a Web Role for example. As developers we use Visual Studio, and when we are getting ready to deploy a project, we have the option of enabling this. Here is how: 1.  We publish our Project 2. On the Deployment dialog, provide all the details for your account, and before clicking OK, click on Configure Remote Desktop connections. 3.  Enable connections and the rest of the configuration.  Now, here is where there is an extra set of steps.  The first thing to know: The certificate used here is different from the other certs you have in place.  I created a new one, the went into certmgr.msc, then to Personal, then I selected the cert I just created.  Did a right-click, then All Tasks > Export.  Because what is needed is a pfx package, make sure when exporting you select to export the private key. 4. Click OK, on the Remote Desktop Configuration screen, now before you click OK on the Deployment, you will need to visit the Azure Portal. And perform the following: Go to your hosted services. Then with the service available, select the Certificates folder location. Then, select Add Certificate from the toolbar (more like Azure Portal Ribbon) Provide the details to upload the recently create pfx file. That will create the Certificate. Click OK on the deployment dialog, this kick off the deployment process. 5. Now, we need to go to the Windows Azure Portal.  Here we will select the Web Role deployed and Configure RDP. 6. Time to test.  Click on the Instance (not the role), this will make the Remote Access Connect Button available.  A file will start the process to be downloaded too 7. You will then be prompted for the credentials you configured. 8.  Validate connectivity … 9. Open IIS Manager … From here on, this is a way to manage and work with your Instance.

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• OOF checklist

  - by Daniel Moth

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

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• Alert: It is No Longer 1982, So Why is CRM Still There?

  - by Mike Stiles

  Hot off the heels of Oracle’s recent LinkedIn integration announcement and Oracle Marketing Cloud Interact 2014, the Oracle Social Cloud is preparing for another big event, the CRM Evolution conference and exhibition in NYC. The role of social channels in customer engagement continues to grow, and social customer engagement will be a significant theme at the conference. According to Paul Greenberg, CRM Evolution Conference Chair, author, and Managing Principal at The 56 Group, social channels have become so pervasive that there is no longer a clear reason to make a distinction between “social CRM” and traditional CRM systems. Why not? Because social is a communication hub every bit as vital and used as the phone or email. What makes social different is that if you think of it as a phone, it’s a party line. That means customer interactions are far from secret, and social connections are listening in by the hundreds, hearing whether their friend is having a positive or negative experience with your brand. According to a Mention.com study, 76% of brand mentions are neutral, neither positive nor negative. These mentions fail to get much notice. So think what that means about the remaining 24% of mentions. They’re standing out, because a verdict, about you, is being rendered in them, usually with emotion. Suddenly, where the R of CRM has been lip service and somewhat expendable in the past, “relationship” takes on new meaning, seriousness, and urgency. Remarkably, legions of brands still approach CRM as if it were 1982. Today, brands must provide customer experiences the customer actually likes (how dare they expect such things). They must intimately know not only their customers, but each customer, because technology now makes personalized experiences possible. That’s why the Oracle Social Cloud has been so mission-oriented about seamlessly integrating social with sales, marketing and customer service interactions so the enterprise can have an actionable 360-degree view of the customer. It’s the key to that customer-centricity we hear so much about these days. If you’re attending CRM Evolution, Chris Moody, Director of Product Marketing for the Oracle Marketing Cloud, will show you how unified customer experiences and enhanced customer centricity will help you attract and keep ideal customers and brand advocates (“The Pursuit of Customer-Centricity” Aug 19 at 2:45p ET) And Meg Bear, Group Vice President for the Oracle Social Cloud, will sit on a panel talking about “terms of engagement” and the ways tech can now enhance your interactions with customers (Aug 20 at 10a ET). If you can’t be there, we’ll be doing our live-tweeting thing from the @oraclesocial handle, so make sure you’re a faithful follower. You’ll notice NOBODY is writing about the wisdom of “company-centricity.” Now is the time to bring your customer relationship management into the socially connected age. @mikestilesPhoto: Sue Pizarro, freeimages.com

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• Independent Research on 1500 Companies Reveals Challenges in Performance Visibility – Part 1

  - by ndwyouell

  At the end of May I was joined by Professor Andy Neely of Cambridge University on a webinar, with an audience of over 700, to discuss the results of this extensive study which covered 13 countries and nearly every commercial and industrial sector.  What stunned both of us was not so much the number listening but the 100 questions they asked in just 1 hour.  This certainly represents a record in my experience and for those that organized the webinar. So what was all the fuss about?  Well, to begin with this was a pretty big sample and it represented organizations with over $100m sales across the USA, Europe, Africa and the Middle East. It also delivered some pretty interesting results across a wide range of EPM subjects such as profitability, planning and reporting.  Let’s look at some of those findings. We kicked off with profitability, one of the key factors in driving performance, or that is what you would think, but in fact 82% of our respondents said they did not have complete visibility into the profitability of their organization. 91% of these went further to say that, not surprisingly, this lack of knowledge into the profitability has implications with over half citing 3 or more implications.  Implications cited included misallocated resources, revenue opportunities not maximized, erroneous decisions made and impaired financial performance.  Quite a list of implications, especially given the difficult economic circumstances many organizations are operating in at this time. So why is this?  Well other results in the study point to some of the potential reasons.  Firstly 59% of respondents that use spreadsheets use them for monitoring profitability and 93% of all managers responding to the study use spreadsheets to gather and analyze information.  This is an enormous proportion given the problems with using spreadsheets based performance management systems that have been widely talked about for many years.  For profitability analysis this is particularly important when you consider the typical requirement will be to allocate cost and revenue across 6+ dimensions based on many different allocation methods.  Not something that can be done easily in spreadsheets plus it gets to be a nightmare once you want to change allocations, run different scenarios and then change the basis of your planning and budgeting! It is no wonder so many organizations have challenges in performance visibility. My next blog will look at the fragmented nature of many organizations’ planning.  In the meantime if you want to read the complete report on the research go to: http://www.oracle.com/webapps/dialogue/ns/dlgwelcome.jsp?p_ext=Y&p_dlg_id=10077790&src=7038701&Act=29

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• Building a Solaris 11 repository without network connection

  - by user12611852

  Solaris 11 has been released and is a fantastic new iteration of Oracle's rock solid, enterprise operating system.  One of the great new features is the repository based Image Packaging system.  IPS not only introduces new cloud based package installation services, it is also integrated with our zones, boot environment and ZFS file systems to provide a safe, easy and fast way to perform system updates. My customers typically don't have network access and, in fact, can't connect to any network until they have "Authority to connect."  It's useful, however, to build up a Solaris 11 system with additional software using the new Image Packaging System and locally stored repository. The Solaris 11 documentation describes how to create a locally stored repository with full explanations of what the commands do. I'm simply providing the quick and dirty steps.  The easiest way is to download the ISO image, burn to a DVD and insert into your DVD drive.  Then as root: pkg set-publisher -G '*' -g file:///cdrom/sol11repo_full/repo solaris Now you can to install software using the GUI package manager or the pkg commands.  If you would like something more permanent (or don't have a DVD drive), however, it takes a little more work. After installing Solaris 11, download (on another system perhaps) the two files that make up the Solaris 11 repository from our download site Sneaker-net the files to your Solaris 11 system Unzip and cat the two files together to create one large ISO image. The file is about 6.9 GB in size zfs create rpool/export/repoSolaris11 zfs set atime=off rpool/export/repoSolaris11 zfs set compression=on rpool/export/repoSolaris11 (save some space) lofiadm -a sol-11-1111-repo-full.iso /dev/lofi/1 mount -F hsfs /dev/lofi/1 /mnt You could stop here and set the publisher to point to the /mnt/repo location, however, this mount will not be persistent across reboots. Copy the repository from the mounted ISO image to a permanent, on disk location. rsync -aP /mnt/repo /export/repoSolaris11 pkgrepo -s /export/repoSolaris11 refresh pkg set-publisher -G '*' -g /export/repoSolaris11/repo solaris You now have a locally installed repository for adding additional software packages for Solaris 11.  The documentation also takes you through publishing your repository on the network so that others can access it.

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• How Do I Do Alpha Transparency Properly In XNA 4.0?

  - by Soshimo

  Okay, I've read several articles, tutorials, and questions regarding this. Most point to the same technique which doesn't solve my problem. I need the ability to create semi-transparent sprites (texture2D's really) and have them overlay another sprite. I can achieve that somewhat with the code samples I've found but I'm not satisfied with the results and I know there is a way to do this. In mobile programming (BREW) we did it old school and actually checked each pixel for transparency before rendering. In this case it seems to render the sprite below it blended with the alpha above it. This may be an artifact of how I'm rendering the texture but, as I said before, all examples point to this one technique. Before I go any further I'll go ahead and paste my example code. public void Draw(SpriteBatch batch, Camera camera, float alpha) { int tileMapWidth = Width; int tileMapHeight = Height; batch.Begin(SpriteSortMode.Texture, BlendState.AlphaBlend, SamplerState.PointWrap, DepthStencilState.Default, RasterizerState.CullNone, null, camera.TransformMatrix); for (int x = 0; x < tileMapWidth; x++) { for (int y = 0; y < tileMapHeight; y++) { int tileIndex = _map[y, x]; if (tileIndex != -1) { Texture2D texture = _tileTextures[tileIndex]; batch.Draw( texture, new Rectangle( (x * Engine.TileWidth), (y * Engine.TileHeight), Engine.TileWidth, Engine.TileHeight), new Color(new Vector4(1f, 1f, 1f, alpha ))); } } } batch.End(); } As you can see, in this code I'm using the overloaded SpriteBatch.Begin method which takes, among other things, a blend state. I'm almost positive that's my problem. I don't want to BLEND the sprites, I want them to be transparent when alpha is 0. In this example I can set alpha to 0 but it still renders both tiles, with the lower z ordered sprite showing through, discolored because of the blending. This is not a desired effect, I want the higher z-ordered sprite to fade out and not effect the color beneath it in such a manner. I might be way off here as I'm fairly new to XNA development so feel free to steer me in the correct direction in the event I'm going down the wrong rabbit hole. TIA

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• Assessing Relative Maintainability

  - by João Bragança

  We (a contractor, actually) are implementing an off the shelf system to replace a legacy homegrown system for the core domain of the company (designing widgets). Unfortunately both systems will have to run concurrently for some time, as the product just isn't ready yet. Also, the decision was made to only migrate some of the widgets from the legacy system, based on date of last sale activity. Later on a new requirement came down: certain people in the company, most of them outside of the widget development context, want to search all widgets. The search results screen has 3 pieces of data: a GUID, a human readable id that is searchable, and a brief description (may need to be searchable in the future). In the widget details, there will be multiple screens. These screens align very well along SOA / bounded context lines - a screen for marketing data, a screen for sales history, etc. UML ahead! I am probably using the wrong kind of arrows here so please forgive me. The current solution - which is not in production yet - is something like the following: Both systems will be queried and the controller will merge the results. The new system has its own proprietary query language (we've alleviated this a bit with a LINQ provider). It also puts a lot of data on the wire. 15 search results typically run about 60k of unintelligible SOAP-wrapped xml. So I would prefer to avoid querying this system directly. These two systems publish events to help us integrate with other systems, mainly an ERP system. One of these events contains all the data necessary for the search screen. I proposed the following alternative: However I am being told that 'adding another database' will create more maintenance down the road. However, I believe this to be false, as I had to add a relatively simple feature that took several hours longer than anticipated because of this merging code. I want to get a feel for which system is more maintainable in the long run. I personally have not had the burden of maintaining any large system. I want something more than my gut. Specifically I'd like to know if having more, specialized physical databases is more or less maintainable than having less larger physical databases.

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• career planning advice [closed]

  - by JDB

  Possible Duplicate: Are certifications worth it? I am at the point in my career where people start to veer off into either management-type roles or they focus on solidifying their technical skills to stay in the development game for the long-haul. Here's my story: I've got a degree in economics, an MA in Political Science and an MBA in Finance and Management. In addition, I've done coursework in advanced math and software development (although no degree in math or software). All-in-all, I've got 13 years of post-secondary education under my belt. I, however, currently work as a software developer using C# for desktop, Silverlight, Flex and javascript for web, and objective c for mobile. I've been in software development for the past 3.3 years, and it seems like it comes pretty easy to me. I work in a field called "geospatial information systems," which just involves customization and manipulation of geospatial data. Right now I am looking at one of several certifications. Given this background, which of these certifications has the highest ceiling? CFA PMP various development/technological certifications from Microsoft, etc. Other? My academic and work experience are all heavy on the analytical/development side, esp. so given the MBA and the B.S. in Econ. The political science degree was really a lot of stats. So it seems that I would be good pursuing more of the CFA/analytical role. This is a difficult path, however, because I have no work experience in the financial sector, and the developers in finance are all "quants," which again, I am OK with, but I haven't done much statistical modeling in the past 3.3 years. The PMP would require knowledge of best practices as it pertains explicitly to software development. I also don't enjoy a lot of business travel, a common theme for most PMP jobs I've seen. If certifications is the route, which would you recommend? Anything else? I've thought about going back to try to knock out a B.S. in C.S., but I wasn't sure how long that would take, or what would be involved. Thoughts or recommendations? Thanks in advance! I turn 32 this weekend, which is what has forced me to think about these issues.

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• Resources to Help You Getting Up To Speed on ADF Mobile

  - by Joe Huang

  Hi, everyone: By now, I hope you would have a chance to review the sample applications and try to deploy it.  This is a great way to get started on learning ADF Mobile.  To help you getting started, here is a central list of "steps to get up to speed on ADF Mobile" and related resources that can help you developing your mobile application. Check out the ADF Mobile Landing Page on the Oracle Technology Network. View this introductory video. Read this Data Sheet and FAQ on ADF Mobile. JDeveloper 11.1.2.3 Download. Download the generic version of JDeveloper for installation on Mac. Note that there are workarounds required to install JDeveloper on a Mac. Download ADF Mobile Extension from JDeveloper Update Center or Here. Please note you will need to configure JDeveloper for Internet access (In HTTP Proxy preferences) in order the install the extension, as the installation process will prompt you for a license that's linked off Oracle's web site. View this end-to-end application creation video. View this end-to-end iOS deployment video if you are developing for iOS devices. Configure your development environment, including location of the SDK, etc in JDeveloper-Tools-Preferences-ADF Mobile dialog box.  The two videos above should cover some of these configuration steps. Check out the sample applications shipped with JDeveloper, and then deploy them to simulator/devices using the steps outlined in the video above.  This blog entry outlines all sample applications shipped with JDeveloper. Develop a simple mobile application by following this tutorial. Try out the Oracle Open World 2012 Hands on Lab to get a sense of how to programmatically access server data.  You will need these source files. Ask questions in the ADF/JDeveloper Forum. Search ADF Mobile Preview Forum for entries from ADF Mobile Beta Testing participants. For all other questions, check out this exhaustive and detailed ADF Mobile Developer Guide. If something does not seem right, check out the ADF Mobile Release Note. Thanks, Oracle ADF Mobile Product Management Team

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• Setting up Ubuntu on my mother's computer

  - by idealmachine

  Intended use My mother had an old Compaq desktop computer running Windows 98, which she used for occasional Web browsing and playing cards. The name of her card game is Hoyle Card Games 3. Although I had to repair it several times over the last 10 years, it worked fine until it finally died at the end of last year. Hardware specifications A relative brought up a newer computer soon afterward: Operating system: Windows XP Asus K8N motherboard (with broken on-board sound; getting a sound card) Athlon 64? processor (don't remember the clock speed) 512 MB RAM Hope the graphics card works... Replacement sound card will be one of: Ensoniq ES1370 AudioPCI Diamond Monster Sound MX300 (Aureal chipset) Sound Blaster Audigy 2 SE Peripherals HP Scanjet 3400c scanner (USB connected) HP LaserJet multi-function printer (parallel port connected, and printing works with a PCL driver) Same serial mouse as old computer Question I had set up an SSH/VNC connection to allow for remotely working out problems. Or so I thought. A month later, the computer would not boot, rendering the SSH connection useless and an OS reinstall necessary. Unfortunately, I have neither the original Windows disc nor the product key. Unless I were to pay $200 for a full Windows 7 Home Premium license for my computer, I would not be able to re-install Windows XP on hers. I consider myself an advanced Linux user, having used Debian for years. So here are my questions. I have only one day to decide whether to use Ubuntu or buy Windows: A quick search leads me to believe all the hardware listed above is supposed to work with Linux, but am I mistaken? Would Ubuntu/Xubuntu suffice (specify which one if it matters), or would I be better off paying the $200 necessary for Windows XP? Is the card game likely to run on Wine? I believe the minimum system requirement is Windows 95. Failing Wine compatibility, will VirtualBox run fast enough on such a computer (Windows 98 as the guest OS)? Are there any free card games just as good? She plays mainly Bridge, Poker, and Solitaire. Is there any "Large Fonts" option for those with poor vision? The lack of it would be a big disadvantage. BONUS: Although I would probably replace the old mouse upon a move to Ubuntu, is it even possible to get a serial mouse working?

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• Why is my arrow texture being drawn in odd places?

  - by tyjkenn

  This is a script I wrote that places an arrow on the screen, pointing to an enemy off-screen, or, if the enemy is on-screen, it places an arrow hovering above the enemy. Everything seems to work, except for some odd reason, I see random arrows floating around, often skewed and resized (which I really don't understand, because I only rotate and place in this script). Even when I only have one enemy in the scene, I still see these random arrows. It should only be drawing one per enemy. Note: when all enemies are removed, no arrows appear. var arrow : Texture; var cam : Camera; var dim : int = 30; function OnGUI() { var objects = GameObject.FindGameObjectsWithTag("Enemy"); for(var ob : GameObject in objects) { var pos = cam.WorldToViewportPoint(ob.transform.position); if(gameObject.GetComponent(FollowCamera).target != null){ var tar = gameObject.GetComponent(FollowCamera).target.parent; } if(pos.z>1 && ob.transform != tar){ var xDiff = (pos.x*cam.pixelWidth)-(cam.pixelWidth/2); var yDiff = (pos.y*cam.pixelHeight)-(cam.pixelHeight/2); var angle = Mathf.Rad2Deg*Mathf.Atan(yDiff/xDiff)+180; if(xDiff>0) angle += 180; var dist = Mathf.Sqrt(xDiff*xDiff + yDiff*yDiff); var slope = yDiff/xDiff; var camSlope = cam.pixelHeight/cam.pixelWidth; var theX = -1000.0; var theY = -1000.0; var mult = 0; var temp; if(Mathf.Abs(xDiff)>(cam.pixelWidth/2)||Mathf.Abs(yDiff)>(cam.pixelHeight/2)){ //touching right if(slope<camSlope && slope>-camSlope) { if(xDiff>(cam.pixelWidth/2)) { theX = cam.pixelWidth - (dim/2); mult = -1; }else if(xDiff<-(cam.pixelWidth/2)) { theX = (dim/2); mult = 1; } temp = ((cam.pixelWidth/2)*yDiff)/xDiff; theY =(cam.pixelHeight/2)+(mult*temp); } else{ if(yDiff>(cam.pixelHeight/2)) { theY = (dim/2); mult = 1; }else if(yDiff<-(cam.pixelHeight/2)) { theY = cam.pixelHeight - (dim/2); mult = -1; } temp = ((cam.pixelHeight/2)*xDiff)/yDiff; theX =(cam.pixelWidth/2)+(mult*temp); } } else { angle = -90; theX = (cam.pixelWidth/2)+xDiff; theY = (cam.pixelHeight/2)-yDiff-dim; } GUIUtility.RotateAroundPivot(-angle, Vector2(theX, theY)); Graphics.DrawTexture(Rect(theX-(dim/2),theY-(dim/2),dim,dim),arrow,null); GUIUtility.RotateAroundPivot(angle, Vector2(theX, theY)); } } }

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• Speaker Notes...

  - by wulfers

  At a .Net User Group meeting this week, I experienced two poorly prepared speakers floundering through presentations….  As a Lead Technologist at the company I work for, I have experience training technical staff and also giving presentations at code camps.  Here are a few guidelines for aspiring speakers you might find helpful…   1.       Do not stand in front of your audience and read your slides.  This is  offensive to your audience and not what they came for...  Your slides are there to reinforce the information you are presenting and to give the audience a little clarification on some terms you may use and as a visual aid for some complicated issues. 2.       Have someone review your presentation (slides, notes, …) who speaks the language you will be presenting in fluently.  Also record at least ten minutes of your presentation and have that same person review that.  One of the speakers this week used the word “Basically” fifty times in less than thirty minutes…  I started to flinch every time he used the term. 3.       Be Prepared  -  before the presentation begins.  Don’t make any last minute changes to your presentation or demo code the night before.  Don’t patch your laptop or demo servers the night before.  If possible create a virtual image that you only use for presentations and use that (refreshed before every presentation). 4.       Know the level of expertise of your audience.  Speaking above or below their abilities will make or break your presentation. 5.       Deliver what you promise. The presentation this week was supposed to be on BDD (Behavior Driven Develpment).  The presenter completely ran off track and 90% of the discussion was how his team mistakenly used TDD (Test Driven Development), and was unhappy with the results.  Based on his loss of focus we only heard a rushed 10 minute presentation on DBB which was a disservice to the audience. 6.       Practice your presentation with your own small team before you try this on a room full of people you don’t know.  A side benefit of doing this with your own team is that you can get candid feedback from your team and also get kudos for training your own team.  I find I can also turn my presentations into technical white papers and get a third benefit from the work I’ve put into a presentation. 7.       Sharpen your own saw.  Pick a topic that is fairly current.  Something you would like to learn about and would benefit your current career path. 8.       Have fun doing it.

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• Is Innovation Dead?

  - by wulfers

  My question is has innovation died?  For large businesses that do not have a vibrant, and fearless leadership (see Apple under Steve jobs), I think is has.  If you look at the organizational charts for many of the large corporate megaliths you will see a plethora of middle managers who are so risk averse that innovation (any change involves risk) is choked off since there are no innovation champions in the middle layers.  And innovation driven top down can only happen when you have a visionary in the top ranks, and that is also very rare.So where is actual innovation happening, at the bottom layer, the people who live in the trenches…   The people who live for a challenge. So how can big business leverage this innovation layer?  Remove the middle management layer.   Provide an innovation champion who has an R&D budget and is tasked with working with the bottom layer of a company, the engineers, developers  and business analysts that live on the edge (Where the corporate tires meet the road). Here are two innovation failures I will tell you about, and both have been impacted by a company so risk averse it is starting to fail in its primary business ventures: This company initiated an innovation process several years ago.  The process was driven companywide with team managers being the central points of collection of innovative ideas.  These managers were given no budget to do anything with these ideas.  There was no process or incentive for these managers to drive it about their team.  This lasted close to a year and the innovation program slowly slipped into oblivion…. A second example:  This same company failed an attempt to market a consumer product in a line where there was already a major market leader.  This product was under development for several years and needed to provide some major device differentiation form the current market leader.  This same company had a large Lead Technologist community made up of real innovators in all areas of technology.  Did this same company leverage the skills and experience of this internal community,   NO!!! So to wrap this up, if large companies really want to survive, then they need to start acting like a small company.  Support those innovators and risk takers!  Reward them by implementing their innovative ideas.  Champion (from the top down) innovation (found at the bottom) in your companies.  Remember if you stand still you are really falling behind.Do it now!  Take a risk!

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• Analysing SQLBits Feedback

  - by jamiet

  Earlier this week I received all the feedback that people offered on my session at SQLBits 7 in York – “SSIS Dataflow Performance Tuning” (the video is available online if you wish to see it). As you may have gathered from previous posts on this blog and my less-SQLy-focused Wordpress blog I am a big fan of collecting and tracking both personal and public data and session feedback lends itself very well to tracking because it is quantitative rather than qualitative; by that I mean attendees are invited to provide marks out of ten rather than (or, in the case of SQLBits, as well as) written comments. The SQLBits feedback is also useful because they use a consistent format – the same questions are asked each time – this means it is particularly easy to to track whether the scores that people give are trending up or down. I suspect that somewhere the SQLBits organisers have a big Analysis Services cube (ok, perhaps its an Excel pivot table) that allows them to analyse these scores per conference, speaker, track etc.… and there’s no reason that we as session speakers cannot do the same thing. To that end I have started to store my feedback in an Excel spreadsheet of my own which in the interests of transparency is available for public viewing (only a web browser required) on SkyDrive at http://cid-550f681dad532637.office.live.com/view.aspx/Public/Misc/Personal%20SQLBits%20Session%20Feedback.xlsx. I have used a pivot table to aggregate all that feedback and here is a screenshot: I am hereby making a public plea to the SQLBits organisers (on the off-chance that they are reading) to please continue to keep the feedback format consistent in the future and I encourage them to publish all of the feedback in an anonymised form. I would also encourage anyone doing conference speaking to track their conference feedback in the same way that I am doing so that you get an insight into whether or not you are improving over time. It is not difficult to setup and maintaining it as you do more sessions takes very little effort. Storing feedback data like this leads me to wider thoughts about well-known conventions and data format standardisation. Let’s imagine a utopia where there were a standard set of questions for capturing session feedback that were leveraged at every conference regardless of subject matter, location or culture; that would give rise to immense cross-conference and cross-discipline analysis – the data analyst in me goes giddy at the thought of it. It is scenarios like this that drive my interest both in data formats such as iCalendar, microformats and RDF, and in emerging movements such as the semantic web and linked data, all things which I have written about in the past. I don’t know whether we will ever reach the stage where every piece of data has structured, descriptive metadata associated with it but I live in hope. @Jamiet

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