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• PASS Summit 2011: Save Money Now

  - by Bill Graziano

  Register by March 31st and save $200.  On April 1st we increase the price.  On July 1st we increase it again.  We have regular price bumps all the way through to the Summit.  You can save yourself $200 if you register by Thursday. In two years of marketing for PASS and a year of finance I’ve learned a fair bit about our pricing, why we do this and how you react to it.  Let me help you save some money! Price bumps drive registrations.  We see big spikes in the two weeks prior to a price increase.  Having a deadline with a cost attached is a great motivator to get people to take action. Registering early helps you and it helps PASS.  You get the exact same Summit at a cheaper rate.  PASS gets smoother cash flow and a better idea of how many people to expect.  We also get people that are already registered that will tell their friends about the conference. This tiered pricing lets us serve those that are very price conscious.  They can register early and take advantage of these discounts.  I know there are people that pay for this conference out of their own pockets.  This is a great way for those people to reduce the cost of the conference.  (And remember for next year that our cheapest pricing starts right after the Summit and usually goes up around the first of the year.) We also get big price bumps after we announce the program and the pre-conference sessions.  If you wrote down the 50 or so best known speakers in the SQL Server community I’m guessing we’ll have nearly all of them at the conference.  We did last year.  I expect we will this year too.  We’re going to have good sessions.  Why wait?  Register today. If you want to attend a pre-conference session you can always add it to your registration later.  Pre-con prices don’t change.  It’s very easy to update your registration and add a pre-conference session later. I want as many people as possible to attend the Summit.  It’s been a great experience for me and I hope it will be for you.  And if you are going to go, do yourself a favor and save some money.  Register today!

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• RTS Game Style Application [closed]

  - by Daniel Wynand van Wyk

  My question may seem somewhat odd, but I hope that my specifications will clarify EXACTLY what it is that I am after. I need some help choosing the right tooling for a particular endeavour. My background is in desktop application development and large back-end systems. I have worked primarily on the Microsoft stack using C# and the .Net framework. My goal is to develop a 2D, RTS style, interactive office simulation. The simulation will model various office spaces, office equipment, employees and their interactions with one another. The idea is to abstract the concept of an office completely. Under the hood the application will do many things that are nothing like a game. This includes P2P networking, VPN tunnelling, streaming video, instant messaging, document collaboration, remote screen sharing, file-sharing, virus scanning, VOIP, document scanning, faxing, emailing, distributed computing, content management and much more! A somewhat similar thing has been attempted by IBM, where they created a virtual office in second life. If their attempt was a game, the game-play would be notably horrible, to say the least! The users/players will drive and control my application through the various objects modelled in the simulation. A single application capable of performing all of these various tasks would be a nightmare to navigate for even the most expert user. Using the concept of a game, I can easily separate functionality by assigning them to objects that relate 1-1 with their real world counter-parts. This can greatly simplify computing for novice users, with many added benefits in terms of visibility, transparency of process and centralized configuration. My hope is to make complex computing tasks accessible to all kinds of users and to greatly reduce the cognitive load associated with using the many different utilities and applications inside office settings. The complexity is therefore limited to the complexity of the space in which you find yourself. I want the application to target as many platforms as possible and run on computers that have no accelerated graphics capabilities. The simulation won't contain any of the fancy eye-candy you find in modern games, to the contrary, my "game" will purposefully be clean and simple. The closest thing I could imagine would be an old game like "Theme Hospital" or the first instalment of "The Sims". All the content will be pre-created and not user-generated like Second Life. New functionality will be added via a plugin system. Given my background and nature of my "game", I would like to spend most of my time writing code that does not have to do with the simulated office, as the "game" is really just a glorified application menu. I have done much reading about existing engines, frameworks and tools. I need the help of an experienced game developer who has tried and tested various products over the years who can guide me in the right direction given my very particular needs. I would appreciate any help I can get!

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• A .NET Developers day with the iPad.

  - by mbcrump

  The Apple iPad is currently getting a lot of buzz because of the app store, the book store and of course iTunes. I had the chance to play with one and this is what I have learned about the device. Let’s get this out of the way first, the iPad is awesome. It is the device for media consumption and casual web browsing. But how does it measure up to those of us with .NET on our brains all days. Let’s find out… Main Screen – you can customize everything on this page. I guess I should replace that image with a C# or VS logo. Its pretty standard stuff if you have an iPhone.   Programming Books If you have a subscription to Safari Books Online, then you are in luck, its very easy to read the books on the iPad. Just fire up Safari web browser and goto the Safari Books Online. The biggest benefit that I can see with the iPad is the ability to read books wherever and not have to worry about purchasing books that I already have the .PDF for. Below is a sample from Code Complete 2nd Edition. Below is a PDF of the ECMA-334 C# Language Specification. As you can see its very readable and you should have no problem reading actual code.   Example of Code shown below: It is however easier to read the PDF and store them with a 3rd party PDF reader. I have seen several for .99 cents or less. You can however switch the screen to vertical to get more viewing space as shown below: I was disappointed with the iBooks application. I could not find a single .NET programming book anywhere. I was able to download the excellent sci-fi book “A memory of Wind” for free though. If I just overlooked them, then please email me with the names and titles. I couldn’t even find a technology category in the categories list. Web Surfing – Technical Sites Below is an example of my site in Safari. The code is very readable and the experience was identical to viewing it in Firefox. I tried multiple programming site and the pages looked great except those that used flash and of course it did not display on those pages.   News Apps - Technical Content The standard NY Times and USA Today looked great, but the Technical Content was lacking. It would probably be better to use Google Reader for online technical news.     YouTube Videos – Technical Content  Since its YouTube, we already know that a lot of technical content exist and it plays great on the iPad. I watched several programming videos and could clearly see the code being written. Taking Technical Notes The iPad comes with a great notepad for taking notes. I found that it was easy to take notes regarding projects that I am currently working on.   Calendar The calendar that ships with the iPad is great for organizing. You can setup exchange server or manually enter the information. Pretty standard stuff.    Random Applications that I like: TweetDeck.   and Adobe Ideas. Adobe Ideas is kinda like SketchFlow except you use your finger to mock up the sketches.  Don’t forget that the iPad is great for any type of podcasting. That pretty much sums it up, I would definitely recommend this device as it will only get better. I believe the iOS4 comes out on the 24th and the iPad will only get more and more apps. You could save a few bucks by waiting for the 2nd generation, but that’s a call that only you can make.

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• Why Apple’s New SDK Limitation is So Offensive

  - by TStewartDev

  I am not an Apple fanboy, nor have I ever been. However, I have owned a Mac, an iPod, and an iPhone in my lifetime, and for more than a decade, I have defended Apple against the untruths that the haters so enjoy spewing. I encouraged my wife to buy a MacBook when she needed a new laptop two years ago, and I often recommend them to my friends and relatives. I have proudly and happily used my first generation iPhone for nearly three years. Now, for the first time in well over ten years, I find myself ready to swear off Apple and encourage everyone I know to do the same. I was disappointed when Apple wouldn't allow native apps, but I still bought the iPhone. I've stomached their ambiguous app approval process even though it's apparent that Steve may just reject your app because he doesn't like you or feels threatened by you (I'm still lamenting the rejection of the Google Voice app). But, as a developer, I can no longer tolerate Apple's terms and the kind of totalitarian control they indicate Apple wants. In case you are not already familiar, Apple has dictated in their OS 4.0 SDK license agreement (the now infamous Section 3.3.1) that all apps developed for the iPhone must be coded in C, C++, or Objective C, and moreover, that using any cross-compiling platforms is a violation of the agreement. For those of you who aren't developers, let me try to illustrate why this angers those of us who are. Imagine you're a professional writer. You've had articles published in some journals and magazines, and you've got a couple popular books out there, too. You've got an idea for a new book, and so you take it to your publisher. Your publisher agrees that it's a good idea. "But," says the publisher, "we want to hold our books to a tighter standard so that our readers get the experience we want them to have. Therefore, from now on, all our writers may only use words from this list of the 10,000 most common English words. Furthermore, if you cite any other works or quote anyone, they must comply with that same list, or you'll have to rewrite the entire work as well in case our readers want to look up your citation." What do you do? If your work is a children's book, this probably isn't a big deal to you. If it's an autobiography, textbook, or even a novel, though, you're going to have a lot of trouble describing your content with only common words. It's going to take you longer to complete your book, too, since you'll be looking up less common words frequently to see if you can use them. You could always go to another publisher, but this one has the best ability to distribute your book. The next largest distributor can only do a quarter as much. You could abandon the project altogether, but then everyone loses. Isn't this a silly scenario? Who would put such a limitation on writers? Yet this is very much what Apple is doing. They are using their dominant position in the market to coerce developers to write their apps exclusively for the iPhone OS by making it too expensive to write for multiple platforms. It is at least a threefold attack, striking at Adobe who is set to release a compiler that lets Flash source be compiled to iPhone binaries; striking at Google whose Android platform stands the best chance at the moment of providing serious competition to the iPhone; and reinforcing their own strong position by keeping popular apps exclusively to iPhone. And while developers are already very upset about this, the sad fact is that most of us will cave and give in to Apple because consumers don't know any better. They will continue to buy Apple's toy forcing developers to play Apple's maniacal game in order to make any money, at least until Steve Jobs decides he doesn't like them or he intends to release a competing application (bye-bye OpenFeint). Apple has been kept in check on the desktop front by a very dominant Microsoft, but I'm afraid that their success with iPods, iTunes, and iPhones has created a monster that we may have to bear until it is slain by an anti-trust suit or dies with the retirement of Steve Jobs.

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• Using HTML5 Today part 3&ndash; Using Polyfills

  - by Steve Albers

  Shims helps when adding semantic tags to older IE browsers, but there is a huge range of other new HTML5 features that having varying support on browsers.  Polyfills are JavaScript code and/or browser plug-ins that can provide older or less featured browsers with API support.  The best polyfills will detect the whether the current browser has native support, and only adds the functionality if necessary.  The Douglas Crockford JSON2.js library is an example of this approach: if the browser already supports the JSON object, nothing changes.  If JSON is not available, the library adds a JSON property in the global object. This approach provides some big benefits: It lets you add great new HTML5 features to your web sites sooner. It lets the developer focus on writing to the up-and-coming standard rather than proprietary APIs. Where most one-off legacy code fixes tends to break down over time, well done polyfills will stop executing over time (as customer browsers natively support the feature) meaning polyfill code may not need to be tested against new browsers since they will execute the native methods instead. Your should also remember that Polyfills represent an entirely separate code path (and sometimes plug-in) that requires testing for support.  Also Polyfills tend to run on older browsers, which often have slower JavaScript performance.  As a result you might find that performance on older browsers is not comparable. When looking for Polyfills you can start by checking the Modernizr GitHub wiki or the HTML5 Please site. For an example of a polyfill consider a page that writes a few geometric shapes on a <canvas> <script src="jquery-1.7.1.min.js"><script> <script> $(document).ready(function () { drawCanvas(); }); function drawCanvas() { var context = $("canvas")[0].getContext('2d'); //background context.fillStyle = "#8B0000"; context.fillRect(5, 5, 300, 100); // emptybox context.strokeStyle = "#B0C4DE"; context.lineWidth = 4; context.strokeRect(20, 15, 80, 80); // circle context.arc(160, 55, 40, 0, Math.PI * 2, false); context.fillStyle = "#4B0082"; context.fill(); </script>   The result is a simple static canvas with a box & a circle:   …to enable this functionality on a pre-canvas browser we can find a polyfill.  A check on html5please.com references  FlashCanvas.  Pull down the zip and extract the files (flashcanvas.js, flash10canvas.swf, etc) to a directory on your site.  Then based on the documentation you need to add a single line to your original HTML file: <!--[if lt IE 9]><script src="flashcanvas.js"></script><![endif]—> …and you have canvas functionality!  The IE conditional comments ensure that the library is only loaded in browsers where it is useful, improving page load & processing time. Like all Polyfills, you should test to verify the functionality matches your expectations across browsers you need to support.  For instance the Flash Canvas home page advertises 70% support of HTML5 Canvas spec tests.

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• Partners - Steer Clear of the Unknown with Oracle Enterprise Manager12c and Plug-in Extensibility

  - by Get_Specialized!

  Imagine if you just purchased a new car and as you entered the vehicle to drive it home and you found there was no steering wheel. And upon asking the dealer you were told that it was an option and you had a choice now or later of a variety of aftermarket steering wheels that fit a wide variety of automobiles. If you expected the car to already have a steering wheel designed to manage your transportation solution, you might wonder why someone would offer an application solution where its management is not offered as an option or come as part of the solution... Using management designed to support the underlying technology and that can provide management and support  for your own Oracle technology based solution can benefit your business  a variety of ways: increased customer satisfaction, reduction of support calls, margin and revenue growth. Sometimes when something is not included or recommended , customers take their own path which may not be optimal when using your solution and has later impact on the customers satisfaction or worse a negative impact on their business. As an Oracle Partner, you can reduce your research, certification, and time to market by selecting and offering management designed, developed, and supported for Oracle product technology by Oracle with Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c. For partners with solution specific management needs or seeking to differentiate themselves in the market, Enterprise Manager 12c is extensible and provides partners the opportunity to create their own plug-ins as well as a validation program for them.  Today a number of examples by partners are available and Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* 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:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} more on the way from such partners as NetApp for NetApp storage and Blue Medora for VMware vSphere. To review and consider further for applicability to your solution, visit  the Oracle PartnerNetwork KnowledgeZone for Enterprise Manager under the Develop Tab http://www.oracle.com/partners/goto/enterprisemanager

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• Dual booting windows 8/ubuntu 12.04. Grub doesn't appear and machine never boot in ubuntu

  - by black sensei

  i got a new ACER predator AG3620-UR308 which came with windows 8, so i wanted to run ubuntu 12.04.2 on it as a dual booting. To be honest, i've been doing dual booting for a while now so, i did the right thing. the box came with 2TB HDD. so i made 4 partitions with a raw partition just after the windows installation partition I always do manual installation so even if ubuntu didn't detect windows 8, it was ok for me. So i created swap area and finished the installation etc....Grub was install on the only drive there which is sda. After reboot, grub doesn't even come up.So it always boot in windows 8. I did repeat the installation process twice and yield same result. which is weird because this method always works for me so far.Even the laptop am using to write this post is a dual booting windows 7/ mint nadia installed the same way. Is there anything new in windows 8 that i didn't make provision for? Before starting the installation, all i read about was that , windows 8 should be installed first and ubuntu after. I went ahead and disable secure boot from the BIOS and enabled CSM (don't even know what it means) according to Acer custhelp site . I boot from USB and did fdisk -l bellow is the result: ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l WARNING: GPT (GUID Partition Table) detected on '/dev/sda'! The util fdisk doesn't support GPT. Use GNU Parted. Disk /dev/sda: 2000.4 GB, 2000398934016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 243201 cylinders, total 3907029168 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes Disk identifier: 0x8c361cb5 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 1 3907029167 1953514583+ ee GPT Partition 1 does not start on physical sector boundary. Disk /dev/sdb: 8178 MB, 8178892800 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 994 cylinders, total 15974400 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x0006a87e Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdb1 * 2048 15972351 7985152 b W95 FAT32 ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ Can anybody shed some light? thank you in advance

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• Dual booting windows 8/ubuntu 12.04.2, Grub doesn't appear and machine never boot in ubuntu

  - by black sensei

  i got a new ACER predator AG3620-UR308 which came with windows 8, so i wanted to run ubuntu 12.04.2 on it as a dual booting. To be honest, i've been doing dual booting for a while now so, i did the right thing. the box came with 2TB HDD. so i made 4 partitions with a raw partition just after the windows installation partition I always do manual installation so even if ubuntu didn't detect windows 8, it was ok for me. So i created swap area and finished the installation etc....Grub was install on the only drive there which is sda. After reboot, grub doesn't even come up.So it always boot in windows 8. I did repeat the installation process twice and yield same result. which is weird because this method always works for me so far.Even the laptop am using to write this post is a dual booting windows 7/ mint nadia installed the same way. Is there anything new in windows 8 that i didn't make provision for? Before starting the installation, all i read about was that , windows 8 should be installed first and ubuntu after. I went ahead and disable secure boot from the BIOS and enabled CSM (don't even know what it means) according to Acer custhelp site . I boot from USB and did fdisk -l bellow is the result: ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l WARNING: GPT (GUID Partition Table) detected on '/dev/sda'! The util fdisk doesn't support GPT. Use GNU Parted. Disk /dev/sda: 2000.4 GB, 2000398934016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 243201 cylinders, total 3907029168 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes Disk identifier: 0x8c361cb5 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 1 3907029167 1953514583+ ee GPT Partition 1 does not start on physical sector boundary. Disk /dev/sdb: 8178 MB, 8178892800 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 994 cylinders, total 15974400 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x0006a87e Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdb1 * 2048 15972351 7985152 b W95 FAT32 ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ Can anybody shed some light? thank you in advance EDIT Hey, i just did another trial with 13.04 this time and still no luck. bios: secure-boot: disabled enable CSM : always 1-delete previous ubuntu partition and swap area partition.now having free space 2- used usb installer to prepare usb with ubuntu-13.04-desktop-amd64.iso 3- rebooted : liveusb didnt detect windows 8, used something else 4-created partition ext4 for / 5-created partition for swap-area 6- default grub path is /dev/sda and clicked install Acer always boots into windows.

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• Bowing to User Experience

  As a consumer of geeky news it is hard to check my Google Reader without running into two or three posts about Apples iPad and in particular the changes to the developer guidelines which seemingly restrict developers to using Apples Xcode tool and Objective-C language for iPad apps. One of the alternatives to Objective-C affected, is MonoTouch, an option with some appeal to me as it is based on the Mono implementation of C#. Seemingly restricted is the key word here, as far as I can tell, no official announcement has been made about its fate. For more details around MonoTouch for iPhone OS, check out Miguel de Icazas post: http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2010/Apr-28.html. These restrictions have provoked some outrage as the perception is that Apple is arrogantly restricting developers freedom to create applications as they choose and perhaps unwittingly shortchanging iPhone/iPad users who wont benefit from these now never-to-be-made great applications. Apples response has mostly been to say they are concentrating on providing a certain user experience to their customers, and to do this, they insist everyone uses the tools they approve. Which isnt a surprising line of reasoning given Apple restricts the hardware used and content of the apps already. The vogue term for this approach is curated, as in a benevolent museum director selecting only the finest artifacts for display or a wise gardener arranging the plants in a garden just so. If this is what a curated experience is like it is hard to argue that consumers are not responding. My iPhone is probably the most satisfying piece of technology I own. Coming from the Razr, it really was an revolution in how the form factor, interface and user experience all tied together. While the curated approach reinvented the smart phone genre, it is easy to forget that this is not a new approach for Apple. Macbooks and Macs are Apple hardware that run Apple software. And theyve been successful, but not quite in the same way as the iPhone or iPad (based on early indications). Why not? Well a curated approach can only be wildly successful if the curator a) makes the right choices and b) offers choices that no one else has. Although its advantages are eroding, the iPhone was different from other phones, a unique, focused, touch-centric experience. The iPad is an attempt to define another category of computing. Macs and Macbooks are great devices, but are not fundamentally a different user experience than a PC, you still have windows, file folders, mouse and keyboard, and similar applications. So the big question for Apple is can they hold on to their market advantage, continuing innovating in user experience and stay on top? Or are they going be like Xerox, and the rest of the world says thank you for the windows metaphor, now let me implement that better? It will be exciting to watch, with Android already a viable competitor and Microsoft readying Windows Phone 7. And to close the loop back to the restrictions on developing for iPhone OS. At this point the main target appears to be Adobe and Adobe Flash. Apples calculation is that a) they dont need those developers or b) the developers they want will learn Apples stuff anyway. My guess is that they are correct; that as much as I like the idea of developers having more options, I am not going to buy a competitors product to spite Apple unless that product is just as usable. For a non-technical consumer, I dont know that this conversation even factors into the buying decision. If it did, wed be talking about how Microsoft is trying to retake a slice of market share from the behemoth that is Linux.Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Part 5: Choose the right tool - or - why

  - by volker.eckardt(at)oracle.com

  Consider the following client request “Please create a report for us to list expenses”. Which Oracle EBS tool would you choose? There are plenty of options available: Oracle Reports, or BI Publisher with PDF or Excel layout, or Discoverer, or BI Publisher Stand Alone, or PDF online generation, or Oracle WebADI, or Plain SQL*Plus as Concurrent Program, or Online review option … Assuming, you as development lead have to decide, you may decide by available skill set in your development team. However, is this a good decision? An important question to influence the decision is the “Why” question: why do you need this report, what process is behind, what exactly you like to achieve? We see often data created or printed, although it would be much better to get the data in Excel, and upload changes via WebADI directly. There are more points that should drive your decision: How many of such requirements you have got? Has this technique been used in the project already? Are there related reusable’s you may gain from? How difficult is it to maintain your solution? Can you merge this report with another one, to reduce test and maintenance work? In addition, also your own development standards should guide you a bit to come to a good decision. In one of my own projects, we discussed such topics in our weekly team meeting. By utilizing the team knowledge best, you may come to a better decision, and additionally, your team supports your decision. Unfortunately, I have rarely seen dedicated team trainings or planned knowledge transfer to support such processes. Often the pressure to deliver on time is too high to have discussion and decision time left. But exactly this can help keeping maintenance costs low by limiting the number of alternative solutions for similar requirements. Lastly, design decisions should be documented to allow another person taking this over easily. Decisions shall be reviewed and updated regularly, to reflect related procedures or Oracle products respective product versions. Summary: Oracle EBS offers plenty of alternatives to implement customizations. Create and maintain a decision tree to support the design process. Do not leave the decision just on developer side. Limit the number of alternative solutions as best as possible; choose one which is the most appropriate also from future maintenance perspective.

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• Gnome-shell fails to load on 12.10

  - by Githlar

  I'm usually the one answering questions, but in this I'm throughly stumped! My Setup: Ubuntu 12.10 (Dist upgrade form 12.04) ATI M96 [Mobility Radeon HD 4650] Upon the first installation of 12.10 I had all kinds of issues getting the Legacy ATI drivers to install (I guess the source for the drivers isn't kosher with kernel 3.5). So, I added the repository ppa:makson96/fglrx - which has a version of the ATI source patched to work with kernel 3.5. After installation of fglrx-legacy from that PPA, gnome-shell and all my graphics work fine... until today. The Problem I unsuspended my computer today and the screen was black (not off, the black from the gnome lock screen). I'd move my mouse/hit a key and the background would flash and then it'd go back to black. Restarted via VT1 Logged into Gnome (gnome-shell) session, but no gnome-shell! Investigation: First, I went to VT1 and tried export DISPLAY=:0;gnome-shell --replace. It appeared to work fine, switch back to X and nothing. Went back to VT1 and saw this error message: JS ERROR: !!! Exception was: TypeError: Object 0x7fc748129c30 is not a subclass of (null), it's a xO JS ERROR: !!! message = '"Object 0x7fc748129c30 is not a subclass of (null), it's a xO"' JS ERROR: !!! fileName = '"/usr/share/gnome-shell/js/ui/tweener.js"' JS ERROR: !!! lineNumber = '218' JS ERROR: !!! stack = '"()@/usr/share/gnome-shell/js/ui/tweener.js:218 wrapper()@/usr/share/gjs-1.0/lang.js:204 ()@/usr/share/gjs-1.0/lang.js:145 ()@/usr/share/gjs-1.0/lang.js:239 init()@/usr/share/gnome-shell/js/ui/tweener.js:49 init()@/usr/share/gnome-shell/js/ui/environment.js:96 @<main>:1 "' Window manager warning: Log level 32: Execution of main.js threw exception: TypeError: Object 0x7fc748129c30 is not a subclass of (null), it's a xO Note: Everywhere it says "it's a xO", xO is actually garbled and changes every time (I'm thinking memory corruption?) This error is thrown by line 96 of /usr/share/gnome-shell/js/ui/environment.js: tweener.Init() Did a purge of fglrx-legacy, reboot, reinstall fglrx-legacy, reboot... same thing. Did a ppa-purge of ppa:gnome3-team/gnome3, and reinstalled gnome-shell and ubuntu-desktop from the standard repositores... same thing. I'm really at a loss here. I love gnome-shell and after using it for nearly a year now gnome classic just seems so archaic. Additional Information Apt log from the day I first suspended my machine (these are upgrades from the gnome3-team/gnome3 ppa and ubuntu-wine/ppa ppa): Start-Date: 2012-11-24 17:30:28 Commandline: aptdaemon role='role-commit-packages' sender=':1.618' Install: gkbd-capplet:amd64 (3.6.0-0ubuntu1), gnome-control-center-unity:amd64 (1.0-0ubuntu1~ubuntu12.10.1) Upgrade: nautilus:amd64 (3.6.2-0ubuntu0.1~quantal1, 3.6.3-0ubuntu2~ubuntu12.10.1), libgnome-control-center1:amd64 (3.4.2-0ubuntu19, 3.6.3-0ubuntu6~ubuntu12.10.1), wine1.5-i386:i386 (1.5.17-0ubuntu4, 1.5.18-0ubuntu1), wine1.5:amd64 (1.5.17-0ubuntu4, 1.5.18-0ubuntu1), gnome-settings-daemon:amd64 (3.4.2-0ubuntu14, 3.6.3-0ubuntu1~ubuntu12.10.1), gnome-control-center-data:amd64 (3.4.2-0ubuntu19, 3.6.3-0ubuntu6~ubuntu12.10.1), gnome-accessibility-themes:amd64 (3.6.0.2-0ubuntu1, 3.6.2-0ubuntu2~ubuntu12.10.1), gnome-themes-standard:amd64 (3.6.0.2-0ubuntu1, 3.6.2-0ubuntu2~ubuntu12.10.1), wine1.5-amd64:amd64 (1.5.17-0ubuntu4, 1.5.18-0ubuntu1), nautilus-data:amd64 (3.6.2-0ubuntu0.1~quantal1, 3.6.3-0ubuntu2~ubuntu12.10.1), gnome-control-center:amd64 (3.4.2-0ubuntu19, 3.6.3-0ubuntu6~ubuntu12.10.1), libnautilus-extension1a:amd64 (3.6.2-0ubuntu0.1~quantal1, 3.6.3-0ubuntu2~ubuntu12.10.1) End-Date: 2012-11-24 17:31:32 fglrxinfo (driver appears to be working): display: :0 screen: 0 OpenGL vendor string: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. OpenGL renderer string: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4650 OpenGL version string: 3.3.11653 Compatibility Profile Context Does anybody have any further ideas?

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• Interaction of a GUI-based App and Windows Service

  - by psubsee2003

  I am working on personal project that will be designed to help manage my media library, specifically recordings created by Windows Media Center. So I am going to have the following parts to this application: A Windows Service that monitors the recording folder. Once a new recording is completed that meets specific criteria, it will call several 3rd party CLI Applications to remove the commercials and re-encode the video into a more hard-drive friendly format. A controller GUI to be able to modify settings of the service, specifically add new shows to watch for, and to modify parameters for the CLI Applications A standalone (GUI-based) desktop application that can perform many of the same functions as the windows service, expect manually on specific files instead of automatically based on specific criteria. (It should be mentioned that I have limited experience with an application of this complexity, and I have absolutely zero experience with Windows Services) Since the 1st and 3rd bullet share similar functionality, my design plan is to pull the common functionality into a separate library shared by both parts applications, but these 2 components do not need to interact otherwise. The 2nd and 3rd bullets seem to share some common functionality, both will have a GUI, both will have to help define similar parameters (one to send to the service and the other to send directly to the CLI applications), so I can see some advantage to combining them into the same application. On the other hand, the standalone application (bullet #3) really does not need to interact with the service at all, except for possibly sharing a few common default parameters that can easily be put into an XML in a common location, so it seems to make more sense to just keep everything separate. The controller GUI (2nd bullet) is where I am stuck at the moment. Do I just roll this functionality (allow for user interaction with the service to update settings and criteria) into the standalone application? Or would it be a better design decision to keep them separate? Specifically, I'm worried about adding the complexity of communicating with the Windows Service to the standalone application when it doesn't need it. Is WCF the right approach to allow the controller GUI to interact with the Windows Service? Or is there a better alternative? At the moment, I don't envision a need for a significant amount of interaction, maybe just adding a new task once in a while and occasionally tweaking a parameter, but when something is changed, I do expect the windows service to immediately use the new settings.

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• Top 10 Reasons to Attend the 7th Annual Maintenance Summit

  - by Stephen Slade

  Some of you may be sitting the fence before registering for the Oracle Maintenance Summit 2013. Here are 10 solid reasons to register in the next 3 weeks: 1. It's the 'IN' red carpet maintenance event for 2013. The summit will have one of the greatest concentrations of maintenance best practices, case studies and success stories that can catapult your organization. 2.  Return a Hero! Hear how you can drive reliability and operational excellence back home at the plant!  3. Learn the Roadmap! Hear form product experts who will discuss the vision, strategy and roadmap for Oracle products 4. See Product Demos! All the SCM/EAM rich products will be exhibited by both sales consultants and developers. Ask the hardest question you can think of and be ready for a great response. 5. Meet our Partners! There will be a good number of supporting partners exhibiting at the summit. Hear and learn of what ingredients make for success. 6. Join a panel or discussion group! Raise your hand and be heard – have your questions answered. Contribute to the discussion. 7. Network with your peers. Rub elbows with your fellow maintenance managers and operations supervisors. Talk shop here! 8. 6 Summits under one roof. Hear and share supply chain information at one of the other summits taking place concurrently. Bring other team members and secure the group discount. 9. Save $100, register by Dec 31 for the early bird rate. Hotel will fill fast.  www.oracle.com/goto/vcs 10. Have a great time! The Summit is both informational and enjoyable. Set at the waterfront in downtown San Francisco at the Embarcadero, the summit will be a fun-filled and enjoyable experience.

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• Social Networks & the Cloud

  - by kellsey.ruppel

  It’s no secret that millions of people are connected to the Internet. And it also probably doesn’t come as a surprise that a lot of those people are connected on social networking sites.  Social networks have become an excellent platform for sharing and communication that reflects real world relationships and they play a major part in the everyday lives of many people. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Google+ and hundreds of others have transformed the way we interact and communicate with one another. Social networks are becoming more than just an online gathering of friends. They are becoming a destination for ideation, e-commerce, and marketing. But it doesn’t just stop there. Some organizations are utilizing social networks internally, integrated with their business applications and processes and the possibility of social media and cloud integration is compelling. Forrester alone estimates enterprise cloud computing to grow to over $240 billion by 2020. It’s hard to find any current IT project today that is NOT considering cloud-based deployments. Security and quality of service concerns are no longer at the forefront; rather, it’s about focusing on the right mix of capabilities for the business. Cloud vs. On-Premise? Policies & governance models? Social in the cloud? Cloud’s increasing sophistication, security in applications, mobility, transaction processing and social capabilities make it an attractive way to manage information. And Oracle offers all of this through the Oracle Cloud and Oracle Social Network. Oracle Social Network is a secure private network that provides a broad range of social tools designed to capture and preserve information flowing between people, enterprise applications, and business processes. By connecting you with your most critical applications, Oracle Social Network provides contextual, real-time communication within and across enterprises. With Oracle Social Network, you and your teams have the tools you need to collaborate quickly and efficiently, while leveraging the organization’s collective expertise to make informed decisions and drive business forward. Oracle Social Network is available as part of a portfolio of application and platform services within the Oracle Cloud. Oracle Cloud offers self-service business applications delivered on an integrated development and deployment platform with tools to rapidly extend and create new services. Oracle Social Network is pre-integrated with the Fusion CRM Cloud Service and the Fusion HCM Cloud Service within the Oracle Cloud. Learn more how you can use Oracle Social Network to revolutionize how you create, understand, and achieve true value through enterprise social networking. And be sure to check out the follow sessions here at Oracle OpenWorld, where can learn more about Oracle Cloud and Oracle Social Network. Tuesday, Oct 2 – Oracle WebCenter’s Cloud Strategy: From Social and Platform Services to Mashups, 1:15pm - 2:15pm, Moscone West – 3001  Wednesday, Oct 3 – Oracle Social Network: Your Strategy for Socially Enabled Oracle Fusion Applications, 11:45am - 12:45pm, Moscone West – 3002/3004

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• Ubuntu 12.4.1 failing in vm both Vbox and Vmware on new HP Envy 4t-1000

  - by Chas

  Brand new to Linux, getting frustrated trying to get an environment up with Ubuntu. My primary goal is to learn Linux and Apache/PHP development. I need to keep my Windows OS as main on my machine for work, so i'm trying to virtualize Ubuntu 12.4.1 without luck (many attempts). I have a new HP Envy 4t-1000 with 16gb ram, and 32 gb ssd caching with 500gb spindle hard drive. Graphics card is an Intel HD 3000 with AMD Radeon 7670M. With installing Ubuntu desktop in VBox, I'm getting this result: https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=51939 With VMware workstation 7 (patched), I complete the install of Ubuntu, it reboots, purple desktop briefly flashes then it drops to command line. I bought a beginning Ubuntu book, and it recommends trying to manually configure graphics if this happens. So I tried doing a safe boot holding shift - I get to the first screen (GRUB) loads fine, and I choose recovery mode. After choosing the recovery mode, I get the recovery mode options, and can arrow down to what the book suggests 'Run in fail safe graphic mode.' Once I select this option, I get a black screen with a large white dialogue box, at the top it says "The system is running in low-graphics mode. Your screen, graphics card, and input device settings could not be detected correctly. You will need to configure these yourself." Then there is an ok button way down at the bottom. When I select 'ok' I get a menu for a few options, book recommended 'reconfigure graphics.' When I try this, I get a menu of two options: 1) "Use generic (default) configuration or 2) use backup. I've tried both options several times, hitting ok just refreshes screen and nothing more. Rebooting at this point just goes back to command line as before. I don't know what to do at this point, I've spent too many hours this weekend trying in both VBox and VMware to get Ubuntu going. Isn't there like a very basic graphic display or something I can use to at least get into the desktop? I explored the GRUB some more, and tried to look at the startup and xserver logs - both are blank. No help there I guess? When I try to choose 'Edit the configuration file, then 'ok' screen just refreshes on same menu options, nothing happens. thx for any advice. I really need to focus on learning Linux, Apache and PHP, so perhaps Ubuntu just won't work on my hardware? Any other suggestions? I will need to virtualize - THANKS for any help/advice.

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• Help with calculation to steer ship in 3d space

  - by Aaron Anodide

  I'm a beginner using XNA to try and make a 3D Asteroids game. I'm really close to having my space ship drive around as if it had thrusters for pitch and yaw. The problem is I can't quite figure out how to translate the rotations, for instance, when I pitch forward 45 degrees and then start to turn - in this case there should be rotation being applied to all three directions to get the "diagonal yaw" - right? I thought I had it right with the calculations below, but they cause a partly pitched forward ship to wobble instead of turn.... :( Here's current (almost working) calculations for the Rotation acceleration: float accel = .75f; // Thrust +Y / Forward if (currentKeyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.I)) { this.ship.AccelerationY += (float)Math.Cos(this.ship.RotationZ) * accel; this.ship.AccelerationX += (float)Math.Sin(this.ship.RotationZ) * -accel; this.ship.AccelerationZ += (float)Math.Sin(this.ship.RotationX) * accel; } // Rotation +Z / Yaw if (currentKeyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.J)) { this.ship.RotationAccelerationZ += (float)Math.Cos(this.ship.RotationX) * accel; this.ship.RotationAccelerationY += (float)Math.Sin(this.ship.RotationX) * accel; this.ship.RotationAccelerationX += (float)Math.Sin(this.ship.RotationY) * accel; } // Rotation -Z / Yaw if (currentKeyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.K)) { this.ship.RotationAccelerationZ += (float)Math.Cos(this.ship.RotationX) * -accel; this.ship.RotationAccelerationY += (float)Math.Sin(this.ship.RotationX) * -accel; this.ship.RotationAccelerationX += (float)Math.Sin(this.ship.RotationY) * -accel; } // Rotation +X / Pitch if (currentKeyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.F)) { this.ship.RotationAccelerationX += accel; } // Rotation -X / Pitch if (currentKeyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.D)) { this.ship.RotationAccelerationX -= accel; } I'm combining that with drawing code that does a rotation to the model: public void Draw(Matrix world, Matrix view, Matrix projection, TimeSpan elsapsedTime) { float seconds = (float)elsapsedTime.TotalSeconds; // update velocity based on acceleration this.VelocityX += this.AccelerationX * seconds; this.VelocityY += this.AccelerationY * seconds; this.VelocityZ += this.AccelerationZ * seconds; // update position based on velocity this.PositionX += this.VelocityX * seconds; this.PositionY += this.VelocityY * seconds; this.PositionZ += this.VelocityZ * seconds; // update rotational velocity based on rotational acceleration this.RotationVelocityX += this.RotationAccelerationX * seconds; this.RotationVelocityY += this.RotationAccelerationY * seconds; this.RotationVelocityZ += this.RotationAccelerationZ * seconds; // update rotation based on rotational velocity this.RotationX += this.RotationVelocityX * seconds; this.RotationY += this.RotationVelocityY * seconds; this.RotationZ += this.RotationVelocityZ * seconds; Matrix translation = Matrix.CreateTranslation(PositionX, PositionY, PositionZ); Matrix rotation = Matrix.CreateRotationX(RotationX) * Matrix.CreateRotationY(RotationY) * Matrix.CreateRotationZ(RotationZ); model.Root.Transform = rotation * translation * world; model.CopyAbsoluteBoneTransformsTo(boneTransforms); foreach (ModelMesh mesh in model.Meshes) { foreach (BasicEffect effect in mesh.Effects) { effect.World = boneTransforms[mesh.ParentBone.Index]; effect.View = view; effect.Projection = projection; effect.EnableDefaultLighting(); } mesh.Draw(); } }

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• Asynchronously returning a hierarchal data using .NET TPL... what should my return object "look" like?

  - by makerofthings7

  I want to use the .NET TPL to asynchronously do a DIR /S and search each subdirectory on a hard drive, and want to search for a word in each file... what should my API look like? In this scenario I know that each sub directory will have 0..10000 files or 0...10000 directories. I know the tree is unbalanced and want to return data (in relation to its position in the hierarchy) as soon as it's available. I am interested in getting data as quickly as possible, but also want to update that result if "better" data is found (better means closer to the root of c:) I may also be interested in finding all matches in relation to its position in the hierarchy. (akin to a report) Question: How should I return data to my caller? My first guess is that I think I need a shared object that will maintain the current "status" of the traversal (started | notstarted | complete ) , and might base it on the System.Collections.Concurrent. Another idea that I'm considering is the consumer/producer pattern (which ConcurrentCollections can handle) however I'm not sure what the objects "look" like. Optional Logical Constraint: The API doesn't have to address this, but in my "real world" design, if a directory has files, then only one file will ever contain the word I'm looking for.  If someone were to literally do a DIR /S as described above then they would need to account for more than one matching file per subdirectory. More information : I'm using Azure Tables to store a hierarchy of data using these TPL extension methods. A "node" is a table. Not only does each node in the hierarchy have a relation to any number of nodes, but it's possible for each node to have a reciprocal link back to any other node. This may have issues with recursion but I'm addressing that with a shared object in my recursion loop. Note that each "node" also has the ability to store local data unique to that node. It is this information that I'm searching for. In other words, I'm searching for a specific fixed RowKey in a hierarchy of nodes. When I search for the fixed RowKey in the hierarchy I'm interested in getting the results FAST (first node found) but prefer data that is "closer" to the starting point of the hierarchy. Since many nodes may have the particular RowKey I'm interested in, sometimes I may want to get a report of ALL the nodes that contain this RowKey.

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• Taking a Projects Development to the Next Level

  - by user1745022

  I have been looking for some advice for a while on how to handle a project I am working on, but to no avail. I am pretty much on my fourth iteration of improving an "application" I am working on; the first two times were in Excel, the third Time in Access, and now in Visual Studio. The field is manufacturing. The basic idea is I am taking read-only data from a massive Sybase server, filtering it and creating much smaller tables in Access daily (using delete and append Queries) and then doing a bunch of stuff. More specifically, I use a series of queries to either combine data from multiple tables or group data in specific ways (aggregate functions), and then I place this data into a table (so I can sort and manipulate data using DAO.recordset and run multiple custom algorithms). This process is then repeated multiple times throughout the database until a set of relevant tables are created. Many times I will create a field in a query with a value such as 1.1 so that when I append it to a table I can store information in the field from the algorithms. So as the process continues the number of fields for the tables change. The overall application consists of 4 "back-end" databases linked together on a shared drive, with various output (either front-end access applications or Excel). So my question is is this how many data driven applications that solve problems essentially work? Each backend database is updated with fresh data daily and updating each takes around 10 seconds (for three) and 2 minutes(for 1). Project Objectives. I want/am moving to SQL Server soon. Front End will be a Web Application (I know basic web-development and like the administration flexibility) and visual-studio will be IDE with c#/.NET. Should these algorithms be run "inside the database," or using a series of C# functions on each server request. I know you're not supposed to store data in a database unless it is an actual data point, and in Access I have many columns that just hold calculations from algorithms in vba. The truth is, I have seen multiple professional Access applications, and have never seen one that has the complexity or does even close to what mine does (for better or worse). But I know some professional software applications are 1000 times better then mine. So Please Please Please give me a suggestion of some sort. I have been completely on my own and need some guidance on how to approach this project the right way.

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• Why do some user agents have spam urls in them (and why are they always Opera/Presto User-Agents)?

  - by Erx_VB.NExT.Coder

  If you go to (say) the last 100 entries (visits) to the botsvsbrowsers.com website (exact link, feel free to take a look: http://www.botsvsbrowsers.com/recent/listings/index.html ), you'd notice that almost every User Agent that has the keywords "Opera" and "Presto" inside them, will almost certainly have a web link (URL/Web Address) inside it, and it won't just be a normal web address, but a HTML anchor tag/link to that address. Why is this so, I could not even find a single discussion about it on the internet, nowhere, I tried varying my search terms many times. If the user agent contains the words "Opera" and "Presto" it doesnt mean it will have this weblink, but it means there is about an 80% change that it will. A typical anchor tag/link inside a user agent will look like this: Mozilla/4.0 <a href="http://osis-uk.co.uk/disabled-equipment">disability equipment</a> (Windows NT 5.1; U; en) Presto/2.10.229 Version/11.60 If you check it out at the website, http://www.botsvsbrowsers.com/recent/listings/index.html you will notice that the back and forward arrows are in there unescaped format. This isn't just true for botsvsbrowsers, but several other user agent listing sites. I'm really confused and feel line I'm in a room full of 10,000 people and am the only one seeing this ghost :). If I'm doing statistical analysis, should I include or exclude this type of user agent from my listing (ie: are these just normal users who've set their user agents to attempt to drive some traffic to their sites as they browser the web), or is there something else going on? The fact that it is so consistent in terms of its format leads me to believe that it is an automated process (the setting or alteration of the user agent) so I cannot decide or understand the process by which this change is made (I know how to change a user agent), but unsure which program or facility is doing this, especially since it is exclusive to Opera (Presto) user agents that are beyond I think an 8 or 9 point something browser version. I've run some statistical tests, parsing entries from all over the place, writing custom programs, to get a better understanding of this. Keep in mind that I see normal URL's in user agents infrequently, they are just text such as +http://www.someSite.com appended to a user agent normally, especially if its a crawler or bot it provided its service URL, this is normal and isnt done with an embedded link (A HREF=) etc, so I'm not talking about "those".

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• Can my machine run Ubuntu( kubuntu | xubuntu | mint ) 12.04 WELL?

  - by Steve

  I have a 9 year old computer packing the hardware listed below. My question is, can I run 12.04 ( Ubuntu, Kubuntu, MINT or Xubuntu ) WELL? I was running Ubuntu 10.10 and I upgraded to 12.04 by going through each release via the update manager: 11.04 - 11.10 -12.04 During the installation process for 12.04 I saw an error message that there was an error installing and setting up part of the kernel. Later, when I tried installing a package in synaptic, I got another error message mentioning the kernel. When I rebooted, I got told somehting about my video and graphics was not configured properly and that I would have to do it manually ( like I know ). It gave me the option to enter the system in low graphics mode, but it just hanged. I had an old livecd of Xubuntu 10.10 around so I used that to get into my computer and copy data over to an external hard drive. I think tried to install Xubuntu 10.10 from the livecd, with the option "download updates" checked. The install process moved along a bit, then halted for about 5 hours. I rebooted my machine and tried the Xubuntu 10.10 installer WITHOUT the option to "download updates". The install completed in about 15 minutes. So, all of that is making me wonder if there is someting about 12.04 that does not like my hardware. I'm willing to try again, but only if I know I will not have to spend hours just to get to an error message and a hosed up system like I did last night. I also think I have a lot more RAM than is being reported in the output below. I had extra ram installed last year. I'm not good with the command line readouts, but there seems like there should be a lot more. I wasn't thrilled with Unity. I am willing to try Kubuntu 12.04. Will I run into the same problems? What is the highest version of a *ubuntu can I upgrade to? Thanks CPU Model: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.53GHz Frequency: 2533.223 MHz L2 Cache: 512 KB Bogomips: 5066.44 Numbering: family(15) model(2) stepping(7) Flags: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe up pebs bts cid RAM ~$ free -mt total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 1506 891 615 0 91 521 -/+ buffers/cache: 278 1227 Swap: 1609 0 1609 Total: 3116 891 2225 Video Card 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV18 [GeForce4 MX 440 AGP 8x] (rev a2) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller]) Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. V9180 Magic Flags: bus master, 66MHz, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 16 Memory at fd000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M] Memory at f0000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=64M] Expansion ROM at fe9e0000 [disabled] [size=128K] Kernel driver in use: nouveau Kernel modules: nouveau, nvidiafb Motherboard Intel 845PE ATX 533FSB DDR333 USB2

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• How do you feel about being asked to code during an interview?

  - by Mystere Man

  I have seen a lot of comments about good interview questions and puzzles to require potential developers to solve during the interview process. I have personally had several interviews in which the interviewer has asked me to write some piece of code or solve a problem during the interview, and I have always performed very poorly in these "tests". The reason is simple, as a developer who spends my days talking to computers, I find I have to prepare myself and "switch gears" to be in "interview mode". I prepare myself to make a good impression. When I'm programming, I'm very focused and am totally different from when I'm being "interpersonal". I just can't get into "the zone" when I'm also having to be a charming and witty potential employee. I feel that by asking a developer to prove his skills during an interview, all you're doing is finding out if they can code under pressure, and at the drop of a hat. It has almost no ability to determine how you would perform in a "real life" development situation. Maybe, if you're looking for someone that can code and chat at the same time, i can see how that would be beneficial. But I think you overlook potential candidates that simply do not perform well in such an artificial environment. While I appreciate that a potential employer wants to see what I can do, I don't think an interview is the place for such a test. I mean, suppose a job for an over the road trucker required that you drive while being interviewed. How does that really end well? So I'm curious as to what others think about such situations. Have you failed interviews because you were not in the right frame of mind? Have you failed to make a good interpersonal impression because you were too distracted trying to solve the problem? If you're a hiring manager, or someone that gives interviews, do you even think about such things? Is it really important that someone perform well in an interview? EDIT: To clarify, I'm not against testing applicants. My concern is about testing during an interview. See also: What are the pros and cons for the employer of code questions during an interview? looking at this from the interviewer's point of view.

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• Problem with DualBooting Ubuntu 13.10 and Win7

  - by VinArrow

  this is my first post here on AskUbuntu, not first time using it though. I wanted to install Ubuntu 13.10 on my PC to have all my work stuff there and leave Win7 for gaming. So i did my research on how to Dual Boot when you already have Win7 installed, here are the steps i took Used Disk Management on Win7 and shrunk that partition, leaving 80GB free for Ubuntu. Made a Bootable pendrive following the instructions on Ubuntu`s website. During the installation steps there was supposed to be a Install alongside Win7, but there wasnt, so i chose Something else. Everything was fine and i was able to install Ubuntu no problem on my unallocated 80GB partition (76GB Ubuntu + 4GB swap) There was a prompt for me to restart my PC and so I did expecting to see the dual boot screen (grub right?) Now, when i restarted my PC, Grub never showed up and it booted straight to Windows. Then I did some more research and found out that that could happen. Tried three things then Plugging in bootable pendrive again and selected Try Ubuntu without installing. Then i followed some instructions found here (How can I repair grub? (How to get Ubuntu back after installing Windows?)) and i could chroot into my Ubuntu install just fine. Repaired grub as instructed on that link, restarted the PC and booted straight into Win7 again. Again, used the bootable pen drive to Try Ubuntu... and used the Boot-repair tool (recommended repair). Again, booted straight into Win7. Lastly, i installed easyBCD on my Win7 and made a new entry for Ubuntu (Linux/BSD). When i rebooted the PC, there was the option to choose between Win7 and Linux, chose linux and it didnt work, taking me straight to a command line-like enviroment that read Minimum bash like scripting or something, as if I didn`t have a Linux OS installed. So, I thought I`d try and repair my Ubuntu install. And during the Installation method step there was the choice to install alongside Ubuntu 13.10! and that right there drove me crazy. Here is a screenshot of gparted showing how things are set up now http://imageshack.us/f/801/77u3.png/ Notice on the left-hand side how i can access my installation files just fine. sdb1- win7 reserved space, sdb2- win7 OS, sdb3- 76GB ubuntu install, sdb5- 4GB swap area. Does anyone know why my Ubuntu 13.10 is not being recognized? and what should I do to get it working? Thanks and sorry for the long read and bad english! (BIOS = legacy)

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• Appropriate design / technologies to handle dynamic string formatting?

  - by Mark W

  recently I was tasked with implementing a way of adding support for versioning of hardware packet specifications to one of our libraries. First a bit of information about the project. We have a hardware library which has classes for each of the various commands we support sending to our hardware. These hardware modules are essentially just lights with a few buttons, and a 2 or 4 digit display. The packets typically follow the format {SOH}AADD{ETX}, where AA is our sentinel action code, and DD is the device ID. These packet specs are different from one command to the next obviously, and the different firmware versions we have support different specifications. For example, on version 1 an action code of 14 may have a spec of {SOH}AADDTEXT{ETX} which would be AA = 14 literal, DD = device ID, TEXT = literal text to display on the device. Then we come out with a revision with adds an extended byte(s) onto the end of the packet like this {SOH}AADDTEXTE{ETX}. Assume the TEXT field is fixed width for this example. We have now added a new field onto the end which could be used to say specify the color or flash rate of the text/buttons. Currently this java library only supports one version of the commands, the latest. In our hardware library we would have a class for this command, say a DisplayTextArgs.java. That class would have fields for the device ID, the text, and the extended byte. The command class would expose a method which generates the string ("{SOH}AADDTEXTE{ETX}") using the value from the class. In practice we would create the Args class as needed, populate the fields, call the method to get our packet string, then ship that down across the CAN. Some of our other commands specification can vary for the same command, on the same version, depending on some runtime state. For example, another command for version 1 may be {SOH}AA{ETX}, where this action code clears all of the modules behind a specific controller device of their text. We may overload this packet to have option fields with multiple meanings like {SOH}AAOC{ETX} where OC is literal text, which tells the controller to only clear text on a specific module type, and to leave the others alone, or the spec could also have an option format of {SOH}AADD{ETX} to clear the text off a a specific device. Currently, in the method which generates the packet string, we would evaluate fields on the args class to determine which spec we will be using when formatting the packet. For this example, it would be along the lines of: if m_DeviceID != null then use {SOH}AADD{ETX} else if m_ClearOCs == true then use {SOH}AAOC{EXT} else use {SOH}AA{ETX} I had considered using XML, or a database to store String.format format strings, which were linked to firmware version numbers in some table. We would load them up at startup, and pass in the version number of the hardwares firmware we are currently using (I can query the devices for their firmware version, but the version is not included in all packets as part of the spec). This breaks down pretty quickly because of the dynamic nature of how we select which version of the command to use. I then considered using a rule engine to possibly build out expressions which could be interpreted at runtume, to evaluate the args class's state, and from that select the appropriate format string to use, but my brief look at rule engines for java scared me away with its complexity. While it seems like it might be a viable solution, it seems overly complex. So this is why I am here. I wouldn't say design is my strongest skill, and im having trouble figuring out the best way to approach this problem. I probably wont be able to radically change the args classes, but if the trade off was good enough, I may be able to convince my boss that the change is appropriate. What I would like from the community is some feedback on some best practices / design methodologies / API or other resources which I could use to accomplish: Logic to determine which set of commands to use for a given firmware version Of those command, which version of each command to use (based on the args classes state) Keep the rules logic decoupled from the application so as to avoid needing releases for every firmware version Be simple enough so I don't need weeks of study and trial and error to implement effectively.

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• Is Ubuntu recognizing and/or using my NVIDIA graphics card?

  - by user212860

  This is my first post here, and I'm pretty new to Ubuntu/Linux. I currently have no other OS except for Ubuntu 13.10. (I used to have Win7 until i got a new terabyte hard drive). My current PC build, if any of this helps: CPU: Intel i5 quad-core Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 RAM: 8 GB HDD: 1 TB SATA 3 Motherboard: MSi Z77 A-G41 OS Ubuntu 13.10 So I recently installed Ubuntu 13.10 and put Steam on it, and I'm seeing that my games run a lot slower than they did when I had Win7. I figured it was a graphics problem, so I checked System Settings Details Overview. It says in "Graphics" that I have "Gallium 0.4 on NVE7" (don't really know what that is). Does this mean that Ubuntu is not using my graphics card? In System Settings Software & Updates Additional Drivers, it clearly shows like this: NVIDIA Corporation: GK107 [GeForce GTX 650] -This device is using an alternative driver (And then it shows a list of drivers that I can switch back and forth to) So this is a bit confusing. In Software and Updates, it clearly shows that I have my NVIDIA card installed, and that I have a driver selected for it. But in System Settings, it shows I have some Gallium 0.4 thing. I had done a bit of research, and ended up typing command: "lspci|grep VGA" in the Terminal. It showed this in response: VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GK107 [GeForce GTX 650] (rev a1) The Terminal seems to recognize my graphics card. What it looks like to me, is that I don't have the proper driver, and I might be using my CPU's integrated graphics. When I switch around which driver I am using in that list, it still does not see my card in System Settings. Some of the drivers in the list give me some sort of OpenGL error when I try to run a game. It might just be that my games are running slow because the game developers have not optimized it for Ubuntu that well. However, that still doesn't take away from the fact that System Settings is not showing my NVIDIA card. TL;DR Version: How do I know if my video card is being recognized/used? If my video card is not being used, what is the best way fix that? Please make your answers easy to understand. I do not mind wordy responses, as long as I can follow what you're saying. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks, Jabber5

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• It’s that Time of Year Again… OPN Survey Time!

  - by Kristin Rose

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* 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:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; 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;} Whether you’re still carving pumpkins or getting ready to carve a turkey, be sure to carve out your chance to win one of 5 Apple i-Pads, by taking our Oracle PartnerNetwork Survey! On October 12th, Oracle Alliances and Channels sent out invitations asking you to complete the Oracle PartnerNetwork Survey and provide feedback on Oracle’s Enablement, Partner Business Center, OPN Portal, Communications, Benefits, OPN Competency Center, Solutions Catalog and Marketing.  So, if you’re feeling as festive as we are, and received an invitation to participate, we hope you take this opportunity to provide us feedback so we can continue to drive meaningful programs and interactions with you, our partners! If you didn’t receive an invitation but still want to get the get the holidays started with your very own i-Pad, you’re welcome to send us a note at [email protected] with your candid feedback, or request to be added to the list for future surveys. The drawing for the Apple i-Pads will take place after the survey closes mid November. Thank you in advance for your participation and we look forward to receiving your response. Let the holiday season begin! The OPN Communications Team

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