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  • Aggregating Excel cell contents that match a label [migrated]

    - by Josh
    I'm sure this isn't a terribly difficult thing, but it's not the type of question that easily lends itself to internet searches. I've been assigned a project for work involving a complex spreadsheet. I've done the usual =SUM and other basic Excel formulas, and I've got enough coding background that I'm able to at least fudge my way through VBA, but I'm not certain how to proceed with one part of the task. Simple version: On Sheet 1 I have a list of people (one on each row, person's name in column A), on sheet 2 I have a list of groups (one on each row, group name in column A). Each name in Sheet 1 has its own row, and I have a "Data Validation" dropdown menu where you choose the group each person belongs to. That dropdown is sourced from Sheet 2, where each group has a row. So essentially the data validation source for Sheet 1's "Group" column is just "=Sheet2!$a1:a100" or whatever. The problem is this: I want each group row in Sheet 2 to have a formula which results in a list of all the users which have been assigned to that group on Sheet 1. What I mean is something the equivalent of "select * from PeopleTab where GROUP = ThisGroup". The resulting cell would just stick the names together like "Bob Smith, Joe Jones, Sally Sanderson" I've been Googling for hours but I can't think of a way to phrase my search query to get the results I want. Here's an example of desired result (Dash-delimited. Can't find a way to make it look nice, table tags don't seem to work here): (Sheet 1) Bob Smith - Group 1 (selected from dropdown) Joe Jones - Group 2 (selected from dropdown) Sally Sanderson - Group 1 (selected from dropdown) (Sheet 2) Group 1 - Bob Smith, Sally Sanderson (result of formula) Group 2 - Joe Jones (result of formula) What formula (or even what function) do I use on that second column of sheet 2 to make a flat list out of the members of that group?

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  • When is meta description still relevant?

    - by Jeff Atwood
    I received this bit of advice about the meta description tag recently: Meta descriptions are used by Google probably 80% of the time for the snippet. They don’t help with rankings but you should probably use them. You could just auto generate them from the first part of the question. The description tag exists in the header, like so: <meta name="Description" content="A brief summary of the content on the page."> I'm not sure why we would need this field, as Google seems perfectly capable of showing the relevant search terms in context in the search result pages, like so (I searched for c# list performance): In other words, where would a meta description summary improve these results? We want the page to show context around the actual search hits, not a random summary we inserted! Google Webmaster Central has this advice: For some sites, like news media sources, generating an accurate and unique description for each page is easy: since each article is hand-written, it takes minimal effort to also add a one-sentence description. For larger database-driven sites, like product aggregators, hand-written descriptions are more difficult. In the latter case, though, programmatic generation of the descriptions can be appropriate and is encouraged -- just make sure that your descriptions are not "spammy." Good descriptions are human-readable and diverse, as we talked about in the first point above. The page-specific data we mentioned in the second point is a good candidate for programmatic generation. I'm struggling to think of any scenario when I would want the Google-generated summary, that is, actual context from the page for the search terms, to be replaced by a hard-coded meta description summary of the question itself.

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  • BDD/TDD vs JAD?

    - by Jonathan Conway
    I've been proposing that my workplace implement Behavior-Driven-Development, by writing high-level specifications in a scenario format, and in such a way that one could imagine writing a test for it. I do know that working against testable specifications tends to increase developer productivity. And I can already think of several examples where this would be the case on our own project. However it's difficult to demonstrate the value of this to the business. This is because we already have a Joint Application Development (JAD) process in place, in which developers, management, user-experience and testers all get together to agree on a common set of requirements. So, they ask, why should developers work against the test-cases created by testers? These are for verification and are based on the higher-level specs created by the UX team, which the developers currently work off. This, they say, is sufficient for developers and there's no need to change how the specs are written. They seem to have a point. What is the actual benefit of BDD/TDD, if you already have a test-team who's test cases are fully compatible with the higher-level specs currently given to the developers?

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  • Alt-Tab looses focus and have to hit Alt-Grave Accent to get focus

    - by John Hamill
    Alt-Tab looses focus and have to hit Alt-Grave Accent to get focus I have ubuntu 12.4 with Unity window manager. I have a gvim window and a firefox window open. I hit Alt-Tab to switch between the two. Sometimes the gvim window doesn't have focus and I have to hit Alt-GraveAccent (Alt-`) to get the gvim window to have focus (ie: have the cursor a solid white square instead of a outline of a square) I do this to move between firefox where I highlight some text and do a copy, then Alt-Tab to gvim and do a paste. Sometimes the focus isn't in gvim and the paste doesn't work. I then have to do an Alt-graveAccent to get the focus into gvim or click the gvim window. These extra steps slow my process down and it makes it difficult to get into a smooth rythum. I saw this: ALT+TAB loses focus Maybe the Alt-GraveAccent may help someone. It's a unity bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity/+bug/1035628 Your best bet is to wait until an update comes through fixing it.

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  • How many of you *really* surf around without JavaScript enabled? [closed]

    - by Stephen
    I've decided to rephrase the question. After some deliberation on Meta, I've realized that my question needs to be a bit more focused. The question: Should we (web developers) continue to spend effort progressively enhancing our web applications with JavaScript, ensuring that features gracefully degrade, thereby ensuring accessibility? Or should we spend that time focused on new features or other areas of development? The subtext of that question would be: How many of our customers/clients/users utilize our websites or applications with JavaScript disabled? Do you have any projects with requirements that specifically demand JavaScript functionality (almost all of mine do), and do those requirements also demand graceful degradation? For the sake of asking this question, I pulled up programmers.stackexchange.com without JavaScript enabled, and I was greeted with this message: "Programmers - Stack Exchange works best with JavaScript enabled". It was difficult to log in, albeit the site seemed to generally work okay. (I wasn't able to vote up any questions.) I think this is a satisfactory approach to development. Imagine the effort involved in making all of the site's features work with plain old HTML and server-side logic. OTOH, I wonder how many users have been alienated by this approach. We've all been trained (at least the good developers among us) to use progressive enhancement and to ensure our web applications' dynamic features degrade gracefully. Is this progressive enhancement just pissing into the wind, or do some of our customers actually utilize certain web services without JavaScript enabled? I mean, like really, not figuratively or presumptuously.

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  • How-To Backup, Swap, and Update Your Wii Game Saves

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    Whether you want to backup your game saves because you’ve worked so hard on them or you want to import game saves precisely so you don’t have to work so hard, we’ve got you covered. Image adapted from icon set by GasClown. There are a multitude of reasons you might want to export and import game saves from your Wii including: saving the progress on your favorite games before sending in your Wii for service, copying the progress to a friend’s or your secondary Wii, and importing saved games from the web or your friend’s Wii so that you don’t have to bust your ass to unlock all the specialty items yourself. (Here’s looking at you Mario Kart and House of the Dead: Overkill.) Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How To Create Your Own Custom ASCII Art from Any Image How To Process Camera Raw Without Paying for Adobe Photoshop How Do You Block Annoying Text Message (SMS) Spam? How to Use and Master the Notoriously Difficult Pen Tool in Photoshop HTG Explains: What Are the Differences Between All Those Audio Formats? How To Use Layer Masks and Vector Masks to Remove Complex Backgrounds in Photoshop Bring Summer Back to Your Desktop with the LandscapeTheme for Chrome and Iron The Prospector – Home Dash Extension Creates a Whole New Browsing Experience in Firefox KinEmote Links Kinect to Windows Why Nobody Reads Web Site Privacy Policies [Infographic] Asian Temple in the Snow Wallpaper 10 Weird Gaming Records from the Guinness Book

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  • Optimising Database Mirroring over WAN

    - by blakmk
      I recently got asked by our network guys about botlenecks in the WAN that used for mirroring to our DR I site. They asked me to turn off encryption of Database Mirroring so that the riverbed software  they were using could optimise the packets sent over the WAN. I was a bit sceptical at first about the security risks, but it seems the riverbed software has its own form of obfuscation making the packets difficult to read. After reading an article by rusanu I realised that it could be done with minimal downtime and potential reducing network traffic by 5-10% on its own. After turning off encryption I was pleasantly suprised to see that overall network traffic for mirroring dropped by a whopping 75%!                                               This Web Page Created with PageBreeze Free HTML Editor

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  • The How-To Geek Video Guide to Using Windows 7 Speech Recognition

    - by YatriTrivedi
    Ever get the desire to control your computer, Star Trek-style? With Windows 7’s Speech Recognition, it’s easier than you might think. Microsoft has been working on its voice command steadily over the years. XP introduced it, Vista smoothed it, and 7 has it polished. It’s strangely not advertised as a feature, even though other voice command and speech recognition programs are hundreds of dollars. It may not be as perfect as some of them, but there’s definitely something amazing about vocally telling your computer to do things and it actually working Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How To Create Your Own Custom ASCII Art from Any Image How To Process Camera Raw Without Paying for Adobe Photoshop How Do You Block Annoying Text Message (SMS) Spam? How to Use and Master the Notoriously Difficult Pen Tool in Photoshop HTG Explains: What Are the Differences Between All Those Audio Formats? How To Use Layer Masks and Vector Masks to Remove Complex Backgrounds in Photoshop Bring Summer Back to Your Desktop with the LandscapeTheme for Chrome and Iron The Prospector – Home Dash Extension Creates a Whole New Browsing Experience in Firefox KinEmote Links Kinect to Windows Why Nobody Reads Web Site Privacy Policies [Infographic] Asian Temple in the Snow Wallpaper 10 Weird Gaming Records from the Guinness Book

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  • Is using something other than XML advisable for my configuration file?

    - by Earlz
    I have a small tool I'm designing which would require a configuration file of some sort. The configuration file in my case is really more of a database, but it needs to be lightweight, and if needed the end-user should find it easily editable. However, it also will contain a lot of things in it. (depending on certain factors, could be 1Mb or more) I've decided I'd rather use plain ol' text, rather than trying to use SQLite or some such. However, with using text, I also have to deal with the variety of formats. So far, my options are XML JSON Custom format The data in my file is quite simple consisting for the most part of key-value type things. So, a custom format wouldn't be that difficult... but I'd rather not have to worry about writing the support for it. I've never seen JSON used for configuration files. And XML would bloat the file size substantially I think. (I also just has a dislike of XML in general). What should I do in this case? Factors to consider: This configuration file can be uploaded to a web service(so size matters) Users must be able to edit it by hand if necessary(ease of editing and reading matters) Must be able to generate and process automatically (speed doesn't matter a lot, but not excessively slow) The "keys" and "values" are plain strings, but must be escaped because they can contain anything. (unicode and escaping has to work easily)

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  • Entity system and rendering types

    - by Papi75
    I would like to implement entity system in my game and I've got some question about entity system and rendering. Currently, my renderer got two types of elements: Current design Mesh : A default renderable with a Material, a Geometry and a Transformable Sprite : A type of mesh with some methods like "flip" and "setRect" methods and a rect member (With an imposed geometry, a quad) This objects inherit from "Spacial" class. Questions: How can I handle this two types in an entity system? I'm thinking about using "MeshComponent" and "SpriteComponent", but if I do that, an entity could have a Mesh and a Sprite at the same type, it's look stupid, right? I thought the idea to have a parent "rendering" component : "RenderableComponent" for "MeshComponent" and "SpriteComponent" but it will be difficult to handle "cast" in the game (ex: did I need to ask entity-getComponent or SpineComponent, …) Thanks a lot for reading me! My entity system work like that: --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Entity* entity = world->createEntity(); MeshComponent* mesh = entity->addComponent<MeshComponent>(material); mesh->loadFromFile("monkey.obj"); PhysicComponent* physic = entity->addComponent<PhysicComponent>(); physic->setMass(5.4f); physic->setVelocity( 0.5f, 2.f ); --------------------------------------------------------------------------- class RenderingSystem { private: Scene scene; public: void onEntityAdded( Entity* entity ) { scene.addMesh( entity->getComponent<MeshComponent>() ); } } class PhysicSystem { private: World world; public: void onEntityAdded( Entity* entity ) { world.addBody( entity->getComponent<PhysicComponent>()->getBody() ); } void process( Entity* entity ) { PhysicComponent* physic = entity->getComponent<PhysicComponent>(); } } ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

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  • Installation of Tex Live via the terminal 12.04

    - by user74713
    I need to install upstream version of TeX Live for 12.04 to edit the manual for Ubuntu. I am having a difficult time installing it per the directions @ http://ubuntu-manual.org/getinvolved/editors#install-texlive. TeX Live documents are on my computer, but I am not able to run the install. No TeX Live program found on my computer. Any help is greatly appreciated! ~Thanx!~ Hello, my name is Chris. I am a student pursuing a career in technical writing. I would like to assist the Ubuntu community while gaining experience & building my resume. Below I have listed the prior attempts & links to view the posts of each attempt: Backports I have tried using the official backports of the latest (2012) TeX-Live via their PPA. Please refer to link below for the particulars. How do I install the latest 2012 TeX Live on 12.04? Latex I've also tried running Latex as suggested. Please refer to link below for the particulars. http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2019051 PPA Causing Issue?? or something else I came across a post concerning the ability to install programs via the terminal and am wondering if it may be my problem??? Please refer to link below for the particulars. PPA - TeX Live Cannot install anything through Terminal - apt-get -f install

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  • RTFMobile

    - by ultan o'broin
    It may seem obvious but it’s worth stating again. The idea that mobile users are going to read lots of user assistance on their devices is just wrong. So, Jakob Nielsen’s post Mobile Content Is Twice as Difficult serves as a timely reminder for anyone thinking of putting manuals as a form of user assistance onto mobile phones. There is also an excellent post on UXMag.com, explaining that one of the ways to screw up with your iPhone app is to throw an old-style user manual into the user experience: 10 Surefire Ways to Screw Up Your iPhone App.   (Image copyright and referenced from UX Magazine 2010)   Instead, user assistance  alternatives—if any at all—include one-time tours, graphics, in-context instructions, and so on. Not so sure that importing “humor” and “personality” work so well in the enterprise app space, myself. However, the message is clear: iPhone users don’t read manuals. Great message. Users will figure it out, and if they can’t, well then your app’s UX is a problem and the app will fail. Shame some teams are obsessed with figuring out ways to port existing manuals to mobile platforms without any thought for the UX. Razorfish’s Scatter/Gather blog says it all: One thing that is particularly discouraging, most material currently available on “Creating Content for the iPad” or similar themes turns out to be about getting traditional content onto, or into, the iPad. Now, manuals for non-end users in PDF format on eReaders is a different matter. I have research on that, but it’s for another post. Technorati Tags: mobile,user assistance,UX,user experience,manuals,documentation

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  • Good Freelance models for web developers

    - by Matthew Underwood
    I am a web developer with four years of experience in PHP, MYSQL and experience in Javascript etc. One day I hope to develop a freelance career in web development. Areas of freelance that I am thinking of going towards includes Wordpress, Magento development along with bespoke applications. I am also thinking of doing some consultancy work for clients and businesses when I build up some more experience and technical knowledge. I want to offer a web development service to potential clients that plays on my strengths in what I know but most importantly has a market. Web development can cover so many subjects that its difficult to pick out the areas that have demand. I am also curious to find out if web developers offer services that bring in a monthly income e.g application maintenance or database maintenance? Is there a market for certain areas like WordPress plugins or bespoke applications? Are there certain things to avoid because of work duration, unrealistic client expectations or the fact that its impossible to find a market for it? As professional and experienced freelance web developers have you learned some important do's and don'ts? Is there certain services that the majority of web developers offer because its in high demand? This is the one area of web development freelancing that I cant get my head around. I know there is never a definitive answer but there must be some good practises and general consensus on this subject. Web designers design websites they offer a lump sum and get paid monthly sometimes to add new content, PPC and SEO consultants market sites to the top this will involve monthly payments, web development doesn’t seem so clear cut.

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  • Personal knowledge base [closed]

    - by AlexLocust
    Possible Duplicate: How do you manage your knowledge base? Hello. Now I am using easy writing pad for scratches while doing some researches, solving troubles or doing workarounds. But.. you now, it's really difficult to remember all details of founded solution and it's alternatives after few months. And writing pad is not wery useful. Usually writing pad doesn't contains half of needed inforation: links founded in internet, output of some test commands and etc. Now I'am looking for a tool for storing information about my researches and it's results. Basic reqirements: ability to store files; ability to store formatted text (kind of HTML will be nice) with hyperlinks and code snippets; tags on notes; easy to use. Now I'am thinking about some kind of file-system organized storage, but I think it will be inconvenient. Another thinks is local wiki or blog. So, my question is: How do you organize you knowlege base? What tools do you use, and what "pros and cons".

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  • Stackify Gives Devs a Crack at the Production Server

    - by Matt Watson
    Originally published on SDTimes.com on 7/9/2012 by David Rubinstein.It was one of those interviews where you get finished talking about a company’s product, and you wonder aloud, “Well, THAT makes sense! Why hasn’t anyone thought of that before?” Matt Watson, CEO of Kansas City, Mo.-based startup Stackify, was telling me that the 10-person company is getting ready to launch its product in August (it’s in beta now) that will give developers an app-centric look into production servers so they can support and troubleshoot apps and fix bugs. Of course, this hasn’t happened in the past because of the security concerns of IT administrators, and a decided lack of expertise on the part of developers. Stackify installs on a server and acts like a proxy for developers, collecting data about the environment, discovering all the applications, scanning for config file changes, and doing server monitoring. “We become the central point that developers can see everything they need to know about their applications,” he said. “Developers can look at the files that are deployed, and query databases in a safe way.”  In his words:“The big thing we’re hoping is just giving them (developers) visibility. Most companies want to hire the junior developers that they pay $50,000 a year right out of college to do application support and troubleshooting and fix bugs, but those people don’t have access to production servers to troubleshoot. It becomes very difficult for them to do their job, so they end up spending all of their day bugging the senior developers, the managers or the system administrators to track down this stuff, which creates a huge bottleneck. And so what we can do is give that visibility to those lower-level people so that they can do this work and free up the higher-level people so they can be working on the next big thing.”Stackify itself might just prove to be the next big thing.

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  • How important is graceful degradation of JavaScript? [closed]

    - by Stephen
    Should web developers continue to spend effort progressively enhancing our web applications with JavaScript, ensuring that features gracefully degrade, thereby ensuring accessibility? Or should we spend that time focused on new features or other areas of development? The subtext of that question would be: How many of our customers/clients/users utilize our websites or applications with JavaScript disabled? Do you have any projects with requirements that specifically demand JavaScript functionality (almost all of mine do), and do those requirements also demand graceful degradation? For the sake of asking this question, I pulled up programmers.stackexchange.com without JavaScript enabled, and I was greeted with this message: "Programmers - Stack Exchange works best with JavaScript enabled". It was difficult to log in, albeit the site seemed to generally work okay. (I wasn't able to vote up any questions.) I think this is a satisfactory approach to development. Imagine the effort involved in making all of the site's features work with plain old HTML and server-side logic. On the other hand, I wonder how many users have been alienated by this approach. We've all been trained (at least the good developers among us) to use progressive enhancement and to ensure our web applications' dynamic features degrade gracefully. Is this progressive enhancement just pissing into the wind, or do some of our customers actually utilize certain web services without JavaScript enabled?

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  • How to advertise (free) software?

    - by nebukadnezzar
    I'm not sure if this fits on SO, but other SE sites don't seem to fit either, so I understand when this question gets moved, Although I'd like to avoid getting it closed due to being offtopics, since I think that this question might fit, considering this part of the FAQ: Stack Overflow is for professional and enthusiast programmers, ... covers … a specific programming problem ... matters that are unique to the programming profession Sorry for the lengthy Introduction, though. When Software is advertised, it is usually Software for one (or more) specific purpose, such as: Mozilla Firefox - A Web Browser Ubuntu - An Operating System Python - A Programming Language Visual Studio - A Development Studio ... And so on. But when writing Libraries, that is, Software that doesn't necessarily serve one specific purpose, but instead multiple purposes, which are usually supposed to be used inside an application, such as: Irrlicht - A 3D Engine Qt - An Application Framework ... The process of advertisement gets a little more difficult. I'm a developer of the latter kind of Software, and I naturally want to advertise my Software. It's not commercial Software; It's not GPL either. It's completely free (Licensed under the MIT License :-)). I naturally host my stuff at github, which technically makes it very easy to access the software, and I thought that these might be possible options, although I have no experience with them: Submit the Software to Freshmeat, and hope for the best Submit the Software to Sourceforge, and hope someone accidently stumbles over it Write spammails, and get death threats via Mail ... But something tells me that these methods are probably not the best Methods. So, my final question would be, How does the Average Joe Hobby Programmer advertise his/her Software Library?

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  • is it possible to use shopify for just their shopping cart component or should I just roll my own

    - by timpone
    I'm working on an e-commerce site and am a rails developer; due to the nature of the items, I am managing them in their own database so I'm really looking for something that is only for the shopping cart aspect (there are things like heavy nesting and integration with other pieces of the app that would be very difficult to reproduce). It seems like there are two ways that I can go. (1) One way is rolling my own shopping cart and using something like Stripe (which I have been evaluating and am working fine with it). This literally could be as easy as creating an orders table and a line items table and a lot of front-end. (2) Or I could try to integrate into a third-party shopping cart like Shopify. I am not really sure if I can just use the shopify shopping cart or whether there is any advantage to this. If I already have most of my app done, would shopify (or another shopping cart app) provide any significant benefit (it clearly could)? Or would the integration be too much of a headache? Like for example, when a user 'adds to order' on my site, can I post to shopify and associate it with that user? thx

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  • IT Optimization Plan Pays Off For UK Retailer

    - by [email protected]
    I caught this article in ComputerworldUK yesterday. The headline talks about UK-based supermarket chain Morrisons is increasing their IT spend...OK, sounds good. Even nicer that Oracle is a big part of that. But what caught my eye were three things: 1) Morrison's truly has a long term strategy for IT. In this case, modernizing and optimizing how they use IT for business advantage. 2) Even in a tough economic climate, Morrison's views IT investments as contributing to and improving the bottom line. Specifically, "The investment in IT contributed to a 21 percent increase in Morrison's underlying profit.." 3) The phased, 3-year "Optimization Plan" took a holistic approach to their business--from CRM and Supply Chain systems to the underlying application infrastructure. On the infrastructure front, adopting a more flexible Service-Oriented Architecture enabled them to be more agile and adapt their business and Identity Management helped with sometimes mundane (but costly) issues like lost passwords and being able to document who has access to what. Things don't always turn out so rosy. And I know it was a long and difficult process...but it's nice to see a happy ending every once in a while.

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  • Won't boot after installing Ubuntu 12.04 sucessfully

    - by Matt
    I installed 12.04 successfully and rebooted (I took out my installation CD), and selected the newly installed Linux partition to boot from rEFIt. Then it just comes up with this error message: Error loading operating system which could not be more vague. Take that back. I guess it could say just "error." I don't even get to the boot prompt which limits what I can do. I cannot boot into rescue mode. I tried boot-repair, but it took more than 24 hours to check the system configuration, so I gave up on that. I'm running a Mac Mini with its main OS being Mac OS X 10.5.8. I have an alternate OS Windows XP installed, which was virtually destroyed by this Linux installation. I sacrificed my working, speedy Windows partition for something that won't even boot up. What was I thinking. My Mac partition is slow as crap. I've tried installing 12.04 many times with two different disks. The first time, I had one partition for Linux, then I had 2 (swap+main), then 3 (swap, main and BIOS), then 4 which is what I have now (swap, main, BIOS, and boot/grub). The only way I could get through the install without GRUB giving up was if I created a separate partition for it. Which was pointless, because it did install successfully, but it still doesn't boot up at all. Could rEFIt be booting off of the BIOS or one of the other partitions? Because if that's the case, there is no alternative, because Mac itself without rEFIt refuses to recognize a Linux ext4 (or 2 or 3) format partition. Apple always has to make everything so difficult. If I'm not mistaken, rEFIt is the only application of its kind for Mac. I can boot off of the CD back to the install/try screen. This is extremely upsetting, can you guys help? Please?

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  • My Big Break - this is my story and I am sticking to it ;)

    - by dbasnett
    The value of undertaking new and difficult tasks can have many wonderful consequences, don't you agree? Here is the story of my big break. Remember yours? During the mid 70's I was in the Navy and worked as a computer operator at the CNO's Command and Control computer system (WWMCCS) in the Washington Navy Yard. I was a tape ape, but knew that I wanted to be a systems programmer. One day the Lieutenant in charge of the OS group was running a test that required the development system to be re-booted, and I was politely hinting that I wanted out of computer operations. As he watched the accounting tape rewind to BOT and then search for where it had just been (severalminutes) he told me if I would fix "that" he would have me transferred. I couldn't say "Deal" fast enough. Up until then my programming experience had been on Edsger Dijkstra's favorite computer (sic), an IBM 1620. It took almost 6 months of learning the assembler for the Honeywell 6000 and finding the code responsible for rewinding the tape and then forwarding it. After much trial and error at o’dark thirty I succeeded. The tape barely moved and my “patch” was later adopted by many other sites. Lieutenant Jack Cowan kept his promise and I have gone on to have a varied and enjoyable career. To Jack, and the rest of the crew (Ken, Stu, Neil, Tom, Silent W, Mr. Jacobs, Roy, Rocco, etc.) I’d like to thank you all.

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  • Organising levels / rooms in a MUD-style text based world

    - by Polynomial
    I'm thinking of writing a small text-based adventure game, but I'm not particularly sure how I should design the world from a technical standpoint. My first thought is to do it in XML, designed something like the following. Apologies for the huge pile of XML, but I felt it important to fully explain what I'm doing. <level> <start> <!-- start in kitchen with empty inventory --> <room>Kitchen</room> <inventory></inventory> </start> <rooms> <room> <name>Kitchen</name> <description>A small kitchen that looks like it hasn't been used in a while. It has a table in the middle, and there are some cupboards. There is a door to the north, which leads to the garden.</description> <!-- IDs of the objects the room contains --> <objects> <object>Cupboards</object> <object>Knife</object> <object>Batteries</object> </objects> </room> <room> <name>Garden</name> <description>The garden is wild and full of prickly bushes. To the north there is a path, which leads into the trees. To the south there is a house.</description> <objects> </objects> </room> <room> <name>Woods</name> <description>The woods are quite dark, with little light bleeding in from the garden. It is eerily quiet.</description> <objects> <object>Trees01</object> </objects> </room> </rooms> <doors> <!-- a door isn't necessarily a door. each door has a type, i.e. "There is a <type> leading to..." from and to are references the rooms that this door joins. direction specifies the direction (N,S,E,W,Up,Down) from <from> to <to> --> <door> <type>door</type> <direction>N</direction> <from>Kitchen</from> <to>Garden</to> </door> <door> <type>path</type> <direction>N</direction> <from>Garden</type> <to>Woods</type> </door> </doors> <variables> <!-- variables set by actions --> <variable name="cupboard_open">0</variable> </variables> <objects> <!-- definitions for objects --> <object> <name>Trees01</name> <displayName>Trees</displayName> <actions> <!-- any actions not defined will show the default failure message --> <action> <command>EXAMINE</command> <message>The trees are tall and thick. There aren't any low branches, so it'd be difficult to climb them.</message> </action> </actions> </object> <object> <name>Cupboards</name> <displayName>Cupboards</displayName> <actions> <action> <!-- requirements make the command only work when they are met --> <requirements> <!-- equivilent of "if(cupboard_open == 1)" --> <require operation="equal" value="1">cupboard_open</require> </requirements> <command>EXAMINE</command> <!-- fail message is the message displayed when the requirements aren't met --> <failMessage>The cupboard is closed.</failMessage> <message>The cupboard contains some batteires.</message> </action> <action> <requirements> <require operation="equal" value="0">cupboard_open</require> </requirements> <command>OPEN</command> <failMessage>The cupboard is already open.</failMessage> <message>You open the cupboard. It contains some batteries.</message> <!-- assigns is a list of operations performed on variables when the action succeeds --> <assigns> <assign operation="set" value="1">cupboard_open</assign> </assigns> </action> <action> <requirements> <require operation="equal" value="1">cupboard_open</require> </requirements> <command>CLOSE</command> <failMessage>The cupboard is already closed.</failMessage> <message>You closed the cupboard./message> <assigns> <assign operation="set" value="0">cupboard_open</assign> </assigns> </action> </actions> </object> <object> <name>Batteries</name> <displayName>Batteries</displayName> <!-- by setting inventory to non-zero, we can put it in our bag --> <inventory>1</inventory> <actions> <action> <requirements> <require operation="equal" value="1">cupboard_open</require> </requirements> <command>GET</command> <!-- failMessage isn't required here, it'll just show the usual "You can't see any <blank>." message --> <message>You picked up the batteries.</message> </action> </actions> </object> </objects> </level> Obviously there'd need to be more to it than this. Interaction with people and enemies as well as death and completion are necessary additions. Since the XML is quite difficult to work with, I'd probably create some sort of world editor. I'd like to know if this method has any downfalls, and if there's a "better" or more standard way of doing it.

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  • internet sharing over wifi between ubuntu 11.10 and windows7

    - by Vivek Pradhan
    So i have looked up a lot of forums for these solution but haven't really found one that works. I have a laptop running ubuntu 11.10 connected to the ethernet cord at home and i want to share the internet over wifi with my friend's laptop running windows7. I did not think it would be so difficult, I tried a lot of things: I went to networks and then wireless and set up a wifi hotspot, my laptop got connected to it and the ipv4 was set to "shared to other computers". Thankfully the network was discoverable and after some tries my friend was able to connect to the network, but it still showed that there was no internet access. I tried coniguring the tcp addresses of the wifi on his laptop. Bottom line: did not work. I went to the network manager, clicked on create a new wireless network, created one with security WEP 40/128 bit passphrase, tried the other 2 options later, and did the same thing as with the wifi, this network was also not discoverable initially and after some tries, we could connect to it but then ICS was not working although there was a working internet on my ubuntu laptop. I would really appreciate if some one who has faced a similar problem and got it fixed to please give me a step by step solution of how to get this work, because this is a prety common problem with ubuntu distros I have noticed. Note: This however seems to work with ubuntu to ubuntu connections, but specifically cross OS connections like windows or my phone running android ICS are not able to see or if connect not able to share internet on my laptop

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  • Jagran Prakashan Increases Staff Productivity by 40%

    - by Michael Snow
    Jagran Prakashan Increases Staff Productivity by 40%, Launches New IT Projects up to 4x Faster, Enables Mobile Service, and Improves Business Agility Oracle Customer: JPL Location:  Uttar Pradesh, India Industry: Media and Entertainment Employees:  10,000 Annual Revenue:  $100 to $500 Million Jagran Prakashan Ltd. (JPL) is one of India's premier media and communications groups with interests spanning print, advertising, event management, and mobile services for weather, cricket scores, and educational activities. It is a major media enterprise, with 300 locations across 15 states. Its impressive stable of print publications includes Dainik Jagran, the world’s most widely read daily newspaper––with a readership of over 55 million––the country’s leading afternoon dailies, and a range of popular local, bilingual, and English language newspapers. JPL was using multiple systems to manage its business processes. Users were resistant to using multiple passwords for various applications, preferring to continue their less efficient, legacy work practices. In addition, there was no single repository for sharing documents across the organization, such as company announcements or project documents. The company relied on e-mail to disseminate up-to-date company information, often missing employees. It was also time-consuming and difficult for managers to track the status of ongoing assignments or projects because collaboration and document sharing was inefficient and ineffective.With diverse businesses and many geographic locations, JPL needed to implement a centralized and user-friendly enterprise portal to improve document sharing and collaboration and increase business agility. The company implemented Oracle WebCenter Portal to create a dynamic, secure, and intuitive self-service enterprise portal to improve the user experience and increase operating efficiency. It improved staff productivity by 40%, accelerated new IT projects by up to 4x, boosted staff morale, and increased business agility.   Increases Staff Productivity by 40%, Launches New Products up to 2x Faster A word from JPL "With Oracle WebCenter Portal, we gained a dynamic, secure, and intuitive self-service enterprise portal that provided an exceptional user experience and enabled us to engage employees in a collaborative environment. It increased IT staff productivity by 40%, delivered new projects up to 4x faster, and enabled mobile service to improve our business agility.” Sarbani Bhatia, Vice President IT, Jagran Prakashahn Ltd Before implementing Oracle WebCenter Portal, JPL stored project-critical information, such as page planning of daily newspaper editions and the launch of new editions or supplements on individual laptops or in the e-mail system. Collaboration between colleagues was limited to physical meetings, telephone discussions, and e-mail. It was difficult to trace and recover important project documents when a staff member resigned, which represented a significant risk to business continuity. Employees were also averse to multiple passwords and resisted using the systems, affecting staff productivity. With Oracle WebCenter Portal, JPL created a dynamic, secure, and intuitive self-service enterprise portal with business activity streams. The portal allowed users to navigate, discover, and access information, such as advertising rates, requisition approvals, ad-hoc queries, and employee surveys from a single entry point with a single password. Managers can also upload important documents, such as new pricing for advertisers or newspaper distributors, and share them through the information and instruction section in the portal. In addition, managers can now easily track and review timelines for projects online rather than gathering information from meetings and e-mails. The company gained the ability to centrally manage information, ensured business continuity, and improved staff productivity by 40%.“In the media industry, news has a very short shelf life, so speed is crucial. Information delayed is like information lost,” said Sarbani Bhatia, vice president IT, Jagran Prakashahn Ltd. “Thanks to Oracle WebCenter Portal’s contextual collaboration tools, we can provide and share feedback for new project launches, such as career or education supplements, up to 2x faster through discussion forums or knowledge groups. Tasks that previously required four months, we now complete in one month.”In addition, the company can broadcast announcements, flash employee birthdays, and promote important events through the message section on the webpage, instead of using the e-mail system. The company can also conduct opinion polls to gauge employee response to organizational issues and improve management decision-making.“With over 10,000 employees across 300 locations, it is critical for management to hear the voice of employees and develop a cohesive organizational culture. Oracle WebCenter Portal enables employees to engage with business processes and systems in a collaborative environment, providing users with an exceptional experience,” Bhatia said. Enables Mobility Access and Increases Business Agility Newspaper advertisements generate the majority of JPL’s revenue. With most sales staff on the move, the company needed to ensure timely approval of print advertisement discounts for specific clients and meet tight publication deadlines.  By integrating Oracle WebCenter Portal seamlessly with its enterprise resource planning (ERP) system and other applications, such as the organizational mass mailing system, business intelligence, and management information system, JPL embedded its approval workflow processes into the enterprise portal and provided users with an integrated and intuitive interface. About 30% of JPL’s sales staff members now have tablets and receive advertising discount approval from managers while in the field and no longer need to return to the office, which has significantly improved efficiency and increased business agility.“Application mobility was critical for sales representatives in the field to meet stringent auditing requirements for online accountability, particularly for our newspaper advertising business. Staff member satisfaction has improved significantly now that the sales team can use tablets to access the portal––a capability we will extend to smart phones in the second stage of the implementation,” Bhatia said. Accelerates Application Development by up to 4x and Cuts Costs by up to 60% With Oracle WebCenter Portal, users can easily create, modify, and upload information to their personalized webpages without IT assistance. By seamlessly integrating Oracle WebCenter Portal with the payroll database, managers can decide which members of their team can access the page and with whom they will share information, a decision based on role or geographical location. A sales representative selling advertising space for a local language daily newspaper, for example, can upload an updated advertising rate relevant only to that particular publication. Users can also easily adapt to the new platform, thanks to its intuitive design and look, reducing the need for training and lowering resistance to using the system.Using Oracle WebCenter Portal’s out-of-the-box reusable components, such as portal pages and templates, provided JPL’s developers with a comprehensive and flexible user experience platform and increased the speed of application development. In less than five months, JPL developed more than 55 workflows. The IT team accelerated deployment of new applications by up to 4x, as they do not need to install them on individual machines now that they have a web-based environment.   “Previously, we would have spent a whole day deploying a new application for each department or location. With a browser-based environment, we have cut costs by up to 60% by reducing deployment time to zero, because our IT team can roll out a new application from a single point, thanks to Oracle WebCenter Portal,” Bhatia said. Challenges Provide a dynamic, secure, and intuitive self-service enterprise portal to improve staff productivity and ensure business continuity Enable seamless integration with multiple enterprise applications to improve workflow efficiency—including approval of print advertisement discounts—and increase business agility Improve engagement with employees and enable collaboration to enhance management decision-making Accelerate time-to-market for new services, such as new advertising programs Solutions Oracle Product and ServicesOracle WebCenter Portal 11g Increased staff productivity by 40% and enhanced user satisfaction by enabling employees to easily navigate, discover, and access information from a single, self-service enterprise portal without IT assistance Launched new products, such as career or education supplements, up to 2x faster by enabling peer collaboration and incorporating feedback generated through discussion forums, thanks to Oracle WebCenter Portal’s out-of-the-box collaboration tools Accelerated application development up to 4x by enabling developers to optimize reusable components for managing and deploying new applications in a browser-based environment rather than spending one day to install applications for each department, cutting costs by up to 60% Ensured business continuity by enabling managers to easily track and review project timelines online rather than storing important documents on individual laptops or relying on the e-mail system Increased business agility and operational efficiency by seamlessly integrating with the in-house, ERP system and embedding business processes into a single portal Boosted company revenue by enabling sales team members to submit print-advertising discount requests through mobile devices instead of waiting to return to office, ensuring timely approval from managers to meet tight publication deadlines Improved management decision-making by enabling employees to easily share and access feedback through opinion polls or forums, boosting staff morale Introduced the single sign-on capability and enhanced security by enabling managers to decide access level for staff members based on role or geographical location Reduced the need for staff training and minimized user resistance to systems by providing a dynamic and intuitive user experience Why Oracle JPL did not consider other products because the company was already using Oracle Database, Enterprise Edition with Real Application Clusters and had a positive experience with Oracle. JPL chose Oracle WebCenter Portal to ensure no compatibility issues for integration with its existing Oracle products and to take advantage of the experience and support of a reputable vendor to ensure business continuity. “We chose Oracle because we knew we could rely on its support and experience. In addition, Oracle WebCenter Portal’s speed, agility, and mobile access features were a perfect fit for our business requirements,” Bhatia said. Implementation Process JPL launched the enterprise portal to 500 users in the first phase of the project, and plans to extend this to 2,000 users when the portal is fully launched. Oracle partner PricewaterhouseCoopers used Oracle Application Development Framework for the intial set-up, user training and to develop and design sample workflows. JPL’s internal IT staff then took charge of the implementation, bringing it to completion on budget. Partner Oracle PartnerPricewaterhouseCoopers (India)

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  • PublishingWeb.ExcludeFromNavigation Missing

    - by Michael Van Cleave
    So recently I have had to make the transition from the SharePoint 2007 codebase to SharePoint 2010 codebase. Needless to say there hasn't been much difficulty in the changeover. However in a set of code that I was playing around with and transitioning I did find one change that might cause some pain to others out there that have been programming against the PublishingWeb object in the Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing namespace. The 2007 snippet of code that work just fine in 2007 looks like: using (SPSite site = new SPSite(url)) using (SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb()) {      PublishingWeb publishingWeb = PublishingWeb.GetPublishingWeb(web);     publishingWeb.ExcludeFromNavigation(true, itemID);     publishingWeb.Update(); } The 2010 update to the code looks like: using (SPSite site = new SPSite(url)) using (SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb()) {     PublishingWeb publishingWeb = PublishingWeb.GetPublishingWeb(web);     publishingWeb.Navigation.ExcludeFromNavigation(true, itemID); //--Had to reference the Navigation object.     publishingWeb.Update(); } The purpose of the code is to keep a page from showing up on the global or current navigation when it is added to the pages library. However you see that the update to the 2010 codebase actually makes more "object" sense. It specifies that you are technically affecting the Navigation of the Publishing Web, instead of the Publishing Web itself. I know that this isn't a difficult problem to fix, but I thought it would be something quick to help out the general public. Michael

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