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• SQL SERVER – 3 Online SQL Courses at Pluralsight and Free Learning Resources

  - by pinaldave

  Usain Bolt is an inspiration for all. He broke his own record multiple times because he wanted to do better! Read more about him on wikipedia. He is great and indeed fastest man on the planet. Usain Bolt – World’s Fastest Man “Can you teach me SQL Server Performance Tuning?” This is one of the most popular questions which I receive all the time. The answer is YES. I would love to do performance tuning training for anyone, anywhere.  It is my favorite thing to do, and it is my favorite thing to train others in.  If possible, I would love to do training 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.  To me, it doesn’t feel like a job. Of course, as much as I would love to do performance tuning 24/7/365, obviously I am just one human being and can only be in one place t one time.  It is also very difficult to train more than one person at a time, and it is difficult to train two or more people at a time, especially when the two people are at different levels.  I am also limited by geography.  I live in India, and adjust to my own time zone.  Trying to teach a live course from India to someone whose time zone is 12 or more hours off of mine is very difficult.  If I am trying to teach at 2 am, I am sure I am not at my best! There was only one solution to scale – Online Trainings. I have built 3 different courses on SQL Server Performance Tuning with Pluralsight. Now I have no problem – I am 100% scalable and available 24/7 and 365. You can make me say the same things again and again till you find it right. I am in your mobile, PC as well as on XBOX. This is why I am such a big fan of online courses.  I have recorded many performance tuning classes and you can easily access them online, at your own time.  And don’t think that just because these aren’t live classes you won’t be able to get any feedback from me.  I encourage all my viewers to go ahead and ask me questions by e-mail, Twitter, Facebook, or whatever way you can get a hold of me. Here are details of three of my courses with Pluralsight. I suggest you go over the description of the course. As an author of the course, I have few FREE codes for watching the free courses. Please leave a comment with your valid email address, I will send a few of them to random winners. SQL Server Performance: Introduction to Query Tuning  SQL Server performance tuning is an art to master – for developers and DBAs alike. This course takes a systematic approach to planning, analyzing, debugging and troubleshooting common query-related performance problems. This includes an introduction to understanding execution plans inside SQL Server. In this almost four hour course we cover following important concepts. Introduction 10:22 Execution Plan Basics 45:59 Essential Indexing Techniques 20:19 Query Design for Performance 50:16 Performance Tuning Tools 01:15:14 Tips and Tricks 25:53 Checklist: Performance Tuning 07:13 The duration of each module is mentioned besides the name of the module. SQL Server Performance: Indexing Basics This course teaches you how to master the art of performance tuning SQL Server by better understanding indexes. In this almost two hour course we cover following important concepts. Introduction 02:03 Fundamentals of Indexing 22:21 Practical Indexing Implementation Techniques 37:25 Index Maintenance 16:33 Introduction to ColumnstoreIndex 08:06 Indexing Practical Performance Tips and Tricks 24:56 Checklist : Index and Performance 07:29 The duration of each module is mentioned besides the name of the module. SQL Server Questions and Answers This course is designed to help you better understand how to use SQL Server effectively. The course presents many of the common misconceptions about SQL Server, and then carefully debunks those misconceptions with clear explanations and short but compelling demos, showing you how SQL Server really works. In this almost 2 hours and 15 minutes course we cover following important concepts. Introduction 00:54 Retrieving IDENTITY value using @@IDENTITY 08:38 Concepts Related to Identity Values 04:15 Difference between WHERE and HAVING 05:52 Order in WHERE clause 07:29 Concepts Around Temporary Tables and Table Variables 09:03 Are stored procedures pre-compiled? 05:09 UNIQUE INDEX and NULLs problem 06:40 DELETE VS TRUNCATE 06:07 Locks and Duration of Transactions 15:11 Nested Transaction and Rollback 09:16 Understanding Date/Time Datatypes 07:40 Differences between VARCHAR and NVARCHAR datatypes 06:38 Precedence of DENY and GRANT security permissions 05:29 Identify Blocking Process 06:37 NULLS usage with Dynamic SQL 08:03 Appendix Tips and Tricks with Tools 20:44 The duration of each module is mentioned besides the name of the module. SQL in Sixty Seconds You will have to login and to get subscribed to the courses to view them. Here are my free video learning resources SQL in Sixty Seconds. These are 60 second video which I have built on various subjects related to SQL Server. Do let me know what you think about them? Here are three of my latest videos: Identify Most Resource Intensive Queries – SQL in Sixty Seconds #028 Copy Column Headers from Resultset – SQL in Sixty Seconds #027 Effect of Collation on Resultset – SQL in Sixty Seconds #026 You can watch and learn at your own pace.  Then you can easily ask me any questions you have.  E-mail is easiest, but for really tough questions I’m willing to talk on Skype, Gtalk, or even Facebook chat.  Please do watch and then talk with me, I am always available on the internet! Here is the video of the world’s fastest man.Usain St. Leo Bolt inspires us that we all do better than best. We can go the next level of our own record. We all can improve if we have a will and dedication.  Watch the video from 5:00 mark. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL in Sixty Seconds, SQL Performance, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Training, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology, Video

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• How to uninstall Ubuntu from an ubuntu only system

  - by Jo Blick

  I installed Ubuntu 12.4 by wiping Windows and not creating another partition for Ubuntu in the hard drive. I realize that, this was a mistake. I have tried repartitioning using various tools, So that I can run Windows alongside Ubuntu, using my copy of Windows from another PC, but it has all become too complex. I love Ubuntu, wish I could keep it on its own, but I am tired of trying because, I need Windows for work related things. In particular, I have to instal my "Wacom intuos graphics tablet" with a serial port, but this appears too technical to me to achieve that in Ubuntu. I think I now have to first remove Ubuntu, reinstall Windows and then, reinstall Ubuntu by partitioning it properly, as I was advised to begin with. I would appreciate any answers very much, but I need answers in plain English unfortunately, because I do not understand much of the abbreviations used in Ubuntu forums. I should add that my treasured Ubuntu system is on an HPMini netbook, so it all has to be done with USB's. which does complicate things. Sorri :/

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• SQLAuthority News – Presenting at Virtual Tech Days TechEd Pre-Con – February 9, 2011

  - by pinaldave

  I will be presenting on following subject on Virtual Tech Days TechEd Pre-Con – February 9, 2011. Auditing Made Easy: Change Tracking and Change Data Capture Date and Time: February 9, 2011 11:45am-12:45pm Location: Online In this fast paced demo oriented session we will go over few of concept which are related to real life problem at customers. We often see developers and DBA looking for details like who has dropped the table, who has last modified any object as well what was actually modified. SQL Server 2008 has all the answers. It has various new methods for Auditing where not only you can know details about what was changed as well know who changed it as well. In addition to that we can capture way more details configuring Auditing. We can also work prevent changes if proper policy management is configured. If you have ever attended my session on this subject earlier, this is going to absolutely new session and very much demo oriented. There is going to be quiz at the end of the session and I promise that if you attend the session, you will get all the answers correct. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com)   Filed under: About Me, Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology

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• Naming conventions: camelCase versus underscore_case ? what are your thoughts about it? [closed]

  - by poelinca

  I've been using underscore_case for about 2 years and I recently switched to camelCase because of the new job (been using the later one for about 2 months and I still think underscore_case is better suited for large projects where there are alot of programmers involved, mainly because the code is easier to read). Now everybody at work uses camelCase because (so they say) the code looks more elegant . What are you're thoughts about camelCase or underscore_case p.s. please excuse my bad english Edit Some update first: platform used is PHP (but I'm not expecting strict PHP platform related answers , anybody can share their thoughts on which would be the best to use , that's why I came here in the first place) I use camelCase just as everibody else in the team (just as most of you recomend) we use Zend Framework which also recommends camelCase Some examples (related to PHP) : Codeigniter framework recommends underscore_case , and honestly the code is easier to read . ZF recomends camelCase and I'm not the only one who thinks ZF code is a tad harder to follow through. So my question would be rephrased: Let's take a case where you have the platform Foo which doesn't recommend any naming conventions and it's the team leader's choice to pick one. You are that team leader, why would you pick camelCase or why underscore_case? p.s. thanks everybody for the prompt answers so far

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• A Good Developer is So Hard to Find

  - by James Michael Hare

  Let me start out by saying I want to damn the writers of the Toughest Developer Puzzle Ever – 2. It is eating every last shred of my free time! But as I've been churning through each puzzle and marvelling at the brain teasers and trivia within, I began to think about interviewing developers and why it seems to be so hard to find good ones.  The problem is, it seems like no matter how hard we try to find the perfect way to separate the chaff from the wheat, inevitably someone will get hired who falls far short of expectations or someone will get passed over for missing a piece of trivia or a tricky brain teaser that could have been an excellent team member.   In shops that are primarily software-producing businesses or other heavily IT-oriented businesses (Microsoft, Amazon, etc) there often exists a much tighter bond between HR and the hiring development staff because development is their life-blood. Unfortunately, many of us work in places where IT is viewed as a cost or just a means to an end. In these shops, too often, HR and development staff may work against each other due to differences in opinion as to what a good developer is or what one is worth.  It seems that if you ask two different people what makes a good developer, often you will get three different opinions.   With the exception of those shops that are purely development-centric (you guys have it much easier!), most other shops have management who have very little knowledge about the development process.  Their view can often be that development is simply a skill that one learns and then once aquired, that developer can produce widgets as good as the next like workers on an assembly-line floor.  On the other side, you have many developers that feel that software development is an art unto itself and that the ability to create the most pure design or know the most obscure of keywords or write the shortest-possible obfuscated piece of code is a good coder.  So is it a skill?  An Art?  Or something entirely in between?   Saying that software is merely a skill and one just needs to learn the syntax and tools would be akin to saying anyone who knows English and can use Word can write a 300 page book that is accurate, meaningful, and stays true to the point.  This just isn't so.  It takes more than mere skill to take words and form a sentence, join those sentences into paragraphs, and those paragraphs into a document.  I've interviewed candidates who could answer obscure syntax and keyword questions and once they were hired could not code effectively at all.  So development must be more than a skill.   But on the other end, we have art.  Is development an art?  Is our end result to produce art?  I can marvel at a piece of code -- see it as concise and beautiful -- and yet that code most perform some stated function with accuracy and efficiency and maintainability.  None of these three things have anything to do with art, per se.  Art is beauty for its own sake and is a wonderful thing.  But if you apply that same though to development it just doesn't hold.  I've had developers tell me that all that matters is the end result and how you code it is entirely part of the art and I couldn't disagree more.  Yes, the end result, the accuracy, is the prime criteria to be met.  But if code is not maintainable and efficient, it would be just as useless as a beautiful car that breaks down once a week or that gets 2 miles to the gallon.  Yes, it may work in that it moves you from point A to point B and is pretty as hell, but if it can't be maintained or is not efficient, it's not a good solution.  So development must be something less than art.   In the end, I think I feel like development is a matter of craftsmanship.  We use our tools and we use our skills and set about to construct something that satisfies a purpose and yet is also elegant and efficient.  There is skill involved, and there is an art, but really it boils down to being able to craft code.  Crafting code is far more than writing code.  Anyone can write code if they know the syntax, but so few people can actually craft code that solves a purpose and craft it well.  So this is what I want to find, I want to find code craftsman!  But how?   I used to ask coding-trivia questions a long time ago and many people still fall back on this.  The thought is that if you ask the candidate some piece of coding trivia and they know the answer it must follow that they can craft good code.  For example:   What C++ keyword can be applied to a class/struct field to allow it to be changed even from a const-instance of that class/struct?  (answer: mutable)   So what do we prove if a candidate can answer this?  Only that they know what mutable means.  One would hope that this would infer that they'd know how to use it, and more importantly when and if it should ever be used!  But it rarely does!  The problem with triva questions is that you will either: Approve a really good developer who knows what some obscure keyword is (good) Reject a really good developer who never needed to use that keyword or is too inexperienced to know how to use it (bad) Approve a really bad developer who googled "C++ Interview Questions" and studied like hell but can't craft (very bad) Many HR departments love these kind of tests because they are short and easy to defend if a legal issue arrises on hiring decisions.  After all it's easy to say a person wasn't hired because they scored 30 out of 100 on some trivia test.  But unfortunately, you've eliminated a large part of your potential developer pool and possibly hired a few duds.  There are times I've hired candidates who knew every trivia question I could throw out them and couldn't craft.  And then there are times I've interviewed candidates who failed all my trivia but who I took a chance on who were my best finds ever.    So if not trivia, then what?  Brain teasers?  The thought is, these type of questions measure the thinking power of a candidate.  The problem is, once again, you will either: Approve a good candidate who has never heard the problem and can solve it (good) Reject a good candidate who just happens not to see the "catch" because they're nervous or it may be really obscure (bad) Approve a candidate who has studied enough interview brain teasers (once again, you can google em) to recognize the "catch" or knows the answer already (bad). Once again, you're eliminating good candidates and possibly accepting bad candidates.  In these cases, I think testing someone with brain teasers only tests their ability to answer brain teasers, not the ability to craft code. So how do we measure someone's ability to craft code?  Here's a novel idea: have them code!  Give them a computer and a compiler, or a whiteboard and a pen, or paper and pencil and have them construct a piece of code.  It just makes sense that if we're going to hire someone to code we should actually watch them code.  When they're done, we can judge them on several criteria: Correctness - does the candidate's solution accurately solve the problem proposed? Accuracy - is the candidate's solution reasonably syntactically correct? Efficiency - did the candidate write or use the more efficient data structures or algorithms for the job? Maintainability - was the candidate's code free of obfuscation and clever tricks that diminish readability? Persona - are they eager and willing or aloof and egotistical?  Will they work well within your team? It may sound simple, or it may sound crazy, but when I'm looking to hire a developer, I want to see them actually develop well-crafted code.

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• Improving SpriteBatch performance for tiles

  - by Richard Rast

  I realize this is a variation on what has got to be a common question, but after reading several (good answers) I'm no closer to a solution here. So here's my situation: I'm making a 2D game which has (among some other things) a tiled world, and so, drawing this world implies drawing a jillion tiles each frame (depending on resolution: it's roughly a 64x32 tile with some transparency). Now I want the user to be able to maximize the game (or fullscreen mode, actually, as its a bit more efficient) and instead of scaling textures (bleagh) this will just allow lots and lots of tiles to be shown at once. Which is great! But it turns out this makes upward of 2000 tiles on the screen each time, and this is framerate-limiting (I've commented out enough other parts of the game to make sure this is the bottleneck). It gets worse if I use multiple source rectangles on the same texture (I use a tilesheet; I believe changing textures entirely makes things worse), or if you tint the tiles, or whatever. So, the general question is this: What are some general methods for improving the drawing of thousands of repetitive sprites? Answers pertaining to XNA's SpriteBatch would be helpful but I'm equally happy with general theory. Also, any tricks pertaining to this situation in particular (drawing a tiled world efficiently) are also welcome. I really do want to draw all of them, though, and I need the SpriteMode.BackToFront to be active, because

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• Final Man vs. Machine Round of Jeopardy Unfolds; Watson Dominates

  - by ETC

  The final round of IBM’s Watson against Ken Jenning and Brad Rutter ended last night with Watson coming out in a strong lead against its two human opponents. Read on to catch a video of the match and see just how quick Watson is on the draw. Watson tore through many of the answers, the little probability bar at the bottom of the screen denoting it was often 95%+ confident in its answers. Some of the more interesting stumbles were, like in the last matches, based on nuance. By far the biggest “What?” moment of the night, however, was when it answered the Daily Double question of “The New Yorker’s 1959 review of this said in its brevity and clarity, it is ‘unlike most such manuals, a book as well as a tool’”. Watson, inexplicably, answered “Dorothy Parker”. You can win them all, eh? Check out the video below to see Watson in action on its final day. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How to Enable User-Specific Wireless Networks in Windows 7 How to Use Google Chrome as Your Default PDF Reader (the Easy Way) How To Remove People and Objects From Photographs In Photoshop Ask How-To Geek: How Can I Monitor My Bandwidth Usage? Internet Explorer 9 RC Now Available: Here’s the Most Interesting New Stuff Here’s a Super Simple Trick to Defeating Fake Anti-Virus Malware The Citroen GT – An Awesome Video Game Car Brought to Life [Video] Final Man vs. Machine Round of Jeopardy Unfolds; Watson Dominates Give Chromium-Based Browser Desktop Notifications a Native System Look in Ubuntu Chrome Time Track Is a Simple Task Time Tracker Google Sky Map Turns Your Android Phone into a Digital Telescope Walking Through a Seaside Village Wallpaper

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• Programming Practice/Test Contest?

  - by Emmanuel

  My situation: I'm on a programming team, and this year, we want to weed out the weak link by making a competition to get the best coder from our group of candidates. Focus is on IEEExtreme-like contests. What I've done: I've been trying already for 2 weeks to get a practice or test site, like UVa or codechef. The plan after I find one: Send them (the candidates) a list of direct links to the problems (making them the "contest's problem list) get them to email me their correct answers' code at the time the judge says they have solved it and accept the fastest one into the team. Issues: We had practiced on UVa already (on programming challenges too), so our former teammate (which will be in the candidate group) already has an advantage if we used it. Codechef has all it's answers public, and since it shows the latest ones it will be extremely hard to verify if the answer was copied. And I've found other sites, like SPOJ, but they share at least some problems with codechef, making them inherit the issue of Codechef So, what alternatives do you think there are? Any site that may work? Any place to get all stuff to set up a Mooshak or similar contest (as in the stuff to get the problems, instructions to set up the server itself are easy to google)? Any other idea?

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• How do I find a qualified web designer in my area?

  - by Incognito

  I just sent out emails to five local web design companies to my area asking to take drawings to HTML/CSS/jQuery. None of the ones who accepted the deal seem suitable to myself. Others rejected the offer because they wanted to 'provide an end-to-end solution' or are 'booked till June'. The local companies did not seem suitable to myself because my review process is this: goto their website, do a view-source. I'll see really weird things (contact us forms that go nowhere), really old things (mm_menu.js), and portfolios that are non-existent (aren't on the site, don't link anywhere, or otherwise). The company would like to hire as locally as they can rather than out-source to another country. Answers I'm looking for Processes you use when searching for someone How you qualify their aptitude for the project Anything that you think I'm doing wrong, or should be doing also. Answers I'm not looking for: "Hello sir please contact me we do everything for 10 dolla." My bud's great at this stuff, call him. example.com is the best for this.

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• Why a static main method in Java and C#, rather than a constructor?

  - by Konrad Rudolph

  Why did (notably) Java and C# decide to have a static method as their entry point – rather than representing an application instance by an instance of an Application class, with the entry point being an appropriate constructor which, at least to me, seems more natural? I’m interested in a definitive answer from a primary or secondary source, not mere speculations. This has been asked before. Unfortunately, the existing answers are merely begging the question. In particular, the following answers don’t satisfy me, as I deem them incorrect: There would be ambiguity if the constructor were overloaded. – In fact, C# (as well as C and C++) allows different signatures for Main so the same potential ambiguity exists, and is dealt with. A static method means no objects can be instantiated before so order of initialisation is clear. – This is just factually wrong, some objects are instantiated before (e.g. in a static constructor). So they can be invoked by the runtime without having to instantiate a parent object. – This is no answer at all. Just to justify further why I think this is a valid and interesting question: Many frameworks do use classes to represent applications, and constructors as entry points. For instance, the VB.NET application framework uses a dedicated main dialog (and its constructor) as the entry point1. Neither Java nor C# technically need a main method. Well, C# needs one to compile, but Java not even that. And in neither case is it needed for execution. So this doesn’t appear to be a technical restriction. And, as I mentioned in the first paragraph, for a mere convention it seems oddly unfitting with the general design principle of Java and C#. To be clear, there isn’t a specific disadvantage to having a static main method, it’s just distinctly odd, which made me wonder if there was some technical rationale behind it. I’m interested in a definitive answer from a primary or secondary source, not mere speculations. 1 Although there is a callback (Startup) which may intercept this.

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• Xubuntu 12.04 : Random boot to black screen

  - by Thibaud Ruelle

  My xubuntu 12.04 has worked flawlessly since install in September. However, lately I randomly have the following boot issue : The computer boots to grub, and after choosing xubuntu either boots normally or boots to a black screen. Here are some observations I have made : The black screen seems to happen randomly. The black screen does not seem to happen in safe mode (- nomodeset in grub). The black screen does not allow me to ctrl + alt + F1-6 into a terminal. The black screen allows me to use SysRq keys (Alt + SysRq + K does not work though). The black screen often happens on first boot in several hours and the computer usually boots normally after a RSEINUB. When the computer boots I get "SP5100 TCO timer: mmio address 0xfec000f0 already in use" at startup and "Could not write bytes: broken pipe" at shutdown. However research on these errors did not yield answers to my particular issue. Comparing Xorg.0.log (successful boot) and Xorg.0.log.old (black screen), and reading the answers to similar problem, it seems that I might have a X driver issue. However the system worked flawlessly since lately. Additional info on my system : ACER AO722 C62kk Operating system : 3.2.0-31-generic ubuntu Edit : I made a fresh install of Xubuntu 12.04 x64, the issue is still there ... (I have a separate /home so config. files were not erased). Edit 2 : I followed troubleshooting blank screen, so my new observations are without quiet and splash in grub : When the system boots normally, the screen goes black after grub then lights up and displays text information then goes to login screen. (After that the desktop starting time vary substantially, which is new and may be a separate issue ?). When the boot fails, after grub the screen goes black, lights up, goes black, lights up again and most times goes black again. At this point it responds to Alt+SysReq K by lighting up but no more, and has to be rebooted through Alt+SysReq+ RSEINUB. Thank you for your time and attention in advance ! Thibaud Ruelle

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• The Faces in the Crowdsourcing

  - by Applications User Experience

  By Jeff Sauro, Principal Usability Engineer, Oracle Imagine having access to a global workforce of hundreds of thousands of people who can perform tasks or provide feedback on a design quickly and almost immediately. Distributing simple tasks not easily done by computers to the masses is called "crowdsourcing" and until recently was an interesting concept, but due to practical constraints wasn't used often. Enter Amazon.com. For five years, Amazon has hosted a service called Mechanical Turk, which provides an easy interface to the crowds. The service has almost half a million registered, global users performing a quarter of a million human intelligence tasks (HITs). HITs are submitted by individuals and companies in the U.S. and pay from $.01 for simple tasks (such as determining if a picture is offensive) to several dollars (for tasks like transcribing audio). What do we know about the people who toil away in this digital crowd? Can we rely on the work done in this anonymous marketplace? A rendering of the actual Mechanical Turk (from Wikipedia) Knowing who is behind Amazon's Mechanical Turk is fitting, considering the history of the actual Mechanical Turk. In the late 1800's, a mechanical chess-playing machine awed crowds as it beat master chess players in what was thought to be a mechanical miracle. It turned out that the creator, Wolfgang von Kempelen, had a small person (also a chess master) hiding inside the machine operating the arms to provide the illusion of automation. The field of human computer interaction (HCI) is quite familiar with gathering user input and incorporating it into all stages of the design process. It makes sense then that Mechanical Turk was a popular discussion topic at the recent Computer Human Interaction usability conference sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery in Atlanta. It is already being used as a source for input on Web sites (for example, Feedbackarmy.com) and behavioral research studies. Two papers shed some light on the faces in this crowd. One paper tells us about the shifting demographics from mostly stay-at-home moms to young men in India. The second paper discusses the reliability and quality of work from the workers. Just who exactly would spend time doing tasks for pennies? In "Who are the crowdworkers?" University of California researchers Ross, Silberman, Zaldivar and Tomlinson conducted a survey of Mechanical Turk worker demographics and compared it to a similar survey done two years before. The initial survey reported workers consisting largely of young, well-educated women living in the U.S. with annual household incomes above $40,000. The more recent survey reveals a shift in demographics largely driven by an influx of workers from India. Indian workers went from 5% to over 30% of the crowd, and this block is largely male (two-thirds) with a higher average education than U.S. workers, and 64% report an annual income of less than $10,000 (keeping in mind $1 has a lot more purchasing power in India). This shifting demographic certainly has implications as language and culture can play critical roles in the outcome of HITs. Of course, the demographic data came from paying Turkers $.10 to fill out a survey, so there is some question about both a self-selection bias (characteristics which cause Turks to take this survey may be unrepresentative of the larger population), not to mention whether we can really trust the data we get from the crowd. Crowds can perform tasks or provide feedback on a design quickly and almost immediately for usability testing. (Photo attributed to victoriapeckham Flikr While having immediate access to a global workforce is nice, one major problem with Mechanical Turk is the incentive structure. Individuals and companies that deploy HITs want quality responses for a low price. Workers, on the other hand, want to complete the task and get paid as quickly as possible, so that they can get on to the next task. Since many HITs on Mechanical Turk are surveys, how valid and reliable are these results? How do we know whether workers are just rushing through the multiple-choice responses haphazardly answering? In "Are your participants gaming the system?" researchers at Carnegie Mellon (Downs, Holbrook, Sheng and Cranor) set up an experiment to find out what percentage of their workers were just in it for the money. The authors set up a 30-minute HIT (one of the more lengthy ones for Mechanical Turk) and offered a very high $4 to those who qualified and $.20 to those who did not. As part of the HIT, workers were asked to read an email and respond to two questions that determined whether workers were likely rushing through the HIT and not answering conscientiously. One question was simple and took little effort, while the second question required a bit more work to find the answer. Workers were led to believe other factors than these two questions were the qualifying aspect of the HIT. Of the 2000 participants, roughly 1200 (or 61%) answered both questions correctly. Eighty-eight percent answered the easy question correctly, and 64% answered the difficult question correctly. In other words, about 12% of the crowd were gaming the system, not paying enough attention to the question or making careless errors. Up to about 40% won't put in more than a modest effort to get paid for a HIT. Young men and those that considered themselves in the financial industry tended to be the most likely to try to game the system. There wasn't a breakdown by country, but given the demographic information from the first article, we could infer that many of these young men come from India, which makes language and other cultural differences a factor. These articles raise questions about the role of crowdsourcing as a means for getting quick user input at low cost. While compensating users for their time is nothing new, the incentive structure and anonymity of Mechanical Turk raises some interesting questions. How complex of a task can we ask of the crowd, and how much should these workers be paid? Can we rely on the information we get from these professional users, and if so, how can we best incorporate it into designing more usable products? Traditional usability testing will still play a central role in enterprise software. Crowdsourcing doesn't replace testing; instead, it makes certain parts of gathering user feedback easier. One can turn to the crowd for simple tasks that don't require specialized skills and get a lot of data fast. As more studies are conducted on Mechanical Turk, I suspect we will see crowdsourcing playing an increasing role in human computer interaction and enterprise computing. References: Downs, J. S., Holbrook, M. B., Sheng, S., and Cranor, L. F. 2010. Are your participants gaming the system?: screening mechanical turk workers. In Proceedings of the 28th international Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Atlanta, Georgia, USA, April 10 - 15, 2010). CHI '10. ACM, New York, NY, 2399-2402. Link: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1753326.1753688 Ross, J., Irani, L., Silberman, M. S., Zaldivar, A., and Tomlinson, B. 2010. Who are the crowdworkers?: shifting demographics in mechanical turk. In Proceedings of the 28th of the international Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Atlanta, Georgia, USA, April 10 - 15, 2010). CHI EA '10. ACM, New York, NY, 2863-2872. Link: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1753846.1753873

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• SQL SERVER – Puzzle to Win Print Book and Free 30 Days Online Training Material

  - by pinaldave

  Yesterday I had asked a simple question SQL SERVER – Puzzle to Win Print Book – Write T-SQL Self Join Without Using LEAD and LAG with keeping two simple intention. We can all learn about new feature of SQL Server 2012 We can learn new feature of SQL Server 2012 while practicing on earlier version of SQL Server. While I was creating question due to copy-paste error the question was not correctly created. In simple word – I made a mistake. This created some confusion and I feel bad about this. Here is what we will do. Please read the question again and attempt to answer the question which I have asked in the blog post. Yesterday the give away was my SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers book. As the question was corrected after a while, the give away are now got sweeter. SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers book – 2 Copy 30 Days Online Training Material of Pluralsight. They have excellent learning resources – I have written my 6 hour learning experience over Learning SSAS (SQL Server Analysis Services) Online in 6 Hours. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Training, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology

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• Spirent Communications Improves Customer Experience with Knowledge Management

  - by Tony Berk

  Spirent Communications plc is a global leader in test and measurement inspiring innovation within development labs, communication networks and IT organizations. The world’s leading communications companies rely on Spirent to help design, develop, validate, and deliver world-class network, devices, and services. Spirent’s customers require high levels of support for a diverse and complex product portfolio, and the company is committed to delivering on this requirement. Spirent needed a solution to help its customers get the information they need quickly and at their convenience through its Web site. After evaluating several solutions, Spirent selected and deployed Oracle Knowledge for Web Self Service Enterprise Edition. Oracle Knowledge Management uses natural language processing to understand the true intent of each inquiry logged via the support portal’s search function. The Spirent Knowledge Base on the company’s Customer Support Center (CSC) finds the best possible answer using search enhancement features?such as communications industry-specific libraries and federation to search external sources. Spirent has reduced contact center call volume while better serving its customers. Each time a customer uses the knowledge base, they find answers faster than by calling, and it saves Spirent an average of US$210 per call?which is significant when multiplied across the thousands of calls received monthly. Oracle Knowledge also helps support engineers find answers more quickly, enabling the company to scale without adding additional support engineers. Oracle Knowledge is integrated with Spirent's Siebel Contact Center implementation to provide an integrated desktop for CRM and agent intelligence, avoiding the need for contact center personnel to toggle between various screens to address customer inquiries, thereby accelerating customer service. Click here to learn more about Sprient's use of Siebel CRM and Oracle Knowledge Management.

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• How do I work around sudo 'segmentation fault' on basic bash commands?

  - by sage

  I am sure the answers are out there, but alas there are too many answers (here and elsewhere) to other questions stopping me from finding them. I just encountered something substantially similar to what is described at the closed SO question, sudo : “segmentation fault” Ubuntu maverick [closed]. My team is using Ubuntu 11.04 on VMWare Workstation 8.0.4. We are doing development using c++, Xenomai, Qt, and Qt Creator. When we simulate our application on the virtual machine, we currently need to launch Qt Creator with sudo. My colleague mentioned today that he has been having issues where his workstation locks up and he needs to restart and that occasionally he has the issue that all sudo bash commands return "segmentation fault". I just ran our application in simulation mode. I was running Qt Creator under sudo and Qt Creator received the signal abort (if I recall). Afterward, every command executed with sudo from sudo qtcreator to sudo ls resulted in the message Segmentation fault. I clicked on the power widget to see if I could log out, but the system shut down straightaway without prompting. My understanding is that we run sudo because of a permissions issue with Xenomai and the VM as currently configured, but my colleague has a workaround for this. I expect that not running Qt Creator under sudo -- something that has always made me nervous -- will help contain this issue, but I find it troubling that this could happen and manifest as it does. Does anyone know what is happening? Any recommendations on how to work around this issue? This is happening often to I am trying tolobby for VM changes to be able to run the process without sudo.

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• Ubuntu impossible to install: "unable to find a medium containing a live filesystem"

  - by Lorenzo

  Yes, I have read questions and answers with similar titles for this issue, which prevented me from installing Ubuntu for several MONTHS now, trying to figure it out. I have a MacBookPro with triple partition (one for Mac Snow Leopard, one for Windows 7, one for Linux) created with reFIT firmware (not BootCamp). I set up the system according to these instructions for reFIT: http://lifehacker.com/5531037/how-to-triple+boot-your-mac-with-windows-and-linux-no-boot-camp-required Now. There is a free partition ready to accept Linux into its arms, but Linux does not want to participate. Most answers to the issue "unable to find a medium containing a live filesystem" point to changing the BIOS booting system (which I don't know how to do, especially using this reFIT booting system), and to changing the socket of the USB (which does not concern me, since I am using a CD, actually I tried with a CD, then with a DVD, since a blank CD is only 700MB while the iso image file of Ubuntu is about 731MB). Anyway. This is what happens: I am in the Mac system (using the Mac partition) I insert the DVD with the burned image of Ubuntu (yes I have tried burning it again and agin on both CD and DVD blank discs). I restart the computer. When reFIT loads, I hold down the ALT key until the CD image appears. I select it, and hit Enter. A small Ubuntu icon appears at the bottom of the screen. Then a Ubuntu sign appears in the middle of the screen with small dots underneath, lighting up progressively over and over to indicate it's loading. Then everything turns black and the following message appears, at the end of a few lines of text: "unable to find medium with live file system". Please provide very practical suggestions on what to do to an unexperienced wannabe Ubuntu very patient user. Please start by saying how do I access the BIOS setup from reFIT bootup, and exactly what and why I need to try and change. (Will this mess up my reFIT bootup?) And anything else I need to do to finally be able to install Ubuntu. Thanks

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• Is micro-optimisation important when coding?

  - by BozKay

  I recently asked a question on stackoverflow.com to find out why isset() was faster than strlen() in php. This raised questions around the importance of readable code and whether performance improvements of micro-seconds in code were worth even considering. My father is a retired programmer, I showed him the responses and he was absolutely certain that if a coder does not consider performance in their code even at the micro level, they are not good programmers. I'm not so sure - perhaps the increase in computing power means we no longer have to consider these kind of micro-performance improvements? Perhaps this kind of considering is up to the people who write the actual language code? (of php in the above case). The environmental factors could be important - the internet consumes 10% of the worlds energy, I wonder how wasteful a few micro-seconds of code is when replicated trillions of times on millions of websites? I'd like to know answers preferably based on facts about programming. Is micro-optimisation important when coding? EDIT : My personal summary of 25 answers, thanks to all. Sometimes we need to really worry about micro-optimisations, but only in very rare circumstances. Reliability and readability are far more important in the majority of cases. However, considering micro-optimisation from time to time doesn't hurt. A basic understanding can help us not to make obvious bad choices when coding such as if (expensiveFunction() && counter < X) Should be if (counter < X && expensiveFunction()) (example from @zidarsk8) This could be an inexpensive function and therefore changing the code would be micro-optimisation. But, with a basic understanding, you would not have to because you would write it correctly in the first place.

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• Handling early/late/dropped packets for interpolation in a 3D multiplayer game

  - by Ben Cracknell

  I'm working on a multiplayer game that for the purposes of this question, is most similar to Team Fortress. Each network data packet will contain the 3D position of the target moving object. (this object could be another player) The packets are sent on a fixed interval, and linear interpolation will be used to smooth the transition between packets. Under normal circumstances, interpolation will occur between the second-to-last packet, and the last packet received. The linear interpolation algorithm is the same as this post: Interpolating positions in a multiplayer game I have the same issue as in that post, but the answers don't seem like they will work in my situation. Consider the following scenario: Normal packet timing, everything is okay The next expected packet is late. That's okay, we'll just extrapolate based on previous positions The late packet eventually arrives with corrections to our extrapolation. Now what do we do with its information? The answers on the above post suggest we should just interpolate to this new packet's position, but that would not work at all. If we have already extrapolated past that point in time, moving back would cause rubber-banding. The issue is similar in the case of an early or dropped packet. So I believe what I am looking for is some way to smoothly deal with new information in an ongoing interpolation/extrapolation process. Since I might be moving on to quadratic or even cubic interpolation, it would be great if the same solutiuon could be applied to those as well.

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• Advisor Webcasts in July for the EBS Technology area

  - by Oracle_EBS

  For July 2012 we have scheduled 2 Webcasts: The first one is an E-Business Suite OAM Overview and Usage session. The second is about the E-Business Suite Workflow Avisor as a follow-up session. As every time we are driving 2 sessions for a better global alignment : E-Business Suite - OAM Overview and Monitoring Agenda Oracle Applications Manager (OAM) Overview Log files Diagnostics and Logging Concurrent processing through OAM Applications Dashboard Troubleshooting Patch Management. Patch Wizard OAM "How To" Documents Questions &Answers EMEA Session : July 10, 2012 at 09:00 AM UK / 10:00 AM CET / 13:30 India / 17:00 Japan / 18:00 Australia Details & Registration : Note 1466056.1 Direct link to register in WebEx US Session : July 11, 2012 at 18:00 UK / 19:00 CET / 10:00 AM Pacific / 11:00 AM Mountain/ 01:00 PM Eastern Details & Registration : Note 1466057.1 Direct link to register in WebEx E-Business Suite - Workflow Analyzer - Follow-Up Agenda Overview of Workflow Analyzer Enhancements implemented in the latest Release Questions & Answers EMEA Session : July 24, 2012 at 09:00 AM UK / 10:00 AM CET / 13:30 India / 17:00 Japan / 18:00 Australia Details & Registration : Note 1466058.1 Direct link to register in WebEx US Session : July 25, 2012 at 18:00 UK / 19:00 CET / 10:00 AM Pacific / 11:00 AM Mountain/ 01:00 PM Eastern Details & Registration : Note 1466059.1 Direct link to register in WebEx Schedules, recordings and the Presentations of the Advisor Webcast drove under the EBS Applications Technology area can be found in Note 1186338.1. Current Schedules of Advisor Webcast for all Oracle Products can be found on Note 740966.1 Post Presentation Recordings of the Advisor Webcasts for all Oracle Products can be found on Note 740964.1

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• My first time in the gambling industry

  - by sfrj

  I am a Java enterprise developer with almost 3 years of professional experience. Soon i am going to have a face to face interview with a company in the gambling industry. I already did successfully a phone screening and now for the personal interview i suppose they will ask me about some kind of white board problem or system design task. I think i am in the right place to ask about this, and would appreciate a lot if someone would give me some tips or share something related to his own experience. The things i am more interested in regarding my interview are: What are the most common challenges for programmers, in this industry? Any idea or suggestion on a white board problem they may ask me? Could you point me to some links where i can find information on the topic or sample problems in this industry?. I personally find this question very interesting not just for me. Also i think, the given answers can help also others in a similar situation. Just what i want to say whit this last comment is: Please avoid, answers like: www.google.com and so on...

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• School vs Self-Taught [duplicate]

  - by Joan Venge

  This question already has an answer here: Do I need a degree in Computer Science to get a junior Programming job? [closed] 8 answers Do you think university is a good learning environment or is it better to be autodidact? [closed] 3 answers Do you think formal education is necessary to gain strong programming skills? There are a lot of jobs that aren't programming but involves programming, such as tech artists in games, fx tds in film for example. I see similar patterns in the people I work where the best ones I have seen were self-taught, because of being artists primarily. But I also see that while the software, programming knowledge is varied and deep, hardware knowledge is very basic, including me, again due to lack of formal education. But I also work with a lot of programmers who possess both skills in general (software and hardware). Do you think it's necessary to have a formal education to have great programming skills? Would you think less of someone if he didn't have a degree in computer science, or software engineering, etc in terms of job opportunities? Would you trust him to do a software engineering job, i.e. writing a complex tool? Basically I feel the self-taught programmer doesn't know a lot of things, i.e. not knowing a particular pattern or a particular language, etc. But I find that the ability to think outside the box much more powerful. As "pure" programmers what's your take on it?

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• How to Deliberately Practice Software Engineering?

  - by JasCav

  I just finished reading this recent article. It's a very interesting read, and it makes some great points. The point that specifically jumped out at me was this: The difference was in how they spent this [equal] time. The elite players were spending almost three times more hours than the average players on deliberate practice — the uncomfortable, methodical work of stretching your ability. This article (if you care not to read it) is discussing violin players. Of course, being a software engineer, my mind turned towards software ability. Granted, there are some very naturally talented individuals out there, but time and time again, it is those folks who stretch their abilities through deliberate practice that really become exceptional at their craft. My question is - how would one go about practicing the "scales" of software engineering and computer science? When I practice the piano, I will spend more of my time on scales and less on a fun song. How can I do the same in developing software? To head off early answers, I don't feel that "work on an open source project," and similar answers, is really right. Sure...that can improve your skills, but you could just as easily get stuck focusing on something that is unimportant to your craft as a whole. It can become the equivalent of learning "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" and never being able to play Chopin. So, again, I ask - how would you suggest that someone deliberately practice software engineering?

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• Live programming help

  - by frazras

  This idea has been floating around my head for a few years. I started some work on it but I just want to know if it is feasible, sensible, or if there is something else like it out there. Dont want to know I was wasting time on a solved issue. Whenever I have a programming issue, this is my sequence: Google it!: That usually brings up a lot of things: blogs, forums, stackoverflow, stackexchange, and even the official docs of the language/framework/cms. Ask on IRC: I format my question and try to get people on IRC to help me. Make a post: I create a post on forums/stackoverflow/stackexchange or shout on twitter with hashtags. Now a lot of the time I am in the middle of a project with a deadline. So I want answers NOW!!! Sometimes just 5-15 minutes worth of attention. Usually by the time I am failing at getting answers at #2, I am imagining how many people are ONLINE NOW with the skill and my exact answer but playing video games, watching youtube or idling online. However, if they were motivated, they would invest the 15 mintes helping me, that would make a world of a difference. I am even in positions where I would PAY for that 15 minutes of instant help. If your rate is as much as $100/hour (relatively good programmer) that is $25 that might save me 3 hours. This help would be live, text chat/skype/phone/screenshare. Should I continue developing this idea or is there a better alternative out there? Or is this even an unfeasible idea?

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• What have you learned from the bugs you helped discover and fix?

  - by Ethel Evans

  I liked the core of this question, and wanted to re-ask it in a way that made it less about 'fun' and more about 'What do these past mistakes tell us about how we can write and test software better?' As an SDET, I'm always looking for anecdotes about new and interesting ways that programs can fail. I've learned a lot from these tales in the past, and would like to get that from the intelligent people in this community as well. I'd be interested in hearing what the issue was, how it was caught, if you think there was anything that could have reasonably done to catch it earlier or to avoid the same issue on later projects, and any other interesting lessons you took away from this bug. Please only write about bugs you personally were involved with, ideally on a project you worked on (e.g., no "10 years before I was born, this happened and it was FUNNY!" answers). Please vote up answers that are thought-provoking or could change how you develop or test in some way, so this isn't just 'social fun'. Try to avoid voting up something just because it was funny.

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• Wanted: Java Code Brainteasers

  - by Tori Wieldt

  The Jan/Feb Java Magazine will go out next week. It's full of great Java stories, interviews and technical articles. It also includes a Fix This section; the idea of this section is challenging a Java developer's coding skills. It's a multiple-choice brainteaser that includes code and possible answers. The answer is provided in the next issue. For an example, check out Fix This in the Java Magazine premier issue. We are looking for community submissions to Fix This. Do you have a good code brain teaser? Remember, you want tease your fellow devs, not stump them completely! If you have a submission, here's what you do:  1. State the problem, including a short summary of the tool/technique, in about 75 words. 2. Send us the code snippet, with a short set-up so readers know what they are looking at (such as, "Consider the following piece of code to have database access within a Servlet.") 3. Provide four multiple-choice answers to the question, "What's the fix?" 4. Give us the answer, along with a brief explanation of why. 5. Tell us who you are (name, occupation, etc.) 6. Email the above to JAVAMAG_US at ORACLE.COM with "Fix This Submission" in the title. Deadlines for Fix This for next two issues of Java Magazine are Dec. 12th and Jan. 15th. Bring It!

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