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• Archbeat Link-O-Rama Top 10 Facebook Faves for October 20-26, 2013

  - by OTN ArchBeat

  Here's this week's list of the Top 10 items shared on the OTN ArchBeat Facebook Page from October 27 - November 2, 2013. Visualizing and Process (Twitter) Events in Real Time with Oracle Coherence | Noah Arliss This OTN Virtual Developer Day session explores in detail how to create a dynamic HTML5 Web application that interacts with Oracle Coherence as it’s processing events in real time, using the Avatar project and Oracle Coherence’s Live Events feature. Part of OTN Virtual Developer Day: Harnessing the Power of Oracle WebLogic and Oracle Coherence, November 5, 2013. 9am to 1pm PT / 12pm to 4pm ET / 1pm to 5pm BRT. Register now! HTML5 Application Development with Oracle WebLogic Server | Doug Clarke This free OTN Virtual Developer Day session covers the support for WebSockets, RESTful data services, and JSON infrastructure available in Oracle WebLogic Server. Part of OTN Virtual Developer Day: Harnessing the Power of Oracle WebLogic and Oracle Coherence, November 5, 2013. 9am to 1pm PT / 12pm to 4pm ET / 1pm to 5pm BRT. Register now! Video: ADF BC and REST services | Frederic Desbiens Spend a few minutes with Oracle ADF principal product manager Frederic Desbiens and learn how to publish ADF Business Components as RESTful web services. One Client Two Clusters | David Felcey "Sometimes its desirable to have a client connect to multiple clusters, either because the data is dispersed or for instance the clusters are in different locations for high availability," says David Felcey. David shows you how in this post, which includes a simple example. Exceptions Handling and Notifications in ODI | Christophe Dupupet Oracle Fusion Middleware A-Team director Christophe Dupupet reviews the techniques that are available in Oracle Data Integrator to guarantee that the appropriate individuals are notified in the event that ODI processes are impacted by network outages or other mishaps. Securing WebSocket applications on Glassfish | Pavel Bucek WebSocket is a key capability standardized into Java EE 7. Many developers wonder how WebSockets can be secured. One very nice characteristic for WebSocket is that it in fact completely piggybacks on HTTP. In this post Pavel Bucek demonstrates how to secure WebSocket endpoints in GlassFish using TLS/SSL. Oracle Coherence, Split-Brain and Recovery Protocols In Detail | Ricardo Ferreira Ricardo Ferreira's article "provides a high level conceptual overview of Split-Brain scenarios in distributed systems," focusing on a "specific example of cluster communication failure and recovery in Oracle Coherence." Non-programmatic Authentication Using Login Form in JSF (For WebCenter & ADF) | JayJay Zheng Oracle ACE JayJay Zheng shares an approach that "avoids the programmatic authentication and works great for having a custom login page developed in WebCenter Portal integrated with OAM authentication." The latest article in the Industrial SOA series looks at mobile computing and how companies are developing SOA to go. http://pub.vitrue.com/PUxT Tech Article: SOA in Real Life: Mobile Solutions The ACE Director Thing | Dr. Frank Munz Frank Munz finally gets around to blogging about achieving Oracle ACE Director status and shares some interesting insight into what will change—and what won't—thanks to that new status. A good, short read for those interested in learning more about the Oracle ACE program. Thought for the Day "Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there." — Will Rogers, American humorist (November 4, 1879 – August 15, 1935) Source: brainyquote.com

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• Tip on Reusing Classes in Different .NET Project Types

  - by psheriff

  All of us have class libraries that we developed for use in our projects. When you create a .NET Class Library project with many classes, you can use that DLL in ASP.NET, Windows Forms and WPF applications. However, for Silverlight and Windows Phone, these .NET Class Libraries cannot be used. The reason is Silverlight and Windows Phone both use a scaled down version of .NET and thus do not have access to the full .NET framework class library. However, there are many classes and functionality that will work in the full .NET and in the scaled down versions that Silverlight and Windows Phone use.Let’s take an example of a class that you might want to use in all of the above mentioned projects. The code listing shown below might be something that you have in a Windows Form or an ASP.NET application. public class StringCommon{  public static bool IsAllLowerCase(string value)  {    return new Regex(@"^([^A-Z])+$").IsMatch(value);  }   public static bool IsAllUpperCase(string value)  {    return new Regex(@"^([^a-z])+$").IsMatch(value);  }} The StringCommon class is very simple with just two methods, but you know that the System.Text.RegularExpressions namespace is available in Silverlight and Windows Phone. Thus, you know that you may reuse this class in your Silverlight and Windows Phone projects. Here is the problem: if you create a Silverlight Class Library project and you right-click on that project in Solution Explorer and choose Add | Add Existing Item… from the menu, the class file StringCommon.cs will be copied from the original location and placed into the Silverlight Class Library project. You now have two files with the same code. If you want to change the code you will now need to change it in two places! This is a maintenance nightmare that you have just created. If you then add this to a Windows Phone Class Library project, you now have three places you need to modify the code! Add As LinkInstead of creating three separate copies of the same class file, you want to leave the original class file in its original location and just create a link to that file from the Silverlight and Windows Phone class libraries. Visual Studio will allow you to do this, but you need to do one additional step in the Add Existing Item dialog (see Figure 1). You will still right mouse click on the project and choose Add | Add Existing Item… from the menu. You will still highlight the file you want to add to your project, but DO NOT click on the Add button. Instead click on the drop down portion of the Add button and choose the “Add As Link” menu item. This will now create a link to the file on disk and will not copy the file into your new project. Figure 1: Add as Link will create a link, not copy the file over. When this linked file is added to your project, there will be a different icon next to that file in the Solution Explorer window. This icon signifies that this is a link to a file in another folder on your hard drive.   Figure 2: The Linked file will have a different icon to show it is a link. Of course, if you have code that will not work in Silverlight or Windows Phone -- because the code has dependencies on features of .NET that are not supported on those platforms – you  can always wrap conditional compilation code around the offending code so it will be removed when compiled in those class libraries. SummaryIn this short blog entry you learned how to reuse one of your class libraries from ASP.NET, Windows Forms or WPF applications in your Silverlight or Windows Phone class libraries. You can do this without creating a maintenance nightmare by using the “Add a Link” feature of the Add Existing Item dialog. Good Luck with your Coding,Paul Sheriff ** SPECIAL OFFER FOR MY BLOG READERS **Visit http://www.pdsa.com/Event/Blog for a free video on Silverlight entitled Silverlight XAML for the Complete Novice - Part 1.

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• Developer Profile: Marcelo Quinta

  - by Tori Wieldt

  As the Java developer community lead for Oracle, the best part of my job is going to conferences and meeting Java developers. I’ve had the pleasure to meet men and women who are smart, fun and passionate about Java—they make the Java community happen. The current issue of Java Magazine provides profiles of other young Java developers around the world. Subscribe to read them! Marcelo Quinta Age: 24Occupation: Professor, Federal University of GoiasLocation: Goias, Brazil Twitter: @mrquinta Marcelo (white polo shirt, center) and class OTN: When did you realize that you were good at programming? When I was in graduate school, I developed a Java system that displayed worked out the logics of getting the maximum coverage using the fewest resources (for example, the minimum number of soldiers [and positions] needed for a battlefield. It may seems not difficult, but it's a hard problem to solve, mathematically. Here I was, a freshman, who came up with an app  "solving" it. Some Master's students use my software today. It was then I began to believe in what I could do.OTN: What most inspires you about programming?I'm really inspired by the challenges and tension that comes from solving a complicated problems. Lately, I've been doing a new system focused on education and digital inclusion and was very gratifying to see it working and the results. I felt useful for the community. OTN: What are some things you would like to accomplish using Java?Java is a very strong platform and that gives us power to develop applications for different devices and purposes, from home automation with little microcontrollers to systems in big servers. I would like to build more systems that integrate the people life or different business contexts, from PCs to cell phones and tablets, ubiquitously. I think IT has reached a level where the current challenge is to make systems that leverage existing technologies that are present in daily life. Java gives us a very interesting set of options to put it into practice, especially in systems that require more strength.OTN: What technical insights into Java technology have been most important to you?I have really enjoyed the way that Java has evolved with Oracle, with new features added, many of them which were suggested by the community. Java 7 came with substantial improvements in the language syntax and it seems that Java 8 takes it even further. I also made some applications in JavaFX and liked the new version. The Java GUI is on a higher level than is offered out there. I saw some JavaFX prototypes running in modern tablets and I got excited. OTN: What would you like to be doing 10 years from now?I want my work to make a difference for individuals or an institution. It would be interesting to be improving one of the systems that I am making today. Recently I've been mixing my hobbies and work, playing with Arduino and home automation. The JHome project, winner of the Duke's Choice Award in 2011, is very interesting to me.OTN: Do you listen to music when you write code? If so, what kind?Absolutely! I usually listen to electronic music (Prodigy, Fatboy Slim and Paul Oakenfold), rock (Metallica, Strokes, The Black Keys) and a bit of local alternative music. I live in Goiânia, "The Brazilian Seattle" and I profit from it very well. OTN: What do you do when you're not programming?I like to play guitar and to fish. Last year I sold my economy car and bought a old jeep. Some people called me crazy, but since then I've been having a great time and having adventures on the backroads of Brazil. Once I broke my glasses in a funny game involving my car's suspension and the airbags. OTN: Does your girlfriend think you are crazy?Crazy is someone who doesn't have courage to do strange things! My girlfriend likes my style. =D Subscribe to the free Java Magazine to read profiles of other young Java developers. Visit the Java channel on YouTube to see a video of Marcelo in action.

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• Hello, T4MVC &ndash; Goodbye, ASP.NET MVC &ldquo;magic strings&rdquo;

  - by Brian Schroer

  I’m working on my first ASP.NET MVC project, and I really, really like MVC. I hate all of the “magic strings”, though: <div id="logindisplay"> <% Html.RenderPartial("LogOnUserControl"); %> </div> <div id="menucontainer"> <ul id="menu"> <li><%=Html.ActionLink("Find Dinner", "Index", "Dinners")%></li> <li><%=Html.ActionLink("Host Dinner", "Create", "Dinners")%></li> <li><%=Html.ActionLink("About", "About", "Home")%></li> </ul> </div> They’re prone to misspelling (causing errors that won’t be caught until runtime), there’s duplication, there’s no Intellisense, and they’re not friendly to refactoring tools.   I had started down the path of creating static classes with constants for the strings, e.g.: <li><%=Html.ActionLink("Find Dinner", DinnerControllerActions.Index, Controllers.Dinner)%></li> …but that was pretty tedious.   Then I discovered T4MVC (http://mvccontrib.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=T4MVC). Just add its T4MVC.tt and T4MVC.settings.t4 files to the root of your MVC application, and it magically (and this time, it’s good magic) generates code that allows you to replace the first code sample above with this: <div id="logindisplay"> <% Html.RenderPartial(MVC.Shared.Views.LogOnUserControl); %> </div> <div id="menucontainer"> <ul id="menu"> <li><%=Html.ActionLink("Find Dinner", MVC.Dinners.Index())%></li> <li><%=Html.ActionLink("Host Dinner", MVC.Dinners.Create())%></li> <li><%=Html.ActionLink("About", MVC.Home.About())%></li> </ul> </div> It gives you a strongly-typed alternative to magic strings for all of these scenarios: Html.Action Html.ActionLink Html.RenderAction Html.RenderPartial Html.BeginForm Url.Action Ajax.ActionLink view names inside controllers But wait, there’s more! It even gives you static helpers for image and script links, e.g.: <img src="<%= Links.Content.nerd_jpg %>" />   <script src="<%= Links.Scripts.Map_js %>" type="text/javascript"></script> …instead of: <img src="/Content/nerd.jpg" />   <script src="/Scripts/Map.js" type="text/javascript"></script>   Thanks to David Ebbo for creating this great tool. You can watch an eight and a half minute video about T4MVC on Channel 9 via this link: http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/jongalloway/Jon-Takes-Five-with-David-Ebbo-on-T4MVC/. You can download T4MVC from its CodePlex page: http://mvccontrib.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=T4MVC.

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• Retail CEO Interviews

  - by David Dorf

  Businessweek's 2012 Interview Issue has interviews with three retail CEOs that are worth a quick read.  I copied some excerpts below, but please follow the links to the entire interviews. Ron Johnson, CEO JCPenney Take me through your merchandising. One of the things I learned from Steve [Jobs]—Steve said three times in his life he had the chance to be part of the change of an interface. If you change the interface, you can dramatically change the entire experience of the product. For Steve, that was the mouse, the scroll wheel on the iPod, and then the [touch]screen. What we’re trying to do here is change the interface of retail. What we call that is the street, and you’re standing in the middle of it. When you walk into a store today, you’re overwhelmed by merchandise. There is a narrow aisle. Typically, it’s filled with product on tables and you’re overwhelmed with the noise of signs and promotions. Especially in the age of the Internet, the idea of going to a very large store and having so much abundance is actually not very appealing. The first thing you find here is you’re inspired. I have used the mannequins. The street is actually this new navigation path for a retail store. So if you come in here—you’ll notice that these aisles are 14 feet wide. These are wider than Nordstrom’s (JWN). Slide show of JCPenney store. Walter Robb, co-CEO Whole Foods What did you learn from the recent recession about selling groceries?It was a lot of humble pie, because our sales experienced a drop that I have never seen in 32 years of retail. Customers left us in droves. We also learned that there were some very loyal customers who loved Whole Foods (WFM), people who said, “I like what you stand for. I like coming here. I like this experience.” That was very affirming. I think the realization was that we’ve got some customers, and we need to make sure we know who they are. So instead of chasing every customer out there, we started doing customer discussion groups. We were growing for growth’s sake, which is not a good strategy. We were chasing the rainbow. We cut the growth in half overnight and said, “All right, slow down. Let’s make sure we’re doing this better and more thoroughly and more thoughtfully.” This company is a mission-based company. This company started to change the world by bringing healthier food to the world. It’s not about the money, it’s about the impact, and this company is back on track as a result of those experiences. Video of Whole Foods store tour. Kay Krill, CEO Ann Taylor You’ve worked in retail all your life. What drew you to it?I graduated from college, and I did not know what I wanted to do. Macy’s (M) came to campus to interview for their training program, and I thought, “Let me give it a try.” I got the job and fell in love with the industry. The president of Macy’s at the time said, “If you don’t wake up every morning dying to go to work, then retailing is not for you; it has to be in your blood.” It was in my blood. I love the fact that every day is different. You can get to be creative one day, financial the next day, marketing the next. I love going to stores. I love talking to associates. I love talking to clients. There’s not a predictable day.

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• Oracle WebLogic Server and Oracle Database: A Robust Infrastructure for your Applications

  - by Ruma Sanyal

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 It has been said that a chain is as strong as its weakest link. Well, this is also true for your application infrastructure. Not only are the various components that constitute your infrastructure, like database and application server critical, the integration between these things [whether coming out of the box from your vendor or done in-house] is paramount. Imagine your database being down and your application server not knowing about it and as a result your application waiting indefinitely for a database response – not a great situation if high availability is critical to your application. Or one of your database nodes is very busy, but your application server doesn’t have the intelligence to decipher that – it keeps pinging the busy node when it can in fact get a response from another idle node much faster. This is what Oracle WebLogic and Database integration provides: Intelligent integration out of the box. Tight integration between Oracle WebLogic and Database makes your infrastructure robust enough that not only does each of your infrastructure component provide you with improved RASP [reliability availability, scalability, and performance] but these components work together to offer improved performance & availability, better resource sharing, inherent scalability, ease of configuration and automated management for your entire infrastructure. Oracle WebLogic Server is the only application server with this degree of integration to Oracle Database. With Oracle WebLogic Server 11g, we introduced Active GridLink for Real Application Clusters (RAC). In conjunction with Oracle Database, this powerful software technology simplifies management, increases availability, and ensures fast connection failover with runtime connection, load balancing and affinity capabilities. With the release of Oracle Database 12c this summer, even tighter integration between Oracle WebLogic Server 12c (12.1.2) and Oracle Database 12c has been achieved and this further optimizes the integration for a global cloud environment. Read about these capabilities in detail in the Oracle WebLogic-Database Integration Whitepaper. Get in depth ‘how-to’ details from this YouTube video on the topic from our resident expert, Monica Roccelli. /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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• Copy New Files Only in .NET

  - by psheriff

  Recently I had a client that had a need to copy files from one folder to another. However, there was a process that was running that would dump new files into the original folder every minute or so. So, we needed to be able to copy over all the files one time, then also be able to go back a little later and grab just the new files. After looking into the System.IO namespace, none of the classes within here met my needs exactly. Of course I could build it out of the various File and Directory classes, but then I remembered back to my old DOS days (yes, I am that old!). The XCopy command in DOS (or the command prompt for you pure Windows people) is very powerful. One of the options you can pass to this command is to grab only newer files when copying from one folder to another. So instead of writing a ton of code I decided to simply call the XCopy command using the Process class in .NET. The command I needed to run at the command prompt looked like this: XCopy C:\Original\*.* D:\Backup\*.* /q /d /y What this command does is to copy all files from the Original folder on the C drive to the Backup folder on the D drive. The /q option says to do it quitely without repeating all the file names as it copies them. The /d option says to get any newer files it finds in the Original folder that are not in the Backup folder, or any files that have a newer date/time stamp. The /y option will automatically overwrite any existing files without prompting the user to press the "Y" key to overwrite the file. To translate this into code that we can call from our .NET programs, you can write the CopyFiles method presented below. C# using System.Diagnostics public void CopyFiles(string source, string destination){  ProcessStartInfo si = new ProcessStartInfo();  string args = @"{0}\*.* {1}\*.* /q /d /y";   args = string.Format(args, source, destination);   si.FileName = "xcopy";  si.Arguments = args;  Process.Start(si);} VB.NET Imports System.Diagnostics Public Sub CopyFiles(source As String, destination As String)  Dim si As New ProcessStartInfo()  Dim args As String = "{0}\*.* {1}\*.* /q /d /y"   args = String.Format(args, source, destination)   si.FileName = "xcopy"  si.Arguments = args  Process.Start(si)End Sub The CopyFiles method first creates a ProcessStartInfo object. This object is where you fill in name of the command you wish to run and also the arguments that you wish to pass to the command. I created a string with the arguments then filled in the source and destination folders using the string.Format() method. Finally you call the Start method of the Process class passing in the ProcessStartInfo object. That's all there is to calling any command in the operating system. Very simple, and much less code than it would have taken had I coded it using the various File and Directory classes. Good Luck with your Coding,Paul Sheriff ** SPECIAL OFFER FOR MY BLOG READERS **Visit http://www.pdsa.com/Event/Blog for a free video on Silverlight entitled Silverlight XAML for the Complete Novice - Part 1.  

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• A view from the call center for the Nashville Flood telethon

  - by Rob Foster

  I want to break away from my usual topic of something technical and talk about what I experienced tonight while working in the call center for the Nashville Flood telethon, which was broadcast on WSMV, CNN, and The Weather Channel.  We started receiving calls about 7pm local time and to be honest, I had no idea what to expect when going into this.  I mean, I'm a pretty good talker, but this is different...We had a good script of what to say and how we were supposed to say it, as well as paper forms and pens that we used to collect information from people who wanted to donate their money to help.  I took my first few calls pretty easily and it went pretty quick and easy.  Everyone was upbeat and happy to be in the call center as well as people happy to be donating money. Pizza, snacks, and soft drinks were flowing well.  Everyone is smiling and happy.  :) About 3 or 4 calls into my night, I got a call from a lady that had lost 2 family members in West Nashville who drowned in the floods.  She was crying when she called and I of course tried to console her.  She told me how bad her situation was, losing family members and much of her neighborhood.  After all this, she still just wanted to help other people.  She was donating all the money that she could to the telethon and I want to share a direct quote from her: "I want to donate this instead of buying flowers for my family members' funeral because people out there need help.". Please let me pause while I get myself together <again>.  That caught me so off guard (and still does). I had kids calling wanting to donate their allowance, open their piggy banks, whatever they could do.  These are kids.  Kids not much older than my boys.  Kids who should be focused on buying the next cool video game or toy or whatever but wanted to do something.  Everyone just seemed to want to help. I took calls from as far away as British Columbia as well and pretty much coast to coast.  how cool is that? Yet another thing that caught me off guard.  This kind lady that called from British Columbia told me how much she loved visiting Nashville and just hated to see this happen.  I belive that she said that she will be attending the CMA Fest this year too.  I was sure to tell her not to cancel her plans!  :) It felt like every call I took (and I took A LOT, as did everyone else) was very personal and heartfelt.  I've never had the privelage to do anything like this and fell lucky to have been able to help out with answering phones and logging donations.  Nashville will bounce back very quickly, people are out there day and night helping each other, and the spirits are very high here.  I hope that one day, my kids read this blog and better understand who they are, where they come from, and what the human spirt is and can be.  I love this city, I love the people here, I love the culture and even more than ever am proud to say that this is me.  This is us.  We are Nashville!

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• Yammer, Berkeley DB, and the 3rd Platform

  - by Eric Jensen

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:major-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:major-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:major-bidi; mso-bidi-language:EN-US;} If you read the news, you know that the latest high-profile social media acquisition was just confirmed. Microsoft has agreed to acquire Yammer for 1.2 billion. Personally, I believe that Yammer’s amazing success can be mainly attributed to their wise decision to use Berkeley DB Java Edition as their backend data store. :-) I’m only kidding, of course. However, as Ryan Kennedy points out in the video I recently blogged about, BDB JE did provide the right feature set that allowed them to reliably grow their business. Which in turn allowed them to focus on their core value add. As it turns out, their ‘add’ is quite valuable! This actually makes sense to me, a lot more sense than certain other recent social acquisitions, and here’s why. Last year, IDC declared that we are entering a new computing era, the era of the “3rd Platform.” In case you’re curious, the first 2 were terminal computing and client/server computing, IIRC. Anyway, this 3rd one is more complicated. This year, IDC refined the concept further. It now involves 4 distinct buzzwords: cloud, social, mobile, and big data. Yammer is a social media platform that runs in the cloud, designed to be used from mobile devices. Their approach, using Berkeley DB Java Edition with High Availability, qualifies as big data. This means that Yammer is sitting right smack in the center if IDC’s new computing era. Another way to put it is: the folks at Yammer were prescient enough to predict where things were headed, and get there first. They chose Berkeley DB to handle their data. Maybe you should too!

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• SharePoint 2013 Developer Ramp-Up - Part 1

  Today I had a little spare time during the morning hours and I decided that after checking MVA that I'm going to query the available course material over at Pluralsight. Wow, thanks to fantastic corporations and acquisitions there are lots of courses available. Nicely split by SharePoint version as well as particular interest group. Additionally, I found a couple of online blogs and community sites that I'm going to visit regularly during the next couple of weeks. Today's resource(s) Of course, I'm "all in" for the latest developer resources: SharePoint 2013 Developer Ramp-Up - Part 1 - Understanding the Platform and Developer Experience SharePoint 2013 Developer Ramp-Up - Part 2 SharePoint 2013 Developer Ramp-Up - Part 3 SharePoint 2013 Developer Ramp-Up - Part 4 SharePoint 2013 Developer Ramp-Up - Part 5 SharePoint 2013 Developer Ramp-Up - Part 6 I guess, I'm going to stick to the Pluralsight library until the end of this week. We'll see... Anyway, apart from the video material I came across a couple of other websites which I'd like to list here, too. That's mainly for personal reference instead of bookmarking in the browser, I'll use my own blog for that purpose. Atkinson's SharePoint Blog Düsseldorfer Jung Doerflers SharePoint Blog SharePoint Community Absolute SharePoint The links are in no preferential order and I added them as soon as I found them. Most probably, I'm going to report about specific articles from those resources during this challenge. So, stay tuned and I try to provide more details on certain topics. Takeaway First contact with the 'real stuff' in order to get an idea about software development in Microsoft SharePoint and beyond. Unfortunately and as already expected, the marketing department over at Microsoft seemed to have nothing better to do than to invent new names and baptise literally the same product with every release. Luckily, the release cycles between versions have been three years (roughly) - 2007, 2010, and 2013. Nonetheless, there will be a lot of version-specfic issues to tackle during this learning phase. Especially, when it's about historical expressions like 'WSS'* like I had it yesterday... It's going to be exciting and demanding to catch up with roughly 6-7 years of development and changes. Okay, let's face it. * WSS stands for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 which forms the 'core engine' of SharePoint 2007. Part 1 of Andrew Connell's series on SharePoint 2013 for developers provides a brief history and overview of the various product names and their relation to the actual SharePoint version. I guess, I might create a cheat-sheet or something comparable in order to reduce the level of confusion while reading through other material: SharePoint 2007 (aka SharePoint v3 aka SharePoint 12) Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 3.0 Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 .NET Framework 3.0, 32-bit or 64-bit OS SharePoint 2010 (aka SharePoint v4 aka SharePoint 14) Microsoft SharePoint Foundation (SPF) 2010 Microsoft SharePoint Server (SPS) 2010 .NET Framework 3.5 SP1, 64-bit OS only SharePoint 2013 Microsoft SharePoint Foundation (SPF) 2013 Microsoft SharePoint Server (SPS) 2013 .NET Framework 4.5, 64-bit OS only After this quick excursion it is getting more interesting. SharePoint 2013 has a number of Development Practices and Techniques under the hood, and it will be quite a decision process depending on the task requirements to choose the correct path to go. At the moment, the following two options seem to be my future fields of operation: Client-Side Object Model (CSOM) REST API and OData syntax As part of my job assignment, I see myself developing within Visual Studio 2012/2013. Most probably the client development in C# will be using CSOM but of course I'll keep an eye on the REST API, too. JavaScript has quite a momentum since a while and it would a shame to ignore this type of opportunity and possibilities.

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for 2012-06-26

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Software Architecture for High Availability in the Cloud | Brian Jimerson Brian Jimerson looks at the paradigm shifts from machine-based architectures to cloud-based architectures when designing fault tolerance, and how enterprise applications need to be engineered to ensure the highest level of availability in the cloud. SOA, Cloud & Service Technology Symposium 2012 London - Special Oracle Discount Registration is now open for one of the premier SOA, Cloud, and Service Technology events. Once again, the Oracle community is well-represented in the session schedule. And now you can save on registration with a special Oracle discount code. Progress 4GL and DB to Oracle and cloud | Tom Laszewski "Getting from client/server based 4GLs and databases where the 4GL is tightly linked to the database to Oracle and the cloud is not easy," says cloud migration expert Tom Laszewski. "The least risky and expensive option...is to use the Progress OpenEdge DataServer for Oracle." Embrace 'big data' now or fall behind the competition, analyst warns | TechTarget TechTarget's Mark Brunelli's story says, in essence, that Big Data is not your fathers Business Intelligence. Calculating the Size (in Bytes and MB) of a Oracle Coherence Cache | Ricardo Ferreira Ferreira illustrates a programmatic way to use the Oracle Coherence API to calculate the total size of a specific cache that resides in the data grid. WebCenter Portal Tutorial Part 7: Integrating Discussions and Link service | Yannick Ongena The latest chapter in Oracle ACE Yannick Ongena's ongoing series. How to Setup JDeveloper workspace for ADF Fusion Applications to run Business Component Tester? | Jack Desai Helpful technical tips from yet another member of the Oracle Fusion Middleware Architecture Team. Big Data for the Enterprise; Software Architecture for High Availability in the Cloud; Why Cloud Computing is a Paradigm Shift - And Why It Isn't This week on the OTN Solution Architect Homepage, along with an updated events list and this weeks list of selected community blog posts. Worst Practices for Big Data | Dain Hansen Dain Hansen shares some insight on what NOT to do if you want to captialize on Big Data. Free Virtual Developer Day - Oracle Fusion Development | Grant Ronald "The online conference will include seminars, hands-on lab and live chats with our technical staff including me!" says Grant Ronald. "And the best bit, it doesn't cost you a single penny. It's free and available right on your desktop." Penguin is Getting Ready for Oracle OpenWorld 2012 | Zeynep Koch Linux fan? Check out Zeynep Koch's post for a list of Linux-based sessions at Oracle OpenWorld 2012 in San Francisco. Amazon Web Services (AWS) Autoscaling | Frank Munz "Autoscaling on AWS can only be configured with lengthy commands from the command line but not from the web cased AWS console," says Frank Munz. "Getting all the parameters right can be tricky." He demonstrates one easy example in this video. Oracle Fusion Applications Design Patterns Now Available For Developers | Ultan O'Broin "These Oracle Fusion Applications UX Design Patterns, or blueprints, enable Oracle applications developers and system implementers everywhere to leverage professional usability insight," says O'Broin. How Much Data Is Created Every Minute? [INFOGRAPHIC] | Mashable Explaining what the "Big" in Big Data really means -- and it's more than a little mind-boggling. Thought for the Day "Real, though miniature, Turing Tests are happening all the time, every day, whenever a person puts up with stupid computer software." — Jaron Lanier Source: SoftwareQuotes.com

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• Enterprise Integration: Can Companies Afford It?

  - by Ralph Wheaton

  Each year, my company holds a global sales conference where employees and partners from around the world some together to collaborate, share knowledge and ideas and learn about future plans.  As a member of the professional services division, several of us had been asked to make a presentation, an elevator pitch in 3 minutes or less that relates to a success we have worked on or directly relates to our tag (that is, our primary technology focus).  Mine happens to be Enterprise Integration as it relates Business Intelligence.  I found it rather difficult to present that pitch in a short amount of time and had to pare it down.  At any rate, in just a little over 3 minutes, this is the presentation I submitted.  Here is a link to the full presentation video in WMV format.   Many companies today subscribe to a buy versus build mentality in an attempt to drive down costs and improve time to implementation. Sometimes this makes sense, especially as it relates to specialized software or software that performs a small number of tasks extremely well. However, if not carefully considered or planned out, this oftentimes leads to multiple disparate systems with silos of data or multiple versions of the same data. For instance, client data (contact information, addresses, phone numbers, opportunities, sales) stored in your CRM system may not play well with Accounts Receivables. Employee data may be stored across multiple systems such as HR, Time Entry and Payroll. Other data (such as member data) may not originate internally, but be provided by multiple outside sources in multiple formats. And to top it all off, some data may have to be manually entered into multiple systems to keep it all synchronized. When left to grow out of control like this, overall performance is lacking, stability is questionable and maintenance is frequent and costly. Worse yet, in many cases, this topology, this hodgepodge of data creates a reporting nightmare. Decision makers are forced to try to put together pieces of the puzzle attempting to find the information they need, wading through multiple systems to find what they think is the single version of the truth. More often than not, they find they are missing pieces, pieces that may be crucial to growing the business rather than closing the business. across applications. Master data owners are defined to establish single sources of data (such as the CRM system owns client data). Other systems subscribe to the master data and changes are replicated to subscribers as they are made. This can be one way (no changes are allowed on the subscriber systems) or bi-directional. But at all times, the master data owner is current or up to date. And all data, whether internal or external, use the same processes and methods to move data from one place to another, leveraging the same validations, lookups and transformations enterprise wide, eliminating inconsistencies and siloed data. Once implemented, an enterprise integration solution improves performance and stability by reducing the number of moving parts and eliminating inconsistent data. Overall maintenance costs are mitigated by reducing touch points or the number of places that require modification when a business rule is changed or another data element is added. Most importantly, however, now decision makers can easily extract and piece together the information they need to grow their business, improve customer satisfaction and so on. So, in implementing an enterprise integration solution, companies can position themselves for the future, allowing for easy transition to data marts, data warehousing and, ultimately, business intelligence. Along this path, companies can achieve growth in size, intelligence and complexity. Truly, the question is not can companies afford to implement an enterprise integration solution, but can they afford not to.   Ralph Wheaton Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist Microsoft Certified Professional Developer Microsoft VTS-P BizTalk, .Net

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• Cutting Subscriber Churn with Media Intelligence

  - by Oracle M&E

  There's lots of talk in media and entertainment companies about using "big data".  But it's often hard to see through the hype and understand how big data brings benefits in the real world.  How about being able to predict with 92% accuracy which subscribers intend to cancel their subscription - and put in place a renewal strategy to dramatically reduce that churn?  That's what Belgian media company De Persgroep has achieved with Oracle's Media Intelligence solution.  "One of the areas in which we're able to achieve beautiful results using big data is the churn prediction," De Persgroep's CIO Luc Verbist explains in a new Oracle video.  "Based on all the data that we collect on websites and all your behavior, payment behavior and so on, we're able to make a prediction model, which, with an accuracy of 92 percent, is able to predict that you probably won't renew your newspaper, anymore. So our approach to renewal is completely different to the people in that segment than towards the other people. And this has brought us a lot of value and a lot of customers who didn't stop their newspaper where else they would have done so." De Persgroep is using Oracle's Big Data Appliance, along with software from Oracle partner NGDATA to build up a detailed "DNA profile" of each individual customer, based on every interaction, in real time.  This means that any change in behavior - a drop in content consumption, a late subscription payment, a negative social media comment - is captured.  Applying advanced data modeling techniques automatically converts those raw interactions into data with real business meaning - like that customer's risk of churning. The very same data profile - comprising hundreds if individual dimensions - can simultaneously drive targeted marketing campaigns - informing audience about new content that's most relevant and encouraging them to subscribe.  It can power content recommendations and personalization right in the content sites and apps. And it can link directly into digital advertising networks via platforms like Oracle's BlueKai data management platform (DMP), to drive increased advertising CPMs. Using Oracle's Media Intelligence solution enables this across De Persgroep's business - comprising eight newspapers and 25 magazines published in Belgium and The Netherlands, and digital properties including websites with 6m daily unique visitors, along with TV and radio stations. "The company strategy is in fact a customer-centric strategy, so we want to get a 360-view about our customers, about our prospects. And the big data project helped us to achieve that goal," says Verbist. Using Oracle's Big Data Appliance to underpin the solution created huge savings.   "The selection of the Big Data Appliance was quite easy.  It was very quick to install, very easy to install, as well. And it was far cheaper than building our own Hadoop cluster. So it was in fact a non-brainer," Verbist explains. Applying Media Intelligence approach has yielded incredible results for De Persgroep, including: Improved products - with a new understanding of how readers are consuming print and digital content across the day Improved customer segmentation - driving a 6X improvement in customer prospecting and acquisition when contacting a specific segment Having the project up and running in three months And that has led to competitive benefits for De Persgroep, as Luc Verbist explains: "one of the results we saw since we started using big data is that we're able to increase the gap between we as the market leader, and the second [by] more than 20 percent."

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• Atheros AR9485 wireless card doesn't work in an ASUS K53E

  - by John

  I just installed Ubuntu 11.10 32-bit version in dual boot mode on an ASUS K53. Every thing seems to work fine except for the wireless. The wireless works on Windows 7. Ubuntu finds the wireless card, but it does not appear to be turned on. The only physical means of turning on the card is the FN-F2 key combo. That works on Windows, but not in Ubuntu. I've looked in the forums for a solution and I'm not quite sure what to do. I've gathered the following information: jdwbmc@Spatha:~$ cat /etc/lsb-release; uname -a DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu DISTRIB_RELEASE=11.10 DISTRIB_CODENAME=oneiric DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 11.10" Linux Spatha 3.0.0-12-generic #20-Ubuntu SMP Fri Oct 7 14:50:42 UTC 2011 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux jdwbmc@Spatha:~$ lspci -nnk | grep -iA2 net 02:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Atheros Communications Inc. AR9485 Wireless Network Adapter [168c:0032] (rev 01) Subsystem: AzureWave Device [1a3b:1186] Kernel driver in use: ath9k -- 04:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Atheros Communications AR8151 v2.0 Gigabit Ethernet [1969:1083] (rev c0) Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device [1043:1851] Kernel driver in use: atl1c jdwbmc@Spatha:~$ lsusb Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub Bus 002 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub Bus 001 Device 003: ID 058f:a014 Alcor Micro Corp. jdwbmc@Spatha:~$ iwconfig lo no wireless extensions. eth0 no wireless extensions. wlan0 IEEE 802.11bgn ESSID off/any Mode:Managed Access Point: Not-Associated Tx-Power=0 dBm Retry long limit:7 RTS thrff Fragment thrff Power Managementff jdwbmc@Spatha:~$ rfkill list all 0: phy0: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no 1: asus-wlan: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no jdwbmc@Spatha:~$ lsmod Module Size Used by parport_pc 32114 0 ppdev 12849 0 snd_hda_codec_hdmi 31426 1 bnep 17923 2 rfcomm 38408 0 bluetooth 148839 10 bnep,rfcomm snd_hda_codec_realtek 254125 1 binfmt_misc 17292 1 joydev 17393 0 asus_nb_wmi 12469 0 asus_wmi 19333 1 asus_nb_wmi sparse_keymap 13658 1 asus_wmi uvcvideo 67271 0 videodev 85626 1 uvcvideo snd_hda_intel 24262 2 snd_hda_codec 91754 3 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_hda_i ntel snd_hwdep 13276 1 snd_hda_codec snd_pcm 80468 3 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec snd_seq_midi 13132 0 wmi 18744 1 asus_wmi snd_rawmidi 25241 1 snd_seq_midi snd_seq_midi_event 14475 1 snd_seq_midi snd_seq 51567 2 snd_seq_midi,snd_seq_midi_event arc4 12473 2 i915 505108 3 snd_timer 28932 2 snd_pcm,snd_seq snd_seq_device 14172 3 snd_seq_midi,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq ath9k 112711 0 psmouse 73673 0 serio_raw 12990 0 mac80211 272785 1 ath9k drm_kms_helper 32889 1 i915 ath9k_common 13599 1 ath9k drm 192226 4 i915,drm_kms_helper ath9k_hw 293893 2 ath9k,ath9k_common ath 19387 2 ath9k,ath9k_hw cfg80211 172392 3 ath9k,mac80211,ath snd 55902 14 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_hda_i ntel,snd_hda_codec,snd_hwdep,snd_pcm,snd_rawmidi,s nd_seq,snd_timer,snd_seq_device soundcore 12600 1 snd snd_page_alloc 14115 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm mei 36466 0 i2c_algo_bit 13199 1 i915 video 18908 1 i915 lp 17455 0 parport 40930 3 parport_pc,ppdev,lp ahci 21634 3 libahci 25727 1 ahci atl1c 36638 0 xhci_hcd 72915 0 jdwbmc@Spatha:/var/lib/NetworkManager$ cat NetworkManager.state [main] NetworkingEnabled=true WirelessEnabled=true WWANEnabled=true WimaxEnabled=true jdwbmc@Spatha:~$ lspci -nn | grep 0280 02:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Atheros Communications Inc. AR9485 Wireless Network Adapter [168c:0032] (rev 01) Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

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• Ubuntu 13.04 installation issues: unable to handle kernel paging request error

  - by user173944

  I wish I could say that I’ve done more for the Linux community as of recent but I am very VERY new to all of this and I feel very much in over my head. I figured I would install Ubuntu. on my computer and then I would learn and contribute to the community simultaneously. I will try to be as detailed as I can, please ask questions if you need clarification. I installed Ubuntu. 13.04 (64-bit) on my dell Inspiron 1501. This has an AMD Turion 64-bit TL-56 1.8 Ghz mobile processor. It is a dual core. It has an ATI Radeon Xpress 1150 chipset in it as well. As of right now I only have a total of 2Ghz ram, however I was planning on upgrading that in the near future so I opted for the 64-bit Ubuntu. 13.04. I first tried the live CD and everything seemed to be functioning correctly other than the wireless (but that's not the issue at hand, there are plenty of guides on the internet on how to get that functioning). The internet worked just fine when it was plugged in so no issues there. However, once I went from that to installing 13.04 (just 13.04, no dual partitioning... I want this computer to run strictly Ubuntu.) it did not work. It took me into a shell that I could not type anything into. In this shell it said Bug: unable to handle kernel paging and then it called a bunch of traces and froze up. I had to hard reset the laptop. I tried the boot-repair program multiple times with many different settings and typically after starting up the laptop would say something along the lines of recursive errors. will attempt to fix and then it would attempt to fix a couple of things, and then the computer would freeze up after the text said end trace... so I had to hard reset it again. I'm not an impatient person either, when I say it would freeze up it would be for a period of at least 15 minutes each time before I decided to hard reset. I attempted to install 12.10 on it instead and I got the same exact message, and when I ran boot-repair it did the same exact thing as before. I am currently in the process of running memtest64+ on the computer's memory, though I really don't believe that, nor any of the hardware is at fault due to the fact that it was still running windows vista perfectly when I had decided to switch over to Ubuntu. so far the memtest has came back just fine without any errors, but I’ve only been running it for approximately an hour. So this is the situation I’m in. I did notice when I was using the live disk that the video driver needed updated so I performed that, though I’m fairly certain that has nothing to do with this. I have also attempted (though I’m not certain that my attempt was successful in accomplishing what I had planned) to manually edit the grub settings by making acpi=0 along top of adding nomodeset to the boot commands. Like I said, I’m not sure I did that correctly though, but I’m fairly certain I did. If anyone needs any more information I will be more than happy to provide it, I will post back once I get the full results of the memtest. I very much appreciate any ideas anyone else has, I’ve been at this for a few days to no avail... thank you

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• ffmpeg unmet dependencies

  - by Nikki

  I faced an issue recently when tried to install ffmpeg on my Ubuntu computer. I am running Ubuntu 11.10 64 bit, all latest updates are installed and system runs perfectly, however i feel need in recording my desktop and have read many articles that ffmpeg is one of the best recording tools for it (besides providing packages for video) So I tried to run sudo apt-get install ffmpeg However i wasn't able to do this because packages have unmet dependencies. Here is a full text I receive after trying to install package above. Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable distribution that some required packages have not yet been created or been moved out of Incoming. The following information may help to resolve the situation: The following packages have unmet dependencies: ffmpeg : Depends: libavcodec53 (< 4:0.7.3-99) but it is not going to be installed or libavcodec-extra-53 (< 4:0.7.3.99) but 4:0.8.0.1~ppa2 is to be installed Depends: libavdevice53 (>= 4:0.7.3-0ubuntu0.11.10.1) but it is not going to be installed or libavdevice-extra-53 (>= 4:0.7.3) but it is not going to be installed Depends: libavdevice53 (< 4:0.7.3-99) but it is not going to be installed or libavdevice-extra-53 (< 4:0.7.3.99) but it is not going to be installed Depends: libavfilter2 (>= 4:0.7.3-0ubuntu0.11.10.1) but it is not going to be installed or libavfilter-extra-2 (>= 4:0.7.3) but it is not going to be installed Depends: libavfilter2 (< 4:0.7.3-99) but it is not going to be installed or libavfilter-extra-2 (< 4:0.7.3.99) but it is not going to be installed Depends: libavformat53 (< 4:0.7.3-99) but 4:0.8-1u1~ppa2 is to be installed or libavformat-extra-53 (< 4:0.7.3.99) but it is not going to be installed Depends: libavutil51 (< 4:0.7.3-99) but it is not going to be installed or libavutil-extra-51 (< 4:0.7.3.99) but 4:0.8.0.1~ppa2 is to be installed Depends: libpostproc52 (< 4:0.7.3-99) but 4:0.8-1u1~ppa2 is to be installed or libpostproc-extra-52 (< 4:0.7.3.99) but it is not going to be installed Depends: libswscale2 (< 4:0.7.3-99) but 4:0.8-1u1~ppa2 is to be installed or libswscale-extra-2 (< 4:0.7.3.99) but it is not going to be installed E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages. This problem hasn't existed on my previous laptop which runs the same Ubuntu 11.10 64 bit as my new one. Can anyone please help me find a solution without "messing and braking" the whole system? Thank you for helping in advance.

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• Oracle Social Network Developer Challenge: Fishbowl Solutions

  - by Kellsey Ruppel

  Originally posted by Jake Kuramoto on The Apps Lab blog. Today, I give you the final entry in the Oracle Social Network Developer Challenge, held last week during OpenWorld. This one comes from Friend of the ‘Lab and Fishbowl Solutions (@fishbowle20) hacker, John Sim (@jrsim_uix), whom you might remember from his XBox Kinect demo at COLLABORATE 12 (presentation slides and abstract) hacks and other exploits with WebCenter. We put this challenge together specifically for developers like John, who like to experiment with new tools and push the envelope of what’s possible and build cool things, and as you can see from his entry John did just that, mashing together Google Maps and Oracle Social Network into a mobile app built with PhoneGap that uses the device’s camera and GPS to keep teams on the move in touch. He calls it a Mobile GeoTagging Solution, but I think Avengers Assemble! would have equally descriptive, given that was obviously his inspiration. Here’s his description of the mobile app: My proposed solution was to design and simplify GeoLocation mapping, and automate updates for users and teams on the move; who don’t have access to a laptop or want to take their ipads out – but allow them to make quick updates to OSN and upload photos taken from their mobile device – there and then. As part of this; the plan was to include a rules engine that could be configured by the user to allow the device to automatically update and post messages when they arrived at a set location(s). Inspiration for this came from on{x} – automate your life. Unfortunately, John didn’t make it to the conference to show off his hard work in person, but luckily, he had a colleague from Fishbowl and a video to showcase his work.    Here are some shots of John’s mobile app for your viewing pleasure: John’s thinking is sound. Geolocation is usually relegated to consumer use cases, thanks to services like foursquare, but distributed teams working on projects out in the world definitely need a way to stay in contact. Consider a construction job. Different contractors all converge on a single location, and time is money. Rather than calling or texting each other and risking a distracted driving accident, an app like John’s allows everyone on the job to see exactly where the other contractors are. Using his GPS rules, they could easily be notified about how close each is to the site, definitely useful when you have a flooring contractor sitting idle, waiting for an electrician to finish the wiring. The best part is that the project manager or general contractor could stay updated on all the action (or inaction) using Oracle Social Network, either sitting at a desk using the browser app or desktop client or on the go, using one of the native mobile apps built for Oracle Social Network. I can see this being used by insurance adjusters too, and really any team that, erm, assembles at a given spot. Of course, it’s also useful for meeting at the pub after the day’s work is done. Beyond people, this solution could also be implemented for physical objects that are in route to a destination. Say you’re a customer waiting on rail shipment or a package delivery. You could track your valuable’s whereabouts easily as they report their progress via checkins. If they deviated from the GPS rules, you’d be notified. You might even be able to get a picture into Oracle Social Network with some light hacking. Thanks to John and his colleagues at Fishbowl for participating in our challenge. We hope everyone had a good experience. Make sure to check out John’s blog post on his work and the experience using Oracle Social Network. Although this is the final, official entry we had, tomorrow, I’ll show you the work of someone who finished code, but wasn’t able to make the judging event. Stay tuned.

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• RC of Entity Framework 4.1 (which includes EF Code First)

  - by ScottGu

  Last week the data team shipped the Release Candidate of Entity Framework 4.1.  You can learn more about it and download it here. EF 4.1 includes the new “EF Code First” option that I’ve blogged about several times in the past.  EF Code First provides a really elegant and clean way to work with data, and enables you to do so without requiring a designer or XML mapping file.  Below are links to some tutorials I’ve written in the past about it: Code First Development with Entity Framework 4.x EF Code First: Custom Database Schema Mapping Using EF Code First with an Existing Database The above tutorials were written against the CTP4 release of EF Code First (and so some APIs might be a little different) – but the concepts and scenarios outlined in them are the same as with the RC. Go Live License Last week’s EF 4.1 RC ships with a “go live” license that enables you to use it in production environments.  The final release of EF 4.1 will ship within the next 4 weeks and will be 100% API compatible with the RC release. Improvements with the RC The RC includes several improvements and enhancements.  The EF team has a good blog post summarizing the RC changes.  Scott Hanselman also has a nice video interview with the data team that talks more about the release. One of my favorite improvements introduced with last week’s RC is its support for medium trust security.  This enables you to use EF 4.1 (and code-first) within low-cost ASP.NET shared hosting web environments – without requiring a hoster to install anything to use it. EF 4.1 also now supports validation with not only code-first scenarios, but also model-first and database-first workflows.  Upgrading from previous releases The RC does include a few API tweaks and changes from the prior CTP builds.  Read the release notes that come with the release to get a more detailed listing of the changes. John Papa also has an excellent Upgrading to EF 4.1 RC blog post that describes the steps he took when upgrading a large project he wrote with the previous CTP5 release.  The work to upgrade is pretty straight forward and easy – use his write-up as a guide on how to quickly update projects of your own. NuGet Package Rename One of the changes that the data team made between the CTP5 and RC releases was to rename the NuGet package name from “EFCodeFirst” to “EntityFramework”. They decided to make this change since the EF 4.1 release now includes several additions above and beyond just code first. If you already have installed the “EFCodeFirst” NuGet package, you’ll want to uninstall it and then install the new “EntityFramework” NuGet package.  John Papa’s blog post details the exact steps on how to do this (it only takes ~20 seconds to do this). More EF Tutorials Julie Lerman has created some nice whitepapers and tutorials for MSDN that show using the new EF4 and EF 4.1 feature set. Click here to find links to read and watch them. Summary I’m really excited about the EF 4.1 release that will be shipping next month.  It significantly improves the Entity Framework, and makes it even easier and cleaner to work with data inside of .NET.  You can take advantage of it within all ASP.NET projects (including both Web Forms and MVC), within client projects using Windows Forms and WPF, and within other project types like WCF, Console and Services.  You can use NuGet to easily install it within all of them. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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• Getting Started with NASM

  - by MarkPearl

  Today I got to play with NASM. This is an assembler and disassembler that can be used to write 16-bit, 32-bit & 64-bit programs. Let me say upfront that the last time I looked at assembly code at any depth was when I was studying Computer Science in Pietermaritzburg – ten years ago – and we never ever got to touch any real assembly code so a lot of what I am looking at today is very new to me. The first thing I did was download NASM compiler. This turned out to be a bit more complicated than I thought. Originally I went to http://www.nasm.us/ and downloaded the nasm-2.09.04.zip file which I thought had all I needed. No luck! It seemed to just have the uncompiled code, and from what I could tell I would need to recompile and build it – possibly in c++? Well, I wasn’t going to waste my time with that, so a bit more searching and I found the Win32 (http://www.nasm.us/pub/nasm/releasebuilds/2.09.04/win32/) folder Nasm.exe which I downloaded. Choosing an IDE So, I have NASM compiler but to compile anything you need to pass a string of special characters in the command prompt. That’s fine if I was going to just do one program once every couple of years, but since I am aiming to do quite a bit more exploration of NASM I began searching for an IDE. There were a few options, even apparently Visual Studio with a bit of tweeking could do the job, but from past experience I wanted to avoid the VS route as it can sometimes get confusing. I eventually settled on TextPad which I had used a few years ago for a similar project and it had been simple enough yet powerful enough to do the job. A bit of searching and I found a syntax file for NASM and everything seemed hunky dory. Configuring TextPad to run the NASM Compiler Next was to get TextPad to run the NASM compiler. TextPad has this external tools option that allows one to configure special commands. To simplify the process I first created a bat file in the NASM directory that allowed me to simply compile asm files. The bat file was called as.bat and had just one line of code… nasm -f bin %1.asm -o %1.com -l %1.lst Once I had created as.bat I just needed to go into TextPad and create a tool. I have made a quick video of that just showing you where the various settings are which is viewable below. The 64Bit Problem So I now have an ‘IDE’ linked to my NASM compiler so everything should be fine right? No! Whenever I tried to compile an asm program it compiles fine, but when I try and run it I get an error – “This version of the file is not compatible with the version Windows you’re running. Check your computer’s system information to see whether you need an x86 (32-bit) or x64 (64-bit) version of the program, and then contact the software publisher." Well.. it turns out there are a few complications with having a 64 bit OS! So after searching google and coming to any real solution that I could find other than perhaps attempting to build the code for nasm, I eventually resorted to running a VM with Windows XP on it and putting NASM there… My first hello world program So I attempt my first hello world program as per an example I found… the code was quite simple and is shown below… bits16 org 0x100 jmp main message: db 'Hello World',0ah,0dh,'$' main: mov dx,message mov ah,09 int 21h int 20h Running the build tool from TextPad and everything compiles fine and I now have a console app with helllo world shown. Conclusion It’s very early days with NASM. I have been spoilt with Visual Studio and high order languages so I assume it will be a painful ride getting into the basics of assembly programming but I am hoping that at the end of it, I will at least have a bit more exposure to a language closer to the metal.

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• Windows Phone 7 Silverlight / XNA development talk

  - by subodhnpushpak

  Hi, I presented on Windows Phone 7 app development using Silverlight. Here are few pics from the event Windows Phone 7 development VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL     I demonstrated the Visual studio, emulator capabilities/ features. An demo on Wp7 app communication with an OData Service, along with a demo on XNA app. There was lot of curious questions; I am listing them here because these keep on popping up again and again: 1. What tools does it takes to develop Wp7 app? Are they free? A typical WP7 app can be developed either using Silverlight or XNA. For developers, Visual Studio 2010 is a good choice as it provides an integrated development environment with lots of useful project templates; which makes the task really easy. For designers, Blend may be used to develop the UI in XAML. Both the tools are FREE (express version) to download and very intuitive to use. 2. What about the learning curve? If you know C#, (or any other programming language), learning curve is really flat. XAML (used for UI) may be new for you, but trust me; its very intuitive. Also you can use Microsoft Blend to generate the UI (XAML) for you. 3. How can I develop /test app without using actual device? How can I be sure my app runs as expected on actual device? The WP7 SDK comes along with an excellent emulator; which you can use for development/ testing on a computer. Later you can just change a setting and deploy the application on WP7. You will require Zune software for deploying the application on phone along with Developers key from WP7 marketplace. You can obtain key from marketplace by filling a form. The whole process for registering  is easy; just follow the steps on the site. 4. Which one should I use? Silverlight or XNA? Use Silverlight for enterprise/ business / utility apps. Use XNA for Games app. While each platform is capable / strong and may be used in conjunction as well; The methodologies used for development in these platforms are very different. XNA works on typical Do..While loop where as Silverlight works on event based methodology. 5. Where are the learning resources? Are they free? There is lots of stuff on WP7. Most of them are free. There is a excellent free book by Charles Petzold to download and http://www.microsoft.com/windowsphone is full of demos /todos / vidoes. All the exciting stuff was captured live and you can view it here; in case you were not able to catch it live!! @ http://livestre.am/AUfx. My talk starts from 3:19:00 timeline in the video!! Is there an app you miss on WP7? Do let me know about it and I may work on it for free !!! Keep discovering. Keep is Simple. WP7. Subodh

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• 2014 Conferences - JFokus, JavaLand & GeeCon!

  - by Heather VanCura

  There has been a delay in publishing these past event summaries from early 2014--JFokus in February, JavaLand in March, and GeeCon in May. As we plan for Devoxx UK next week, I found these summaries that did not make it past 'draft' stage.  We had some great successes with the first three events of 2014, a Java developer conference trifecta! Participation topics included Java, the JCP program overall and the Adopt-a-JSR programs.   First up in February was JFokus in Stockholm. The energy and talent in Stockholm is amazing and the conference organizers do a stellar job running it and welcoming the speakers of this event.  I enjoyed the city walk and speaker dinner, as well as many opportunities to interact with conference speakers and attendees, both during and after the conference hours. Reza Rehman invited me to speak during his Java EE 7 lab session about the Adopt-a-JSR program, and I gave a quickie session on the JCP and Adopt-a-JSR.  There was also a late night Birds of a Feather (BoF) session held jointly with Cecelia Borg, Martijn Verburg and Reza Rehman.  This was an interactive conversation with a focus on the Java EE community survey results and encouraging more community participation and collaboration in Java development.  The Java 8 keynote by Georges Saab and Mark Reinhold was also very entertaining,  I was sorry to miss FOSDEM happening the previous weekend this year in Brussels, but I hope to attend in 2015.  Favorite take home gift -- Lambdas cap! In March, the inaugural version of the JavaLand conference happened inside Phantasialand, an amusement park in Germany. Markus Eisele suggested having an Early Adopters area at the conference, which I was keen to implement. In 2013 at Devoxx Belgium we held some activities in the Hackergaren area around Lambdas and Java EE 7, so this was a great opportunity to expand on a more interactive conference format and Andreas Badelt from the program committee helped in the planning for this area.  Daniel Bryant and Mani Sarkar from the London Java Community led some general Adopt-a-JSR discussions and AdoptOpen JDK activities.  JCP Spec Leads, Anatole Tresch from Credit Suisse, leading JSR 354, Money & Currency API, and Ed Burns from Oracle, leading JSR 344, JavaServer Faces 2.2, attended to engage with conference attendees on their JSRs.  Favorite - Stephen Chin's roller coaster video. In May, GeeCon in Krakow was anther awesome conference!  The conference organizers were warm and welcoming and I enjoyed time getting to know the other speakers at the event. There was a JCP and Adopt-a-JSR participation session as well as a moderated panel session on Early Adopters.  We had an amazing panel -- Daniel Bryant, Arun Gupta, Tomasz Borek , and Peter Lawrey. The panel discussed the Adopt-a-JSR and Adopt OpenJDK program, and how the participants work together to get involved and contribute to both the Java SE and Java EE platforms.  If was an interesting discussion and sparked some new ideas on how Java User Groups in Poland and around the world can contribute in a significant and meaningful way to create better and more practical Java standards today and in the future.  Favorite take home gift - GeeCon mug!   These were some of the highlights of the events--looking forward to Devoxx UK next week.  I will publish these details tomorrow!

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• It's like I'm in recovery mode after update, but I'm not

  - by mawburn

  I used the Ubuntu software updater and updated to the most recent packages. After the last update today, it's like I have gone into recovery mode, but I haven't. I am running UbuntuGNOME First, everything looks like this: Switching to dark mode does nothing. Also, default applications do not work. Such as Startup and the default screenshot application. Everything was working fine before the latest software update. System Info Ubuntu 14.04 LTS Gnome-Shell 3.10.4 Kernel 3.13.0-29 I can't figure out how to get an update history, but this is almost a fresh install. It's about a week old install and this is the 3rd time I've used the Ubuntu Software Update. I am running AMD ATI HD6700 with the proprietary Catalyst drivers. I tried to provide all information that I thought would be useful, if you need any more please let me know. Edit - I believe something went wrong within these updates: Update Log: Start-Date: 2014-06-09 19:07:07 Commandline: aptdaemon role='role-commit-packages' sender=':1.68' Install: libgnome-desktop-3-10:amd64 (3.12.0-0~eugenesan~trusty2) Upgrade: gnome-session-common:amd64 (3.9.90-0ubuntu12, 3.12.0-0~eugenesan~trusty10), gnome-session-bin:amd64 (3.9.90-0ubuntu12, 3.12.0-0~eugenesan~trusty10), gir1.2-gnomedesktop-3.0:amd64 (3.8.4-0ubuntu3, 3.12.0-0~eugenesan~trusty2), gnome-session:amd64 (3.9.90-0ubuntu12, 3.12.0-0~eugenesan~trusty10), python-libxml2:amd64 (2.9.1+dfsg1-3ubuntu4.1, 2.9.1+dfsg1-3ubuntu4.2), libspice-server1:amd64 (0.12.4-0nocelt2, 0.12.4-0nocelt2.02~eugenesan~trusty1), gir1.2-mutter-3.0:amd64 (3.10.4-0ubuntu2, 3.10.4-0ubuntu2.1), xserver-xorg-video-qxl:amd64 (0.1.1-0ubuntu3, 0.1.1-0ubuntu3.01), libxml2:amd64 (2.9.1+dfsg1-3ubuntu4.1, 2.9.1+dfsg1-3ubuntu4.2), libxml2:i386 (2.9.1+dfsg1-3ubuntu4.1, 2.9.1+dfsg1-3ubuntu4.2), gnome-desktop3-data:amd64 (3.8.4-0ubuntu3, 3.12.0-0~eugenesan~trusty2), mutter:amd64 (3.10.4-0ubuntu2, 3.10.4-0ubuntu2.1), mutter-common:amd64 (3.10.4-0ubuntu2, 3.10.4-0ubuntu2.1), libxml2-utils:amd64 (2.9.1+dfsg1-3ubuntu4.1, 2.9.1+dfsg1-3ubuntu4.2), libmutter0c:amd64 (3.10.4-0ubuntu2, 3.10.4-0ubuntu2.1) End-Date: 2014-06-09 19:07:12 I also installed Citrix Receiver today, following the tutorial here: Citrix Receiver 12.1 on Ubuntu 14.04 64-bit Log Start-Date: 2014-06-09 18:59:06 Commandline: apt-get install libmotif4:i386 nspluginwrapper lib32z1 libc6-i386 libxp6:i386 libxpm4:i386 libasound2:i386 Install: libmotif-common:amd64 (2.3.4-5, automatic), libatk1.0-0:i386 (2.10.0-2ubuntu2, automatic), libxft2:i386 (2.3.1-2, automatic), libgraphite2-3:i386 (1.2.4-1ubuntu1, automatic), nspluginviewer:i386 (1.4.4-0ubuntu5, automatic), libpango-1.0-0:i386 (1.36.3-1ubuntu1, automatic), libxcursor1:i386 (1.1.14-1, automatic), libmotif4:i386 (2.3.4-5), libxm4:amd64 (2.3.4-5, automatic), libxm4:i386 (2.3.4-5, automatic), libxp6:i386 (1.0.2-1ubuntu1), libpangocairo-1.0-0:i386 (1.36.3-1ubuntu1, automatic), libxcb-render0:i386 (1.10-2ubuntu1, automatic), libthai0:i386 (0.1.20-3, automatic), libharfbuzz0b:i386 (0.9.27-1, automatic), libpixman-1-0:i386 (0.30.2-2ubuntu1, automatic), libpangoft2-1.0-0:i386 (1.36.3-1ubuntu1, automatic), libcairo2:i386 (1.13.0~20140204-0ubuntu1, automatic), lib32z1:amd64 (1.2.8.dfsg-1ubuntu1), libjasper1:i386 (1.900.1-14ubuntu3, automatic), libgtk2.0-0:i386 (2.24.23-0ubuntu1.1, automatic), nspluginwrapper:amd64 (1.4.4-0ubuntu5), libuil4:amd64 (2.3.4-5, automatic), libuil4:i386 (2.3.4-5, automatic), libxcb-shm0:i386 (1.10-2ubuntu1, automatic), libxmu6:i386 (1.1.1-1, automatic), libc6-i386:amd64 (2.19-0ubuntu6), libxinerama1:i386 (1.1.3-1, automatic), libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0:i386 (2.30.7-0ubuntu1, automatic), libxcomposite1:i386 (0.4.4-1, automatic), libmrm4:amd64 (2.3.4-5, automatic), libmrm4:i386 (2.3.4-5, automatic), libdatrie1:i386 (0.2.8-1, automatic), libxrandr2:i386 (1.4.2-1, automatic), libxpm4:i386 (3.5.10-1) End-Date: 2014-06-09 18:59:11

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• Unable to make properly work the Ralink rt3090 wifi card on my Lenovo B575 with Kubuntu 12.04 64bit

  - by Sebastien

  I look and tried many solution from many thread but I still unable to make this wifi card work properly (very slow, unable to connect to some wifi spot, etc.). I tried to compile the driver from the ralink website but it doesn't work. Tried to blacklist many mod, withou any result. So here are some command results, hope their help you help me: lspci sebastien@sebastien-portable:~$ lspci 00:00.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 14h Processor Root Complex 00:01.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI Wrestler [Radeon HD 6310] 00:01.1 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI Wrestler HDMI Audio [Radeon HD 6250/6310] 00:11.0 SATA controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 SATA Controller [AHCI mode] 00:12.0 USB controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB OHCI0 Controller 00:12.2 USB controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB EHCI Controller 00:13.0 USB controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB OHCI0 Controller 00:13.2 USB controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB EHCI Controller 00:14.0 SMBus: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SBx00 SMBus Controller (rev 42) 00:14.2 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA) (rev 40) 00:14.3 ISA bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 LPC host controller (rev 40) 00:14.4 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SBx00 PCI to PCI Bridge (rev 40) 00:14.5 USB controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB OHCI2 Controller 00:15.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SB700/SB800/SB900 PCI to PCI bridge (PCIE port 0) 00:15.2 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SB900 PCI to PCI bridge (PCIE port 2) 00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 12h/14h Processor Function 0 (rev 43) 00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 12h/14h Processor Function 1 00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 12h/14h Processor Function 2 00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 12h/14h Processor Function 3 00:18.4 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 12h/14h Processor Function 4 00:18.5 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 12h/14h Processor Function 6 00:18.6 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 12h/14h Processor Function 5 00:18.7 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 12h/14h Processor Function 7 02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 06) 03:00.0 Network controller: Ralink corp. RT3090 Wireless 802.11n 1T/1R PCIe lsmod sebastien@sebastien-portable:~$ lsmod Module Size Used by rt2800pci 18715 0 arc4 12529 2 rt2800lib 58925 1 rt2800pci crc_ccitt 12667 1 rt2800lib rt2x00pci 14577 1 rt2800pci rt2x00lib 55301 3 rt2800pci,rt2800lib,rt2x00pci mac80211 506816 3 rt2800lib,rt2x00pci,rt2x00lib cfg80211 205544 2 rt2x00lib,mac80211 eeprom_93cx6 12725 1 rt2800pci rt2860sta 864748 0 snd_hda_codec_conexant 62128 1 snd_hda_codec_hdmi 32474 1 uvcvideo 72627 0 rts5139 351143 0 snd_hda_intel 33773 4 videodev 98259 1 uvcvideo snd_hda_codec 127706 3 snd_hda_codec_conexant,snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_intel snd_hwdep 13668 1 snd_hda_codec psmouse 87692 0 v4l2_compat_ioctl32 17128 1 videodev serio_raw 13211 0 k10temp 13166 0 snd_pcm 97188 3 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec sp5100_tco 13791 0 i2c_piix4 13301 0 snd_seq_midi 13324 0 snd_rawmidi 30748 1 snd_seq_midi ideapad_laptop 18234 0 sparse_keymap 13890 1 ideapad_laptop rfcomm 47604 0 joydev 17693 0 snd_seq_midi_event 14899 1 snd_seq_midi bnep 18281 2 bluetooth 180104 10 rfcomm,bnep parport_pc 32866 0 ppdev 17113 0 snd_seq 61896 2 snd_seq_midi,snd_seq_midi_event snd_timer 29990 2 snd_pcm,snd_seq snd_seq_device 14540 3 snd_seq_midi,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq snd 78855 18 snd_hda_codec_conexant,snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec,snd_hwdep,snd_pcm,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq,snd_timer,snd_seq_device soundcore 15091 1 snd mac_hid 13253 0 snd_page_alloc 18529 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm lp 17799 0 parport 46562 3 parport_pc,ppdev,lp usbhid 47199 0 hid 99559 1 usbhid r8169 62099 0 radeon 804372 4 video 19596 0 wmi 19256 0 ttm 76949 1 radeon drm_kms_helper 46978 1 radeon drm 242038 6 radeon,ttm,drm_kms_helper i2c_algo_bit 13423 1 radeon iwconfig sebastien@sebastien-portable:~$ iwconfig lo no wireless extensions. wlan0 IEEE 802.11bgn ESSID:"4CE6763F0E0A" Mode:Managed Frequency:2.452 GHz Access Point: 4C:E6:76:3F:0E:0A Bit Rate=54 Mb/s Tx-Power=20 dBm Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off Power Management:off Link Quality=70/70 Signal level=-39 dBm Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0 Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:100 Missed beacon:0 eth0 no wireless extensions.

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• How to Make the Gnome Panels in Ubuntu Totally Transparent

  - by The Geek

  We all love transparency, since it makes your desktop so beautiful and lovely—so today we’re going to show you how to apply transparency to the panels in your Ubuntu Gnome setup. It’s an easy process, and here’s how to do it. This article is the first part of a multi-part series on how to customize the Ubuntu desktop, written by How-To Geek reader and ubergeek, Omar Hafiz. Making the Gnome Panels Transparent Of course we all love transparency, It makes your desktop so beautiful and lovely. So you go for enabling transparency in your panels , you right click on your panel, choose properties, go to the Background tab and make your panel transparent. Easy right? But instead of getting a lovely transparent panel, you often get a cluttered, ugly panel like this: Fortunately it can be easily fixed, all we need to do is to edit the theme files. If your theme is one of those themes that came with Ubuntu like Ambiance then you’ll have to copy it from /usr/share/themes to your own .themes directory in your Home Folder. You can do so by typing the following command in the terminal cp /usr/share/themes/theme_name ~/.themes Note: don’t forget to substitute theme_name with the theme name you want to fix. But if your theme is one you downloaded then it is already in your .themes folder. Now open your file manager and navigate to your home folder then do to .themes folder. If you can’t see it then you probably have disabled the “View hidden files” option. Press Ctrl+H to enable it. Now in .themes you’ll find your previously copied theme folder there, enter it then go to gtk-2.0 folder. There you may find a file named “panel.rc”, which is a configuration file that tells your panel how it should look like. If you find it there then rename it to “panel.rc.bak”. If you don’t find don’t panic! There’s nothing wrong with your system, it’s just that your theme decided to put the panel configurations in the “gtkrc” file. Open this file with your favorite text editor and at the end of the file there is line that looks like this “include “apps/gnome-panel.rc””. Comment out this line by putting a hash mark # in front of it. Now it should look like this “# include “apps/gnome-panel.rc”” Save and exit the text editor. Now change your theme to any other one then switch back to the one you edited. Now your panel should look like this: Stay tuned for the second part in the series, where we’ll cover how to change the color and fonts on your panels. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How To Remove People and Objects From Photographs In Photoshop Ask How-To Geek: How Can I Monitor My Bandwidth Usage? Internet Explorer 9 RC Now Available: Here’s the Most Interesting New Stuff Here’s a Super Simple Trick to Defeating Fake Anti-Virus Malware How to Change the Default Application for Android Tasks Stop Believing TV’s Lies: The Real Truth About "Enhancing" Images The Legend of Zelda – 1980s High School Style [Video] Suspended Sentence is a Free Cross-Platform Point and Click Game Build a Batman-Style Hidden Bust Switch Make Your Clock Creates a Custom Clock for your Android Homescreen Download the Anime Angels Theme for Windows 7 CyanogenMod Updates; Rolls out Android 2.3 to the Less Fortunate

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• Shadows shimmer when camera moves

  - by Chad Layton

  I've implemented shadow maps in my simple block engine as an exercise. I'm using one directional light and using the view volume to create the shadow matrices. I'm experiencing some problems with the shadows shimmering when the camera moves and I'd like to know if it's an issue with my implementation or just an issue with basic/naive shadow mapping itself. Here's a video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyprATt5BBg&feature=youtu.be Here's the code I use to create the shadow matrices. The commented out code is my original attempt to perfectly fit the view frustum. You can also see my attempt to try clamping movement to texels in the shadow map which didn't seem to make any difference. Then I tried using a bounding sphere instead, also to no apparent effect. public void CreateViewProjectionTransformsToFit(Camera camera, out Matrix viewTransform, out Matrix projectionTransform, out Vector3 position) { BoundingSphere cameraViewFrustumBoundingSphere = BoundingSphere.CreateFromFrustum(camera.ViewFrustum); float lightNearPlaneDistance = 1.0f; Vector3 lookAt = cameraViewFrustumBoundingSphere.Center; float distanceFromLookAt = cameraViewFrustumBoundingSphere.Radius + lightNearPlaneDistance; Vector3 directionFromLookAt = -Direction * distanceFromLookAt; position = lookAt + directionFromLookAt; viewTransform = Matrix.CreateLookAt(position, lookAt, Vector3.Up); float lightFarPlaneDistance = distanceFromLookAt + cameraViewFrustumBoundingSphere.Radius; float diameter = cameraViewFrustumBoundingSphere.Radius * 2.0f; Matrix.CreateOrthographic(diameter, diameter, lightNearPlaneDistance, lightFarPlaneDistance, out projectionTransform); //Vector3 cameraViewFrustumCentroid = camera.ViewFrustum.GetCentroid(); //position = cameraViewFrustumCentroid - (Direction * (camera.FarPlaneDistance - camera.NearPlaneDistance)); //viewTransform = Matrix.CreateLookAt(position, cameraViewFrustumCentroid, Up); //Vector3[] cameraViewFrustumCornersWS = camera.ViewFrustum.GetCorners(); //Vector3[] cameraViewFrustumCornersLS = new Vector3[8]; //Vector3.Transform(cameraViewFrustumCornersWS, ref viewTransform, cameraViewFrustumCornersLS); //Vector3 min = cameraViewFrustumCornersLS[0]; //Vector3 max = cameraViewFrustumCornersLS[0]; //for (int i = 1; i < 8; i++) //{ // min = Vector3.Min(min, cameraViewFrustumCornersLS[i]); // max = Vector3.Max(max, cameraViewFrustumCornersLS[i]); //} //// Clamp to nearest texel //float texelSize = 1.0f / Renderer.ShadowMapSize; //min.X -= min.X % texelSize; //min.Y -= min.Y % texelSize; //min.Z -= min.Z % texelSize; //max.X -= max.X % texelSize; //max.Y -= max.Y % texelSize; //max.Z -= max.Z % texelSize; //// We just use an orthographic projection matrix. The sun is so far away that it's rays are essentially parallel. //Matrix.CreateOrthographicOffCenter(min.X, max.X, min.Y, max.Y, -max.Z, -min.Z, out projectionTransform); } And here's the relevant part of the shader: if (CastShadows) { float4 positionLightCS = mul(float4(position, 1.0f), LightViewProj); float2 texCoord = clipSpaceToScreen(positionLightCS) + 0.5f / ShadowMapSize; float shadowMapDepth = tex2D(ShadowMapSampler, texCoord).r; float distanceToLight = length(LightPosition - position); float bias = 0.2f; if (shadowMapDepth < (distanceToLight - bias)) { return float4(0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f); } } The shimmer is slightly better if I drastically reduce the view volume but I think that's mostly just because the texels become smaller and it's harder to notice them flickering back and forth. I'd appreciate any insight, I'd very much like to understand what's going on before I try other techniques.

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