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• Bad Practices: Locking on Non-shared Objects in Multi-threaded Applications

  In this article we will see one of the bad practices developers always do.

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• Disabling Navigation Flicks in WPF

  - by Brian Genisio's House Of Bilz

  I am currently working on a multi-touch application using WPF.  One thing that has been irritating me with this development is an automatic navigation forward/back command that is bound to forward and backwards flicks.  Many of my touch-based interactions were being thwarted by gestures picked up by WPF as navigation.  I just wanted to disable this behavior. My programmatic back/forward calls are not affected by this change, which is nice.  Here is how I did it:  In my main window, I added the following command bindings:<NavigationWindow.CommandBindings> <CommandBinding Command="NavigationCommands.BrowseBack" Executed="DoNothing" /> <CommandBinding Command="NavigationCommands.BrowseForward" Executed="DoNothing" /> </NavigationWindow.CommandBindings> Then, the DoNothing method in the code-behind does nothing:private void DoNothing(object sender, ExecutedRoutedEventArgs e) { } There may be a better way to do this, but I haven’t found one.

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• How do functional languages handle random numbers?

  - by Electric Coffee

  What I mean about that is that in nearly every tutorial I've read about functional languages, is that one of the great things about functions, is that if you call a function with the same parameters twice, you'll always end up with the same result. How on earth do you then make a function that takes a seed as a parameter, and then returns a random number based on that seed? I mean this would seem to go against one of the things that are so good about functions, right? Or am I completely missing something here?

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• Process Centric Banking: Loan Origination Solution

  - by Manish Palaparthy

  There is an old proverb that goes, "The difference between theory and practice is greater in practice than in theory". So, we keep doing numerous "Proof of Concepts" with our own products on various business cases to analyze them deeply, understand and explain to our customers. We then present our learnings as they happened. The awareness of each PoC should help readers increase the trustworthiness of the results coming out of these PoCs. I present one such PoC where we invested a lot of time&effort.  Process Centric Banking : Loan Origination Solution Loan Origination is a process by which a borrower applies for a new loan and the lender processes that application. Loan origination includes the series of steps taken by the bank from the point the customer shows interest in a loan product all the way to disbursal of funds. The Loan Origination process is relevant for many kind of lenders in Financial services: Banks, Credit Unions, NBFCs(Non Banking Financial Companies) and so on. For simplicity sake, I will use "Bank" as the lending institution in the rest of my article.  Loan Origination is one of the core processes for Banks as it is the process by which the it creates assets against which the Institution earns most of its profits from. A well tuned loan origination process can affect the Bank in many positive ways. Banks have always shown great interest in automating the loan origination process for the above reason. However, due the constant changes in customer environment, market dynamics, prevailing economic conditions, cost pressures & regulatory environment they run into lot of challenges. Let me categorize some of these challenges for you Customer Environment Multiple Channels: Customer can use any of the available channels (Internet Banking, Email, Fax, Branch, Phone Banking, ATM, Broker, Mobile, Snail Mail) to perform all or some of the activities related to her Visibility into the origination process: Expect immediate update on the status of loan processing & alert messages Reduced Turn Around Time: Expect loans to be processed with least turn around time Reduced loan processing fees: Partly due to market dynamics the customer expects the loan processing fee to be negligible Market Dynamics Competitive environment:  The competition keeps creating many variants of loan products to attract customers, the bank needs to create similar product variants with better offers to attract customers or keep existing ones Ability to migrate loans from one vendor to another: It has become really easy for retail customers to move from one bank to the other given the low fee of loan processing and highly attractive offers. How does the bank protect it's customer base while actively engaging with potential customers banking with competitor banks Flexibility to react to market developments: Market development greatly influence loan processing, underwriting, asset valuation, risk mitigation rules. Can the bank modify rules and policies, the idea is not just to react to market developments but to pro-actively manage new developments Economic conditions Constant change in various rates and their implications on the rates and rules applied when on-boarding a loan: How quickly can the bank apply changes to rates offered to customers when the central bank changes various rates Requirements of Audit by the central banker: Tough economic conditions have demanded much more stringent audit rules and tests. The banks needs to produce ready reports(historic & operational) for audit compliance Risk Mitigation: While risk mitigation has always been a key concern for the bank, this is the area where the bank's underwriters & risk analysts spend the maximum time when processing a loan application. In order to reduce TAT the bank cannot compromise on its risk mitigation strategies Cost pressures Reduce Cost of processing per application: To deliver a reduced loan processing fee to the customer, the bank needs to keep its cost per processing loan application low. Meet customer TAT expectations while reducing the queues and the systems being used to process the loan application: The loan application could potentially be spending a lot of time waiting in the queue for further processing. Different volumes & patterns of applications demand different queuing algorithms. The bank needs to have real-time visibility into these queues and have the flexibility to change queuing algorithms at runtime  Increase the use of electronic communication and reduce the branch channel usage: Lesser automation leads not only leads to Increased turn around time, it also impacts more costs to reach out to customers The objective of our PoC was to implement a Loan Origination Solution whose ownership lies with the bank and effectively meet the challenges listed above. We built a simple story board for the solution We then went about implementing our storyboard using Oracle BPM Suite, Webcenter Content : Imaging. The web UI has been built on ADF technolgies, while the integration with core-services has been implemented using the underlying SOA infrastructure. The BPM process model is quite exhaustive can meet all the challenges listed above to reasonable degree. A bank intending to implement an end-to-end Loan Origination Solution has multiple options at it's disposal. It can Develop a customer Loan Origination Application from scratch: Gives maximum opportunity to build what you want but inflexible to upgrade and maintain. Higher TCO in long term Buy a Packaged application & customize it: Customizing a generic loan application can be tedious and prove as difficult as above. Build it using many disparate & un-integrated tools: Initially seems easier than developing from scratch. But, without integrated tool sets this is not a viable approach either or A solution based on a Framework: Independent Services and Business Process Modeling provide decoupled architecture that is flexible. We built this framework end-to-end with processes the core process of loan origination & several sub-processes such as Analyse and define customer needs, customer credit verification, identity check processes, legal review process, New customer registration & risk assessment.

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• The challenge of giving a positive No

  - by MarkPearl

  I find it ironic that the more I am involved in the software industry, the more apparent it becomes that soft skills are just as if not more important than the technical abilities of a developer. One of the biggest challenges I have faced in my career is in managing client expectations to what one can deliver and being able to work with multiple clients. If I look at where things commonly go pear shaped, one area features a lot is where I should have said "No" to a request, but because of the way the request was made I ended up saying yes. Time and time again this has caused immense pain. Thus, when I saw on Amazon that they had a book titled "The power of a positive no" by William Ury I had to buy it and read it. In William's book he explains an approach to saying No that while extremely simple does change the way a No is presented. In essence he talks of a pattern the Yes! > No > Yes? Pattern. 1. Yes! -> positively and concretely describing your core interests and values 2. No. -> explicitly link your no to this YES! 3. Yes? -> suggest another positive outcome or agreement to the other person Let me explain how I understood it. If you are working on a really important project and someone asks you to do add a quick feature to another project, your Yes! would be to the more important project, which would mean a No to the quick feature, and an option for your Yes? may be an alternative time when you can look at it.. An example of an appropriate response would be... It is really important that I keep to the commitment that I made to this customer to finish his project on time so I cannot work on your feature right now but I am available to help you in a weeks time. William then goes on to explain the type of behaviour a person may display when the no is received. He illustrates this with a diagram called the curve of acceptance. William points out that if you are aware of the type of behaviour you can expect it empowers you to stay true to your no. Personally I think reading and having an understanding of the “soft” side of things like saying no is invaluable to a developer.

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• CSS naming guildlines with elements with multiple classes

  - by ryanzec

  Its seems like there are 2 ways someone can handle naming classes for elements that are designed to have multiple classes. One way would be: <span class="btn btn-success"></span> This is something that twitter bootstrap uses. Another possibility I would think would be: <span class="btn success"></span> It seems like the zurb foundation uses this method. Now the benefits of the first that I can see is that there less chance of outside css interfering with styling as the class name btn-success would not be as common as the class name success. The benefit of the second as I can see is that there is less typing and potential better style reuse. Are there any other benefits/disadvantages of either option and is one of them more popular than the other?

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• Terminal line glitches

  - by foxy

  I installed Ubuntu 11.10 mini + LXDE and wanted to make my command line different in terminal (than just plain white), so I added blue color to path line (everything until $ sign) and it works fine but I have two strange glitches now: When i write a line which is longer than terminal window, instead of starting at next line it starts at the same one, overwriting everything which was in there. Sometimes while navigating over previous commands (up/down arrow keys) some part of command gets stuck and is treated as part of prompt (the blue text), but it is white and is non-deletable and is not taken as part of command when i press enter. What could I mess up? The bad thing is that I don't remember what exactly did I change, but i'm sure I changed only one line in bashrc

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• Combined Likelihood Models

  - by Lukas Vermeer

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

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• Should Site Title be Before or After Page Title?

  - by NickAldwin

  Possible Duplicate: Does the order of keywords matter in a page title? Apologies if this is a dupe. I tried searching, but didn't find anything specifically addressing this concern. When creating a large(ish) site, page titles usually reference both the site name and the current page name. However, it seems there are two main conventions: Bob's Awesome Site - Contact Page and Contact Page - Bob's Awesome Site I've looked around, and pages usually use one of the two variants above. Is there any reason to use one over the other? SEO/readability/usability/etc? I've thought about it, and have only come up with: Page first - Differentiates the tab when the browser is crowded with lots of tabs Site first - Immediately see the "parent" site, so to speak; more cohesive experience

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• grub/burg listing a lot of os's

  - by Matthew

  I guess I've got more than one ubuntu installation (either two or three) along with a windows 7 installation. Each of the ubuntu installations also list something extra (maybe like a safe mode?) within grub. Firstly, how do I remove the ubuntu installations I don't use? (how do I first identify the one I do use? I log into it after booting it, but how do I delete the others) Also, how do I leave just a Windows 7 option and an Ubuntu option?

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• Connectify Dispatch: Link All Your Network Connections into a Super Pipeline

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  Connectify Dispatch is a network management tool that takes all the connections around you–Ethernet, Wi-Fi nodes, even 3G/4G cellular connections–and combines them into one giant data pipeline. At its most simple, Connectify Dispatch takes all the network inputs available to your computer (be those connections hard-line Ethernet, Wi-Fi nodes, or cellular connections) and merges the separate data connections seamlessly into one master connection. If any of the connections should falter (like your 3G reception goes out), Connectify automatically shifts the data to other available networks without any interruption. In addition you can specify which network Connectify should favor with connection prioritization; perfect for using your cellular connection without breaking through your data cap for the month right away. Hit up the link below to read more about Connectify Dispatch and the companion app Connectify Hotspot. Connectify Dispatch Secure Yourself by Using Two-Step Verification on These 16 Web Services How to Fix a Stuck Pixel on an LCD Monitor How to Factory Reset Your Android Phone or Tablet When It Won’t Boot

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• Multiple values for a specif custom variable in Google Analytics

  - by Nicola Pacini

  we're trying to get rid of a this question : would it be possible to setup more than one value in a custom variable in Google Analytics, at page level ? Eg: _gaq.push(['_setCustomVar',3,'Tag','Custom Variables',3]); We'd like to track most popular tags on a web site who publishes news, articles and stuff. Contents are categorized (each content belongs to one category) and tagged (1 or more tags for each article). So, we'd like to apply this code: _gaq.push(['_setCustomVar',3,'Tag','Custom Variables',3]); _gaq.push(['_setCustomVar',3,'Tag','Google Analytics',3]); in a page that shows an article with these two tags assigned. What do you think? Honestly I didn't find anything in documentation from Google and some other example sites. Many thanks! Nicola

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• Subterranean IL: Volatile

  - by Simon Cooper

  This time, we'll be having a look at the volatile. prefix instruction, and one of the differences between volatile in IL and C#. The volatile. prefix volatile is a tricky one, as there's varying levels of documentation on it. From what I can see, it has two effects: It prevents caching of the load or store value; rather than reading or writing to a cached version of the memory location (say, the processor register or cache), it forces the value to be loaded or stored at the 'actual' memory location, so it is then immediately visible to other threads. It forces a memory barrier at the prefixed instruction. This ensures instructions don't get re-ordered around the volatile instruction. This is slightly more complicated than it first seems, and only seems to matter on certain architectures. For more details, Joe Duffy has a blog post going into the details. For this post, I'll be concentrating on the first aspect of volatile. Caching field accesses To demonstrate this, I created a simple multithreaded IL program. It boils down to the following code: .class public Holder { .field public static class Holder holder .field public bool stop .method public static specialname void .cctor() { newobj instance void Holder::.ctor() stsfld class Holder Holder::holder ret }}.method private static void Main() { .entrypoint // Thread t = new Thread(new ThreadStart(DoWork)) // t.Start() // Thread.Sleep(2000) // Console.WriteLine("Stopping thread...") ldsfld class Holder Holder::holder ldc.i4.1 stfld bool Holder::stop call instance void [mscorlib]System.Threading.Thread::Join() ret}.method private static void DoWork() { ldsfld class Holder Holder::holder // while (!Holder.holder.stop) {} DoWork: dup ldfld bool Holder::stop brfalse DoWork pop ret} If you compile and run this code, you'll find that the call to Thread.Join() never returns - the DoWork spinlock is reading a cached version of Holder.stop, which is never being updated with the new value set by the Main method. Adding volatile to the ldfld fixes this: dupvolatile.ldfld bool Holder::stopbrfalse DoWork The volatile ldfld forces the field access to read direct from heap memory, which is then updated by the main thread, rather than using a cached copy. volatile in C# This highlights one of the differences between IL and C#. In IL, volatile only applies to the prefixed instruction, whereas in C#, volatile is specified on a field to indicate that all accesses to that field should be volatile (interestingly, there's no mention of the 'no caching' aspect of volatile in the C# spec; it only focuses on the memory barrier aspect). Furthermore, this information needs to be stored within the assembly somehow, as such a field might be accessed directly from outside the assembly, but there's no concept of a 'volatile field' in IL! How this information is stored with the field will be the subject of my next post.

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• How and when to ask for a pay raise?

  - by Nico

  When should one ask for a pay raise? Will I know when the time is right for a pay raise? or should I just think "I deserve a pay raise for X and Y." When would be a moment to ask for a pay grade? For instance, if you are in a company that outsources to others, could it be the right moment to ask when they move you to a different physical workplace? Maybe a few weeks/months after you started working as a consultant at the client? Should you ask for one after engaging new technologies or something you've never worked with before? In short, should you ask for a raise for a "business motive" (they move you, they assign you new responsibilities), a "professional motive" (you are required to learn new languages or technologies), or a "personal motive" (you are having twins, your mother died and you need to arrange the funeral), or are all of the above potentially valid motives? How should one ask for it? Asking for a pay raise can be difficult for some people, how you deal with this? Do you just walk up to your manager and tell him "I need more money", "I think I deserve a pay raise"? Do you suggest you might have other offers on the table? Couldn't this be counterproductive if you actually really want to stay in the company you are in (because you like the environment, made a few friends, and like all the features they give you besides your pay grade; say: free sodas, parties, after-offices that happen pretty often, a ps3 you can grab when you are tired or want to chill out, courses, english classes, football games, etc, etc. [these would be my reasons not to leave]). I mean, how would you ask for a pay raise, effectively, but without pretending to threaten to leave the company if you don't get it? Because you don't actually want to. How would you deal with their answer? If they tell you they don't think you deserve a raise, would you ask for their reasons, would you get furious and trash the room? If they give you their reasons why they think you don't deserve a pay raise yet, would you discuss this with them or just take their opinion as factual? What if they ask you how much more you think you deserve to be being paid? Should you have thought this before-hand, or expect them to set the new grade? If they do agree to a pay raise, should you expect extra work to be thrown your way, or should everything remain the same, except your pay grade?

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• Opinions on logging in multiprocess applications

  - by chkorn

  We have written an application that spawns at least 9 parallel processes. All processes generate a lot of logging information. Currently we are using Pythons QueueHandler to consolidate all logs into one file. Unfortunately this sometimes results in very messy files which make them hard to read (e.g. Track what exactly is going on in one thread). Do you think it is a viable option to separate all messages into dedicated files, or is this going to make things even more messy due to the high number of files? What are your general experiences when writing log files for multiprocessed/multithreaded applications?

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• Apple Developer Enterprise Program?

  - by Gnial0id

  I'm building an iOS application for a client (not an enterprise but non-profit association with under than 500 employess), distributed in a free version and a "paid" one. The free version will be available with iTunes/AppStore, no problem with that. But about the paid one... the distribution my client wants is different. They want to distribute it to their clients as a bonus in their subscription, and so, to control this distribution. The first answer would be "iOS Developer Enterprise Program", but it's not an enterprise and have less than 500 employees. Will the fact that my client will distribute the app' with a subscription be a problem ? I spend a lot of time to read documentation, but it is not very clear. I'm a bit lost, I admit it. Any help would grateful.

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• Can Kind People Finish First?

  - by Oracle Accelerate for Midsize Companies

  by Jim Lein, Oracle Midsize Programs In an earlier post, I expressed my undying love for KIND Snacks' products. This month's Oracle Profit magazine features an interview with KIND Healthy Snacks Founder and CEO Daniel Lubetzky entitled "Better Business". Lubetzky expresses his vision for making KIND a "not for profit only" company.  All great companies start with a good idea. In this case, that one great idea was to offer a healthy snack with ingredients you can "see and pronounce". That's one of things I really like about this company--that coupled with the fact that their snacks taste great. They compete in an over crowded playing field but I've found that it's rare to find an energy snack that both tastes good and is good for you.  A couple of interesting facts I learned from reading this article: 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:"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;} 9 out of 10 consumers who try a KIND bar will purchase a KIND product again and recommend it to others KIND has the highest Net Promoter Score among the top 10 brands in the nutritional bar category (I confess I've never heard about this rating before but now that I have it's pretty cool) KIND's coporate mantra, "Do the Kind Thing" both encourages people to do random acts of kindness and provides easy mechanisms for doing so. Not coincidentally, I think, KIND is indeed a story about how nice guys can finish first. KIND has doubled in size every year for the last ten  years and now employees over 300 people, with sales exceeding $120M annually. Growth Applies Pressures One thing I know for certain from interacting our with fast growing customers over the last fifteen years is that growth applies myriad pressures across the organization--resources, processes, technology systems, and leadership agility. And it's easy to forget that Oracle was once an entrepreneurial startup and experienced all those same pressures that other growing companies are experiencing today. When asked by Profit Editor in Chief Aaron Lazenby, " What sort of pressure does KIND"s growth and success place on operations?", Lubetzky responded, "We have a demand planning process right now that is manual to a significant extent, and it just takes so much management time. It takes us days and sometimes weeks to produce information that is critical to our business—and by the time we get the results, we need revised data. Our sales leadership could go out selling, but instead they’re talking to our team about forecasts." Hitching Your Wagon to Oracle Lubetzky and his team selected Oracle for what I believe is our company's greatest strength: hitch your wagon to Oracle and you can trust that we will be there for the long run with the solutions you need and financial staying power. In Lubetzky's words, "The KIND philosophy requires you to have a long-term view of things; taking shortcuts may be the fastest way to get things done, but in the long term that can come back and bite you. Oracle is the type of company—and has the kind of platform—that is here for the long term. It’s not going to go away tomorrow. And Oracle is going to invest all the necessary resources into staying ahead of the game and improving." o next time you're in the supermarket or an REI (my favorite store in the world) or any of the other 80,000 locations that carry KIND, give one a try. Maybe some day you'll want to become a KIND Brand Ambassador.   Looking for more news and information about Oracle Solutions for Midsize Companies? Read the latest Oracle for Midsize Companies Newsletter Sign-up to receive the latest communications from Oracle’s industry leaders and experts Jim Lein I evangelize Oracle's enterprise solutions for growing midsize companies. I recently celebrated 15 years with Oracle, having joined JD Edwards in 1999. I'm based in Evergreen, Colorado and love relating stories about creativity and innovation whether they be about software, live music, or the mountains. The views expressed here are my own, and not necessarily those of Oracle.

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• evaluating a code of a graph [migrated]

  - by mazen.r.f

  This is relatively a long code,if you have the tolerance and the will to find out how to make this code work then take a look please, i will appreciate your feed back. i have spent two days trying to come up with a code to represent a graph , then calculate the shortest path using dijkastra algorithm , but i am not able to get the right result , even the code runs without errors , but the result is not correct , always i am getting 0. briefly,i have three classes , Vertex, Edge, Graph , the Vertex class represents the nodes in the graph and it has id and carried ( which carry the weight of the links connected to it while using dijkastra algorithm ) and a vector of the ids belong to other nodes the path will go through before arriving to the node itself , this vector is named previous_nodes. the Edge class represents the edges in the graph it has two vertices ( one in each side ) and a wight ( the distance between the two vertices ). the Graph class represents the graph , it has two vectors one is the vertices included in this graph , and the other is the edges included in the graph. inside the class Graph there is a method its name shortest takes the sources node id and the destination and calculates the shortest path using dijkastra algorithm, and i think that it is the most important part of the code. my theory about the code is that i will create two vectors one for the vertices in the graph i will name it vertices and another vector its name is ver_out it will include the vertices out of calculation in the graph, also i will have two vectors of type Edge , one its name edges for all the edges in the graph and the other its name is track to contain temporarily the edges linked to the temporarily source node in every round , after the calculation of every round the vector track will be cleared. in main() i created five vertices and 10 edges to simulate a graph , the result of the shortest path supposedly to be 4 , but i am always getting 0 , that means i am having something wrong in my code , so if you are interesting in helping me find my mistake and how to make the code work , please take a look. the way shortest work is as follow at the beginning all the edges will be included in the vector edges , we select the edges related to the source and put them in the vector track , then we iterate through track and add the wight of every edge to the vertex (node ) related to it ( not the source vertex ) , then after we clear track and remove the source vertex from the vector vertices and select a new source , and start over again select the edges related to the new source , put them in track , iterate over edges in tack , adding the weights to the corresponding vertices then remove this vertex from the vector vertices, and clear track , and select a new source , and so on . here is the code. #include<iostream> #include<vector> #include <stdlib.h> // for rand() using namespace std; class Vertex { private: unsigned int id; // the name of the vertex unsigned int carried; // the weight a vertex may carry when calculating shortest path vector<unsigned int> previous_nodes; public: unsigned int get_id(){return id;}; unsigned int get_carried(){return carried;}; void set_id(unsigned int value) {id = value;}; void set_carried(unsigned int value) {carried = value;}; void previous_nodes_update(unsigned int val){previous_nodes.push_back(val);}; void previous_nodes_erase(unsigned int val){previous_nodes.erase(previous_nodes.begin() + val);}; Vertex(unsigned int init_val = 0, unsigned int init_carried = 0) :id (init_val), carried(init_carried) // constructor { } ~Vertex() {}; // destructor }; class Edge { private: Vertex first_vertex; // a vertex on one side of the edge Vertex second_vertex; // a vertex on the other side of the edge unsigned int weight; // the value of the edge ( or its weight ) public: unsigned int get_weight() {return weight;}; void set_weight(unsigned int value) {weight = value;}; Vertex get_ver_1(){return first_vertex;}; Vertex get_ver_2(){return second_vertex;}; void set_first_vertex(Vertex v1) {first_vertex = v1;}; void set_second_vertex(Vertex v2) {second_vertex = v2;}; Edge(const Vertex& vertex_1 = 0, const Vertex& vertex_2 = 0, unsigned int init_weight = 0) : first_vertex(vertex_1), second_vertex(vertex_2), weight(init_weight) { } ~Edge() {} ; // destructor }; class Graph { private: std::vector<Vertex> vertices; std::vector<Edge> edges; public: Graph(vector<Vertex> ver_vector, vector<Edge> edg_vector) : vertices(ver_vector), edges(edg_vector) { } ~Graph() {}; vector<Vertex> get_vertices(){return vertices;}; vector<Edge> get_edges(){return edges;}; void set_vertices(vector<Vertex> vector_value) {vertices = vector_value;}; void set_edges(vector<Edge> vector_ed_value) {edges = vector_ed_value;}; unsigned int shortest(unsigned int src, unsigned int dis) { vector<Vertex> ver_out; vector<Edge> track; for(unsigned int i = 0; i < edges.size(); ++i) { if((edges[i].get_ver_1().get_id() == vertices[src].get_id()) || (edges[i].get_ver_2().get_id() == vertices[src].get_id())) { track.push_back (edges[i]); edges.erase(edges.begin()+i); } }; for(unsigned int i = 0; i < track.size(); ++i) { if(track[i].get_ver_1().get_id() != vertices[src].get_id()) { track[i].get_ver_1().set_carried((track[i].get_weight()) + track[i].get_ver_2().get_carried()); track[i].get_ver_1().previous_nodes_update(vertices[src].get_id()); } else { track[i].get_ver_2().set_carried((track[i].get_weight()) + track[i].get_ver_1().get_carried()); track[i].get_ver_2().previous_nodes_update(vertices[src].get_id()); } } for(unsigned int i = 0; i < vertices.size(); ++i) if(vertices[i].get_id() == src) vertices.erase(vertices.begin() + i); // removing the sources vertex from the vertices vector ver_out.push_back (vertices[src]); track.clear(); if(vertices[0].get_id() != dis) {src = vertices[0].get_id();} else {src = vertices[1].get_id();} for(unsigned int i = 0; i < vertices.size(); ++i) if((vertices[i].get_carried() < vertices[src].get_carried()) && (vertices[i].get_id() != dis)) src = vertices[i].get_id(); //while(!edges.empty()) for(unsigned int round = 0; round < vertices.size(); ++round) { for(unsigned int k = 0; k < edges.size(); ++k) { if((edges[k].get_ver_1().get_id() == vertices[src].get_id()) || (edges[k].get_ver_2().get_id() == vertices[src].get_id())) { track.push_back (edges[k]); edges.erase(edges.begin()+k); } }; for(unsigned int n = 0; n < track.size(); ++n) if((track[n].get_ver_1().get_id() != vertices[src].get_id()) && (track[n].get_ver_1().get_carried() > (track[n].get_ver_2().get_carried() + track[n].get_weight()))) { track[n].get_ver_1().set_carried((track[n].get_weight()) + track[n].get_ver_2().get_carried()); track[n].get_ver_1().previous_nodes_update(vertices[src].get_id()); } else if(track[n].get_ver_2().get_carried() > (track[n].get_ver_1().get_carried() + track[n].get_weight())) { track[n].get_ver_2().set_carried((track[n].get_weight()) + track[n].get_ver_1().get_carried()); track[n].get_ver_2().previous_nodes_update(vertices[src].get_id()); } for(unsigned int t = 0; t < vertices.size(); ++t) if(vertices[t].get_id() == src) vertices.erase(vertices.begin() + t); track.clear(); if(vertices[0].get_id() != dis) {src = vertices[0].get_id();} else {src = vertices[1].get_id();} for(unsigned int tt = 0; tt < edges.size(); ++tt) { if(vertices[tt].get_carried() < vertices[src].get_carried()) { src = vertices[tt].get_id(); } } } return vertices[dis].get_carried(); } }; int main() { cout<< "Hello, This is a graph"<< endl; vector<Vertex> vers(5); vers[0].set_id(0); vers[1].set_id(1); vers[2].set_id(2); vers[3].set_id(3); vers[4].set_id(4); vector<Edge> eds(10); eds[0].set_first_vertex(vers[0]); eds[0].set_second_vertex(vers[1]); eds[0].set_weight(5); eds[1].set_first_vertex(vers[0]); eds[1].set_second_vertex(vers[2]); eds[1].set_weight(9); eds[2].set_first_vertex(vers[0]); eds[2].set_second_vertex(vers[3]); eds[2].set_weight(4); eds[3].set_first_vertex(vers[0]); eds[3].set_second_vertex(vers[4]); eds[3].set_weight(6); eds[4].set_first_vertex(vers[1]); eds[4].set_second_vertex(vers[2]); eds[4].set_weight(2); eds[5].set_first_vertex(vers[1]); eds[5].set_second_vertex(vers[3]); eds[5].set_weight(5); eds[6].set_first_vertex(vers[1]); eds[6].set_second_vertex(vers[4]); eds[6].set_weight(7); eds[7].set_first_vertex(vers[2]); eds[7].set_second_vertex(vers[3]); eds[7].set_weight(1); eds[8].set_first_vertex(vers[2]); eds[8].set_second_vertex(vers[4]); eds[8].set_weight(8); eds[9].set_first_vertex(vers[3]); eds[9].set_second_vertex(vers[4]); eds[9].set_weight(3); unsigned int path; Graph graf(vers, eds); path = graf.shortest(2, 4); cout<< path << endl; return 0; }

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• Rule Engine in .net

  - by user641812

  I have to import data from excel to SQL database. Excel data contains various parameters and there value like P1,P1,P4,P5 etc. I have to apply business rules Like if( P1 100 and P1 < 200) then insert the record in database. Similarly in some cases string values are also validated. Can I have any open source rule engine that contains UI to change , add , delete the rules. Am using C# to read the excel and and insert the records One more thing which is best approach: Read excel first and store every record as an object in a collection, then iterate through the collection, apply business rules on every object and then insert record in the database Or Read one record from excel apply business rule and then insert record in the database. Repeat the process for whole excel.

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for 2012-08-28

  - by Bob Rhubart

  You may be tempted by IaaS, but you should PaaS on that or your database cloud journey will be a short one "The better option [to IaaS] is to rationalize the deployment stack so that VMs are needed only for exceptional cases," says B. R. Clouse. "By settling on a standard operating system and patch level, you create an infrastructure that potentially all of your databases can share. Now, the building block will be database instances or possibly schemas within databases. These components are the platforms on which you will deploy workloads, hence this is known as Platform as a Service (PaaS)." 'Shadow IT' can be the cloud's best friend | David Linthicum "I do not advocate that IT give up control and allow business units to adopt any old technology they want," says Infoworld cloud computing blogger David Linthicum. "However, IT needs to face reality: For the past three decades or so, corporate IT has been slow on the uptake around the use of productive new technologies." Do you agree? 9 ways cloud will impact IT employment | ZDNet ZDNet blogger Joe McKendrick condenses information from a recent report on how cloud computing will impact IT jobs. Number one on the list: New categories of jobs arising from cloud computing, which include "private cloud developers and administrators, departmental liaisons, integration specialists, cloud architects, and compliance specialists." Yeah, that's right, cloud architects. For more on cloud architects, including what you need to up your game to thrive in the cloud, check out "The Role of the Cloud Architect" on the OTN ArchBeat Podcast. Decisions, Decisions: The art, science, and politics of technology selection "When the time comes for a solution architect to make the final decision about the technologies, standards, and other elements that are to be incorporated into a particular project, what factors weigh most heavily on that decision? It comes as no surprise that among the architects I contacted, business needs top the list." Managing Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud with Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center Anand Akela's byline is on this post, but "Dr. Jürgen Fleischer, Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center Engineering" appears at the end of the post, so it's anybody's guess as to who wrote this thing. But the content includes a complete listing of the Exalogic 2.0.1 Tea Break Snippets series written by a member of the Exalogic team who goes by the name "The Old Toxophilist." So maybe the best thing to do here is ignore the names and focus on the very useful conent. Boost your infrastructure with Coherence into the Cloud | Nino Guarnacci Nino Guarnacci describes a use case that involved managing a variety of data caches that process complex queries and parallel computational operations, in order to maintain the caches in a consistent state on different server instances. Thought for the Day "No one hates software more than software developers." — Jeff Atwood Source: SoftwareQuotes

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• Caveat utilitor - Can I run two versions of Microsoft Project side-by-side?

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  A number of out customers have asked if there are any problems in installing and running multiple versions of Microsoft Project on a single client. Although this is a case of Caveat utilitor (Let the user beware), as long as the user understands and accepts the issues that can occur then they can do this. Although Microsoft provide the ability to leave old versions of Office products (except Outlook) on your client when you are installing a new version of the product they certainly do not endorse doing so. Figure: For Project you can choose to keep the old stuff   That being the case I would have preferred that they put a “(NOT RECOMMENDED)” after the options to impart that knowledge to the rest of us, but they did not. The default and recommended behaviour is for the newer version installer to remove the older versions. Of course this does not apply in the revers. There are no forward compatibility packs for Office. There are a number of negative behaviours (or bugs) that can occur in this configuration: There is only one MS Project In Windows a file extension can only be associated with a single program.  In this case, MPP files can be associated with only one version of winproj.exe.  The executables are in different folders so if a user double-clicks a Project file on the desktop, file explorer, or Outlook email, Windows will launch the winproj.exe associated with MPP and then load the MPP file.  There are problems associated with this situation and in some cases workarounds. The user double-clicks on a Project 2010 file, Project 2007 launches but is unable to open the file because it is a newer version.  The workaround is for the user to launch Project 2010 from the Start menu then open the file.  If the file is attached to an email they will need to first drag the file to the desktop. All your linked MS Project files need to be of the same version There are a number of problems that occur when people use on Microsoft’s Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) technology.  The three common uses of OLE are: for inserted projects where a Master project contains sub-projects and each sub-project resides in its own MPP file shared resource pools where multiple MPP files share a common resource pool kept in a single MPP file cross-project links where a task or milestone in one MPP file has a  predecessor/successor relationship with a task or milestone in a different MPP file What I’ve seen happen before is that if you are running in a version of Project that is not associated with the MPP extension and then try and activate an OLE link then Project tries to launch the other version of Project.  Things start getting very confused since different MPP files are being controlled by different versions of Project running at the same time.  I haven’t tried this in awhile so I can’t give you exact symptoms but I suspect that if Project 2010 is involved the symptoms will be different then in a Project 2003/2007 scenario.  I’ve noticed that Project 2010 gives different error messages for the exact same problem when it occurs in Project 2003 or 2007.  -Anonymous The recommendation would be either not to use this feature if you have to have multiple versions of Project installed or to use only a single version of Project. You may get unexpected negative behaviours if you are using shared resource pools or resource pools even when you are not running multiple versions as I have found that they can get broken very easily. If you need these thing then it is probably best to use Project Server as it was created to solve many of these specific issues. Note: I would not even allow multiple people to access a network copy of a Project file because of the way Windows locks files in write mode. This can cause write-locks that get so bad a server restart is required I’ve seen user’s files get write-locked to the point where the only resolution is to reboot the server. Changing the default version to run for an extension So what if you want to change the default association from Project 2007 to Project 2010?   Figure: “Control Panel | Folder Options | Change the file associated with a file extension” Windows normally only lists the last version installed for a particular extension. You can select a specific version by selecting the program you want to change and clicking “Change program… | Browse…” and then selecting the .exe you want to use on the file system. Figure: You will need to select the exact version of “winproj.exe” that you want to run Conclusion Although it is possible to run multiple versions of Project on one system in the main it does not really make sense.

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• XNA - Moving Background Calculations

  - by Jesse Emond

  Hi, My question is relatively hard to explain(for me, at least), so I'll go one step at a time and just tell me in the comments if it's not clear enough. So I'm making a "Defend Your Castle" type 2D game, where two players own a castle and create units that will move horizontally to try to destroy the opponent's base. Here's a screenshot of the game: The distance between both castles is much bigger in a real game though, bigger than the screen's width actually. Because the distance is bigger than the screen's width, I had to implement a simple 2D camera: Camera2D, which only holds a Location Vector2 (and I always make sure this camera is within the field area). Then, I just move all the game elements(castles, units, health bars) by that location, so that if a unit is at (5, 0), and the camera's location is (5, 0), then the unit's position will be moved by 5 units to the left, making it (0, 0) on the screen. At first, I simply used a static background with mountains and clouds(yeah, those are supposed to be mountains and clouds). Obviously, this looked awful: when you moved the camera, the background would stay immobile. Instead, I'd like to make a moving background, kind of a "scrolling" one. But rather than making a background with the same width as the distance between the castles, I'd like to make one that is a little bit smaller(but still bigger than the screen's width). I thought this would create an effect of "distance" with the background(but it might just look awful, too). Here's the background I'm testing with: I tried different ways, but none of them seems to work. I tried this: float backgroundFieldRatio = BackgroundTexture.Width / fieldWidth;//find the ratio between the background and the field. float backgroundPositionX = -cam.Location.X * backgroundFieldRatio;//move the background to the left When I run this with fieldWith = 1600, BackgroundTexture.Width = 1500 and while looking at the rightmost area, the background is offset to the left by a too big amount, and we can see the black clear color in the back, as you can see here: I hope I explained properly what I'm trying to achieve. Thank you for your time. Note: I didn't know what to look for on Google, so I thought I'd ask here.

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• SQLAuthority News Guest Post FAULT Contract in WCF with Learning Video

  This is guest post by one of my very good friends and .NET MVP, Dhananjay Kumar. The very first impression one gets when they meet him is his politeness. He is an extremely nice person, but has superlative knowledge in .NET and is truly helpful to all of us. Objective: This article will give a [...]...Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Why are part-time jobs in programming an anomaly?

  - by Mikle

  I've recently quit my full time developing job at mega-corp, and I decided that I'll look for a part time job. Since then I've talked to half a dozen potential employers, and every one of them had the same reaction when I said the magic words "part-time" - they all closed up and became suspicious. Now, I understand that it might just be me, so as control I asked every one of them what if I were willing to work full time, and they all said I would probably get an offer. My question is two fold: Why, as an employer, would you give up a competent, even great, developer, simply because he wants to work 3 days a week and not 5? How do I sell the story of part time job better? I usually just list my reasons which are that I prefer that balance currently in my life and that I want to work on my own projects, but it leaves them even more suspicious - am I going to start something myself and quit? Am I just lazy?

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• Is there any text editor for windows which can save files with code highlight for viewing

  - by user1713836

  I want some software for Windows where I can save code snippets and other daily usable commands in one file. Everyday I find some small code snippets which I want to save in a single file. Just like we have code snippet savers online, I want something offline on Windows, basically with all the features Microsoft Word has, but with code highlight. It should be lightweight like Notepad++. I mean if I select the code and then press some button, it should change the color according to the language. Currently I use Notepad++, but in it, I can't select small code snippets on one page. It either highlights the entire file or nothing.

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