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• JCP.next.3: time to get to work

  - by Patrick Curran

  As I've previously reported in this blog, we planned three JSRs to improve the JCP’s processes and to meet our members’ expectations for change. The first - JCP.next.1, or more formally JSR 348: Towards a new version of the Java Community Process - was completed in October 2011. This focused on a small number of simple but important changes to make our process more transparent and to enable broader participation. We're already seeing the benefits of these changes as new and existing JSRs adopt the new requirements. However, because we wanted to complete this JSR quickly we deliberately postponed a number of more complex items, including everything that would require modifying the JSPA (the legal agreement that members sign when they join the organization) to a follow-on JSR. The second JSR (JSR 355: JCP Executive Committee Merge) is in progress now and will complete later this year. This JSR is even simpler than the first, and is focused solely on merging the two Executive Committees into one for greater efficiency and to encourage synergies between the Java ME and Java SE platforms. Continuing the momentum to move Java and the JCP forward we have just filed the third JSR (JCP.next.3) as JSR 358: A major revision of the Java Community Process. This JSR will modify the JSPA as well as the Process Document, and will tackle a large number of complex issues, many of them postponed from JSR 348. For these reasons we expect to spend a considerable amount of time working on it - at least a year, and probably more. The current version of the JSPA was created back in 2002, although some minor changes were introduced in 2005. Since then the organization and the environment in which we operate have changed significantly, and it is now time to revise our processes to ensure that they meet our current needs. We have a long list of topics to be considered, including the role of independent implementations (those not derived from the Reference Implementation), licensing and open source, ensuring that our new transparency requirements are implemented correctly, compatibility policy and TCKs, the role of individual members, patent policy, and IP flow. The Expert Group for JSR 358, as with all process-change JSRs, consists of all members of the Executive Committees. Even though the JSR has just been filed we started discussions on the various topics several months ago (see the EC's meeting minutes for details) and our EC members - including the new members who joined within the last year or two - are actively engaged. Now it's your opportunity to get involved. As required by version 2.8 of our Process (introduced with JSR 348) we will conduct all our business in the open. We have a public java.net project where you can follow and participate in our work. All of our deliberations will be copied to a public Observer mailing list, we'll track our issues on a public Issue Tracker, and all our documents (meeting agendas and minutes, task lists, working drafts) will be published in our Document Archive. We're just getting started, but we do want your input. Please visit us on java.net where you can learn how to participate. Let's get to work...

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• "Expecting A Different Result?" (2 of 3 in 'No Customer Left Behind' Series)

  - by Kathryn Perry

  A guest post by David Vap, Group Vice President, Oracle Applications Product Development Many companies already have some type of customer experience initiative in process or one that could be framed as such. The challenge is that the initiatives too often are started in a department silo, don't have the right level of executive sponsorship, or have been initiated without the necessary insight and strategic business alignment. You can't keep doing the same things, give it a customer experience name, and expect a different result. You can't continue to just compete on price or features - that is not sustainable in commoditized markets. And ultimately, investing in technology alone doesn't solve customer experience problems; it just adds to the complexity of them. You need a customer experience strategy and approach on how to execute a customer-centric worldview within your business. To develop this, you must take an outside in journey on how your customers are interacting with your business to establish a benchmark of your customers' experiences. Then you must get cross-functional alignment on what you are trying to achieve, near, mid, and long term. Your execution of that strategy should be based on a customer experience approach: Understand your customer: You need to capture the insights across interactions, channels (including social), and personas to better understand whom to serve, how to serve them, and when to serve them. Not all experiences or customers are equal, so leverage this insight to understand the strategic business objectives you need to address. Then determine which experiences can be improved immediately and which over time to get the result you need. Empower your ecosystem: You need to align your front-line employees with your strategy and give them the power, insight, and tools that allow them to cultivate a culture around strengthening the relationships with your customers. You also need to provide the transparency, access, and collaboration that enable your customers and partners to self serve and self solve and to share with ease. Adapt your business: You need to enable the discipline of agility within your organization and infrastructure so that you can innovate, tailor, and personalize experiences. This needs to be done both reactively from insight and proactively in real time so you can stay ahead of shifting market trends and evolving consumer behaviors. No longer will the old approaches provide the same returns. To compete, differentiate, and win in a world where the customer has the power, you must execute a strategy that is sure to deliver a better brand experience for your customers. Note: This is Part 2 in a three-part series. Part 1 is here. Stop back for Part 3 on November 28.

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• Help writing server script to ban IP's from a list

  - by Chev_603

  I have a VPS that I use as an openvpn and web server. For some reason, my apache log files are filled with thousands of these hack attempts: "POST /xmlrpc.php HTTP/1.0" 404 395 These attack attempts fill up 90% of my logs. I think it's a WordPress vulnerability they're looking for. Obviously they are not successful (I don't even have Wordpress on my server), but it's annoying and probably resource consuming as well. I am trying to write a bash script that will do the following: Search the apache logs and grab the offending IP's (even if they try it once), Sort them into a list with each unique IP on a seperate line, And then block them using the IP table rules. I am a bash newb, and so far my script does everything except Step 3. I can manually block the IP's, but that's tedious and besides, this is Linux and it's perfectly capable of doing it for me. I also want the script to be customizable so that I (or anyone else who wants to use it) can change the variables to suit whatever situation I/they may deal with in the future. Here is the script so far: #!/bin/bash ##IP LIST GENERATOR ##Author Chev Young ##Script to search Apache logs and list IP's based on custom filters ## ##Define our variables: DIRECT=~/Script ##Location of script&where to put results/temp files LOGFILE=/var/log/apache2/access.log ## Logfile to search for offenders TEMPLIST=xml_temp ## Temporary file name IP_LIST=ipstoban ## Name of results file FILTER1=xmlrpc ## What are we looking for? (Requests we want to ban) cd $DIRECT if [ ! -f $TEMPLIST ];then touch $TEMPLIST ##Create temp file fi cat $LOGFILE | grep $FILTER1 >> $DIRECT/$TEMPLIST ## Only interested in the IP's, so: sed -e 's/\([0-9]\+\.[0-9]\+\.[0-9]\+\.[0-9]\+\).*$/\1/' -e t -e d $DIRECT/$TEMPLIST | sort | uniq > $DIRECT/$IP_LIST rm $TEMPLIST ## Clean temp file echo "Done. Results located at $DIRECT/$IP_LIST" So I need help with the next part of the script, which should ban the IP's (incoming and perhaps outgoing too) from the resulting $IP_LIST file. I don't care if it utilizes UFW or IPTables directly, as long as it bans the IP's. I'd probably run it as a cron task. What I'm having trouble with is understanding how to use line of the result file as a seperate variable to do something like: ufw deny $IP1 $IP2 $IP3, ect Any ideas? Thanks.

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• Oracle OpenWorld is on the Horizon

  - by Matthew Haavisto

  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: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;} Oracle OpenWorld 2012 is only a few months away, and we're excited about our slate of sessions and other activities scheduled this year.  PeopleSoft sessions are perennially among the best attended and well-received sessions, and we plan to keep that trend going. We have a full complement of sessions planned, from updates for some of your yearly favorites to lots of completely new topics.  Some of the long-standing favorites include the PeopleSoft Technology Roadmap, PeopleTools Tips and Techniques and a number of candid panel discussions. Coverage of the latest trends include new sessions on PeopleSoft on mobile platforms, PeopleSoft's new user experience and interaction model, advances in reporting and analytics and employing virtualization to reduce costs.  The PeopleTools team is also working closely with Applications groups this year to demonstrate to users how advances in PeopleTools will have a direct and beneficial impact on the latest applications releases.  There are plenty of sessions for developers and administrators as well, from sessions on enhancing, integrating, maintaining, and securing your applications, to tuning for performance.  We'll also update you on the latest platform roadmap. In addition to these conventional sessions, we will of course be manning the demo pods, where you'll be able to see the latest functionality first hand. We plan to engage in lots of direct customer interaction.  One of the highlights each year for our team as well as attendees is the session in which a panel of senior PeopleTools leaders talks candidly and engages in open Q&A with customers about our products.  This is definitely a discussion worth joining in on. Keep your eyes on this blog in the coming weeks for details on many of the sessions we have planned.  We look forward to seeing you at OpenWorld 2012!

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• Best practice for organizing/storing character/monster data in an RPG?

  - by eclecto

  Synopsis: Attempting to build a cross-platform RPG app in Adobe Flash Builder and am trying to figure out the best class hierarchy and the best way to store the static data used to build each of the individual "hero" and "monster" types. My programming experience, particularly in AS3, is embarrassingly small. My ultra-alpha method is to include a "_class" object in the constructor for each instance. The _class, in turn, is a static Object pulled from a class created specifically for that purpose, so things look something like this: // Character.as package { public class Character extends Sprite { public var _strength:int; // etc. public function Character(_class:Object) { _strength = _class._strength; // etc. } } } // MonsterClasses.as package { public final class MonsterClasses extends Object { public static const Monster1:Object={ _strength:50, // etc. } // etc. } } // Some other class in which characters/monsters are created. // Create a new instance of Character var myMonster = new Character(MonsterClasses.Monster1); Another option I've toyed with is the idea of making each character class/monster type its own subclass of Character, but I'm not sure if it would be efficient or even make sense considering that these classes would only be used to store variables and would add no new methods. On the other hand, it would make creating instances as simple as var myMonster = new Monster1; and potentially cut down on the overhead of having to read a class containing the data for, at a conservative preliminary estimate, over 150 monsters just to fish out the one monster I want (assuming, and I really have no idea, that such a thing might cause any kind of slowdown in execution). But long story short, I want a system that's both efficient at compile time and easy to work with during coding. Should I stick with what I've got or try a different method? As a subquestion, I'm also assuming here that the best way to store data that will be bundled with the final game and not read externally is simply to declare everything in AS3. Seems to me that if I used, say, XML or JSON I'd have to use the associated AS3 classes and methods to pull in the data, parse it, and convert it to AS3 object(s) anyway, so it would be inefficient. Right?

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• Understanding When Social Interactions Should Be Resolved in Another Channel

  - by Christina McKeon

  Guest Blogger: Aphrodite Brinsmead, Senior Analyst at Ovum Agents need to respond to customers’ social comments and questions quickly and in the right tone. But more importantly, they need to offer resolutions. Customers care most about how long it takes to find information rather than which channel they are using. They choose to use social media because they are comfortable with the channel and it offers a convenient way to communicate. Ideally agents will resolve questions within social media, but they need guidance as to how and when to escalate interactions to a more private channel. First, businesses should assess the way in which customers are using social media to communicate with them and categorize posts into groups: complaints, feedback, technical queries or more general support questions. They should then consider the types of interactions that can easily be handled within social media and those that need to be followed up in another channel. This will be very dependent on the industry. Examples of queries that can be resolved in social media include Shipping pricing and timeframes Outage updates and resolution plans Flight status information Product stock check Technical support videos or forum posts Availability of facilities Both customers and agents need to be educated about the types of questions they can expect to resolve within social media. As the channel matures as a customer service tool, it needs to have value other than just as a forum for complaints. Social customer service agents need the power to start a web chat or phone call Any questions where customers need to divulge personal details in order to get a resolution will need to be addressed in a private channel: a private social message, web chat, email or phone call. Customers should never disclose their date of birth, social security, credit card number, or healthcare records in a public forum. Flight issues, changes to a booking, billing queries or account updates will all need to be completed via a private interaction. Agents responding to questions on social media need the ability to start a web chat or phone call with the customer. The customer doesn’t want to have to repeat their question and the agent should be empowered to connect customer records and access account or billing information. These agents will need to be trained across different channels and should be able to view all customer communications in one application. They also need to follow up questions that began on a public forum in the initial channel to make it clear that the issue was addressed. In order to make this possible, social media needs to be integrated as part of a broader customer service strategy. Irrespective of how many channels are used to complete an interaction, businesses should prioritize customer satisfaction and issue resolution. They need a clear strategy and trained agents that can handle and respond to social interactions. Follow me on Twitter @diteb. 

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• Forced to be trained [closed]

  - by steeb

  is it OK to force employees to take a training in order to make them sign a contract to stay in the job for X years? Here I'm the only developer in the company and before this job I've developed in VB6, VB.Net and others. There are others technicians here but they query the database server to make reports and make little programs but do not spend all day in programming. I was hired here to manage some legacy data to be migrated to a new system and I used my experience to accomplish the task. I also have made some utilities and other developments. Since we went live with the new system I've been developing a lot of side programs, add-ons and changed the source code of it and basically I've been learning from it since then and became some sort of jack of all trades when some feature needs to be changed or corrected. I have one and a half year in this company but during the last 8 months I've been entirely programming in the system. There have been times when even the implementers ask me how I accomplish certain things. The issue here is that the company has come and told me and other co-workers (which do not program in the system but know basic programming and databases) to have a basic training to program for the new system's platform and when we finish it we will sign a contract to stay in the company for an unspecified time. They have offered also an unspecified better salary. I'm feeling very suspicious cause I know the basics of system and I don't understand why I have to take it, being known by everybody all developments I've made. I gathered with my boss and told him that I should not take that course because I feel that I can learn more with all the daily requirements I've been asked and they should save that money. But he responded me that I have to take it and sign after that. I think they want me to be with them for a long time, and I'd like to, but my opinion is that I would like to stay in the company because I feel comfortable in all laboral aspects (including salary) but not because I signed a contract forced to do more tasks and forced to say no if I have others and better job offers. What advice can you give me in this kind of situation?

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• I'm graduating with a Computer Science degree but I don't feel like I know how to program.

  - by wp123

  I'm graduating with a Computer Science degree but I see websites like Stack Overflow and search engines like Google and don't know where I'd even begin to write something like that. During one summer I did have the opportunity to work as a iPhone developer, but I felt like I was mostly gluing together libraries that other people had written with little understanding of the mechanics happening beneath the hood. I'm trying to improve my knowledge by studying algorithms, but it is a long and painful process. I find algorithms difficult and at the rate I am learning a decade will have passed before I will master the material in the book. Given my current situation, I've spent a month looking for work but my skills (C, Python, Objective-C) are relatively shallow and are not so desirable in the local market, where C#, Java, and web development are much higher in demand. That is not to say that C and Python opportunities do not exist but they tend to demand 3+ years of experience I do not have. My GPA is OK (3.0) but it's not high enough to apply to the large companies like IBM or return for graduate studies. Basically I'm graduating with a Computer Science degree but I don't feel like I've learned how to program. I thought that joining a company and programming full-time would give me a chance to develop my skills and learn from those more experienced than myself, but I'm struggling to find work and am starting to get really frustrated. I am going to cast my net wider and look beyond the city I've grown up in, but what have other people in similar situation tried to do? I've worked hard but don't have the confidence to go out on my own and write my own app. (That is, become an indie developer in the iPhone app market.) If nothing turns up I will need to consider upgrading and learning more popular skills or try something marginally related like IT, but given all the effort I've put in that feels like copping out. EDIT: Thank you for all the advice. I think I was premature because of unrealistic expectations but the comments have given me a dose of reality. I will persevere and continue to code. I have a project in mind, although well beyond my current capabilities it will challenge me to hone my craft and prove my worth to myself (and potential employers). Had I known there was a career overflow I would have posted there instead. Thanks again!

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• Sampling SQL server batch activity

  - by extended_events

  Recently I was troubleshooting a performance issue on an internal tracking workload and needed to collect some very low level events over a period of 3-4 hours.  During analysis of the data I found that a common pattern I was using was to find a batch with a duration that was longer than average and follow all the events it produced.  This pattern got me thinking that I was discarding a substantial amount of event data that had been collected, and that it would be great to be able to reduce the collection overhead on the server if I could still get all activity from some batches. In the past I’ve used a sampling technique based on the counter predicate to build a baseline of overall activity (see Mikes post here).  This isn’t exactly what I want though as there would certainly be events from a particular batch that wouldn’t pass the predicate.  What I need is a way to identify streams of work and select say one in ten of them to watch, and sql server provides just such a mechanism: session_id.  Session_id is a server assigned integer that is bound to a connection at login and lasts until logout.  So by combining the session_id predicate source and the divides_by_uint64 predicate comparator we can limit collection, and still get all the events in batches for investigation. CREATE EVENT SESSION session_10_percent ON SERVER ADD EVENT sqlserver.sql_statement_starting(     WHERE (package0.divides_by_uint64(sqlserver.session_id,10))), ADD EVENT sqlos.wait_info (        WHERE (package0.divides_by_uint64(sqlserver.session_id,10))), ADD EVENT sqlos.wait_info_external (        WHERE (package0.divides_by_uint64(sqlserver.session_id,10))), ADD EVENT sqlserver.sql_statement_completed(     WHERE (package0.divides_by_uint64(sqlserver.session_id,10))) ADD TARGET ring_buffer WITH (MAX_DISPATCH_LATENCY=30 SECONDS,TRACK_CAUSALITY=ON) GO   There we go; event collection is reduced while still providing enough information to find the root of the problem.  By the way the performance issue turned out to be an IO issue, and the session definition above was more than enough to show long waits on PAGEIOLATCH*.        

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• How to write comments to explain the "why" behind the callback function when the function and parameter names are insufficient for that?

  - by snowmantw

  How should I approach writing comments for callback functions? I want to explain the "why" behind the function when the function and parameter names are insufficient to explain what's going on. I have always wonder why comments like this can be so ordinary in documents of libraries in dynamic languages: /** * cb: callback // where's the arguments & effects? */ func foo( cb ) Maybe the common attitude is "you can look into source code on your own after all" which pushes people into leaving minimalist comments like this. But it seems like there should be a better way to comment callback functions. I've tried to comment callbacks in Haskell way: /** * cb: Int -> Char */ func foo(cb) And to be fair, it's usually neat enough. But it gets into trouble when I need to pass some complex structure. The problem being partly due to the lack of type system: /** * cb: Int -> { err: String -> (), success: () -> Char } // too long... */ func foo(cb) Or I have tried this too: /** * cb: Int -> { err: String -> (), * success: () -> Char } // better ? */ func bar(cb) The problem is that you may put the structure in somewhere else, but you must give it a name to reference it. But then when you name a structure you're about to use immediately looks so redundant: // Somewhere else... // ResultCallback: { err: String -> (), success: () -> Char } /** * cb: Int -> ResultCallback // better ?? */ func foo(cb) And it bothers me if I follow the Java-doc like commenting style since it still seems incomplete. The comments don't tell you anything that you couldn't immediately see from looking at the function. /** * @param cb {Function} yeah, it's a function, but you told me nothing about it... * @param err {Function} where should I put this callback's argument ?? * Not to mention the err's own arguments... */ func foo(cb) These examples are JavaScript like with generic functions and parameter names, but I've encountered similar problems in other dynamic languages which allow complex callbacks.

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• How is a switch statement better than a series of if statements? [closed]

  - by user1276078

  Possible Duplicate: Should I use switch statements or long if…else chains? I'm working on a small program that will conduct an Insertion Sort. A number will be inputted through the keyboard and stored in a variable I called "num." I've decided to use a switch statement in order to obtain the number inputted. switch( e.getKeyCode() ) { case KeyEvent.VK_0: num = 0; break; case KeyEvent.VK_1: num = 1; break; case KeyEvent.VK_2: num = 2; break; case KeyEvent.VK_3: num = 3; break; case KeyEvent.VK_4: num = 4; break; case KeyEvent.VK_5: num = 5; break; case KeyEvent.VK_6: num = 6; break; case KeyEvent.VK_7: num = 7; break; case KeyEvent.VK_8: num = 8; break; case KeyEvent.VK_9: num = 9; break; } I realized one other course of action could have been to use a set of if statements. if( e.getKeyCode() == KeyEvent.VK_0 ) num = 0; else if( e.getKeyCode() == KeyEvent.VK_1 ) num = 1; etc. for every number up until 9. I then wondered what the essential difference is between a switch statement and a series of if statements. I know it saves space and time to write, but it's not that much. So, my question is, aside from the space, does a switch statement differ from a series of if statments in any way? Is it faster, less error-prone, etc.? This question really doesn't affect my code that much. I was just wondering. Also, this question pertains to the JAVA language, not any other programming language.

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• The type of programmer I want to be [closed]

  - by Aventinus_

  I'm an undergraduate Software Engineer student, although I've decided that pure programming is what I want to do for the rest of my life. The thing is that programming is a vast field and although most of its aspects are extremely interesting, soon or later I'll have to choose one (?) to focus on. I have several ideas on small projects I'd like to develop this summer, having in mind that this will gain me some experience and, in the best scenario, some cash. But the most important reason I'd like to develop something close to “professional” is to give myself direction on what I want to do as a programmer. One path is that of the Web Programmer. I enjoy PHP and MySQL, as well as HTML and CSS, although I don't really like ASP.NET. I can see myself writing web apps, using the above technologies, as well as XML and Javascript. I also have a neat idea on a Facebook app. The other path is that of the Desktop Programmer. This is a little more complicated cause I really-really enjoy high level languages such as Java and Python but not the low level ones, such as C. I use both Linux and Windows for the last 6 years and I like their latest DEs (meaning Gnome Shell and Metro). I can see myself writing desktop applications for both OSs as long as it means high level programming. Ideally I'd like being able to help the development of GNOME. The last path that interests me is the path of the Smartphone Programmer. I have created some sample applications on Android and due to Java I found it a quite interesting experience. I can also see myself as an independent smartphone developer. These 3 paths seem equally interesting at the moment due to the shallowness of my experience, I guess. I know that I should spend time with all of them and then choose the right one for me but I'd like to know what are the pros and cons in terms of learning curve, fun, job finding and of course financial rewards with each of these paths. I have fair or basic understanding of the languages/technologies I described earlier and this question will help me choose where to focus, at least for now.

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• Can Anything be Done to Make Improv (a 1993 Win 3.1 App) handle larger Files?

  - by user75185

  My very favorite spradsheet is Improv, a 1993 Windows 3.1 application. It still puts Excel to shame for building spreadsheets and writing formulas. The only problem is because Improv was written when 1 Meg of RAM was state of the art, it becomes unstable when working with larger spreadsheets and often crashes and/or corrupts the data file. I am working on a project that greatly exceeds Improv's limits. Although it will ultimately require more robust databasing capability, I could save a lot of critical time if I could delay that headache and continue working in Improv for now. To that end, I moved to the only product I could find that comes close, Quantrix, which is nothing more than Improv updated to handle large spreadsheets and utilize today's technologies. The problems with Quantrix are its speed (significantly slower than Improv) and its $1000 price (which I cannot afford). I have already had 3 15 day extensions after the initial 30 day trial, so my time to use Quantrix as a bridge is at its end. Searches for Improv over the years have gotten me nowhere and, not surprisingly after reading some posts on this site, I got nothing for the money and time invested to find a programmer to write code to "fix" this problem. Improv is freely available as "abandonware" at http://vetusware.com/download/LotusImprov2.1/?id=5797 , and the best background info can be found on Wikipedia and at "Moose's Greatest Software Products of All Time - Lotus Improv" http://moosevalley.fhost.com.au/mooses_review_page_lotus_improv.html It is critically urgent for me to focus on analyzing the data asap. Working in a stable Improv would, without question, be the fastest route. To that end, I am looking for answers to the following questions and anything else that might be helpful: 1) Is it lawful to hire someone to fix Improv for my own use? If so, 2) About how much should it cost? 3) About how long should it take? 4) What skills should I be looking for &/or how should a post be worded? 5) Is there a niche site where it should it be posted? 6) What questions can I ask to quickly screen candidates? Since I am not a programmer, I need questions the answers to which leave no room to confuse me, whether intentional or not. For example, what tools or players should someone with an acceptable competency level have knowledge of?

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• Storing a looong lookup table

  - by inquisitive

  Background The product i am working on has a very long lookup-table. the table contains static data and cannot be auto generated. there are about 500 rows and 10 columns. columns have mostly integers and strings. to complicate the matters, there are actually two such tables. every row in table-1 maps to zero-or-more rows in table-2. we use an SQLite database with two tables. the product installer places the SQLite file in the installation directory. the application is written in dot-net and we use ADO to load the data once on startup. now, the lookup table grows. in each release a month, we add about 10 new entries existing entries are adjusted. every release we fine tune existing entries. The problem a team of (10) developers work on the lookup table. Code goes in the SVN, but the little devil the SQLite does not. this prevents multiple developers to work on it. we do take regular backups of the file, but proper versioning is not possible. we never know who did the breaking change. the worse thing is we dont know if there is any change at all. diff'ing databases is tedious if not impossible. the tables are expected to grow quite large in years to come and we would need developers to work in parallel on it. the data is business critical. we need to be able to audit changes made to it. Question What would be a solution for the problems outlines above? one idea was to transform the whole thing to XML and treat it like just another source file. that way SVN can do the versioning and we can work in parallel. but the data shows relational behavior. with XML we loose the unique and foreign-key constraints. also we cant query it with sql like ease. any help here will be appreciated.

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• password incorrect 3 times + suspected failed update

  - by Cheese

  I have been lurking your site for the past few hours, and have found myself in a bit of a pickle. Visiting my parents, I discover that neither computer, nor laptop work. Long story short, I've got the laptop working, but have completely fudged up the computer. I am a n00b, but I was at least willing to give it a go. The comp originally had ubuntu 11.10 installed, later updated to 12.04. We have cds for both. I do not understand what the initial problem was for my parents, but somehow when I turned on the computer, it worked for me. Soon after, I was nagged to install the latest updates. So, I spent the next half an hour wondering why the updates kept on asking for 11.04 cdroms, until I realised that you could turn off the cdrom necessity. After doing this via console, I installed some of the smaller updates, before being told to do a partial update. This failed a few times, and ended up freezing whilst reinstalling drivers. After a hard restart I continued to type whatever I could find on the forum into the console. At some point, the console started saying that I had 3 incorrect password inputs, and sudo commands stopped altogether. I found another thread discussing this; but people kept on suggesting changing passwords (which I did to no avail) or other things that made use of sudo (which I am locked out of, although I am technically the admin) I found myself somehow on the Ctrl+Alt+F1 console, and after being utterly confused (and Ctrl+AltF5 failing for me), another hard reset occurred. Somewhere along the way I created a USB start up for 14.04, (but this does not seem to work) Now I am left with an admin (and guest) account that log in but have blank screens (with only the desktop background showing) and I can't do anything in the console because I'm locked out. Interestingly, the console now says that I am running 14.04 although all updates said they had failed. Aside from the obvious lessons I have learnt (don't fiddle about in the console when you have no idea what you're doing "Dog wearing safety glasses "I have no idea what I am doing" GIF would be inserted here ) Is there any way I can redeem this almighty muck up? A million thanks for any help!

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• Rebuilding a Mac Mini (early 2009)

  - by Kelly Jones

  This weekend I decided to rebuild the family’s Mac Mini.  It’s the early 2009 model and I hadn’t done it since we got it in March of 2009.  Even worse, I had done the import data step (or whatever Apple calls it) which brought over all of the data files and apps from our previous Mac.  AND that install goes back to before 2005, as far as I can remember.  SO, to say that “cruft” had built up in the operating system, is probably a bit of an understatement. The rebuild went pretty smoothly, especially since I had a couple of spare hard drives.  I hooked up a spare USB drive and formatted it for use with the Mac.  I then used Carbon Copy to clone the internal hard drive onto the USB drive.  (Carbon Copy is a great little app that I used several years ago and I was happy to see it was not only still around, but updated as well.) Once I had my backup, I shut down the Mac and replaced the internal hard drive.  I had purchased the hard drive last fall to use with my work laptop, but I got a new work laptop (with awesome dual SSDs) so I wasn’t using it anymore.  The replacement drive (Seagate Momentus 7200.4 ST9500420AS 500GB 7200 RPM 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive) has more than double the original’s capacity and is also faster.  I’ll have to keep an eye on the temperature, since that 7200 drive will run hotter. Opening the Mac Mini is not for the easily intimidated!  That cool little case is quite the pain to open.  Luckily, OWC put a video together here.  After replacing the drive, I then installed a clean copy of OS 10.5 using the DVDs that came with the Mac.  After the OS, it was time to reinstall the apps.  I downloaded some of the freeware, just to make sure I had the latest versions.  For the rest, I just copied from the backup cloned drive to the new drive.  (I love the way most Mac apps are written – with almost everything contained within a “package” that I can just copy from one drive to another.  MUCH better than the Windows way of using shared DLLs and the registry to store critical pieces that the app needs in order to run!) The whole process took longer than I would have preferred, but it was long overdue.  It definitely “feels” faster, especially boot time and application launches.

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• Damaged external NTFS hard disk

  - by Thanos

  A few days ago, I used my external hard disk (a 2TB Seagate) in order to transfer some files on Windows Vista. During that, I noticed some malfunctions on my system (it was running too slow, Windows Explorer crashed). When Explorer crashed, file transportation stopped. I was afraid, but I tried to access my files and it seemed to be working. I tried to open a movie (from the external disk) but it couldn't load. I thought of restarting, but this took sooo long... So I unplugged the hard disk and at that time it managed to shut down. I logged on to Windows Vista but the hard disk couldn't be mounted. I plugged it but nothing happened. I unplugged it and I heard this specific sound that notifies that something has been unplugged. I thought of logging to Ubuntu 10.04 and see what I can do. I plugged the hard disk, but I couldn't see it. I opened GParted but I couldn't see it either. I tried with Disc Utility and there it was! I tried to mount it but a got an error message stating that an error occured with Windows, there is a file (0,0) that has problem or something like that. It suggested to log into Windows and run chkdsk /f and reboot twice. The thing is that I am somehow afraid to do so because I don't really know the impact on that. Plus I don't trust doing even a check on Vista... I finally risked it and I typed chkdsk/f on a cmd. I cannot, however, actually run it because I don't have admin privileges. So from search I found chkdsk, I right cliked and selected “run as administrator”. It run but I got a message like NTFS file system. It should check at the coming restart. At that point I am mistaken. I thought that f meant F but this is not the case here... Does anyone have any suggestions and advice?

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• Cloud Computing Business Benefits

  - by workflowman

  If you have been living under a rock for the past year, you wouldn't have heard about cloud computing. Cloud computing is a loose term that describes anything that is hosted in data centers and accessed via the internet. It is normally associated with developers who draw clouds in diagrams indicating where services or how systems communicate with each other. Cloud computing also incorporates such well-known trends as Web 2.0 and Software as a Service (SaaS) and more recently Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS). Its aim is to change the way we compute, moving from traditional desktop and on-premises servers to services and resources that are hosted in the cloud.  Benefits of Cloud Computing  There are clearly benefits in building applications using cloud computing, some of which are listed here:  Zero up- front investment:  Delivering a large-scale system costs a fortune in both time and money. Often IT departments are split into hardware/network and software services. The hardware team provisions servers and so forth under the requirements of the software team. Often the hardware team has a different budget that requires approval. Although hardware and software management are two separate disciplines, sometimes what happens is developers are given the task to estimate CPU cycles, disk space, and so forth, which ends up in underutilized servers.  Usage-based costing:  You pay for what you use, no more, no less, because you never actually own the server. This is similar to car leasing, where in the long run you get a new car every three years and maintenance is never a worry.  Potential for shrinking the processing time:  If processes are split over multiple machines, parallel processing is performed, which decreases processing time.  More office space:  Walk into most offices, and guaranteed you will find a medium- sized room dedicated to servers.  Efficient resource utilization:  The resource utilization is handed by a centralized cloud administrator who is in charge of deciding exactly the right amount of resources for a system. This takes the task away from local administrators, who have to regularly monitor these servers.  Just-in-time infrastructure:  If your system is a success and needs to scale to meet demand, this can cause further time delays or a slow- performing service. Cloud computing solves this because you can add more resources at any time.  Lower environmental impact:  If servers are centralized, potentially an environment initiative is more likely to succeed. As an example, if servers are placed in sunny or windy parts of the world, then why not use these resources to power those servers?  Lower costs:  Unfortunately, this is one point that administrators will not like. If you have people administrating your e-mail server and network along with support staff doing other cloud-based tasks, this workforce can be reduced. This saves costs, though it also reduces jobs.

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• reference list for non-IT driven algorithmic patterns

  - by Quicker

  I am looking for a reference list for non-IT driven algorithmic patterns (which still can be helped with IT implementations of IT). An Example List would be: name; short desc; reference Travelling Salesman; find the shortest possible route on a multiple target path; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travelling_salesman_problem Ressource Disposition (aka Regulation); Distribute a limited/exceeding input on a given number output receivers based on distribution rules; http://database-programmer.blogspot.de/2010/12/critical-analysis-of-algorithm-sproc.html If there is no such list, but you instantly think of something specific, please 'put it on the desk'. Maybe I can compile something out of the input I get here (actually I am very frustrated as I did not find any such list via research by myself). Details on Scoping: I found it very hard to formulate what I want in a way everything is out that I do not need (which may be the issue why I did not find anything at google). There is a database centric definition for what I am looking for in the section 'Processes' of the second example link. That somehow fits, but the database focus sort of drifts away from the pattern thinking, which I have in mind. So here are my own thoughts around what's in and what's out: I am NOT looking for a foundational algo ref list, which is implemented as basis for any programming language. Eg. the php reference describes substr and strlen. That implements algos, but is not what I am looking for. the problem the algo does address would even exist, if there were no computers (or other IT components) the main focus of the algo is NOT to help other algo's chances are high, that there are implementions of the solution or any workaround without any IT support out there in the world however the algo could be benefitialy implemented/fully supported by a software application = means: the problem of the algo has to be addressed anyway, but running an algo implementation with software automates the process (that is why I posted it on stackoverflow and not somewhere else) typically such algo implementations have more than one input field value and more than one output field value - which implies it could not be implemented as simple function (which is fixed to produce not more than one output value) in a normalized data model often times such algo implementation outputs span accross multiple rows (sometimes multiple tables), whereby the number of output rows depends on the input paraters and rows in the table(s) at start time - which implies that any algo implementation/procedure must interact with a database (read and/or write) I am mainly looking for patterns, not for specific implementations. Example: The Travelling Salesman assumes any coordinates, however it does not say: You need a table targets with fields x and y. - however sometimes descriptions are focussed on examples with specific implementations very much - no worries, as long as the pattern gets clear

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• Does OO, TDD, and Refactoring to Smaller Functions affect Speed of Code?

  - by Dennis

  In Computer Science field, I have noticed a notable shift in thinking when it comes to programming. The advice as it stands now is write smaller, more testable code refactor existing code into smaller and smaller chunks of code until most of your methods/functions are just a few lines long write functions that only do one thing (which makes them smaller again) This is a change compared to the "old" or "bad" code practices where you have methods spanning 2500 lines, and big classes doing everything. My question is this: when it call comes down to machine code, to 1s and 0s, to assembly instructions, should I be at all concerned that my class-separated code with variety of small-to-tiny functions generates too much extra overhead? While I am not exactly familiar with how OO code and function calls are handled in ASM in the end, I do have some idea. I assume that each extra function call, object call, or include call (in some languages), generate an extra set of instructions, thereby increasing code's volume and adding various overhead, without adding actual "useful" code. I also imagine that good optimizations can be done to ASM before it is actually ran on the hardware, but that optimization can only do so much too. Hence, my question -- how much overhead (in space and speed) does well-separated code (split up across hundreds of files, classes, and methods) actually introduce compared to having "one big method that contains everything", due to this overhead? UPDATE for clarity: I am assuming that adding more and more functions and more and more objects and classes in a code will result in more and more parameter passing between smaller code pieces. It was said somewhere (quote TBD) that up to 70% of all code is made up of ASM's MOV instruction - loading CPU registers with proper variables, not the actual computation being done. In my case, you load up CPU's time with PUSH/POP instructions to provide linkage and parameter passing between various pieces of code. The smaller you make your pieces of code, the more overhead "linkage" is required. I am concerned that this linkage adds to software bloat and slow-down and I am wondering if I should be concerned about this, and how much, if any at all, because current and future generations of programmers who are building software for the next century, will have to live with and consume software built using these practices. UPDATE: Multiple files I am writing new code now that is slowly replacing old code. In particular I've noted that one of the old classes was a ~3000 line file (as mentioned earlier). Now it is becoming a set of 15-20 files located across various directories, including test files and not including PHP framework I am using to bind some things together. More files are coming as well. When it comes to disk I/O, loading multiple files is slower than loading one large file. Of course not all files are loaded, they are loaded as needed, and disk caching and memory caching options exist, and yet still I believe that loading multiple files takes more processing than loading a single file into memory. I am adding that to my concern.

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• What is hiberfil.sys and How Do I Delete It?

  - by The Geek

  You’re no doubt reading this article because there’s a gigantic hiberfil.sys file sitting in the root of your drive, and you want to get rid of it to free up some space… but you can’t! Luckily, you actually can delete it, and today we’ll show you how. The more memory you have in your PC, the bigger the file will be. So What is hiberfil.sys Anyway? Windows has two power management modes that you can choose from: one is Sleep Mode, which keeps the PC running in a low power state so you can almost instantly get back to what you were working on. The other is Hibernate mode, which completely writes the memory out to the hard drive, and then powers the PC down entirely, so you can even take the battery out, put it back in, start back up, and be right back where you were. Hibernate mode uses the hiberfil.sys file to store the the current state (memory) of the PC, and since it’s managed by Windows, you can’t delete the file. So if you never use it, and want to disable Hibernate mode, keep reading. Personally I stick with Sleep Mode the vast majority of the time, but I do use Hibernate quite often. Disable Hibernate (and Delete hiberfil.sys) in Windows 7 or Vista You’ll need to open an administrator mode command prompt by right-clicking on the command prompt in the start menu, and then choosing Run as Administrator. Once you’re there, type in the following command: powercfg -h off You should immediately notice that the Hibernate option is gone from the Shut down menu. You’ll also notice that the file is magically gone! For more about dealing with Hibernate like setting how long it takes to head into Hibernate mode, you can check out our article on How to Manage Hibernate Mode in Windows 7. Disabling Hibernate Mode in Windows XP It’s a lot easier in Windows XP to get rid of Hibernate mode… in fact, we’ve already covered it before, but we’ll cover it again. Just head into Control Panel –> Power Options, and then find the Hibernate tab. Uncheck the box, reboot your PC, and then you can delete the hiberfil.sys file. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips How to Delete a System File in Windows 7 or VistaDisable Delete Confirmation Dialog in Windows 7 or VistaClear IE7 Browsing History From the Command LineHide, Delete, or Destroy the Recycle Bin Icon in Windows 7 or VistaClear the Auto-Complete Email Address Cache in Outlook TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Whoa ! Use Printflush to Solve Printing Problems Icelandic Volcano Webcams Open Multiple Links At One Go NachoFoto Searches Images in Real-time Office 2010 Product Guides

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• Best language on Linux to replace manual tasks that use SSH/Telnet? [on hold]

  - by Calab

  I've been tasked to create and maintain a web browser based interface to replace several of the manual tasks that we perform now. I currently have a "shakey" but working program written in Perl (2779 lines) that uses basic Expect coding, but it has some limitations that require a great deal of coding to get around. Because of this I am going to do a complete rewrite and want to do it "right" this time. My question is this... What would be the best language to use to create a web based interface to perform SSH/Telnet tasks that we would normally do manually? Keep in mind the following requirements: Runs on a CentOS Linux system v5.10 Http will be served by Apache2 This is an INTRANET site and only accessible within our organization. User load will be light. No more that 5 users accessing it at one time. perl 5.8.8, php 5.3.3, python 2.7.2 are available... Not sure what other languages to check for, or what modules might be installed in each language. The web interface will need to provide progress indicators and text output produced by the remote connection, in real time as it is generated. If we are running our process on multiple hosts, they should be in individual threads so that they can run side by side, not sequentially. I want the ability to "trap" on specific text generated by the remote host and display an alert to the user - such as when the remote host generates an error message. I would like to avoid as much client side scripting (javascript/vbscript) as I can. Most users will be on Windows PC's using Chrome or IE as a browser. Users will be downloading the resulting output so they can process it as they see fit. I currently have no experience with "Ajax" or the like. Most of my coding experience is old 6809 assembly, Visual Basic 6, and whatever I can cut/paste from online examples in various languages (hence my "shaky" Perl program) My coding environment is Eclipse for remote code editing, but I prefer stuff like UltraEdit if I can get a decent syntax file for the language I'm using. I do have su access on the server, but I'm not the only one using this server so I can't just upgrade/install blindly as I might impact other software currently running on the machine. One reason that I'm asking here, instead of searching (which I did) is that most replies were, "use language 'xyz', but you need to use an external SSH connection" - like I'm using Expect in my Perl script. Most also did not agree on what language that 'xyz' should be. ...so, after this long posting, can someone offer some advice?

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• Ad-hoc reporting similar to Microstrategy/Pentaho - is OLAP really the only choice (is OLAP even sufficient)?

  - by TheBeefMightBeTough

  So I'm getting ready to develop an API in Java that will provide all dimensions, metrics, hierarchies, etc to a user such that they can pick and choose what they want (say, e.g., dimensions of Location (a store) and Weekly, and the metric Product Sales $), provide their choices to the api, and have it spit out an object that contains the answer to their question (the object would probably be a set of cells). I don't even believe there will be much drill up/down. The data warehouse the APIwill interface with is in a standard form (FACT tables, dimensions, star schema format). My question is, is an OLAP framework such as Mondrian the only way to achieve something akin to ad-hoc reporting? I can envisage a really large Cube (or VirtualCube) that contains most of the dimensions and metrics the user could ever want, which would give the illusion of ad-hoc reporting. The problem is that there is a ton of setup to do (so much XML) to get the framework to work with the data. Further it requires specific knowledge, such as MDX, and even moreso learning the framework peculiars (Mondrian API). Finally, I am not positive it will scale much better than simply making queries against a SQL database. OLAP to me feels like very old technology. Is performance really an issue anymore? The alternative I can think of would be dynamic SQL. If the existing tables in the data warehouse conform to a naming scheme (FACT_, DIM_, etc), or if a very simple config file/ database table containing config information existed that stored which tables are fact tables, which are dimensions, and what metrics are available, then couldn't the api read from that and assembly the appropriate sql query? Would this necessarily be harder than learning MDX, Mondrian (or another OLAP framework), and creating all the cubes? In general, I feel that OLAP is at the same time too powerful (supports drill up/down, complex functions) and outdated and am reluctant to base my architecture on it. However, I am unsure if the alternative(s), such as rolling my own ad-hoc reporting framework using dynamic SQL would remove any complexity while still fulfilling requirements, both functional and non-functional (e.g., scalability; some FACT tables have many millions of rows). I also wonder about other techniques (e.g., hive). Has anyone here tried to do ad-hoc reporting? Any advice? I expect this project to take a pretty long time (3 months min, but probably longer), so I just do not want to commit to an architecture without being absolutely sure of its pros and cons. Thanks so much.

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• WiFi on Ubuntu 12.04 custom: downloading unbearably slow

  - by Mark

  iwconfig reports 11 Mbps, yet I've seen as low as <1 KBps. This is the latest in my laundry list of Ubuntu problems in a dual-boot machine (cyberpowerpc custom, intel i7-3820, nvidia gtx 570). I received it two days ago, Windows 7 running fine, still having problems with Ubuntu. The browsing is intermittent but unacceptable. e.g. I could get to this site last night but I couldn't post this question. The downloading is unbearably slow, I can't download anything or install any packages because the speed is so slow. e.g. I am trying to install vim which is inexplicably missing from my 12.04 install (add another one to the problems list) and my download speed reported in the terminal was 241 B/s. Yes, bytes. iwconfig reports 11 Mbps, which further adds to the confusion. User@ubuntu:~$ iwconfig lo no wireless extensions. wlan0 IEEE 802.11bgn ESSID:"linksys" Mode:Managed Frequency:2.437 GHz Access Point: 00:18:39:76:2C:A1 Bit Rate=11 Mb/s Tx-Power=20 dBm Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off Power Management:off Link Quality=36/70 Signal level=-74 dBm Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0 Tx excessive retries:54 Invalid misc:18 Missed beacon:0 eth0 no wireless extensions. Any ideas? I see this is a problem a lot of people, but none of the on line solutions have worked for me so far. e.g. one site recommends editing the ath9k.conf file in /etc/modprobe.d, yet this file isn't even in the folder: User@ubuntu:/$ cd etc/modprobe.d User@ubuntu:/etc/modprobe.d$ ls alsa-base.conf blacklist-oss.conf blacklist-ath_pci.conf blacklist-rare-network.conf blacklist.conf blacklist-watchdog.conf blacklist-firewire.conf dkms.conf blacklist-framebuffer.conf nvidia-current_hybrid.conf blacklist-modem.conf nvidia-graphics-drivers.conf I think the nvidia gpu might be mucking things up. I had the "blinking cursor" problem when installing in the first place, and then I had the monitor out of range problem as well. I have my faithful Asus laptop, which is running Ubuntu 12.04 just fine. The only difference is executing host -t SOA local in the terminal gives User@ubuntu:~$ host -t SOA local local has SOA record local. nobody.localhost. 42 86400 43200 604800 10800 in my new machine, and the command reports Host local. not found in the laptop. Help would be most welcome, as I am in danger of reverting back to Windows. I'm seriously considering it. Sorry for the length, trying to show my effort in resolving the issue and include terminal snippets that might be helpful.

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• How to Export a Contact to and Import a Contact from a vCard (.vcf) File in Outlook 2013

  - by Lori Kaufman

  vCard is the abbreviation for Virtual Business Card and is the standard format (.vcf files) for electronic business cards. vCards allow you to create and share contact information over the internet, such as in email messages and instant messaging. You can also use vCards to move contact information from one email or personal information management program to another, as long as both programs support the .vcf file format. vCards can contain name and address information, as well as phone numbers, email addresses, URLs, images, and audio clips. We will show you how to export a contact to and import a contact from a vCard, or .vcf file, in Outlook. First access the People section by clicking People at the bottom of the Outlook window. To view your contact in business card format, click Business Card in the Current View section of the Home tab. Select a contact by clicking on the name bar at the top of the business card. To export the selected contact as a vCard, click the File tab. On the Account Information screen, click Save As in the list of options on the left. The Save As dialog box displays. By default, the name of the contact is used to name the .vcf file in the File name edit box. Change the name, if desired, select a location for the file, and click Save. The contact is saved as a .vcf file. To import a vCard, or .vcf file, into Outlook, simply double-click on the .vcf file. By default, .vcf files are automatically associated with Outlook, so the file is opened in Outlook as a Contact. Make any changes or additions to the contact in the contact editing window. To save the contact, click Save & Close in the Actions section of the Contact tab. NOTE: Notice that because this contact is new, the full contact editing window displays rather than the Contact Card that displays when double-clicking on a contact. You can open the full contact editing window instead of the Contact Card when editing a contact or searching for a contact. The contact is added to the Contacts folder. You can add your contact information to a signature in business card format, and it will display as shown above in emails. We have covered how to create signatures and will be discussing more about signatures and business cards in Outlook.     

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