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• Offshoring: does it ever work?

  - by DanSingerman

  I know there has been a fair amount of discussion on here about outsourcing/offshoring, and the general opinion seems to be that at best it is difficult, and at worst it fails. I have direct experience of offshoring myself; a previous company where I was a dev manager wanted to send some development offshore, and we ran a pilot scheme to see how well it would work. Of course it was a complete failure, although it is not completely clear to me whether this was down to the offshore devs being less talented, the process, or other factors (no doubt it was really a combination). I can see as a business how offshoring looks attractive (much lower day rate), but as far as I can see, the only way it could possibly work is if you do exceptionally detailed design up front, with incredibly detailed specifications; and by the time you have invested in producing that, you have probably spent as nearly as much as if you had written the actual code locally (which I think is an instance of No Silver Bullet) So, what I want to know is, does anyone here have any experience of offshoring actually working ever? Especially if there are any success stories of it working in a semi-agile way? I know there are developers here from all over the World; has anyone worked on an offshore project they consider successful?

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• Scaling along an arbitrary axis (Dealing with non-uniform scale)

  - by Jon

  I'm trying to build my own little engine to get more familiar with the concepts of 3D programming. I have a transform class that on each frame it creates a Scaling Matrix (S), a Rotation Matrix from a Quaternion (R) and concatenates them together (S*R). Once i have SR, I insert the translation values into the bottom of the three columns. So i end up with a transformation matrix that looks like: [SR SR SR 0] [SR SR SR 0] [SR SR SR 0] [tx ty tz 1] This works perfectly in all cases except when rotating an object that has a non-uniform scale. For example a unit cube with ScaleX = 4, ScaleY = 2, ScaleZ = 1 will give me a rectangular box that is 4 times as wide as the depth and twice as high as the depth. If i then translate this around, the box stays the same and looks normal. The problem happens whenever I try to rotate this scaled box. The shape itself becomes distorted and it appears as though the Scale factors are affecting the object on the World X,Y,Z axis rather than the local X,Y,Z axis of the object. I've done some pretty extensive research through a variety of textbooks (Eberly, Moller/Hoffman, Phar etc) and there isn't a ton there to go off of. Online, most of the answers say to avoid non-uniform scaling which I understand the desire to avoid it, but I'd still like to figure out how to support it. The only thing I can think off is that when constructing a Scale Matrix: [sx 0 0 0] [0 sy 0 0] [0 0 sz 0] [0 0 0 1] This is scaling along the World Axis instead of the object's local Direction, Up and Right vectors or it's local Z, Y, X axis. Does anyone have any tips or ideas on how to handle construction a transformation matrix that allows for non-uniform scaling and rotation? Thanks!

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• Is a "model" branch a common practice?

  - by dukeofgaming

  I just thought it could be a good thing to have a dedicated version control branch for all database schema changes and I wanted to know if anyone else is doing the same and what have the results been. Say that you are working with: Schema model/documentation (some file where you model the database visually to generate the schema source, say MySQL Workbench, with a .mwb file, which is binary) Schema source (a .sql file) Schema-based code generation The normal way we were working was with feature branches, so we would do changes to the model files (the database specific ones), and then have to regenerate points 2 and 3, dealing with the possible conflicts (or even code rewriting). Now say that your workflow goes the same way as the previous item numbering. With a model branch you wouldn't have to reconcile the schema model with binaries in other feature branches, or have to regenerate schema source and regenerate code (which might have human code on top of it). It makes so much sense to me it feels weird not having seen this earlier as a common practice. Edit: I'm counting on branch merges to be the assertions for the model matching the code. I use a DVCS, so I don't fear long-lived branches or scary-looking merges. I'm also doing feature branching.

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• General Availability: Simplified User Experience Design Patterns eBook

  - by ultan o'broin

  Karen Scipi (@karenscipi) writes: The Oracle Applications User Experience team is delighted to announce that our Simplified User Experience Design Patterns for the Oracle Applications Cloud Service eBook is available for free. Working with publishers McGraw-Hill, we're pleased to make the eBook available in EPUB (for use on Apple iOS devices), MOBI (ideal for Amazon Kindle), and PDF (for anything with Adobe Reader) versions. The Simplified User Experience Design Patterns for the Oracle Applications Cloud Service eBook We’re sharing the same user experience design patterns, and their supporting guidance on page types and Oracle ADF components that Oracle uses to build simplified user interfaces (UIs) for the Oracle Sales Cloud and Oracle Human Capital Management (HCM) Cloud, with you so that you can build your own simplified UI solutions. Click to register and download your free copy of the eBook Design patterns offer big wins for applications builders because they are proven, reusable, and based on Oracle technology. They enable developers, partners, and customers to design and build the best user experiences consistently, shortening the application's development cycle, boosting designer and developer productivity, and lowering the overall time and cost of building a great user experience. Developers use the eBook to build their own simplified UIs with Oracle ADF and Oracle JDeveloper Now, Oracle partners, customers and the Oracle ADF community can share further in the Oracle Applications User Experience science and design expertise that brought the acclaimed simplified UIs to the Cloud and they can build their own UIs, simply and productively too!

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• Oracle Linux Partner Pavilion Spotlight - Part IV

  - by Ted Davis

  Welcome to the final Oracle Linux Partner Pavilion Spotlight Part IV.  Two days left till the Big Show. You are gearing up. We are gearing up. You can feel the excitement.  We can feel the excitement. This. Will. Be. The. Best. Show. EVER. See you at the Partner Pavilion (Moscone south # 1033) at Oracle OpenWorld. - Oracle Linux / Oracle VM Team HP and Oracle are pleased to announce another Oracle Validated Configuration based on the ProLiant DL980 server. Many choose to deploy Oracle workloads on the ProLiant DL980 based on the cost/performance ratio they achieve running Oracle Linux Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel. You can be confident that Oracle Validated Configurations based on ProLiant servers will help you achieve your most demanding performance goals. QLogic The QLogic-Oracle partnership spans over 20 years resulting in the most comprehensive line of Oracle Linux I/O adapter technology. Interface options include Ethernet, Fibre-Channel, and FCoE. Host side connectivity is offered in both low profile PCIe and Express Module PCIe form factors. QLogic software drives are jointly qualified and “in-box” with Oracle Linux 5.x, 6,x and Oracle VM enabling simplified installation and management while simultaneously taking risk out of the solution. Bringing innovations such as NPIV, T10-PI, and intelligent caching adapter technology to the Oracle Linux environment further strengthens the QLogic advantage. A big thank you to all of our Oracle Linux Partner Pavilion participants. We - they- look forward to meeting you next week at Oracle OpenWorld. If you've missed our three previous Partner Spotlight's - here are the links: Part I, Part II, Part III. 

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• How to add precedence to LALR parser like in YACC?

  - by greenoldman

  Please note, I am asking about writing LALR parser, not writing rules for LALR parser. What I need is... ...to mimic YACC precedence definitions. I don't know how it is implemented, and below I describe what I've done and read so far. For now I have basic LALR parser written. Next step -- adding precedence, so 2+3*4 could be parsed as 2+(3*4). I've read about precedence parsers, however I don't see how to fit such model into LALR. I don't understand two points: how to compute when insert parenthesis generator how to compute how many parenthesis the generator should create I insert generators when the symbols is taken from input and put at the stack, right? So let's say I have something like this (| denotes boundary between stack and input): ID = 5 | + ..., at this point I add open, so it gives ID = < 5 | + ..., then I read more input ID = < 5 + | 5 ... and more ID = < 5 + 5 | ; ... and more ID = < 5 + 5 ; | ... At this point I should have several reduce moves in normal LALR, but the open parenthesis does not match so I continue reading more input. Which does not make sense. So this was when problem. And about count, let's say I have such data < 2 + < 3 * 4 >. As human I can see that the last generator should create 2 parenthesis, but how to compute this? After all there could be two scenarios: ( 2 + ( 3 *4 )) -- parenthesis is used to show the outcome of generator or (2 + (( 3 * 4 ) ^ 5) because there was more input Please note that in both cases before 3 was open generator, and after 4 there was close generator. However in both cases, after reading 4 I have to reduce, so I have to know what generator "creates".

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• What's the best way to manage error logging for exceptions?

  - by Peter Boughton

  Introduction If an error occurs on a website or system, it is of course useful to log it, and show the user a polite message with a reference code for the error. And if you have lots of systems, you don't want this information dotted around - it is good to have a single centralised place for it. At the simplest level, all that's needed is an incrementing id and a serialized dump of the error details. (And possibly the "centralised place" being an email inbox.) At the other end of the spectrum is perhaps a fully normalised database that also allows you to press a button and see a graph of errors per day, or identifying what the most common type of error on system X is, whether server A has more database connection errors than server B, and so on. What I'm referring to here is logging code-level errors/exceptions by a remote system - not "human-based" issue tracking, such as done with Jira,Trac,etc. Questions I'm looking for thoughts from developers who have used this type of system, specifically with regards to: What are essential features you couldn't do without? What are good to have features that really save you time? What features might seem a good idea, but aren't actually that useful? For example, I'd say a "show duplicates" function that identifies multiple occurrence of an error (without worrying about 'unimportant' details that might differ) is pretty essential. A button to "create an issue in [Jira/etc] for this error" sounds like a good time-saver. Just to re-iterate, what I'm after is practical experiences from people that have used such systems, preferably backed-up with why a feature is awesome/terrible. (If you're going to theorise anyway, at the very least mark your answer as such.)

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• Is the development of CLI apps considered "backwards"?

  - by user61852

  I am a DBA fledgling with a lot of experience in programming. I have developed several CLI, non interactive apps that solve some daily repetitive tasks or eliminate the human error from more complex albeit not so daily tasks. These tools are now part of our tool box. I find CLI apps are great because you can include them in an automated workflow. Also the Unix philosophy of doing a single thing but doing it well, and letting the output of a process be the input of another, is a great way of building a set of tools than would consolidate into an strategic advantage. My boss recently commented that developing CLI tools is "backwards", or constitutes a "regression". I told him I disagreed, because most CLI tools that exist now are not legacy but are live projects with improved versions being released all the time. Is this kind of development considered "backwards" in the market? Does it look bad on a rèsumè? I also considered all solutions whether they are web or desktop, should have command line, non-interactive options. Some people consider this a waste of programming resources. Is this goal a worthy one in a software project?

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• for an ajax heavy web application which would be better SOAP or REST?

  - by coder

  I'm building an ajax heavy application (client-side strictly html/css/js) which will be getting all the data and using server business logic via webservices. I know REST seems to be the hot topic but I can't find any good arguments. The main argument seems to be its "light-weight". My impression so far is that wsdl/soap based services are more expressive and allow for more a more complex transfer of data. It appears that soap would be more useful in the application I'm building where the only code consuming the services will be the js downloaded in the client browser. REST on the other hand seems to have a smaller entry barrier and so can be more useful for services like twitter in allowing other developers to consume these services easily. Also, REST seems to Te better suited for simple data transfers. So in summary SOAP is useful for complex data transfer and REST is useful in simple data transfer. I'm currently under the impression that using SOAP would be best due to the complexity of the messages but perhaps there's other factors. What are your thoughts on the pros/cons of soap/rest for a heavy ajax web app?

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• Fusion CRM Release 7 RCDs and TOIs Now Available!

  - by Richard Lefebvre

  Fusion CRM Release 7 Release Content Documents (RCD) and Transfer of Information (TOI) presentations are now available. In addition, you can find 245 new or changed product features for Release 7 on Oracle Product Features. All the new RCDs and TOIs can be found on the Fusion Learning Center: Customer Relationship Management TOIs - Customer Center, Define Segmentation Strategy, Enterprise Contracts, Oracle Social Network, Sales, and Territory Management Business Process Model (BPM) RCDs - Customer Service, Marketing, Order Fulfillment, and Sales Financials BPM RCDs - Asset Lifecycle Management, Cash and Treasury Management, and Financial Control and Reporting Human Capital Management TOIs - Workforce Development, Compensation, Benefits, Worker Performance, Workforce Profiles, Enterprise Structures, Talent Review, Manage Transaction and Batch Processing, Delete HCM Storage Data, and Load Batch Data BPM RCDs - Compensation Management, Enterprise Information Management, Workforce Deployment, and Workforce Development Procurement TOI - Requisitions BPM RCD - Procurement Project Portfolio Management TOIs - Project Resources, Evaluate and Assign Resources, Maintain Resource Assignments, Manage Resource Demand, Manage Resource Supply, Manage Resource Utilization and Analytics, Project Management, Set Up Project Management BPM RCD - Project Management Supply Chain Management TOIs - Manage New Product Definition and Approval, Manage Product Change Orders, Product Hub, Define Item Class BPM RCDs - Materials Management and Logistics, Product Management and Supply Chain Planning Partners and customers can access the content from the following locations: Partner access: BPM RCDs and TOIs Oracle Partner Network Fusion Learning Center New Feature RCDs Oracle Product Features Customer access: TOIs My Oracle Support (Note:1528594.1) BPM RCDs My Oracle Support (Note:1559828.1) New Feature RCDs Oracle Product Features

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• How do you price your work?

  - by Dr.Kameleon

  Well, let me explain : This has really been an issue for me, for such a long time. And what is worse - since coding is something I simply ADORE (I would definitely do it, even if there was no payment involved whatsoever..) - is that I always end up feeling somewhat awkward... Anyway... So, here's the deal : You start working on a project, you may have something in your mind, and even if you're lucky enough and the client needs no "cost estimates" beforehand, sooner or later you'll face the ultimate dilemma of pricing your own work. So, how do YOU do it? By estimating the time you put into it? (obviously, this is not exact, 'coz perhaps a more capable coder will need much less time for the very same thing than a not-so-competent coder + even the very same coder may not "perform" equally at all times) By the Lines of code you've written? (obviously, this is not a measure either : a 10-line script that does exactly the same with a 1000-line script is, at least for me, "better") By taking into account the level of complexity of the project and, perhaps, how specialised the subject is? By taking into account other factors? (e.g. the value of the project for your customer)

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• Using HTML5 Today part 4&ndash;What happened to XHTML?

  - by Steve Albers

  This is the fourth entry in a series of descriptions & demos from the “Using HTML5 Today” user group presentation. For practical purposes, the original XHTML standard is a historical footnote, although XHTML transitional will probably live on forever in the default web page templates of old web page editors. The original XHTML spec was released in 2000, on the heels of the HTML 4.01 spec.  The plan was to move web development away from HTML to the more formal, rigorous approach that XHTML offered, but it was built on a principle that conflicts with the history and culture of the Internet: XHTML introduced the idea of Draconian Error Handling, which essentially means that invalid XML markup on a page will cause a page to stop rendering. There is a transitional mode offered in the original XHTML spec, but the goal was to move to D.E.H.  You can see the result by changing the doc type for a document to “application/xhtml+xml” - for my class example we change this setting in the web.config file: <staticContent> <remove fileExtension=".html" /> <mimeMap fileExtension=".html" mimeType="application/xhtml+xml" /> </staticContent> With the new strict syntax a simple error, in this case a duplicate </td> tag, can cause a critical page error: While XHTML became very popular in the ensuing decade, the Strict form of XHTML never achieved widespread use. Draconian Error Handling was one of the factors that led in time to the creation of the WHATWG, or Web Hypertext Application Technology Group.  WHATWG contributed to the eventually disbanding of the XHTML 2.0 working group and the W3C’s move to embrace the HTML5 standard. For developers who long for XML markup the W3C HTML5 standard includes an XHTML5 syntax. For the longer, more definitive look at what happened to XHTML and how HTML5 came to be check out the Dive Into HTML mirror site or Bruce Lawson’s “HTML5: Who, What, When Why” talk.

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• How to Reap Anticipated ROI in Large-Scale Capital Projects

  - by Sylvie MacKenzie, PMP

  Only a small fraction of companies in asset-intensive industries reliably achieve expected ROI for major capital projects 90 percent of the time, according to a new industry study. In addition, 12 percent of companies see expected ROIs in less than half of their capital projects. The problem: no matter how sophisticated and far-reaching the planning processes are, many organizations struggle to manage risks or reap the expected value from major capital investments. The data is part of the larger survey of companies in oil and gas, mining and metals, chemicals, and utilities industries. The results appear in Prepare for the Unexpected: Investment Planning in Asset-Intensive Industries, a comprehensive new report sponsored by Oracle and developed by the Economist Intelligence Unit. Analysts say the shortcomings in large-scale, long-duration capital-investments projects often stem from immature capital-planning processes. The poor decisions that result can lead to significant financial losses and disappointing project benefits, which are particularly harmful to organizations during economic downturns. The report highlights three other important findings. Teaming the right data and people doesn’t guarantee that ROI goals will be achieved. Despite involving cross-functional teams and looking at all the pertinent data, executives are still failing to identify risks and deliver bottom-line results on capital projects. Effective processes are the missing link. Project-planning processes are weakest when it comes to risk management and predicting costs and ROI. Organizations participating in the study said they fail to achieve expected ROI because they regularly experience unexpected events that derail schedules and inflate budgets. But executives believe that using more-robust risk management and project planning strategies will help avoid delays, improve ROI, and more accurately predict the long-term cost of initiatives. Planning for unexpected events is a key to success. External factors, such as changing market conditions and evolving government policies are difficult to forecast precisely, so organizations need to build flexibility into project plans to make it easier to adapt to the changes. The report outlines a series of steps executives can take to address these shortcomings and improve their capital-planning processes. Read the full report or take the benchmarking survey and find out how your organization compares.

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• Why is CS never a topic of conversation of the layman? [closed]

  - by hydroparadise

  Granted, every profession has it's technicalities. If you are an MD, you better know the anatomy of the human body, and if you are astronomer, you better know your calculus. Yet, you don't have to know these more advance topics to know that smoking might give you lung cancer because of carcinogens or the moon revolves around the earth because of gravity (thank you Discovery Channel). There's sort of a common knowledge (at least in more developed countries) of these more advanced topics. With that said, why are things like recursive descent parsing, BNF, or Turing machines hardly ever mentioned outsided 3000 or 4000 level classes in a university setting or between colleagues? Even back in my days before college in my pursuit of knowledge on how computers work, these very important topics (IMHO) never seem to get the light of day. Many different sources and sites go into "What is a processor?" or "What is RAM?", or "What is an OS?". You might get lucky and discover something about programming languages and how they play a role in how applications are created, but nothing about the tools for creating the language itself. To extend this idea, Dennis Ritchie died shortly after Steve Jobs, yet Dennis Ritchie got very little press compared to Steve Jobs. So, the heart of my question: Does the public in general not care to hear about computer science topics that make the technology in their lives work, or does the computer science community not lend itself to the general public to close the knowledge gap? Am I wrong to think the general public has the same thirst for knowledge on how things work as I do? Please consider the question carefully before answering or vote closing please.

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• Visually and audibly unambiguous subset of the Latin alphabet?

  - by elliot42

  Imagine you give someone a card with the code "5SBDO0" on it. In some fonts, the letter "S" is difficult to visually distinguish from the number five, (as with number zero and letter "O"). Reading the code out loud, it might be difficult to distinguish "B" from "D", necessitating saying "B as in boy," "D as in dog," or using a "phonetic alphabet" instead. What's the biggest subset of letters and numbers that will, in most cases, both look unambiguous visually and sound unambiguous when read aloud? Background: We want to generate a short string that can encode as many values as possible while still being easy to communicate. Imagine you have a 6-character string, "123456". In base 10 this can encode 10^6 values. In hex "1B23DF" you can encode 16^6 values in the same number of characters, but this can sound ambiguous when read aloud. ("B" vs. "D") Likewise for any string of N characters, you get (size of alphabet)^N values. The string is limited to a length of about six characters, due to wanting to fit easily within the capacity of human working memory capacity. Thus to find the max number of values we can encode, we need to find that largest unambiguous set of letters/numbers. There's no reason we can't consider the letters G-Z, and some common punctuation, but I don't want to have to go manually pairwise compare "does G sound like A?", "does G sound like B?", "does G sound like C" myself. As we know this would be O(n^2) linguistic work to do =)...

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• Mapping Your Customer Experience Journey

  - by Michael Hylton

  For those who attended today’s Oracle Customer Experience Summit keynote you heard from Brian Curran talk about the strategies and best practices to implement customer experience (CX) in your organization.  He spoke about how this evolving journey begins by understanding six steps to transform your business and put your customers front and center.  Here are those key six steps: What are the strategic business objectives in your company? What are your operational objectives and KPIs necessary to measure a CX project? Build an income statement and create “what if” scenarios and see how changes impact your business’ bottom line.  Explore what keeps you from getting to your own goals for your business. Define the business objectives and opportunities you want to meet? Understand the trends and accelerators in the market?  What factors are going on in the market affect that impact your business?  Social?  Mobile?  Cloud?  Just to name a few.  Many of these trends may signal a change in the way people think about your business. What approach will you take to solve these issues?  Understand who your customer is.  How do you need to adapt your business to build relevant, personalized customer experiences. What technologies can you implement to address CX?  Does technology help you solve your problem? A great way to begin your customer experience journey is a concept called journey mapping, one of the most powerful and deceptively simple tools for unlocking CX innovation at your organization. Here is where you can learn more about how you can bring this concept into your business to drive great customer experiences.

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for October 23, 2013

  - by OTN ArchBeat

  Virtual Dev Day: Oracle ADF Development - Web, Mobile, and Beyond This free virtual event includes technical sessions that range from introductory to deep dive, covering Oracle ADF and Oracle ADF Mobile. Multiple tracks cover every interest and every level and include live online Q&A for answers to your technical questions. Register now! Americas: Tuesday, November 19, 9am-1pm PT / 12pm-4pm ET / 1pm-5pm BRT APAC: Thursday, November 21, 10am–1:30pm IST (India) / 12:30pm–4pm SGT (Singapore) / 3:30pm–7pm AESDT EMEA: Tuesday, November 26, 9am-1pm GMT / 1pm-5pm GST/ 2:30pm-6:30pm IST A Roadmap for SOA Development and Delivery | Mark Nelson Do you know the way to S-O-A? Mark Nelson does. His latest blog post, part of an ongoing series, will help to keep you from getting lost along the way. Updated ODI Statement of Direction | Robert Schweighardt Heads up Oracle Data Integrator fans! A new product statement of direction document is available, offering "an overview of the strategic product plans for Oracle’s data integration products for bulk data movement and transformation, specifically Oracle Data Integrator (ODI) and Oracle Warehouse Builder (OWB)." Java-Powered Robot Named NAO Wows Crowds | Tori Wieldt Java community manager Tori Wieldt interviews a robot and human. Nordic OTN Tour 2013 | Lonneke Dikmans Oracle ACE Director Lonneke Dikmans checks in from the Stockholm leg of the Nordic OTN Tour for 2013, sponsored by the Danish Oracle User Group and featuring fellow ACE Directors Tim Hall and Sten Vesterli, plus local speakers at various stops. Lonneke's post include the slides from three of the presentations. Thought for the Day "Some people approach every problem with an open mouth." — Adlai E. Stevenson23rd Vice President of the United States (October 23, 1835 – June 14, 1914) Source: brainyquote.com

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• People != Resources

  - by eddraper

  Ken Tabor’s blog post “They Are not Resources – We Are People” struck a chord with me.  I distinctly remember hearing the term “resources” within the context of “people” for the first time back in the late 90’s.  I was in a meeting at Compaq and a manager had been faced with some new scope for an IT project he was managing.  His response was that he needed more “resources” in order to get the job done.  As I knew the timeline for the project was fixed and the process for acquiring additional funding would almost certainly extend beyond his expected delivery date, I wondered what he meant.  After the meeting, I asked him what he meant… his response was that he needed some more “bodies” to get the job done.  For a minute, my mind whirred… why is it so difficult to simply say “people?”  This particular manager was neither a bad person nor a bad manager… quite the contrary.  I respected him quite a bit and still do.  Over time, I began to notice that he was what could be termed an “early adopter” of many “Business speak” terms – such as “sooner rather than later,” “thrown a curve,” “boil the ocean” etcetera.  Over time, I’ve discovered that much of this lexicon can actually be useful, though cliché and overused.  For example, “Boil the ocean” does serve a useful purpose in distilling a lot of verbiage and meaning into three simple words that paint a clear mental picture.  The term “resources” would serve a similar purpose if it were applied to the concept of time, funding, or people.  The problem is that this never happened.  “Resources”, “bodies”, “ICs” (individual contributors)… this is what “people” have become in the IT business world.  Why?  We’re talking about simple word choices here.  Why have human beings been deliberately dehumanized and abstracted in this manner? What useful purpose does it serve other than to demean and denigrate?

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• Basic is Best

  - by Eric A. Stephens

  Fellow foodies will recognize the recent movement towards "farm-to-table" restaurants. These venues attempt to simplify their menus and source ingredients as close to the source as possible. I had the opportunity to dine at such a restaurant the other evening. I was gushing about the appetizer to my server when she described the preparation for the item and then punctuated her comments with "basic is best". I reminded my fellow enterprise architect diners there was an architecture lesson in that statement. They rolled their eyes and chuckled. But they also knew I was right. I'm reminded of Frederick Brooks' book The Mythical Man Month and his latest The Design of Design. The former must read book talks about complexity. But he refrains from damning all complexity. The world we live in and enterprises we strive to transform with enterprise architecture are complicated organisms, much like the human body. But sometimes a simple solution is the best approach. Fewer applications (think: portfolio rationalization). Fewer components. Fewer lines of code. Whatever level of abstraction you are working at, less is more. I'm reminded of the enterprise architecture principle "Control Technical Diversity". At one firm I created pithy catch phrases for each principles. I named this one "Less is More". But perhaps another variation is what my server said the other night, "Basic is Best".

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• What is a Coding Dojo?

  - by huwyss

  Recently i found out that there is a thing called "coding dojo". The point behind it is that software developers want to have a space to learn new stuff like processes, methods, coding details, languages, and whatnot in an environment without stress. Just for fun. No competition. No results required. No deadlines.Some days ago I joined the Zurich coding dojo. We were three programmers with different backgrounds.We gave ourselves the task to develop a method that takes an input value and returns its prime factors. We did pair programming and every few minutes we switched positions. We used test driven development. The chosen programming language was Ruby.I haven't really done TDD before. It was pretty interesting to see the algorithm develop following the testcases.We started with the first test input=1 then developed the most simple productive program that passed this very first test. Then we added the next test input=2 and implemented the productive code. We kept adding tests and made sure all tests are passed until we had the general solution.When we improved the performance of our code we saw the value of the tests we wrote before. Of course our first performance improvement broke several tests.It was a very interesting experience to see how other developers think and how they work. I will participate at the dojo again and can warmly recommend it to anyone. There are  coding dojos all over the world.Have fun!

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• Fusion Applications Announces the Online Feature Query Tool

  - by Richard Lefebvre

  Fusion Applications Development is pleased to announce the availability of a new, online tool for viewing Fusion Features. Oracle Product Features allows you to view new features in Fusion across multiple releases, families and products. You can view online or download the data in a variety of formats, including pdf and xls. This easy-to-use tool covers the same content and therefore replaces the pdf versions of the What's New documents. You can access Oracle Product Features from the Fusion Learning Center under Featured Assets > Product Features Query Tool. It can also be found under Release Readiness > Release Overview. Oracle Product Features will be available to customers and Partners from MyOracleSupport, oracle.com and the Partner Network Fusion Learning Center in the near future.  Oracle Product Features provides you with a high level of flexibility allowing you to only see the content you want, whether it is for a single Fusion product family, such as Human Capital Management (HCM), across several releases, or to view the entire listing of new features.  Content currently incorporates all new features introduced in Releases 3, 4 and 5. Release 6 content will be added in the near future.

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• Name of the Countdown Numbers round problem - and algorithmic solutions?

  - by Dai

  For the non-Brits in the audience, there's a segment of a daytime game-show where contestants have a set of 6 numbers and a randomly generated target number. They have to reach the target number using any (but not necessarily all) of the 6 numbers using only arithmetic operators. All calculations must result in positive integers. An example: Youtube: Countdown - The Most Extraordinary Numbers Game Ever? A detailed description is given on Wikipedia: Countdown (Game Show) For example: The contentant selects 6 numbers - two large (possibilities include 25, 50, 75, 100) and four small (numbers 1 .. 10, each included twice in the pool). The numbers picked are 75, 50, 2, 3, 8, 7 are given with a target number of 812. One attempt is (75 + 50 - 8) * 7 - (3 * 2) = 813 (This scores 7 points for a solution within 5 of the target) An exact answer would be (50 + 8) * 7 * 2 = 812 (This would have scored 10 points exactly matching the target). Obviously this problem has existed before the advent of TV, but the Wikipedia article doesn't give it a name. I've also saw this game at a primary school I attended where the game was called "Crypto" as an inter-class competition - but searching for it now reveals nothing. I took part in it a few times and my dad wrote an Excel spreadsheet that attempted to brute-force the problem, I don't remember how it worked (only that it didn't work, what with Excel's 65535 row limit), but surely there must be an algorithmic solution for the problem. Maybe there's a solution that works the way human cognition does (e.g. in-parallel to find numbers 'close enough', then taking candidates and performing 'smaller' operations).

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• Whole continent simulation [on hold]

  - by user2309021

  Let's suppose I am planning to create a simulation of an entire continent at some point in the past (let's say, around 0 A.D). Is it feasible to spawn a hundred million actors that interact with each other and their environments? Having them reproduce, extract resources, etc? The fact is that I actually want to create a simulation that allows me to zoom in from a view of the entire continent up to a single village, and interact with it. (Think as if you could keep zooming in the campaign map of any Total War game and the transition to the battle map was seamless, not a change of the "game mode"). By the way, I have never made a game in my entire life (I have programmed normal desktop applications, though), so I am really having trouble wrapping my head around how to implement such a thing. Even while thinking about how to implement a simple population simulator, without a graphical interface, I think that the O(n) complexity of traversing an array and telling all people to get one year older each time the program ticks is kind of stupid. Any kind help would be greatly appreciated :) EDIT: After being put on hold, I shall specify a question. How would you implement a simulation of all basic human dynamics (reproduction, resource consumption) in an entire continent (with millions of people)?

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• Vector-based fonts vs. bitmap fonts in (2d) games?

  - by jmp97

  I know that many games are using bitmap fonts. Which are the advantages for vector-based font rendering / manipulation when compared to bitmap fonts and in which scenarios would they matter the most? Prefer a focus on 2d games when answering this question. If relevant, please include examples for games using either approach. Some factors you might consider: amount of text used in the game scaling of text overlaying glyphs and anti-aliasing general rendering quality font colors and styling user interface requirements localisation / unicode text wrapping and formatting cross-platform deployment 2d vs 3d Background: I am developing a simple falling blocks game in 2d, targeted for pc. I would like to add text labels for level, score, and menu buttons. I am using SFML which uses FreeType internally, so vector-based features are easily available for my project. In my view, font sizes in simple games often don't vary, and bitmap fonts should be easier for cross-platform concerns (font-formats and font rendering quality). But I am unsure if I am missing some important points here, especially since I want to polish the looks of the final game.

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• game play strategy in an arena

  - by joulesm

  I am writing a player's behavior for an arena game, and I'm wondering if you can offer some strategies. I'm writing it in Python, but I'm just interested in the high level game play. Here are the game aspects: Arena is a circle of a given size. The arena size shrinks every round to help break ties. Players are much smaller circles, can be on teams of 1 or 2 players. Players attack by colliding with other players, and based on the physics of the collision (speed of both players, angle), one could force another player out of the arena. Once a player is out of the arena, they are out of the game (for that round). The goal is to be the only team with players left in the arena. All other players have been pushed (through collisions or mistakes) out of the arena. It is possible for there to be no winner if the last two players exit the arena at the same time. Once the player has been programmed, the game just runs. There is no human intervention in the game. I'm thinking it's easiest to implement a few simple programmatic rules for my player to follow. For example, stay close to center of the arena, attack opponents from the inner side of the arena, etc. Are there any good simple game strategies? Would adding a random aspect to the game help? For example, to avoid predictability by the other team or something. Thanks in advance.

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