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• SQL SERVER – Introduction to Big Data – Guest Post

  - by pinaldave

  BIG Data – such a big word – everybody talks about this now a days. It is the word in the database world. In one of the conversation I asked my friend Jasjeet Sigh the same question – what is Big Data? He instantly came up with a very effective write-up.  Jasjeet is working as a Technical Manager with Koenig Solutions. He leads the SQL domain, and holds rich IT industry experience. Talking about Koenig, it is a 19 year old IT training company that offers several certification choices. Some of its courses include SharePoint Training, Project Management certifications, Microsoft Trainings, Business Intelligence programs, Web Design and Development courses etc. Big Data, as the name suggests, is about data that is BIG in nature. The data is BIG in terms of size, and it is difficult to manage such enormous data with relational database management systems that are quite popular these days. Big Data is not just about being large in size, it is also about the variety of the data that differs in form or type. Some examples of Big Data are given below : Scientific data related to weather and atmosphere, Genetics etc Data collected by various medical procedures, such as Radiology, CT scan, MRI etc Data related to Global Positioning System Pictures and Videos Radio Frequency Data Data that may vary very rapidly like stock exchange information Apart from difficulties in managing and storing such data, it is difficult to query, analyze and visualize it. The characteristics of Big Data can be defined by four Vs: Volume: It simply means a large volume of data that may span Petabyte, Exabyte and so on. However it also depends organization to organization that what volume of data they consider as Big Data. Variety: As discussed above, Big Data is not limited to relational information or structured Data. It can also include unstructured data like pictures, videos, text, audio etc. Velocity:  Velocity means the speed by which data changes. The higher is the velocity, the more efficient should be the system to capture and analyze the data. Missing any important point may lead to wrong analysis or may even result in loss. Veracity: It has been recently added as the fourth V, and generally means truthfulness or adherence to the truth. In terms of Big Data, it is more of a challenge than a characteristic. It is difficult to ascertain the truth out of the enormous amount of data and the one that has high velocity. There are always chances of having un-precise and uncertain data. It is a challenging task to clean such data before it is analyzed. Big Data can be considered as the next big thing in the IT sector in terms of innovation and development. If appropriate technologies are developed to analyze and use the information, it can be the driving force for almost all industrial segments. These include Retail, Manufacturing, Service, Finance, Healthcare etc. This will help them to automate business decisions, increase productivity, and innovate and develop new products. Thanks Jasjeet Singh for an excellent write up.  Jasjeet Sign is working as a Technical Manager with Koenig Solutions. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Database, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Big Data

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• Twice as long and half as long

  - by PointsToShare

  We are in a project and we hit some snags. What’s a snag? An activity that takes longer than expected. Actually it takes longer than the time assigned to it by an over pressed PM who accepts an impossible time table and tries his best to make it possible, but I digress (again!).  So we have snags and we also have the opposite. Let’s call these “cinches”. The question is: how does a combination of snags and cinches affect the project timeline? Well, there is no simple answer. It depends on the projects dependencies as we see in the PERT chart. If all the snags are in the critical path and all the cinches are elsewhere then the cinches don’t help at all. In fact any snag in the critical path will delay the project.  Conversely, a cinch in the critical path will expedite it. A snag outside the critical path might be serious enough to even change the critical path. Thus without the PERT chart, we cannot really tell. Still there is a principle involved – Time and speed are non-linear! Twice as long adds a full unit, half as long only takes ½ unit away. Let’s just investigate a simple project. It consists of two activities – S and C - each estimated to take a week. Alas, S is a snag and really needs twice the time allotted and – a sigh of relief – C is a cinch and will take half the time allotted, so everything is Hun-key-dory, or is it?  Even here the PERT chart is important. We have 2 cases: 1: S depends on C (or vice versa) as in when the two activities are assigned to one employee. Here the estimated time was 1 + 1 and the actual time was 2 + ½ and we are ½ week late or 25% late. 2: S and C are done in parallel. Here the estimated time was 1, but the actual time is 2 – we are a whole week or 100% late. Let’s change the equation a little. S need 1.5 and C needs .5 so in case 1, we have the loss fully compensated by the gain, but in case 2 we are still behind. There are cases where this really makes no difference. This is when the critical path is not affected and we have enough slack in the other paths to counteract the difference between its snags and cinches – Let’s call this difference DSC. So if the slack is greater than DSC the project will not suffer. Conclusion: There is no general rule about snags and cinches. We need to examine each case within its project, still as we saw in the 4 examples above; the snag is generally more powerful than the cinch. Long live Murphy! That’s All Folks

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• How to get bearable 2D and 3D performance on AMD Radeon HD 6950?

  - by l0b0

  I have had an AMD Radeon HD 6950 (i.e., Cayman series) for a couple years now, and I have tried a lot of combinations of drivers and settings with terrible results. I'm completely at a loss as to how to proceed. The open source driver has much better 2D performance, but it offloads all OpenGL rendering to the CPU. What I've tried so far: All the latest stable Ubuntu releases in the period, plus one Linux Mint release. All the latest stable AMD Catalyst Proprietary Display Drivers, and currently 13.1. The unofficial wiki installation instructions for every Ubuntu version and the semi-official Ubuntu instructions. All the tips and tweaks I could find for Minecraft (Optifine, reducing settings to minimum), VLC (postprocessing at minimum, rendering at native video size), Catalyst Control Center (flipped every lever in there) and X11 (some binary toggles I can no longer remember). Results: Typically 13-15 FPS in Minecraft, 30 max (100+ in Windows with the same driver version). Around 10 FPS in Team Fortress 2 using the official Steam client. Choppy video playback, in Flash and with VLC. CPU use goes through the roof when rendering video (150% for 1080p on YouTube in Chromium, 100% for 1080p H264 in VLC). glxgears shows 12.5 FPS when maximized. fgl_glxgears shows 10 FPS when maximized. Hardware details from lshw: Motherboard ASUS P6X58D-E CPU Intel Core i7 CPU 950 @ 3.07GHz (never overclocked; 64 bit) 6 GB RAM Video card product "Cayman PRO [Radeon HD 6950]", vendor "Hynix Semiconductor (Hyundai Electronics)" 2 x 1920x1200 monitors, both connected with HDMI. I feel I must be missing something absolutely fundamental here. Is there no accelerated support for anything on 64-bit architectures? Does a dual monitor completely mess up the driver? $ fglrxinfo display: :0 screen: 0 OpenGL vendor string: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. OpenGL renderer string: AMD Radeon HD 6900 Series OpenGL version string: 4.2.11995 Compatibility Profile Context $ glxinfo | grep 'direct rendering' direct rendering: Yes I am currently using the open source driver, with the following results: Full frame rate and low CPU load when playing 1080p video. Black screen (but music in the background) in Team Fortress 2. Similar performance in Minecraft as the Catalyst driver. In hindsight obvious, since both end up offloading the rendering to the CPU. My /var/log/Xorg.0.log after upgrading to AMD Catalyst 13.1. Some possibly important lines: (WW) Falling back to old probe method for fglrx (WW) fglrx: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:0@3:0:1) found The generated xorg.conf. The disabled "monitor" 0-DFP9 is actually an A/V receiver, which sometimes confuses the monitor drivers when turned on/off (but not in Windows). All three "monitor" devices are connected with HDMI. Edit: Chris Carter's suggestion to use the xorg-edgers PPA (Catalyst 13.1) resulted in some improvement, but still pretty bad performance overall: Minecraft stabilizes at 13-17 FPS, but at least the CPU load is "only" at 45-60%. Still 150% CPU use for 1080p video rendering on YouTube in Chromium. Massive improvement for 1080p H264 in VLC: 40-50% CPU use and no visible jitter glxgears performance about doubled to 25-30 FPS when maximized. fgl_glxgears still at ~10 FPS when maximized.

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• BI&EPM in Focus June 2012

  - by Mike.Hallett(at)Oracle-BI&EPM

  General News Thomas Kurian Discusses Oracle Exalytics, SAP HANA (replay | preso | press)  Accenture & Oracle Study: The Challenges of Corporate Financial Reporting  (link) Flash Demo: Oracle Hyperion Planning on Exalytics in the Public Sector (link) Flash Demo: OBIEE & Exalytics in Retail (link) Customers Italian Partner Alfa Sistemi implemented at Autovie Venete S.p.A. Integrates Business Intelligence and Performance Management to Improve Efficiency and Speed for Managing Public Works Projects (English version)  / Autovie Venete implementa un sistema integrato di Business Intelligence e Performance Management per migliorare l’efficienza e la tempestività dell’attività di Controlling di Commessa (Italian version). FANCL Gains 360-Degree View of Customers across Multiple Sales Channels, Reduces Reports by 75% Korea Yakult Improves Profit & Loss Analysis with Oracle Hyperion Planning and OBIEE Hill International Streamlines Forecasting, Improves Visibility into Project Productivity and Profitability Children’s Rights in Society Better Supports Organizational Mission with Advanced, Integrated, and Streamlined Business Intelligence Tools Profit: International utility Enel monitors the performance of global subsidiaries with Oracle Hyperion Applications (link) Profit: Charting a New Course: Korean Air gains altitude by leveraging its greatest asset: information (link)   Events June 12: Breaking Away from the Excel Add-In: Welcome to Hyperion Smart View 11.1.2.2 (link) June 13: Upgrading OBIEE 10g to 11g: Best Practices and Lessons Learned (performance architects) (link) June 14, The Netherlands: Strategies for Business Excellence, New Release of Oracle Hyperion EPM Suite (link) June 21: Comprehensive and Accurate Forecasting for Healthcare (link) June 26: What Exactly is Exalytics? (KPI Partners) (link) Webcast Replay: Is Your Company Able to Navigate Through Market Volatility? (link)  Webcast Replay: Is Hope and Email The Core of Your Reconciliation Process? (link) Webcast Replay: Troubleshooting EPM Reporting & Analysis 11.1.2.x  (link) Webcast Replay: Is your Organization Flying Blind when it comes to Understanding Profitability?  (link) Enterprise Performance Management Final Oracle EPM  Information Panel (CIP) survey on cost, profitability and performance reporting/scorecards is now OPEN (link) New on EPM Blog: What's Going on With IFRS? (link) How does Crystal Ball integrate with EPM Solutions? New collateral and demos on Crystal Ball Solution Factory!  (link) New Youtube Video: Business Case Analysis with Oracle Crystal Ball (link) Crystal Ball 11.1.2.2 is released! Grouped Assumptions in Sensitivity Charts, Data Filtering When Fitting Distributions and Parameter Edits When Fitting Distributions to name a few. Get full details from the online New Features Guide (link) New DRM Oracle-by-Examples now available (link) Support Blog: Hyperion Ledgerlink Sample Record and Windows 7: Now you see it, now you don’t  (link) Use Enterprise Manager FMW Control to Troubleshoot Oracle EPM 11.1.2 Family of Products (link) Business  Intelligence Whitepaper: Real-Time Operational Reporting for E-Business Suite via GoldenGate Replication to an Operational Data Store.  How Oracle enabled real-time operational reporting for its $20B services contract business with Golden Gate & OBIEE (link) KPI Partners ebook: Understanding Oracle BI Components and Repository Modeling Basics (link) “Getting Started with Oracle Endeca Information Discovery” video tutorials now available (link) Oracle BI Publisher Conversion Center: Convert from Crystal, Actuate, or Oracle Reports to Oracle BI Publisher (link) Oracle Fusion Applications: Monthly Partner Updates Webcast Replays to help BI partners understand how OBI, Essbase, BI-Apps and Fusion work together: More on Fusion CRM: Fusion Marketing More on Fusion CRM: Fusion CRM Sales Start-Up Packs and Expert Services for Implementation Partners Introducing the Oracle Fusion Accounting Hub Implementing Fusion Applications using Oracle's Composers Oracle Fusion Applications Co-Existence

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• Is Cloud Security Holding Back Social SaaS?

  - by Mike Stiles

  The true promise of social data co-mingling with enterprise data to influence and inform social marketing (all marketing really) lives in cloud computing. The cloud brings processing power, services, speed and cost savings the likes of which few organizations could ever put into action on their own. So why wouldn’t anyone jump into SaaS (Software as a Service) with both feet? Cloud security. Being concerned about security is proper and healthy. That just means you’re a responsible operator. Whether it’s protecting your customers’ data or trying to stay off the radar of regulatory agencies, you have plenty of reasons to make sure you’re as protected from hacking, theft and loss as you can possibly be. But you also have plenty of reasons to not let security concerns freeze you in your tracks, preventing you from innovating, moving the socially-enabled enterprise forward, and keeping up with competitors who may not be as skittish regarding SaaS technology adoption. Over half of organizations are transferring sensitive or confidential data to the cloud, an increase of 10% over last year. With the roles and responsibilities of CMO’s, CIO’s and other C’s changing, the first thing you should probably determine is who should take point on analyzing cloud software options, providers, and policies. An oft-quoted Ponemon Institute study found 36% of businesses don’t have a cloud security policy at all. So that’s as good a place to start as any. What applications and data are you comfortable housing in the cloud? Do you have a classification system for data that clearly spells out where data types can go and how they can be used? Who, both internally and at the cloud provider, will function as admins? What are the different levels of admin clearance? Will your security policies and procedures sync up with those of your cloud provider? The key is verifiable trust. Trust in cloud security is actually going up. 1/3 of organizations polled say it’s the cloud provider who should be responsible for data protection. And when you look specifically at SaaS providers, that expectation goes up to 60%. 57% “strongly agree” or “agree” there’s more confidence in cloud providers’ ability to protect data. In fact, some businesses bypass the “verifiable” part of verifiable trust. Just over half have no idea what their cloud provider does to protect data. And yet, according to the “Private Cloud Vision vs. Reality” InformationWeek Report, 82% of organizations say security/data privacy are one of the main reasons they’re still holding the public cloud at arm’s length. That’s going to be a tough position to maintain, because just as social is rapidly changing the face of marketing, big data is rapidly changing the face of enterprise IT. Netflix, who’s particularly big on the benefits of the cloud, says, "We're systematically disassembling the corporate IT components." An enterprise can never realize the full power of big data, nor get the full potential value out of it, if it’s unwilling to enable the integrations and dataset connections necessary in the cloud. Because integration is called for to reduce fragmentation, a standardized platform makes a lot of sense. With multiple components crafted to work together, you’re maximizing scalability, optimization, cost effectiveness, and yes security and identity management benefits. You can see how the incentive is there for cloud companies to develop and add ever-improving security features, making cloud computing an eventual far safer bet than traditional IT. @mikestilesPhoto: stock.xchng

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• To SYNC or not to SYNC – Part 4

  - by AshishRay

  This is Part 4 of a multi-part blog article where we are discussing various aspects of setting up Data Guard synchronous redo transport (SYNC). In Part 1 of this article, I debunked the myth that Data Guard SYNC is similar to a two-phase commit operation. In Part 2, I discussed the various ways that network latency may or may not impact a Data Guard SYNC configuration. In Part 3, I talked in details regarding why Data Guard SYNC is a good thing, and the distance implications you have to keep in mind. In this final article of the series, I will talk about how you can nicely complement Data Guard SYNC with the ability to failover in seconds. Wait - Did I Say “Seconds”? Did I just say that some customers do Data Guard failover in seconds? Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. Data Guard has an automatic failover capability, aptly called Fast-Start Failover. Initially available with Oracle Database 10g Release 2 for Data Guard SYNC transport mode (and enhanced in Oracle Database 11g to support Data Guard ASYNC transport mode), this capability, managed by Data Guard Broker, lets your Data Guard configuration automatically failover to a designated standby database. Yes, this means no human intervention is required to do the failover. This process is controlled by a low footprint Data Guard Broker client called Observer, which makes sure that the primary database and the designated standby database are behaving like good kids. If something bad were to happen to the primary database, the Observer, after a configurable threshold period, tells that standby, “Your time has come, you are the chosen one!” The standby dutifully follows the Observer directives by assuming the role of the new primary database. The DBA or the Sys Admin doesn’t need to be involved. And - in case you are following this discussion very closely, and are wondering … “Hmmm … what if the old primary is not really dead, but just network isolated from the Observer or the standby - won’t this lead to a split-brain situation?” The answer is No - It Doesn’t. With respect to why-it-doesn’t, I am sure there are some smart DBAs in the audience who can explain the technical reasons. Otherwise - that will be the material for a future blog post. So - this combination of SYNC and Fast-Start Failover is the nirvana of lights-out, integrated HA and DR, as practiced by some of our advanced customers. They have observed failover times (with no data loss) ranging from single-digit seconds to tens of seconds. With this, they support operations in industry verticals such as manufacturing, retail, telecom, Internet, etc. that have the most demanding availability requirements. One of our leading customers with massive cloud deployment initiatives tells us that they know about server failures only after Data Guard has automatically completed the failover process and the app is back up and running! Needless to mention, Data Guard Broker has the integration hooks for interfaces such as JDBC and OCI, or even for custom apps, to ensure the application gets automatically rerouted to the new primary database after the database level failover completes. Net Net? To sum up this multi-part blog article, Data Guard with SYNC redo transport mode, plus Fast-Start Failover, gives you the ideal triple-combo - that is, it gives you the assurance that for critical outages, you can failover your Oracle databases: very fast without human intervention, and without losing any data. In short, it takes the element of risk out of critical IT operations. It does require you to be more careful with your network and systems planning, but as far as HA is concerned, the benefits outweigh the investment costs. So, this is what we in the MAA Development Team believe in. What do you think? How has your deployment experience been? We look forward to hearing from you!

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• Changes in Language Punctuation [closed]

  - by Wes Miller

  More social curiosity than actual programming question... (I got shot for posting this on Stack Overflow. They sent me here. At least i hope here is where they meant.) Based on the few responses I got before the content police ran me off Stack Overflow, I should note that I am legally blind and neatness and consistency in programming are my best friends. A thousand years ago when I took my first programming class (Fortran 66) and a mere 500 years ago when I tokk my first C and C++ classes, there were some pretty standard punctuation practices across languages. I saw them in Basic (shudder), PL/1, PL/AS, Rexx even Pascal. Ok, APL2 is not part of this discussion. Each language has its own peculiar punctuation. Pascal's periods, Fortran's comma separated do loops, almost everybody else's semicolons. As I learned it, each language also has KEYWORDS (if, for, do, while, until, etc.) which are set off by whitespace (or the left margin) if, etc. Each language has function, subroutines of whatever they're called. Some built-in some user coded. They were set off by function_name( parameters );. As in sqrt( x ) or rand( y ); Lately, there seems to be a new set of punctuation rules. Especially in c++ where initializers get glued onto the end of variable declarations int x(0); or auto_ptr p(new gizmo); This usually, briefly fools me into thinking someone is declaring a function prototype or using a function as a integer. Then "if" and 'for' seems to have grown parens; if(true) for(;;), etc. Since when did keywords become functions. I realize some people think they ARE functions with iterators as parameters. But if "for" is a function, where did the arg separating commas go? And finally, functions seem to have shed their parens; sqrt (2) select (...) I know, I koow, loosening whitespace rules is good. Keep reading. Question: when did the old ways disappear and this new way come into vogue? Does anyone besides me find it irritating to read and that the information that the placement of punctuation used to convey is gone? I know full well that K&R put the { at the end of the "if" or "for" to save a byte here and there. Can't use that excuse here. Space as an excuse for loss of readability died as HDD space soared past 100 MiB. Your thoughts are solicited. If there is a good reason to do this, I'll gladly learn it and maybe in another 50 years I'll get used to it. Of course it's good that compilers recognize these (IMHO) typos and keep right on going, but just because you CAN code it that way doesn't mean you HAVE to, right?

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• What You Can Learn from the NFL Referee Lockout

  - by Christina McKeon

  American football is a lot like religion. The fans are devoted followers that take brand loyalty to a whole new level. These fans that worship their teams each week showed that they are powerful customers whose voice has an impact. Yesterday, these fans proved that their opinion could force the hand of a large and powerful institution. With a three-month NFL referee lockout that seemed like it was nowhere close to resolution, the Green Bay Packers and the Seattle Seahawks competed last Monday night. For those of you that might have been out of the news cycle the past few days, Green Bay lost the game due to a controversial call that many experts and analysts agree should have resulted in Green Bay winning the game. Outrage ensued. The NFL had pulled replacement referees from the high school ranks, and these replacements did not have the knowledge and experience to handle high intensity NFL games. Fans protested about their customer experience. Their anger-filled rants were heard in social media, in the headlines of newspapers, on radio, and on national TV. Suddenly, the NFL was moved to reach an agreement with the referees. That agreement was reached late in the night on Wednesday with many believing that the referees had the upper hand forcing the owners into submission. Some might argue that the referees benefited, not the fans. Since the fans wanted qualified and competent referees, I would say the fans did benefit. The referees are scheduled to return to the field this Sunday, so the fans got what they wanted. What can you learn from this negative customer experience? Customers are in control. NFL owners thought they were controlling this situation with the upper hand over referees. The owners figured out they weren’t in control when their fans reacted negatively. Customers can make or break you more now than ever before, which is why it is more important to connect with them, engage them in a personal manner, and create rewarding relationships. Protect your brand. Whether knowingly or unknowingly, the NFL put their brand and each team’s brand at risk with replacement referees. Think about each business decision you make, and how it may impact your brand at different points in time. A decision that results in a gain today could result in a larger loss down the road. Customer experience matters. The NFL likely foresaw declining revenues in ticket sales, merchandising, advertising, and other areas if the lockout continued. While fans primarily spoke with their minds in the days following the Green Bay debacle, their wallets would be the next things to speak. Customer experience directly affects your success and is one of the few areas where you can differentiate your business. What would you do if your brand got such negative attention? Would you be prepared to navigate such stormy waters? Would you be able to prevent such a fiasco? If you don’t have a good answer to these questions, consider joining us October 3-5, 2012 at the Oracle Customer Experience Summit in San Francisco. You’ll have the opportunity to learn even more about customer experience from industry experts such as best-selling author Seth Godin, Paul Hagen and Kerry Bodine from Forrester Research, Inc., George Kembel from the Stanford d.School, Bruce Temkin of The Temkin Group, and Gene Alvarez from Gartner Inc.. There will also be plenty of your peers and customer experience experts available for networking and discussions.

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• Logging errors caused by exceptions deep in the application

  - by Kaleb Pederson

  What are best-practices for logging deep within an application's source? Is it bad practice to have multiple event log entries for a single error? For example, let's say that I have an ETL system whose transform step involves: a transformer, pipeline, processing algorithm, and processing engine. In brief, the transformer takes in an input file, parses out records, and sends the records through the pipeline. The pipeline aggregates the results of the processing algorithm (which could do serial or parallel processing). The processing algorithm sends each record through one or more processing engines. So, I have at least four levels: Transformer - Pipeline - Algorithm - Engine. My code might then look something like the following: class Transformer { void Process(InputSource input) { try { var inRecords = _parser.Parse(input.Stream); var outRecords = _pipeline.Transform(inRecords); } catch (Exception ex) { var inner = new ProcessException(input, ex); _logger.Error("Unable to parse source " + input.Name, inner); throw inner; } } } class Pipeline { IEnumerable<Result> Transform(IEnumerable<Record> records) { // NOTE: no try/catch as I have no useful information to provide // at this point in the process var results = _algorithm.Process(records); // examine and do useful things with results return results; } } class Algorithm { IEnumerable<Result> Process(IEnumerable<Record> records) { var results = new List<Result>(); foreach (var engine in Engines) { foreach (var record in records) { try { engine.Process(record); } catch (Exception ex) { var inner = new EngineProcessingException(engine, record, ex); _logger.Error("Engine {0} unable to parse record {1}", engine, record); throw inner; } } } } } class Engine { Result Process(Record record) { for (int i=0; i<record.SubRecords.Count; ++i) { try { Validate(record.subRecords[i]); } catch (Exception ex) { var inner = new RecordValidationException(record, i, ex); _logger.Error( "Validation of subrecord {0} failed for record {1}", i, record ); } } } } There's a few important things to notice: A single error at the deepest level causes three log entries (ugly? DOS?) Thrown exceptions contain all important and useful information Logging only happens when failure to do so would cause loss of useful information at a lower level. Thoughts and concerns: I don't like having so many log entries for each error I don't want to lose important, useful data; the exceptions contain all the important but the stacktrace is typically the only thing displayed besides the message. I can log at different levels (e.g., warning, informational) The higher level classes should be completely unaware of the structure of the lower-level exceptions (which may change as the different implementations are replaced). The information available at higher levels should not be passed to the lower levels. So, to restate the main questions: What are best-practices for logging deep within an application's source? Is it bad practice to have multiple event log entries for a single error?

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• Single page not appearing in Google Search

  - by Dan

  Description I have a static franchise website which has various sub pages each dedicated to an individual franchisee. For each franchisee the page, the only thing slightly similar between all of them are the page titles, they follow this structure: <title> Welcome to THE_COMPANY - PRODUCT_DESCRIPTION Services, THE_LOCATION </title> THE_COMPANY and PRODUCT_DESCRIPTION are the same across all franchisees, however THE_LOCATION changes depeding on where they are located in the UK. Each franchisee page has the following <meta /> tags: <meta name="DC.creator" content="user"/> <meta name="DC.format" content="text/html"/> <meta name="DC.language" content="en"/> <meta name="DC.date.modified" content="2014-01-23T11:22:31+00:00"/> <meta name="DC.date.created" content="2014-01-23T11:22:09+00:00"/> <meta name="DC.type" content="Page"/> <meta name="DC.distribution" content="Global"/> <meta name="robots" content="ALL"/> <meta name="distribution" content="Global"/> The main content on each franchisee page is completely different. The Problem There is one particular franchisee page, located in Area A.. Which will not appear in Google Search results at all. However every single other franchisee (if you Google Search for "THE_COMPANY, THE_LOCATION" is number 1). And if I do the same search on Bing, Yahoo or DuckDuckGo, the Area A franchisee is the first result on all of them. Has Google for some reason black listed one page on the site? What I Have Tried Ensuring the page is referenced in my sitemap.xml file 'Fetching as Google Bot' the link www.the_company.co.uk/areaa When that came back as OK I would submit to index Resubmitting the sitemap.xml file in Webmaster Tools Linking to the Area A page from another pages content For this I also waited about 3 weeks before checking again to give Google time to re-index Making a change to the page content and waiting another 2 / 3 weeks Removing the page completely and recreating it with an alternative URL The closest thing I have found to this issue is this StackOverflow question but this particular franchisee has existed for almost a year, it used to appear on Google searches however no longer does. I'm guessing the Panda update wasn't too happy with something on the page, but it hasn't effected anything else on the site and I am at a loss for things to try. I would greatly appreciate any information or thoughts as to what could have caused this Thanks. Update In line with Daniel Fukudas answer below, I have followed some of his steps but everything seems to check out alright: HTTP Headers HTTP/1.1 200 OK => Date => Tue, 25 Feb 2014 16:31:29 GMT Server => Zope/(2.12.16, python 2.6.6, linux2) ZServer/1.1 Content-Length => 40078 Expires => Sat, 01 Jan 2000 00:00:00 GMT Content-Type => text/html;charset=utf-8 Content-Language => en Vary => Accept-Encoding Connection => close Robots <meta /> tag: <meta name="robots" content="ALL"/> I have updated this <meta /> tag to read content="INDEX" instead now. robots.txt: User-agent: * Disallow: User-Agent: Googlebot Disallow: /*sendto_form$ Disallow: /*folder_factories$ Using site:THE_COMPANY.co.uk: Searching for 'AREA A site:THE_COMPANY.co.uk' does not return the page, but regardless of that searching just for site:THE_COMPANY.co.uk will not necessarily return every indexed page, or so I understand... Update It appears Google likes to drop pages every now and then from the index, despite my steps above, I left the site alone and the page appeared back in the SERPs by itself.

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• Elo system behaves oddly in program I've created

  - by adc

  Alright, so I'm looking to build a small program (C# and XAML) that, essentially, does this: Generate array of players. Each player has a current rating and a true rating. I set current rating to 1200 as a starting point right now; I've also tried setting it to true rating and the average of the two. True rating is what their skill level actually is. Their true rating is calculated based on percentages from the current League of Legends rating system; generating an array of 970 thousand generates results very similar to the data from here: (removed due to URL limit - but trust me, the results are very similar). This array is of length specified by the user. If need be, sort the array from smallest to largest. Play X number of games, again specified by the user. This is done by taking the array of players (which is sorted by Current Rating after being created) and running through it in groups of 10. The first five are on team one, the second five are on team two. It then takes the True Rating of these players and calculates an expected chance to win using the Elo system. It generates a random double and compares it to the expected chance to win; if the number is lower, team one wins - otherwise team two wins. I then update the rating of the players via, again, the Elo system - giving the winning team a score of 1 and the losing team a score of 0. I use a K value of 36 (but have tried 12, 24, and even higher ones) and an F value of 400. After going through the entire loop of players (which I have conveniently forced to be a multiple of ten), it sorts the array - again via current rating. This, if my understanding of the Elo system is correct, runs properly. However, it doesn't seem to work. I have a running test telling me how many players of the full array are within 100 current rating of their true rating. I would expect some portion of the population to be outside this range (as probability is not always going to go in their favor), but a full 40-45% of the population is outside of this range. I also have it outputting the maximum difference between true and current rating - and I have never seen this drop below 500! It hovers between 550-600, occasionally going over or under. I'm at a loss as to what to change - I've fiddled with the K and F values, where I start all the players, etc. but nothing changes the fact that eventually a good 40% of the population is outside the range. And it isn't that I have it playing too few games - it's now run through over 60 thousand games and the problem never disappears or really fluctuates. The full C# code, including everything except the XAML file and the Player class (pastebin is being very slow and I can only post two links, so I can't link to the XAML file): http://pastebin.com/rFcZRL84 The Player class: http://pastebin.com/4cJTdTRu I guess my question is did I do anything wrong? Is there a problem with the way I implemented the system, or is it just that Riot uses a significantly modified Elo system? I don't think it's the latter, as that still wouldn't explain the massive true and current rating differences to me, however.

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• WebCenter Customer Spotlight: Hyundai Motor Company

  - by me

  Author: Peter Reiser - Social Business Evangelist, Oracle WebCenter  Solution SummaryHyundai Motor Company is one of the world’s fastest-growing car manufacturers, ranked as the fifth-largest in 2011. The company also operates the world’s largest integrated automobile manufacturing facility in Ulsan, Republic of Korea, which can produce 1.6 million units per year. They  undertook a project to improve business efficiency and reinforce data security by centralizing the company’s sales, financial, and car manufacturing documents into a single repository. Hyundai Motor Company chose Oracle Exalogic, Oracle Exadata, Oracle WebLogic Sever, and Oracle WebCenter Content 11g, as they provided better performance, stability, storage, and scalability than their competitors.  Hyundai Motor Company cut the overall time spent each day on document-related work by around 85%, saved more than US$1 million in paper and printing costs, laid the foundation for a smart work environment, and supported their future growth in the competitive car industry. Company OverviewHyundai Motor Company is one of the world’s fastest-growing car manufacturers, ranked as the fifth-largest in 2011. The company also operates the world’s largest integrated automobile manufacturing facility in Ulsan, Republic of Korea, which can produce 1.6 million units per year. The company strives to enhance its brand image and market recognition by continuously improving the quality and design of its cars. Business Challenges To maximize the company’s growth potential, Hyundai Motor Company undertook a project to improve business efficiency and reinforce data security by centralizing the company’s sales, financial, and car manufacturing documents into a single repository. Specifically, they wanted to: Introduce a smart work environment to improve staff productivity and efficiency, and take advantage of rapid company growth due to new, enhanced car designs Replace a legacy document system managed by individual staff to improve collaboration, the visibility of corporate documents, and sharing of work-related files between employees Improve the security and storage of documents containing corporate intellectual property, and prevent intellectual property loss when staff leaves the company Eliminate delays when downloading files from the central server to a PC Build a large, single document repository to more efficiently manage and share data between 30,000 staff at the company’s headquarters Establish a scalable system that can be extended to Hyundai offices around the world Solution DeployedAfter conducting a large-scale benchmark test, Hyundai Motor Company chose Oracle Exalogic, Oracle Exadata, Oracle WebLogic Sever, and Oracle WebCenter Content 11g, as they provided better performance, stability, storage, and scalability than their competitors. Business Results Lowered the overall time spent each day on all document-related work by approximately 85%—from 4.5 hours to around 42 minutes on an average day Saved more than US$1 million per year in printer, paper, and toner costs, and laid the foundation for a completely paperless environment Reduced staff’s time spent requesting and receiving documents about car sales or designs from supervisors by 50%, by storing and managing all documents across the corporation in a single repository Cut the time required to draft new-car manufacturing, sales, and design documents by 20%, by allowing employees to reference high-quality data, such as marketing strategy and product planning documents already in the system Enhanced staff productivity at company headquarters by 9% by reducing the document-related tasks of 30,000 administrative and research and development staff Ensured the system could scale to hold 3 petabytes of car sales, manufacturing, and design data by 2013 and be deployed at branches worldwide We chose Oracle Exalogic, Oracle Exadata, and Oracle WebCenter Content to support our new document-centralization system over their competitors as Oracle offers stable storage for petabytes of data and high processing speeds. We have cut the overall time spent each day on document-related work by around 85%, saved more than US$1 million in paper and printing costs, laid the foundation for a smart work environment, and supported our future growth in the competitive car industry. Kang Tae-jin, Manager, General Affairs Team, Hyundai Motor Company Additional Information Hyundai Motor Company Customer Snapshot Oracle WebCenter Content

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• User password rejected on login screen but accepted on text console login

  - by MadsirR

  I had to force shutdown my Ubuntu 12.04 64-bit, after which I restarted and tried to log in as a normal user, which was rejected several times. I then logged in as guest and tty to my regular account with use of my normal password, which succeeded. (So the password is still valid.) How can I gain access again via the normal login procedure (welcome screen)? Update: When I tried to log on with my new password, it again was denied. When I deliberately tried to log on with a faulty password, an error message came back, saying: Access denied - wrong password. I suppose, the first time the password was not rejected, but the procedure was aborted for some reason. Some additional info after trying to find a solution: I am conviced it is a Compiz-issue. Why? before this happened, all sessions came to a grinding halt, regardless of being logged on in a 2D or 3d environment. I found a link saying that I should remove Compiz and proceed in a 2D environment, which initiall worked without a glitch, until my system went into a state of total obivium. Only after that, the above mentioned troubles appeared. In the meantime I have happened to find a thread with reference 17381, describing exactly what I have experienced. For now, I will try to cure this situation (later this week) and revert with the results, hopefully to close this post. In the meantime I cordially thank you all, even if you didn't kill the problem; you gave me the inspiration to look further and find a possible cure. Update2: After 15 hrs of trial-and-error I callled it quits (When I decided to tackle this problem, I've given myself 12 hrs, to avoid massive loss of time.) I decided to re-install Precise, since the "point 1" version has become availabe. Log-in is back to normal, as is the graphic environment. Response to mouse input is stil appalling, especially when I have a series of screens open as "children"of a "parent" screen. It still completely locks up. I have installed Enlightenment, Gnome classic, Gnome 3, Cinnamon and they all behave in a similar fashion. FOR THOSE WHO NEED A WAY-OUT IN SITUATIONS OF THE LIKE: Open a terminal with [Ctrl+Alt+F2]. Type [sudo killall Firefox] (or whatever application you wish to terminate). Key in your password. Return to your graphical screen with [Ctrl+Alt+F7], and Bob's your uncle. Just re-open Firefox like nothing happened. Next time you are stuck: [Ctrl+Alt+F2], upward arrow till you meet the command of your desire, [Ctrl+Alt+F7], etcetera. Hope this is of help. My next move will be to upgrade the kernel to 3.4 from the repositories for 12.10. However, since this entails a totally new situation, I will start a new thread on this site to avoid topic pollution I will keep you posted. Still.

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• What's wrong with my wireless?

  - by dazzle

  I am having issues with my wireless connection. My connection is constantly disconnecting, then attempting to reconnect, reconnecting momentarily, then disconnecting etc. on times scales that range from seconds to minutes. In the meantime, needless to say I'm having significant packet loss. I'm running Ubuntu 14.04 64bit, updated and upgraded to today. Here is my card and driver: delta@sager:~$ lspci -vq | grep -i wireless -B 1 -A 5 04:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Wireless 7260 (rev 73) Subsystem: Intel Corporation Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 47 Memory at f7d00000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=8K] Capabilities: Kernel driver in use: iwlwifi Here is my kernel: delta@sager:~$ uname -r 3.13.0-34-generic None of the other machines on my home network are having these issues. Windows Vista is networking without issue for goodness sake ;-) Here is a small clipping from the output of dmesg. As you can see, I am getting a cfg80211 message of some sort over and over again (FYI, I've replaced my MAC address with a series of dashes, so anytime there is a ---------------, that was where the MAC address was: [ 1881.739161] wlan1: authenticate with --------------- [ 1881.741561] wlan1: send auth to --------------- (try 1/3) [ 1881.743440] wlan1: authenticated [ 1881.746027] wlan1: associate with --------------- (try 1/3) [ 1881.749244] wlan1: RX AssocResp from --------------- (capab=0x411 status=0 aid=4) [ 1881.754727] wlan1: associated [ 1881.754827] cfg80211: Calling CRDA for country: US [ 1881.761552] cfg80211: Regulatory domain changed to country: US [ 1881.761559] cfg80211: (start_freq - end_freq @ bandwidth), (max_antenna_gain, max_eirp) [ 1881.761564] cfg80211: (2402000 KHz - 2472000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2700 mBm) [ 1881.761568] cfg80211: (5170000 KHz - 5250000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 1700 mBm) [ 1881.761571] cfg80211: (5250000 KHz - 5330000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm) [ 1881.761574] cfg80211: (5490000 KHz - 5600000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm) [ 1881.761577] cfg80211: (5650000 KHz - 5710000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm) [ 1881.761580] cfg80211: (5735000 KHz - 5835000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 3000 mBm) [ 1881.761584] cfg80211: (57240000 KHz - 63720000 KHz @ 2160000 KHz), (N/A, 4000 mBm) [ 1882.391038] cfg80211: Calling CRDA to update world regulatory domain [ 1882.396254] cfg80211: World regulatory domain updated: [ 1882.396260] cfg80211: (start_freq - end_freq @ bandwidth), (max_antenna_gain, max_eirp) [ 1882.396265] cfg80211: (2402000 KHz - 2472000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm) [ 1882.396268] cfg80211: (2457000 KHz - 2482000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm) [ 1882.396271] cfg80211: (2474000 KHz - 2494000 KHz @ 20000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm) [ 1882.396274] cfg80211: (5170000 KHz - 5250000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm) [ 1882.396277] cfg80211: (5735000 KHz - 5835000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm) [ 1886.148252] wlan1: authenticate with --------------- [ 1886.150005] wlan1: send auth to --------------- (try 1/3) [ 1886.151807] wlan1: authenticated [ 1886.154847] wlan1: associate with --------------- (try 1/3) [ 1886.158147] wlan1: RX AssocResp from --------------- (capab=0x411 status=0 aid=4) [ 1886.163464] wlan1: associated [ 1886.163520] wlan1: Limiting TX power to 30 (30 - 0) dBm as advertised by --------------- [ 1886.163588] cfg80211: Calling CRDA for country: US [ 1886.170500] cfg80211: Regulatory domain changed to country: US [ 1886.170508] cfg80211: (start_freq - end_freq @ bandwidth), (max_antenna_gain, max_eirp) [ 1886.170513] cfg80211: (2402000 KHz - 2472000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2700 mBm) [ 1886.170517] cfg80211: (5170000 KHz - 5250000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 1700 mBm) [ 1886.170520] cfg80211: (5250000 KHz - 5330000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm) [ 1886.170523] cfg80211: (5490000 KHz - 5600000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm) [ 1886.170526] cfg80211: (5650000 KHz - 5710000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm) [ 1886.170529] cfg80211: (5735000 KHz - 5835000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 3000 mBm) [ 1886.170533] cfg80211: (57240000 KHz - 63720000 KHz @ 2160000 KHz), (N/A, 4000 mBm) [ 1887.200197] cfg80211: Calling CRDA to update world regulatory domain [ 1887.203655] cfg80211: World regulatory domain updated: [ 1887.203659] cfg80211: (start_freq - end_freq @ bandwidth), (max_antenna_gain, max_eirp) [ 1887.203662] cfg80211: (2402000 KHz - 2472000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm) [ 1887.203664] cfg80211: (2457000 KHz - 2482000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm) [ 1887.203666] cfg80211: (2474000 KHz - 2494000 KHz @ 20000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm) [ 1887.203668] cfg80211: (5170000 KHz - 5250000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm) [ 1887.203670] cfg80211: (5735000 KHz - 5835000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm) I've poked around on AskUbuntu, and have not found any adequate solutions; have also found similar threads that were left unanswered. Any advice/experience/threads I might be able to pull on would be greatly appreciated. In your opinion, is this a kernel issue, hardware issue, etc.? Thanks in advance. EDIT: chili, here's the output of iwconfig: delta@sager:~$ iwconfig wlan1 IEEE 802.11abg ESSID:"LANbeforetime" Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412 GHz Access Point: ----------- Bit Rate=48 Mb/s Tx-Power=16 dBm Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off Power Management:off Link Quality=44/70 Signal level=-66 dBm Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0 Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:80 Missed beacon:0 eth0 no wireless extensions. lo no wireless extensions.

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• Package management system corrupted. Cannot install or remove packages. U12.04LTS

  - by user271490

  Having read other posts, I believe that this may be less about samba than about update system. Below is the log file of the failed installation of Samba. I have been trying without success to install/outstall samba so that I could install anything else ... I cannot either install or remove samba using either update-manager or apt-get (nor indeed Software Centre). One of the errors that I have had to correct is the presence after "removal" (failed) of /usr/share/system-config-samba directory which finally allowed itself to be deleted. That, however was then ... I have U12.04LTS. running on release 63 because I allowed the upgrade to 64 this morning which fell over - no output to monitor - obviously even less support for my graphic chip than I am suffering already (see other posts in this forum). According to my interpretation of the dpkg returned errors there may be some problem with the package files, but if this is the case then it is on servers 'main', 'nantes uni fr' and 'best fr' at the very least if not everywhere. The suggestions offered at Package operation failed and elsewhere have not worked for me. This linked post suggests that a similar error is present in other packages, or that the error is in the 'update system' I have tried ... sudo apt-get remove samba ... autoremove ... install samba ... clean ... update -f all of the above In update-manager I have tried the "reload packages list" which fails to terminate because of the error. I have tried to install and remove samba from the software centre ... :( I am at a loss ... I need help, please! Firstly to recover my apt-get/update-manager/Software Centre so that I can at least carry on with my continuing installation - up to communicating with home network hence need for samba - which brings me to my second requirement ... samba. PS is the issue about "MaxReports" associated or apart? UPDATE! Being heartily sick of restarting FF every 5 seconds I thought I'd try again with Chromium ... and got the same errors from dpkg about corrupt compressed package - coincidence? Of course this was no longer in clipboard when I got here because apport has just errored ... AAARRRGGGH!!! Why does every error clear the clipboard? Thanks for any and all help!! installArchives() failed: Preconfiguring packages ... ... snip (Reading database ... ... snip (Reading database ... 184858 files and directories currently installed.) Unpacking samba (from .../samba_2%3a3.6.3-2ubuntu2.10_i386.deb) ... dpkg-deb (subprocess): data: internal gzip read error: ': data error' dpkg-deb: error: subprocess returned error exit status 2 dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/samba_2%3a3.6.3-2ubuntu2.10_i386.deb (--unpack): subprocess dpkg-deb --fsys-tarfile returned error exit status 2 No apport report written because MaxReports is reached already Selecting previously unselected package system-config-samba. Unpacking system-config-samba (from .../system-config-samba_1.2.63-0ubuntu5_all.deb) ... Processing triggers for ureadahead ... ureadahead will be reprofiled on next reboot Processing triggers for ufw ... Processing triggers for man-db ... Processing triggers for bamfdaemon ... Rebuilding /usr/share/applications/bamf.index... Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils ... Processing triggers for gnome-menus ... Processing triggers for hicolor-icon-theme ... Errors were encountered while processing: /var/cache/apt/archives/samba_2%3a3.6.3-2ubuntu2.10_i386.deb Error in function: dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of system-config-samba: system-config-samba depends on samba; however: Package samba is not installed. dpkg: error processing system-config-samba (--configure): dependency problems - leaving unconfigured

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• Getting the number of fragments which passed the depth test

  - by Etan

  In "modern" environments, the "NV Occlusion Query" extension provides a method to get the number of fragments which passed the depth test. However, on the iPad / iPhone using OpenGL ES, the extension is not available. What is the most performant approach to implement a similar behaviour in the fragment shader? Some of my ideas: Render the object completely in white, then count all the colors together using a two-pass shader where first a vertical line is rendered and for each fragment the shader computes the sum over the whole row. Then, a single vertex is rendered whose fragment sums all the partial sums of the first pass. Doesn't seem to be very efficient. Render the object completely in white over a black background. Downsample recursively, abusing the hardware linear interpolation between textures until being at a reasonably small resolution. This leads to fragments which have a greyscale level depending on the number of white pixels where in their corresponding region. Is this even accurate enough? Use mipmaps and simply read the pixel on the 1x1 level. Again the question of accuracy and if it is even possible using non-power-of-two textures. The problem wit these approaches is, that the pipeline gets stalled which results in major performance issues. Therefore, I'm looking for a more performant way to accomplish my goal. Using the EXT_OCCLUSION_QUERY_BOOLEAN extension Apple introduced EXT_OCCLUSION_QUERY_BOOLEAN in iOS 5.0 for iPad 2. "4.1.6 Occlusion Queries Occlusion queries use query objects to track the number of fragments or samples that pass the depth test. An occlusion query can be started and finished by calling BeginQueryEXT and EndQueryEXT, respectively, with a target of ANY_SAMPLES_PASSED_EXT or ANY_SAMPLES_PASSED_CONSERVATIVE_EXT. When an occlusion query is started with the target ANY_SAMPLES_PASSED_EXT, the samples-boolean state maintained by the GL is set to FALSE. While that occlusion query is active, the samples-boolean state is set to TRUE if any fragment or sample passes the depth test. When the occlusion query finishes, the samples-boolean state of FALSE or TRUE is written to the corresponding query object as the query result value, and the query result for that object is marked as available. If the target of the query is ANY_SAMPLES_PASSED_CONSERVATIVE_EXT, an implementation may choose to use a less precise version of the test which can additionally set the samples-boolean state to TRUE in some other implementation dependent cases." The first sentence hints on a behavior which is exactly what I'm looking for: getting the number of pixels which passed the depth test in an asynchronous manner without much performance loss. However, the rest of the document describes only how to get boolean results. Is it possible to exploit this extension to get the pixel count? Does the hardware support it so that there may be hidden API to get access to the pixel count? Other extensions which could be exploitable would be debugging features like the number of times the fragment shader was invoked (PSInvocations in DirectX - not sure if something simila is available in OpenGL ES). However, this would also result in a pipeline stall.

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• Comparing Apples and Pairs

  - by Tony Davis

  A recent study, High Costs and Negative Value of Pair Programming, by Capers Jones, pulls no punches in its assessment of the costs-to- benefits ratio of pair programming, two programmers working together, at a single computer, rather than separately. He implies that pair programming is a method rushed into production on a wave of enthusiasm for Agile or Extreme Programming, without any real regard for its effectiveness. Despite admitting that his data represented a far from complete study of the economics of pair programming, his conclusions were stark: it was 2.5 times more expensive, resulted in a 15% drop in productivity, and offered no significant quality benefits. The author provides a more scientific analysis than Jon Evans’ Pair Programming Considered Harmful, but the theme is the same. In terms of upfront-coding costs, pair programming is surely more expensive. The claim of productivity loss is dubious and contested by other studies. The third claim, though, did surprise me. The author’s data suggests that if both the pair and the individual programmers employ static code analysis and testing, then there is no measurable difference in the resulting code quality, in terms of defects per function point. In other words, pair programming incurs a massive extra cost for no tangible return in investment. There were, inevitably, many criticisms of his data and his conclusions, a few of which are persuasive. Firstly, that the driver/observer model of pair programming, on which the study bases its findings, is far from the most effective. For example, many find Ping-Pong pairing, based on use of test-driven development, far more productive. Secondly, that it doesn’t distinguish between “expert” and “novice” pair programmers– that is, independently of other programming skills, how skilled was an individual at pair programming. Thirdly, that his measure of quality is too narrow. This point rings true, certainly at Red Gate, where developers don’t pair program all the time, but use the method in short bursts, while tackling a tricky problem and needing a fresh perspective on the best approach, or more in-depth knowledge in a particular domain. All of them argue that pair programming, and collective code ownership, offers significant rewards, if not in terms of immediate “bug reduction”, then in removing the likelihood of single points of failure, and improving the overall quality and longer-term adaptability/maintainability of the design. There is also a massive learning benefit for both participants. One developer told me how he once worked in the same team over consecutive summers, the first time with no pair programming and the second time pair-programming two-thirds of the time, and described the increased rate of learning the second time as “phenomenal”. There are a great many theories on how we should develop software (Scrum, XP, Lean, etc.), but woefully little scientific research in their effectiveness. For a group that spends so much time crunching other people’s data, I wonder if developers spend enough time crunching data about themselves. Capers Jones’ data may be incomplete, but should cause a pause for thought, especially for any large IT departments, supporting commerce and industry, who are considering pair programming. It certainly shouldn’t discourage teams from exploring new ways of developing software, as long as they also think about how to gather hard data to gauge their effectiveness.

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• Converting .docx to pdf (or .doc to pdf, or .doc to odt, etc.) with libreoffice on a webserver on the fly using php

  - by robertphyatt

  Ok, so I needed to convert .docx files to .pdf files on the fly, but none of the free php libraries that were available let me do it on my server (a webservice was not good enough). Basically either I needed to pay for a library (and have it maybe suck) or just deal with the free ones that didn't convert the formatting well enough. Not good enough! I found that LibreOffice (OpenOffice's successor) allows command line conversion using the LibreOffice conversion engine (which DID preserve the formatting like I wanted and generally worked great). I loaded the latest version of Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com/download/ubuntu/download) onto my Virtual Box (https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads) on my computer and found that I was able to easily convert files using the commandline like this: libreoffice --headless -convert-to pdf fileToConvert.docx -outdir output/path/for/pdf I thought: sweet...but I don't have admin rights on my host's web server. I tried to use a "portable" version of LibreOffice that I obtained from http://portablelinuxapps.org/ but I was unable to get it to work on my host's webserver, because my host's webserver didn't have all the dependencies (Dependency Hell! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dependency_hell) I was at a loss of how to make it work, until I ran across a cool project made by a Ph.D. student (Philip J. Guo) at Stanford called CDE: http://www.stanford.edu/~pgbovine/cde.html I will let you look at his explanations of how it works (I followed what he did in http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=6XdwHo1BWwY, starting at about 32:00 as well as the directions on his site), but in short, it allows one to avoid dependency hell by copying all the files used when you run certain commands, recreating the linux environment where the command worked. I was able to use this to run LibreOffice without having to resort to someone's portable version of it, and it worked just like it did when I did it on Ubuntu with the command above, with a tweak: I needed to run the wrapper of LibreOffice the CDE generated. So, below is my PHP code that calls it. In this code snippet, the filename to be copied is passed in as $_POST["filename"]. I copy the file to the same spot where I originally converted the file, convert it, copy it back and then delete all the files (so that it doesn't start growing exponentially). I did it this way because I wasn't able to make it work otherwise on the webserver. If there is a linux + webserver ninja out there that can figure out how to make it work without doing this, I would be interested to know what you did. Please post a comment or something if you did that. <?php //first copy the file to the magic place where we can convert it to a pdf on the fly copy($time.$_POST["filename"], "../LibreOffice/cde-package/cde-root/home/robert/Desktop/".$_POST["filename"]); //change to that directory chdir('../LibreOffice/cde-package/cde-root/home/robert'); //the magic command that does the conversion $myCommand = "./libreoffice.cde --headless -convert-to pdf Desktop/".$_POST["filename"]." -outdir Desktop/"; exec ($myCommand); //copy the file back copy("Desktop/".str_replace(".docx", ".pdf", $_POST["filename"]), "../../../../../documents/".str_replace(".docx", ".pdf", $_POST["filename"])); //delete all the files out of the magic place where we can convert it to a pdf on the fly $files1 = scandir('Desktop'); //my files that I generated all happened to start with a number. $pattern = '/^[0-9]/'; foreach ($files1 as $value) { preg_match($pattern, $value, $matches); if(count($matches) ?> 0) { unlink("Desktop/".$value); } } //changing the header to the location of the file makes it work well on androids header( 'Location: '.str_replace(".docx", ".pdf", $_POST["filename"]) ); ?> And here is the tar.gz file I generated I generated with CDE. To duplicate what I did exactly, put the tar.gz file in a folder somewhere. I will call that folder the "root". Make a new folder called "documents" in the "root" folder. Unpack the tar.gz and run the php script above from the "documents" folder. Success! I made a truly portable version of LibreOffice that can convert files on the fly on a webserver using 100% free, open source software!

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• Customer owes me half my payment. Should I take ownership of his AWS account for charging? How?

  - by Cawas

  Background They paid me my first half (back in April 15th) before even we could get into an agreement. Very nice of him! Then I've finished the 2 weeks job of setting up the servers, using his AWS credentials he had just bought. I waited for another 2 weeks for everything settling up, and it was all running fine. He did what he needed with his sftp account, everyone were happy. Now, it has been almost 2 months since I've finished the job and I still didn't get the 2nd half. I must assume, it's not much money (about U$400, converted), but it would help me pay the bills at least. Heck, the Amazon bills they are paying are little less than that (for now). Measures I'm wondering how I can go to charge him now. First thought, of course, would be taking everything down and say "pay now, or be doomed". If that's not good enough, then I lost it. I have no contracts and I doubt I could get a law suit in this country for such a low value based only on emails. And I don't really want to get too agressive here - there might be a business chance in the future and I don't want to ruin it. Second though would be just changing the password. But then he probably could gain access again by some recovery means. That's where my question may mainly relay. How can I do it and not leaving any room for recovery from his side? I even got the first AWS "your account was created" mail from himself, showing me I could begin my job, back then. Lastly, do you have any other idea on what I can and what I should do in this case? Responding to Answers Please, consider reading the current answers and comments. This is not a very simple case. I've considered many, many options (including all lawful ones) before considering this ones I've listed here, and I am willing to take the loss and all that. That's not the point. The point is being practical here. I will call him again and talk about it. I will do terrorism on getting lawyers and getting contract. I am ready to go all forth while I have time and energy for it. But, in practice, there is this extra thing I can do to assure myself of the work I've done. I can basically take it back and delete everything! I'd only take his password because I can find no other way to do it within Amazon. Maybe, contacting Amazon and explaining the situation? I don't know. Give me ideas on this technical side! And thank everyone for the attention and helping me clarifying the issue so far! :)

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• Ubuntu 12.04 LXC nat prerouting not working

  - by petermolnar

  I have a running Debian Wheezy setup I copied exactly to an Ubuntu 12.04 ( elementary OS, used as desktop as well ) While the Debian setup runs flawlessly, the Ubuntu version dies on the prerouting to containers ( or so it seems ) In short: lxc works containers work and run connecting to container from host OK ( including mixed ports & services ) connecting to outside world from container is fine What does not work is connecting from another box to the host on a port that should be NATed to a container. The setups: /etc/rc.local CMD_BRCTL=/sbin/brctl CMD_IFCONFIG=/sbin/ifconfig CMD_IPTABLES=/sbin/iptables CMD_ROUTE=/sbin/route NETWORK_BRIDGE_DEVICE_NAT=lxc-bridge HOST_NETDEVICE=eth0 PRIVATE_GW_NAT=192.168.42.1 PRIVATE_NETMASK=255.255.255.0 PUBLIC_IP=192.168.13.100 ${CMD_BRCTL} addbr ${NETWORK_BRIDGE_DEVICE_NAT} ${CMD_BRCTL} setfd ${NETWORK_BRIDGE_DEVICE_NAT} 0 ${CMD_IFCONFIG} ${NETWORK_BRIDGE_DEVICE_NAT} ${PRIVATE_GW_NAT} netmask ${PRIVATE_NETMASK} promisc up Therefore lxc network is 192.168.42.0/24 and the host eth0 ip is 192.168.13.100; setup via network manager as static address. iptables: *mangle :PREROUTING ACCEPT [0:0] :INPUT ACCEPT [0:0] :FORWARD ACCEPT [0:0] :OUTPUT ACCEPT [0:0] :POSTROUTING ACCEPT [0:0] COMMIT *filter :FORWARD ACCEPT [0:0] :INPUT DROP [0:0] :OUTPUT ACCEPT [0:0] # Accept traffic from internal interfaces -A INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT # accept traffic from lxc network -A INPUT -d 192.168.42.1 -s 192.168.42.0/24 -j ACCEPT # Accept internal traffic Make sure NEW incoming tcp connections are SYN # packets; otherwise we need to drop them: -A INPUT -p tcp ! --syn -m state --state NEW -j DROP # Packets with incoming fragments drop them. This attack result into Linux server panic such data loss. -A INPUT -f -j DROP # Incoming malformed XMAS packets drop them: -A INPUT -p tcp --tcp-flags ALL ALL -j DROP # Incoming malformed NULL packets: -A INPUT -p tcp --tcp-flags ALL NONE -j DROP # Accept traffic with the ACK flag set -A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --tcp-flags ACK ACK -j ACCEPT # Allow incoming data that is part of a connection we established -A INPUT -m state --state ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT # Allow data that is related to existing connections -A INPUT -m state --state RELATED -j ACCEPT # Accept responses to DNS queries -A INPUT -p udp -m udp --dport 1024:65535 --sport 53 -j ACCEPT # Accept responses to our pings -A INPUT -p icmp -m icmp --icmp-type echo-reply -j ACCEPT # Accept notifications of unreachable hosts -A INPUT -p icmp -m icmp --icmp-type destination-unreachable -j ACCEPT # Accept notifications to reduce sending speed -A INPUT -p icmp -m icmp --icmp-type source-quench -j ACCEPT # Accept notifications of lost packets -A INPUT -p icmp -m icmp --icmp-type time-exceeded -j ACCEPT # Accept notifications of protocol problems -A INPUT -p icmp -m icmp --icmp-type parameter-problem -j ACCEPT # Respond to pings, but limit -A INPUT -m icmp -p icmp --icmp-type echo-request -m state --state NEW -m limit --limit 6/s -j ACCEPT # Allow connections to SSH server -A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 22 -m state --state NEW -m limit --limit 12/s -j ACCEPT COMMIT *nat :OUTPUT ACCEPT [0:0] :PREROUTING ACCEPT [0:0] :POSTROUTING ACCEPT [0:0] -A PREROUTING -d 192.168.13.100 -p tcp -m tcp --dport 2221 -m state --state NEW -m limit --limit 12/s -j DNAT --to-destination 192.168.42.11:22 -A PREROUTING -d 192.168.13.100 -p tcp -m tcp --dport 80 -m state --state NEW -m limit --limit 512/s -j DNAT --to-destination 192.168.42.11:80 -A PREROUTING -d 192.168.13.100 -p tcp -m tcp --dport 443 -m state --state NEW -m limit --limit 512/s -j DNAT --to-destination 192.168.42.11:443 -A POSTROUTING -d 192.168.42.0/24 -o eth0 -j SNAT --to-source 192.168.13.100 -A POSTROUTING -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE COMMIT sysctl: net.ipv4.conf.all.forwarding = 1 net.ipv4.conf.all.mc_forwarding = 0 net.ipv4.conf.default.forwarding = 1 net.ipv4.conf.default.mc_forwarding = 0 net.ipv4.ip_forward = 1 I've set up full iptables log on the container; none of the packets addressed to 192.168.13.100, port 80 is reaching the container. I've even tried different kernels ( server kernel, raring lts kernel, etc ), modprobe everything iptables & nat related, nothing. Any ideas?

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• lvm disappeared after disc replacement on raid10

  - by user142295

  here my problem: I am running ubuntu 12.04 on a raid10 (4 disks), on top of which I installed an lvm with two volume groups (one for /, one for /home). The layout of the disks are as follows: Disk /dev/sda: 1500.3 GB, 1500301910016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 182401 cylinders, total 2930277168 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x0003f3b6 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 * 63 481949 240943+ 83 Linux /dev/sda2 481950 2910640634 1455079342+ fd Linux raid autodetect /dev/sda3 2910640635 2930272064 9815715 82 Linux swap / Solaris Disk /dev/sdb: 1500.3 GB, 1500301910016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 182401 cylinders, total 2930277168 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x00069785 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdb1 63 2910158684 1455079311 fd Linux raid autodetect /dev/sdb2 2910158685 2930272064 10056690 82 Linux swap / Solaris Disk /dev/sdc: 1500.3 GB, 1500301910016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 182401 cylinders, total 2930277168 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x00000000 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdc1 63 2910158684 1455079311 fd Linux raid autodetect /dev/sdc2 2910158685 2930272064 10056690 82 Linux swap / Solaris Disk /dev/sdd: 1500.3 GB, 1500301910016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 182401 cylinders, total 2930277168 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x000f14de Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdd1 63 2910158684 1455079311 fd Linux raid autodetect /dev/sdd2 2910158685 2930272064 10056690 82 Linux swap / Solaris The first disk (/dev/sda) contains the /boot partition on /dev/sda1. I use grub2 to boot the system off this partition. On top of this raid10 I installed two volume groups, one for /, one for /home. This system worked well, I even exchanged two disks during the last two years. It always worked. But not this time. For the first time, /dev/sda broke. I do not know if this is an issue – I know I would have struggled anyways to overcome the problem with /boot installed on that disk and grub2 installed on the mbr of /dev/sda. Anyways, I did what I always did: start knoppix fire up the raid sudo mdadm --examine -scan which returns ARRAY /dev/md127 UUID=0dbf4558:1a943464:132783e8:19cdff95 start it up sudo mdadm --assemble /dev/md127 fail the failing disk (smart event) sudo mdadm /dev/md127 --fail /dev/sda2 remove the failing disk sudo mdadm /dev/md127 --remove /dev/sda2 stop the raid sudo mdadm -S /dev/md127 take out the disk replace it with a new one create the same partitions as on the failling one add it to the raid sudo mdadm --assemble /dev/md127 sudo mdadm /dev/md127 --add /dev/sda2 wait 4 hours All looks fine: cat /proc/mdstat returns: Personalities : [raid10] md127 : active raid10 sda2[0] sdd1[3] sdc1[2] sdb1[1] 2910158464 blocks 64K chunks 2 near-copies [4/4] [UUUU] unused devices: <none> and sudo mdadm --detail /dev/md127 returns /dev/md127: Version : 0.90 Creation Time : Wed Jun 10 13:08:46 2009 Raid Level : raid10 Array Size : 2910158464 (2775.34 GiB 2980.00 GB) Used Dev Size : 1455079232 (1387.67 GiB 1490.00 GB) Raid Devices : 4 Total Devices : 4 Preferred Minor : 127 Persistence : Superblock is persistent Update Time : Thu Mar 21 16:27:40 2013 State : clean Active Devices : 4 Working Devices : 4 Failed Devices : 0 Spare Devices : 0 Layout : near=2 Chunk Size : 64K UUID : 0dbf4558:1a943464:132783e8:19cdff95 (local to host Microknoppix) Events : 0.4824680 Number Major Minor RaidDevice State 0 8 2 0 active sync /dev/sda2 1 8 17 1 active sync /dev/sdb1 2 8 33 2 active sync /dev/sdc1 3 8 49 3 active sync /dev/sdd1 However, there is no trace of the volume groups. Rebooting into knoppix does not help Restarting the old system (I actually replugged and re-added the failing disk for that – the system begins to start, but then fails to see the / partition – no wonder if the volume group is gone) does not help. sudo vgscan, sudo vgdisplay, sudo lvs, sudo lvdisplay, sudo vgscan –mknodes all returned No volume groups found. I am completely at a loss. Can anyone tell me if and how I can recover my data? Thanks in advance!

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• Gnome-shell fails to load on 12.10

  - by Githlar

  I'm usually the one answering questions, but in this I'm throughly stumped! My Setup: Ubuntu 12.10 (Dist upgrade form 12.04) ATI M96 [Mobility Radeon HD 4650] Upon the first installation of 12.10 I had all kinds of issues getting the Legacy ATI drivers to install (I guess the source for the drivers isn't kosher with kernel 3.5). So, I added the repository ppa:makson96/fglrx - which has a version of the ATI source patched to work with kernel 3.5. After installation of fglrx-legacy from that PPA, gnome-shell and all my graphics work fine... until today. The Problem I unsuspended my computer today and the screen was black (not off, the black from the gnome lock screen). I'd move my mouse/hit a key and the background would flash and then it'd go back to black. Restarted via VT1 Logged into Gnome (gnome-shell) session, but no gnome-shell! Investigation: First, I went to VT1 and tried export DISPLAY=:0;gnome-shell --replace. It appeared to work fine, switch back to X and nothing. Went back to VT1 and saw this error message: JS ERROR: !!! Exception was: TypeError: Object 0x7fc748129c30 is not a subclass of (null), it's a xO JS ERROR: !!! message = '"Object 0x7fc748129c30 is not a subclass of (null), it's a xO"' JS ERROR: !!! fileName = '"/usr/share/gnome-shell/js/ui/tweener.js"' JS ERROR: !!! lineNumber = '218' JS ERROR: !!! stack = '"()@/usr/share/gnome-shell/js/ui/tweener.js:218 wrapper()@/usr/share/gjs-1.0/lang.js:204 ()@/usr/share/gjs-1.0/lang.js:145 ()@/usr/share/gjs-1.0/lang.js:239 init()@/usr/share/gnome-shell/js/ui/tweener.js:49 init()@/usr/share/gnome-shell/js/ui/environment.js:96 @<main>:1 "' Window manager warning: Log level 32: Execution of main.js threw exception: TypeError: Object 0x7fc748129c30 is not a subclass of (null), it's a xO Note: Everywhere it says "it's a xO", xO is actually garbled and changes every time (I'm thinking memory corruption?) This error is thrown by line 96 of /usr/share/gnome-shell/js/ui/environment.js: tweener.Init() Did a purge of fglrx-legacy, reboot, reinstall fglrx-legacy, reboot... same thing. Did a ppa-purge of ppa:gnome3-team/gnome3, and reinstalled gnome-shell and ubuntu-desktop from the standard repositores... same thing. I'm really at a loss here. I love gnome-shell and after using it for nearly a year now gnome classic just seems so archaic. Additional Information Apt log from the day I first suspended my machine (these are upgrades from the gnome3-team/gnome3 ppa and ubuntu-wine/ppa ppa): Start-Date: 2012-11-24 17:30:28 Commandline: aptdaemon role='role-commit-packages' sender=':1.618' Install: gkbd-capplet:amd64 (3.6.0-0ubuntu1), gnome-control-center-unity:amd64 (1.0-0ubuntu1~ubuntu12.10.1) Upgrade: nautilus:amd64 (3.6.2-0ubuntu0.1~quantal1, 3.6.3-0ubuntu2~ubuntu12.10.1), libgnome-control-center1:amd64 (3.4.2-0ubuntu19, 3.6.3-0ubuntu6~ubuntu12.10.1), wine1.5-i386:i386 (1.5.17-0ubuntu4, 1.5.18-0ubuntu1), wine1.5:amd64 (1.5.17-0ubuntu4, 1.5.18-0ubuntu1), gnome-settings-daemon:amd64 (3.4.2-0ubuntu14, 3.6.3-0ubuntu1~ubuntu12.10.1), gnome-control-center-data:amd64 (3.4.2-0ubuntu19, 3.6.3-0ubuntu6~ubuntu12.10.1), gnome-accessibility-themes:amd64 (3.6.0.2-0ubuntu1, 3.6.2-0ubuntu2~ubuntu12.10.1), gnome-themes-standard:amd64 (3.6.0.2-0ubuntu1, 3.6.2-0ubuntu2~ubuntu12.10.1), wine1.5-amd64:amd64 (1.5.17-0ubuntu4, 1.5.18-0ubuntu1), nautilus-data:amd64 (3.6.2-0ubuntu0.1~quantal1, 3.6.3-0ubuntu2~ubuntu12.10.1), gnome-control-center:amd64 (3.4.2-0ubuntu19, 3.6.3-0ubuntu6~ubuntu12.10.1), libnautilus-extension1a:amd64 (3.6.2-0ubuntu0.1~quantal1, 3.6.3-0ubuntu2~ubuntu12.10.1) End-Date: 2012-11-24 17:31:32 fglrxinfo (driver appears to be working): display: :0 screen: 0 OpenGL vendor string: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. OpenGL renderer string: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4650 OpenGL version string: 3.3.11653 Compatibility Profile Context Does anybody have any further ideas?

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• Video works with 'Try me' but not after install. What is the difference? U12.04LTS,

  - by HarveyP

  My hard drive got corrupted so I did a reinstall. Tested Youtube in FF during 'try me' and it worked - jerky, but it worked. Instal without all the updates (576 outstanding now) in order to get ff installed as per the demo - to no avail. In 'try me' mode ff NEVER crashed! After install ff crashed whilst I was typing in 'youtube' in the address field. When I finally got to youtube - no video. What is the difference between ff in try me and ff after install? Off to try some selected updates now to see if I can see it for myself. In previous installation I had several profiles and aliased ff with -safe-mode switch to simplify startup of most stable ff. Also found that ff startup in graphic mode worked better (but still without video) with all of the extensions disabled and all of the plugins set to "ask" and always denied ... I have SiS graphic card in SiS Motherboard for XP and ancient Hyundai ImageQuest QV770 monitor. I have Ubuntu 12.04.01 LTS 1 day after install with only the immediate upgrades requested to language pack (English UK). Using FR Alternative keyboard. Connected with domestic wifi network from Orange (FT) I really want to use Skype, but won't bother installing it (again) without video as I can do my sms on FB - whilst ff is not crashed ... Update ... Is something overflowing? I have just had to reboot in order to get ff to restart in any way shape or form - restart on crash form generates new crash form, etc. It was however a good half hour before it crashed so some improvement over conditions before disk corruption. I have now installed all of the critical updates (332 recommended updates still outstanding) which included some relating to ff. Still no video. Still crashing - especially when on Grepolis website. Since the re-install I have had a lovely 1024x768 screen, but after last ff crash and reboot I got a message about 'low graphics mode' and 'setting things myself'. I was not sufficiently tuned in at the time to take proper note - I have no doubt I shall see it again and shall report accordingly. I still have only laptop options for my screen and do not know how to rectify this. Spent a few days with ubuntu on a different, newer machine which has now suffered a graphics breakdown. Returned to this old one again, but with new flat screen Monitor. Found SIS drivers for my graphics BUT it is intended for Red Hat 7.2. I chose this over the version for 7.0 because I thought what the hell, I might not be able to do anything with either of them but this is the later one ... The file will not open with software manager - found a similar problem on Overclock but it has not helped me to install this driver. File name is sis_drv.o-410 and it is currently idling away in my Downloads folder ... I have tried the solution offered on another sis problem, but this shows that my xserver-xorg-video-sis driver is up to date. I am now at a loss as to how to proceed if I can't install the latest sis driver from sis ... Does nobody know how FF changes from "try-me" to "installed"? Any time I MUST have video I reboot from the disk again, but this is tedious! Also one of the things I mock most about MS is the constant rebooting ... UPDATE 10/6/2014 I have installed chromium-browser - worse, crashes even more often than ff.I have installed epiphany - better; Video works but not the associated soundtrack.FireFox is version 14.01 in 'try me' and version 29.0 from my install. Would it be useful to try to downgrade FireFox in order to get video?

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• Wireless connection works but the internet is too slow to use in Ubuntu 11.04

  - by Garrin

  The internet is so slow as to be unusable. And I'm not being picky. Even after minutes I can't get my Google home page to load. I tried installing a package through apt-get and was getting rates between 0 and a few hundred bytes/s. That's bytes, not kilobytes! Mostly 0 however (no exaggeration, it spends large amounts of time stalled). And I would go to a speed test web site of some kind but I can't since nothing will load. Briefly put, the laptop I am using was connected to two wireless networks while using Ubuntu 11.04 without any issues before this. It was also connected to a wired network without any issues. It dual boats Windows 7 which has never had any issues, not even with the current wireless network. Just to be clear, on the current wi-fi network, Windows 7 encounters no issues (speedtest.net puts the network speed at 1mb/s) but my network connection in Ubuntu 11.04 is so slow as to literally be unusable. I am unfamiliar with the router except for the fact that it boasts a Rogers logo (that's a large ISP/cable provider in Canada for those not familiar with the land of igloos and polar bears). I am far from the router and some desktop widget I use tells me the signal strength is at 58% (it seems fairly reliable and this would appear to match up with the filled bars in the network icon). I should also mention I'm just renting a room in this house so I'm not the network administrator and while I can access the 192.168.0.1 router page, the password wasn't set to 'password' so it's not much use to me. Here are a bunch of commands I ran which don't tell me a whole lot but I thought might be more instructive to the wise around here: lspci (just showing my network card): 05:00.0 Network controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR928X Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) (rev 01) This one is self explanatory. PING www.googele.com (216.65.41.185) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from nnw.net (216.65.41.185): icmp_req=1 ttl=51 time=267 ms 64 bytes from nnw.net (216.65.41.185): icmp_req=2 ttl=51 time=190 ms 64 bytes from nnw.net (216.65.41.185): icmp_req=3 ttl=51 time=212 ms 64 bytes from nnw.net (216.65.41.185): icmp_req=4 ttl=51 time=207 ms 64 bytes from nnw.net (216.65.41.185): icmp_req=5 ttl=51 time=220 ms --- www.googele.com ping statistics --- 5 packets transmitted, 5 received, 0% packet loss, time 4003ms rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 190.079/219.699/267.963/26.121 ms ifconfig eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 20:6a:8a:02:20:da UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B) Interrupt:42 lo Link encap:Local Loopback inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0 inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1 RX packets:16 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:16 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:960 (960.0 B) TX bytes:960 (960.0 B) wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 20:7c:8f:05:c6:bf inet addr:192.168.0.16 Bcast:192.168.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 inet6 addr: fe80::227c:8fff:fe05:c6bf/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:982 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:658 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:497250 (497.2 KB) TX bytes:95076 (95.0 KB) Thank you

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• Squibbly: LibreOffice Integration Framework for the Java Desktop

  - by Geertjan

  Squibbly is a new framework for Java desktop applications that need to integrate with LibreOffice, or more generally, need office features as part of a Java desktop solution that could include, for example, JavaFX components. Here's what it looks like, right now, on Ubuntu 13.04: Why is the framework called Squibbly? Because I needed a unique-ish name, because "squibble" sounds a bit like "scribble" (which is what one does with text documents, etc), and because of the many absurd definitions in the Urban Dictionary for the apparently real word "squibble", e.g., "A name for someone who is squibblish in nature." And, another e.g., "A squibble is a small squabble. A squabble is a little skirmish." But the real reason is the first definition (and definitely not the fourth definition): "Taking a small portion of another persons something, such as a small hit off of a pipe, a bite of food, a sip of a drink, or drag of a cigarette." In other words, I took (or "squibbled") a small portion of LibreOffice, i.e., OfficeBean, and integrated it into a NetBeans Platform application. Now anyone can add new features to it, to do anything they need, such as create a legislative software system as Propylon has done with their own solution on the NetBeans Platform: For me, the starting point was Chuk Munn Lee's similar solution from some years ago. However, he uses reflection a lot in that solution, because he didn't want to bundle the related JARs with the application. I understand that benefit but I find it even more beneficial to not need to require the user to specify the location of the LibreOffice location, since all the necessary JARs and native libraries (currently 32-bit Linux only, by the way) are bundled with the application. Plus, hundreds of lines of reflection code, as in Chuk's solution, is not fun to work with at all. Switching between applications is done like this: It's a work in progress, a proof of concept only. Just the result of a few hours of work to get the basic integration to work. Several problems remain, some of them potentially unsolvable, starting with these, but others will be added here as I identify them: Window management problems. I'd like to let the user have multiple LibreOffice applications and documents open at the same time, each in a new TopComponent. However, I haven't figured out how to do that. Right now, each application is opened into the same TopComponent, replacing the currently open application. I don't know the OfficeBean API well enough, e.g., should a single OfficeBean be shared among multiple TopComponents or should each of them have their own instance of it? Focus problems. When putting the application behind other applications and then switching back to the application, typing text becomes impossible. When closing a TopComponent and reopening it, the content is lost completely. Somehow the loss of focus, and then the return of focus, disables something. No idea how to fix that. The project is checked into this location, which isn't public yet, so you can't access it yet. Once it's publicly available, it would be great to get some code contributions and tweaks, etc. https://java.net/projects/squibbly Here's the source structure, showing especially how the OfficeBean JARs and native libraries (currently for Linux 32-bit only) fit in: Ultimately, would be cool to integrate or share code with http://joeffice.com!

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