Search Results

Search found 11697 results on 468 pages for 'requires sense of humor'.

Page 54/468 | < Previous Page | 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61  | Next Page >

• Collaborative Organizations build Organizational Culture

  “A Collaborative organization builds its culture based on the idea of the family or an athletic team.”(Hoefling, 2001) As I grew up, I participated in many different types of clubs, civic organizations, and sports teams.  Now looking back at the more successful undertakings, I can see three commonalities amongst them. They all shared a defined purpose or goal, defined functional roles, and a shared sense of responsibility to the group. Defined Purpose or Goal In order to unit people to work together, they must share a common goal or have a common purpose. An example of this would be the Lions Club International Foundation. There purpose is to help everyone to lead healthier and more productive lives, nurtures the potential of youth, promotes health, serves the elderly, empowers the disabled and helps victims of disasters. This organization holds localized meetings across the world and works in conjunction with other localized clubs within there organization along with other organizations to promote common goals. If there are no common goals for the group, then there is nothing that binds people to the group, and nothing will be done. Defined Functional Roles In order for an organization to work and function as a team, they must have defined roles and everyone must know how their roles are interdependent on each other. Lets shed light on this subject by looking at a football team’s offense.  Each player has an assigned role to play each time the ball is snapped. The offensive line blocks for the running back or quarterback, the quarterback passes the ball to the wide receiver or hands it off to the running back and the running back and wide receivers run with the ball towards the goal line. Each member of this team shares a common goal of scoring a touchdown, but if each team member does not fulfill their assigned roles the offences will collapse and the team will lose yards. This will provide a set back to the teams goal of scoring a touchdown because they potential are then farther away from the goal line.  In addition, if all the players do not know their roles and how they are part of a larger team then even larger yard losses can occur. Shared Sense of Personal Responsibility to the Group Shared responsibility comes with the shared common goals. Each person in the organization must do their part to promote the common shared goal or purpose based on their abilities. A prime example of this is a wrestling team competing in a match. Points are awarded to the team based on how many wins the team achieves in the meet and of that how many wins where won by decision or by pin. If a wrestler pins his opponent the teams will receive 2 points for the win, but if the wrestler wins by decision, then the team only gets one point for the win. So it is the responsibility of each person on the team to not get pinned if they are unable to win the match. If the team member gets pinned then the other team receives an additional point for the win. References: Hoefling, T. (2001). Working Virtually: Managing People for Successful Virtual Teams and Organizations. Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing, LLC.

  Read the article

• When things go awry

  - by Phil Factor

  The moment the Entrepreneur opened his mouth on prime-time national TV, spelled out the URL and waxed big on how exciting ‘his’ new website was, I knew I was in for a busy night. I’d designed and built it. All at once, half a million people tried to log into the website. Although all my stress-testing paid off, I have to admit that the network locked up tight long before there was any danger of a database or website problem. Soon afterwards, the Entrepreneur and the Big Boss were there in the autopsy meeting. We picked through all our systems in detail to see how they’d borne the unexpected strain. Mercifully, in view of the sour mood of the Big Boss, it turned out that the only thing we could have done better was buy a bigger pipe to and from the internet. We’d specified that ‘big pipe’ when designing the system. The Big Boss had then railed at the cost and so we’d subsequently compromised. I felt that my design decisions were vindicated. The Big Boss brooded for a while. Then he made the significant comment: “What really ****** me off is the fact that, for ten minutes, we couldn’t take people’s money.” At that point I stopped feeling smug. Had the internet connection been better, the system would have reached its limit and failed rather precipitously, and that wasn’t what he wanted. Then it occurred to me that what had gummed up the connection was all those images on the site, that had made it so impressive for the visitors. If there had been a way to automatically pare down the site to the bare essentials under stress… Hmm. I began to consider disaster-recovery in the broadest sense – maintaining a service in spite of unusual or unexpected events. What he said makes a lot of sense: sacrifice whatever isn’t essential to keep the core service running when we approach the capacity limits. Maybe in IT we should borrow (or revive) the business concept of the ‘Skeleton service’, maintaining only the priority parts under stress, using a process that is well-prepared and carefully rehearsed. How might this work? Whatever the event we have to prepare for, it is all about understanding the priorities; knowing what one can dispense with when the going gets tough. In the event of database disaster, it’s much faster to deploy a skeletal system with only the essential data than to restore the entire system, though there would have to be a reconciliation process to update the revived database retrospectively, once the emergency was over. It isn’t just the database that could be designed for resilience. One could prepare for unusually high traffic in a website by designing a system that degraded gradually to a ‘skeletal’ site, one that maintained the commercial essentials without fat images, JavaScript libraries and razzmatazz. This is all what the Big Boss scathingly called ‘a mere technicality’. It seems to me that what is needed first is a culture of application and database design which acknowledges that we live in a very imperfect world, and react accordingly when things go awry.

  Read the article

• Does *every* project benefit from written specifications?

  - by nikie

  I know this is holy war territory, so please read the question to the end before answering. There are many cases where written specifications make a lot of sense. For example, if you're a contractor and you want to get paid, you need written specs. If you're working in a team with 20 persons, you need written specs. If you're writing a programming language compiler or interpreter (and it's not perl), you'll usually write a formal specification. I don't doubt that there are many more cases where written specifications are a really good idea. I just think that there are cases where there's so little benefit in written specs, that it doesn't outweigh the costs of writing and maintaining them. EDIT: The close votes say that "it is difficult to say what is asked here", so let me clarify: The usefulness of written, detailed specifications is often claimed like a dogma. (If you want examples, look at the comments.) But I don't see the use of them for the kind of development I'm doing. So what is asked here is: How would written specifications help me? Background information: I work for a small company that's developing vertical market software. If our product is easier to use and has better performance than the competition, it sells. If it's harder to use, even if it behaves 100% as the specification says, it doesn't sell. So there are no "external forces" for having written specs. The advantage would have to be somewhere in the development process. Now, I can see how frozen specifications would make a developer's life easier. But we'll never have frozen specs. If we see in the middle of development that feature X is not intuitive to use the way it's specified, then we can only choose between changing the specification or developing a product that won't sell. You'll probably ask by now: How do you know when you're done? Well, we're continually improving our product. The competition does the same. So (hopefully) we're never done. We keep improving the software, and when we reach a point when the benefits of the improvements we've added since the last release outweigh the costs of an update, we create a new release that is then tested, localized, documented and deployed. This also means that there's rarely any schedule pressure. Nobody has to do overtime to make a deadline. If the feature isn't done by the time we want to release the next version, it'll simply go into the next version. The next question might be: How do your developers know what they're supposed to implement? The answer is: They have a lot of domain knowledge. They know the customers business well enough, so a high-level description of the feature (or even just the problem that the customer needs solved) is enough to implement it. If it's not clear, the developer creates a few fake screens to get feedback from marketing/management or customers, but this is nowhere near the level of detail of actual specifications. This might be inefficient for larger teams, but for a small team with low turnover it works quite well. It has the additional benefit that the developer in question often comes up with a better solution than the person writing the specs might have. This question is already getting very long, but let me address one last point: Testing. Like I said in the beginning, if our software behaves 100% like the spec says, it still can be crap. In fact, if it's so unintuitive that you need a spec to know how to test it, it probably is crap. It makes sense to have fixed, written tests for some core functionality and for regression bugs, but again, this is nowhere near a full written spec of how the software should behave when. The main test is: hand the software to a user who doesn't know it yet and tell him to use the new feature X. If she can figure out how to use it and it works, it works.

  Read the article

• Getting Started with Cloud Computing

  - by juanlarios

  You’ve likely heard about how Office 365 and Windows Intune are great applications to get you started with Cloud Computing. Many of you emailed me asking for more info on what Cloud Computing is, including the distinction between "Public Cloud" and "Private Cloud". I want to address these questions and help you get started. Let's begin with a brief set of definitions and some places to find more info; however, an excellent place where you can always learn more about Cloud Computing is the Microsoft Virtual Academy. Public Cloud computing means that the infrastructure to run and manage the applications users are taking advantage of is run by someone else and not you. In other words, you do not buy the hardware or software to run your email or other services being used in your organization – that is done by someone else. Users simply connect to these services from their computers and you pay a monthly subscription fee for each user that is taking advantage of the service. Examples of Public Cloud services include Office 365, Windows Intune, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, Hotmail, and others. Private Cloud computing generally means that the hardware and software to run services used by your organization is run on your premises, with the ability for business groups to self-provision the services they need based on rules established by the IT department. Generally, Private Cloud implementations today are found in larger organizations but they are also viable for small and medium-sized businesses since they generally allow an automation of services and reduction in IT workloads when properly implemented. Having the right management tools, like System Center 2012, to implement and operate Private Cloud is important in order to be successful. So – how do you get started? The first step is to determine what makes the most sense to your organization. The nice thing is that you do not need to pick Public or Private Cloud – you can use elements of both where it makes sense for your business – the choice is yours. When you are ready to try and purchase Public Cloud technologies, the Microsoft Volume Licensing web site is a good place to find links to each of the online services. In particular, if you are interested in a trial for each service, you can visit the following pages: Office 365, CRM Online, Windows Intune, and Windows Azure. For Private Cloud technologies, start with some of the courses on Microsoft Virtual Academy and then download and install the Microsoft Private Cloud technologies including Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V and System Center 2012 in your own environment and take it for a spin. Also, keep up to date with the Canadian IT Pro blog to learn about events Microsoft is delivering such as the IT Virtualization Boot Camps and more to get you started with these technologies hands on. Finally, I want to ask for your help to allow the team at Microsoft to continue to provide you what you need. Twice a year through something we call "The Global Relationship Study" – they reach out and contact you to see how they're doing and what Microsoft could do better. If you get an email from "Microsoft Feedback" with the subject line "Help Microsoft Focus on Customers and Partners" between March 5th and April 13th, please take a little time to tell them what you think. Cloud Computing Resources: Microsoft Server and Cloud Computing site – information on Microsoft's overall cloud strategy and products. Microsoft Virtual Academy – for free online training to help improve your IT skillset. Office 365 Trial/Info page – get more information or try it out for yourself. Office 365 Videos – see how businesses like yours have used Office 365 to transition to the cloud. Windows Intune Trial/Info – get more information or try it out for yourself. Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online page – information on trying and licensing Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online. Additional Resources You May Find Useful: Springboard Series Your destination for technical resources, free tools and expert guidance to ease the deployment and management of your Windows-based client infrastructure. TechNet Evaluation Center Try some of our latest Microsoft products for free, Like System Center 2012 Pre-Release Products, and evaluate them before you buy. AlignIT Manager Tech Talk Series A monthly streamed video series with a range of topics for both infrastructure and development managers. Ask questions and participate real-time or watch the on-demand recording. Tech·Days Online Discover what's next in technology and innovation with Tech·Days session recordings, hands-on labs and Tech·Days TV.

  Read the article

• Should I expose IObservable<T> on my interfaces?

  - by Alex

  My colleague and I have dispute. We are writing a .NET application that processes massive amounts of data. It receives data elements, groups subsets of them into blocks according to some criterion and processes those blocks. Let's say we have data items of type Foo arriving some source (from the network, for example) one by one. We wish to gather subsets of related objects of type Foo, construct an object of type Bar from each such subset and process objects of type Bar. One of us suggested the following design. Its main theme is exposing IObservable objects directly from the interfaces of our components. // ********* Interfaces ********** interface IFooSource { // this is the event-stream of objects of type Foo IObservable<Foo> FooArrivals { get; } } interface IBarSource { // this is the event-stream of objects of type Bar IObservable<Bar> BarArrivals { get; } } / ********* Implementations ********* class FooSource : IFooSource { // Here we put logic that receives Foo objects from the network and publishes them to the FooArrivals event stream. } class FooSubsetsToBarConverter : IBarSource { IFooSource fooSource; IObservable<Bar> BarArrivals { get { // Do some fancy Rx operators on fooSource.FooArrivals, like Buffer, Window, Join and others and return IObservable<Bar> } } } // this class will subscribe to the bar source and do processing class BarsProcessor { BarsProcessor(IBarSource barSource); void Subscribe(); } // ******************* Main ************************ class Program { public static void Main(string[] args) { var fooSource = FooSourceFactory.Create(); var barsProcessor = BarsProcessorFactory.Create(fooSource) // this will create FooSubsetToBarConverter and BarsProcessor barsProcessor.Subscribe(); fooSource.Run(); // this enters a loop of listening for Foo objects from the network and notifying about their arrival. } } The other suggested another design that its main theme is using our own publisher/subscriber interfaces and using Rx inside the implementations only when needed. //********** interfaces ********* interface IPublisher<T> { void Subscribe(ISubscriber<T> subscriber); } interface ISubscriber<T> { Action<T> Callback { get; } } //********** implementations ********* class FooSource : IPublisher<Foo> { public void Subscribe(ISubscriber<Foo> subscriber) { /* ... */ } // here we put logic that receives Foo objects from some source (the network?) publishes them to the registered subscribers } class FooSubsetsToBarConverter : ISubscriber<Foo>, IPublisher<Bar> { void Callback(Foo foo) { // here we put logic that aggregates Foo objects and publishes Bars when we have received a subset of Foos that match our criteria // maybe we use Rx here internally. } public void Subscribe(ISubscriber<Bar> subscriber) { /* ... */ } } class BarsProcessor : ISubscriber<Bar> { void Callback(Bar bar) { // here we put code that processes Bar objects } } //********** program ********* class Program { public static void Main(string[] args) { var fooSource = fooSourceFactory.Create(); var barsProcessor = barsProcessorFactory.Create(fooSource) // this will create BarsProcessor and perform all the necessary subscriptions fooSource.Run(); // this enters a loop of listening for Foo objects from the network and notifying about their arrival. } } Which one do you think is better? Exposing IObservable and making our components create new event streams from Rx operators, or defining our own publisher/subscriber interfaces and using Rx internally if needed? Here are some things to consider about the designs: In the first design the consumer of our interfaces has the whole power of Rx at his/her fingertips and can perform any Rx operators. One of us claims this is an advantage and the other claims that this is a drawback. The second design allows us to use any publisher/subscriber architecture under the hood. The first design ties us to Rx. If we wish to use the power of Rx, it requires more work in the second design because we need to translate the custom publisher/subscriber implementation to Rx and back. It requires writing glue code for every class that wishes to do some event processing.

  Read the article

• Cloud Adoption Challenges

  - by Herve Roggero

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/hroggero/archive/2013/11/07/cloud-adoption-challenges.aspxWhile cloud computing makes sense for most organizations and countless projects, I have seen customers significantly struggle with cloud adoption challenges. This blog post is not an attempt to provide a generic assessment of cloud adoption; rather it is an account of personal experiences in the field, some of which may or may not apply to your organization. Cloud First, Burst? In the rush to cloud adoption some companies have made the decision to redesign their core system with a cloud first approach. However a cloud first approach means that the system may not work anymore on-premises after it has been redesigned, specifically if the system depends on Platform as a Service (PaaS) components (such as Azure Tables). While PaaS makes sense when your company is in a position to adopt the cloud exclusively, it can be difficult to leverage with systems that need to work in different clouds or on-premises. As a result, some companies are starting to rethink their cloud strategy by designing for on-premises first, and modify only the necessary components to burst when needed in the cloud. This generally means that the components need to work equally well in any environment, which requires leveraging Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) or additional investments for PaaS applications, or both.  What’s the Problem? Although most companies can benefit from cloud computing, not all of them can clearly identify a business reason for doing so other than in very generic terms. I heard many companies claim “it’s cheaper”, or “it allows us to scale”, without any specific metric or clear strategy behind the adoption decision. Other companies have a very clear strategy behind cloud adoption and can precisely articulate business benefits, such as “we have a 500% increase in traffic twice a year, so we need to burst in the cloud to avoid doubling our network and server capacity”. Understanding the problem being solved through by adopting cloud computing can significantly help organizations determine the optimum path and timeline to adoption. Performance or Scalability? I stopped counting the number of times I heard “the cloud doesn’t scale; our database runs faster on a laptop”.  While performance and scalability are related concepts, they are nonetheless different in nature. Performance is a measure of response time under a given load (meaning with a specific number of users), while scalability is the performance curve over various loads. For example one system could see great performance with 100 users, but timeout with 1,000 users, in which case the system wouldn’t scale. However another system could have average performance with 100 users, but display the exact same performance with 1,000,000 users, in which case the system would scale. Understanding that cloud computing does not usually provide high performance, but instead provides the tools necessary to build a scalable system (usually using PaaS services such as queuing and data federation), is fundamental to proper cloud adoption. Uptime? Last but not least, you may want to read the Service Level Agreement of your cloud provider in detail if you haven’t done so. If you are expecting 99.99% uptime annually you may be in for a surprise. Depending on the component being used, there may be no associated SLA at all! Other components may be restarted at any time, or services may experience failover conditions weekly ( or more) based on current overall conditions of the cloud service provider, most of which are outside of your control. As a result, for PaaS cloud environments (and to a certain extent some IaaS systems), applications need to assume failure and gracefully retry to be successful in the cloud in order to provide service continuity to end users. About Herve Roggero Herve Roggero, Windows Azure MVP, is the founder of Blue Syntax Consulting (http://www.bluesyntax.net). Herve's experience includes software development, architecture, database administration and senior management with both global corporations and startup companies. Herve holds multiple certifications, including an MCDBA, MCSE, MCSD. He also holds a Master's degree in Business Administration from Indiana University. Herve is the co-author of "PRO SQL Azure" and “PRO SQL Server 2012 Practices” from Apress, a PluralSight author, and runs the Azure Florida Association.

  Read the article

• College Ratings via the Federal Government

  - by user9147039

  A few weeks back you might remember news about a higher education rating system proposal from the Obama administration. As I've discussed previously, political and stakeholder pressures to improve outcomes and increase transparency are stronger than ever before. The executive branch proposal is intended to make progress in this area. Quoting from the proposal itself, "The ratings will be based upon such measures as: Access, such as percentage of students receiving Pell grants; Affordability, such as average tuition, scholarships, and loan debt; and Outcomes, such as graduation and transfer rates, graduate earnings, and advanced degrees of college graduates.” This is going to be quite complex, to say the least. Most notably, higher ed is not monolithic. From community and other 2-year colleges, to small private 4-year, to professional schools, to large public research institutions…the many walks of higher ed life are, well, many. Designing a ratings system that doesn't wind up with lots of unintended consequences and collateral damage will be difficult. At best you would end up potentially tarnishing the reputation of certain institutions that were actually performing well against the metrics and outcome measures that make sense in their "context" of education. At worst you could spend a lot of time and resources designing a system that would lose credibility with its "customers". A lot of institutions I work with already have in place systems like the one described above. They are tracking completion rates, completion timeframes, transfers to other institutions, job placement, and salary information. As I talk to these institutions there are several constants worth noting: • Deciding on which metrics to measure is complicated. While employment and salary data are relatively easy to track, qualitative measures are more difficult. How do you quantify the benefit to someone who studies in one field that may not compensate him or her as well as another field but that provides huge personal fulfillment and reward is a difficult measure to quantify? • The data is available but the systems to transform the data into actual information that can be used in meaningful ways are not. Too often in higher ed information is siloed. As such, much of the data that need to be a part of a comprehensive system sit in multiple organizations, oftentimes outside the reach of core IT. • Politics and culture are big barriers. One of the areas that my team and I spend a lot of time talking about with higher ed institutions all over the world is the imperative to optimize for student success. This, like the tracking of the students’ achievement after graduation, requires a level or organizational capacity that does not currently exist. The primary barrier is the culture of "data islands" in higher ed, and the need for leadership to drive out the divisions between departments, schools, colleges, etc. and institute academy-wide analytics and data stewardship initiatives that will enable student success. • Data quality is a very big issue. So many disparate systems exist (some on premise, some "in the cloud") that keep data about "persons" using different means to identify them. Establishing a single source of truth about an individual and his or her data is difficult without some type of data quality policy and tools. Good tools actually exist but are seldom leveraged. Don't misunderstand - I think it's a great idea to drive additional transparency and accountability into the system of higher education. And not just at home, but globally. Students and parents need access to key data to make informed, responsible choices. The tools exist to not only enable this kind of information to be shared but to capture the very metrics stakeholders care most about and in a way that makes sense in the context of a given institution's "place" in the overall higher ed panoply.

  Read the article

• Come up with a real-world problem in which only the best solution will do (a problem from Introduction to algorithms) [closed]

  - by Mike

  EDITED (I realized that the question certainly needs a context) The problem 1.1-5 in the book of Thomas Cormen et al Introduction to algorithms is: "Come up with a real-world problem in which only the best solution will do. Then come up with one in which a solution that is “approximately” the best is good enough." I'm interested in its first statement. And (from my understanding) it is asked to name a real-world problem where only the exact solution will work as opposed to a real-world problem where good-enough solution will be ok. So what is the difference between the exact and good enough solution. Consider some physics problem for example the simulation of the fulid flow in the permeable medium. To make this simulation happen some simplyfing assumptions have to be made when deriving a mathematical model. Otherwise the model becomes at least complex and unsolvable. Virtually any particle in the universe has its influence on the fluid flow. But not all particles are equal. Those that form the permeable medium are much more influental than the ones located light years away. Then when the mathematical model needs to be solved an exact solution can rarely be found unless the mathematical model is simple enough (wich probably means the model isn't close to reality). We take an approximate numerical method and after hours of coding and days of verification come up with the program or algorithm which is a solution. And if the model and an algorithm give results close to a real problem by some degree that is good enough soultion. Its worth noting the difference between exact solution algorithm and exact computation result. When considering real-world problems and real-world computation machines I believe all physical problems solutions where any calculations are taken can not be exact because universal physical constants are represented approximately in the computer. Any numbers are represented with the limited precision, at least limited by amount of memory available to computing machine. I can imagine plenty of problems where good-enough, good to some degree solution will work, like train scheduling, automated trading, satellite orbit calculation, health care expert systems. In that cases exact solutions can't be derived due to constraints on computation time, limitations in computer memory or due to the nature of problems. I googled this question and like what this guy suggests: there're kinds of mathematical problems that need exact solutions (little note here: because the question is taken from the book "Introduction to algorithms" the term "solution" means an algorithm or a program, which in this case gives exact answer on each input). But that's probably more of theoretical interest. So I would like to narrow down the question to: What are the real-world practical problems where only the best (exact) solution algorithm or program will do (but not the good-enough solution)? There are problems like breaking of cryptographic ciphers where only exact solution matters in practice and again in practice the process of deciphering without knowing a secret should take reasonable amount of time. Returning to the original question this is the problem where good-enough (fast-enough) solution will do there's no practical need in instant crack though it's desired. So the quality of "best" can be understood in any sense: exact, fastest, requiring least memory, having minimal possible network traffic etc. And still I want this question to be theoretical if possible. In a sense that there may be example of computer X that has limited resource R of amount Y where the best solution to problem P is the one that takes not more than available Y for inputs of size N*Y. But that's the problem of finding solution for P on computer X which is... well, good enough. My final thought that we live in a world where it is required from programming solutions to practical purposes to be good enough. In rare cases really very very good but still not the best ones. Isn't it? :) If it's not can you provide an example? Or can you name any such unsolved problem of practical interest?

  Read the article

• Multichannel Digital Engagement: Find Out How Your Organization Measures Up

  - by Michael Snow

  This article was originally published in the September 2013 Edition of the Oracle Information InDepth Newsletter ORACLE WEBCENTER EDITION Thanks to mobile and social technologies, interactive online experiences are now commonplace. Not only that, they give consumers more choices, influence, and control than ever before. So how can you make your organization stand out? The key building blocks for delivering exceptional cross-channel digital experiences are outlined below. Also, a new assessment tool is available to help you measure your organization's ability to deliver such experiences. A clearly defined digital strategy. The customer journey is growing increasingly complex, encompassing multiple touchpoints and channels. It used to be easy to map marketing efforts to specific offline channels; for example, a direct mail piece with an offer to visit a store for a discounted purchase. Now it is more difficult to cultivate and track such clear cause-and-effect relationships. To deliver an integrated digital experience in this more complex world, organizations need a clearly defined and comprehensive digital marketing strategy that is backed up by an integrated set of software, middleware, and hardware solutions. Strong support for business agility and speed-to-market. As both IT and marketing executives know, speed-to-market and business agility are key to competitive advantage. That means marketers need solutions to support the rapid implementation of online marketing initiatives—plus the flexibility to adapt quickly to a changing marketplace. And IT needs tools with the performance, scalability, and ease of integration to support marketing efforts. Both teams benefit when business users are empowered to implement marketing initiatives on their own, with minimal IT intervention. The ability to deliver relevant, personalized content. Delivering a one-size-fits-all online customer experience is no longer acceptable. Customers expect you to know who they are, including their preferences and past relationship with your brand. That means delivering the most relevant content from the moment a visitor enters your site. To make that happen, you need a powerful rules engine so that marketers and business users can easily define site visitor segments and deliver content accordingly. That includes both implicit targeting that is based on the user’s behavior, and explicit targeting that takes a user’s profile information into account. Ideally, the rules engine can also intelligently weight recommendations when multiple segments apply to a specific customer. Support for social interactivity. With the advent of Facebook and LinkedIn, visitors expect to participate in and contribute to your web presence—and share their experience on their own social networks. That requires easy incorporation of user-generated content such as comments, ratings, reviews, polls, and blogs; seamless integration with third-party social networking sites; and support for social login, which helps to remove barriers to social participation. The ability to deliver connected, multichannel experiences that include powerful, flexible mobile capabilities. By 2015, mobile usage is projected to surpass that of PCs and other wired devices. In other words, mobile is an essential element in delivering exceptional online customer experiences. This requires the creation and management of mobile experiences that are optimized for delivery to the thousands of different devices that are in use today. Just as important, organizations must be able to easily extend their traditional web presence to the mobile channel and deliver highly personalized and relevant multichannel marketing initiatives while also managing to minimize the time and effort required to manage mobile sites. Are you curious to know how your organization measures up when it comes to delivering an engaging, multichannel digital experience? If so, take this brief, 15-question online assessment and see how your organization scores in the areas of digital strategy, digital agility, relevance and personalization, social interactivity, and multichannel experience.

  Read the article

• Why is 0 false?

  - by Morwenn

  This question may sound dumb, but why does 0 evaluates to false and any other [integer] value to true is most of programming languages? String comparison Since the question seems a little bit too simple, I will explain myself a little bit more: first of all, it may seem evident to any programmer, but why wouldn't there be a programming language - there may actually be, but not any I used - where 0 evaluates to true and all the other [integer] values to false? That one remark may seem random, but I have a few examples where it may have been a good idea. First of all, let's take the example of strings three-way comparison, I will take C's strcmp as example: any programmer trying C as his first language may be tempted to write the following code: if (strcmp(str1, str2)) { // Do something... } Since strcmp returns 0 which evaluates to false when the strings are equal, what the beginning programmer tried to do fails miserably and he generally does not understand why at first. Had 0 evaluated to true instead, this function could have been used in its most simple expression - the one above - when comparing for equality, and the proper checks for -1 and 1 would have been done only when needed. We would have considered the return type as bool (in our minds I mean) most of the time. Moreover, let's introduce a new type, sign, that just takes values -1, 0 and 1. That can be pretty handy. Imagine there is a spaceship operator in C++ and we want it for std::string (well, there already is the compare function, but spaceship operator is more fun). The declaration would currently be the following one: sign operator<=>(const std::string& lhs, const std::string& rhs); Had 0 been evaluated to true, the spaceship operator wouldn't even exist, and we could have declared operator== that way: sign operator==(const std::string& lhs, const std::string& rhs); This operator== would have handled three-way comparison at once, and could still be used to perform the following check while still being able to check which string is lexicographically superior to the other when needed: if (str1 == str2) { // Do something... } Old errors handling We now have exceptions, so this part only applies to the old languages where no such thing exist (C for example). If we look at C's standard library (and POSIX one too), we can see for sure that maaaaany functions return 0 when successful and any integer otherwise. I have sadly seen some people do this kind of things: #define TRUE 0 // ... if (some_function() == TRUE) { // Here, TRUE would mean success... // Do something } If we think about how we think in programming, we often have the following reasoning pattern: Do something Did it work? Yes -> That's ok, one case to handle No -> Why? Many cases to handle If we think about it again, it would have made sense to put the only neutral value, 0, to yes (and that's how C's functions work), while all the other values can be there to solve the many cases of the no. However, in all the programming languages I know (except maybe some experimental esotheric languages), that yes evaluates to false in an if condition, while all the no cases evaluate to true. There are many situations when "it works" represents one case while "it does not work" represents many probable causes. If we think about it that way, having 0 evaluate to true and the rest to false would have made much more sense. Conclusion My conclusion is essentially my original question: why did we design languages where 0 is false and the other values are true, taking in account my few examples above and maybe some more I did not think of? Follow-up: It's nice to see there are many answers with many ideas and as many possible reasons for it to be like that. I love how passionate you seem to be about it. I originaly asked this question out of boredom, but since you seem so passionate, I decided to go a little further and ask about the rationale behind the Boolean choice for 0 and 1 on Math.SE :)

  Read the article

• Path Not Found error when opening VB6 project from a shared folder on Virtual PC 2007 (XP sp3)

  - by law1185

  I currently work on a small software team that primarily maintains legacy software. I am trying to set up a VirtualPC that we can use to do this maintenance. Specifically, I would like to be able to debug and run VB6 web apps from a folder on the host pc. My constraints are as follows: The VirtualPC will not be registered on the domain. The server that hosts our Subversion repository does not run the subversion service so the only way to interact with the repository is through "file:\\", which requires domain authentication. It is not possible to debug/run VB6 web apps that are located on mapped network drives, because IIS requires that the VirtualPC be on the same domain as the network drive I would like to avoid having to copy the folder from the host pc to the VirtualPC and then copying it back in order to have the latest revision from Subversion So, I am trying to use VirtualPC's shared folder feature to share the host machine's Subversion directory and open the project in VB6 on the VirtualPC. Problem is that Visual Basic throws the error: "Path not found: '\\C:\\Subversion\Path\Project.vbp'" when I try to open it. Folder C:\Subversion on the host machine is mapped to G: on the VirtualPC. If anyone can help me resolve this error or find some other way to accomplish this, I would be deeply grateful. Oh, both host and virtual OS is Windows XP sp3. Using VB 6.0, IIS v5.1. I can manipulate files in the shared directory freely from the VirtualPC ie. copy, paste, delete, etc. Edit: Link to screenshot: http://img190.imageshack.us/img190/5439/vpcscreen.png

  Read the article

• Silverlight 4 with WCF RIA architecture applying DDD

  - by doteneter

  Hello, In my ASP.NET MVC applications I use DDD and it works very well. I'm new to Silverlight development and would like to know how could I apply DDD to build a new architecture. I had a look on WCF RIA Services and what is exposed by default it's the simple CRUD methods. I would like to use MVVM pattern. I thought about general architecture and don't know if what I'm thinking about make sense in Silverlight development. I thought about creating Domain Model on the top of SVC. I would than expose by WCF RIA some operation that deals with aggreates in my Domain Model instead of simple CRUD. What I would aloso expose is the ViewModel entieties that could be used by the view. I don't know if it's make sense, if I'm going in a good direction or if applying DDD in Silverlight 4 development is a good practice. I didn't find much informations on Internet. I'll appreciate if you could point me to some interesting links or if you can give me some hints. Thanks for your help.

  Read the article

• IIS 7.5, ASP.NET, impersonation, and access to C:\Windows\Temp

  - by Heinzi

  Summary: One of our web applications requires write access to C:\Windows\Temp. However, no matter how much I weaken the NTFS permission, procmon shows ACCESS DENIED. Background (which might or might not be relevant for the problem): We are using OLEDB to access an MS Access database (which is located outside of C:\Windows\Temp). Unfortunately, this OLEDB driver requires write access to the user profile's TEMP directory (which happens to be C:\Windows\Temp when running under IIS 7.5), otherwise the dreaded "Unspecified Error" OleDbException is thrown. See KB 926939 for details. I followed the steps in the KB article, but it doesn't help. Details: This is the output of icacls C:\Windows\Temp. For debugging purposes I gave full permissions to Everyone. C:\Windows\Temp NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM:(OI)(CI)(F) CREATOR OWNER:(OI)(CI)(IO)(F) BUILTIN\IIS_IUSRS:(OI)(CI)(S,RD) BUILTIN\Users:(CI)(S,WD,AD,X) BUILTIN\Administrators:(OI)(CI)(F) Everyone:(OI)(CI)(F) However, this is the screenshot of procmon: Desired Access: Generic Read/Write, Delete Disposition: Create Options: Synchronous IO Non-Alert, Non-Directory File, Random Access, Delete On Close, Open No Recall Attributes: NT ShareMode: None AllocationSize: 0 Impersonating: MYDOMAIN\myuser

  Read the article

• OAuth with Google Reader API using Objective C

  - by Dylan

  I'm using the gdata OAuth controllers to get an OAuth token and then signing my requests as instructed. [auth authorizeRequest:myNSURLMutableRequest] It works great for GET requests but POSTs are failing with 401 errors. I knew I wouldn't be able to remain blissfully ignorant of the OAuth magic. The Google Reader API requires parameters in the POST body. OAuth requires those parameters to be encoded in the signature like they were on the query string. It doesn't appear the gdata library does this. I tried hacking it in the same way it handles the query string but no luck. This is so difficult to debug as all I get is a 401 from the Google black box and I'm left to guess. I really want to use OAuth so I don't have to collect login credentials from my users but I'm about to scrap it and go with the simpler cookie based authentication that is more mature. It's possible I'm completely wrong about the reason it's failing. This is my best guess. Any suggestions for getting gdata to work or maybe an alternative iphone friendly OAuth library?

  Read the article

• T4 vs CodeDom vs Oslo

  - by Ryan Riley

  In an application scaffolding project on which I'm working, I'm trying to decide whether to use Oslo, T4 or CodeDom for generating code. Our goals are to keep dependencies to a minimum and drive code generation for a domain driven design from user stories. The first step will be to create the tests from the user stories, but we want the domain experts to be able to write their stories in a variety of different media (e.g. custom app, Word, etc.) and still generate the tests from the stories. What I know so far: CodeDom requires .NET but can only output .NET class files (e.g. .cs, .vb). Level of difficulty is fairly high. T4 requires CodeDom and VS Standard+. Level of difficulty is fairly reasonable, especially with the T4 Toolbox. Oslo is very new. I have no idea of the dependencies, but I imagine you must be on at least .NET 3.5. I'm also not certain as to the code generation abilities or the complexity for adding new grammars. However, domain experts could probably write user stories in Intellipad quite easily. Also not sure about ease of converting stories in Word to an MGrammar. What are your thoughts, experiences, etc. with any of the above tools. We want to stick with Microsoft or open source tools.

  Read the article

• Using Fancybox with Google Static Maps

  - by Levi Hackwith

  Setup I have multiple links on a page with the class location_link Each Links rel attribute is equal to a city state combo (i.e.,Omaha, NE) Once the page is loaded, a JavaScript function loops through all of the location_link items and binds a click event to them using jQuery. This click event fires a call to the Fancybox constructor that is supposed to show a Google Map of the location that link is associated with The Problem: Whenever I click on one of the "location links", I get the following error message: The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later. Code I've Already Written: function setUpLocationLinks() { locationLinks = $("a.location_link"); locationLinks.click( function() { var me = $(this); console.log(me.attr("href")); $.fancybox( { "showCloseButton" : true, "hideOnContentClick" : true, "titlePosition" : "inside", "title" : me.attr("rel"), "type" : "image" } ) return false; } ); } Research I've Already Done: The Google Static Map API no longer requires an API Key. The following is from the Google Static Maps API Page Note: The Google Static Maps API no longer requires a Maps API key! (Google Maps API Premier customers should instead sign their URLs using a new cryptographic key which will be sent to you. See the Premier documentation for more information.) The The Image URL I'm using does resolve and pulls back the data I need When I put the above mentioned URL into a standard <img> tag, the map shows up just fine. I'd like to pull this off without having to create some sort of dummy <img> tag that I'm constantly switching the src attribute out of. Hopefully, you'll find this information helpful. Please let me know if you have any other questions.

  Read the article

• Rhino Mocks, Dependency Injection, and Separation of Concerns

  - by whatispunk

  I am new to mocking and dependency injection and need some guidance. My application is using a typical N-Tier architecture where the BLL references the DAL, and the UI references the BLL but not the DAL. Pretty straight forward. Lets say, for example, I have the following classes: class MyDataAccess : IMyDataAccess {} class MyBusinessLogic {} Each exists in a separate assembly. I want to mock MyDataAccess in the tests for MyBusinessLogic. So I added a constructor to the MyBusinessLogic class to take an IMyDataAccess parameter for the dependency injection. But now when I try to create an instance of MyBusinessLogic on the UI layer it requires a reference to the DAL. I thought I could define a default constructor on MyBusinessLogic to set a default IMyDataAccess implementation, but not only does this seem like a codesmell it didn't actually solve the problem. I'd still have a public constructor with IMyDataAccess in the signature. So the UI layer still requires a reference to the DAL in order to compile. One possible solution I am toying with is to create an internal constructor for MyBusinessLogic with the IMyDataAccess parameter. Then I can use an Accessor from the test project to call the constructor. But there's still that smell. What is the common solution here. I must just be doing something wrong. How could I improve the architecture?

  Read the article

• Yii: Multi-language website - best practices.

  - by michal

  Hi, I find Yii great framework, and the example website created with yiic shell is a good point to start... however it doesn't cover the topic of multi-language websites, unfortunately. The docs covers the topic of translating short messages, but not keeping the multi-lingual content ... I'm about to start working on a website which needs to be in at least two languages, and I'm wondering what is the best way to keep content for that ... The problem is that the content is mixed extensively with common elements (like embedded video files). I need to avoid duplicating those commons ... so far I used to have an array of arrays containing texts (usually no more than 1-2 short paragraphs), then the view file was just rendering the text from an array. Now I'd like to avoid keeping it in arrays (which requires some attention when putting double quotations " " and is inconvenient in general...). So, what is the best way to keep those short paragraphs? Should I keep them in DB like (id | msg_id | language | content ) and then select them by msg_id & language? That still requires me to create some msg_id's and embed them into view file ... Is there any recommended paradigm for which Yii has some solutions? Thanks, m.

  Read the article

• Linq - how does it work??

  - by clarkeyboy

  Hey, I have just been looking into Linq with ASP.Net. It is very neat indeed. I was just wondering - how do all the classes get populated? I mean in ASP.Net, suppose you have a Linq file called Catalogue, and you then use a For loop to loop through Catalogue.Products and print each Product name. How do the details get stored? Does it just go through the Products table on page load and create another instance of class Product for each row, effectively copying an entire table into an array of class Product? If so, I think I have created a system very much like this, in the sense that there is a SiteContent module with an instance of each Manager class - for example there is UserManager, ProductManager, SettingManager and alike. UserManager contains an instance of the User class for each row in the Users table. They also contain methods such as Create, Update and Remove. These Managers and their "Items" are created on every page load. This just makes it nice and easy to access users, products, settings etc in every page as far as I, the developer, am concerned. Any any subsequent pages I need to create, I just need to reference SiteContent.UserManager to access a list of users, rather than executing a query from within that page (ie this method separates out data access from the workings of the page, in the same way as using code behind separates out the workings of the page from how the page is layed out). However the problem is that this technique seems rather slow. I mean it is effectively creating a database on every page load, taking data from another database. I have taken measures such as preventing, for example, the ProductManager from being created if it is not referenced on page load. Therefore it does not load data into storage when it is not needed. My question is basically whether my technique does the exact same thing as Linq, in the sense of duplicating data from tables into properties of classes.. Thanks in advance for any advice or answers about this. Regards, Richard Clarke

  Read the article

• Base 128 or 256 Encoding for the Binary Lexical Octet Adhoc Transport Protocol?

  - by Randolpho

  I'm in the process of implementing a network driver for the Binary Lexical Octet Adhoc Transport (BLOAT) protocols in the hopes of replacing the TCP/UDP/IP stack with a much more flexible XML structure. BLOAT is detailed in RFC 3252, so if you're unfamiliar with the protocol I highly recommend you read the entire RFC before providing any comments. Don't worry, it's short and sweet; you might even enjoy it. Anyway, my problem is this: BLOAT requires that the payload be Base64 encoded which doesn't make sense to me. I mean, sure, it's the internet standard for binary payloads, but there are better, more efficient encodings available: Base128 and Base256, for example. That the RFC requires Base64 and doesn't allow for any other payload encoding really bothers me. To that end, I'm considering a small optional change to the protocol. Embrace and extend, right? Anyway, I'd like to modify the payload element to accept an encoding attribute, which can extend the encoding to Base128 or Base256, or even to other encodings I can't conceive of at the moment. If the encoding attribute isn't present, Base64 would be assumed. So my question is this: should I? I mean, BLOAT is an accepted standard, even if it isn't exactly omnipresent. If I make this change, will there be compatibility issues? I don't foresee any, but perhaps you, oh great Stack Overflow Community, can? If I do implement this change, should I contact the original RFC author? Should I offer a supplemental RFC?

  Read the article

• DDD: Aggregate Roots

  - by Mosh

  Hello, I need help with finding my aggregate root and boundary. I have 3 Entities: Plan, PlannedRole and PlannedTraining. Each Plan can include many PlannedRoles and PlannedTrainings. Solution 1: At first I thought Plan is the aggregate root because PlannedRole and PlannedTraining do not make sense out of the context of a Plan. They are always within a plan. Also, we have a business rule that says each Plan can have a maximum of 3 PlannedRoles and 5 PlannedTrainings. So I thought by nominating the Plan as the aggregate root, I can enforce this invariant. However, we have a Search page where the user searches for Plans. The results shows a few properties of the Plan itself (and none of its PlannedRoles or PlannedTrainings). I thought if I have to load the entire aggregate, it would have a lot of overhead. There are nearly 3000 plans and each may have a few children. Loading all these objects together and then ignoring PlannedRoles and PlannedTrainings in the search page doesn't make sense to me. Solution 2: I just realized the user wants 2 more search pages where they can search for Planned Roles or Planned Trainings. That made me realize they are trying to access these objects independently and "out of" the context of Plan. So I thought I was wrong about my initial design and that is how I came up with this solution. So, I thought to have 3 aggregates here, 1 for each Entity. This approach enables me to search for each Entity independently and also resolves the performance issue in solution 1. However, using this approach I cannot enforce the invariant I mentioned earlier. There is also another invariant that states a Plan can be changed only if it is of a certain status. So, I shouldn't be able to add any PlannedRoles or PlannedTrainings to a Plan that is not in that status. Again, I can't enforce this invariant with the second approach. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Cheers, Mosh

  Read the article

• How to compile a schema that uses a DataSet (xs:schema)?

  - by Yaron Naveh

  I have created the simplest web service in c#: public void AddData(DataSet ds) The generated schema (Wsdl) looks like this: <s:schema xmlns:s="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"> ... <s:element ref="s:schema" /> ... </s:schema> Note the schema does not contain any import/include elements. I am trying to load this schema to a c# System.Xml.XmlSchema and add it to System.Xml.XmlSchemaSet: var set = new XmlSchemaSet(); var fs = new FileStream(@"c:\temp\schema.xsd", FileMode.Open); var s = XmlSchema.Read(fs, null); set.Add(s); set.Compile(); The last line throws this exception: The 'http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema:schema' element is not declared. It kind of makes sense: The schema generated by .Net uses the "s:schema" type which is declared in a schema which is not imported. Why does .Net create a non valid schema? How to compile the schema anyway? Whay I did is download the schema in http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema and added it to the XmlSchemaSet also. This did not work since that online schema contains DTD definition. I had to manually remove it and now all works. Does this make sense or am I missing something?

  Read the article

• Getting a gestureoverlayview

  - by Codejoy

  I have been using some nice tutorials on drawing graphics on my android. I wanted to also add in the cool gesture demo found here: http://developer.android.com/resources/articles/gestures.html That takes these lines of code: GestureOverlayView gestures = (GestureOverlayView) findViewById(R.id.gestures); gestures.addOnGesturePerformedListener(this); This is fine and dandy yet I realize in my demo i'm trying to build using code from "Playing with Graphics in Android". The demos make sense, everything makes sense but I found out by using: setContentView(new Panel(this)); as is required by the Playing With Graphics tutorials, then the findViewById seems to no longer be valid and returns null. At first I was about to post a stupider question as to why this is happening, a quick test of playing with the setContentView made me realize the cause of findViewById returning null, I just do not know how to remedy this issue. Whats the key I am missing here? I realize that the new Panel is doinking some reference up but I am not sure how to make the connection here. THe: R.id.gestures is defined right int he main.xml as: (just like the tutorial) Thanks, Shane p.s. im new here be gentle.

  Read the article

• Two DIV layers: resize top DIV based on dynamic height of bottom DIV

  - by user1650713

  I have two DIV layers, one above the other. In the top DIV, there is an image, and in the bottom DIV, there is a block of text. The amount of text in the bottom DIV will change, thus increasing and decreasing the required height. I need to dynamically decrease the height of the image in the top DIV based on how much height is required for the bottom. I have exactly 600px vertical space available. For example: If the bottom DIV requires 200px height, I need for the image to change height to 400px. If the bottom DIV requires 300px height, I need for the image to change height to 300px. I know that I can make the image height 100% of the top DIV, thus allowing it to expand or contract as needed. The issue is that I need for the bottom DIV to be able to expand freely and for the top DIV to react accordingly. In other words, I cannot have either be a fixed height. <div id="topdiv"> <img src="example.png" alt="This image needs a height based on the bottom div" /> </div> <div id="bottomdiv"> This text needs to be able to expand or contract freely </div> Can anyone help?

  Read the article

• Custom Membership in ASP.NET MVC 2

  - by Interfector

  Hello, I'm trying to make my Custom Membership starting from ASP.NET's. I have a users table created by me which has as Primary Key a Guid UserId, exactly the sames as ASP.NET's default user and membership table. I have all the Foreign Key relationships built. However, I cannot insert the user into my custom users table. The data gets inserted correctly into the default ASP.NET's tables. I have tried the following scenarios: First version Receive the user model from POST call the CreateUser method of the Membership.class (stuff gets inserted) without modifying the user object, I try to insert it using EF's AddObject I receive the following error: "Cannot insert the value NULL into column 'LoweredUserName', table 'asp.dbo.aspnet_Users'; column does not allow nulls. INSERT fails.\r\nThe statement has been terminated."} System.Exception {System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException The error actually makes sense as EF's AddObject doesn't know how to create the LoweredUserName value, and I don't want to do it, this is ASP.NET's job. Second version Receive the user model from POST call the CreateUser method of the Membership.class (stuff gets inserted) Get the Guid of the freshly inserted system user get the ASP.NET's User object and overwrite that of user.User get the ASP.NET's Membership object and overwrite that of user.Membership (remember the FKs) try again EF's AddObject new error {"The relationship between the two objects cannot be defined because they are attached to different ObjectContext objects."} System.Exception {System.InvalidOperationException} Don't know what this is, but it certenly doesn't make any sense for me. After some googleing I think that it has something to do with the context, but as I'm a beginner I don't know how to fix it. Any ideeas on how to accomplish this task are more than welcomed, especially if they follow some good practices. Thx

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61  | Next Page >