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• Am I deluding myself? Business analyst transition to programmer

  - by Ryan

  Current job: Working as the lead business analyst for a Big 4 firm, leading a team of developers and testers working on a large scale re-platforming project (4 onshore dev, 4 offshore devs, several onshore/offshore testers). Also work in a similar capacity on other smaller scale projects. Extent of my role: Gathering/writing out requirements, creating functional specifications, designing the UI (basically mapping out all front-end aspects of the system), working closely with devs to communicate/clarify requirements and come up with solutions when we hit roadblocks, writing test cases (and doing much of the testing), working with senior management and key stakeholders, managing beta testers, creating user guides and leading training sessions, providing key technical support. I also write quite a few macros in Excel using VBA (several of my macros are now used across the entire firm, so there are maybe around 1000 people using them) and use SQL on a daily basis, both on the SQL compact files the program relies on, our SQL Server data and any Access databases I create. The developers feel that I am quite good in this role because I understand a lot about programming, inherent system limitations, structure of the databases, etc so it's easier for me to communicate ideas and come up with suggestions when we face problems. What really interests me is developing software. I do a fair amount of programming in VBA and have been wanting to learn C# for awhile (the dev team uses C# - I review code occasionally for my own sake but have not had any practical experience using it). I'm interested in not just the business process but also the technical side of things, so the traditional BA role doesn't really whet my appetite for the kind of stuff I want to do. Right now I have a few small projects that managers have given me and I'm finding new ways to do them (like building custom Access applications), so there's a bit here and there to keep me interested. My question is this: what I would like to do is create custom Excel or Access applications for small businesses as a freelance business (working as a one-man shop; maybe having an occasional contractor depending on a project's complexity). This would obviously start out as a part-time venture while I have a day job, but eventually become a full-time job. Am I deluding myself to thinking I can go from BA/part-time VBA programmer to making a full-time go of a freelance business (where I would be starting out just writing custom Excel/Access apps in VBA)? Or is this type of thing not usually attempted until someone gains years of full-time programming experience? And is there even a market for these types of applications amongst small businesses (and maybe medium-sized) businesses?

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• How to Remove Extensions From, and Force the Trailing Slash at the End of URLs?

  - by Kronbernkzion

  Example of current file structure: example.com/foo.php example.com/bar.html example.com/directory/ example.com/directory/foo.php example.com/directory/bar.html example.com/cgi-bin/directory/foo.cgi I would like to remove HTML, PHP and CGI extensions from, and then force the trailing slash at the end of URLs. So, it could look like this: example.com/foo/ example.com/bar/ example.com/directory/ example.com/directory/foo/ example.com/directory/bar/ example.com/cgi-bin/directory/foo/ I am very frustrated because I've searched for 17 hours straight for solution and visited more than a few hundred pages on various blogs and forums. I'm not joking. So I think I've done my research. Here is the code that sits in my .htaccess file right now: RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}\.html -f RewriteRule ^(([^/]+/)*[^./]+)/$ $1.html RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(\.[a-zA-Z0-9]|/)$ RewriteRule (.*)$ /$1/ [R=301,L] As you can see, this code only removes .html (and I'm not very happy with it because I think it could be done a lot simpler). I can remove the extension from PHP files when I rename them to .html through .htaccess, but that's not what I want. I want to remove it straight. This is the first thing I don't know how to do. The second thing is actually very annoying. My .htaccess file with code above, adds .html/ to every string entered after example.com/directory/foo/. So if I enter example.com/directory/foo/bar (obviously /bar doesn't exist since foo is a file), instead of just displaying message that page is not found, it converts it to example.com/directory/foo/bar.html/, then searches for a file for a few seconds and then displays the not found message. This, of course, is bad behavior. So, once again, I need the code in .htaccess to do the following things: Remove .html extension Remove .php extension Remove .cgi extension Force the trailing slash at the end of URLs Requests should behave correctly (no adding trailing slashes or extensions to strings if file or directory doesn't exist on server) Code should be as simple as possible I would very much appreciate any help. And to first person that gives me the solution, I'll send two $50 iTunes Store gift cards for US store. If this offends anyone, I am truly sorry and I apologize. Thanks in advance.

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• Disk drive for / not ready on boot after upgrade from 10.04 to 12.04

  - by Mathieu M-Gosselin

  After upgrading (using the Upgrade button from the update manager) from 10.04.4 to 12.04.1, I cannot boot anymore. Upon booting, I am greeted with the Ubuntu logo and the error "The disk drive for / is not ready yet or not present". I have the option to wait, to skip and to access a basic shell. Waiting overnight did nothing, skipping just gives me the same error for /tmp, /home, then for a UUID and finally it just goes to a black screen with a white "_" in the top left corner. My setup is a dual boot one with XP on a single hard drive, I use separate partitions for / and /home. Back in the day I installed 8.04 directly from the CD while leaving a partition for XP, which I installed after. This setup had never caused any such issues, even when upgrading from 8.04 to 10.04. I have done plenty of research regarding this issue, as many others seem to have had similar issues after doing the same upgrade as me. However, while for most what fixed the problem was running: apt-get -f install after remounting / in read-write, it didn't do it for me. I got dependency errors (see here), which I also investigated. I found https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/python-defaults/+bug/990740 where most people say the solution that worked is (prior to running the above command) running: apt-get install -o APT::Immediate-Configure=false -f apt python-minimal but that also got me a lot of dependencies errors as output (see here), similar to #34 in the above thread. I also read that running: dpkg --configure -a could help, at first it wouldn't run because it had trouble parsing /var/lib/dpkg/status since there was an extra blank line in a package description (see https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/dpkg/+bug/916799) but I removed it using vim (and then reran the command). It still gives me output that looks like an error, though. Here it is: http://paste.ubuntu.com/1338074/. I also tried re-running the above apt-get commands after that, to no avail. I'm running out of things to try in the hope of getting this fixed, your help would be very much appreciated! Thank you in advance.

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• A starting point for Use Cases and User Stories

  - by Mike Benkovich

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/benko/archive/2013/07/23/a-starting-point-for-use-cases-and-user-stories.aspxSoftware is a challenging business and is rife with opportunities to go wrong. Over the years a number of methodologies have evolved to help make sure that things go right. In an effort to contribute to this I’ve created a list of user stories that I think should be included and sometimes are just assumed. Note this is a work in progress, so I’m looking for your feedback. I’m curious what you would add or change in my list. · As a DBA I am working with a Normalized data model that reflects an agreed upon logical model for the system · As a DBA I am using consistent names for my fields which match the naming standards of my organization · As a DBA my model supports simple CRUD operations against all the entities · As an Application Architect the UI has been validated against the Business requirements and a complete set of user story’s have been created · As an Application Architect the database model has been validated against the UI · As an Application Architect we have a logical business model that describes all the known and/or expected usage of the system during the software’s expected lifecycle · As an Application Architect we have a Deployment diagram that describes how the application components will be deployed · As an Application Architect we have a navigation diagram that describes the typical application flow · As an Application Architect we have identified points of interaction which describes how the UI interacts with the services and the data storage · As an Application Architect we have identified external systems which may now or in the future use the data of this application and have adapted the logical model to include these interactions · As an Application Architect we have identified existing systems and tools that can be extended and/or reused to help this application achieve it’s business goals · As a Project Manager all team members understand the goals of each release and iteration as they are planned · As a Project Manager all team members understand their role and the roles of others · As a Project Manager we have support of the business to do the right thing even if it is not the expedient thing · As a Test/QA Analyst we have created a simulation environment for testing the system which does not use sensitive data and accurately reflects the scenarios of all the data that will be supported by the system · As a Test/QA Analyst we have identified the matrix of supported clients used to access the system including the likely browsers, mobile devices and other interfaces to work with the application · As a Test/QA Analyst we have created exit criteria for each user story that match the requirements of the business story that was used to create them · As a Test/QA Analyst we have access to a Test environment that is isolated from production and staging environments · As a Test/QA Analyst there we have a way to reset the environment so we can rerun tests when a new version of the software becomes available · As a Test/QA Analyst I am able to automate portions of the test process Thoughts? -mike

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• Why does my ID3DXSprite appear to be incorrectly scaled?

  - by Bjoern

  I am using D3D9 for rendering some simple things (a movie) as the backmost layer, then on top of that some text messages, and now wanted to add some buttons to that. Before adding the buttons everything seemed to have worked fine, and I was using a ID3DXSprite for the text as well (ID3DXFont), now I am loading some graphics for the buttons, but they seem to be scaled to something like 1.2 times their original size. In my test window I centered the graphic, but it being too big it just doesnt fit well, for example the client area is 640x360, the graphic is 440, so I expect 100 pixel on left and right, left side is fine [I took screenshot and "counted" the pixels in photoshop], but on the right there is only about 20 pixels) My rendering code is very simple (I am omitting error checks, et cetera, for brevity) // initially viewport was set to width/height of client area // clear device m_d3dDevice->Clear( 0, NULL, D3DCLEAR_TARGET|D3DCLEAR_STENCIL|D3DCLEAR_ZBUFFER, D3DCOLOR_ARGB(0,0,0,0), 1.0f, 0 ); // begin scene m_d3dDevice->BeginScene(); // render movie surface (just two triangles to which the movie is rendered) m_d3dDevice->SetRenderState(D3DRS_ALPHABLENDENABLE,false); m_d3dDevice->SetSamplerState( 0, D3DSAMP_MAGFILTER, D3DTEXF_LINEAR ); // bilinear filtering m_d3dDevice->SetSamplerState( 0, D3DSAMP_MINFILTER, D3DTEXF_LINEAR ); // bilinear filtering m_d3dDevice->SetTextureStageState( 0, D3DTSS_COLORARG1, D3DTA_TEXTURE ); m_d3dDevice->SetTextureStageState( 0, D3DTSS_COLORARG2, D3DTA_DIFFUSE ); //Ignored m_d3dDevice->SetTextureStageState( 0, D3DTSS_COLOROP, D3DTOP_SELECTARG1 ); m_d3dDevice->SetTexture( 0, m_movieTexture ); m_d3dDevice->SetStreamSource(0, m_displayPlaneVertexBuffer, 0, sizeof(Vertex)); m_d3dDevice->SetFVF(Vertex::FVF_Flags); m_d3dDevice->DrawPrimitive(D3DPT_TRIANGLELIST, 0, 2); // render sprites m_sprite->Begin(D3DXSPRITE_ALPHABLEND | D3DXSPRITE_SORT_TEXTURE | D3DXSPRITE_DO_NOT_ADDREF_TEXTURE); // text drop shadow m_font->DrawText( m_playerSprite, m_currentMessage.c_str(), m_currentMessage.size(), &m_playerFontRectDropShadow, DT_RIGHT|DT_TOP|DT_NOCLIP, m_playerFontColorDropShadow ); // text m_font->DrawText( m_playerSprite, m_currentMessage.c_str(), m_currentMessage.size(), &m_playerFontRect, DT_RIGHT|DT_TOP|DT_NOCLIP, m_playerFontColorMessage ) ); // control object m_sprite->Draw( m_texture, 0, 0, &m_vecPos, 0xFFFFFFFF ); // draws a few objects like this m_sprite->End() // end scene m_d3dDevice->EndScene(); What did I forget to do here? Except for the control objects (play button, pause button etc which are placed on a "panel" which is about 440 pixels wide) everything seems fine, the objects are positioned where I expect them, but just too big. By the way I loaded the images using D3DXCreateTextureFromFileEx (resizing wnidow, and reacting to lost device, etc, works fine too). For experimenting, I added some code to take an identity matrix and scale is down on the x/y axis to 0.75f, which then gave me the expected result for the controls (but also made the text smaller and out of position), but I don't know why I would need to scale anything. My rendering code is so simple, I just wanted to draw my 2D objects 1;1 the size they came from the file... I am really very inexperienced in D3D, so the answer might be very simple...

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• Accessing SQL Server data from iOS apps

  - by RobertChipperfield

  Almost all mobile apps need access to external data to be valuable. With a huge amount of existing business data residing in Microsoft SQL Server databases, and an ever-increasing drive to make more and more available to mobile users, how do you marry the rather separate worlds of Microsoft's SQL Server and Apple's iOS devices? The classic answer: write a web service layer Look at any of the questions on this topic asked in Internet discussion forums, and you'll inevitably see the answer, "just write a web service and use that!". But what does this process gain? For a well-designed database with a solid security model, and business logic in the database, writing a custom web service on top of this just to access some of the data from a different platform seems inefficient and unnecessary. Desktop applications interact with the SQL Server directly - why should mobile apps be any different? The better answer: the iSql SDK Working along the lines of "if you do something more than once, make it shared," we set about coming up with a better solution for the general case. And so the iSql SDK was born: sitting between SQL Server and your iOS apps, it provides the simple API you're used to if you've been developing desktop apps using the Microsoft SQL Native Client. It turns out a web service remained a sensible idea: HTTP is much more suited to the Big Bad Internet than SQL Server's native TDS protocol, removing the need for complex configuration, firewall configuration, and the like. However, rather than writing a web service for every app that needs data access, we made the web service generic, serving only as a proxy between the SQL Server and a client library integrated into the iPhone or iPad app. This client library handles all the network communication, and provides a clean API. OSQL in 25 lines of code As an example of how to use the API, I put together a very simple app that allowed the user to enter one or more SQL statements, and displayed the results in a rather primitively formatted text field. The total amount of Objective-C code responsible for doing the work? About 25 lines. You can see this in action in the demo video. Beta out now - your chance to give us your suggestions! We've released the iSql SDK as a beta on the MobileFoo website: you're welcome to download a copy, have a play in your own apps, and let us know what we've missed using the Feedback button on the site. Software development should be fun and rewarding: no-one wants to spend their time writing boiler-plate code over and over again, so stop writing the same web service code, and start doing exciting things in the new world of mobile data!

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• Software Tuned to Humanity

  - by Phil Factor

  I learned a great deal from a cynical old programmer who once told me that the ideal length of time for a compiler to do its work was the same time it took to roll a cigarette. For development work, this is oh so true. After intently looking at the editing window for an hour or so, it was a relief to look up, stretch, focus the eyes on something else, and roll the possibly-metaphorical cigarette. This was software tuned to humanity. Likewise, a user’s perception of the “ideal” time that an application will take to move from frame to frame, to retrieve information, or to process their input has remained remarkably static for about thirty years, at around 200 ms. Anything else appears, and always has, to be either fast or slow. This could explain why commercial applications, unlike games, simulations and communications, aren’t noticeably faster now than they were when I started programming in the Seventies. Sure, they do a great deal more, but the SLAs that I negotiated in the 1980s for application performance are very similar to what they are nowadays. To prove to myself that this wasn’t just some rose-tinted misperception on my part, I cranked up a Z80-based Jonos CP/M machine (1985) in the roof-space. Within 20 seconds from cold, it had loaded Wordstar and I was ready to write. OK, I got it wrong: some things were faster 30 years ago. Sure, I’d now have had all sorts of animations, wizzy graphics, and other comforting features, but it seems a pity that we have used all that extra CPU and memory to increase the scope of what we develop, and the graphical prettiness, but not to speed the processes needed to complete a business procedure. Never mind the weight, the response time’s great! To achieve 200 ms response times on a Z80, or similar, performance considerations influenced everything one did as a developer. If it meant writing an entire application in assembly code, applying every smart algorithm, and shortcut imaginable to get the application to perform to spec, then so be it. As a result, I’m a dyed-in-the-wool performance freak and find it difficult to change my habits. Conversely, many developers now seem to feel quite differently. While all will acknowledge that performance is important, it’s no longer the virtue is once was, and other factors such as user-experience now take precedence. Am I wrong? If not, then perhaps we need a new school of development technique to rival Agile, dedicated once again to producing applications that smoke the rear wheels rather than pootle elegantly to the shops; that forgo skeuomorphism, cute animation, or architectural elegance in favor of the smell of hot rubber. I struggle to name an application I use that is truly notable for its blistering performance, and would dearly love one to do my everyday work – just as long as it doesn’t go faster than my brain.

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• Interesting Topics in Comp. Sci. for New Students?

  - by SoulBeaver

  I hope this is the right forum to ask this question. Last friday I was in a discussion with my professors about the students' lack of motivation and interest in the field of Computer Science. All of the students are enrolled, but through questionnaires and other questions that my professor posed it was revealed that over 90% of all enrolled students are just in it for the reward of getting a job sometime in the future (since it's a growing field with high job potential) I asked my professor for the permission to take over the first couple of lectures and try and motivate, interest and inspire students for the field of Computer Science and programming in particular (this is the Intro to Programming course). This request was granted and I now have a week to come up with a lecture topic for my professor's five groups. My main goal isn't to teach, I just want to get students to be as interested in the field as I am. I want to show them what's possible, what awesome magical things have been done in the field, the future we are heading towards using programming and Comp. Sci. Therefore, I would like to pose this question: I have a few topics, materials and sample projects that I would like to talk about: -- Grace Hopper (It is my hope to interest the female programmers in the class. There are never more than two or three per group and they, more than males, are prone to jumping ship and abandoning Comp. Sci.) -- The Singularity Institute -- Alan Turing -- Robotics -- Programming not as a chore or a must, but the idea that we are, at our core, the nexus to which anything anybody does in the digital world is connected to. We are the problem solvers; we assemble all the parts together and we are the ones that, essentially, make the vision a reality. -- Give them an idea for a programming project which, through the help of the professor, could be significant to every student (I want students to not only feel interested in the topic, but they should feel important, that what they do here makes a difference) Do you have interesting topics worthy of discussion, something I can tell the students which they can get interested about? How would you approach the lecture? If you had 90 minutes worth of time to try and get students interested in the project, what would you do?

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• Nvidia GT218 repository drivers don't work

  - by user1042840

  I upgraded all packages with sudo apt-get upgrade command on my Ubuntu 10.04 box and I have Ubuntu 12.04 3.2.0-29-generic-pae now. I have two monitors and the following GPU: 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GT218 [NVS 300] (rev a2) After upgrading to 12.04, I somehow lost my previous setup with one common workspace stretched across two monitors. When Ubuntu starts only one monitor is on. I can see the message on the active monitor: Not optimum mode. Recommended mode: 1680x1050 60Hz I used Nvidia proprietary drivers on 10.04 but now jockey-text --list shows: xorg:nvidia_current - NVIDIA accelerated graphics driver (Proprietary, Disabled, Not in use) xorg:nvidia_current_updates - NVIDIA accelerated graphics driver (post-release updates) (Proprietary, Enabled, Not in use) When I run sudo nvidia-settings it says You do not appear to be using the NVIDIA X driver. Please edit your X configuration file (just run `nvidia-xconfig` as root), and restart the X server.' I typed nvidia-xconfig and rebooted, but jockey-text --list says the same after the reboot: Not in use. The same with nvidia-current - Enabled but Not in use. I also tried nvidia-173 but I ended up in tty immediately at startup so I removed it. I used to have some problems with Nvidia proprietary drivers on 10.04, I had to put paths to EDID files in /etc/X11/xorg.conf explicitly, but the resolution was as recommended and both monitors were working. If I understand correctly, nouveau drivers are used now by default because the resolution is still quite high, definitely not 800x600, xrandr showed: xrandr: Failed to get size of gamma for output default Screen 0: minimum 320 x 400, current 1600 x 1200, maximum 1600 x 1200 default connected 1600x1200+0+0 0mm x 0mm 1600x1200 66.0* 1280x1024 76.0 1024x768 76.0 800x600 73.0 640x480 73.0 640x400 0.0 320x400 0.0 1680x1050_60.00 (0x4f) 146.2MHz h: width 1680 start 1784 end 1960 total 2240 skew 0 clock 65.3KHz v: height 1050 start 1053 end 1059 total 1089 clock 60.0Hz However, colors seem a bit faded and blurry with nouveau drivers. Mouse cursor is invisible if it's placed inside Firefox window, and only one monitor is working. I like open source and if it's possible I'd prefer to use nouveau drivers but a few things should be fixed. I'm curious why nvidia-current drivers from the repository don't work now. I read it has something to do with the new X11 server in Ubuntu 12.04, is it true? How can I get it back to work?

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• How are Reads Distributed in a Workload

  - by Bill Graziano

  People have uploaded nearly one millions rows of trace data to TraceTune.  That’s enough data to start to look at the results in aggregate.  The first thing I want to look at is logical reads.  This is the easiest metric to identify and fix. When you upload a trace, I rank each statement based on the total number of logical reads.  I also calculate each statement’s percentage of the total logical reads.  I do the same thing for CPU, duration and logical writes.  When you view a statement you can see all the details like this: This single statement consumed 61.4% of the total logical reads on the system while we were tracing it.  I also wanted to see the distribution of reads across statements.  That graph looks like this: On average, the highest ranked statement consumed just under 50% of the reads on the system.  When I tune a system, I’m usually starting in one of two modes: this “piece” is slow or the whole system is slow.  If a given piece (screen, report, query, etc.) is slow you can usually find the specific statements behind it and tune it.  You can make that individual piece faster but you may not affect the whole system. When you’re trying to speed up an entire server you need to identity those queries that are using the most disk resources in aggregate.  Fixing those will make them faster and it will leave more disk throughput for the rest of the queries. Here are some of the things I’ve learned querying this data: The highest ranked query averages just under 50% of the total reads on the system. The top 3 ranked queries average 73% of the total reads on the system. The top 10 ranked queries average 91% of the total reads on the system. Remember these are averages across all the traces that have been uploaded.  And I’m guessing that people mainly upload traces where there are performance problems so your mileage may vary. I also learned that slow queries aren’t the problem.  Before I wrote ClearTrace I used to identify queries by filtering on high logical reads using Profiler.  That picked out individual queries but those rarely ran often enough to put a large load on the system. If you look at the execution count by rank you’d see that the highest ranked queries also have the highest execution counts.  The graph would look very similar to the one above but flatter.  These queries don’t look that bad individually but run so often that they hog the disk capacity. The take away from all this is that you really should be tuning the top 10 queries if you want to make your system faster.  Tuning individually slow queries will help those specific queries but won’t have much impact on the system as a whole.

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• Moved to SSD and now getting "the disk drive for / is not ready yet"

  - by dmt0

  I moved my Ubuntu 12.04 install over to an SSD drive. Copied all directories except for the ones most often written to - var, tmp, ... Reinstalled grub into SSD by booting with live CD and following the commands in this post: How to move Ubuntu to an SSD This seemed to work fine, because when I press "e" in grub menu, I see the expected UUIDs. But right after grub I get could not log bootup: Address already in use the disk drive for / is not ready yet or not present. If I skip, I get same for /tmp /run, and other dirs If I go into manual recovery and do mount -n -o remount,rw / it turns out that everything can mount no problem. Can't get my head around this one. My fstab seems right. grub is right. AHCI in bios is enabled. Why is this happening? What can I do to fix it? When I do drop into shell from this error and get to mount things manually, how do I get the OS to continue loading? Thank you guys for any ideas you can give me. Here's what my fstab looks like right now: # <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass> proc /proc proc defaults 0 0 UUID=67fc8a7a-f1db-485c-88bd-e007c214244f / ext4 defaults,noatime,discard 0 1 # swap was on /dev/sda3 during installation UUID=6bc9cd6c-46b7-43a0-bfac-bd04cc26cfb6 none swap sw 0 0 UUID=7397729b-2125-4b1d-b5eb-28866898d773 /hdd ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1 /hdd/home /home none bind 0 0 /hdd/run /run none bind 0 0 /hdd/tmp /tmp none bind 0 0 /hdd/var /var none bind 0 0 /dev/scd0 /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0 output from blkid: /dev/sda1: LABEL="System Reserved" UUID="EABC56C1BC568849" TYPE="ntfs" /dev/sda2: UUID="7CCC6124CC60D9C2" TYPE="ntfs" /dev/sda3: UUID="6bc9cd6c-46b7-43a0-bfac-bd04cc26cfb6" TYPE="swap" /dev/sda5: UUID="7397729b-2125-4b1d-b5eb-28866898d773" TYPE="ext4" /dev/sdb1: UUID="67fc8a7a-f1db-485c-88bd-e007c214244f" TYPE="ext4" relevant from fdisk -l: Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdb1 2048 115345407 57671680 83 Linux

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• Traditional POS is Dead

  - by David Dorf

  Traditional POS is dead -- I've heard that one before. Here's an excerpt from Joe Skorupa's blog over at RIS where he relayed ten trends that were presented at NRF. 7. Mobile POS signals death of traditional POS. Shoppers don't love self-checkout, but they prefer it to long queues or dealing with associates. Fixed POS is expensive and bulky. Mobile POS frees floor space for other purposes and converts associates from being cashiers to being sales assistants that provide new levels of customer service and incremental basket sales. In addition to unplugging the POS, new alternatives are starting to take hold - thin client, POS as a service, and replacing POS software with e-commerce platforms. I'll grant that in some situations for some retailers there might be an opportunity to to ditch the traditional POS, but for the majority of retailers that's just not practical. Take it from a guy that had to wake up at 3am after every Thanksgiving to monitor POS systems across the US on Black Friday. If a retailer's website goes down on Black Friday, they will take a significant hit. If a retailer's chain-wide POS system goes down on Black Friday, that retailer will cease to exist. Mobile POS works great for Apple because the majority of purchases are one or two big-ticket items that don't involve cash. There's still a traditional POS in every store to fall back on (its just hidden). Try this at home: Choose your favorite e-commerce site and add an item to the cart while timing how long it takes. Now multiply that by 15 to represent the 15 items you might buy at store like Target. The user interface isn't optimized for bulk purchases, and that's how it should be. The webstore and POS are designed for different purposes. Self-checkout is a great addition to POS and so is mobile checkout. But they add capabilities to POS, not replace it. Centralized architectures, even those based in the cloud, are quite viable as long as there's resiliency in the registers. You cannot assume perfect access to the network, so a POS must always be able to sell regardless of connectivity. Clearly the different selling channels should be sharing common functionality. Things like calculating tax, accepting coupons, and processing electronic payments can be shared, usually through a service-oriented architecture. This lowers costs and providers greater consistency, both of which help retailers. On paper these technologies look really good and we should continue to push boundaries, but I'm not ready to call the patient dead just yet.

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• How do we provide valid time estimates during Sprint Planning without doing "too much" design?

  - by Michael Edenfield

  My team is getting up to speed with Scrum, but most of us are more familiar with non-agile or "pseudo-"agile methodologies. The part that is the biggest hurdle for us is running an efficient Sprint Planning meeting where we break our backlog items into tasks, and estimate hours. (I'm using the terminology from the VS2010 Scrum Template; apologies if I use the wrong word somewhere.) When we try to figure out how long a task is going to take, we often fall into the trap of designing the feature at the code level -- table layout, interfaces, etc -- in order to figure out how long that's going to take. I'm pretty sure this is not the appropriate place to be doing that kind of design. We should be scheduling tasks for these design meetings during the sprint. However, we are having trouble figuring out how else to come up with meaningful estimates for the tasks. Are there any practical habits/techniques/etc. for making a judgement call about how long a feature is going to take, without knowing how you plan to implement it? If our time estimates are going to change significantly once the design has been completed, how can we properly budget our Sprint backlog ahead of time? EDIT: Just to clarify, since some of the comments/answers are very valid but I think addressing the wrong question. We know that what we're doing is not right, and that we should be building time into the sprint for this design. Conceptually all of the developers understand that. We also also bringing in a team member with Scrum experience to keep us on track if we start going off into the weeds. The problem is that, without going through this design process, we are finding it difficult to provide concrete time estimates for anything. We are constantly saying things like "well if we design it this way it might take 8 hours but if we end up having to do this other way instead that will take about 32 but it might not be as bad once we start trying to write it...". I also assume that this process will get better once we have some historical velocity to work from, but many of the technologies and architectural patterns we are using are new to us. But if potentially-wildly-wrong estimates are just a natural part of adapting this process then we will just need to recondition ourselves to accept that :)

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• Image first loaded, then it isn't? (XNA)

  - by M0rgenstern

  I am very confused at the Moment. I have the following Class: (Just a part of the class): public class GUIWindow { #region Static Fields //The standard image for windows. public static IngameImage StandardBackgroundImage; #endregion } IngameImage is just one of my own classes, but actually it contains a Texture2D (and some other things). In another class I load a list of GUIButtons by deserializing a XML file. public static GUI Initializazion(string pXMLPath, ContentManager pConMan) { GUI myGUI = pConMan.Load<GUI>(pXMLPath); GUIWindow.StandardBackgroundImage = new IngameImage(pConMan.Load<Texture2D>(myGUI.WindowStandardBackgroundImagePath), Vector2.Zero, 1024, 600, 1, 0, Color.White, 1.0f, true, false, false); System.Console.WriteLine("Image loaded? " + (GUIWindow.StandardBackgroundImage.ImageStrip != null)); myGUI.Windows = pConMan.Load<List<GUIWindow>>(myGUI.GUIFormatXMLPath); System.Console.WriteLine("Windows loaded"); return myGUI; } Here this line: System.Console.WriteLine("Image loaded? " + (GUIWindow.StandardBackgroundImage.ImageStrip != null)); Prints "true". To load the GUIWindows I need an "empty" constructor, which looks like that: public GUIWindow() { Name = ""; Buttons = new List<Button>(); ImagePath = ""; System.Console.WriteLine("Image loaded? (In win) " + (GUIWindow.StandardBackgroundImage.ImageStrip != null)); //Image = new IngameImage(StandardBackgroundImage); //System.Console.WriteLine( //Image.IsActive = false; SelectedButton = null; IsActive = false; } As you can see, I commented lines out in the constructor. Because: Otherwise this would crash. Here the line System.Console.WriteLine("Image loaded? (In win) " + (GUIWindow.StandardBackgroundImage.ImageStrip != null)); Doesn't print anything, it just crashes with the following errormessage: Building content threw NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an object instance. Why does this happen? Before the program wants to load the List, it prints "true". But in the constructor, so in the loading of the list it prints "false". Can anybody please tell me why this happens and how to fix it?

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• Contract / Project / Line-Item hierarchy design considerations

  - by Ryan

  We currently have an application that allows users to create a Contract. A contract can have 1 or more Project. A project can have 0 or more sub-projects (which can have their own sub-projects, and so on) as well as 1 or more Line. Lines can have any number of sub-lines (which can have their own sub-lines, and so on). Currently, our design contains circular references, and I'd like to get away from that. Currently, it looks a bit like this: public class Contract { public List<Project> Projects { get; set; } } public class Project { public Contract OwningContract { get; set; } public Project ParentProject { get; set; } public List<Project> SubProjects { get; set; } public List<Line> Lines { get; set; } } public class Line { public Project OwningProject { get; set; } public List ParentLine { get; set; } public List<Line> SubLines { get; set; } } We're using the M-V-VM "pattern" and use these Models (and their associated view models) to populate a large "edit" screen where users can modify their contracts and the properties on all of the objects. Where things start to get confusing for me is when we add, for example, a Cost property to the Line. The issue is reflecting at the highest level (the contract) changes made to the lowest level. Looking for some thoughts as to how to change this design to remove the circular references. One thought I had was that the contract would have a Dictionary<Guid, Project> which would contain ALL projects (regardless of their level in hierarchy). The Project would then have a Guid property called "Parent" which could be used to search the contract's dictionary for the parent object. THe same logic could be applied at the Line level. Thanks! Any help is appreciated.

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• More on Map Testing

  - by Michael Stephenson

  I have been chatting with Maurice den Heijer recently about his codeplex project for the BizTalk Map Testing Framework (http://mtf.codeplex.com/). Some of you may remember the article I did for BizTalk 2009 and 2006 about how to test maps but with Maurice's project he is effectively looking at how to improve productivity and quality by building some useful testing features within the framework to simplify the process of testing maps. As part of our discussion we realized that we both had slightly different approaches to how we validate the output from the map. Put simple Maurice does some xpath validation of the data in various nodes where as my approach for most standard cases is to use serialization to allow you to validate the output using normal MSTest assertions. I'm not really going to go into the pro's and con's of each approach because I think there is a place for both and also I'm sure others have various approaches which work too. What would be great is for the map testing framework to provide support for different ways of testing which can cover everything from simple cases to some very specialized scenarios. So as agreed with Maurice I have done the sample which I will talk about in the rest of this article to show how we can use the serialization approach to create and compare the input and output from a map in normal development testing. Prerequisites One of the common patterns I usually implement when developing BizTalk solutions is to use xsd.exe to create .net classes for most of the schemas used within the solution. In the testing pattern I will take advantage of these .net classes. The Map In this sample the map we will use is very simple and just concatenates some data from the input message to the output message. Hopefully the below picture illustrates this well. The Test In the test I'm basically taking the following actions: Use the .net class generated from the schema to create an input message for the map Serialize the input object to a file Run the map from .net using the standard BizTalk test method which was generated for running the map Deserialize the output file from the map execution to a .net class representing the output schema Use MsTest assertions to validate things about the output message The below picture shows this: As you can see the code for this is pretty simple and it's all strongly typed which means changes to my schema which can affect the tests can be easily picked up as compilation errors. I can then chose to have one test which validates most of the output from the map, or to have many specific tests covering individual scenarios within the map. Summary Hopefully this post illustrates a powerful yet simple way of effectively testing many BizTalk mapping scenarios. I will probably have more conversations with Maurice about these approaches and perhaps some of the above will be included in the mapping test framework.   The sample can be downloaded from here: http://cid-983a58358c675769.office.live.com/self.aspx/Blog%20Samples/More%20Map%20Testing/MapTestSample.zip

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• Sharing on Github

  - by Alan

  Over the past couple weeks I have gotten a lot of help from StackOverflow users on a project, and rather than keep the finished product to myself I wanted to share it unencumbered by licenses, but don't want there to be so much legwork during installation that users shy away from trying it. I am about to post it to Github and choosing public domain licensing. I would like to to be super simple for users to make use of and just FTP it up and go. That being said, do I need to make sure I remove things like the JQuery file, and other GPL / MIT licensed dependencies that I didn't write but that my code depends on? I haven't removed any copyright notices from the other code and all of it open source, it would just be nice if users could download everything at once while of course not trying to represent that I am the license holder of the dependencies. Inside my files are also some snippets, do those have to be externalized with installation instructions or can it be posted as is? Here is an example, my nav.php file is 115 lines long and I have these at the top: <script type="text/javascript" src="./js/ddaccordion.js"> /*********************************************** * Accordion Content script- (c) Dynamic Drive DHTML code library (www.dynamicdrive.com) * Visit http://www.dynamicDrive.com for hundreds of DHTML scripts * This notice must stay intact for legal use ***********************************************/ </script> <link href="css/admin.css" rel="stylesheet"> <script type="text/javascript"> ddaccordion.init({ headerclass: "submenuheader", //Shared CSS class name of headers group contentclass: "submenu", //Shared CSS class name of contents group revealtype: "click", //Reveal content when user clicks or onmouseover the header? Valid value: "click", "clickgo", or "mouseover" mouseoverdelay: 200, //if revealtype="mouseover", set delay in milliseconds before header expands onMouseover collapseprev: false, //Collapse previous content (so only one open at any time)? true/false defaultexpanded: [], //index of content(s) open by default [index1, index2, etc] [] denotes no content onemustopen: false, //Specify whether at least one header should be open always (so never all headers closed) animatedefault: false, //Should contents open by default be animated into view? persiststate: true, //persist state of opened contents within browser session? toggleclass: ["", ""], //Two CSS classes to be applied to the header when it's collapsed and expanded, respectively ["class1", "class2"] togglehtml: ["suffix", "<img src='./images/plus.gif' class='statusicon' />", "<img src='./images/minus.gif' class='statusicon' />"], //Additional HTML added to the header when it's collapsed and expanded, respectively ["position", "html1", "html2"] (see docs) animatespeed: "fast", //speed of animation: integer in milliseconds (ie: 200), or keywords "fast", "normal", or "slow" oninit:function(headers, expandedindices){ //custom code to run when headers have initalized //do nothing }, onopenclose:function(header, index, state, isuseractivated){ //custom code to run whenever a header is opened or closed //do nothing } }) </script>

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• So, I though I wanted to learn frontend/web development and break out of my comfort zone...

  - by ripper234

  I've been a backend developer for a long time, and I really swim in that field. C++/C#/Java, databases, NoSql, caching - I feel very much at ease around these platforms/concepts. In the past few years, I started to taste end-to-end web programming, and recently I decided to take a job offer in a front end team developing a large, complex product. I wanted to break out of my comfort zone and become more of an "all around developer". Problem is, I'm getting more and more convinced I don't like it. Things I like about backend programming, and missing in frontend stuff: More interesting problems - When I compare designing a server that handle massive data, to adding another form to a page or changing the validation logic, I find the former a lot more interesting. Refactoring refactoring refactoring - I am addicted to Visual Studio with Resharper, or IntelliJ. I feel very comfortable writing code as it goes without investing too much thought, because I know that with a few clicks I can refactor it into beautiful code. To my knowledge, this doesn't exist at all in javascript. Intellisense and navigation - I hate looking at a bunch of JS code without instantly being able to know what it does. In VS/IntelliJ I can summon the documentation, navigate to the code, climb up inheritance hiererchies ... life is sweet. Auto-completion - Just hit Ctrl-Space on an object to see what you can do with it. Easier to test - With almost any backend feature, I can use TDD to capture the requirements, see a bunch of failing tests, then implement, knowing that if the tests pass I did my job well. With frontend, while tests can help a bit, I find that most of the testing is still manual - fire up that browser and verify the site didn't break. I miss that feeling of "A green CI means everything is well with the world." Now, I've only seriously practiced frontend development for about two months now, so this might seem premature ... but I'm getting a nagging feeling that I should abandon this quest and return to my comfort zone, because, well, it's so comfy and fun. Another point worth mentioning in this context is that while I am learning some frontend tools, a lot of what I'm learning is our company's specific infrastructure, which I'm not sure will be very useful later on in my career. Any suggestions or tips? Do you think I should give frontend programming "a proper chance" of at least six to twelve months before calling it quits? Could all my pains be growing pains, and will they magically disappear as I get more experienced? Or is gaining this perspective is valuable enough, even if plan to do more "backend stuff" later on, that it's worth grinding my teeth and continuing with my learning?

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• Mutable Records in F#

  - by MarkPearl

  I’m loving my expert F# book – today I thought I would give a post on using mutable records as covered in Chapter 4 of Expert F#. So as they explain the simplest mutable data structures in F# are mutable records. The whole concept of things by default being immutable is a new one for me from my C# background. Anyhow… lets look at some C# code first. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; namespace MutableRecords { public class DiscreteEventCounter { public int Total { get; set; } public int Positive { get; set; } public string Name { get; private set; } public DiscreteEventCounter(string name) { Name = name; } } class Program { private static void recordEvent(DiscreteEventCounter s, bool isPositive) { s.Total += 1; if (isPositive) s.Positive += 1; } private static void reportStatus (DiscreteEventCounter s) { Console.WriteLine("We have {0} {1} out of {2}", s.Positive, s.Name, s.Total); } static void Main(string[] args) { var longCounter = new DiscreteEventCounter("My Discrete Counter"); recordEvent(longCounter, true); recordEvent(longCounter, true); reportStatus(longCounter); Console.ReadLine(); } } } Quite simple, we have a class that has a few values. We instantiate an instance of the class and perform increments etc on the instance. Now lets look at an equivalent F# sample. namespace EncapsulationNS module Module1 = open System type DiscreteEventCounter = { mutable Total : int mutable Positive : int Name : string } let recordEvent (s: DiscreteEventCounter) isPositive = s.Total <- s.Total+1 if isPositive then s.Positive <- s.Positive+1 let reportStatus (s: DiscreteEventCounter) = printfn "We have %d %s out of %d" s.Positive s.Name s.Total let newCounter nm = { Total = 0; Positive = 0; Name = nm } // // Using it... // let longCounter = newCounter "My Discrete Counter" recordEvent longCounter (true) recordEvent longCounter (true) reportStatus longCounter System.Console.ReadLine() Notice in the type declaration of the DiscreteEventCounter we had to explicitly declare that the total and positive value holders were mutable. And that’s it – a very simple example of mutable types.

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• Critical Patch Updates During EBS 11i Exception to Sustaining Support Period

  - by Elke Phelps (Oracle Development)

  As previously blogged in the EBS 11i and 12.1 Support Timeline Changes entry, two important changes to the Oracle Lifetime Support policies were announced at Oracle OpenWorld 2012 - San Francisco.  These changes affect E-Business Suite Releases 11i and 12.1. Critical Patch Updates for EBS 11i during the Exception to Sustaining Support Period You may be wondering about the availability of Critical Patch Updates (CPU) for EBS 11i during the Exception to Sustaining Support period.  The following details the E-Business Suite Critical Patch Update support policy for EBS 11i during the Exception to Sustaining Support period: Oracle will continue to provide CPUs containing critical security fixes for E-Business Suite 11i.  CPUs will be packaged and released as as cumulative patches for both ATG RUP 6 and ATG RUP 7. As always, we try to minimize the number of patches and dependencies required for uptake of a CPU; however, there have been quite a few changes to the 11i baseline since its release.  For dependency reasons the 11i CPUs may require a higher number of files in order to bring them up to a consistent, stable, and well tested level. EBS 11i customer will continue to receive CPUs up to and including the October 2014 CPU. Where can I learn more? There are two interlocking policies that affect the E-Business Suite:  Oracle's Lifetime Support policies for each EBS release (timelines which were updated by this announcement), and the Error Correction Support policies (which state the minimum baselines for new patches). For more information about how these policies interact, see: Understanding Support Windows for E-Business Suite Releases What about E-Business Suite technology stack components? Things get more complicated when one considers individual techstack components such as Oracle Forms or the Oracle Database.  To learn more about the interlocking EBS+techstack component support windows, see these two articles: On Apps Tier Patching and Support: A Primer for E-Business Suite Users On Database Patching and Support: A Primer for E-Business Suite Users Where can I learn more about Critical Patch Updates?The Critical Patch Update Advisory is the starting point for relevant information. It includes a list of products affected, pointers to obtain the patches, a summary of the security vulnerabilities, and links to other important documents.  Related Articles EBS 11i and 12.1 Support Timeline Changes Frequently Asked Questions about Latest EBS Support Changes Extended Support Fees Waived for E-Business Suite 11i and 12.0

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• The cost of Programmer Team Clustering

  - by MarkPearl

  I recently was involved in a conversation about the productivity of programmers and the seemingly wide range in abilities that different programmers have in this industry. Some of the comments made were reiterated a few days later when I came across a chapter in Code Complete (v2) where it says "In programming specifically, many studies have shown order-of-magnitude differences in the quality of the programs written, the sizes of the programs written, and the productivity of programmers". In line with this is another comment presented by Code Complete when discussing teams - "Good programmers tend to cluster, as do bad programmers". This is something I can personally relate to. I have come across some really good and bad programmers and 99% of the time it turns out the team they work in is the same - really good or really bad. When I have found a mismatch, it hasn't stayed that way for long - the person has moved on, or the team has ejected the individual. Keeping this in mind I would like to comment on the risks an organization faces when forcing teams to remain together regardless of the mix. When you have the situation where someone is not willing to be part of the team but still wants to get a pay check at the end of each month, it presents some interesting challenges and hard decisions to make. First of all, when this occurs you need to give them an opportunity to change - for someone to change, they need to know what the problem is and what is expected. It is unreasonable to expect someone to change but have not indicated what they need to change and the consequences of not changing. If after a reasonable time of an individual being aware of the problem and not making an effort to improve you need to do two things... Follow through with the consequences of not changing. Consider the impact that this behaviour will have on the rest of the team. What is the cost of not following through with the consequences? If there is no follow through, it is often an indication to the individual that they can continue their behaviour. Why should they change if you don't care enough to keep your end of the agreement? In many ways I think it is very similar to the "Broken Windows" principles – if you allow the windows to break and don’t fix them, more will get broken. What is the cost of keeping them on? When keeping a disruptive influence in a team you risk loosing the good in the team. As Code Complete says, good and bad programmers tend to cluster - they have a tendency to keep this balance - if you are not going to help keep the balance they will. The cost of not removing a disruptive influence is that the good in the team will eventually help you maintain the clustering themselves by leaving.

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• How to explain bad software to non-technical people?

  - by mtutty

  In discussing software development with non-technical people (customers, business owners, project sponsors, etc.), I often resort to analogies and metaphors. It's relatively easy and effective to use a "house" or other metaphor for describing the size and complexity of new development. However, we often inherit someone else's code or data, and this approach doesn't seem to hold up as well when trying to explain why we're gutting something that already seems to work. Of course we can point to cycle time and cost to be saved in the future but this generally means nothing to business folks. I know doctors can say "just take this pill," but I'm not sure that software devs have the same authority. Ideas? EDIT: Let me add a bit to the discussion. The specific project I'm talking about has customers that don't realize (or care) about specific aspects of the system we're retiring (i.e., they think it was just fine): The system would save a NEW RECORD every time someone updated a field The system contained tables for reference data. These tables had new records added every day, even though they were duplicates of previous records. And there was no way to tie the reference data used for a particular case at the time it was closed. This is like 99% of the data in the old system. The field NAMES also have spaces, apostrophes and other inappropriate characters in them, making everything harder to work with. In addition to the incredible amount of duplicate data, they have around 1000 XLS files with data they want added to the system. Previously, they would do a spreadsheet for each case in the database, IN ADDITION TO what they typed into the database. Getting rid of this old, unneeded information and piping in the XLS data comprises about 80% of the total project effort, and was not something we could accurately predict. I'm trying to find a concrete way to describe how bad this thing was, mostly so that the customer will understand why the migration process has been so time-consuming. The actual coding was done pretty quickly and the new system works fine, but without the old data they won't be happy. Sorry to get into the weeds, but most of the answers I've seen so far are pretty basic scope/schedule/cost things. I've been doing this for 15 years, so this really is more of a reflective, philosophical question - but without some of the details it can be difficult to really appreciate the awful beauty of this problem.

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• Alert: It is No Longer 1982, So Why is CRM Still There?

  - by Mike Stiles

  Hot off the heels of Oracle’s recent LinkedIn integration announcement and Oracle Marketing Cloud Interact 2014, the Oracle Social Cloud is preparing for another big event, the CRM Evolution conference and exhibition in NYC. The role of social channels in customer engagement continues to grow, and social customer engagement will be a significant theme at the conference. According to Paul Greenberg, CRM Evolution Conference Chair, author, and Managing Principal at The 56 Group, social channels have become so pervasive that there is no longer a clear reason to make a distinction between “social CRM” and traditional CRM systems. Why not? Because social is a communication hub every bit as vital and used as the phone or email. What makes social different is that if you think of it as a phone, it’s a party line. That means customer interactions are far from secret, and social connections are listening in by the hundreds, hearing whether their friend is having a positive or negative experience with your brand. According to a Mention.com study, 76% of brand mentions are neutral, neither positive nor negative. These mentions fail to get much notice. So think what that means about the remaining 24% of mentions. They’re standing out, because a verdict, about you, is being rendered in them, usually with emotion. Suddenly, where the R of CRM has been lip service and somewhat expendable in the past, “relationship” takes on new meaning, seriousness, and urgency. Remarkably, legions of brands still approach CRM as if it were 1982. Today, brands must provide customer experiences the customer actually likes (how dare they expect such things). They must intimately know not only their customers, but each customer, because technology now makes personalized experiences possible. That’s why the Oracle Social Cloud has been so mission-oriented about seamlessly integrating social with sales, marketing and customer service interactions so the enterprise can have an actionable 360-degree view of the customer. It’s the key to that customer-centricity we hear so much about these days. If you’re attending CRM Evolution, Chris Moody, Director of Product Marketing for the Oracle Marketing Cloud, will show you how unified customer experiences and enhanced customer centricity will help you attract and keep ideal customers and brand advocates (“The Pursuit of Customer-Centricity” Aug 19 at 2:45p ET) And Meg Bear, Group Vice President for the Oracle Social Cloud, will sit on a panel talking about “terms of engagement” and the ways tech can now enhance your interactions with customers (Aug 20 at 10a ET). If you can’t be there, we’ll be doing our live-tweeting thing from the @oraclesocial handle, so make sure you’re a faithful follower. You’ll notice NOBODY is writing about the wisdom of “company-centricity.” Now is the time to bring your customer relationship management into the socially connected age. @mikestilesPhoto: Sue Pizarro, freeimages.com

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• Investment scheme for a PC game the project

  - by Alex Kamen

  Good day everyone, I am working on a PC game project that has 3 phases planned, micro, macro and mmo versions [if confused, see a brief description at the bottom]. I have found a potential investor for the micro version of the game, but naturally, he requested a detailed plan of how the game will pay back. And the problem is that micro version itself is not supposed to be monetized much, other than some ads and limited in-game currency utilization. The idea is that with this combat demo already at hand, it should be possible to get a really large enough investment (millions of dollars) and use it to pay back the initial small one (thousands of dollars) and take the project into macro phase, which will really make profit. This way, everybody is going to win, provided that I can deliver the end-product. Yet while I am confident of that both the conception of the macro and the real game-play of the micro versions are going to be appealing, I don’t know how to obtain any guarantee of that I will be able to get funded once I have the prototype ready. And without that, I won’t receive the funds for the prototype in the first place! To summarize, my question is: how to figure out my future possibilities of getting funded once I have combat demo out, basically “whom to write to and what”. Ideally, I would like some sort of a preliminary agreement with a game publisher, something that would basically state “If the developer provides the product in time and in quality corresponding to the specifications given, the publisher guarantees to allocate funds for distribution and further development, thereby acquiring the right to X part of all future profits”. Does this sound sane? It’s just that I don’t want to sell all of my rights out straight away by taking a big outside investment while the project is in such early stage. I would appreciate if you would share your thoughts on this kind of scheme, and be sure to ask questions as I am sure I must have forgotten to mention a ton of important things, like the fact that initial funds are going to be spent on outsourcing (living in Siberia is really just great). [here’s a brief outline of what each version will feature] [micro] 1) turn based tactical combat rules 2) character development 3) arena/tournament system [macro] 4) ai-ruled dynamic interactive worlds 5) global map adventuring 6) strategic rpg + god simulator gameplay [mmo] 7) Persistent worlds system 8) Social structures system (“guilds/clans”) 9) god-simulation on the mmo scale P.S. Obviously, these features are incremental, so that mmo version has all 9.

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• How can I achieve a 3D-like effect with spritebatch's rotation and scale parameters

  - by Alic44

  I'm working on a 2d game with a top-down perspective similar to Secret of Mana and the 2D Final Fantasy games, with one big difference being that it's an action rpg using a 3-dimensional physics engine. I'm trying to draw an aimer graphic (basically an arrow) at my characters' feet when they're aiming a ranged weapon. At first I just converted the character's aim vector to radians and passed that into spritebatch, but there was a problem. The position of every object in my world is scaled for perspective when it's drawn to the screen. So if the physics engine coordinates are (1, 0, 1), the screen coords are actually (1, .707) -- the Y and Z axis are scaled by a perspective factor of .707 and then added together to get the screen coordinates. This meant that the direction the aimer graphic pointed (thanks to its rotation value passed into spritebatch) didn't match up with the direction the projectile actually traveled over time. Things looked fine when the characters fired left, right, up, or down, but if you fired on a diagonal the perspective of the physics engine didn't match with the simplistic way I was converting the character's aim direction to a screen rotation. Ok, fast forward to now: I've got the aimer's rotation matched up with the path the projectile will actually take, which I'm doing by decomposing a transform matrix which I build from two rotation matrices (one to represent the aimer's rotation, and one to represent the camera's 45 degree rotation on the x axis). My question is, is there a way to get not just rotation from a series of matrix transformations, but to also get a Vector2 scale which would give the aimer the appearance of being a 3d object, being warped by perspective? Orthographic perspective is what I'm going for, I think. So, the aimer arrow would get longer when facing sideways, and shorter when facing north and south because of the perspective. At the same time, it would get wider when facing north and south, and less wide when facing right or left. I'd like to avoid actually drawing the aimer texture in 3d because I'm still using spritebatch's layerdepth parameter at this point in my project, and I don't want to have to figure out how to draw a 3d object within the depth sorting system I already have. I can provide code and more details if this is too vague as a question... This is my first post on stack exchange. Thanks a lot for reading! Note: (I think) I realize it can't be a technically correct 3D perspective, because the spritebatch's vector2 scaling argument doesn't allow for an object to be skewed the way it actually should be. What I'm really interested in is, is there a good way to fake the effect, or should I just drop it and not scale at all? Edit to clarify without the help of a picture (apparently I can't post them yet): I want the aimer arrow to look like it has been painted on the ground at the character's feet, so it should appear to be drawn on the ground plane (in my case the XZ plane) which should be tilted at a 45 degree angle (around the X axis) from the viewing perspective. Alex

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