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• career advice for PhD scientist seeking to program?

  - by C SD

  I'm largely a self-taught programmer. In fact, I first started programming about half way through biophysics grad school, and even though I think I've done some pretty nice work, I've never worked as part of a 'serious' development team that had more than one or two other developers (and I wouldn't hesitate to call them equally inexperienced in software development as a profession). After finishing my PhD I applied to Google, on a lark, since I had some confidence in my abilities, if not necessarily my experience, and I was hoping to maybe slip in and absorb all the experience and talent I'd be surrounded with and become productive enough, quickly enough, that they wouldn't immediately regret their decision. I was excited to actually get invited to interview up at Mountain View (this was ~ mid 2008). Overall, my memory of the interview was very positive, but after close to a three month wait (is that normal?) they ended up turning me down. I wasn't too surprised or disappointed (aside from the uncomfortably long wait) given my unusual background and admitted lack of experience. I decided to continue as a postdoc, but focus on improving my skills rather than doing research. I've done about three years of that, and my honest assessment is that I've learned a ton more, but I really need more of a peer group to maintain or accelerate my growth. Google invited me to interview again about eight months ago, and the interview process went even better than the first time around (I thought), though they again declined to give me an offer. I have to admit this second rejection was much more discouraging. They had insisted I interview even after I mentioned to them that a move on my part was unlikely given that I had bought a house, gotten married, etc. since the first interview. I guess I was hoping they'd at least give me an offer that I could parlay into a more conventional, but still interesting, programming position close to home. So here I am, going on my third year out of grad school, a glorified postdoc and I'm starting to get pretty discouraged. Even though I could technically get 'back-on-track' for a career in science, I have been focusing the vast majority of this time on gaining programming experience rather than on research and publications. The problem is, whenever I look, most job listings have requirements that seem impossibly grandiose and I hesitate to apply. That, or the job/project seems incredibly dull. Ironically, applying to Google struck me as less intimidating. I suspect that either most people are just a lot less realistic than I am when it comes to assessing how long it will take for them to get up to speed, or they don't care; my fear is that I'm just woefully unqualified for any interesting, well paying work. IE: I'm confident I could switch fully back into C++ mode with a couple weeks work (I mostly use C,Python,C# daily) but I don't list myself as being 'proficient' in C++ on my CV, or applying for jobs that 'require' such knowledge. The few applications for which I did feel I was a legitimately good match have not elicited a response. I suspect the following things are potential problems with my application/CV and I would like feedback on: I don't have a CS degree. My BS was in biochemistry and molecular biology, my PhD in biophysics. I took a undergrad and grad level CS course at UCSD and completely killed them, but I don't know how to translate that to my CV effectively. I have a PhD, but it's not in CS... I've been debating if I should remove it from my CV, and wether or not it would then be misleading to list at least some of those years as some kind of 'programming' job (in many respects it was). I think there are sometimes strong stigmas associated with 'self-taught' programmers. I am certainly one of those. I even recognize that some of those stigmas hold a hint of truth, but I really do want to be an asset to a team. How do I communicate that even though I have been largely self-directing for ~8 years I can still take marching orders when needed? Do I just say so outright? Should I just become a lot less scrupulous about the whole process? anecdote: I have a friend who applied for positions where he completely fudged his qualifications to get past the first culling. He was much more honest and forthcoming about his actual qualifications when contacted and he still managed to get invited to a couple of interviews and even got some offers. His balls are larger than mine though.

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• To My 24 Year Old Self, Wherever You Are&hellip;

  - by D'Arcy Lussier

  A decade is a milestone in one’s life, regardless of when it occurs. 2011 might seem like a weird year to mark a decade, but 2001 was a defining year for me. It marked my emergence into the technology industry, an unexpected loss of innocence, and triggered an ongoing struggle with faith and belief. Once you go through a valley, climbing the mountain and looking back over where you travelled, you can take in the entirety of the journey. Over the last 10 years I kept journals, and in this new year I took some time to review them. For those today that are me a decade ago, I share with you what I’ve gleamed from my experiences. Take it for what it’s worth, and safe travels on your own journeys through life. Life is a Performance-Based Sport Have confidence, believe you’re capable, but realize that life is a performance-based sport. Everything you get in life is based on whether you can show that you deserve it. Performance is also your best defense against personal attacks. Just make sure you know what standards you’re expected to hit and if people want to poke holes at you let them do the work of trying to find them. Sometimes performance won’t matter though. Good things will happen to bad people, and bad things to good people. What’s important is that you do the right things and ensure the good and bad even out in your own life. How you finish is just as important as how you start. Start strong, end strong. Respect is Your Most Prized Reward Respect is more important than status or ego. The formula is simple: Performing Well + Building Trust + Showing Dedication = Respect Focus on perfecting your craft and helping your team and respect will come. Life is a Team Sport Whatever aspect of your life, you can’t do it alone. You need to rely on the people around you and ensure you’re a positive aspect of their lives; even those that may be difficult or unpleasant. Avoid criticism and instead find ways to help colleagues and superiors better whatever environment you’re in (work, home, etc.). Don’t just highlight gaps and issues, but also come to the table with solutions. At the same time though, stand up for yourself and hold others accountable for the commitments they make to the team. A healthy team needs accountability. Give feedback early and often, and make it verbal. Issues should be dealt with immediately, and positives should be celebrated as they happen. Life is a Contact Sport Difficult moments will happen. Don’t run from them or shield yourself from experiencing them. Embrace them. They will further mold you and reveal who you will become. Find Your Tribe and Embrace Your Community We all need a tribe: a group of people that we gravitate to for support, guidance, wisdom, and friendship. Discover your tribe and immerse yourself in them. Don’t look for a non-existent tribe just to fill the need of belonging though that will leave you empty and bitter when they don’t meet your unrealistic expectations. Try to associate with people more experienced and more knowledgeable than you. You’ll always learn, and you’ll always remember you have much to learn. Put yourself out there, get involved with the community. Opportunities will present themselves. When we open ourselves up to be vulnerable, we also give others the chance to do the same. This helps us all to grow and help each other, it’s very important. And listen to your wife. (Easter *is* a romantic holiday btw, regardless of what you may think.) Don’t Believe Your Own Press Clippings (and by that I mean the ones you write) Until you have a track record of performance to refer to, any notions of grandeur are just that: notions. You lose your rookie status through trials and tribulations, not by the number of stamps in your passport. Be realistic about your own “experience and leadership” and be honest when you aren’t ready for something. And always remember: nobody really cares about you as much as you think they do. Don’t Let Assholes Get You Down The world isn’t evil, but there is evil in the world. Know the difference and don’t paint all people with the same brush. Do be wary of those that use personal beliefs to describe their business (i.e. “We’re a [religion] company”). What matters is the culture of the organization, and that will tell you the moral compass and what is truly valued. Don’t make someone or something a priority that only makes you an option. Life is unfair and enemies/opponents will succeed when you fail. Don’t waste your energy getting upset at this; the only one that will lose out is you. As mentioned earlier, nobody really cares about you as much as you think they do. Misc Ecclesiastes is bullshit. Everything is certainly *not* meaningless. Software development is about delivery, not the process. Having a great process means nothing if you don’t produce anything. Watch “The Weatherman” (“It’s not easy, but easy doesn’t enter into grownup life.”). Read Tony Dungee’s autobiography, even if you don’t like football, and even if you aren’t a Christian. Say no, don’t feel like you have to commit right away when someone asks you to.

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• Unexpected advantage of Engineered Systems

  - by user12244672

  It's not surprising that Engineered Systems accelerate the debugging and resolution of customer issues. But what has surprised me is just how much faster issue resolution is with Engineered Systems such as SPARC SuperCluster. These are powerful, complex, systems used by customers wanting extreme database performance, app performance, and cost saving server consolidation. A SPARC SuperCluster consists or 2 or 4 powerful T4-4 compute nodes, 3 or 6 extreme performance Exadata Storage Cells, a ZFS Storage Appliance 7320 for general purpose storage, and ultra fast Infiniband switches.  Each with its own firmware. It runs Solaris 11, Solaris 10, 11gR2, LDoms virtualization, and Zones virtualization on the T4-4 compute nodes, a modified version of Solaris 11 in the ZFS Storage Appliance, a modified and highly tuned version of Oracle Linux running Exadata software on the Storage Cells, another Linux derivative in the Infiniband switches, etc. It has an Infiniband data network between the components, a 10Gb data network to the outside world, and a 1Gb management network. And customers can run whatever middleware and apps they want on it, clustered in whatever way they want. In one word, powerful.  In another, complex. The system is highly Engineered.  But it's designed to run general purpose applications. That is, the physical components, configuration, cabling, virtualization technologies, switches, firmware, Operating System versions, network protocols, tunables, etc. are all preset for optimum performance and robustness. That improves the customer experience as what the customer runs leverages our technical know-how and best practices and is what we've tested intensely within Oracle. It should also make debugging easier by fixing a large number of variables which would otherwise be in play if a customer or Systems Integrator had assembled such a complex system themselves from the constituent components.  For example, there's myriad network protocols which could be used with Infiniband.  Myriad ways the components could be interconnected, myriad tunable settings, etc. But what has really surprised me - and I've been working in this area for 15 years now - is just how much easier and faster Engineered Systems have made debugging and issue resolution. All those error opportunities for sub-optimal cabling, unusual network protocols, sub-optimal deployment of virtualization technologies, issues with 3rd party storage, issues with 3rd party multi-pathing products, etc., are simply taken out of the equation. All those error opportunities for making an issue unique to a particular set-up, the "why aren't we seeing this on any other system ?" type questions, the doubts, just go away when we or a customer discover an issue on an Engineered System. It enables a really honed response, getting to the root cause much, much faster than would otherwise be the case. Here's a couple of examples from the last month, one found in-house by my team, one found by a customer: Example 1: We found a node eviction issue running 11gR2 with Solaris 11 SRU 12 under extreme load on what we call our ExaLego test system (mimics an Exadata / SuperCluster 11gR2 Exadata Storage Cell set-up).  We quickly established that an enhancement in SRU12 enabled an 11gR2 process to query Infiniband's Subnet Manager, replacing a fallback mechanism it had used previously.  Under abnormally heavy load, the query could return results which were misinterpreted resulting in node eviction.  In several daily joint debugging sessions between the Solaris, Infiniband, and 11gR2 teams, the issue was fully root caused, evaluated, and a fix agreed upon.  That fix went back into all Solaris releases the following Monday.  From initial issue discovery to the fix being put back into all Solaris releases was just 10 days. Example 2: A customer reported sporadic performance degradation.  The reasons were unclear and the information sparse.  The SPARC SuperCluster Engineered Systems support teams which comprises both SPARC/Solaris and Database/Exadata experts worked to root cause the issue.  A number of contributing factors were discovered, including tunable parameters.  An intense collaborative investigation between the engineering teams identified the root cause to a CPU bound networking thread which was being starved of CPU cycles under extreme load.  Workarounds were identified.  Modifications have been put back into 11gR2 to alleviate the issue and a development project already underway within Solaris has been sped up to provide the final resolution on the Solaris side.  The fixed SPARC SuperCluster configuration greatly aided issue reproduction and dramatically sped up root cause analysis, allowing the correct workarounds and fixes to be identified, prioritized, and implemented.  The customer is now extremely happy with performance and robustness.  Since the configuration is common to other customers, the lessons learned are being proactively rolled out to other customers and incorporated into the installation procedures for future customers.  This effectively acts as a turbo-boost to performance and reliability for all SPARC SuperCluster customers.  If this had occurred in a "home grown" system of this complexity, I expect it would have taken at least 6 months to get to the bottom of the issue.  But because it was an Engineered System, known, understood, and qualified by both the Solaris and Database teams, we were able to collaborate closely to identify cause and effect and expedite a solution for the customer.  That is a key advantage of Engineered Systems which should not be underestimated.  Indeed, the initial issue mitigation on the Database side followed by final fix on the Solaris side, highlights the high degree of collaboration and excellent teamwork between the Oracle engineering teams.  It's a compelling advantage of the integrated Oracle Red Stack in general and Engineered Systems in particular.

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• Use your own domain email and tired of SPAM? SPAMfighter FTW

  - by Dave Campbell

  I wouldn't post this if I hadn't tried it... and I paid for it myself, so don't anybody be thinking I'm reviewing something someone sent me! Long ago and far away I got very tired of local ISPs and 2nd phone lines and took the plunge and got hooked up to cable... yeah I know the 2nd phone line concept may be hard for everyone to understand, but that's how it was in 'the old days'. To avoid having to change email addresses all the time, I decided to buy a domain name, get minimal hosting, and use that for all email into the house. That way if I changed providers, all the email addresses wouldn't have to change. Of course, about a dozen domains later, I have LOTS of pop email addresses and even an exchange address to my client's server... times have changed. What also has changed is the fact that we get SPAM... 'back in the day' when I was a beta tester for the first ISP in Phoenix, someone tried sending an ad to all of us, and what he got in return for his trouble was a bunch of core dumps that locked up his email... if you don't know what a core dump is, ask your grandfather. But in today's world, we're all much more civilized than that, and as with many things, the criminals seem to have much more rights than we do, so we get inundated with email offering all sorts of wild schemes that you'd have to be brain-dead to accept, but yet... if people weren't accepting them, they'd stop sending them. I keep hoping that survival of the smartest would weed out the mental midgets that respond and then the jumk email stop, but that hasn't happened yet anymore than finding high-quality hearing aids at the checkout line of Safeway because of all the dimwits playing music too loud inside their car... but that's another whole topic and I digress. So what's the solution for all the spam? And I mean *all*... on that old personal email address, I am now getting over 150 spam messages a day! Yes I know that's why God invented the delete key, but I took it on as a challenge, and it's a matter of principle... why should I switch email addresses, or convert from [email protected] to something else, or have all my email filtered through some service just because some A-Hole somewhere has a site up trying to phish Ma & Pa Kettle (ask your grandfather about that too) out of their retirement money? Well... I got an email from my cousin the other day while I was writing yet another email rule, and there was a banner on the bottom of his email that said he was protected by SPAMfighter. SPAMfighter huh.... so I took a look at their site, and found yet one more of the supposed tools to help us. But... I read that they're a Microsoft Gold Partner... and that doesn't come lightly... so I took a gamble and here's what I found: I installed it, and had to do a couple things: 1) SPAMfighter stuffed the SPAMfighter folder into my client's exchange address... I deleted it, made a new SPAMfighter folder where I wanted it to go, then in the SPAMfighter Clients settings for Outlook, I told it to put all spam there. 2) It didn't seem to be doing anything. There's a ribbon button that you can select "Block", and I did that, wondering if I was 'training' it, but it wasn't picking up duplicates 3) I sent email to support, and wrote a post on the forum (not to self: reply to that post). By the time the folks from the home office responded, it was the next day, and first up, SPAMfighter knocked down everything that came through when Outlook opend... two thumbs up! I disabled my 'garbage collection' rule from Outlook, and told Outlook not to use the junk folder thinking it was interfering. 4) Day 2 seemed to go about like Day 1... but I hung in there. 5) Day 3 is now a whole new day... I had left Outlook open and hadn't looked at the PC since sometime late yesterday afternoon, and when I looked this morning, *every bit* of spam was in the SPAMfighter folder!! I'm a new paying customer After watching SPAMfighter work this morning, I've purchased a 1-year license, and I now can sit and watch as emails come in and disappear from my inbox into the SPAMfighter folder. No more continual tweaking of the rules. I've got SPAMfighter set to 'Very Hard' filtering... personally I'd rather pull the few real emails out of the SPAMfighter folder than pull spam out of the real folders. Yes this is simply another way of using the delete key, but you know what? ... it feels good :) Here's a screenshot of the stats after just about 48 hours of being onboard: Note that all the ones blocked by me were during Day 1 and 2... I've blocked none today, and everything is blocked. Stay in the 'Light!

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• Cookbook: SES and UCM setup

  - by George Maggessy

  The purpose of this post is to guide you setting up the integration between UCM and SES. On my next post I’ll show different approaches to integrate WebCenter Portal, UCM and SES based on some common scenarios. Let’s get started. WebCenter Content Configuration WebCenter Content has a component that adds functionality to the content server to allow it to be searched via the Oracle SES. To enable the component installation, go to Administration -&gt; Admin Server and select SESCrawlerExport. Click the update button and restart UCM_server1 managed server. Once the managed server is back, we’ll configure the component. In the menu, under Administration you should see SESCrawlerExport. Click on the link. You’ll see the window below. Click on Configure SESCrawlerExport. Configure the values below: Hostname: SES hostname. Feed Location: Directory where data feeds will be saved. Metadata List: List of metadata that will be searchable by SES. After updating the values click on the Update button. Come back to the SESCrawlerExport Administration UI and click on Take Snapshot button. It will create the data feeds in the specified Feed Location. To check if the correct configuration was done, please access the following URL http://&lt;ucm_server&gt;:&lt;port&gt;/cs/idcplg?IdcService=SES_CRAWLER_DOWLOAD_CONFIG&amp;source=default. It should download config file in the format below: &lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt; &lt;rsscrawler xmlns="http://xmlns.oracle.com/search/rsscrawlerconfig"&gt; &lt;feedLocation&gt;&lt;![CDATA[http://adc6160699.us.oracle.com:16200/cs/idcplg?IdcService=SES_CRAWLER_DOWNLOAD_CONTROL&amp;source=default]]&gt;&lt;/feedLocation&gt; &lt;errorFileLocation&gt;&lt;![CDATA[http://adc6160699.us.oracle.com:16200/cs/idcplg?IdcService=SES_CRAWLER_STATUS&amp;IsJava=1&amp;source=default&amp;StatusFeed=]]&gt;&lt;/errorFileLocation&gt; &lt;feedType&gt;controlFeed&lt;/feedType&gt; &lt;sourceName&gt;default&lt;/sourceName&gt; &lt;securityType&gt;attributeBased&lt;/securityType&gt; &lt;securityAttribute name="Account" grant="true"/&gt; &lt;securityAttribute name="DocSecurityGroup" grant="true"/&gt; &lt;securityAttribute name="Collab" grant="true"/&gt; &lt;/rsscrawler&gt; Make sure Account and DocSecurityGroup values are true. SES Configuration Let’s start by configuring the Identity Plug-ins in SES. Go to Global Settings -&gt; System -&gt; Identity Management Setup. Select Oracle Content Server and click the Activate button. We’ll populate the following values: HTTP endpoint for authentication: URL to WebCenter Content. Notice that /cs/idcplg was added at the end of the URL. Admin User: UCM Admin user. This user must have access to all CPOE content. Password: Password to Admin user. Authentication Type: NATIVE. Go back to the Home tab and click on Sources on the top left. Select Oracle Content Server on the right and click the Create button. Configuration URL: URL that point to the configuration file. Example: http://&lt;ucm_hostname&gt;:&lt;port&gt;/cs/idcplg?IdcService=SES_CRAWLER_DOWNLOAD_CONFIG&amp;source=default. User ID: UCM Admin user. Password: Password to Admin user. Click on the Authorization tab and add the appropriate values to the fields below. Make sure you see the ACCOUNT and DOCSECURITYGROUP security attributes at the end of the page. HTTP endpoint for authorization: http://&lt;ucm_hostname&gt;:&lt;port&gt;/cs/idcplg. Display URL prefix: http://&lt;ucm_hostname&gt;:&lt;port&gt;/cs. Administrator user: UCM Admin user. Administrator password. On the Document Types tab, add the documents that should be indexed by SES. As our last step, we’ll configure the Federation Trusted Entities under Global Settings. Entity Name: The user must be present in both the identity management server configured for your WebCenter application and the identity management server configured for Oracle SES. For instance, I used weblogic in my sample. Password: Entity user password.\ Now you are ready to test the integration on the SES UI: http://&lt;ses hostname&gt;:&lt;port&gt;/search/query/.

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• How do I mount my External HDD with filesystem type errors?

  - by Snuggie

  I am a relatively new Ubuntu user and I am having some difficulty mounting my external 2TB HDD. When I first installed Linux my external HDD was working just fine, however, it has stopped working and I have a lot of important files on there that I need. Before my HDD would automatically mount and no worries. Now, however, it doesn't automatically mount and when I try to manually mount it I keep running into filesystem type errors that I can't seem to get past. Below are images that depict my step by step process of how I am trying to mount my HDD along with the errors I am receiving. If anybody has any idea what I am doing wrong or how to correct the issue I would greatly appreciate it. Step 1) Ensure the computer recognizes my external HDD. pj@PJ:~$ dmesg ... [ 5790.367910] scsi 7:0:0:0: Direct-Access WD My Passport 0748 1022 PQ: 0 ANSI: 6 [ 5790.368278] scsi 7:0:0:1: Enclosure WD SES Device 1022 PQ: 0 ANSI: 6 [ 5790.370122] sd 7:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0 [ 5790.370310] ses 7:0:0:1: Attached Enclosure device [ 5790.370462] ses 7:0:0:1: Attached scsi generic sg3 type 13 [ 5792.971601] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] 3906963456 512-byte logical blocks: (2.00 TB/1.81 TiB) [ 5792.972148] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off [ 5792.972162] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 47 00 10 08 [ 5792.972591] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] No Caching mode page found [ 5792.972605] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through [ 5792.975235] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] No Caching mode page found [ 5792.975249] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through [ 5792.987504] sdb: sdb1 [ 5792.988900] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] No Caching mode page found [ 5792.988911] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through [ 5792.988920] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk Step 2) Check if it mounted properly (it does not) pj@PJ:~$ df -ah Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sda1 682G 3.9G 644G 1% / proc 0 0 0 - /proc sysfs 0 0 0 - /sys none 0 0 0 - /sys/fs/fuse/connections none 0 0 0 - /sys/kernel/debug none 0 0 0 - /sys/kernel/security udev 2.9G 4.0K 2.9G 1% /dev devpts 0 0 0 - /dev/pts tmpfs 1.2G 928K 1.2G 1% /run none 5.0M 0 5.0M 0% /run/lock none 2.9G 156K 2.9G 1% /run/shm gvfs-fuse-daemon 0 0 0 - /home/pj/.gvfs Step 3) Try mounting manually using NTFS and VFAT (both as SDB and SDB1) pj@PJ:~$ sudo mount /dev/sdb /media/Passport/ NTFS signature is missing. Failed to mount '/dev/sdb': Invalid argument The device '/dev/sdb' doesn't seem to have a valid NTFS. Maybe the wrong device is used? Or the whole disk instead of a partition (e.g. /dev/sda, not /dev/sda1)? Or the other way around? pj@PJ:~$ sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /media/Passport/ NTFS signature is missing. Failed to mount '/dev/sdb1': Invalid argument The device '/dev/sdb1' doesn't seem to have a valid NTFS. Maybe the wrong device is used? Or the whole disk instead of a partition (e.g. /dev/sda, not /dev/sda1)? Or the other way around? pj@PJ:~$ sudo mount -t ntfs /dev/sdb /media/Passport/ NTFS signature is missing. Failed to mount '/dev/sdb': Invalid argument The device '/dev/sdb' doesn't seem to have a valid NTFS. Maybe the wrong device is used? Or the whole disk instead of a partition (e.g. /dev/sda, not /dev/sda1)? Or the other way around? pj@PJ:~$ sudo mount -t vfat /dev/sdb /media/Passport/ mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdb, missing codepage or helper program, or other error In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try dmesg | tail or so pj@PJ:~$ sudo mount -t ntfs /dev/sdb1 /media/Passport/ NTFS signature is missing. Failed to mount '/dev/sdb1': Invalid argument The device '/dev/sdb1' doesn't seem to have a valid NTFS. Maybe the wrong device is used? Or the whole disk instead of a partition (e.g. /dev/sda, not /dev/sda1)? Or the other way around? pj@PJ:~$ sudo mount -t vfat /dev/sdb1 /media/Passport/ mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdb1, missing codepage or helper program, or other error In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try dmesg | tail or so

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• PanelGridLayout - A Layout Revolution

  - by Duncan Mills

  With the most recent 11.1.2 patchset (11.1.2.3) there has been a lot of excitement around ADF Essentials (and rightly so), however, in all the fuss I didn't want an even more significant change to get missed - yes you read that correctly, a more significant change! I'm talking about the new panelGridLayout component, I can confidently say that this one of the most revolutionary components that we've introduced in 11g, even though it sounds rather boring. To be totally accurate, panelGrid was introduced in 11.1.2.2 but without any presence in the component palette or other design time support, so it was largely missed unless you read the release notes. However in this latest patchset it's finally front and center. Its time to explore - we (really) need to talk about layout.  Let's face it,with ADF Faces rich client, layout is a rather arcane pursuit, once you are a layout master, all bow before you, but it's more of an art than a science, and it is often, in fact, way too difficult to achieve what should (apparently) be a pretty simple. Here's a great example, it's a homework assignment I set for folks I'm teaching this stuff to:  The requirements for this layout are: The header is 80px high, the footer is 30px. These are both fixed.  The first section of the header containing the logo is 180px wide The logo is centered within the top left hand corner of the header  The title text is start aligned in the center zone of the header and will wrap if the browser window is narrowed. It should be aligned in the center of the vertical space  The about link is anchored to the right hand side of the browser with a 20px gap and again is center aligned vertically. It will move as the browser window is reduced in width. The footer has a right aligned copyright statement, again middle aligned within a 30px high footer region and with a 20px buffer to the right hand edge. It will move as the browser window is reduced in width. All remaining space is given to a central zone, which, in this case contains a panelSplitter. Expect that at some point in time you'll need a separate messages line in the center of the footer.  In the homework assigment I set I also stipulate that no inlineStyles can be used to control alignment or margins and no use of other taglibs (e.g. JSF HTML or Trinidad HTML). So, if we take this purist approach, that basic page layout (in my stock solution) requires 3 panelStretchLayouts, 5 panelGroupLayouts and 4 spacers - not including the spacer I use for the logo and the contents of the central zone splitter - phew! The point is that even a seemingly simple layout needs a bit of thinking about, particulatly when you consider strechting and browser re-size behavior. In fact, this little sample actually teaches you much of what you need to know to become vaguely competant at layouts in the framework. The underlying result of "the way things are" is that most of us reach for panelStretchLayout before even finishing the first sip of coffee as we embark on a new page design. In fact most pages you will see in any moderately complex ADF page will basically be nested panelStretchLayouts and panelGroupLayouts, sometimes many, many levels deep. So this is a problem, we've known this for some time and now we have a good solution. (I should point out that the oft-used Trinidad trh tags are not a particularly good solution as you're tie-ing yourself to an HTML table based layout in that case with a host of attendent issues in resize and bi-di behavior, but I digress.) So, tadaaa, I give to you panelGridLayout. PanelGrid, as the name suggests takes a grid like (dare I say slightly gridbag-like) approach to layout, dividing your layout into rows and colums with margins, sizing, stretch behaviour, colspans and rowspans all rolled in, all without the use of inlineStyle. As such, it provides for a much more powerful and consise way of defining a layout such as the one above that is actually simpler and much more logical to design. The basic building blocks are the panelGridLayout itself, gridRow and gridCell. Your content sits inside the cells inside the rows, all helpfully allowing both streching, valign and halign definitions without the need to nest further panelGroupLayouts. So much simpler!  If I break down the homework example above my nested comglomorate of 12 containers and spacers can be condensed down into a single panelGrid with 3 rows and 5 cell definitions (39 lines of source reduced to 24 in the case of the sample). What's more, the actual runtime representation in the browser DOM is much, much simpler, and clean, with basically one DIV per cell (Note that just because the panelGridLayout semantics looks like an HTML table does not mean that it's rendered that way!) . Another hidden benefit is the runtime cost. Because we can use a single layout to achieve much more complex geometries the client side layout code inside the browser is having to work a lot less. This will be a real benefit if your application needs to run on lower powered clients such as netbooks or tablets. So, it's time, if you're on 11.1.2.2 or above, to smile warmly at your panelStretchLayouts, wrap the blanket around it's knees and wheel it off to the Sunset Retirement Home for a well deserved rest. There's a new kid on the block and it wants to be your friend. 

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• Where would a spam bot be located?

  - by Tim

  I have a hosted website using a free hosting service, I received an email this afternoon saying that I have been suspended because my account has been compromised. Basically, someone is using my email account to mass send spam. I've changed all the passwords and everything but when my Gmail pulls the emails from the host it's still downloading loads of spam messages that show like this: This message was created automatically by mail delivery software. A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed: [email protected] SMTP error from remote mail server after end of data: host 198.91.80.251 [198.91.80.251]: 554 5.6.0 id=23634-03 - Rejected by MTA on relaying, from MTA([127.0.0.1]:10030): 554 Error: This email address has lost rights to send email from the system ------ This is a copy of the message, including all the headers. ------ Return-path: <[email protected]> Received: from keenesystems.com ([66.135.33.211]:2370 helo=server211) by absolut.x10hosting.com with esmtpsa (TLSv1:RC4-MD5:128) (Exim 4.77) (envelope-from <[email protected]>) id 1TGwSW-002hHe-Lc for [email protected]; Wed, 26 Sep 2012 13:35:44 -0500 MIME-Version: 1.0 Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2012 13:35:43 -0500 X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-Mailer: Ximian Evolution 3.9.9 (8.5.3-6) Subject: New staff members wanted at Auction It Online From: [email protected] Reply-To: [email protected] To: "Nadia Monti" <[email protected]> Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Message-ID: <OUTLOOK-IDM-9aed7054-6a3e-e1a4-1d5c-3e73377652a6@server211> Date : 26 September 2012=0ATime : 13:35=0ASender : Dennise Halcomb Head = Office Manager of RJ Auction Drop-Off Int.=0A=0ANice to meet you Nadia M= onti=0A=0ARJ ADO Ltd., a USA based company, offers a significant amount = of goods worldwide for our customers on eBay and other auction venues. = Our company's main target is to provide a suitable and cost-effective se= rvice for any person, company or fundraising company. The main purpose o= f the administrative assistant / sales support representative is to cont= ribute to the sales force and add convenience to our cost-effective serv= ice dedicated to individuals, businesses, and organizations worldwide. O= ur HR department obtained your resume from one of the various job-orient= ed websites just to offer you this post.=0A=0AWorking Schedule: This is = a part time and home-based offer. You won't need to spend more than 3 ho= urs each day. Your =0Aschedule will be flexible.=0A=0ASalary: At the end= of the trial period (it lasts for 1 month) you will be paid 1,800 EUR. = With the average volume of clients your overall income will raise up to = 3,000 EUR per month. After the trial period is over your base salary wil= l grow up to 2,500 EUR per month, so you will earn 5% commission from th= e transactions completed.=0A=0AWhere?: Italy Wide. As it is a stay at ho= me position all the communication will be carried out via email and via = phone.=0A=0ARequirements: Access to the internet during the workday and = basic microsoft office skills are needed. Basic knowledge of English is = required (most of the contacts will be in English).=0A=0ACosts and Fees:= There are NO costs at any time for our employees. All fees related to t= his position are covered by the RJ ADO Co. Ltd..=0A=0AFurther Hiring Pro= cess: If you are interested in position we offer, please reply to this e= mail and send us the copy of your resume for verification.=0A=0AAfter re= viewing all of the received applications we will reply to successful app= licants only. Then we'll offer to these successful applicants a position= within our firm on a trial period basis for one month beginning from th= e date you sign a trial agreement. During this trial period you will rec= eive full guidance and support. Employees on a one monthly trial period = are evaluated at least one week prior to the end of their trial. During = the trial, your supervisor can recommend termination. At the end of the = trial period, the supervisor can offer continued employment, extension o= f trial period, or termination. After the trial period you may ask for m= ore hours or continue full-time.=0A=0AIf you are interested in this posi= tion, just reply to this email and send any questions you have and the c= opy of your resume for verification.=0A=0AThank You,=0AHR-Manager of RJ = ADO Co. Ltd.=0A=0APermission Settings=0AYou have been referred to RJ Auc= tion Drop-Off If you feel you received this email in error or do not wis= h to receive future messages, please reply to this message with "remove"= in the subject field. We will immediately update our database according= ly. =0AWe apologize for any inconvenience caused.=0A=0ARJ Auction Drop-O= ff Co. Ltd. I'm not aware of how this has happened. I'm not sure how anyone could have got hold of my password. It's a simple wordpress install, at some point recently my host went down and there was a fresh install of wordpress with default admin accounts, I have a feeling it could be something to do with this. My question is, even though I've changed all my passwords it's all still happening, is there annywhere in paticular this script would be stored on my host. I really can't deal with having my hosting account suspended and my email account sending all this spam.

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• JavaDay Taipei 2014 Trip Report

  - by reza_rahman

  JavaDay Taipei 2014 was held at the Taipei International Convention Center on August 1st. Organized by Oracle University, it is one of the largest Java developer events in Taiwan. This was another successful year for JavaDay Taipei with a fully sold out venue packed with youthful, energetic developers (this was my second time at the event and I have already been invited to speak again next year!). In addition to Oracle speakers like me, Steve Chin and Naveen Asrani, the event also featured a bevy of local speakers including Taipei Java community leaders. Topics included Java SE, Java EE, JavaFX, cloud and Big Data. It was my pleasure and privilege to present one of the opening keynotes for the event. I presented my session on Java EE titled "JavaEE.Next(): Java EE 7, 8, and Beyond". I covered the changes in Java EE 7 as well as what's coming in Java EE 8. I demoed the Cargo Tracker Java EE BluePrints. I also briefly talked about Adopt-a-JSR for Java EE 8. The slides for the keynote are below (click here to download and view the actual PDF): It appears your Web browser is not configured to display PDF files. No worries, just click here to download the PDF file. In the afternoon I did my JavaScript + Java EE 7 talk titled "Using JavaScript/HTML5 Rich Clients with Java EE 7". This talk is basically about aligning EE 7 with the emerging JavaScript ecosystem (specifically AngularJS). The talk was completely packed. The slide deck for the talk is here: JavaScript/HTML5 Rich Clients Using Java EE 7 from Reza Rahman The demo application code is posted on GitHub. The code should be a helpful resource if this development model is something that interests you. Do let me know if you need help with it but the instructions should be fairly self-explanatory. I am delivering this material at JavaOne 2014 as a two-hour tutorial. This should give me a little more bandwidth to dig a little deeper, especially on the JavaScript end. I finished off Java Day Taipei with my talk titled "Using NoSQL with ~JPA, EclipseLink and Java EE" (this was the last session of the conference). The talk covers an interesting gap that there is surprisingly little material on out there. The talk has three parts -- a birds-eye view of the NoSQL landscape, how to use NoSQL via a JPA centric facade using EclipseLink NoSQL, Hibernate OGM, DataNucleus, Kundera, Easy-Cassandra, etc and how to use NoSQL native APIs in Java EE via CDI. The slides for the talk are here: Using NoSQL with ~JPA, EclipseLink and Java EE from Reza Rahman The JPA based demo is available here, while the CDI based demo is available here. Both demos use MongoDB as the data store. Do let me know if you need help getting the demos up and running. After the event the Oracle University folks hosted a reception in the evening which was very well attended by organizers, speakers and local Java community leaders. I am extremely saddened by the fact that this otherwise excellent trip was scarred by terrible tragedy. After the conference I joined a few folks for a hike on the Maokong Mountain on Saturday. The group included friends in the Taiwanese Java community including Ian and Robbie Cheng. Without warning, fatal tragedy struck on a remote part of the trail. Despite best efforts by us, the excellent Taiwanese Emergency Rescue Team and World class Taiwanese physicians we were unable to save our friend Robbie Cheng's life. Robbie was just thirty-four years old and is survived by his younger brother, mother and father. Being the father of a young child myself, I can only imagine the deep sorrow that this senseless loss unleashes. Robbie was a key member of the Taiwanese Java community and a Java Evangelist at Sun at one point. Ironically the only picture I was able to take of the trail was mere moments before tragedy. I thought I should place him in that picture in profoundly respectful memoriam: Perhaps there is some solace in the fact that there is something inherently honorable in living a bright life, dying young and meeting one's end on a beautiful remote mountain trail few venture to behold let alone attempt to ascend in a long and tired lifetime. Perhaps I'd even say it's a fate I would not entirely regret facing if it were my own. With that thought in mind it seems appropriate to me to quote some lyrics from the song "Runes to My Memory" by legendary Swedish heavy metal band Amon Amarth idealizing a fallen Viking warrior cut down in his prime: "Here I lie on wet sand I will not make it home I clench my sword in my hand Say farewell to those I love When I am dead Lay me in a mound Place my weapons by my side For the journey to Hall up high When I am dead Lay me in a mound Raise a stone for all to see Runes carved to my memory" I submit my deepest condolences to Robbie's family and hope my next trip to Taiwan ends in a less somber note.

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• Taking the Plunge - or Dipping Your Toe - into the Fluffy IAM Cloud by Paul Dhanjal (Simeio Solutions)

  - by Greg Jensen

  In our last three posts, we’ve examined the revolution that’s occurring today in identity and access management (IAM). We looked at the business drivers behind the growth of cloud-based IAM, the shortcomings of the old, last-century IAM models, and the new opportunities that federation, identity hubs and other new cloud capabilities can provide by changing the way you interact with everyone who does business with you. In this, our final post in the series, we’ll cover the key things you, the enterprise architect, should keep in mind when considering moving IAM to the cloud. Invariably, what starts the consideration process is a burning business need: a compliance requirement, security vulnerability or belt-tightening edict. Many on the business side view IAM as the “silver bullet” – and for good reason. You can almost always devise a solution using some aspect of IAM. The most critical question to ask first when using IAM to address the business need is, simply: is my solution complete? Typically, “business” is not focused on the big picture. Understandably, they’re focused instead on the need at hand: Can we be HIPAA compliant in 6 months? Can we tighten our new hire, employee transfer and termination processes? What can we do to prevent another password breach? Can we reduce our service center costs by the end of next quarter? The business may not be focused on the complete set of services offered by IAM but rather a single aspect or two. But it is the job – indeed the duty – of the enterprise architect to ensure that all aspects are being met. It’s like remodeling a house but failing to consider the impact on the foundation, the furnace or the zoning or setback requirements. While the homeowners may not be thinking of such things, the architect, of course, must. At Simeio Solutions, the way we ensure that all aspects are being taken into account – to expose any gaps or weaknesses – is to assess our client’s IAM capabilities against a five-step maturity model ranging from “ad hoc” to “optimized.” The model we use is similar to Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) developed by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) at Carnegie Mellon University. It’s based upon some simple criteria, which can provide a visual representation of how well our clients fair when evaluated against four core categories: ·         Program Governance ·         Access Management (e.g., Single Sign-On) ·         Identity and Access Governance (e.g., Identity Intelligence) ·         Enterprise Security (e.g., DLP and SIEM) Often our clients believe they have a solution with all the bases covered, but the model exposes the gaps or weaknesses. The gaps are ideal opportunities for the cloud to enter into the conversation. The complete process is straightforward: 1.    Look at the big picture, not just the immediate need – what is our roadmap and how does this solution fit? 2.    Determine where you stand with respect to the four core areas – what are the gaps? 3.    Decide how to cover the gaps – what role can the cloud play? Returning to our home remodeling analogy, at some point, if gaps or weaknesses are discovered when evaluating the complete impact of the proposed remodel – if the existing foundation wouldn’t support the new addition, for example – the owners need to decide if it’s time to move to a new house instead of trying to remodel the old one. However, with IAM it’s not an either-or proposition – i.e., either move to the cloud or fix the existing infrastructure. It’s possible to use new cloud technologies just to cover the gaps. Many of our clients start their migration to the cloud this way, dipping in their toe instead of taking the plunge all at once. Because our cloud services offering is based on the Oracle Identity and Access Management Suite, we can offer a tremendous amount of flexibility in this regard. The Oracle platform is not a collection of point solutions, but rather a complete, integrated, best-of-breed suite. Yet it’s not an all-or-nothing proposition. You can choose just the features and capabilities you need using a pay-as-you-go model, incrementally turning on and off services as needed. Better still, all the other capabilities are there, at the ready, whenever you need them. Spooling up these cloud-only services takes just a fraction of the time it would take a typical organization to deploy internally. SLAs in the cloud may be higher than on premise, too. And by using a suite of software that’s complete and integrated, you can dramatically lower cost and complexity. If your in-house solution cannot be migrated to the cloud, you might consider using hardware appliances such as Simeio’s Cloud Interceptor to extend your enterprise out into the network. You might also consider using Expert Managed Services. Cost is usually the key factor – not just development costs but also operational sustainment costs. Talent or resourcing issues often come into play when thinking about sustaining a program. Expert Managed Services such as those we offer at Simeio can address those concerns head on. In a cloud offering, identity and access services lend to the new paradigms described in my previous posts. Most importantly, it allows us all to focus on what we're meant to do – provide value, lower costs and increase security to our respective organizations. It’s that magic “silver bullet” that business knew you had all along. If you’d like to talk more, you can find us at simeiosolutions.com.

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• Using Definition of Done to Drive Agile Maturity

  - by Dylan Smith

  I’ve been an Agile Coach at a lot of different clients over the years, and I want to share an approach I use to help them adopt and mature over time. It’s important to realize that “Agile” is not a black/white yes/no thing. Teams can be varying degrees of agile. I think of this as their agile maturity level. When I coach teams I want them to start out being a little agile, and get more agile as they mature. The approach I teach them is to use the definition of done as a technique to continuously improve their agile maturity over time. We’re probably all familiar with the concept of “Done Done” that represents what *actually* being done a feature means. Not just when a developer says he’s done right after he writes that last line of code that makes the feature kind-of work. Done Done means the coding is done, it’s been tested, installers and deployment packages have been created, user manuals have been updated, architecture docs have been updated, etc. To enable teams to internalize the concept of “Done Done”, they usually get together and come up with their Definition of Done (DoD) that defines all the activities that need to be completed before a feature is considered Done Done. The Done Done technique typically is applied only to features (aka User Stories). What I do is extend this to apply to several concepts such as User Stories, Sprints, Releases (and sometimes Check-Ins). During project kick-off I’ll usually sit down with the team and go through an exercise of creating DoD’s for each of these concepts (Stories/Sprints/Releases). We’ll usually start by just brainstorming a bunch of activities that could end up in these various DoD’s. Here’s some examples: Code Reviews StyleCop FxCop User Manuals Updated Architecture Docs Updated Tested by QA Tested by UAT Installers Created Support Knowledge Base Updated Deployment Instructions (for Ops) written Automated Unit Tests Run Automated Integration Tests Run Then we start by arranging these activities into the place they occur today (e.g. Do you do UAT testing only once per release? every sprint? every feature?). If the team was previously Waterfall most of these activities probably end up in the Release DoD. An extremely mature agile team would probably have most of these activities in the DoD for the User Stories (because an extremely mature agile team will probably do continuous deployment and release every story). So what we need to do as a team, is work to move these activities from their current home (Release DoD) down into the Sprint DoD and eventually into the User Story DoD (and maybe into the lower-level Check-In DoD if we decide to use that). We don’t have to move them all down to User Story immediately, but as a team we figure out what we think we’re capable of moving down to the Sprint cycle, and Story cycle immediately, and that becomes our starting DoD’s. Over time the team makes an effort to continue moving activities down from Release->Sprint->Story as they become more agile and more mature. I try to encourage them to envision a world in which they deploy to production as each User Story is completed. They would need to be updating User Manuals, creating installers, doing UAT testing (typical Release cycle activities) on every single User Story. They may never actually reach that point, but they should envision that, and strive to keep driving the activities down closer to the User Story cycle s they mature. This is a great technique to give a team an easy-to-follow roadmap to mature their agile practices over time. Sure there’s other aspects to maturity outside of this, but it’s a great technique, that’s easy to visualize, to drive agility into the team. Just keep moving those activities (aka “gates”) down the board from Release->Sprint->Story. I’ll try to give an example of what a recent client of mine had for their DoD’s (this is from memory, so probably not 100% accurate): Release Create/Update deployment Instructions For Ops Instructional Videos Updated Run manual regression test suite UAT Testing In this case that meant deploying to an environment shared across the enterprise that mirrored production and asking other business groups to test their own apps to ensure we didn’t break anything outside our system Sprint Deploy to UAT Environment But not necessarily actually request UAT testing occur User Guides updated Sprint Features Video Created In this case we decided to create a video each sprint showing off the progress (video version of Sprint Demo) User Story Manual Test scripts developed and run Tested by BA Deployed in shared QA environment Using automated deployment process Peer Code Review Code Check-In Compiled (warning-free) Passes StyleCop Passes FxCop Create installer packages Run Automated Tests Run Automated Integration Tests PS – One of my clients had a great question when we went through this activity. They said that if a Sprint is by definition done when the end-date rolls around (time-boxed), isn’t a DoD on a sprint meaningless – it’s done on the end-date regardless of whether those other activities are complete or not? My answer is that while that statement is true – the sprint is done regardless when the end date rolls around – if the DoD activities haven’t been completed I would consider the Sprint a failure (similar to not completing what was committed/planned – failure may be too strong a word but you get the idea). In the Retrospective that will become an agenda item to discuss and understand why we weren’t able to complete the activities we agreed would need to be completed each Sprint.

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• Separating text strings into a table of individual words in SQL via XML.

  - by Phil Factor

  p.MsoNormal {margin-top:0cm; margin-right:0cm; margin-bottom:10.0pt; margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; } Nearly nine years ago, Mike Rorke of the SQL Server 2005 XML team blogged ‘Querying Over Constructed XML Using Sub-queries’. I remember reading it at the time without being able to think of a use for what he was demonstrating. Just a few weeks ago, whilst preparing my article on searching strings, I got out my trusty function for splitting strings into words and something reminded me of the old blog. I’d been trying to think of a way of using XML to split strings reliably into words. The routine I devised turned out to be slightly slower than the iterative word chop I’ve always used in the past, so I didn’t publish it. It was then I suddenly remembered the old routine. Here is my version of it. I’ve unwrapped it from its obvious home in a function or procedure just so it is easy to appreciate. What it does is to chop a text string into individual words using XQuery and the good old nodes() method. I’ve benchmarked it and it is quicker than any of the SQL ways of doing it that I know about. Obviously, you can’t use the trick I described here to do it, because it is awkward to use REPLACE() on 1…n characters of whitespace. I’ll carry on using my iterative function since it is able to tell me the location of each word as a character-offset from the start, and also because this method leaves punctuation in (removing it takes time!). However, I can see other uses for this in passing lists as input or output parameters, or as return values.   if exists (Select * from sys.xml_schema_collections where name like 'WordList')   drop XML SCHEMA COLLECTION WordList go create xml schema collection WordList as ' <xs:schema xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"> <xs:element name="words">        <xs:simpleType>               <xs:list itemType="xs:string" />        </xs:simpleType> </xs:element> </xs:schema>'   go   DECLARE @string VARCHAR(MAX) –we'll get some sample data from the great Ogden Nash Select @String='This is a song to celebrate banks, Because they are full of money and you go into them and all you hear is clinks and clanks, Or maybe a sound like the wind in the trees on the hills, Which is the rustling of the thousand dollar bills. Most bankers dwell in marble halls, Which they get to dwell in because they encourage deposits and discourage withdrawals, And particularly because they all observe one rule which woe betides the banker who fails to heed it, Which is you must never lend any money to anybody unless they don''t need it. I know you, you cautious conservative banks! If people are worried about their rent it is your duty to deny them the loan of one nickel, yes, even one copper engraving of the martyred son of the late Nancy Hanks; Yes, if they request fifty dollars to pay for a baby you must look at them like Tarzan looking at an uppity ape in the jungle, And tell them what do they think a bank is, anyhow, they had better go get the money from their wife''s aunt or ungle. But suppose people come in and they have a million and they want another million to pile on top of it, Why, you brim with the milk of human kindness and you urge them to accept every drop of it, And you lend them the million so then they have two million and this gives them the idea that they would be better off with four, So they already have two million as security so you have no hesitation in lending them two more, And all the vice-presidents nod their heads in rhythm, And the only question asked is do the borrowers want the money sent or do they want to take it withm. Because I think they deserve our appreciation and thanks, the jackasses who go around saying that health and happi- ness are everything and money isn''t essential, Because as soon as they have to borrow some unimportant money to maintain their health and happiness they starve to death so they can''t go around any more sneering at good old money, which is nothing short of providential. '   –we now turn it into XML declare @xml_data xml(WordList)  set @xml_data='<words>'+ replace(@string,'&', '&amp;')+'</words>'    select T.ref.value('.', 'nvarchar(100)')  from (Select @xml_data.query('                      for $i in data(/words) return                      element li { $i }               '))  A(list) cross apply A.List.nodes('/li') T(ref)     …which gives (truncated, of course)…

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• What Counts for A DBA - Logic

  - by drsql

  "There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who will always wonder why there are only two items in my list and those who will figured it out the first time they saw this very old joke."  Those readers who will give up immediately and get frustrated with me for not explaining it to them are not likely going to be great technical professionals of any sort, much less a programmer or administrator who will be constantly dealing with the common failures that make up a DBA's day.  Many of these people will stare at this like a dog staring at a traffic signal and still have no more idea of how to decipher the riddle. Without explanation they will give up, call the joke "stupid" and, feeling quite superior, walk away indignantly to their job likely flipping patties of meat-by-product. As a data professional or any programmer who has strayed  to this very data-oriented blog, you would, if you are worth your weight in air, either have recognized immediately what was going on, or felt a bit ignorant.  Your friends are chuckling over the joke, but why is it funny? Unfortunately you left your smartphone at home on the dresser because you were up late last night programming and were running late to work (again), so you will either have to fake a laugh or figure it out.  Digging through the joke, you figure out that the word "two" is the most important part, since initially the joke mentioned 10. Hmm, why did they spell out two, but not ten? Maybe 10 could be interpreted a different way?  As a DBA, this sort of logic comes into play every day, and sometimes it doesn't involve nerdy riddles or Star Wars folklore.  When you turn on your computer and get the dreaded blue screen of death, you don't immediately cry to the help desk and sit on your thumbs and whine about not being able to work. Do that and your co-workers will question your nerd-hood; I know I certainly would. You figure out the problem, and when you have it narrowed down, you call the help desk and tell them what the problem is, usually having to explain that yes, you did in fact try to reboot before calling.  Of course, sometimes humility does come in to play when you reach the end of your abilities, but the ‘end of abilities’ is not something any of us recognize readily. It is handy to have the ability to use logic to solve uncommon problems: It becomes especially useful when you are trying to solve a data-related problem such as a query performance issue, and the way that you approach things will tell your coworkers a great deal about your abilities.  The novice is likely to immediately take the approach of  trying to add more indexes or blaming the hardware. As you become more and more experienced, it becomes increasingly obvious that performance issues are a very complex topic. A query may be slow for a myriad of reasons, from concurrency issues, a poor query plan because of a parameter value (like parameter sniffing,) poor coding standards, or just because it is a complex query that is going to be slow sometimes. Some queries that you will deal with may have twenty joins and hundreds of search criteria, and it can take a lot of thought to determine what is going on.  You can usually figure out the problem to almost any query by using basic knowledge of how joins and queries work, together with the help of such things as the query plan, profiler or monitoring tools.  It is not unlikely that it can take a full day’s work to understand some queries, breaking them down into smaller queries to find a very tiny problem. Not every time will you actually find the problem, and it is part of the process to occasionally admit that the problem is random, and everything works fine now.  Sometimes, it is necessary to realize that a problem is outside of your current knowledge, and admit temporary defeat: You can, at least, narrow down the source of the problem by looking logically at all of the possible solutions. By doing this, you can satisfy your curiosity and learn more about what the actual problem was. For example, in the joke, had you never been exposed to the concept of binary numbers, there is no way you could have known that binary - 10 = decimal - 2, but you could have logically come to the conclusion that 10 must not mean ten in the context of the joke, and at that point you are that much closer to getting the joke and at least won't feel so ignorant.

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• Synergy - easy share of keyboard and mouse between multiple computers

  Did you ever have the urge to share one set of keyboard and mouse between multiple machines? If so, please read on... Using multiple machines Honestly, as a software craftsman it is my daily business to run multiple machines - either physical or virtual - to be able to solve my customers' requirements. Recent hardware equipment allows this very easily. For laptops it's a no-brainer to attach a second or even a third screen in order to extend your native display. This works quite handy and in my case I used to attached two additional screens - one via HD15 connector, the other via HDMI. But... as it's a laptop and therefore a mobile unit there are slight restrictions. Detaching and re-attaching all cables when changing locations is one of them but hardware limitations, too. After all, it's a laptop and not a workstation. I guess, that anyone working in IT (or ICT) has more than one machine at their workplace or their home office and at least I find it quite annoying to have multiple sets of keyboard and mouse conquering my remaining space on my desk. Despite the ugly looks of all those cables and whatsoever 'chaos of distraction' I prefer a more clean solution and working environment. This allows me to actually focus on my work and tasks to do rather than to worry about choosing the right combination of keyboard/mouse. My current workplace is a patch work of various pieces of hardware (approx. 2-3 years): DIY desktop on Ubuntu 12.04 64-bit, Core2 Duo (E7400, 2.8GHz), 4GB RAM, 2x 250GB HDD, nVidia GPU 512MB Dell Inspiron 1525 on Windows 8 64-bit, 4GB RAM, 200GB HDD HP Compaq 6720s on Windows Vista 32-bit, Core2 Duo (T5670, 1.8GHz), 2GB RAM, 160GB HDD Mac mini on Mac OS X 10.7, Core i5 (2.3 GHz), 2GB RAM, 500GB HDD I know... Not the latest and greatest but a decent combination to work with. New system(s) is/are already on the shopping list but I live in the 'wrong' country to buy computer hardware. So, the next trip abroad will provide me with some new stuff. Using multiple operating systems The list of hardware above already names different operating systems, and actually I have only one preference: Linux. But still my job as a software craftsman for Visual FoxPro and .NET development requires other OSes, too. Not a big deal, it's just like this. Additionally to those physical machines, there are a bunch of virtual machines around. Most of them running either Windows XP or Windows 7. Since years I have the practice that each development for one customer is isolated into its own virtual machine and environment. This keeps it clean and version-safe. But as you can easily imagine with that setup there are a couple of constraints referring to keyboard and mouse. Usually, those systems require their own pieces of hardware attached. As stated, I don't like clutter on my desk's surface, so a cross-platform solution has to come in here. In the past, I tried it with various applications, hardware or network protocols like X11, RDP, NX, TeamViewer, RAdmin, KVM switch, etc. but the problem in this case is that they either allow you to remotely connect to the other system or exclusively 'bind' your peripherals to the active system. Not optimal after all. Synergy to the rescue Quote from their website: "Synergy lets you easily share your mouse and keyboard between multiple computers on your desk, and it's Free and Open Source. Just move your mouse off the edge of one computer's screen on to another. You can even share all of your clipboards. All you need is a network connection. Synergy is cross-platform (works on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux)." Yep, that's it! All I need for my setup here... Actually, I couldn't believe it myself that I didn't stumble over synergy earlier but 'Get over it' and there we go. And despite the fact that it is Open Source, no, it's also for free. Donations for the developers are very welcome and recently they introduced Synergy Premium. A possibility to buy so-called premium votes that can be used to put more weight / importance on specific issues or bugs that you would like the developers to look into. Installation and configuration Simply download the installation packages for your systems of choice, run the installer and enter some minor information about your network setup. I chose my desktop machine for the role of the Synergy server and configured my screen setup as follows: The screen setup allows you currently to build or connect up to 15 machines. The number of screens can be higher as those machine might have multiple screens physically attached. Synergy takes this into the overall calculations and simply works as expected. I tried it for fun with a second monitor each connected to both laptops to have a total number of 6 active screens. No flaws after all - stunning! All the other machines are configured as clients like so: Side note: The screenshot was taken on Windows 8 and pasted via clipboard into Gimp running on Ubuntu. Resume Synergy is now definitely in my box of tools for my daily work, and amongst the first pieces of software I install after the operating system. It just simplifies my life and cleans my desk. Never again without Synergy!Now, only waiting for an Android version to integrate my Galaxy Tab 10.1, too. ;-) Please, check out that superb product and enjoy sharing one keyboard, one mouse and one clipboard between your various machines and operating systems.

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• Battery life starts at 2:30 hrs (99%), but less than 1 minute later is only 1:30 hrs (99%)

  - by zondu

  After searching this and other forums, I haven't seen this same issue listed anywhere for Ubuntu 12. Prior to installing Ubuntu 12.10, my Netbook (Acer AspireOne D250, SATA HDD) was consistently getting 2:30-3 hrs battery life under Windows XP Home, SP3. However, immediately after installing Ubuntu 12.10, the battery life starts out at 2:30 hrs (99%), but less than 1 minute later suddenly drops to 1:30 hrs (99%), which seems very odd. It could be a complete coincidence that the battery is suddenly flaky at the exact same moment that Ubuntu 12.10 was installed, but that doesn't seem likely. I'm a newbie to Ubuntu, so I don't have much experience tweaking/trouble-shooting yet. Here's what I've tried so far: enabled laptop mode (sudo su, then echo 5 /proc/sys/vm/laptop_mode) and checked that it is running when the A/C adapter is unplugged, but it doesn't seem to have made any noticeable difference in battery life, installed Jupiter, but it didn't work and messed up the system, so I had to uninstall it, disabled bluetooth (wifi is still on b/c it is necessary), set the screen to lowest brightness, etc., run through at least 1 full power cycle (running until the netbook shut itself off due to critical battery) and have been using it normally (sometimes plugged in, often unplugged until the battery gets very low) for a week since installing Ubuntu 12.10. installed powertop, but have no idea how to interpret its results. Here are the results of acpi -b: w/ A/C adapter: Battery 0: Full, 100% immediately after unplugging: Battery 0: Discharging, 99%, 02:30:20 remaining 1 minute after unplugging: Battery 0: Discharging, 99%, 01:37:49 remaining 2-3 minutes after unplugging: Battery 0: Discharging, 95%, 01:33:01 remaining 10 minutes after unplugging: Battery 0: Discharging, 85%, 01:13:38 remaining Results of cat /sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/uevent: w/ A/C adapter: POWER_SUPPLY_NAME=BAT0 POWER_SUPPLY_STATUS=Full POWER_SUPPLY_PRESENT=1 POWER_SUPPLY_TECHNOLOGY=Li-ion POWER_SUPPLY_CYCLE_COUNT=0 POWER_SUPPLY_VOLTAGE_MIN_DESIGN=10800000 POWER_SUPPLY_VOLTAGE_NOW=12136000 POWER_SUPPLY_CURRENT_NOW=773000 POWER_SUPPLY_CHARGE_FULL_DESIGN=4500000 POWER_SUPPLY_CHARGE_FULL=1956000 POWER_SUPPLY_CHARGE_NOW=1956000 POWER_SUPPLY_MODEL_NAME=UM08B32 POWER_SUPPLY_MANUFACTURER=SANYO POWER_SUPPLY_SERIAL_NUMBER= immediately after unplugging: POWER_SUPPLY_NAME=BAT0 POWER_SUPPLY_STATUS=Discharging POWER_SUPPLY_PRESENT=1 POWER_SUPPLY_TECHNOLOGY=Li-ion POWER_SUPPLY_CYCLE_COUNT=0 POWER_SUPPLY_VOLTAGE_MIN_DESIGN=10800000 POWER_SUPPLY_VOLTAGE_NOW=11886000 POWER_SUPPLY_CURRENT_NOW=773000 POWER_SUPPLY_CHARGE_FULL_DESIGN=4500000 POWER_SUPPLY_CHARGE_FULL=1956000 POWER_SUPPLY_CHARGE_NOW=1937000 POWER_SUPPLY_MODEL_NAME=UM08B32 POWER_SUPPLY_MANUFACTURER=SANYO POWER_SUPPLY_SERIAL_NUMBER= 1 minute later: POWER_SUPPLY_NAME=BAT0 POWER_SUPPLY_STATUS=Discharging POWER_SUPPLY_PRESENT=1 POWER_SUPPLY_TECHNOLOGY=Li-ion POWER_SUPPLY_CYCLE_COUNT=0 POWER_SUPPLY_VOLTAGE_MIN_DESIGN=10800000 POWER_SUPPLY_VOLTAGE_NOW=11728000 POWER_SUPPLY_CURRENT_NOW=1174000 POWER_SUPPLY_CHARGE_FULL_DESIGN=4500000 POWER_SUPPLY_CHARGE_FULL=1956000 POWER_SUPPLY_CHARGE_NOW=1937000 POWER_SUPPLY_MODEL_NAME=UM08B32 POWER_SUPPLY_MANUFACTURER=SANYO POWER_SUPPLY_SERIAL_NUMBER= 2-3 minutes later: POWER_SUPPLY_NAME=BAT0 POWER_SUPPLY_STATUS=Discharging POWER_SUPPLY_PRESENT=1 POWER_SUPPLY_TECHNOLOGY=Li-ion POWER_SUPPLY_CYCLE_COUNT=0 POWER_SUPPLY_VOLTAGE_MIN_DESIGN=10800000 POWER_SUPPLY_VOLTAGE_NOW=11583000 POWER_SUPPLY_CURRENT_NOW=1209000 POWER_SUPPLY_CHARGE_FULL_DESIGN=4500000 POWER_SUPPLY_CHARGE_FULL=1956000 POWER_SUPPLY_CHARGE_NOW=1878000 POWER_SUPPLY_MODEL_NAME=UM08B32 POWER_SUPPLY_MANUFACTURER=SANYO POWER_SUPPLY_SERIAL_NUMBER= 10 minutes later: POWER_SUPPLY_NAME=BAT0 POWER_SUPPLY_STATUS=Discharging POWER_SUPPLY_PRESENT=1 POWER_SUPPLY_TECHNOLOGY=Li-ion POWER_SUPPLY_CYCLE_COUNT=0 POWER_SUPPLY_VOLTAGE_MIN_DESIGN=10800000 POWER_SUPPLY_VOLTAGE_NOW=11230000 POWER_SUPPLY_CURRENT_NOW=1239000 POWER_SUPPLY_CHARGE_FULL_DESIGN=4500000 POWER_SUPPLY_CHARGE_FULL=1956000 POWER_SUPPLY_CHARGE_NOW=1644000 POWER_SUPPLY_MODEL_NAME=UM08B32 POWER_SUPPLY_MANUFACTURER=SANYO POWER_SUPPLY_SERIAL_NUMBER= Results of upower -i /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/battery_BAT0: w/ A/C adapter: native-path: /sys/devices/LNXSYSTM:00/device:00/PNP0A08:00/device:02/PNP0C0A:00/power_supply/BAT0 vendor: SANYO model: UM08B32 power supply: yes updated: Tue Nov 27 15:24:58 2012 (823 seconds ago) has history: yes has statistics: yes battery present: yes rechargeable: yes state: fully-charged energy: 21.1248 Wh energy-empty: 0 Wh energy-full: 21.1248 Wh energy-full-design: 48.6 Wh energy-rate: 8.3484 W voltage: 12.173 V percentage: 100% capacity: 43.4667% technology: lithium-ion immediately after unplugging: native-path: /sys/devices/LNXSYSTM:00/device:00/PNP0A08:00/device:02/PNP0C0A:00/power_supply/BAT0 vendor: SANYO model: UM08B32 power supply: yes updated: Tue Nov 27 15:41:25 2012 (1 seconds ago) has history: yes has statistics: yes battery present: yes rechargeable: yes state: discharging energy: 20.9196 Wh energy-empty: 0 Wh energy-full: 21.1248 Wh energy-full-design: 48.6 Wh energy-rate: 8.3484 W voltage: 11.86 V time to empty: 2.5 hours percentage: 99.0286% capacity: 43.4667% technology: lithium-ion History (charge): 1354023683 99.029 discharging 1 minute later: native-path: /sys/devices/LNXSYSTM:00/device:00/PNP0A08:00/device:02/PNP0C0A:00/power_supply/BAT0 vendor: SANYO model: UM08B32 power supply: yes updated: Tue Nov 27 15:42:31 2012 (17 seconds ago) has history: yes has statistics: yes battery present: yes rechargeable: yes state: discharging energy: 20.9196 Wh energy-empty: 0 Wh energy-full: 21.1248 Wh energy-full-design: 48.6 Wh energy-rate: 13.5432 W voltage: 11.753 V time to empty: 1.5 hours percentage: 99.0286% capacity: 43.4667% technology: lithium-ion History (charge): 1354023683 99.029 discharging History (rate): 1354023751 13.543 discharging 2-3 minutes later: native-path: /sys/devices/LNXSYSTM:00/device:00/PNP0A08:00/device:02/PNP0C0A:00/power_supply/BAT0 vendor: SANYO model: UM08B32 power supply: yes updated: Tue Nov 27 15:45:06 2012 (20 seconds ago) has history: yes has statistics: yes battery present: yes rechargeable: yes state: discharging energy: 20.2824 Wh energy-empty: 0 Wh energy-full: 21.1248 Wh energy-full-design: 48.6 Wh energy-rate: 13.7484 W voltage: 11.545 V time to empty: 1.5 hours percentage: 96.0123% capacity: 43.4667% technology: lithium-ion History (charge): 1354023906 96.012 discharging 1354023844 97.035 discharging History (rate): 1354023906 13.748 discharging 1354023875 12.992 discharging 1354023844 13.284 discharging 10 minutes later: native-path: /sys/devices/LNXSYSTM:00/device:00/PNP0A08:00/device:02/PNP0C0A:00/power_supply/BAT0 vendor: SANYO model: UM08B32 power supply: yes updated: Tue Nov 27 15:54:24 2012 (28 seconds ago) has history: yes has statistics: yes battery present: yes rechargeable: yes state: discharging energy: 18.1764 Wh energy-empty: 0 Wh energy-full: 21.1248 Wh energy-full-design: 48.6 Wh energy-rate: 13.2948 W voltage: 11.268 V time to empty: 1.4 hours percentage: 86.0429% capacity: 43.4667% technology: lithium-ion History (charge): 1354024433 86.043 discharging History (rate): 1354024464 13.295 discharging 1354024433 13.662 discharging 1354024402 13.781 discharging I noticed that between #2 and #3 (0 and 1 minutes after unplugging), while the battery still reports 99% charge and drops from 2:30 hr to 1:30 hr, the energy usage goes from 8.34 W to 13.54 W and the current_now increases, but shouldn't it be using less energy in battery mode since the screen is much dimmer and it's in power saving mode? (or is that normal behavior?) It also seems to drain more quickly than what it predicts, especially with the 1-1.25 hour drop in the first minute of being unplugged, which seems odd. What really concerns me is that Ubuntu 12.10 may not be properly managing the battery (with the sudden change in charge/life from 2:30 to 1:30 or 1:15 within a minute of unplugging), and that a new battery may quickly die under Ubuntu 12.10. I'd greatly appreciate any advice/suggestions on what to do, and especially whether there's a way to get back the 1-1.5 hrs of battery life that were suddenly lost when changing from WinXp to Ubuntu 12.10. Thanks :)

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• From the Classroom to the Boardroom

  - by Maria Sandu

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Pens and Paper...these are the only things being a student and being a graduate / professional have in common. Walking in to the offices of Oracle South Africa as a graduate the first thing you notice is how polished and sleek all the people who work here look. 80% of the ladies wear sky-scraper heels and walk with the greatest grace. This was the first of many rude awakenings to remind me that I am no longer a student but a graduate. My first struggle was having to wake up at wee hours of the morning to prepare for work. As a student going to class was almost an optional thing, if you missed a morning class you could always attend an evening class to make up for it or simply attend with another group. But in the workplace, you HAVE to show up every single morning at the same time, with no option of coming in when it suits you and there is definitely no coming in with the evening class/shift. As a student, the earliest hour I ever woke up was 7:00am, anything earlier than that was considered inhumane torture. My reason for waking up every morning as a student was “you have a degree to go get” but as a graduate having to go to work I have to say to myself “here’s to a new day of learning and growing”. My second struggle has come in having to change my beloved wardrobe. Everyone who knows me knows how passionate I am about fashion and shopping. For me Shopping is a BASIC HUMAN RIGHT, that should not be messed with. Therefore it was with great sadness that I swopped my rippled skinny jeans for pin-striped formal pants, my long chandelier earrings for simple studs, my flat shoes for heels, my sheer blouses for crisp white shirts, even my beloved wild hair had to make way for a simple ponytail. Our looks as ladies also came under great scrutiny, we had to acquaint ourselves with some serious grooming tools: the mascara, blush, lip-gloss, blush, a touch of lipstick and a manicure set. Language was a struggle of its own as well. Being a student you learn to relate to your peers in a informal way. In the workplace you have to address everyone with the same respect, including your peers. Words like “Hey buddy” had to make way for “good morning friend”. The month long winter school holiday was one of the things I looked forward to as a student. This was a time where we got to be at home and avoid the coldest month of the year, July. It was the most amazing thing ever, just sleeping and snuggling up to all sorts of warm things but sadly it is now a thing of the past. It is currently winter in South Africa and going to work has become the most unfashionable thing with all the jackets, boots, scarves and gloves. But summer is coming and I will miss those holidays too. As a student the school holidays were like a gift for us to catch a break and not think for a while which was why it was imaginable how someone would go on for the entire year without a break, with only the promise of a mere 21 days annual leave!! Right now I am sure we are all looking forward to taking that annual leave when the time is right. The worst rude awakening I must say, has to be presenting in front of clients and managers. As a student you have the same class mates for almost four years therefore presenting in front of them becomes the norm over the years and your lecturer will always go gently on you. What they don’t tell you at University is that in the real world, time is money and clients pay money to see you present therefore there is no room for error. Clients are not there to give you a score and boost your ego, they expect nothing less than 100% and they will let you know without a second thought. For a graduate this can feel like you are being fed to the sharks, you either get eaten or you swim for your life. At the end of the day, it is all an experience that is meant to groom us into better professional and make us a part of the Red Team. All the sacrifices are worth it and they lead us to being better and more polished professionals. So if you are interested in joining the ECEMEA Sales and Presales Internship Programme, please have a look at http://campus.oracle.com for more information and for our latest vacancies and internships. /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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• Inside Red Gate - Be Reasonable!

  - by simonc

  As I discussed in my previous posts, divisions and project teams within Red Gate are allowed a lot of autonomy to manage themselves. It's not just the teams though, there's an awful lot of freedom given to individual employees within the company as well. Reasonableness How Red Gate treats it's employees is embodied in the phrase 'You will be reasonable with us, and we will be reasonable with you'. As an employee, you are trusted to do your job to the best of you ability. There's no one looking over your shoulder, no one clocking you in and out each day. Everyone is working at the company because they want to, and one of the core ideas of Red Gate is that the company exists to 'let people do the best work of their lives'. Everything is geared towards that. To help you do your job, office services and the IT department are there. If you need something to help you work better (a third or fourth monitor, footrests, or a new keyboard) then ask people in Information Systems (IS) or Office Services and you will be given it, no questions asked. Everyone has administrator access to their own machines, and you can install whatever you want on it. If there's a particular bit of software you need, then ask IS and they will buy it. As an example, last year I wanted to replace my main hard drive with an SSD; I had a summer job at school working in a computer repair shop, so knew what to do. I went to IS and asked for 'an SSD, a SATA cable, and a screwdriver'. And I got it there and then, even the screwdriver. Awesome. I screwed it in myself, copied all my main drive files across, and I was good to go. Of course, if you're not happy doing that yourself, then IS will sort it all out for you, no problems. If you need something that the company doesn't have (say, a book off Amazon, or you need some specifications printing off & bound), then everyone has a expense limit of £100 that you can use without any sign-off needed from your managers. If you need a company credit card for whatever reason, then you can get it. This freedom extends to working hours and holiday; you're expected to be in the office 11am-3pm each day, but outside those times you can work whenever you want. If you need a half-day holiday on a days notice, or even the same day, then you'll get it, unless there's a good reason you're needed that day. If you need to work from home for a day or so for whatever reason, then you can. If it's reasonable, then it's allowed. Trust issues? A lot of trust, and a lot of leeway, is given to all the people in Red Gate. Everyone is expected to work hard, do their jobs to the best of their ability, and there will be a minimum of bureaucratic obstacles that stop you doing your work. What happens if you abuse this trust? Well, an example is company trip expenses. You're free to expense what you like; food, drink, transport, etc, but if you expenses are not reasonable, then you will never travel with the company again. Simple as that. Everyone knows when they're abusing the system, so simply don't do it. Along with reasonableness, another phrase used is 'Don't be an a**hole'. If you act like an a**hole, and abuse any of the trust placed in you, even if you're the best tester, salesperson, dev, or manager in the company, then you won't be a part of the company any more. From what I know about other companies, employee trust is highly variable between companies, all the way up to CCTV trained on employee's monitors. As a dev, I want to produce well-written & useful code that solves people's problems. Being able to get whatever I need - install whatever tools I need, get time off when I need to, obtain reference books within a day - all let me do my job, and so let Red Gate help other people do their own jobs through the tools we produce. Plus, I don't think I would like working for a company that doesn't allow admin access to your own machine and blocks Facebook! Cross posted from Simple Talk.

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• Key Windows Phone Development Concepts

  - by Tim Murphy

  As I am doing more development in and out of the enterprise arena for Windows Phone I decide I would study for the 70-599 test.  I generally take certification tests as a way to force me to dig deeper into a technology.  Between the development and studying I decided it would be good to put a post together of key development features in Windows Phone 7 environment.  Contrary to popular belief the launch of Windows Phone 8 will not obsolete Windows Phone 7 development.  With the launch of 7.8 coming shortly and people who will remain on 7.X for the foreseeable future there are still consumers needing these apps so don’t throw out the baby with the bath water. PhoneApplicationService This is a class that every Windows Phone developer needs to become familiar with.  When it comes to application state this is your go to repository.  It also contains events that help with management of your application’s lifecycle.  You can access it like the following code sample. 1: PhoneApplicationService.Current.State["ValidUser"] = userResult; DeviceNetworkInformation This class allows you to determine the connectivity of the device and be notified when something changes with that connectivity.  If you are making web service calls you will want to check here before firing off. I have found that this class doesn’t actually work very well for determining if you have internet access.  You are better of using the following code where IsConnectedToInternet is an App level property. private void Application_Launching(object sender, LaunchingEventArgs e){ // Validate user access if (Microsoft.Phone.Net.NetworkInformation.NetworkInterface.NetworkInterfaceType != Microsoft.Phone.Net.NetworkInformation.NetworkInterfaceType.None) { IsConnectedToInternet = true; } else { IsConnectedToInternet = false; } NetworkChange.NetworkAddressChanged += new NetworkAddressChangedEventHandler(NetworkChange_NetworkAddressChanged);}void NetworkChange_NetworkAddressChanged(object sender, EventArgs e){ IsConnectedToInternet = (Microsoft.Phone.Net.NetworkInformation.NetworkInterface.NetworkInterfaceType != Microsoft.Phone.Net.NetworkInformation.NetworkInterfaceType.None);} Push Notification Push notification allows your application to receive notifications in a way that reduces the application’s power needs. This MSDN article is a good place to get the basics of push notification, but you can see the essential concept in the diagram below.  There are three types of push notification: toast, Tile and raw.  The first two work regardless of the state of the application where as raw messages are discarded if your application is not running.   Live Tiles Live tiles are one of the main differentiators of the Windows Phone platform.  They allow users to find information at a glance from their start screen without navigating into individual apps.  Knowing how to implement them can be a great boost to the attractiveness of your application. The simplest step-by-step explanation for creating live tiles is here. Local Database While your application really only has Isolated Storage as a data store there are some ways of giving you database functionality to develop against.  There are a number of open source ORM style solutions.  Probably the best and most native way I have found is to use LINQ to SQL.  It does take a significant amount of setup, but the ease of use once it is configured is worth the cost.  Rather than repeat the full concepts here I will point you to a post that I wrote previously. Tasks (Bing, Email) Leveraging built in features of the Windows Phone platform is an easy way to add functionality that would be expensive to develop on your own.  The classes that you need to make yourself familiar with are BingMapsDirectionsTask and EmailComposeTask.  This will allow your application to supply directions and give the user an email path to relay information to friends and associates. Event model Because of the ability for users to switch quickly to switch to other apps or the home screen is just one reason why knowing the Windows Phone event model is important.  You need to be able to save data so that if a user gets a phone call they can come back to exactly where they were in your application.  This means that you will need to handle such events as Launching, Activated, Deactivated and Closing at an application level.  You will probably also want to get familiar with the OnNavigatedTo and OnNavigatedFrom events at the page level.  These will give you an opportunity to save data as a user navigates through your app. Summary This is just a small portion of the concepts that you will use while building Windows Phone apps, but these are some of the most critical.  With the launch of Windows Phone 8 this list will probably expand.  Take the time to investigate these topics further and try them out in your apps. del.icio.us Tags: Windows Phone 7,Windows Phone,WP7,Software Development,70-599

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• Windows Phone 8 Launch Event Summary

  - by Tim Murphy

  Today was the official coming out party for Windows Phone 8.  Below is a summary of the launch event.  There is a lot here to stay with me. They started with a commercial staring Joe Belfiore show how his Windows Phone 8 was personal too him which highlights something I think Microsoft has done well over the last couple of event: spotlight how Windows Phone is a different experience from other smartphones.  Joe actually called iPhone and Android “tired old metaphors" and explained that the idea around Windows Phone was to “reinvent the smartphone around you” as “the most personal smartphone operating system”.  The is the message that they need to drive home in their adds. The only real technical aspect we found out was that they have optimized the operating system around the dual core Qualcomm Snapdragon chip set.  It seems like all of the other hardware goodies had already been announced.  The remainder of the event was centered around new features of the OS and app announcements. So what are we getting?  The integrated features included lock screen live tile, Data Sense, Rooms and Kids corner.  There wasn’t a lot of information about it, but Joe also talked about apps not just having live tiles, but being live apps that could integrate with wallet and the hub. The lock screen will now be able to be personalized with live tile data or even a photo slide show.  This gives the lock screen an even better ability to give you the information you want to know before you even unlock the phone. The Kids Corner allows you as a parent to setup an area on your phone that you kids can go into an use it without disturbing your apps.  They can play games or use apps that you have designated and will only see those apps.  It even has a special lock screen gesture just for the kids corner. Rooms allow you to organize your phone around the groups of people in your life.  You get a shared calendar, a room wall as well as shared notes beyond just being able to send messages to a group.  You can also invite people not on the Windows Phone platform to access an online version of the room. Data Sense is a new feature that gives you better control and understanding of your data plan usage.  You can see which applications are using data and it can automatically adjust they way your phone behaves as you get close to your data limit. Add to these features the fact that the entire Windows ecosystem is integrated with SkyDrive and you have an available anywhere experience that is unequaled by any other platform.  Your document, photos and music are available on your Windows Phone, Window 8 device and Xbox.  SkyDrive also doesn’t limit how long you can keep files like the competing cloud platforms and give more free storage. It was interesting the way they made the launch event more personal.  First Joe brought out his own kids to demo the Kids Corner.  They followed this up by bringing out Jessica Alba to discuss her experience on the Windows Phone 8.  They need to keep putting a face on the product instead of just showing features as a cold list. Then we get to apps.  We knew that the new Skype was coming, but we found out that it was created in such a way that it can receive calls without running consistently in the background which would eat up battery.  This announcement was follow by the coming Facebook app that is optimized for Windows Phone 8.  As a matter of fact they indicated that just after launch the marketplace would have 46 out of the top 50 apps used by all smartphone platforms.  In a rational world this tide with over 120,000 apps currently in the marketplace there should be no more argument about the Windows Phone ecosystem. For those of us who develop for Windows Phone and weren’t on the early adoption program will finally get access to the SDK tomorrow after an announcement at Build (more waiting).  Perhaps we will get a few new features then. In the end I wouldn’t say there were any huge surprises, but I am really excited about getting my hands on the devices next month and starting to develop.  Stay tuned. del.icio.us Tags: Windows Phone,Windows Phone 8,Winodws Phone 8 Launch,Joe Belfiore,Jessica Alba

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• What to leave when you're leaving

  - by BuckWoody

  There's already a post on this topic - sort of. I read this entry, where the author did a good job on a few steps, but I found that a few other tips might be useful, so if you want to check that one out and then this post, you might be able to put together your own plan for when you leave your job.  I once took over the system administrator (of which the Oracle and SQL Server servers were a part) at a mid-sized firm. The outgoing administrator had about a two- week-long scheduled overlap with me, but was angry at the company and told me "hey, I know this is going to be hard on you, but I want them to know how important I was. I'm not telling you where anything is or what the passwords are. Good luck!" He then quit that day. It took me about three days to find all of the servers and crack the passwords. Yes, the company tried to take legal action against the guy and all that, but he moved back to his home country and so largely got away with it. Obviously, this isn't the way to leave a job. Many of us have changed jobs in the past, and most of us try to be very professional about the transition to a new team, regardless of the feelings about a particular company. I've been treated badly at a firm, but that is no reason to leave a mess for someone else. So here's what you should put into place at a minimum before you go. Most of this is common sense - which of course isn't very common these days - and another good rule is just to ask yourself "what would I want to know"? The article I referenced at the top of this post focuses on a lot of documentation of the systems. I think that's fine, but in actuality, I really don't need that. Even with this kind of documentation, I still perform a full audit on the systems, so in the end I create my own system documentation. There are actually only four big items I need to know to get started with the systems: 1. Where is everything/everybody?The first thing I need to know is where all of the systems are. I mean not only the street address, but the closet or room, the rack number, the IU number in the rack, the SAN luns, all that. A picture here is worth a thousand words, which is why I really like Visio. It combines nice graphics, full text and all that. But use whatever you have to tell someone the physical locations of the boxes. Also, tell them the physical location of the folks in charge of those boxes (in case you aren't) or who share that responsibility. And by "where" in this case, I mean names and phones.  2. What do they do?For both the servers and the people, tell them what they do. If it's a database server, detail what each database does and what application goes to that, and who "owns" that application. In my mind, this is one of hte most important things a Data Professional needs to know. In the case of the other administrtors or co-owners, document each person's responsibilities.   3. What are the credentials?Logging on/in and gaining access to the buildings are things that the new Data Professional will need to do to successfully complete their job. This means service accounts, certificates, all of that. The first thing they should do, of course, is change the passwords on all that, but the first thing they need is the ability to do that!  4. What is out of the ordinary?This is the most tricky, and perhaps the next most important thing to know. Did you have to use a "special" driver for that video card on server X? Is the person that co-owns an application with you mentally unstable (like me) or have special needs, like "don't talk to Buck before he's had coffee. Nothing will make any sense"? Do you have service pack requirements for a specific setup? Write all that down. Anything that took you a day or longer to make work is probably a candidate here. This is my short list - anything you care to add? Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Grub won't boot windows after update from 11.10 to 12.04

  - by Holger

  thanks for your time and reading this, here's the deal: i upgraded from 11.10 to 12.04 and everything worked out until i rebooted, i had 11.10 sucessfully running as a dual boot with windows vista. when i rebooted, my GRUB was shot to hell, what ever option i selected it said partion not found or something similar... booting into a live version on a thumb drive and running bootrepair from there fixed the issue... but only for ubuntu, when i try to boot into windows it only goes back to GRUB. i'm not at home, and heres a list of what i have here with me... 1 4gb thumb drive, empty 1 8gb thumb drive, windows vista installer bootable 1 old laptop, the one i try to save, optical drive is not existent 2 Mbps internet connection can you help me get back into my windows without having to reinstall windows? or at least show me a way how to use my illustrator through a virtual machine or something? here's my grub cfg # # DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE # # It is automatically generated by grub-mkconfig using templates # from /etc/grub.d and settings from /etc/default/grub # ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/00_header ### if [ -s $prefix/grubenv ]; then set have_grubenv=true load_env fi set default="0" if [ "${prev_saved_entry}" ]; then set saved_entry="${prev_saved_entry}" save_env saved_entry set prev_saved_entry= save_env prev_saved_entry set boot_once=true fi function savedefault { if [ -z "${boot_once}" ]; then saved_entry="${chosen}" save_env saved_entry fi } function recordfail { set recordfail=1 if [ -n "${have_grubenv}" ]; then if [ -z "${boot_once}" ]; then save_env recordfail; fi; fi } function load_video { insmod vbe insmod vga insmod video_bochs insmod video_cirrus } insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(hd0,msdos2)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 1063e402-b14f-45e5-92b6-d20a2e3a717e if loadfont /usr/share/grub/unicode.pf2 ; then set gfxmode=auto load_video insmod gfxterm insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(hd0,msdos2)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 1063e402-b14f-45e5-92b6-d20a2e3a717e set locale_dir=($root)/boot/grub/locale set lang=de_DE insmod gettext fi terminal_output gfxterm if [ "${recordfail}" = 1 ]; then set timeout=-1 else set timeout=10 fi ### END /etc/grub.d/00_header ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme ### set menu_color_normal=white/black set menu_color_highlight=black/light-gray if background_color 44,0,30; then clear fi ### END /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/10_linux ### function gfxmode { set gfxpayload="${1}" if [ "${1}" = "keep" ]; then set vt_handoff=vt.handoff=7 else set vt_handoff= fi } if [ "${recordfail}" != 1 ]; then if [ -e ${prefix}/gfxblacklist.txt ]; then if hwmatch ${prefix}/gfxblacklist.txt 3; then if [ ${match} = 0 ]; then set linux_gfx_mode=keep else set linux_gfx_mode=text fi else set linux_gfx_mode=text fi else set linux_gfx_mode=keep fi else set linux_gfx_mode=text fi export linux_gfx_mode if [ "${linux_gfx_mode}" != "text" ]; then load_video; fi menuentry 'Ubuntu, mit Linux 3.2.0-24-generic' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os { recordfail gfxmode $linux_gfx_mode insmod gzio insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(hd0,msdos2)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 1063e402-b14f-45e5-92b6-d20a2e3a717e linux /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-24-generic root=UUID=1063e402-b14f-45e5-92b6-d20a2e3a717e ro quiet splash $vt_handoff initrd /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-24-generic } menuentry 'Ubuntu, mit Linux 3.2.0-24-generic (Wiederherstellungsmodus)' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os { recordfail insmod gzio insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(hd0,msdos2)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 1063e402-b14f-45e5-92b6-d20a2e3a717e echo 'Linux 3.2.0-24-generic wird geladen …' linux /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-24-generic root=UUID=1063e402-b14f-45e5-92b6-d20a2e3a717e ro recovery nomodeset echo 'Initiale Ramdisk wird geladen …' initrd /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-24-generic } submenu "Previous Linux versions" { menuentry 'Ubuntu, mit Linux 3.0.0-19-generic' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os { recordfail gfxmode $linux_gfx_mode insmod gzio insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(hd0,msdos2)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 1063e402-b14f-45e5-92b6-d20a2e3a717e linux /boot/vmlinuz-3.0.0-19-generic root=UUID=1063e402-b14f-45e5-92b6-d20a2e3a717e ro quiet splash $vt_handoff initrd /boot/initrd.img-3.0.0-19-generic } menuentry 'Ubuntu, mit Linux 3.0.0-19-generic (Wiederherstellungsmodus)' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os { recordfail insmod gzio insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(hd0,msdos2)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 1063e402-b14f-45e5-92b6-d20a2e3a717e echo 'Linux 3.0.0-19-generic wird geladen …' linux /boot/vmlinuz-3.0.0-19-generic root=UUID=1063e402-b14f-45e5-92b6-d20a2e3a717e ro recovery nomodeset echo 'Initiale Ramdisk wird geladen …' initrd /boot/initrd.img-3.0.0-19-generic } } ### END /etc/grub.d/10_linux ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/20_linux_xen ### ### END /etc/grub.d/20_linux_xen ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/20_memtest86+ ### menuentry "Memory test (memtest86+)" { insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(hd0,msdos2)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 1063e402-b14f-45e5-92b6-d20a2e3a717e linux16 /boot/memtest86+.bin } menuentry "Memory test (memtest86+, serial console 115200)" { insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(hd0,msdos2)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 1063e402-b14f-45e5-92b6-d20a2e3a717e linux16 /boot/memtest86+.bin console=ttyS0,115200n8 } ### END /etc/grub.d/20_memtest86+ ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober ### menuentry "Windows Vista (loader) (on /dev/sda1)" --class windows --class os { insmod part_msdos insmod ntfs set root='(hd0,msdos1)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 2C9E66B39E6674EC chainloader +1 } ### END /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/40_custom ### # This file provides an easy way to add custom menu entries. Simply type the # menu entries you want to add after this comment. Be careful not to change # the 'exec tail' line above. ### END /etc/grub.d/40_custom ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/41_custom ### if [ -f $prefix/custom.cfg ]; then source $prefix/custom.cfg; fi ### END /etc/grub.d/41_custom ###

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• Revisiting the Generations

  - by Row Henson

  I was asked earlier this year to contribute an article to the IHRIM publication – Workforce Solutions Review.  My topic focused on the reality of the Gen Y population 10 years after their entry into the workforce.  Below is an excerpt from that article: It seems like yesterday that we were all talking about the entry of the Gen Y'ers into the workforce and what a radical change that would have on how we attract, retain, motivate, reward, and engage this new, younger segment of the workforce.  We all heard and read that these youngsters would be more entrepreneurial than their predecessors – the Gen X'ers – who were said to be more loyal to their profession than their employer. And, we heard that these “youngsters” would certainly be far less loyal to their employers than the Baby Boomers or even earlier Traditionalists. It was also predicted that – at least for the developed parts of the world – they would be more interested in work/life balance than financial reward; they would need constant and immediate reinforcement and recognition and we would be lucky to have them in our employment for two to three years. And, to keep them longer than that we would need to promote them often so they would be continuously learning since their long-term (10-year) goal would be to own their own business or be an independent consultant.  Well, it occurred to me recently that the first of the Gen Y'ers are now in their early 30s and it is time to look back on some of these predictions. Many really believed the Gen Y'ers would enter the workforce with an attitude – expect everything to be easy for them – have their employers meet their demands or move to the next employer, and I believe that we can now say that, generally, has not been the case. Speaking from personal experience, I have mentored a number of Gen Y'ers and initially felt that with a 40-year career in Human Resources and Human Resources Technology – I could share a lot with them. I found out very quickly that I was learning at least as much from them! Some of the amazing attributes I found from these under-30s was their fearlessness, ease of which they were able to multi-task, amazing energy and great technical savvy. They were very comfortable with collaborating with colleagues from both inside the company and peers outside their organization to problem-solve quickly. Most were eager to learn and willing to work hard.  This brings me to the generation that will follow the Gen Y'ers – the Generation Z'ers – those born after 1998. We have come full circle. If we look at the Silent Generation or Traditionalists, we find a workforce that preceded the television and even very early telephones. We Baby Boomers (as I fall right squarely in this category) remembered the invention of the television and telephone – but laptop computers and personal digital assistants (PDAs) were a thing of “StarTrek” and other science fiction movies and publications. Certainly, the Gen X'ers and Gen Y'ers grew up with the comfort of these devices just as we did with calculators. But, what of those under the age of 10 – how will the workplace look in 15 more years and what type of workforce will be required to operate in the mobile, global, virtual world. I spoke to a friend recently who had her four-year-old granddaughter for a visit. She said she found her in the den in front of the TV trying to use her hand to get the screen to move! So, you see – we have come full circle. The under-70 Traditionalist grew up in a world without TV and the Generation Z'er may never remember the TV we knew just a few years ago. As with every generation – we spend much time generalizing on their characteristics. The most important thing to remember is every generation – just like every individual – is different. The important thing for those of us in Human Resources to remember is that one size doesn’t fit all. What motivates one employee to come to work for you and stay there and be productive is very different than what the next employee is looking for and the organization that can provide this fluidity and flexibility will be the survivor for generations to come. And, finally, just when we think we have it figured out, a multitude of external factors such as the economy, world politics, industries, and technologies we haven’t even thought about will come along and change those predictions. As I reach retirement age – I do so believing that our organizations are in good hands with the generations to follow – energetic, collaborative and capable of working hard while still understanding the need for balance at work, at home and in the community! 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• Adventures in Windows 8: Solving activation errors

  - by Laurent Bugnion

  Note: I tagged this article with “MVVM” because I got a few support requests for MVVM Light regarding this exact issue. In fact it is a Windows 8 issue and has nothing to do with MVVM Light per se… Sometimes when you work on a Windows 8 app, you will get a very annoying issue when starting the app. In that case, the app doesn’t not even start past the Splash screen. Putting a breakpoint in App.xaml.cs doesn’t help because the app doesn’t even reach that point! So what exactly is happening? Well when a Windows 8 app starts, the system is performing a few check first. One of the checks, for instance, is to see if an app with the same package ID is already available. The package ID is a unique value set in the package manifest. In the Solution Explorer, double click on Package.appxmanifest. This opens the manifest in a special editor Click on the Packaging tab See the GUID under Package Name. This is the unique ID I am talking about. If there is a conflict (i.e. if an app is already installed with the exact same ID), Windows will warm the user that the app is already installed. However when you are in the process of developing an app, you install and uninstall the same app many many times (every time that you start in Visual Studio), and sometimes some issues arise, for instance failing to uninstall the app before starting the new instance of the same app. First step if you get such an error When the application fails to start past the splash screen, the first step is to identify what kind of error happened. In my experience the “already installed” is by far the most frequent (in fact I never had another such error), but it can be something else. An annoying thing is that the popup that shows the error is usually started below the Windows 8 app, and so you don’t even see it! This is especially true if you run this in the Simulator. In that case, do the following: Press on the Simulator’s home button, then press on the Desktop tile on the Start menu. The error popup should be shown on the desktop. If your applications runs on the Local machine, you also do the same and press the Windows button, and then from the Start menu press the Desktop tile. Deployment error in Studio Sometimes the same error causes Visual Studio to fail launching the application at all with a deployment error. This is a better case, because at least it is clear that there is an issue. In that case, write down the code that is shown in the Error window (for instance 0x80073D05 in the example below). Once you have the error code, go to the “Troubleshooting packaging, deployment, and query of Windows Store apps” page and look up the code in question. In my case, the error was “ERROR_DELETING_EXISTING_APPLICATIONDATA_STORE_FAILED”, “An error occurred while deleting the package's previously existing application data.” Solving the “ERROR_DELETING_EXISTING_APPLICATIONDATA_STORE_FAILED” issue Update: Before trying the below, you can also try the simple steps: Exit Visual Studio Go to the Start menu Locate your app’s tile. It should be visible in the Start menu directly, towards the far end on the right. Right click the tile and select Uninstall from the App Bar. Restart Visual Studio and try again. Sometimes it helps. If it doesn’t, then try the following: In order to solve the case where Windows, for any reason, fails to delete the existing application before starting the new instance, follow the steps: Open the Package.appxmanifest in Visual Studio Open the Packaging tab. Change the Package name. For tests you can just try to change the last character of the GUID, though I would recommend creating a brand new GUID. Press Start Type GUID Start the GUID Generator application Select Registry Format Press Copy. Paste the new GUID in place of the Package Name in Visual Studio Important: don’t forget to remove the curly brackets at the beginning and at the end of the newly pasted GUID. Then you just have to cross your fingers and start the application again… If it works, celebrate. if it doesn’t work… well at this point I am not sure so good luck with that ;) Happy coding, Laurent   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

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• What's New in SGD 5.1?

  - by Fat Bloke

  Oracle announced the latest version of Secure Global Desktop (SGD) this week with 3 major themes: Support for Android devices; Support for Desktop Chrome clients;  Support for Oracle Unified Directory. I'll talk about the new features in a moment, but a bit of context first: Oracle SGD - what, how and why?  Oracle Secure Global Desktop is Oracle's secure remote access product which allows users on almost any device, to access almost any type application which  is hosted in the data center, from almost any location. And it does this by sitting on the edge of the datacenter, between the user and the applications: This is actually a really smart environment for an increasing number of use cases where: Users need mobility of location AND device (i.e. work from anywhere); IT needs to ensure security of applications and data (of course!) The application requires an end-user environment which can't be guaranteed and IT may not own the client platform (e.g. BYOD, working from home, partners or contractors). Oracle has a a specific interest in this of course. As the leading supplier of enterprise applications, many of Oracle's customers, and indeed Oracle itself, fit these criteria. So, as an IT guy rolling out an application to your employees, if one of your apps absolutely needs, say,  IE10 with Java 6 update 32, how can you be sure that the user population has this, especially when they're using their own devices? In the SGD model you, the IT guy, can set up, say, a Windows Server running the exact environment required, and then use SGD to publish this app, without needing to worry any further about the device the end user is using. What's new?  So back to SGD 5.1 and what is new there: Android devices Since we introduced our support for iPad tablets in SGD 5.0 we've had a big demand from customers to extend this to Android tablets too, and so we're pleased to announce that 5.1 supports Android 4.x tablets such as Nexus 7 and 10, and the Galaxy Tab. Here's how it works, with screenshots from my Nexus 7: Simply point your browser to the SGD server URL and login; The workspace is the list of apps that the admin has deemed ok for you to run. You click on an application to run it (here's Excel and Oracle E-Business Suite): There's an extended on-screen keyboard (extended because desktop apps need keys that don't appear on a tablet keyboard such as ctrl, WIndow key, etc) and touch gestures can be mapped to desktop events (such as tap and hold to right click) All in all a pretty nice implementation for Android tablet users. Desktop Chrome Browsers SGD has always been designed around using a browser to access your applications. But traditionally, this has involved using Java to deliver the SGD client component. With HTML5 and Javascript engines becoming so powerful, we thought we'd see how well a pure web client could perform with desktop apps. And the answer was, surprisingly well. So with this release we now offer this additional way of working, which can be enabled by a simple bit of configuration. Here's a Linux desktop running in a tab in Chrome. And if you resize the browser window, the Linux desktop is resized by SGD too. Very cool! Oracle Unified Directory As I mentioned above, a lot of Oracle users already benefit from SGD. And a lot of Oracle customers use Oracle Unified Directory as their Enterprise and Carrier grade user directory. So it makes a lot of sense that SGD now supports this LDAP directory for both Authentication and as a means to determine which users get which applications, e.g. publish the engineering app to the guys in the Development group, but give everyone E-Business Suite to let them do their expenses. Summary With new devices, and faster 4G networking becoming more prevalent, the pressure for businesses to move to a increasingly mobile enterprise is stronger than ever. SGD is good for users, and even better for IT. By offering the user the ability to work from anywhere, and IT the control and security they need, everyone wins with SGD. To try this for yourself, download SGD 5.1 (look under Desktop Virtualization Products) from the Oracle Software Delivery Cloud or if you're an existing customer, get it from My Oracle Support.  -FB 

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• "Mega Menus" for SEO [duplicate]

  - by Thought Space Designs

  This question already has an answer here: How do I handle having to many links on a webpage because of my menu 4 answers I'm using the term "Mega Menus" loosely here. I'm redesigning my WordPress site (it's going to be responsive), and as part of the redesign, I was debating incorporating some sort of descriptive menu setup. For example, normal navigation drop down menus come in the form of unordered lists of links like so: <nav> <ul> <li> <a href="#">Link1</a> </li> <li> <a href="#">Link2</a> </li> <li> <a href="#">Link3</a> <ul> <li> <a href="#">Sub Link1</a> </li> <li> <a href="#">Sub Link2</a> </li> <li> <a href="#">Sub Link3</a> </li> </ul> </li> <li> <a href="#">Link4</a> </li> </ul> </nav> What I'm looking to do is build my drop down menus with more information than your standard menu. For example, I have a top level link named "Team", and under that link, I want to make a large drop down that contains head shots, headers (in the form of styled p tags) and brief (<100 words) descriptions of each team member (only 2 currently). I want to accompany this with a "Read More" link that takes you to their actual team page. This is just one example, of course, and the other top level links would also have descriptive drop downs in the same fashion. On mobile, I was planning on hiding the "mega menu", and delivering a standard unordered list of links. Here's what I was thinking for overall structure and syntax: <nav> <ul> <li> <a href="#">Home</a> </li> <li> <a href="#">About</a> </li> <li> <a href="#">Team</a> <ul> <!-- DESKTOP --> <li class="mega-menu row"> <a class="col-sm-6" href="#"> <div class="row"> <div class="col-sm-4"> <img src="#" alt="Team Member 1" /> </div> <div class="col-sm-8"> <p class="header">Team Member 1</p> <p>Short description goes here.</p> </div> </div> </a> <a class="col-sm-6" href="#"> <!-- OTHER TEAM MEMBER INFO --> </a> </li> <!-- END DESKTOP --> <!-- MOBILE --> <li> <a href="#">Team Member 1</a> </li> <li> <a href="#">Team Member 2</a> </li> <!-- END MOBILE --> </ul> </li> <li> <a href="#">Contact</a> </li> </ul> </nav> Can anybody think of any potential SEO ramifications of doing this? I'm not going to be loading these menus full of links, so it shouldn't hurt page rank, but what are the effects of having a good bit of text and maybe even forms within nav elements? Is there such a thing as overloading nav with HTML? EDIT: Here's an example of what the menu would look like rendered on desktop. I'm currently hovering the "Team" menu, but you can't see because my mouse went away when I took the screenshot. EDIT 2: This question is not a duplicate. I'm not going to have "too many" links in my menus. I'm wondering how having images and text inside of header navigation will affect my menus. Also, I don't just want "yes, this is bad" answers. Please cite your sources and be specific with reasoning.

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