Search Results

Search found 1749 results on 70 pages for 'night walker'.

Page 57/70 | < Previous Page | 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64  | Next Page >

• LSI SAS 9240-8i on Ubuntu 12.04 Hangs on Modprobe

  - by Francois Stark

  I used the LSI 9240-8i card on a smaller Intel motherboard with no problems in Ubuntu, with ZFS. However, we rebuilt the server to allow for more disks, using the ASROCK X79 Extreme 11 motherboard. It has 7 PCIe slots, and a LSI 2008 on-board. At first I thought the LSI 9240, when plugged in to PCIe, clashed with the on-board LSI 2008. Every time I plugged in the LSI 9240, modprobe would hang. Then I completely disabled the on-board LSI 2008, and the problem persisted. Last night it booted perfectly ONCE - all LSI cards and connected disks visible... However, all subsequent reboots failed. Both LSI cards' bios scans appear and they both see the disks connected to them, but Ubuntu modprobe hangs. Some selected dmesg lines, with both LSI cards enabled: [ 190.752100] megasas: [ 0]waiting for 1 commands to complete [ 195.772071] megasas: [ 5]waiting for 1 commands to complete [ 200.792079] megasas: [10]waiting for 1 commands to complete [ 205.812078] megasas: [15]waiting for 1 commands to complete [ 210.832037] megasas: [20]waiting for 1 commands to complete [ 215.852077] megasas: [25]waiting for 1 commands to complete [ 220.872072] megasas: [30]waiting for 1 commands to complete [ 225.892078] megasas: [35]waiting for 1 commands to complete [ 230.912086] megasas: [40]waiting for 1 commands to complete [ 235.932075] megasas: [45]waiting for 1 commands to complete [ 240.306157] usb 2-1.5: USB disconnect, device number 7 [ 240.952076] megasas: [50]waiting for 1 commands to complete [ 240.960034] INFO: task modprobe:233 blocked for more than 120 seconds. [ 240.960055] "echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/hung_task_timeout_secs" disables this message. [ 240.960067] modprobe D ffffffff81806200 0 233 146 0x00000004 [ 240.960075] ffff880806ae3b48 0000000000000086 ffff880806ae3ae8 ffffffff8101adf3 [ 240.960083] ffff880806ae3fd8 ffff880806ae3fd8 ffff880806ae3fd8 0000000000013780 [ 240.960090] ffffffff81c0d020 ffff880806acae00 ffff880806ae3b58 ffff880808961720 [ 240.960096] Call Trace: [ 240.960107] [<ffffffff8101adf3>] ? native_sched_clock+0x13/0x80 [ 240.960116] [<ffffffff816579cf>] schedule+0x3f/0x60 [ 240.960137] [<ffffffffa00093f5>] megasas_issue_blocked_cmd+0x75/0xb0 [megaraid_sas] [ 240.960144] [<ffffffff8108aa50>] ? add_wait_queue+0x60/0x60 [ 240.960154] [<ffffffffa000a6c9>] megasas_get_seq_num+0xd9/0x260 [megaraid_sas] [ 240.960164] [<ffffffffa000ab31>] megasas_start_aen+0x31/0x60 [megaraid_sas] [ 240.960174] [<ffffffffa00136f1>] megasas_probe_one+0x69a/0x81c [megaraid_sas] [ 240.960182] [<ffffffff813345bc>] local_pci_probe+0x5c/0xd0 [ 240.960189] [<ffffffff81335e89>] __pci_device_probe+0xf9/0x100 [ 240.960197] [<ffffffff8130ce6a>] ? kobject_get+0x1a/0x30 [ 240.960205] [<ffffffff81335eca>] pci_device_probe+0x3a/0x60 [ 240.960212] [<ffffffff813f5278>] really_probe+0x68/0x190 [ 240.960217] [<ffffffff813f5505>] driver_probe_device+0x45/0x70 [ 240.960223] [<ffffffff813f55db>] __driver_attach+0xab/0xb0 [ 240.960227] [<ffffffff813f5530>] ? driver_probe_device+0x70/0x70 [ 240.960233] [<ffffffff813f5530>] ? driver_probe_device+0x70/0x70 [ 240.960237] [<ffffffff813f436c>] bus_for_each_dev+0x5c/0x90 [ 240.960243] [<ffffffff813f503e>] driver_attach+0x1e/0x20 [ 240.960248] [<ffffffff813f4c90>] bus_add_driver+0x1a0/0x270 [ 240.960255] [<ffffffffa001e000>] ? 0xffffffffa001dfff [ 240.960260] [<ffffffff813f5b46>] driver_register+0x76/0x140 [ 240.960266] [<ffffffffa001e000>] ? 0xffffffffa001dfff [ 240.960271] [<ffffffff81335b66>] __pci_register_driver+0x56/0xd0 [ 240.960277] [<ffffffffa001e000>] ? 0xffffffffa001dfff [ 240.960286] [<ffffffffa001e09e>] megasas_init+0x9e/0x1000 [megaraid_sas] [ 240.960294] [<ffffffff81002040>] do_one_initcall+0x40/0x180 [ 240.960301] [<ffffffff810a82fe>] sys_init_module+0xbe/0x230 [ 240.960307] [<ffffffff81661ec2>] system_call_fastpath+0x16/0x1b [ 240.960314] INFO: task scsi_scan_7:349 blocked for more than 120 seconds.

  Read the article

• Access Denied

  - by Tony Davis

  When Microsoft executives wake up in the night screaming, I suspect they are having a nightmare about their own version of Frankenstein's monster. Created with the best of intentions, without thinking too hard of the long-term strategy, and having long outlived its usefulness, the monster still lives on, occasionally wreaking vengeance on the innocent. Its name is Access; a living synthesis of disparate body parts that is resistant to all attempts at a mercy-killing. In 1986, Microsoft had no database products, and needed one for their new OS/2 operating system, the successor to MSDOS. In 1986, they bought exclusive rights to Sybase DataServer, and were also intent on developing a desktop database to capture Ashton-Tate's dominance of that market, with dbase. This project, first called 'Omega' and later 'Cirrus', eventually spawned two products: Visual Basic in 1991 and Access in late 1992. Whereas Visual Basic battled with PowerBuilder for dominance in the client-server market, Access easily won the desktop database battle, with Dbase III and DataEase falling away. Access did an excellent job of abstracting and simplifying the task of building small database applications in a short amount of time, for a small number of departmental users, and often for a transient requirement. There is an excellent front end and forms generator. We not only see it in Access but parts of it also reappear in SSMS. It's good. A business user can pull together useful reports, without relying on extensive technical support. A skilled Access programmer can deliver a fairly sophisticated application, whilst the traditional client-server programmer is still sharpening his pencil. Even for the SQL Server programmer, the forms generator of Access is useful for sketching out application designs. So far, so good, but here's where the problems start; Access ties together two different products and the backend of Access is the bugbear. The limitations of Jet/ACE are well-known and documented. They range from MDB files that are prone to corruption, especially as they grow in size, pathetic security, and "copy and paste" Backups. The biggest problem though, was an infamous lack of scalability. Because Microsoft never realized how long the product would last, they put little energy into improving the beast. Microsoft 'ate their own dog food' by using Access for Microsoft Exchange and Outlook. They choked on it. For years, scalability and performance problems with Exchange Server have been laid at the door of the Jet Blue engine on which it relies. Substantial development work in Exchange 2010 was required, just in order to improve the engine and storage schema so that it more efficiently handled the reading and writing of mails. The alternative of using SQL Server just never panned out. The Jet engine was designed to limit concurrent users to a small number (10-20). When Access applications outgrew this, bitter experience proved that there really is no easy upgrade path from Access to SQL Server, beyond rewriting the whole lot from scratch. The various initiatives to do this never quite bridged the cultural gulf between Access and a true relational database So, what are the obvious alternatives for small, strategic database applications? I know many users who, for simple 'list maintenance' requirements are very happy using Excel databases. Surely, now that PowerPivot has led the way, it is time for Microsoft to offer a new RAD package for database application development; namely an Excel-based front end for SQL Server Express. In that way, we'll have a powerful and familiar front end, to a scalable database, and a clear upgrade path when an app takes off and needs to go enterprise. Cheers, Tony.

  Read the article

• Do your filesystems have un-owned files ?

  - by darrenm

  As part of our work for integrated compliance reporting in Solaris we plan to provide a check for determining if the system has "un-owned files", ie those which are owned by a uid that does not exist in our configured nameservice.  Tests such as this already exist in the Solaris CIS Benchmark (9.24 Find Un-owned Files and Directories) and other security benchmarks. The obvious method of doing this would be using find(1) with the -nouser flag.  However that requires we bring into memory the metadata for every single file and directory in every local file system we have mounted.  That is probaby not an acceptable thing to do on a production system that has a large amount of storage and it is potentially going to take a long time. Just as I went to bed last night an idea for a much faster way of listing file systems that have un-owned files came to me. I've now implemented it and I'm happy to report it works very well and peforms many orders of magnatude better than using find(1) ever will.   ZFS (since pool version 15) has per user space accounting and quotas.  We can report very quickly and without actually reading any files at all how much space any given user id is using on a ZFS filesystem.  Using that information we can implement a check to very quickly list which filesystems contain un-owned files. First a few caveats because the output data won't be exactly the same as what you get with find but it answers the same basic question.  This only works for ZFS and it will only tell you which filesystems have files owned by unknown users not the actual files.  If you really want to know what the files are (ie to give them an owner) you still have to run find(1).  However it has the huge advantage that it doesn't use find(1) so it won't be dragging the metadata for every single file and directory on the system into memory. It also has the advantage that it can check filesystems that are not mounted currently (which find(1) can't do). It ran in about 4 seconds on a system with 300 ZFS datasets from 2 pools totalling about 3.2T of allocated space, and that includes the uid lookups and output. #!/bin/sh for fs in $(zfs list -H -o name -t filesystem -r rpool) ; do unknowns="" for uid in $(zfs userspace -Hipn -o name,used $fs | cut -f1); do if [ -z "$(getent passwd $uid)" ]; then unknowns="$unknowns$uid " fi done if [ ! -z "$unknowns" ]; then mountpoint=$(zfs list -H -o mountpoint $fs) mounted=$(zfs list -H -o mounted $fs) echo "ZFS File system $fs mounted ($mounted) on $mountpoint \c" echo "has files owned by unknown user ids: $unknowns"; fi done Sample output: ZFS File system rpool/ROOT/solaris-30/var mounted (no) on /var has files owned by unknown user ids: 6435 33667 101 ZFS File system rpool/ROOT/solaris-32/var mounted (yes) on /var has files owned by unknown user ids: 6435 33667ZFS File system builds/bob mounted (yes) on /builds/bob has files owned by unknown user ids: 101 Note that the above might not actually appear exactly like that in any future Solaris product or feature, it is provided just as an example of what you can do with ZFS user space accounting to answer questions like the above.

  Read the article

• Improve Playback Using Enhancements in Windows Media Player 12

  - by DigitalGeekery

  Are you looking for ways to improve the playback of your media in Windows Media Player 12? We’ll show you how to do that by using the enhancements in WMP 12. If you are in Library mode, you’ll need to click the icon at the lower right to switch to Now Playing mode. Right-click anywhere in Media Player while in Now Playing mode, select Enhancements, and select any of the available options.   You can switch between the individual enhancements by clicking the right and left buttons at the top left.   Crossfading and Auto Volume Leveling The Auto Volume Leveling setting is just a simple toggle on and off. If your MP3 or WMA files have volume leveling information values.   You can automatically add volume leveling information values to all files you add to your library by switching to Library view, going to Tools > Options, and selecting Add volume leveling information values for new files on the Library tab. Click OK when finished.   Crossfading will gradually decrease the volume of the song that is ending (fade out) and increase volume of the song that is beginning. Click Turn on Crossfading and then click and drag the slider left or right change the amount of overlap between tracks. Graphic Equalizer The graphic equalizer is toggled on and off by clicking Turn on / Turn off at the top left. You can select pre-defined equalizer settings by music genre by clicking the Default list. The radio buttons on the left allow you to move the sliders individually, in a loose group or a tight group. You can always return to the default settings by clicking Reset. Play Speed Settings Choose a pre-defined settings by clicking Slow, Normal, or Fast. Uncheck the Snap slider to common speeds the move the slider right and left to your desired speed. If nothing else, these settings provide a little fun and amusement. Quiet Mode Quiet mode will level out any sharp volume highs and lows within a single track. Simply toggle the setting on or off and select whether you prefer Medium difference or Little difference by selecting one of the radio buttons. SRS WOW effects SRS WOW effects enhance low-frequency and stereo sound performance. Click Turn on to enable the TruBass and WOW Effect sliders. You can also optimize for your speaker type. Click to switch between Regular, Large, and Headphones. Video Settings Video Settings allow you to adjust the Hue, Brightness, Saturation, and Contrast.   You can also adjust the zoom settings by clicking Select video zoom settings.   Dolby Digital Settings Choose between Normal, Night, and Theater settings to adjust the audio for Dolby Digital content. This setting will only effect media with Dolby Digital sound. Looking for more ways to improve your media experience in WMP 12? Check out how to update metadata and cover art and how to share media with other Windows 7 computers on your home network. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Fixing When Windows Media Player Library Won’t Let You Add FilesInstall and Use the VLC Media Player on Ubuntu LinuxHow To Rip a Music CD in Windows 7 Media CenterStream Media from Windows 7 to XP with VLC Media PlayerInstalling Windows Media Player Plugin for Firefox TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows Check these Awesome Chrome Add-ons iFixit Offers Gadget Repair Manuals Online Vista style sidebar for Windows 7 Create Nice Charts With These Web Based Tools Track Daily Goals With 42Goals Video Toolbox is a Superb Online Video Editor

  Read the article

• Windows Phone 8, possible tablets and what the latest update might mean

  - by Roger Hart

  Microsoft have just announced an update to Windows Phone 8. As one of the five, maybe six people who actually bought a WP8 handset I found this interesting. Then I read the blog post about it, and rushed off to write somewhat less than a thousand words about a single picture. The blog post announces an extra column of tiles on the start screen, and support for higher resolutions. If we ignore all the usual flummery about how this will make your life better, that (and the rotation lock) sounds a little like stage setting for tablets. Looking at the preview screenshot, I started to wonder. What it’s called Phablet_5F00_StartScreenProductivity_5F00_01_5F00_072A1240.jpg Pretty conclusive. If you can brand something a “phablet” and sleep at night you’re made of sterner stuff than I am, but that’s beside the point. It’s explicit in the post that Microsoft are expecting a broader range of form factors for WP8, but they stop short of quite calling out tablet size. The extra columns and resolution definitely back that up, so why stop at a 6 inch “phablet”? Sadly, the string of numbers there don’t really look like a Lumia model number – that would be a bit tendentious even for a speculative blog post about a single screenshot. “Productivity” is interesting too. I get into this a bit more below, but this is a pretty clear pitch for a business device. What it looks like Something that would look quite decent on a 7 inch screen, but something a bit too vertical to go toe-to-toe with the Surface. Certainly, it would look a lot better on a large-factor phone than any of the current models. Those tiles are going to get cramped and a bit ugly if the handsets aren’t getting bigger. What’s on it You have a bunch of missed calls, you rarely text, use a stocks app, and your budget spreadsheet and meeting notes are a thumb-reach away. Outlook is your main form of email. You care enough about LinkedIn to not only install its app but give it a huge live tile. There’s no beating about the bush here, the implicit persona is a corporate exec. With Nokia in the bag and Blackberry pushing daisies, that may not be a stupid play. There’s almost certainly a niche there if they can parlay their corporate credentials into filling it before BYOD (which functionally means an iPhone) reaches the late adopters. The really quite slick WP8 Office implementation ought to help here. This is the face they’ve chosen to present, the cultural milieu they’re normalizing for Windows Phone. It’s an iPhone for Serious Business Grown-ups. Could work, I guess. Does it mean anything? Is the latest WP8 update a sign that we can expect to see tablets running Windows Phone rather than WinRT? Well, WinRT tablets haven’t exactly taken off but I’m not quite going to make a leap like that just from a file name and a column of icons. I feel pretty safe, however, conjecturing that Microsoft would like to squeeze a WP8 “phablet” into the palm of every exec who’s ever grumbled about their Blackberry, and this release might get them a bit closer. If it works well incrementing up to larger devices, then that could be a fair hedge against WinRt crashing and burning any harder in the marketplace.

  Read the article

• DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper! Scotland 2010 - DDDSCOT

  - by Plip

  DDD in Scotland was held on the 8th May 2010 in Glasgow and I was there, not as is uaual at these kind of things as an organiser but actually as a speaker and delegate. The weekend started for me back on Thursday with the arrival of Dave Sussman to my place in Lancashire, after a curry and watching the Electon night TV coverage we retired to our respective beds (yes, I know, I hate to shatter the illusion we both sleep in the same bed wearing matching pijamas is something I've shattered now) ready for the drive up to Glasgow the following afternoon. Before heading up to Glasgow we had to pick up Young Mr Hardy from Wigan then we began the four hour drive back in time... Something that struck me on the journey up is just how beautiful Scotland is. The menacing landscapes bordered with fluffy sheep and whirly-ma-gigs are awe inspiring - well worth driving up if you ever get the chance. Anywho we arrived in Glasgow, got settled intot he hotel and went in search of Speakers for pre conference drinks and food. We discovered a gaggle (I believe that's the collective term) of speakers in the Bar and when we reached critical mass headed off to the Speakers Dinner location. During dinner, SOMEONE set my hair on FIRE. That's all I'm going to say on the matter. Whilst I was enjoying my evening there was something nagging at me, I realised that I should really write my session as I was due to give it the following morning. So after a few more drinks I headed back to the hotel and got some well earned sleep (and washed the fire damage out of my hair). Next day, headed off to the conference which was a lovely stroll through Glasgow City Centre. Non of us got mugged, murdered (or set on fire) arriving safely at the venue, which was a bonus.   I was asked to read out the opening Slides for Barry Carr's session which I did dilligently and with such professionalism that I shocked even myself. At which point I reliased in just over an hour I had to give my presentation, so headed back to the speaker room to finish writing it. Wham, bam and it was all over. Session seemed to go well. I was speaking on Exception Driven Development, which isn't so much a technical solution but rather a mindset around how one should treat exceptions and their code. To be honest, I've not been so nervous giving a session for years - something about this topic worried me, I was concerned I was being too abstract in my thinking or that what I was saying was so obvious that everyone would know it, but it seems to have been well recieved which makes me a happy Speaker. Craig Murphy has some brilliant pictures of DDD Scotland 2010. After my session was done I grabbed some lunch and headed back to the hotel and into town to do some shopping (thus my conspicuous omission from the above photo). Later on we headed out to the geek dinner which again was a rum affair followed by a few drinks and a little boogie woogie. All in all a well run, well attended conference, by the community for the community. I tip my hat to the whole team who put on DDD Scotland!       

  Read the article

• Duke's Choice Award Ceremony

  - by Tori Wieldt

  The 2012 Duke's Choice Awards winners and their creative, Java-based technologies and Java community contributions were honored after the Sunday night JavaOne keynotes. Sharat Chander, Group Director for Java Technology Outreach, presented the awards. "Having the community participate directly in both submission and selection truly shows how we are driving exposure of the innovation happening in the Java community," he said. Apache Software Foundation Hadoop Project The Apache Software Foundation’s Hadoop project, written in Java, provides a framework for distributed processing of big data sets across clusters of computers, ranging from a few servers to thousands of machines. This harnessing of large data pools allows organizations to better understand and improve their business. AgroSense Project Improving farming methods to feed a hungry world is the goal of AgroSense, an open source farm information management system built in Java and the NetBeans platform. AgroSense enables farmers, agribusinesses, suppliers and others to develop modular applications that will easily exchange information through a common underlying NetBeans framework. JDuchess Rather than focus on a specific geographic area like most Java User Groups (JUGs), JDuchess fosters the participation of women in the Java community worldwide. The group has more than 500 members in 60 countries, and provides a platform through which women can connect with each other and get involved in all aspects of the Java community. Jelastic, Inc. Moving existing Java applications to the cloud can be a daunting task, but startup Jelastic, Inc. offers the first all-Java platform-as-a-service (PaaS) that enables existing Java applications to be deployed in the cloud without code changes or lock-in. Liquid Robotics Robotics – Liquid Robotics is an ocean data services provider whose Wave Glider technology collects information from the world’s oceans for application in government, science and commercial applications. The organization features the “father of Java” James Gosling as its chief software architect. London Java Community The second user group receiving a Duke’s Choice Award this year, the London Java Community (LJC) and its users have been active in the OpenJDK, the Java Community Process (JCP) and other efforts within the global Java community. NATO The first-ever Community Choice Award goes to the MASE Integrated Console Environment (MICE) in use at NATO. Built in Java on the NetBeans platform, MICE provides a high-performance visualization environment for conducting air defense and battle-space operations. Parleys.com E-learning specialist Parleys.com, based in Brussels, Belgium, uses Java technologies to bring online classes and full IT conferences to desktops, laptops, tablets and mobile devices. Parleys.com has hosted more than 1,700 conferences—including Devoxx and JavaOne—for more than 800,000 unique visitors. Student Nokia Developer Group This year’s student winner, Ram Kashyap, is the founder and president of the Nokia Student Network, and was profiled in the “The New Java Developers” feature in the March/April 2012 issue of Java Magazine. Since then, Ram has maintained a hectic pace, graduating from the People’s Education Society Institute of Technology in Bangalore, India, while working on a Java mobile startup and training students on Java ME. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is on the front lines of crises around the world, from civil wars to natural disasters. To help facilitate its mission of humanitarian relief, the UNHCR has developed a light-client Java application on the NetBeans platform. The Level One registration tool enables the UNHCR to collect information on the number of refugees and their water, food, housing, health, and other needs in the field, and combines that with geocoding information from various sources. This enables the UNHCR to deliver the appropriate kind and amount of assistance where it is needed. You can read more about the winners in the current issue of Java Magazine.

  Read the article

• SQL Sentry Truth-Telling and Disk Configuration

  - by AjarnMark

  Recently, SQL Sentry told me something about my SQL Server disk configurations that I just didn’t want to believe, but alas, it was true. Several days ago I posted my First Impressions of the SQL Sentry Power Suite.  Today’s post could fall into the category of, “Hey, as long as you have that fancy tool…”  Unfortunately, it also falls into the category of an overloaded worker taking someone else’s word for the truth, not verifying it with independent fact-checking, and then making decisions based on that.  Here’s my story… I’m not exactly an Accidental DBA (or Involuntary DBA as Paul Randal calls it).  I came to this company five years ago as a lead application developer with extensive experience in database design and development.  I worked my way into management, and along the way, took over the DBA responsibilities.  Fortunately, our systems run pretty smoothly most of the time, but I’m always looking for ways to make them better and to fit into my understanding of best practices.  When I took over as DBA, I inherited a SQL 2000 server with about 30 databases on it supporting our main systems, and a SQL 2005 server with multiple instances.  Both of these servers were configured with the Operating System and Application files on the C drive, data files on a different drive letter, and log files on a third drive letter.  Even before I took over as DBA, I verified that this was true with a previous server administrator, and that these represented actual separate disks.  He stated that they did, and I thought that all was well. Then one day, I’m poking around inside the SQL Sentry Performance Advisor, checking out features as I am evaluating whether to purchase the product, and I come across a Disk Configuration section.  The first thing I notice is that the drives do not have the proper partition offset, which was not at all surprising to me given the age of the installation and the relative newness of that topic.  But what threw me for a loop was that the graphic display appeared to be telling me that I did not in fact have three separate drives (or arrays) but rather had two, and that the log files were merely on a separate volume on the same physical array as the OS.  I figured that I must be reading it wrong so I scanned the Help file, but that just seemed to confirm my interpretation.  Then I thought, “there must be something wrong with the demo version of the software!  This can’t be right!”  But just to double-check, I went to our current server admin to talk it over with him, and sure enough, SQL Sentry was telling the truth! I was stunned!  I quickly went through the grieving process…denial…anger…reconciliation.  Here was something that I thought was such a basic truth that was turned upside down.  OK, granted, this wasn’t disastrous.  Our databases didn’t suddenly grind to a halt.  I didn’t get calls late at night inquiring about the sudden downturn in performance.  But it was a bit of a shock to the system, in a good way, to jolt me out of taking what I had believed as the truth for granted, and instead to Trust, but Verify! Yes, before someone else points it out, I know that there are”free” disk management tools built-in to Windows that would have told me the same thing if I had only looked at them; I did not have to buy a fancy tool to tell me that, but the fact is, until I was evaluating the tool, I had just gone with what I was told, and never bothered to check what was actually there. So, what things do you believe to be true but you actually never verified?

  Read the article

• Should I break contract early?

  - by cbang

  About 7 months ago I made the switch from a 5 year permie role (as a support developer in C#) to a contract role. I did this because I was stagnating in my old role. The extra cash contracting is really helping too. Unfortunately my team leader has taken a dislike to me from day 1. He regularly tells me I went out contracting too early, and frequently remarks that people in their 20's have no idea what they are talking about (I am 29). I was recently given the task of configuring our reports via our in house reporting library. It works off of a database driven criteria base, with controls being loaded as needed. The configs can get fairly complex, with controls having various levels of dependency on each other. I had a short time frame to get 50 reports working, and I was told to just get the basic configuration done, after which they will be handed over to the reporting team for fine tuning, then the test team. Our updated system was deployed 2 weeks ago, and it turned out that about 15 reports had issues causing incorrect data to be returned. Upon investigation I discovered that the reporting team hadn't even looked at them, and the test team hadn't bothered to test the reports. In spite of this, my team leader has told me that it is 100% my fault. As a result, our help desk got hit hard. I worked back until 2am that night to fix the highest priority issues (on my wedding anniversary!). The next day I arrive at work at 7:45 am to continue with the fixes. I got no thanks, but keep getting repeatedly told by my manager that "I fucked up" and "this is all my fault". I told my team leader I would spend part of my weekend working to fix the remaining issues. His response was "so you fucking should! you fucked it all up!" in front of the rest of the team. I responded "No worries." and left. I spent a decent chunk of my weekend working on it. Within 2 business days of finding out about the issues, I had all the medium and high priority issues fixed. The only comments my team leader has made to me in the last 2 weeks is to tell me how I have caused a big mess, and to tell me it was all my fault. I get this multiple times a day. If I make any jokes to anyone else in the team, I get told not to be a smartass... even though the rest of the team jokes throughout the day. Apart from that, all I get is angry looks any time I am anywhere near the guy. I don't give any response other than "alright" or silence when he starts giving me a hard time. Today we found out that the pilot release for the next stage has been pushed back. My team leader has said this was caused by me (but the higher ups said no such thing). He also said I have "no understanding of the ramifications of my actions". My question is, should I break contract (I am contracted until June 30) and find another role? No one else in my team will speak up in my favour, as they are contractors too and have no interest in rocking the boat. I could complain to my team leaders boss, but I can't see that helping, as I will still be stuck in the same team. As this is my first contract, I imagine getting the next one will be hard without a reference. I can't figure out if this guy is trying to get me fired up to provoke a confrontation (the guy loves conflict), or if he is just venting anger, or what. Copping this blame day after day is really wearing me down and making me depressed... especially since I have a wife and kid to support).

  Read the article

• 65536% Autogrowth!

  - by Tara Kizer

  Twice a year, we move our production systems to our disaster recovery site.  Last Saturday night was one of those days.  There are about 50 SQL Server databases to be moved to the DR site, which is done via database mirroring.  It takes only a few seconds to failover, but some databases have a bit more involved work such as setting up replication.  Everything went relatively smooth, but we encountered a weird bug on our most mission critical system.  After everything was successfully failed over to the DR site, it was noticed that mirroring was in a suspended state on one of the databases.  We thought we had run into a SQL Server 2005 bug that we had been encountering and were working with Microsoft on a fix.  Microsoft did fix it in both SQL Server 2005 service pack 3 cumulative update package 13 and service pack 4 cumulative update package 2, however SP3 CU13 and SP4 both recently failed on this system so we were not patched yet with the bug fix.  As the suspended state was causing us issues with replication, we dropped mirroring.  We then noticed we had 10MB of free disk space on the mount point where the principal’s data files are stored.  I knew something went amiss as this system should have at least 150GB free on that mount point.  I immediately checked the main database’s data file and was shocked to see an autgrowth size of 65536%.  The data file autogrew right before mirroring went into the suspended state. 65536%! I didn’t have a lot of time to research if this autgrowth problem was a known SQL Server bug, so I deferred that research to today.  A quick Google search yielded no results but emphasis on “quick”.  I checked our performance system, which was recently restored with a copy of the affected production database, and found the autogrowth setting to be 512MB.  So this autogrowth bug was encountered sometime in the last two weeks.  On February 26th, we had attempted to install SQL 2005 SP4 on production, however it had failed (PSS case open with Microsoft).  I suspected that the SP4 failure was somehow related to this autgrowth bug although that turned out not to be the case. I then tweeted (@TaraKizer) about this problem to see if the SQL Server community (#sqlhelp) had any insights.  It seems several people have either heard of this bug or encountered it.  Aaron Bertrand (blog|twitter) referred me to this Connect item. Our affected database originated on SQL Server 2000 and was upgraded to SQL Server 2005 in 2007.  Back on SQL Server 2000, we were using the default file growth setting which was a percentage.  Sometime after the 2005 upgrade is when we changed it to 512MB.  Our situation seemed to fit the bug Aaron referred to me, so now the question was whether Microsoft had fixed it yet. I received a reply to my tweet from Amit Banerjee (twitter) that it had been fixed in SP3 CU1 (KB958004).  My affected system is SP3 CU8, so I was initially confused why we had encountered the bug.  Because I don’t read things fully, I had missed that there are additional steps you have to follow after applying the bug fix.  Amit set me straight.  Although you can read this information in the KB article, I will also copy it here in case you are as lazy as me and miss the most important section of it (although if you are as lazy as me, you won’t have read this far down my blog post): This hotfix will prevent only future occurrences of this problem. For example, if you restore a database from SQL Server 2000 to a SQL Server 2005 instance that contains this hotfix, this problem will not occur. However, if you already have a database that is affected by this problem, you must follow these steps to resolve this problem manually: Apply this hotfix. Set the file growth settings for the affected files to percentage settings, and then set the settings back to megabyte settings. Take the database offline, and then bring it back online. Verify that the values of the is_percent_growth column are correct in the sys.database_files system table and in the sys.master_files system table.

  Read the article

• View AccuWeather Forecasts in Google Chrome

  - by Asian Angel

  Being able to keep an eye on the weather while at work or browsing the Internet is definitely helpful. If you like detailed forecasts then join us as we take a look at the Forecastfox Weather extension for Google Chrome. Getting Started As soon as the Forecastfox Weather extension has finished installing you will automatically be presented with the “Customize Forecastfox Page”. The default setting is for New York with English measurement units. Enter your location into the blank and hit “Enter” to display the listing for your city/area. If you are presented multiple options to choose from simply click on the appropriate listing. Once you have your city/area displayed you will notice that it is possible to have access to weather forecasts for multiple locations. You can easily remove any unneeded listings with the “Remove Link”. For our example we removed the New York listing. Note: Click on desired locations and measurement units to automatically set them as defaults (no save button required). Forecastfox Weather in Action You can hover your mouse over the “Toolbar Button” to see the current weather conditions. Clicking on the “Toolbar Button” opens a popup window with the current conditions, 7 day forecast, and a static satellite image. If desired you can access additional details for the current weather conditions. Clicking on “details” opens a new tab with a nice bit of information such as UV Index, Moon Phases, Cloud Ceiling, etc. Note: AccuWeather.com webpages will have some ads displayed. Perhaps you need the Hourly Forecast… Once again a new tab will be opened with the predicted hourly weather conditions for the current day. Going back to the popup window you may also select a specific day from the 7 day forecast. You will be presented with a “Day & Night” forecast for the chosen day with links to view “Additional Details & Hourly” information. Interested in the satellite image instead? You can click on either of the available links for larger images. Once the new tab is open you can choose from a variety of different satellite images. Conclusion If you have been wanting a solid weather forecast extension for your Chrome browser then Forecastfox Weather is definitely a recommended install. Links Download the Forecastfox Weather extension (Google Chrome Extensions) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Add Weather Forecasts to Google ChromeView Weather Underground Forecasts in Google ChromeView the Time & Date in Chrome When Hiding Your TaskbarView Maps and Get Directions in Google ChromeGoogle Image Search Quick Fix TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Office 2010 Product Guides Google Maps Place marks – Pizza, Guns or Strip Clubs Monitor Applications With Kiwi LocPDF is a Visual PDF Search Tool Download Free iPad Wallpapers at iPad Decor Get Your Delicious Bookmarks In Firefox’s Awesome Bar

  Read the article

• 2014 Conferences - JFokus, JavaLand & GeeCon!

  - by Heather VanCura

  There has been a delay in publishing these past event summaries from early 2014--JFokus in February, JavaLand in March, and GeeCon in May. As we plan for Devoxx UK next week, I found these summaries that did not make it past 'draft' stage.  We had some great successes with the first three events of 2014, a Java developer conference trifecta! Participation topics included Java, the JCP program overall and the Adopt-a-JSR programs.   First up in February was JFokus in Stockholm. The energy and talent in Stockholm is amazing and the conference organizers do a stellar job running it and welcoming the speakers of this event.  I enjoyed the city walk and speaker dinner, as well as many opportunities to interact with conference speakers and attendees, both during and after the conference hours. Reza Rehman invited me to speak during his Java EE 7 lab session about the Adopt-a-JSR program, and I gave a quickie session on the JCP and Adopt-a-JSR.  There was also a late night Birds of a Feather (BoF) session held jointly with Cecelia Borg, Martijn Verburg and Reza Rehman.  This was an interactive conversation with a focus on the Java EE community survey results and encouraging more community participation and collaboration in Java development.  The Java 8 keynote by Georges Saab and Mark Reinhold was also very entertaining,  I was sorry to miss FOSDEM happening the previous weekend this year in Brussels, but I hope to attend in 2015.  Favorite take home gift -- Lambdas cap! In March, the inaugural version of the JavaLand conference happened inside Phantasialand, an amusement park in Germany. Markus Eisele suggested having an Early Adopters area at the conference, which I was keen to implement. In 2013 at Devoxx Belgium we held some activities in the Hackergaren area around Lambdas and Java EE 7, so this was a great opportunity to expand on a more interactive conference format and Andreas Badelt from the program committee helped in the planning for this area.  Daniel Bryant and Mani Sarkar from the London Java Community led some general Adopt-a-JSR discussions and AdoptOpen JDK activities.  JCP Spec Leads, Anatole Tresch from Credit Suisse, leading JSR 354, Money & Currency API, and Ed Burns from Oracle, leading JSR 344, JavaServer Faces 2.2, attended to engage with conference attendees on their JSRs.  Favorite - Stephen Chin's roller coaster video. In May, GeeCon in Krakow was anther awesome conference!  The conference organizers were warm and welcoming and I enjoyed time getting to know the other speakers at the event. There was a JCP and Adopt-a-JSR participation session as well as a moderated panel session on Early Adopters.  We had an amazing panel -- Daniel Bryant, Arun Gupta, Tomasz Borek , and Peter Lawrey. The panel discussed the Adopt-a-JSR and Adopt OpenJDK program, and how the participants work together to get involved and contribute to both the Java SE and Java EE platforms.  If was an interesting discussion and sparked some new ideas on how Java User Groups in Poland and around the world can contribute in a significant and meaningful way to create better and more practical Java standards today and in the future.  Favorite take home gift - GeeCon mug!   These were some of the highlights of the events--looking forward to Devoxx UK next week.  I will publish these details tomorrow!

  Read the article

• OEG11gR2 integration with OES11gR2 Authorization with condition

  - by pgoutin

  Introduction This OES use-case has been defined originally by Subbu Devulapalli (http://accessmanagement.wordpress.com/).  Based on this OES museum use-case, I have developed the OEG11gR2 policy able to deal with the OES authorization with condition. From an OEG point of view, the way to deal with OES condition is to provide with the OES request some Environmental / Context Attributes.   Museum Use-Case  All painting in the museum have security sensors, an alarm goes off when a person comes too close a painting. The employee designated for maintenance needs to use their ID and disable the alarm before maintenance. You are the Security Administrator for the museum and you have been tasked with creating authorization policies to manage authorization for different paintings. Your first task is to understand how paintings are organized. Asking around, you are surprised to see that there isno formal process in place, so you need to start from scratch. the museum tracks the following attributes for each painting 1. Name of the work 2. Painter 3. Condition (good/poor) 4. Cost You compile the list of paintings  Name of Painting  Painter  Paint Condition  Cost  Mona Lisa  Leonardo da Vinci  Good  100  Magi  Leonardo da Vinci  Poor  40  Starry Night  Vincent Van Gogh  Poor  75  Still Life  Vincent Van Gogh  Good  25 Being a software geek who doesn’t (yet) understand art, you feel that price(or insurance price) of a painting is the most important criteria. So you feel that based on years-of-experience employees can be tasked with maintaining different paintings. You decide that paintings worth over 50 cost should be only handled by employees with over 20 years of experience and employees with less than 10 years of experience should not handle any painting. Lets us start with policy modeling. All paintings have a common set of attributes and actions, so it will be good to have them under a single Resource Type. Based on this resource type we will create the actual resources. So our high level model is: 1) Resource Type: Painting which has action manage and the following four attributes a) Name of the work b) Painter c) Condition (good/poor) d) Cost 2) To keep things simple lets use painting name for Resource name (in real world you will try to use some identifier which is unique, because in future we may end up with more than one painting which has the same name.) 3) Create Resources based on the previous table 4) Create an identity attribute Experience (Integer) 5) Create the following authorization policies a) Allow employees with over 20 years experience to access all paintings b) Allow employees with 10 – 20 years of experience to access painting which cost less than 50 c) Deny access to all paintings for employees with less than 10 year of experience OES Authorization Configuration We do need to create 2 authorization policies with specific conditions a) Allow employees with over 20 years experience to access all paintings b) Allow employees with 10 – 20 years of experience to access painting which cost less than 50 c) Deny access to all paintings for employees with less than 10 year of experience We don’t need an explicit policy for Deny access to all paintings for employees with less than 10 year of experience, because Oracle Entitlements Server will automatically deny if there is no matching policy. OEG Policy The OEG policy looks like the following The 11g Authorization filter configuration is similar to :  The ${PAINTING_NAME} and ${USER_EXPERIENCE} variables are initialized by the "Retrieve from the HTTP header" filters for testing purpose. That's to say, under Service Explorer, we need to provide 2 attributes "Experience" & "Painting" following the OES 11g Authorization filter described above.

  Read the article

• Heading out to Dallas GiveCamp 2011

  - by dotgeek

  The day has finally arrived for twelve local charities here in the Dallas area, when they’ll get some help from various local Developers with their website initiative needs at this years Dallas GiveCamp. I’m really looking forward to helping out at this year event and what I hope will be the start of many more GiveCamps to follow. Similar to Habitat for Humanity, where people gather to help build and improve homes for people in need, GiveCamp brings together programmers and equips them with the virtual tools they need to build and improve their existing websites. Tonight is when things will kickoff for this weekends events and teams will start working on their various projects. The building continues on through the night then and all the way through until Sunday afternoon. The end goal for the teams and charities is to have a completed and working website for each charity to begin using and turn over all the production code and digital assets to them. None of this would be possible with out the great sponsors we have returning once again and their donations of various products to help these charities out with their projects, like Telerik's CMS product Sitefinity 4.0, paired with a year of hosting from Verio to mention just a few of them. Just like the skilled builders who might help train volunteers in the use of a nail gun in building a house. Training is also available here on site for the Developers and these local Charities. Giving them all the skills in how to manage and use these products, from site development and then into actual production is a key to the success of this weekends event.     Tonight's training sessions will kick off with a real treat from Giovanni Gallucci, as he speaks about Social Media for NPOs and then later Gabe Sumner from Telerik will begin a training session on Sitefinity for Developers. These training sessions will continue through out the weekend with .Net Nuke and Mojo Portal sessions also planned as well. If you’re a developer and would like to help out in the future, then check in your area and with your local User Groups to find out if you already have a GiveCamp near you to help out. If you don’t have one available, then consider starting up a local GiveCamp and then you too can help Code it Forward. About GiveCamp GiveCamp is a weekend-long event where software developers, designers, and database administrators donate their time to create custom software for non-profit organizations. This custom software could be a new website for the nonprofit organization, a small data-collection application to keep track of members, or a application for the Red Cross that automatically emails a blood donor three months after they’ve donated blood to remind them that they are now eligible to donate again. The only limitation is that the project should be scoped to be able to be completed in a weekend. During GiveCamp, developers are welcome to go home in the evenings or camp out all weekend long. There are usually food and drink provided at the event. There are sometimes even game systems set up for when you and your need a little break! Overall, it’s a great opportunity for people to work together, developing new friendships, and doing something important for their community. At GiveCamp, there is an expectation of “What Happens at GiveCamp, Stays at GiveCamp”. Therefore, all source code must be turned over to the charities at the end of the weekend (developers cannot ask for payment) and the charities are responsible for maintaining the code moving forward (charities cannot expect the developers to maintain the codebase).

  Read the article

• Script to UPDATE STATISTICS with time window

  - by Bill Graziano

  I recently spent some time troubleshooting odd query plans and came to the conclusion that we needed better statistics.  We’ve been running sp_updatestats but apparently it wasn’t sampling enough of the table to get us what we needed.  I have a pretty limited window at night where I can hammer the disks while this runs.  The script below just calls UPDATE STATITICS on all tables that “need” updating.  It defines need as any table whose statistics are older than the number of days you specify (30 by default).  It also has a throttle so it breaks out of the loop after a set amount of time (60 minutes).  That means it won’t start processing a new table after this time but it might take longer than this to finish what it’s doing.  It always processes the oldest statistics first so it will eventually get to all of them.  It defaults to sample 25% of the table.  I’m not sure that’s a good default but it works for now.  I’ve tested this in SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2008.  I liked the way Michelle parameterized her re-index script and I took the same approach. CREATE PROCEDURE dbo.UpdateStatistics ( @timeLimit smallint = 60 ,@debug bit = 0 ,@executeSQL bit = 1 ,@samplePercent tinyint = 25 ,@printSQL bit = 1 ,@minDays tinyint = 30 )AS/******************************************************************* Copyright Bill Graziano 2010*******************************************************************/SET NOCOUNT ON;PRINT '[ ' + CAST(GETDATE() AS VARCHAR(100)) + ' ] ' + 'Launching...'IF OBJECT_ID('tempdb..#status') IS NOT NULL DROP TABLE #status;CREATE TABLE #status( databaseID INT , databaseName NVARCHAR(128) , objectID INT , page_count INT , schemaName NVARCHAR(128) Null , objectName NVARCHAR(128) Null , lastUpdateDate DATETIME , scanDate DATETIME CONSTRAINT PK_status_tmp PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED(databaseID, objectID));DECLARE @SQL NVARCHAR(MAX);DECLARE @dbName nvarchar(128);DECLARE @databaseID INT;DECLARE @objectID INT;DECLARE @schemaName NVARCHAR(128);DECLARE @objectName NVARCHAR(128);DECLARE @lastUpdateDate DATETIME;DECLARE @startTime DATETIME;SELECT @startTime = GETDATE();DECLARE cDB CURSORREAD_ONLYFOR select [name] from master.sys.databases where database_id > 4OPEN cDBFETCH NEXT FROM cDB INTO @dbNameWHILE (@@fetch_status <> -1)BEGIN IF (@@fetch_status <> -2) BEGIN SELECT @SQL = ' use ' + QUOTENAME(@dbName) + ' select DB_ID() as databaseID , DB_NAME() as databaseName ,t.object_id ,sum(used_page_count) as page_count ,s.[name] as schemaName ,t.[name] AS objectName , COALESCE(d.stats_date, ''1900-01-01'') , GETDATE() as scanDate from sys.dm_db_partition_stats ps join sys.tables t on t.object_id = ps.object_id join sys.schemas s on s.schema_id = t.schema_id join ( SELECT object_id, MIN(stats_date) as stats_date FROM ( select object_id, stats_date(object_id, stats_id) as stats_date from sys.stats) as d GROUP BY object_id ) as d ON d.object_id = t.object_id where ps.row_count > 0 group by s.[name], t.[name], t.object_id, COALESCE(d.stats_date, ''1900-01-01'') ' SET ANSI_WARNINGS OFF; Insert #status EXEC ( @SQL); SET ANSI_WARNINGS ON; END FETCH NEXT FROM cDB INTO @dbNameENDCLOSE cDBDEALLOCATE cDBDECLARE cStats CURSORREAD_ONLYFOR SELECT databaseID , databaseName , objectID , schemaName , objectName , lastUpdateDate FROM #status WHERE DATEDIFF(dd, lastUpdateDate, GETDATE()) >= @minDays ORDER BY lastUpdateDate ASC, page_count desc, [objectName] ASC OPEN cStatsFETCH NEXT FROM cStats INTO @databaseID, @dbName, @objectID, @schemaName, @objectName, @lastUpdateDateWHILE (@@fetch_status <> -1)BEGIN IF (@@fetch_status <> -2) BEGIN IF DATEDIFF(mi, @startTime, GETDATE()) > @timeLimit BEGIN PRINT '[ ' + CAST(GETDATE() AS VARCHAR(100)) + ' ] ' + '*** Time Limit Reached ***'; GOTO __DONE; END SELECT @SQL = 'UPDATE STATISTICS ' + QUOTENAME(@dBName) + '.' + QUOTENAME(@schemaName) + '.' + QUOTENAME(@ObjectName) + ' WITH SAMPLE ' + CAST(@samplePercent AS NVARCHAR(100)) + ' PERCENT;'; IF @printSQL = 1 PRINT '[ ' + CAST(GETDATE() AS VARCHAR(100)) + ' ] ' + @SQL + ' (Last Updated: ' + CAST(@lastUpdateDate AS VARCHAR(100)) + ')' IF @executeSQL = 1 BEGIN EXEC (@SQL); END END FETCH NEXT FROM cStats INTO @databaseID, @dbName, @objectID, @schemaName, @objectName, @lastUpdateDateEND__DONE:CLOSE cStatsDEALLOCATE cStatsPRINT '[ ' + CAST(GETDATE() AS VARCHAR(100)) + ' ] ' + 'Completed.'GO

  Read the article

• 5 Ways to Celebrate the Release of Internet Explorer 9

  - by David Wesst

  The day has finally come: Microsoft has released a web browser that is awesome. On Monday night, Microsoft officially introduced the world to the latest edition to its product family: Internet Explorer 9. That makes March 14, 2011 (also known as PI day) the official birthday of Microsoft’s rebirth in the world of web browsing. Just like any big event, you take some time to celebrate. Here are a few things that you can do to celebrate the return of Internet Explorer. 1. Download It If you’re not a big partier, that’s fine. The one thing you can do (and definitely should) is download it and give it a shot. Sure, IE may have disappointed you in the past, but believe me when I say they really put the effort in this time. The absolute least you can do is give it a shot to see how it stands up against your favourite browser. 2. Get yourself an HTML5 Shirt One of the coolest, if not best parts of IE9 being released is that it officially introduces HTML5 as a fully supported platform from Microsoft. IE9 supports a lot of what is already defined in the HTML5 technical spec, which really demonstrates Microsoft’s support of the new standard. Since HTML5 is cool on the web, it means that it is cool to wear it too. Head over to html5shirt.com and get yourself, or your staff, or your whole family, an HTML5 shirt to show the real world that you are ready for the future of the web. 3. HTML5-ify Something Okay, so maybe a shirt isn’t enough for you. Maybe you need start using HTML5 for real. If you have a blog, or a website, or anything out there on the web, celebrate IE9 adding some HTML5 to your site. Whether that is updating old code, adding something new, or just changing your WordPress theme, definitely take a look at what HTML5 can do for you. 4. Help Kill Old IE and Upgrade your Organization See this? This is sad. Upgrading web browsers in an large enterprise or organization is not a trivial task. A lot of companies will use the excuse of not having the resources to upgrade legacy web applications they were built for a specific version of IE and it doesn’t render correctly in legacy browsers. Well, it’s time to stop the excuses. IE9 allows you to define what version of Internet Explorer you would like it to emulate. It takes minimal effort for the developer, and will get rid of the excuses. Show your IT manager or software development team this link and show them how easy it is to make old code render right in the latest and greatest from the IE team. 5. Submit an Entry for DevUnplugged So, you’ve made it to number five eh? Well then, you must be pretty hardcore to make it this far down the list. Fine, let’s take it to the next level and build an HTML5 game. That’s right. A game. Like a video game. HTML5 introduces some amazing new features that can let you build working video games using HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript. Plus, Microsoft is celebrating the launch of IE9 with a contest where you can submit an HTML5 game (or audio application) and have a chance to win a whack of cash and other prizes. Head here for the full scoop and rules for the DevUnplugged. This post also appears at http://david.wes.st

  Read the article

• Standards Corner: Preventing Pervasive Monitoring

  - by independentid

   Phil Hunt is an active member of multiple industry standards groups and committees and has spearheaded discussions, creation and ratifications of industry standards including the Kantara Identity Governance Framework, among others. Being an active voice in the industry standards development world, we have invited him to share his discussions, thoughts, news & updates, and discuss use cases, implementation success stories (and even failures) around industry standards on this monthly column. Author: Phil Hunt On Wednesday night, I watched NBC’s interview of Edward Snowden. The past year has been tumultuous one in the IT security industry. There has been some amazing revelations about the activities of governments around the world; and, we have had several instances of major security bugs in key security libraries: Apple's ‘gotofail’ bug  the OpenSSL Heartbleed bug, not to mention Java’s zero day bug, and others. Snowden’s information showed the IT industry has been underestimating the need for security, and highlighted a general trend of lax use of TLS and poorly implemented security on the Internet. This did not go unnoticed in the standards community and in particular the IETF. Last November, the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) met in Vancouver Canada, where the issue of “Internet Hardening” was discussed in a plenary session. Presentations were given by Bruce Schneier, Brian Carpenter,  and Stephen Farrell describing the problem, the work done so far, and potential IETF activities to address the problem pervasive monitoring. At the end of the presentation, the IETF called for consensus on the issue. If you know engineers, you know that it takes a while for a large group to arrive at a consensus and this group numbered approximately 3000. When asked if the IETF should respond to pervasive surveillance attacks? There was an overwhelming response for ‘Yes'. When it came to 'No', the room echoed in silence. This was just the first of several consensus questions that were each overwhelmingly in favour of response. This is the equivalent of a unanimous opinion for the IETF. Since the meeting, the IETF has followed through with the recent publication of a new “best practices” document on Pervasive Monitoring (RFC 7258). This document is extremely sensitive in its approach and separates the politics of monitoring from the technical ones. Pervasive Monitoring (PM) is widespread (and often covert) surveillance through intrusive gathering of protocol artefacts, including application content, or protocol metadata such as headers. Active or passive wiretaps and traffic analysis, (e.g., correlation, timing or measuring packet sizes), or subverting the cryptographic keys used to secure protocols can also be used as part of pervasive monitoring. PM is distinguished by being indiscriminate and very large scale, rather than by introducing new types of technical compromise. The IETF community's technical assessment is that PM is an attack on the privacy of Internet users and organisations. The IETF community has expressed strong agreement that PM is an attack that needs to be mitigated where possible, via the design of protocols that make PM significantly more expensive or infeasible. Pervasive monitoring was discussed at the technical plenary of the November 2013 IETF meeting [IETF88Plenary] and then through extensive exchanges on IETF mailing lists. This document records the IETF community's consensus and establishes the technical nature of PM. The draft goes on to further qualify what it means by “attack”, clarifying that  The term is used here to refer to behavior that subverts the intent of communicating parties without the agreement of those parties. An attack may change the content of the communication, record the content or external characteristics of the communication, or through correlation with other communication events, reveal information the parties did not intend to be revealed. It may also have other effects that similarly subvert the intent of a communicator.  The past year has shown that Internet specification authors need to put more emphasis into information security and integrity. The year also showed that specifications are not good enough. The implementations of security and protocol specifications have to be of high quality and superior testing. I’m proud to say Oracle has been a strong proponent of this, having already established its own secure coding practices. 

  Read the article

• Best depth sorting method for a Top Down 2D game using a 3D physics engine

  - by Alic44

  I've spent many days googling this and still have issues with my game engine I'd like to ask about, which I haven't seen addressed before. I think the problem is that my game is an unusual combination of a completely 2D graphical approach using XNA's SpriteBatch, and a completely 3D engine (the amazing BEPU physics engine) with rotation mostly disabled. In essence, my question is similar to this one (the part about "faux 3D"), but the difference is that in my game, the player as well as every other creature is represented by 3D objects, and they can all jump, pick up other objects, and throw them around. What this means is that sorting by one value, such as a Z position (how far north/south a character is on the screen) won't work, because as soon as a smaller creature jumps on top of a larger creature, or a box, and walks backwards, the moment its z value is less than that other creature, it will appear to be behind the object it is actually standing on. I actually originally solved this problem by splitting every object in the game into physics boxes which MUST have a Y height equal to their Z depth. I then based the depth sorting value on the object's y position (how high it is off the ground) PLUS its z position (how far north or south it is on the screen). The problem with this approach is that it requires all moving objects in the game to be split graphically into chunks which match up with a physical box which has its y dimension equal to its z dimension. Which is stupid. So, I got inspired last night to rewrite with a fresh approach. My new method is a little more complex, but I think a little more sane: every object which needs to be sorted by depth in the game exposes the interface IDepthDrawable and is added to a list owned by the DepthDrawer object. IDepthDrawable contains: public interface IDepthDrawable { Rectangle Bounds { get; } //possibly change this to a class if struct copying of the xna Rectangle type becomes an issue DepthDrawShape DepthShape { get; } void Draw(SpriteBatch spriteBatch); } The Bounds Rectangle of each IDepthDrawable object represents the 2D Axis-Aligned Bounding Box it will take up when drawn to the screen. Anything that doesn't intersect the screen will be culled at this stage and the remaining on-screen IDepthDrawables will be Bounds tested for intersections with each other. This is where I get a little less sure of what I'm doing. Each group of collisions will be added to a list or other collection, and each list will sort itself based on its DepthShape property, which will have access to the object-to-be-drawn's physics information. For starting out, lets assume everything in the game is an axis aligned 3D Box shape. Boxes are pretty easy to sort. Something like: if (depthShape1.Back > depthShape2.Front) //if depthShape1 is in front of depthShape2. //depthShape1 goes on top. else if (depthShape1.Bottom > depthShape2.Top) //if depthShape1 is above depthShape2. //depthShape1 goes on top. //if neither of these are true, depthShape2 must be in front or above. So, by sorting draw order by several different factors from the physics engine, I believe I can get a really correct draw order. My question is, is this a good way of going about this, or is there some tried and true, tested way which is completely different and has somehow completely eluded me on the internets? And, if this does seem like a good way to remake my draw order sorting, what's the right sorting algorithm for reordering the Bounds Rectangle collision lists, and how do you deal with a Bounds Rectangle colliding with two different object which don't collide with eachother. I know these are solved problems, but I've only been programming for a year so any specific input here will be greatly appreciated. Thanks for reading this far, ye who made it -- sorry it was so long!

  Read the article

• Columnstore Case Study #1: MSIT SONAR Aggregations

  - by aspiringgeek

  Preamble This is the first in a series of posts documenting big wins encountered using columnstore indexes in SQL Server 2012 & 2014.  Many of these can be found in this deck along with details such as internals, best practices, caveats, etc.  The purpose of sharing the case studies in this context is to provide an easy-to-consume quick-reference alternative. Why Columnstore? If we’re looking for a subset of columns from one or a few rows, given the right indexes, SQL Server can do a superlative job of providing an answer. If we’re asking a question which by design needs to hit lots of rows—DW, reporting, aggregations, grouping, scans, etc., SQL Server has never had a good mechanism—until columnstore. Columnstore indexes were introduced in SQL Server 2012. However, they're still largely unknown. Some adoption blockers existed; yet columnstore was nonetheless a game changer for many apps.  In SQL Server 2014, potential blockers have been largely removed & they're going to profoundly change the way we interact with our data.  The purpose of this series is to share the performance benefits of columnstore & documenting columnstore is a compelling reason to upgrade to SQL Server 2014. App: MSIT SONAR Aggregations At MSIT, performance & configuration data is captured by SCOM. We archive much of the data in a partitioned data warehouse table in SQL Server 2012 for reporting via an application called SONAR.  By definition, this is a primary use case for columnstore—report queries requiring aggregation over large numbers of rows.  New data is refreshed each night by an automated table partitioning mechanism—a best practices scenario for columnstore. The Win Compared to performance using classic indexing which resulted in the expected query plan selection including partition elimination vs. SQL Server 2012 nonclustered columnstore, query performance increased significantly.  Logical reads were reduced by over a factor of 50; both CPU & duration improved by factors of 20 or more.  Other than creating the columnstore index, no special modifications or tweaks to the app or databases schema were necessary to achieve the performance improvements.  Existing nonclustered indexes were rendered superfluous & were deleted, thus mitigating maintenance challenges such as defragging as well as conserving disk capacity. Details The table provides the raw data & summarizes the performance deltas. Logical Reads (8K pages) CPU (ms) Durn (ms) Columnstore 160,323 20,360 9,786 Conventional Table & Indexes 9,053,423 549,608 193,903 ? x56 x27 x20 The charts provide additional perspective of this data.  "Conventional vs. Columnstore Metrics" document the raw data.  Note on this linear display the magnitude of the conventional index performance vs. columnstore.  The “Metrics (?)” chart expresses these values as a ratio. Summary For DW, reports, & other BI workloads, columnstore often provides significant performance enhancements relative to conventional indexing.  I have documented here, the first in a series of reports on columnstore implementations, results from an initial implementation at MSIT in which logical reads were reduced by over a factor of 50; both CPU & duration improved by factors of 20 or more.  Subsequent features in this series document performance enhancements that are even more significant. 

  Read the article

• The Power of Goals

  - by BuckWoody

  Every year we read blogs, articles, magazines, hear news stories and blurbs on making New Year’s Resolutions. Well, I for one don’t do that. I do something else. Each year, on January 1, my wife, daughter and I get up early - like before 6:00 A.M. - and find a breakfast place that’s open. When I used to live in Safety Harbor, Florida, that was the “Paradise Café”, which has some of the best waffles around…but I digress. We find that restaurant and have a great breakfast while everyone else is recuperating from the night before. And we bring along a worn leather book that we’ve been writing in since my daughter wasn’t even old enough to read. It’s our book of Goals. A resolution, as it is purely defined, is a decision to change, stop or start an action. It has a sense of continuance, and that’s the issue. Some people decide things like “I’m going to lose weight” or “I’m going to spend more time with my family or hobby”. But a goal is different. A goal tends to have a defined start and end point. It’s something that can be measured. So each year on January 1 we sit down with the little leather book and we make a few - and only a few - individual and family goals. Sometimes it’s to exercise three times a week at the gym, sometimes it’s to save a certain percentage of income, and sometimes it’s to give away some of our possessions or to help someone we know in a specific way. Each person is responsible for their own goals - coming up with them, and coming up with a plan to meet them. Then we write it down in the little leather book. But it doesn’t end there. Each month, we grab the little leather book and read out the goals from that year to each person with a question or two: How are you doing on your goal? And what are you doing about reaching it? Can I help? Am I helping? At the end of the year, we put a checkmark by the goals we reached, and an X by the ones we didn’t. There’s no judgment, there’s no statements, each person is just expected to handle the success or failure in their own way. We also have family goals, and those we work on together. This might seem a little “corny” to some people. “I don’t need to write goals down” they say, “I keep track in my head of the things I do all the time. That’s silly.” But let me give you a little challenge: find a book, get with your family, and write down the things you want to do by the next January 1. Each month, look at the book. You can make goals for your career, your education, your spiritual side, your family, whatever. But if you make your goals realistic, think them through, and think about how you will achieve them, you will be surprised by the power of written goals.

  Read the article

• Silverlight Cream for January 15, 2011 -- #1028

  - by Dave Campbell

  Note to #1024 Swag Winners: I'm sending emails to the vendors Sunday night, thanks for your patience (a few of you have not contacted me yet) In this Issue: Ezequiel Jadib, Daniel Egan(-2-), Page Brooks, Jason Zander, Andrej Tozon, Marlon Grech, Jonathan van de Veen, Walt Ritscher, Jesse Liberty, Jeremy Likness, Sacha Barber, William E. Burrows, and WindowsPhoneGeek. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Building a Radar Control in Silverlight - Part 1" Page Brooks WP7: "Tutorial: Dynamic Tile Push Notification for Windows Phone 7" Jason Zander Training: "WP7 Unleashed Session I–Hands on Labs" Daniel Egan From SilverlightCream.com: Silverlight Rough Cut Editor SP1 Released Ezequiel Jadib has an announcement about the Rough Cut Editor SP1 release, and he walks you through the content, installation and a bit of the initial use. WP7 Unleashed Session I–Hands on Labs Daniel Egan posted Part 1 of 3 of a new WP7 HOL ... video online and material to download... get 'em while they're hot! WP7 Saving to Media Library Daniel Egan has another post up as well on saving an image to the media library... not the update from Tim Heuer... all good info Building a Radar Control in Silverlight - Part 1 This freakin' cool post from Page Brooks is the first one of a series on building a 'Radar Control' in Silverlight ... seriously, go to the bottom and run the demo... I pretty much guarantee you'll take the next link which is download the code... don't forget to read the article too! Tutorial: Dynamic Tile Push Notification for Windows Phone 7 Jason Zander has a nice-looking tutorial up on dynamic tile notifications... good diagrams and discussion and plenty of code. Reactive.buffering.from event. Andrej Tozon is continuing his Reactive Extensions posts with this one on buffering: BufferWithTime and BufferWIthCount ... good stuff, good write-up, and the start of a WP7 game? MEFedMVVM with PRISM 4 Marlon Grech combines his MEFedMVVM with Prism 4, and says it was easy... check out the post and the code. Adventures while building a Silverlight Enterprise application part #40 Jonathan van de Veen has a discussion up about things you need to pay attention to as your project gets close to first deployment... lots of good information to think about Silverlight or not. Customize Windows 7 Preview pane for XAML files Walt Ritscher has a (very easy) XAML extension for Windows 7 that allows previewing of XAML files in an explorer window... as our UK friends say "Brilliant!" Entity Framework Code-First, oData & Windows Phone Client From the never-ending stream of posts that is Jesse Liberty comes this one on EF Code-First... so Jesse's describing Code-First and OData all wrapped up about a WP7 app Sterling Silverlight and Windows Phone 7 Database Triggers and Auto-Identity Sterling and Database Triggers sitting in a tree... woot for WP7 from Jeremy Likness... provides database solutions including Validation, Data-specific concerns such as 'last modified', and post-save processing ... all good, Jeremy! A Look At Fluent APIs Sacha Barber has a great post up that isn't necessarily Silverlight, but is it? ... we've been hearing a lot about Fluent APIs... read on to see what the buzz is. Windows Phone 7 - Part 3 - Final Application William E. Burrows has Part 3 of his WP7 tutorial series up... this one completing the Golf Handicap app by giving the user the ability to manage scores. User Control vs Custom Control in Silverlight for WP7 WindowsPhoneGeek has a great diagram and description-filled post up on User Controls and Custom Controls in WP7... good external links too. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

  Read the article

• Determining explosion radius damage - Circle to Rectangle 2D

  - by Paul Renton

  One of the Cocos2D games I am working on has circular explosion effects. These explosion effects need to deal a percentage of their set maximum damage to all game characters (represented by rectangular bounding boxes as the objects in question are tanks) within the explosion radius. So this boils down to circle to rectangle collision and how far away the circle's radius is from the closest rectangle edge. I took a stab at figuring this out last night, but I believe there may be a better way. In particular, I don't know the best way to determine what percentage of damage to apply based on the distance calculated. Note : All tank objects have an anchor point of (0,0) so position is according to bottom left corner of bounding box. Explosion point is the center point of the circular explosion. TankObject * tank = (TankObject*) gameSprite; float distanceFromExplosionCenter; // IMPORTANT :: All GameCharacter have an assumed (0,0) anchor if (explosionPoint.x < tank.position.x) { // Explosion to WEST of tank if (explosionPoint.y <= tank.position.y) { //Explosion SOUTHWEST distanceFromExplosionCenter = ccpDistance(explosionPoint, tank.position); } else if (explosionPoint.y >= (tank.position.y + tank.contentSize.height)) { // Explosion NORTHWEST distanceFromExplosionCenter = ccpDistance(explosionPoint, ccp(tank.position.x, tank.position.y + tank.contentSize.height)); } else { // Exp center's y is between bottom and top corner of rect distanceFromExplosionCenter = tank.position.x - explosionPoint.x; } // end if } else if (explosionPoint.x > (tank.position.x + tank.contentSize.width)) { // Explosion to EAST of tank if (explosionPoint.y <= tank.position.y) { //Explosion SOUTHEAST distanceFromExplosionCenter = ccpDistance(explosionPoint, ccp(tank.position.x + tank.contentSize.width, tank.position.y)); } else if (explosionPoint.y >= (tank.position.y + tank.contentSize.height)) { // Explosion NORTHEAST distanceFromExplosionCenter = ccpDistance(explosionPoint, ccp(tank.position.x + tank.contentSize.width, tank.position.y + tank.contentSize.height)); } else { // Exp center's y is between bottom and top corner of rect distanceFromExplosionCenter = explosionPoint.x - (tank.position.x + tank.contentSize.width); } // end if } else { // Tank is either north or south and is inbetween left and right corner of rect if (explosionPoint.y < tank.position.y) { // Explosion is South distanceFromExplosionCenter = tank.position.y - explosionPoint.y; } else { // Explosion is North distanceFromExplosionCenter = explosionPoint.y - (tank.position.y + tank.contentSize.height); } // end if } // end outer if if (distanceFromExplosionCenter < explosionRadius) { /* Collision :: Smaller distance larger the damage */ int damageToApply; if (self.directHit) { damageToApply = self.explosionMaxDamage + self.directHitBonusDamage; [tank takeDamageAndAdjustHealthBar:damageToApply]; CCLOG(@"Explsoion-> DIRECT HIT with total damage %d", damageToApply); } else { // TODO adjust this... turning out negative for some reason... damageToApply = (1 - (distanceFromExplosionCenter/explosionRadius) * explosionMaxDamage); [tank takeDamageAndAdjustHealthBar:damageToApply]; CCLOG(@"Explosion-> Non direct hit collision with tank"); CCLOG(@"Damage to apply is %d", damageToApply); } // end if } else { CCLOG(@"Explosion-> Explosion distance is larger than explosion radius"); } // end if } // end if Questions: 1) Can this circle to rect collision algorithm be done better? Do I have too many checks? 2) How to calculate the percentage based damage? My current method generates negative numbers occasionally and I don't understand why (Maybe I need more sleep!). But, in my if statement, I ask if distance < explosion radius. When control goes through, distance/radius must be < 1 right? So 1 - that intermediate calculation should not be negative. Appreciate any help/advice!

  Read the article

• Apprentice Boot Camp in South Africa (Part 2)

  - by Tim Koekkoek

  By Maximilian Michel (DE), Jorge Garnacho (ES), Daniel Maull (UK), Adam Griffiths (UK), Guillermo De Las Nieves (ES), Catriona McGill (UK), Ed Dunlop (UK) Today we have the second part of the adventures of seven apprentices from all over Europe in South-Africa!  Kruger National Park & other experiences Going to the Kruger National Park was definitely an experience we will all remember for the rest of our lives. This trip,organised by Patrick Fitzgerald, owner of the Travellers Nest (where we all stayed), took us from the hustle and bustle of Joburg to experience what Africa is all about, the wild! Although the first week’s training we had prior to this trip to the Kruger was going very well, we all knew this was to be a very nice break before we started the second week of training. And we were right, the animals, scenery and sights we saw were just simply incredible and like I said something we will remember for the rest of our lives. To see lions, elephants, cheetahs and rhinos and many more in a zoo is one thing, but to see them in the wild, in their natural habitat is very special and I personally only realised this from the early 5 am start on the first morning in the Kruger, which was definitely worth it. Not only was it all about the safari, we ate some wonderful food, in particular on the Saturday night, Patrick made us a traditional South African Braai which was one of my favourite meals of the whole two weeks. After the Kruger National Park we had a whole day of traveling back to Johannesburg but even this was made to be a good day by our hosts. Despite the early start on the road it was all worth it by the time we reached God's Window. The walk to the top was made a lot harder by all the steaks we had eaten in the first week but the hard walk was worth it at the top, with views that stretched for miles. The Food The food in South Africa is typically meat and in big amounts, while there we ate a lot of big beef steaks, ribs and kudu sausage. All of the meat we ate was usually cooked with a sauce such as a Barbeque glaze. The restaurants we visited were: Upperdeck Restaurant, with live music and a great terrace to eat, the atmosphere was good for enjoying the music and eating our food. Most of us ate  Spare ribs that weighed 600 kg, with barbecue sauce that was delicious. Die Bosvelder Pub & Restaurant is a restaurant with a very surprising decor, this is because the walls had many of south Africa’s famous animals on them. The food was maybe the best we ate in South Africa. Our orders were: Springbokvlakte Lambs' Neck Stew, beef in gravy and steaks topped with cheese and then more meat on top! All meals were accompanied by a selection of white sauce cauliflower, spinach and zanhorias. Pepper Chair Restaurant, where the specialty is T-Bone steaks of 1.4 kg, but most of us were happy to attempt the 1 kg. Cooked with barbecue sauce over the meat, it was very good!  The only problem was their size causing the  the meat to get cold if you did not eat it very fast! We’re all waiting for our 1.0 kg t-bone steak including our Senior Director EMEA Systems Support Germany & Switzerland: Werner Hoellrigl The Godfather Restaurant, the food here was more meat in abundance. We ate: great ribs, hamburgers, steaks and all accompanied with a small plates of carrot and sauteed spinach, very good. We had two great weeks in South-Africa! If you want to join Oracle, then check http://campus.oracle.com 

  Read the article

• On The Road with the HR Community

  - by Kathryn Perry

  A guest post by Steve Boese, Director, Talent Strategy, Oracle One of the best ways to connect with and to get a feel for what is on the minds of Human Resources leaders is to get out of the office and hit the road. I’ve had the great honor to attend and/or present at a number of events recently, including the massive SHRM Annual Conference, the HR Florida Conference, and Taleo World in Chicago. These events, and many others, offer solution providers, talent management professionals, business leaders, and even more casual observers of the Human Resources field with tremendous opportunities to connect, to share information, and to learn from each other. Attending the conferences also give people a sense of how they can improve and enhance their skills and knowledge, learn about the latest workforce technologies, and bring new and innovative ideas back to their organizations. And sure, the parties and conference swag can be pretty nice as well! If you attend a few of these industry events, one of the most beneficial by-products that you can emerge with -- whether you are on the front lines in HR at your organization, or as we are at Oracle, in the business of developing and delivering innovative and impactful technology solutions to our customers -- is to get a larger sense of the big ideas and major trends, concerns, and challenges facing organizations all across the landscape, and to be able to better understand how your strategies and solutions can be improved with this greater perspective. So what are HR folks discussing and debating? What questions and problems keep them up at night? What are the bloggers and large community of HR social media enthusiasts buzzing about? From my perspective some of the common themes you see over and again across the HR community break down (broadly), into three main areas: Talent attraction - How can we locate, attract, recruit, and hire the best talent possible? What new strategies, approaches, and technologies can help us in this critically important area? What role do external social networks like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter play in the increasingly competitive search for talent? Talent Retention - How can we make sure to keep that talent on our team? What engagement, development, recognition, and compensation tools can help us in this regard? How can we continue, (or become), an employer of choice? What is our unique and compelling employer value proposition? Talent Empowerment - How can we put our employees in the best position to succeed? What can we do to better align our talent with the organization’s mission and goals, while simultaneously providing the best and most driven to succeed individuals a clear path to achieve their career goals and aspirations? How can new technologies, particularly social and collaboration tools help in this area? While these are the ‘big themes’ that I know I have seen this year, certainly they are not really new, nor are they likely to fundamentally change in the next year or two. I think the reason is that at the core of any successful enterprise is a collection of smart, interested, engaged, challenged, and empowered group of people. And that was likely the case 10 or 20 years ago, and will probably be the case 10 or 20 years into the future. But what has changed, and what you can see -- evidenced by simply following the Twitter backchannel for an event and by reading some of the many fantastic HR blogs out there -- is that the HR professional's ability, along with technology solution providers like Oracle, to connect, to more openly share information with each other, and to make each other better in the process, (and to create new, improved, and more innovative solutions), has never been greater. And I think it is with this heretofore unprecedented level of opportunity to connect with other members of the community that HR professionals will be better equipped to help their organizations attract, retain, and empower their teams. We at Oracle HCM look forward to continuing to meet, engage, and connect with the HR community in the coming months. Until then -- follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

  Read the article

• How to recover after embarrassing yourself and your company?

  - by gaearon

  I work in an outsourcing company in Russia, and one of our clients is a financial company located in USA. For the last six months I have been working on several projects for this particular company, and as I was being assigned a larger project, I was invited to work onsite in USA in order to understand and learn the new system. Things didn't work out as well as I hoped because the environment was messy after original developers, and I had to spent quite some time to understand the quirks. However we managed to do the release several days ago, and it looks like everything's going pretty smooth. From technical perspective, my client seems to be happy with me. My solutions seem to work, and I always try to add some spark of creativity to what I do. However I'm very disorganized in a certain sense, as I believe many of you fellas are. Let me note that my current job is my first job ever, and I was lucky enough to get a job with flexible schedule, meaning I can come in and out of the office whenever I want as long as I have 40 hours a week filled. Sometimes I want to hang out with friends in the evening, and days after that I like to have a good sleep in the morning—this is why flexible schedule (or lack of one) is ideal fit for me. [I just realized this paragraph looks too serious, I should've decorated it with some UNICORNS!] Of course, after coming to the USA, things changed. This is not some software company with special treatment for the nerdy ones. Here you have to get up at 7:30 AM to get to the office by 9 AM and then sit through till 5 PM. Personally, I hate waking up in the morning, not to say my productivity begins to climb no sooner than at 5 o'clock, i.e. I'm very slow until I have to go, which is ironic. Sometimes I even stay for more than 8 hours just to finish my current stuff without interruptions. Anyway, I could deal with that. After all, they are paying for my trip, who am I to complain? They need me to be in their working hours to be able to discuss stuff. It makes perfect sense that fixed schedule doesn't make any sense for me. But it does makes sense that it does make sense for my client. And I am here for client, therefore sense is transferred. Awww, you got it. I was asked several times to come exactly at 9 AM but out of laziness and arrogance I didn't take these requests seriously enough. This paid off in the end—on my last day I woke up 10 minutes before final status meeting with business owner, having overslept previous day as well. Of course this made several people mad, including my client, as I ignored his direct request to come in time for two days in the row, including my final day. Of course, I didn't do it deliberately but certainly I could've ensured that I have at least two alarms to wake me up, et cetera...I didn't do that. He also emailed my boss, calling my behavior ridiculous and embarrassing for my company and saying “he's not happy with my professionalism at all”. My boss told me that “the system must work both in and out” and suggested me to stay till late night this day working in a berserker mode, fixing as many issues as possible, and sending a status email to my client. So I did, but I didn't receive the response yet. These are my questions to the great programmers community: Did you have situations where your ignorance and personal non-technical faults created problems for your company? Were you able to make up for your fault and stay in a good relationship with your client or boss? How? How would you act if you were in my situation?

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64  | Next Page >