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• Rebuilding CoasterBuzz, Part III: The architecture using the "Web stack of love"

  - by Jeff

  This is the third post in a series about rebuilding one of my Web sites, which has been around for 12 years. I hope to relaunch in the next month or two. More: Part I: Evolution, and death to WCF Part II: Hot data objects I finally hit a point in the re-do of CoasterBuzz where I feel like the major pieces are in place... rewritten, ported and what not, so that I can focus now on front-end design and more interesting creative problems. I've been asked on more than one occasion (OK, just twice) what's going on under the covers, so I figure this might be a good time to explain the overall architecture. As it turns out, I'm using a whole lof of the "Web stack of love," as Scott Hanselman likes to refer to it. Oh that Hanselman. First off, at the center of it all, is BizTalk. Just kidding. That's "enterprise architecture" humor, where every discussion starts with how they'll use BizTalk. Here are the bigger moving parts: It's fairly straight forward. A common library lives in a number of Web apps, all of which are (or will be) powered by ASP.NET MVC 4. They all talk to the same database. There is the main Web site, which also has the endpoint for the Silverlight-based Feed app. The cstr.bz site handles redirects, which are generated when news items are published and sent to Twitter. Facebook publishing is handled via the RSS Graffiti Facebook app. The API site handles requests from the Windows Phone app. The main site depends very heavily on POP Forums, the open source, MVC-based forum I maintain. It serves a number of functions, primarily handling users. These user objects serve in non-forum roles to handle things like news and database contributions, maintaining track records (coaster nerd for "list of rides I've been on") and, perhaps most importantly, paid club memberships. Before I get into more specifics, note that the "glue" for everything is Ninject, the dependency injection framework. I actually prefer StructureMap these days, but I started with Ninject in POP Forums a long time ago. POP Forums has a static class, PopForumsActivation, that new's up an instance of the container, and you can call it from where ever. The downside is that the forums require Ninject in your MVC app as the default dependency resolver. At some point, I'll decouple it, but for now it's not in the way. In the general sense, the entire set of apps follow a repository-service-controller-view pattern. Repos just do data access, service classes do business logic, controllers compose and route, views view. The forum also provides Scoring Game functionality. The Scoring Game is a reasonably abstract framework to award users points based on certain actions, and then award achievements when a certain number of point events happen. For example, the forum already awards a point when someone plus-one's a post you made. You can set up an achievement that says, "Give the user an award when they've had 100 posts plus'd." It also does zero-point entries into the ledger, so if you make a post, you could award an achievement based on 100 posts made. Wiring in the scoring game to CoasterBuzz functionality is just a matter of going to the Ninject container and getting an instance of the event publisher, and passing it events. Forum adapters were introduced into POP Forums a few versions ago, and they can intercept the model generated for forum topic lists and threads and designate an alternate view. These are used to make the "Day in Pictures" forum, where users can upload photos as frame-by-frame photo threads. Another adapter adds an association UI, so users can associate specific amusement parks with their trip report posts. The Silverlight-based Feed app talks to a simple JSON endpoint in the main app. This uses an underlying library I wrote ages ago, simply called Feeds, that aggregates event information. You inherit from a base class that creates instances of a publisher interface, and then use that class to send it an event type and any number of data fields. Feeds has two publishers: One is to the database, and that's used for the endpoint that talks to the Silverlight app. The second publisher publishes to Twitter, if the event is of the type "news." The wiring is a little strange, because for the new posts and topics events, I'm actually pulling out the forum repository classes from the Ninject container and replacing them with overridden methods to publish. I should probably be doing this at the service class level, but whatever. It's my mess. cstr.bz doesn't do anything interesting. It looks up the path, and if it has a match, does a 301 redirect to the long URL. The API site just serves up JSON for the Windows Phone app. The Windows Phone app is Silverlight, of course, and there isn't much to it. It does use the control toolkit, but beyond that, it relies on a simple class that creates a Webclient and calls the server for JSON to deserialize. The same class is now used by the Feed app, which used to use WCF. Simple is better. Data access in POP Forums is all straight SQL, because a lot of it was ported from the ASP.NET version. Most CoasterBuzz data access is handled by the Entity Framework, using the code-first model. The context class in this case does a lot of work to make sure that the table and key mapping works, since much of it breaks from the normal conventions of EF. One of the more powerful things you can do with EF, once you understand the little gotchas, is split tables by row into different entities. For example, a roller coaster photo has everything in the same row, including the metadata, the thumbnail bytes and the image itself. Obviously, if you want to get a list of photos to iterate over in a view, you don't want to get the image data. The use of navigation properties makes it easier to get just what you want. The front end includes Razor views in MVC, and jQuery is used for client-side goodness. I'm also using jQuery UI in a few places, for tabs, a dialog box and autocomplete. I'm also, tentatively, using jQuery Mobile. I've already ported most forum views to Mobile, but they need some work as v1.1 isn't finished yet. I'm not sure if I'll ship CoasterBuzz with mobile views or not yet. It's on the radar, but not something in my delivery criteria. That covers all of the big frameworks in play. Next time I hope to talk more about the front-end experience, which to me is where most of the fun is these days. Hoping to launch in the next month or two. Getting tired of looking at the old site!

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• The Great Divorce

  - by BlackRabbitCoder

  I have a confession to make: I've been in an abusive relationship for more than 17 years now.  Yes, I am not ashamed to admit it, but I'm finally doing something about it. I met her in college, she was new and sexy and amazingly fast -- and I'd never met anything like her before.  Her style and her power captivated me and I couldn't wait to learn more about her.  I took a chance on her, and though I learned a lot from her -- and will always be grateful for my time with her -- I think it's time to move on. Her name was C++, and she so outshone my previous love, C, that any thoughts of going back evaporated in the heat of this new romance.  She promised me she'd be gentle and not hurt me the way C did.  She promised me she'd clean-up after herself better than C did.  She promised me she'd be less enigmatic and easier to keep happy than C was.  But I was deceived.  Oh sure, as far as truth goes, it wasn't a complete lie.  To some extent she was more fun, more powerful, safer, and easier to maintain.  But it just wasn't good enough -- or at least it's not good enough now. I loved C++, some part of me still does, it's my first-love of programming languages and I recognize its raw power, its blazing speed, and its improvements over its predecessor.  But with today's hardware, at speeds we could only dream to conceive of twenty years ago, that need for speed -- at the cost of all else -- has died, and that has left my feelings for C++ moribund. If I ever need to write an operating system or a device driver, then I might need that speed.  But 99% of the time I don't.  I'm a business-type programmer and chances are 90% of you are too, and even the ones who need speed at all costs may be surprised by how much you sacrifice for that.   That's not to say that I don't want my software to perform, and it's not to say that in the business world we don't care about speed or that our job is somehow less difficult or technical.  There's many times we write programs to handle millions of real-time updates or handle thousands of financial transactions or tracking trading algorithms where every second counts.  But if I choose to write my code in C++ purely for speed chances are I'll never notice the speed increase -- and equally true chances are it will be far more prone to crash and far less easy to maintain.  Nearly without fail, it's the macro-optimizations you need, not the micro-optimizations.  If I choose to write a O(n2) algorithm when I could have used a O(n) algorithm -- that can kill me.  If I choose to go to the database to load a piece of unchanging data every time instead of caching it on first load -- that too can kill me.  And if I cross the network multiple times for pieces of data instead of getting it all at once -- yes that can also kill me.  But choosing an overly powerful and dangerous mid-level language to squeeze out every last drop of performance will realistically not make stock orders process any faster, and more likely than not open up the system to more risk of crashes and resource leaks. And that's when my love for C++ began to die.  When I noticed that I didn't need that speed anymore.  That that speed was really kind of a lie.  Sure, I can be super efficient and pack bits in a byte instead of using separate boolean values.  Sure, I can use an unsigned char instead of an int.  But in the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter as much as you think it does.  The key is maintainability, and that's where C++ failed me.  I like to tell the other developers I work with that there's two levels of correctness in coding: Is it immediately correct? Will it stay correct? That is, you can hack together any piece of code and make it correct to satisfy a task at hand, but if a new developer can't come in tomorrow and make a fairly significant change to it without jeopardizing that correctness, it won't stay correct. Some people laugh at me when I say I now prefer maintainability over speed.  But that is exactly the point.  If you focus solely on speed you tend to produce code that is much harder to maintain over the long hall, and that's a load of technical debt most shops can't afford to carry and end up completely scrapping code before it's time.  When good code is written well for maintainability, though, it can be correct both now and in the future. And you know the best part is?  My new love is nearly as fast as C++, and in some cases even faster -- and better than that, I know C# will treat me right.  Her creators have poured hundreds of thousands of hours of time into making her the sexy beast she is today.  They made her easy to understand and not an enigmatic mess.  They made her consistent and not moody and amorphous.  And they made her perform as fast as I care to go by optimizing her both at compile time and a run-time. Her code is so elegant and easy on the eyes that I'm not worried where she will run to or what she'll pull behind my back.  She is powerful enough to handle all my tasks, fast enough to execute them with blazing speed, maintainable enough so that I can rely on even fairly new peers to modify my work, and rich enough to allow me to satisfy any need.  C# doesn't ask me to clean up her messes!  She cleans up after herself and she tries to make my life easier for me by taking on most of those optimization tasks C++ asked me to take upon myself.  Now, there are many of you who would say that I am the cause of my own grief, that it was my fault C++ didn't behave because I didn't pay enough attention to her.  That I alone caused the pain she inflicted on me.  And to some extent, you have a point.  But she was so high maintenance, requiring me to know every twist and turn of her vast and unrestrained power that any wrong term or bout of forgetfulness was met with painful reminders that she wasn't going to watch my back when I made a mistake.  But C#, she loves me when I'm good, and she loves me when I'm bad, and together we make beautiful code that is both fast and safe. So that's why I'm leaving C++ behind.  She says she's changing for me, but I have no interest in what C++0x may bring.  Oh, I'll still keep in touch, and maybe I'll see her now and again when she brings her problems to my door and asks for some attention -- for I always have a soft spot for her, you see.  But she's out of my house now.  I have three kids and a dog and a cat, and all require me to clean up after them, why should I have to clean up after my programming language as well?

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• HTG Explains: Should You Build Your Own PC?

  - by Chris Hoffman

  There was a time when every geek seemed to build their own PC. While the masses bought eMachines and Compaqs, geeks built their own more powerful and reliable desktop machines for cheaper. But does this still make sense? Building your own PC still offers as much flexibility in component choice as it ever did, but prebuilt computers are available at extremely competitive prices. Building your own PC will no longer save you money in most cases. The Rise of Laptops It’s impossible to look at the decline of geeks building their own PCs without considering the rise of laptops. There was a time when everyone seemed to use desktops — laptops were more expensive and significantly slower in day-to-day tasks. With the diminishing importance of computing power — nearly every modern computer has more than enough power to surf the web and use typical programs like Microsoft Office without any trouble — and the rise of laptop availability at nearly every price point, most people are buying laptops instead of desktops. And, if you’re buying a laptop, you can’t really build your own. You can’t just buy a laptop case and start plugging components into it — even if you could, you would end up with an extremely bulky device. Ultimately, to consider building your own desktop PC, you have to actually want a desktop PC. Most people are better served by laptops. Benefits to PC Building The two main reasons to build your own PC have been component choice and saving money. Building your own PC allows you to choose all the specific components you want rather than have them chosen for you. You get to choose everything, including the PC’s case and cooling system. Want a huge case with room for a fancy water-cooling system? You probably want to build your own PC. In the past, this often allowed you to save money — you could get better deals by buying the components yourself and combining them, avoiding the PC manufacturer markup. You’d often even end up with better components — you could pick up a more powerful CPU that was easier to overclock and choose more reliable components so you wouldn’t have to put up with an unstable eMachine that crashed every day. PCs you build yourself are also likely more upgradable — a prebuilt PC may have a sealed case and be constructed in such a way to discourage you from tampering with the insides, while swapping components in and out is generally easier with a computer you’ve built on your own. If you want to upgrade your CPU or replace your graphics card, it’s a definite benefit. Downsides to Building Your Own PC It’s important to remember there are downsides to building your own PC, too. For one thing, it’s just more work — sure, if you know what you’re doing, building your own PC isn’t that hard. Even for a geek, researching the best components, price-matching, waiting for them all to arrive, and building the PC just takes longer. Warranty is a more pernicious problem. If you buy a prebuilt PC and it starts malfunctioning, you can contact the computer’s manufacturer and have them deal with it. You don’t need to worry about what’s wrong. If you build your own PC and it starts malfunctioning, you have to diagnose the problem yourself. What’s malfunctioning, the motherboard, CPU, RAM, graphics card, or power supply? Each component has a separate warranty through its manufacturer, so you’ll have to determine which component is malfunctioning before you can send it off for replacement. Should You Still Build Your Own PC? Let’s say you do want a desktop and are willing to consider building your own PC. First, bear in mind that PC manufacturers are buying in bulk and getting a better deal on each component. They also have to pay much less for a Windows license than the $120 or so it would cost you to to buy your own Windows license. This is all going to wipe out the cost savings you’ll see — with everything all told, you’ll probably spend more money building your own average desktop PC than you would picking one up from Amazon or the local electronics store. If you’re an average PC user that uses your desktop for the typical things, there’s no money to be saved from building your own PC. But maybe you’re looking for something higher end. Perhaps you want a high-end gaming PC with the fastest graphics card and CPU available. Perhaps you want to pick out each individual component and choose the exact components for your gaming rig. In this case, building your own PC may be a good option. As you start to look at more expensive, high-end PCs, you may start to see a price gap — but you may not. Let’s say you wanted to blow thousands of dollars on a gaming PC. If you’re looking at spending this kind of money, it would be worth comparing the cost of individual components versus a prebuilt gaming system. Still, the actual prices may surprise you. For example, if you wanted to upgrade Dell’s $2293 Alienware Aurora to include a second NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 graphics card, you’d pay an additional $600 on Alienware’s website. The same graphics card costs $650 on Amazon or Newegg, so you’d be spending more money building the system yourself. Why? Dell’s Alienware gets bulk discounts you can’t get — and this is Alienware, which was once regarded as selling ridiculously overpriced gaming PCs to people who wouldn’t build their own. Building your own PC still allows you to get the most freedom when choosing and combining components, but this is only valuable to a small niche of gamers and professional users — most people, even average gamers, would be fine going with a prebuilt system. If you’re an average person or even an average gamer, you’ll likely find that it’s cheaper to purchase a prebuilt PC rather than assemble your own. Even at the very high end, components may be more expensive separately than they are in a prebuilt PC. Enthusiasts who want to choose all the individual components for their dream gaming PC and want maximum flexibility may want to build their own PCs. Even then, building your own PC these days is more about flexibility and component choice than it is about saving money. In summary, you probably shouldn’t build your own PC. If you’re an enthusiast, you may want to — but only a small minority of people would actually benefit from building their own systems. Feel free to compare prices, but you may be surprised which is cheaper. Image Credit: Richard Jones on Flickr, elPadawan on Flickr, Richard Jones on Flickr     

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• how to use serial port in UDK using windows DLL and DLLBind directive?

  - by Shayan Abbas

  I want to use serial port in UDK, For that purpose i use a windows DLL and DLLBind directive. I have a thread in windows DLL for serial port data recieve event. My problem is: this thread doesn't work properly. Please Help me. below is my code SerialPortDLL Code: // SerialPortDLL.cpp : Defines the exported functions for the DLL application. // #include "stdafx.h" #include "Cport.h" extern "C" { // This is an example of an exported variable //SERIALPORTDLL_API int nSerialPortDLL=0; // This is an example of an exported function. //SERIALPORTDLL_API int fnSerialPortDLL(void) //{ // return 42; //} CPort *sp; __declspec(dllexport) void Open(wchar_t* portName) { sp = new CPort(portName); //MessageBox(0,L"ha ha!!!",L"ha ha",0); //MessageBox(0,portName,L"ha ha",0); } __declspec(dllexport) void Close() { sp->Close(); MessageBox(0,L"ha ha!!!",L"ha ha",0); } __declspec(dllexport) wchar_t *GetData() { return sp->GetData(); } __declspec(dllexport) unsigned int GetDSR() { return sp->getDSR(); } __declspec(dllexport) unsigned int GetCTS() { return sp->getCTS(); } __declspec(dllexport) unsigned int GetRing() { return sp->getRing(); } } CPort class code: #include "stdafx.h" #include "CPort.h" #include "Serial.h" CSerial serial; HANDLE HandleOfThread; LONG lLastError = ERROR_SUCCESS; bool fContinue = true; HANDLE hevtOverlapped; HANDLE hevtStop; OVERLAPPED ov = {0}; //char szBuffer[101] = ""; wchar_t *szBuffer = L""; wchar_t *data = L""; DWORD WINAPI ThreadHandler( LPVOID lpParam ) { // Keep reading data, until an EOF (CTRL-Z) has been received do { MessageBox(0,L"ga ga!!!",L"ga ga",0); //Sleep(10); // Wait for an event lLastError = serial.WaitEvent(&ov); if (lLastError != ERROR_SUCCESS) { //LOG( " Unable to wait for a COM-port event" ); } // Setup array of handles in which we are interested HANDLE ahWait[2]; ahWait[0] = hevtOverlapped; ahWait[1] = hevtStop; // Wait until something happens switch (::WaitForMultipleObjects(sizeof(ahWait)/sizeof(*ahWait),ahWait,FALSE,INFINITE)) { case WAIT_OBJECT_0: { // Save event const CSerial::EEvent eEvent = serial.GetEventType(); // Handle break event if (eEvent & CSerial::EEventBreak) { //LOG( " ### BREAK received ###" ); } // Handle CTS event if (eEvent & CSerial::EEventCTS) { //LOG( " ### Clear to send %s ###", serial.GetCTS() ? "on":"off" ); } // Handle DSR event if (eEvent & CSerial::EEventDSR) { //LOG( " ### Data set ready %s ###", serial.GetDSR() ? "on":"off" ); } // Handle error event if (eEvent & CSerial::EEventError) { switch (serial.GetError()) { case CSerial::EErrorBreak: /*LOG( " Break condition" );*/ break; case CSerial::EErrorFrame: /*LOG( " Framing error" );*/ break; case CSerial::EErrorIOE: /*LOG( " IO device error" );*/ break; case CSerial::EErrorMode: /*LOG( " Unsupported mode" );*/ break; case CSerial::EErrorOverrun: /*LOG( " Buffer overrun" );*/ break; case CSerial::EErrorRxOver: /*LOG( " Input buffer overflow" );*/ break; case CSerial::EErrorParity: /*LOG( " Input parity error" );*/ break; case CSerial::EErrorTxFull: /*LOG( " Output buffer full" );*/ break; default: /*LOG( " Unknown" );*/ break; } } // Handle ring event if (eEvent & CSerial::EEventRing) { //LOG( " ### RING ###" ); } // Handle RLSD/CD event if (eEvent & CSerial::EEventRLSD) { //LOG( " ### RLSD/CD %s ###", serial.GetRLSD() ? "on" : "off" ); } // Handle data receive event if (eEvent & CSerial::EEventRecv) { // Read data, until there is nothing left DWORD dwBytesRead = 0; do { // Read data from the COM-port lLastError = serial.Read(szBuffer,33,&dwBytesRead); if (lLastError != ERROR_SUCCESS) { //LOG( "Unable to read from COM-port" ); } if( dwBytesRead == 33 && szBuffer[0]=='$' ) { // Finalize the data, so it is a valid string szBuffer[dwBytesRead] = '\0'; ////LOG( "\n%s\n", szBuffer ); data = szBuffer; } } while (dwBytesRead > 0); } } break; case WAIT_OBJECT_0+1: { // Set the continue bit to false, so we'll exit fContinue = false; } break; default: { // Something went wrong //LOG( "Error while calling WaitForMultipleObjects" ); } break; } } while (fContinue); MessageBox(0,L"kka kk!!!",L"kka ga",0); return 0; } CPort::CPort(wchar_t *portName) { // Attempt to open the serial port (COM2) //lLastError = serial.Open(_T(portName),0,0,true); lLastError = serial.Open(portName,0,0,true); if (lLastError != ERROR_SUCCESS) { //LOG( "Unable to open COM-port" ); } // Setup the serial port (115200,8N1, which is the default setting) lLastError = serial.Setup(CSerial::EBaud115200,CSerial::EData8,CSerial::EParNone,CSerial::EStop1); if (lLastError != ERROR_SUCCESS) { //LOG( "Unable to set COM-port setting" ); } // Register only for the receive event lLastError = serial.SetMask(CSerial::EEventBreak | CSerial::EEventCTS | CSerial::EEventDSR | CSerial::EEventError | CSerial::EEventRing | CSerial::EEventRLSD | CSerial::EEventRecv); if (lLastError != ERROR_SUCCESS) { //LOG( "Unable to set COM-port event mask" ); } // Use 'non-blocking' reads, because we don't know how many bytes // will be received. This is normally the most convenient mode // (and also the default mode for reading data). lLastError = serial.SetupReadTimeouts(CSerial::EReadTimeoutNonblocking); if (lLastError != ERROR_SUCCESS) { //LOG( "Unable to set COM-port read timeout" ); } // Create a handle for the overlapped operations hevtOverlapped = ::CreateEvent(0,TRUE,FALSE,0);; if (hevtOverlapped == 0) { //LOG( "Unable to create manual-reset event for overlapped I/O" ); } // Setup the overlapped structure ov.hEvent = hevtOverlapped; // Open the "STOP" handle hevtStop = ::CreateEvent(0,TRUE,FALSE,_T("Overlapped_Stop_Event")); if (hevtStop == 0) { //LOG( "Unable to create manual-reset event for stop event" ); } HandleOfThread = CreateThread( NULL, 0, ThreadHandler, 0, 0, NULL); } CPort::~CPort() { //fContinue = false; //CloseHandle( HandleOfThread ); //serial.Close(); } void CPort::Close() { fContinue = false; CloseHandle( HandleOfThread ); serial.Close(); } wchar_t *CPort::GetData() { return data; } bool CPort::getCTS() { return serial.GetCTS(); } bool CPort::getDSR() { return serial.GetDSR(); } bool CPort::getRing() { return serial.GetRing(); } Unreal Script Code: class MyPlayerController extends GamePlayerController DLLBind(SerialPortDLL); dllimport final function Open(string portName); dllimport final function Close(); dllimport final function string GetData();

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• 3D picking lwjgl

  - by Wirde

  I have written some code to preform 3D picking that for some reason dosn't work entirely correct! (Im using LWJGL just so you know.) I posted this at stackoverflow at first but after researching some more in to my problem i found this neat site and tought that you guys might be more qualified to answer this question. This is how the code looks like: if(Mouse.getEventButton() == 1) { if (!Mouse.getEventButtonState()) { Camera.get().generateViewMatrix(); float screenSpaceX = ((Mouse.getX()/800f/2f)-1.0f)*Camera.get().getAspectRatio(); float screenSpaceY = 1.0f-(2*((600-Mouse.getY())/600f)); float displacementRate = (float)Math.tan(Camera.get().getFovy()/2); screenSpaceX *= displacementRate; screenSpaceY *= displacementRate; Vector4f cameraSpaceNear = new Vector4f((float) (screenSpaceX * Camera.get().getNear()), (float) (screenSpaceY * Camera.get().getNear()), (float) (-Camera.get().getNear()), 1); Vector4f cameraSpaceFar = new Vector4f((float) (screenSpaceX * Camera.get().getFar()), (float) (screenSpaceY * Camera.get().getFar()), (float) (-Camera.get().getFar()), 1); Matrix4f tmpView = new Matrix4f(); Camera.get().getViewMatrix().transpose(tmpView); Matrix4f invertedViewMatrix = (Matrix4f)tmpView.invert(); Vector4f worldSpaceNear = new Vector4f(); Matrix4f.transform(invertedViewMatrix, cameraSpaceNear, worldSpaceNear); Vector4f worldSpaceFar = new Vector4f(); Matrix4f.transform(invertedViewMatrix, cameraSpaceFar, worldSpaceFar); Vector3f rayPosition = new Vector3f(worldSpaceNear.x, worldSpaceNear.y, worldSpaceNear.z); Vector3f rayDirection = new Vector3f(worldSpaceFar.x - worldSpaceNear.x, worldSpaceFar.y - worldSpaceNear.y, worldSpaceFar.z - worldSpaceNear.z); rayDirection.normalise(); Ray clickRay = new Ray(rayPosition, rayDirection); Vector tMin = new Vector(), tMax = new Vector(), tempPoint; float largestEnteringValue, smallestExitingValue, temp, closestEnteringValue = Camera.get().getFar()+0.1f; Drawable closestDrawableHit = null; for(Drawable d : this.worldModel.getDrawableThings()) { // Calcualte AABB for each object... needs to be moved later... firstVertex = true; for(Surface surface : d.getSurfaces()) { for(Vertex v : surface.getVertices()) { worldPosition.x = (v.x+d.getPosition().x)*d.getScale().x; worldPosition.y = (v.y+d.getPosition().y)*d.getScale().y; worldPosition.z = (v.z+d.getPosition().z)*d.getScale().z; worldPosition = worldPosition.rotate(d.getRotation()); if (firstVertex) { maxX = worldPosition.x; maxY = worldPosition.y; maxZ = worldPosition.z; minX = worldPosition.x; minY = worldPosition.y; minZ = worldPosition.z; firstVertex = false; } else { if (worldPosition.x > maxX) { maxX = worldPosition.x; } if (worldPosition.x < minX) { minX = worldPosition.x; } if (worldPosition.y > maxY) { maxY = worldPosition.y; } if (worldPosition.y < minY) { minY = worldPosition.y; } if (worldPosition.z > maxZ) { maxZ = worldPosition.z; } if (worldPosition.z < minZ) { minZ = worldPosition.z; } } } } // ray/slabs intersection test... // clickRay.getOrigin().x + clickRay.getDirection().x * f = minX // clickRay.getOrigin().x - minX = -clickRay.getDirection().x * f // clickRay.getOrigin().x/-clickRay.getDirection().x - minX/-clickRay.getDirection().x = f // -clickRay.getOrigin().x/clickRay.getDirection().x + minX/clickRay.getDirection().x = f largestEnteringValue = -clickRay.getOrigin().x/clickRay.getDirection().x + minX/clickRay.getDirection().x; temp = -clickRay.getOrigin().y/clickRay.getDirection().y + minY/clickRay.getDirection().y; if(largestEnteringValue < temp) { largestEnteringValue = temp; } temp = -clickRay.getOrigin().z/clickRay.getDirection().z + minZ/clickRay.getDirection().z; if(largestEnteringValue < temp) { largestEnteringValue = temp; } smallestExitingValue = -clickRay.getOrigin().x/clickRay.getDirection().x + maxX/clickRay.getDirection().x; temp = -clickRay.getOrigin().y/clickRay.getDirection().y + maxY/clickRay.getDirection().y; if(smallestExitingValue > temp) { smallestExitingValue = temp; } temp = -clickRay.getOrigin().z/clickRay.getDirection().z + maxZ/clickRay.getDirection().z; if(smallestExitingValue < temp) { smallestExitingValue = temp; } if(largestEnteringValue > smallestExitingValue) { //System.out.println("Miss!"); } else { if (largestEnteringValue < closestEnteringValue) { closestEnteringValue = largestEnteringValue; closestDrawableHit = d; } } } if(closestDrawableHit != null) { System.out.println("Hit at: (" + clickRay.setDistance(closestEnteringValue).x + ", " + clickRay.getCurrentPosition().y + ", " + clickRay.getCurrentPosition().z); this.worldModel.removeDrawableThing(closestDrawableHit); } } } I just don't understand what's wrong, the ray are shooting and i do hit stuff that gets removed but the result of the ray are verry strange it sometimes removes the thing im clicking at, sometimes it removes things thats not even close to what im clicking at, and sometimes it removes nothing at all. Edit: Okay so i have continued searching for errors and by debugging the ray (by painting smal dots where it travles) i can now se that there is something oviously wrong with the ray that im sending out... it has its origin near the world center (nearer or further away depending on where on the screen im clicking) and always shots to the same position no matter where I direct my camera... My initial toughts is that there might be some error in the way i calculate my viewMatrix (since it's not possible to get the viewmatrix from the gluLookAt method in lwjgl; I have to build it my self and I guess thats where the problem is at)... Edit2: This is how i calculate it currently: private double[][] viewMatrixDouble = {{0,0,0,0}, {0,0,0,0}, {0,0,0,0}, {0,0,0,1}}; public Vector getCameraDirectionVector() { Vector actualEye = this.getActualEyePosition(); return new Vector(lookAt.x-actualEye.x, lookAt.y-actualEye.y, lookAt.z-actualEye.z); } public Vector getActualEyePosition() { return eye.rotate(this.getRotation()); } public void generateViewMatrix() { Vector cameraDirectionVector = getCameraDirectionVector().normalize(); Vector side = Vector.cross(cameraDirectionVector, this.upVector).normalize(); Vector up = Vector.cross(side, cameraDirectionVector); viewMatrixDouble[0][0] = side.x; viewMatrixDouble[0][1] = up.x; viewMatrixDouble[0][2] = -cameraDirectionVector.x; viewMatrixDouble[1][0] = side.y; viewMatrixDouble[1][1] = up.y; viewMatrixDouble[1][2] = -cameraDirectionVector.y; viewMatrixDouble[2][0] = side.z; viewMatrixDouble[2][1] = up.z; viewMatrixDouble[2][2] = -cameraDirectionVector.z; /* Vector actualEyePosition = this.getActualEyePosition(); Vector zaxis = new Vector(this.lookAt.x - actualEyePosition.x, this.lookAt.y - actualEyePosition.y, this.lookAt.z - actualEyePosition.z).normalize(); Vector xaxis = Vector.cross(upVector, zaxis).normalize(); Vector yaxis = Vector.cross(zaxis, xaxis); viewMatrixDouble[0][0] = xaxis.x; viewMatrixDouble[0][1] = yaxis.x; viewMatrixDouble[0][2] = zaxis.x; viewMatrixDouble[1][0] = xaxis.y; viewMatrixDouble[1][1] = yaxis.y; viewMatrixDouble[1][2] = zaxis.y; viewMatrixDouble[2][0] = xaxis.z; viewMatrixDouble[2][1] = yaxis.z; viewMatrixDouble[2][2] = zaxis.z; viewMatrixDouble[3][0] = -Vector.dot(xaxis, actualEyePosition); viewMatrixDouble[3][1] =-Vector.dot(yaxis, actualEyePosition); viewMatrixDouble[3][2] = -Vector.dot(zaxis, actualEyePosition); */ viewMatrix = new Matrix4f(); viewMatrix.load(getViewMatrixAsFloatBuffer()); } Would be verry greatfull if anyone could verify if this is wrong or right, and if it's wrong; supply me with the right way of doing it... I have read alot of threads and documentations about this but i can't seam to wrapp my head around it... Edit3: Okay with the help of Byte56 (thanks alot for the help) i have now concluded that it's not the viewMatrix that is the problem... I still get the same messedup result; anyone that think that they can find the error in my code, i certenly can't, have bean working on this for 3 days now :(

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• Agile Like Jazz

  - by Jeff Certain

  (I’ve been sitting on this for a week or so now, thinking that it needed to be tightened up a bit to make it less rambling. Since that’s clearly not going to happen, reader beware!) I had the privilege of spending around 90 minutes last night sitting and listening to Sonny Rollins play a concert at the Disney Center in LA. If you don’t know who Sonny Rollins is, I don’t know how to explain the experience; if you know who he is, I don’t need to. Suffice it to say that he has been recording professionally for over 50 years, and helped create an entire genre of music. A true master by any definition. One of the most intriguing aspects of a concert like this, however, is watching the master step aside and let the rest of the musicians play. Not just play their parts, but really play… letting them take over the spotlight, to strut their stuff, to soak up enthusiastic applause from the crowd. Maybe a lot of it has to do with the fact that Sonny Rollins has been doing this for more than a half-century. Maybe it has something to do with a kind of patience you learn when you’re on the far side of 80 – and the man can still blow a mean sax for 90 minutes without stopping! Maybe it has to do with the fact that he was out there for the love of the music and the love of the show, not because he had anything to prove to anyone and, I like to think, not for the money. Perhaps it had more to do with the fact that, when you’re at that level of mastery, the other musicians are going to be good. Really good. Whatever the reasons, there was a incredible freedom on that stage – the ability to improvise, for each musician to showcase their own specialization and skills, and them come back to the common theme, back to being on the same page, as it were. All this took place in the same venue that is home to the L.A. Phil. Somehow, I can’t ever see the same kind of free-wheeling improvisation happening in that context. And, since I’m a geek, I started thinking about agility. Rollins has put together a quintet that reflects his own particular style and past. No upright bass or piano for Rollins – drums, bongos, electric guitar and bass guitar along with his sax. It’s not about the mix of instruments. Other trios, quartets, and sextets use different mixes of instruments. New Orleans jazz tends towards trombones instead of sax; some prefer cornet or trumpet. But no matter what the choice of instruments, size matters. Team sizes are something I’ve been thinking about for a while. We’re on a quest to rethink how our teams are organized. They just feel too big, too unwieldy. In fact, they really don’t feel like teams at all. Most of the time, they feel more like collections or people who happen to report to the same manager. I attribute this to a couple factors. One is over-specialization; we have a tendency to have people work in silos. Although the teams are product-focused, within them our developers are both generalists and specialists. On the one hand, we expect them to be able to build an entire vertical slice of the application; on the other hand, each developer tends to be responsible for the vertical slice. As a result, developers often work on their own piece of the puzzle, in isolation. This sort of feels like working on a jigsaw in a group – each person taking a set of colors and piecing them together to reveal a portion of the overall picture. But what inevitably happens when you go to meld all those pieces together? Inevitably, you have some sections that are too big to move easily. These sections end up falling apart under their own weight as you try to move them. Not only that, but there are other challenges – figuring out where that section fits, and how to tie it into the rest of the puzzle. Often, this is when you find a few pieces need to be added – these pieces are “glue,” if you will. The other issue that arises is due to the overhead of maintaining communications in a team. My mother, who worked in IT for around 30 years, once told me that 20% per team member is a good rule of thumb for maintaining communication. While this is a rule of thumb, it seems to imply that any team over about 6 people is going to become less agile simple because of the communications burden. Teams of ten or twelve seem like they fall into the philharmonic organizational model. Complicated pieces of music requiring dozens of players to all be on the same page requires a much different model than the jazz quintet. There’s much less room for improvisation, originality or freedom. (There are probably orchestral musicians who will take exception to this characterization; I’m calling it like I see it from the cheap seats.) And, there’s one guy up front who is running the show, whose job is to keep all of those dozens of players on the same page, to facilitate communications. Somehow, the orchestral model doesn’t feel much like a self-organizing team, either. The first violin may be the best violinist in the orchestra, but they don’t get to perform free-wheeling solos. I’ve never heard of an orchestra getting together for a jam session. But I have heard of teams that organize their work based on the developers available, rather than organizing the developers based on the work required. I have heard of teams where desired functionality is deferred – or worse yet, schedules are missed – because one critical person doesn’t have any bandwidth available. I’ve heard of teams where people simply don’t have the big picture, because there is too much communication overhead for everyone to be aware of everything that is happening on a project. I once heard Paul Rayner say something to the effect of “you have a process that is perfectly designed to give you exactly the results you have.” Given a choice, I want a process that’s much more like jazz than orchestral music. I want a process that doesn’t burden me with lots of forms and checkboxes and stuff. Give me the simplest, most lightweight process that will work – and a smaller team of the best developers I can find. This seems like the kind of process that will get the kind of result I want to be part of.

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• Merge replication stopping without errors in SQL 2008 R2

  - by Rob Farley

  A non-SQL MVP friend of mine, who also happens to be a client, asked me for some help again last week. I was planning on writing this up even before Rob Volk (@sql_r) listed his T-SQL Tuesday topic for this month. Earlier in the year, I (well, LobsterPot Solutions, although I’d been the person mostly involved) had helped out with a merge replication problem. The Merge Agent on the subscriber was just stopping every time, shortly after it started. With no errors anywhere – not in the Windows Event Log, the SQL Agent logs, not anywhere. We’d managed to get the system working again, but didn’t have a good reason about what had happened, and last week, the problem occurred again. I asked him about writing up the experience in a blog post, largely because of the red herrings that we encountered. It was an interesting experience for me, also because I didn’t end up touching my computer the whole time – just tapping on my phone via Twitter and Live Msgr. You see, the thing with replication is that a useful troubleshooting option is to reinitialise the thing. We’d done that last time, and it had started to work again – eventually. I say eventually, because the link being used between the sites is relatively slow, and it took a long while for the initialisation to finish. Meanwhile, we’d been doing some investigation into what the problem could be, and were suitably pleased when the problem disappeared. So I got a message saying that a replication problem had occurred again. Reinitialising wasn’t going to be an option this time either. In this scenario, the subscriber having the problem happened to be in a different domain to the publisher. The other subscribers (within the domain) were fine, just this one in a different domain had the problem. Part of the problem seemed to be a log file that wasn’t being backed up properly. They’d been trying to back up to a backup device that had a corruption, and the log file was growing. Turned out, this wasn’t related to the problem, but of course, any time you’re troubleshooting and you see something untoward, you wonder. Having got past that problem, my next thought was that perhaps there was a problem with the account being used. But the other subscribers were using the same account, without any problems. The client pointed out that that it was almost exactly six months since the last failure (later shown to be a complete red herring). It sounded like something might’ve expired. Checking through certificates and trusts showed no sign of anything, and besides, there wasn’t a problem running a command-prompt window using the account in question, from the subscriber box. ...except that when he ran the sqlcmd –E –S servername command I recommended, it failed with a Named Pipes error. I’ve seen problems with firewalls rejecting connections via Named Pipes but letting TCP/IP through, so I got him to look into SQL Configuration Manager to see what kind of connection was being preferred... Everything seemed fine. And strangely, he could connect via Management Studio. Turned out, he had a typo in the servername of the sqlcmd command. That particular red herring must’ve been reflected in his cheeks as he told me. During the time, I also pinged a friend of mine to find out who I should ask, and Ted Kruger (@onpnt) ‘s name came up. Ted (and thanks again, Ted – really) reconfirmed some of my thoughts around the idea of an account expiring, and also suggesting bumping up the logging to level 4 (2 is Verbose, 4 is undocumented ridiculousness). I’d just told the client to push the logging up to level 2, but the log file wasn’t appearing. Checking permissions showed that the user did have permission on the folder, but still no file was appearing. Then it was noticed that the user had been switched earlier as part of the troubleshooting, and switching it back to the real user caused the log file to appear. Still no errors. A lot more information being pushed out, but still no errors. Ted suggested making sure the FQDNs were okay from both ends, in case the servers were unable to talk to each other. DNS problems can lead to hassles which can stop replication from working. No luck there either – it was all working fine. Another server started to report a problem as well. These two boxes were both SQL 2008 R2 (SP1), while the others, still working, were SQL 2005. Around this time, the client tried an idea that I’d shown him a few years ago – using a Profiler trace to see what was being called on the servers. It turned out that the last call being made on the publisher was sp_MSenumschemachange. A quick interwebs search on that showed a problem that exists in SQL Server 2008 R2, when stored procedures have more than 4000 characters. Running that stored procedure (with the same parameters) manually on SQL 2005 listed three stored procedures, the first of which did indeed have more than 4000 characters. Still no error though, and the problem as listed at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2539378 describes an error that should occur in the Event log. However, this problem is the type of thing that is fixed by a reinitialisation (because it doesn’t need to send the procedure change across as a transaction). And a look in the change history of the long stored procs (you all keep them, right?), showed that the problem from six months earlier could well have been down to this too. Applying SP2 (with sufficient paranoia about backups and how to get back out again if necessary) fixed the problem. The stored proc changes went through immediately after the service pack was applied, and it’s been running happily since. The funny thing is that I didn’t solve the problem. He had put the Profiler trace on the server, and had done the search that found a forum post pointing at this particular problem. I’d asked Ted too, and although he’d given some useful information, nothing that he’d come up with had actually been the solution either. Sometimes, asking for help is the most useful thing you can do. Often though, you don’t end up getting the help from the person you asked – the sounding board is actually what you need. @rob_farley

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• Mobile BI Comes of Age

  - by rich.clayton(at)oracle.com

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* 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-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;} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* 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-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;} 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-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;} One of the hot topics in the Business Intelligence industry is mobility.  More specifically the question is how business can be transformed by the iPhone and the iPad.  In June 2003, Gartner predicted that Mobile BI would be obsolete and that the technology was headed for the 'trough of disillusionment'.  I agreed with them at that time.  Many vendors like MicroStrategy and Business Objects jumped into the fray attempting to show how PDA's like Palm Pilots could be integrated with BI.  Their investments resulted in interesting demos with no commercial traction.  Why, because wireless networks and mobile operating systems were primitive, immature and slow. In my opinion, Apple's iOS has changed everything in Mobile BI.  Yes Blackberry, Android and Symbian and all the rest have their place in the market but I believe that increasingly consumers (not IT departments) influence BI decision making processes.  Consumers are choosing the iPhone and the iPad. The number of iPads I see in business meetings now is staggering.  Some use it for email and note taking and others are starting to use corporate applications.  The possibilities for Mobile BI are countless and I would expect to see iPads enterprise-wide over the next few years.   These new devices will provide just-in-time access to critical business information.  Front-line managers interacting with customers, suppliers, patients or citizens will have information literally at their fingertips. I've experimented with several mobile BI tools.  They look cool but like their Executive Information System (EIS) predecessors of the 1990's these tools lack a backbone and a plausible integration strategy.  EIS was a viral technology in the early 1990's.  Executives from every industry and job function were showcasing their dashboards to fellow co-workers and colleagues at the country club.  Just like the iPad, every senior manager wanted one.  EIS wasn't a device however, it was a software application.   EIS quickly faded into the software sunset as it lacked integration with corporate information systems.  BI servers  replaced EIS because the technology focused on the heavy data lifting of integrating, normalizing, aggregating and managing large, complex data volumes.  The devices are here to stay. The cute stand-alone mobile BI tools, not so much. If all you're looking to do is put Excel files on your iPad, there are plenty of free tools on the market.  You'll look cool at your next management meeting but after a few weeks, the cool factor will fade away and you'll be wondering how you will ever maintain it.  If however you want secure, consistent, reliable information on your iPad, you need an integration strategy and a way to model the data.  BI Server technologies like the Oracle BI Foundation is a market leading approach to tackle that issue. I liken the BI mobility frenzy to buying classic cars.  Classic Cars have two buying groups - teenagers and middle-age folks looking to tinker.  Teenagers look at the pin-stripes and the paint job while middle-agers (like me)  kick the tires a bit and look under the hood to check out the quality and reliability of the engine.  Mobile BI tools sure look sexy but don't go very far without an engine and a transmission or an integration strategy. The strategic question in Mobile BI is can these startups build a motor and transmission faster than Oracle can re-paint the car?  Oracle has a great engine and a transmission that connects to all enterprise information assets.  We're working on the new paint job and are excited about the possibilities.  Just as vertical integration worked in the automotive business, it too works in the technology industry.

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• What's new in Solaris 11.1?

  - by Karoly Vegh

  Solaris 11.1 is released. This is the first release update since Solaris 11 11/11, the versioning has been changed from MM/YY style to 11.1 highlighting that this is Solaris 11 Update 1.  Solaris 11 itself has been great. What's new in Solaris 11.1? Allow me to pick some new features from the What's New PDF that can be found in the official Oracle Solaris 11.1 Documentation. The updates are very numerous, I really can't include all.  I. New AI Automated Installer RBAC profiles have been introduced to enable delegation of installation tasks. II. The interactive installer now supports installing the OS to iSCSI targets. III. ASR (Auto Service Request) and OCM (Oracle Configuration Manager) have been enabled by default to proactively provide support information and create service requests to speed up support processes. This is optional and can be disabled but helps a lot in supportcases. For further information, see: http://oracle.com/goto/solarisautoreg IV. The new command svcbundle helps you to create SMF manifests without having to struggle with XML editing. (btw, do you know the interactive editprop subcommand in svccfg? The listprop/setprop subcommands are great for scripting and automating, but for an interactive property editing session try, for example, this: svccfg -s svc:/application/pkg/system-repository:default editprop )  V. pfedit: Ever wondered how to delegate editing permissions to certain files? It is well known "sudo /usr/bin/vi /etc/hosts" is not the right way, for sudo elevates the complete vi process to admin levels, and the user can "break" out of the session as root with simply starting a shell from that vi. Now, the new pfedit command provides a solution exactly to this challenge - an auditable, secure, per-user configurable editing possibility. See the pfedit man page for examples.   VI. rsyslog, the popular logging daemon (filters, SSL, formattable output, SQL collect...) has been included in Solaris 11.1 as an alternative to syslog.  VII: Zones: Solaris Zones - as a major Solaris differentiator - got lots of love in terms of new features: ZOSS - Zones on Shared Storage: Placing your zones to shared storage (FC, iSCSI) has never been this easy - via zonecfg.  parallell updates - with S11's bootenvironments updating zones was no problem and meant no downtime anyway, but still, now you can update them parallelly, a way faster update action if you are running a large number of zones. This is like parallell patching in Solaris 10, but with all the IPS/ZFS/S11 goodness.  per-zone fstype statistics: Running zones on a shared filesystems complicate the I/O debugging, since ZFS collects all the random writes and delivers them sequentially to boost performance. Now, over kstat you can find out which zone's I/O has an impact on the other ones, see the examples in the documentation: http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E26502_01/html/E29024/gmheh.html#scrolltoc Zones got RDSv3 protocol support for InfiniBand, and IPoIB support with Crossbow's anet (automatic vnic creation) feature.  NUMA I/O support for Zones: customers can now determine the NUMA I/O topology of the system from within zones.  VIII: Security got a lot of attention too:  Automated security/audit reporting, with builtin reporting templates e.g. for PCI (payment card industry) audits.  PAM is now configureable on a per-user basis instead of system wide, allowing different authentication requirements for different users  SSH in Solaris 11.1 now supports running in FIPS 140-2 mode, that is, in a U.S. government security accredited fashion.  SHA512/224 and SHA512/256 cryptographic hash functions are implemented in a FIPS-compliant way - and on a T4 implemented in silicon! That is, goverment-approved cryptography at HW-speed.  Generally, Solaris is currently under evaluation to be both FIPS and Common Criteria certified.  IX. Networking, as one of the core strengths of Solaris 11, has been extended with:  Data Center Bridging (DCB) - not only setups where network and storage share the same fabric (FCoE, anyone?) can have Quality-of-Service requirements. DCB enables peers to distinguish traffic based on priorities. Your NICs have to support DCB, see the documentation, and additional information on Wikipedia. DataLink MultiPathing, DLMP, enables link aggregation to span across multiple switches, even between those of different vendors. But there are essential differences to the good old bandwidth-aggregating LACP, see the documentation: http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E26502_01/html/E28993/gmdlu.html#scrolltoc VNIC live migration is now supported from one physical NIC to another on-the-fly  X. Data management:  FedFS, (Federated FileSystem) is new, it relies on Solaris 11's NFS referring mechanism to join separate shares of different NFS servers into a single filesystem namespace. The referring system has been there since S11 11/11, in Solaris 11.1 FedFS uses a LDAP - as the one global nameservice to bind them all.  The iSCSI initiator now uses the T4 CPU's HW-implemented CRC32 algorithm - thus improving iSCSI throughput while reducing CPU utilization on a T4 Storage locking improvements are now RAC aware, speeding up throughput with better locking-communication between nodes up to 20%!  XI: Kernel performance optimizations: The new Virtual Memory subsystem ("VM2") scales now to 100+ TB Memory ranges.  The memory predictor monitors large memory page usage, and adjust memory page sizes to applications' needs OSM, the Optimized Shared Memory allows Oracle DBs' SGA to be resized online XII: The Power Aware Dispatcher in now by default enabled, reducing power consumption of idle CPUs. Also, the LDoms' Power Management policies and the poweradm settings in Solaris 11 OS will cooperate. XIII: x86 boot: upgrade to the (Grand Unified Bootloader) GRUB2. Because grub2 differs in the configuration syntactically from grub1, one shall not edit the new grub configuration (grub.cfg) but use the new bootadm features to update it. GRUB2 adds UEFI support and also support for disks over 2TB. XIV: Improved viewing of per-CPU statistics of mpstat. This one might seem of less importance at first, but nowadays having better sorting/filtering possibilities on a periodically updated mpstat output of 256+ vCPUs can be a blessing. XV: Support for Solaris Cluster 4.1: The What's New document doesn't actually mention this one, since OSC 4.1 has not been released at the time 11.1 was. But since then it is available, and it requires Solaris 11.1. And it's only a "pkg update" away. ...aand I seriously need to stop here. There's a lot I missed, Edge Virtual Bridging, lofi tuning, ZFS sharing and crypto enhancements, USB3.0, pulseaudio, trusted extensions updates, etc - but if I mention all those then I effectively copy the What's New document. Which I recommend reading now anyway, it is a great extract of the 300+ new projects and RFE-followups in S11.1. And this blogpost is a summary of that extract.  For closing words, allow me to come back to Request For Enhancements, RFEs. Any customer can request features. Open up a Support Request, explain that this is an RFE, describe the feature you/your company desires to have in S11 implemented. The more SRs are collected for an RFE, the more chance it's got to get implemented. Feel free to provide feedback about the product, as well as about the Solaris 11.1 Documentation using the "Feedback" button there. Both the Solaris engineers and the documentation writers are eager to hear your input.Feel free to comment about this post too. Except that it's too long ;)  wbr,charlie

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• Securing an ADF Application using OES11g: Part 1

  - by user12587121

  Future releases of the Oracle stack should allow ADF applications to be secured natively with Oracle Entitlements Server (OES). In a sequence of postings here I explore one way to achive this with the current technology, namely OES 11.1.1.5 and ADF 11.1.1.6. ADF Security Basics ADF Bascis The Application Development Framework (ADF) is Oracle’s preferred technology for developing GUI based Java applications.  It can be used to develop a UI for Swing applications or, more typically in the Oracle stack, for Web and J2EE applications.  ADF is based on and extends the Java Server Faces (JSF) technology.  To get an idea, Oracle provides an online demo to showcase ADF components. ADF can be used to develop just the UI part of an application, where, for example, the data access layer is implemented using some custom Java beans or EJBs.  However ADF also has it’s own data access layer, ADF Business Components (ADF BC) that will allow rapid integration of data from data bases and Webservice interfaces to the ADF UI component.   In this way ADF helps implement the MVC  approach to building applications with UI and data components. The canonical tutorial for ADF is to open JDeveloper, define a connection to a database, drag and drop a table from the database view to a UI page, build and deploy.  One has an application up and running very quickly with the ability to quickly integrate changes to, for example, the DB schema. ADF allows web pages to be created graphically and components like tables, forms, text fields, graphs and so on to be easily added to a page.  On top of JSF Oracle have added drag and drop tooling with JDeveloper and declarative binding of the UI to the data layer, be it database, WebService or Java beans.  An important addition is the bounded task flow which is a reusable set of pages and transitions.   ADF adds some steps to the page lifecycle defined in JSF and adds extra widgets including powerful visualizations. It is worth pointing out that the Oracle Web Center product (portal, content management and so on) is based on and extends ADF. ADF Security ADF comes with it’s own security mechanism that is exposed by JDeveloper at development time and in the WLS Console and Enterprise Manager (EM) at run time. The security elements that need to be addressed in an ADF application are: authentication, authorization of access to web pages, task-flows, components within the pages and data being returned from the model layer. One  typically relies on WLS to handle authentication and because of this users and groups will also be handled by WLS.  Typically in a Dev environment, users and groups are stored in the WLS embedded LDAP server. One has a choice when enabling ADF security (Application->Secure->Configure ADF Security) about whether to turn on ADF authorization checking or not: In the case where authorization is enabled for ADF one defines a set of roles in which we place users and then we grant access to these roles to the different ADF elements (pages or task flows or elements in a page). An important notion here is the difference between Enterprise Roles and Application Roles. The idea behind an enterprise role is that is defined in terms of users and LDAP groups from the WLS identity store.  “Enterprise” in the sense that these are things available for use to all applications that use that store.  The other kind of role is an Application Role and the idea is that  a given application will make use of Enterprise roles and users to build up a set of roles for it’s own use.  These application roles will be available only to that application.   The general idea here is that the enterprise roles are relatively static (for example an Employees group in the LDAP directory) while application roles are more dynamic, possibly depending on time, location, accessed resource and so on.  One of the things that OES adds that is that we can define these dynamic membership conditions in Role Mapping Policies. To make this concrete, here is how, at design time in Jdeveloper, one assigns these rights in Jdeveloper, which puts them into a file called jazn-data.xml: When the ADF app is deployed to a WLS this JAZN security data is pushed to the system-jazn-data.xml file of the WLS deployment for the policies and application roles and to the WLS backing LDAP for the users and enterprise roles.  Note the difference here: after deploying the application we will see the users and enterprise roles show up in the WLS LDAP server.  But the policies and application roles are defined in the system-jazn-data.xml file.  Consult the embedded WLS LDAP server to manage users and enterprise roles by going to the domain console and then Security Realms->myrealm->Users and Groups: For production environments (or in future to share this data with OES) one would then perform the operation of “reassociating” this security policy and application role data to a DB schema (or an LDAP).  This is done in the EM console by reassociating the Security Provider.  This blog posting has more explanations and references on this reassociation process. If ADF Authentication and Authorization are enabled then the Security Policies for a deployed application can be managed in EM.  Our goal is to be able to manage security policies for the applicaiton rather via OES and it's console. Security Requirements for an ADF Application With this package tour of ADF security we can see that to secure an ADF application with we would expect to be able to take care of at least the following items: Authentication, including a user and user-group store Authorization for page access Authorization for bounded Task Flow access.  A bounded task flow has only one point of entry and so if we protect that entry point by calling to OES then all the pages in the flow are protected.  Authorization for viewing data coming from the data access layer In the next posting we will describe a sample ADF application and required security policies. References ADF Dev Guide: Fusion Middleware Fusion Developer's Guide for Oracle Application Development Framework: Enabling ADF Security in a Fusion Web Application Oracle tutorial on securing a sample ADF application, appears to require ADF 11.1.2 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:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} 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;}

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• Quaternion Camera Orbiting around a Sphere

  - by jessejuicer

  Background: I'm trying to create a game where the camera is always rotating around a single sphere. I'm using the DirectX D3DX math functions in C++ on Windows. The Problem: I cannot get both the camera position and orientation both working properly at the same time. Either one works but not both together. Here's the code for my quaternion camera that revolves around a sphere, always looking at the centerpoint of the sphere, ... as far as I understand it (but which isn't working properly): (I'm only going to present rotation around the X axis here, to simplify this post) Whenever the UP key is pressed or held down, the camera should rotate around the X axis, while looking at the centerpoint of the sphere (which is at 0,0,0 in the world). So, I build a quaternion that represents a small angle of rotation around the x axis like this (where 'deltaAngle' is a small enough number for a slow rotation): D3DXVECTOR3 rotAxis; D3DXQUATERNION tempQuat; tempQuat.x = 0.0f; tempQuat.y = 0.0f; tempQuat.z = 0.0f; tempQuat.w = 1.0f; rotAxis.x = 1.0f; rotAxis.y = 0.0f; rotAxis.z = 0.0f; D3DXQuaternionRotationAxis(&tempQuat, &rotAxis, deltaAngle); ...and I accumulate the result into the camera's current orientation quat, like this: D3DXQuaternionMultiply(&cameraOrientationQuat, &cameraOrientationQuat, &tempQuat); ...which all works fine. Now I need to build a view matrix to pass to DirectX SetTransform function. So I build a rotation matrix from the camera orientation quat as follows: D3DXMATRIXA16 rotationMatrix; D3DXMatrixIdentity(&rotationMatrix); D3DXMatrixRotationQuaternion(&rotationMatrix, &cameraOrientationQuat); ...Now (as seen below) if I just transpose that rotationMatrix and plug it into the 3x3 section of the view matrix, then negate the camera's position and plug it into the translation section of the view matrix, the rotation magically works. Perfectly. (even when I add in rotations for all three axes). There's no gimbal lock, just a smooth rotation all around in any direction. BUT- this works even though I never change the camera's position. At all. Which sorta blows my mind. I even display the camera position and can watch it stay constant at it's starting point (0.0, 0.0, -4000.0). It never moves, but the rotation around the sphere is perfect. I don't understand that. For proper view rotation, the camera position should be revolving around the sphere. Here's the rest of building the view matrix (I'll talk about the commented code below). Note that the camera starts out at (0.0, 0.0, -4000.0) and m_camDistToTarget is 4000.0: /* D3DXVECTOR3 vec1; D3DXVECTOR4 vec2; vec1.x = 0.0f; vec1.y = 0.0f; vec1.z = -1.0f; D3DXVec3Transform(&vec2, &vec1, &rotationMatrix); g_cameraActor->pos.x = vec2.x * g_cameraActor->m_camDistToTarget; g_cameraActor->pos.y = vec2.y * g_cameraActor->m_camDistToTarget; g_cameraActor->pos.z = vec2.z * g_cameraActor->m_camDistToTarget; */ D3DXMatrixTranspose(&g_viewMatrix, &rotationMatrix); g_viewMatrix._41 = -g_cameraActor->pos.x; g_viewMatrix._42 = -g_cameraActor->pos.y; g_viewMatrix._43 = -g_cameraActor->pos.z; g_viewMatrix._44 = 1.0f; g_direct3DDevice9->SetTransform( D3DTS_VIEW, &g_viewMatrix ); ...(The world matrix is always an identity, and the perspective projection works fine). ...So, without the commented code being compiled, the rotation works fine. But to be proper, for obvious reasons, the camera position should be rotating around the sphere, which it currently is not. That's what the commented code is supposed to do. And when I add in that chunk of code to do that, and look at all the data as I hold the keys down (using UP, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT to rotate different directions) all the values look correct! The camera position is rotating around the sphere just fine, and I can watch that happen visually too. The problem is that the camera orientation does not lookat the center of the sphere. It always looks straight forward down the z axis (toward positive z) as it revolves around the sphere. Yet the values of both the rotation matrix and the view matrix seem to be behaving correctly. (The view matrix orientation is the same as the rotation matrix, just transposed). For instance if I just hold down the key to spin around the x axis, I can watch the values of the three axes represented in the view matrix (x, y, and z axes)... view x-axis stays at (1.0, 0.0, 0.0), and view y-axis and z-axis both spin around the x axis just fine. All the numbers are changing as they should be... well, almost. As far as I can tell, the position of the view matrix is spinning around the sphere one direction (like clockwise), and the orientation (the axes in the view matrix) are spinning the opposite direction (like counter-clockwise). Which I guess explains why the orientation appears to stay straight ahead. I know the position is correct. It revolves properly. It's the orientation that's wrong. Can anyone see what am I doing wrong? Am I using these functions incorrectly? Or is my algorithm flawed? As usual I've been combing my code for simple mistakes for many hours. I'm willing to post the actual code, and a video of the behavior, but that will take much more effort. Thought I'd ask this way first.

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• Christmas in the Clouds

  - by andrewbrust

  I have been spending the last 2 weeks immersing myself in a number of Windows Azure and SQL Azure technologies.  And in setting up a new business (I’ll speak more about that in the future), I have also become a customer of Microsoft’s BPOS (Business Productivity Online Services).  In short, it has been a fortnight of Microsoft cloud computing. On the Azure side, I’ve looked, of course, at Web Roles and Worker Roles.  But I’ve also looked at Azure Storage’s REST API (including coding to it directly), I’ve looked at Azure Drive and the new VM Role; I’ve looked quite a bit at SQL Azure (including the project “Houston” Silverlight UI) and I’ve looked at SQL Azure labs’ OData service too. I’ve also looked at DataMarket and its integration with both PowerPivot and native Excel.  Then there’s AppFabric Caching, SQL Azure Reporting (what I could learn of it) and the Visual Studio tooling for Azure, including the storage of certificate-based credentials.  And to round it out with some user stuff, on the BPOS side, I’ve been working with Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and LiveMeeting. I have to say I like a lot of what I’ve been seeing.  Azure’s not perfect, and BPOS certainly isn’t either.  But there’s good stuff in all these products, and there’s a lot of value. Azure Goes Deep Most people know that Web and Worker roles put the platform in charge of spinning virtual machines up and down, and keeping them up to date. But you can go way beyond that now.  The still-in-beta VM Role gives you the power to craft the machine (much as does Amazon’s EC2), though it takes away the platform’s self-managing attributes.  It still spins instances up and down, making drive storage non-durable, but Azure Drive gives you the ability to store VHD files as blobs and mount them as virtual hard drives that are readable and writeable.  Whether with Azure Storage or SQL Azure, Azure does data.  And OData is everywhere.  Azure Table Storage supports an OData Interface.  So does SQL Azure and so does DataMarket (the former project “Dallas”).  That means that Azure data repositories aren’t just straightforward to provision and configure…they’re also easy to program against, from just about any programming environment, in a RESTful manner.  And for more .NET-centric implementations, Azure AppFabric caching takes the technology formerly known as “Velocity” and throws it up into the cloud, speeding data access even more. Snapping in Place Once you get the hang of it, this stuff just starts to work in a way that becomes natural to understand.  I wasn’t expecting that, and I was really happy to discover it. In retrospect, I am not surprised, because I think the various Azure teams are the center of gravity for Redmond’s innovation right now.  The products belie this and so do my observations of the product teams’ motivation and high morale.  It is really good to see this; Microsoft needs to lead somewhere, and they need to be seen as the underdog while doing so.  With Azure, both requirements are in place.   BPOS: Bad Acronym, Easy Setup BPOS is about products you already know; Exchange, SharePoint, Live Meeting and Office Communications Server.  As such, it’s hard not to be underwhelmed by BPOS.  Until you realize how easy it makes it to get all that stuff set up.  I would say that from sign-up to productive use took me about 45 minutes…and that included the time necessary to wrestle with my DNS provider, set up Outlook and my SmartPhone up to talk to the Exchange account, create my SharePoint site collection, and configure the Outlook Conferencing add-in to talk to the provisioned Live Meeting account. Never before did I think setting up my own Exchange mail could come anywhere close to the simplicity of setting up an SMTP/POP account, and yet BPOS actually made it faster.   What I want from my Azure Christmas Next Year Not everything about Microsoft’s cloud is good.  I close this post with a list of things I’d like to see addressed: BPOS offerings are still based on the 2007 Wave of Microsoft server technologies.  We need to get to 2010, and fast.  Arguably, the 2010 products should have been released to the off-premises channel before the on-premise sone.  Office 365 can’t come fast enough. Azure’s Internet tooling and domain naming, is scattered and confusing.  Deployed ASP.NET applications go to cloudapp.net; SQL Azure and Azure storage work off windows.net.  The Azure portal and Project Houston are at azure.com.  Then there’s appfabriclabs.com and sqlazurelabs.com.  There is a new Silverlight portal that replaces most, but not all of the HTML ones.  And Project Houston is Silvelright-based too, though separate from the Silverlight portal tooling. Microsoft is the king off tooling.  They should not make me keep an entire OneNote notebook full of portal links, account names, access keys, assemblies and namespaces and do so much CTRL-C/CTRL-V work.  I’d like to see more project templates, have them automatically reference the appropriate assemblies, generate the right using/Imports statements and prime my config files with the right markup.  Then I want a UI that lets me log in with my Live ID and pick the appropriate project, database, namespace and key string to get set up fast. Beta programs, if they’re open, should onboard me quickly.  I know the process is difficult and everyone’s going as fast as they can.  But I don’t know why it’s so difficult or why it takes so long.  Getting developers up to speed on new features quickly helps popularize the platform.  Make this a priority. Make Azure accessible from the simplicity platforms, i.e. ASP.NET Web Pages (Razor) and LightSwitch.  Support .NET 4 now.  Make WebMatrix, IIS Express and SQL Compact work with the Azure development fabric. Have HTML helpers make Azure programming easier.  Have LightSwitch work with SQL Azure and not require SQL Express.  LightSwitch has some promising Azure integration now.  But we need more.  WebMatrix has none and that’s just silly, now that the Extra Small Instance is being introduced. The Windows Azure Platform Training Kit is great.  But I want Microsoft to make it even better and I want them to evangelize it much more aggressively.  There’s a lot of good material on Azure development out there, but it’s scattered in the same way that the platform is.   The Training Kit ties a lot of disparate stuff together nicely.  Make it known. Should Old Acquaintance Be Forgot All in all, diving deep into Azure was a good way to end the year.  Diving deeper into Azure should a great way to spend next year, not just for me, but for Microsoft too.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, June 02, 2014

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, June 02, 2014Popular ReleasesPortable Class Library for SQLite: Portable Class Library for SQLite - 3.8.4.4: This pull request from mattleibow addresses an issue with custom function creation (define functions in C# code and invoke them from SQLite as id they where regular SQL functions). Impact: Xamarin iOSTweetinvi a friendly Twitter C# API: Tweetinvi 0.9.3.x: Timelines- Added all the parameters available from the Timeline Endpoints in Tweetinvi. - This is available for HomeTimeline, UserTimeline, MentionsTimeline // Simple query var tweets = Timeline.GetHomeTimeline(); // Create a parameter for queries with specific parameters var timelineParameter = Timeline.GenerateHomeTimelineRequestParameter(); timelineParameter.ExcludeReplies = true; timelineParameter.TrimUser = true; var tweets = Timeline.GetHomeTimeline(timelineParameter); Tweets- Add mis...Sandcastle Help File Builder: Help File Builder and Tools v2014.5.31.0: General InformationIMPORTANT: On some systems, the content of the ZIP file is blocked and the installer may fail to run. Before extracting it, right click on the ZIP file, select Properties, and click on the Unblock button if it is present in the lower right corner of the General tab in the properties dialog. This release completes removal of the branding transformations and implements the new VS2013 presentation style that utilizes the new lightweight website format. Several breaking cha...Tooltip Web Preview: ToolTip Web Preview: Version 1.0Database Helper: Release 1.0.0.0: First Release of Database HelperCoMaSy: CoMaSy1.0.2: !Contact Management SystemImage View Slider: Image View Slider: This is a .NET component. We create this using VB.NET. Here you can use an Image Viewer with several properties to your application form. We wish somebody to improve freely. Try this out! Author : Steven Renaldo Antony Yustinus Arjuna Purnama Putra Andre Wijaya P Martin Lidau PBK GENAP 2014 - TI UKDWAspose for Apache POI: Missing Features of Apache POI WP - v 1.1: Release contain the Missing Features in Apache POI WP SDK in Comparison with Aspose.Words for dealing with Microsoft Word. What's New ?Following Examples: Insert Picture in Word Document Insert Comments Set Page Borders Mail Merge from XML Data Source Moving the Cursor Feedback and Suggestions Many more examples are yet to come here. Keep visiting us. Raise your queries and suggest more examples via Aspose Forums or via this social coding site.SEToolbox: 01.032.014 Release 1: Added fix when loading game Textures for icons causing 'Unable to read beyond the end of the stream'. Added new Resource Report, that displays all in game resources in a concise report. Added in temp directory cleaner, to keep excess files from building up. Fixed use of colors on the windows, to work better with desktop schemes. Adding base support for multilingual resources. This will allow loading of the Space Engineers resources to show localized names, and display localized date a...ClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.71.2: More memory and performance improvements. Fixed an issue with pivot table field order.Vi-AIO SearchBar: Vi – AIO Search Bar: Version 1.0Top Verses ( Ayat Emas ): Binary Top Verses: This one is the bin folder of the component. the .dll component is inside.Traditional Calendar Component: Traditional Calender Converter: Duta Wacana Christian University This file containing Traditional Calendar Component and Demo Aplication that using Traditional Calendar Component. This component made with .NET Framework 4 and the programming language is C# .SQLSetupHelper: 1.0.0.0: First Stable Version of SQL SetupComposite Iconote: Composite Iconote: This is a composite has been made by Microsoft Visual Studio 2013. Requirement: To develop this composite or use this component in your application, your computer must have .NET framework 4.5 or newer.Magick.NET: Magick.NET 6.8.9.101: Magick.NET linked with ImageMagick 6.8.9.1. Breaking changes: - Int/short Set methods of WritablePixelCollection are now unsigned. - The Q16 build no longer uses HDRI, switch to the new Q16-HDRI build if you need HDRI.fnr.exe - Find And Replace Tool: 1.7: Bug fixes Refactored logic for encoding text values to command line to handle common edge cases where find/replace operation works in GUI but not in command line Fix for bug where selection in Encoding drop down was different when generating command line in some cases. It was reported in: https://findandreplace.codeplex.com/workitem/34 Fix for "Backslash inserted before dot in replacement text" reported here: https://findandreplace.codeplex.com/discussions/541024 Fix for finding replacing...VG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: VG-Ripper 2.9.59: changes NEW: Added Support for 'GokoImage.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'ViperII.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'PixxxView.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'ImgRex.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'PixLiv.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'imgsee.me' links NEW: Added Support for 'ImgS.it' linksToolbox for Dynamics CRM 2011/2013: XrmToolBox (v1.2014.5.28): XrmToolbox improvement XrmToolBox updates (v1.2014.5.28)Fix connecting to a connection with custom authentication without saved password Tools improvement New tool!Solution Components Mover (v1.2014.5.22) Transfer solution components from one solution to another one Import/Export NN relationships (v1.2014.3.7) Allows you to import and export many to many relationships Tools updatesAttribute Bulk Updater (v1.2014.5.28) Audit Center (v1.2014.5.28) View Layout Replicator (v1.2014.5.28) Scrip...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 5.10: Fix for Issue #20875 - echo switch doesn't work for CSS CSS should honor the SASS source-file comments JS should allow multi-line comment directivesNew Projects[ISEN] Rendu de projet Naughty3Dogs - Pong3D: Pong3D est un jeu qui reprend le principe classique du Pong en le portant dans un environnement 3D à l'aide du langage c# et du moteur Unity3DBootstrap for MVC: Bootstrap for MVC.F. A. Q. - Najczesciej zadawane pytania: FAQForuMvc: Technifutur short projecthomework456: no.iStoody: Studies organize solution, available through app for Windows and Windows Phone.liaoliao: ???????????Price Tracker: Allows a user to track prices based on parsed emailsRoslynEval: RoslynRx Hub: Rx Hub provides server side computation which initiate by subscriber requestSharepoint Online AppCache Reset: We are an IT resource company providing Virtual IT services and custom and opensource programs for everyday needs. UnitConversionLib : Smart Unit Conversion Library in C#: Conversion of units, arithmetic operation and parsing quantities with their units on run time. Smart unit converter and conversion lib for physical quantities,

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• Open GL stars are not rendering

  - by Darestium

  I doing Nehe's Open GL Lesson 9. I'm using SFML for windowing, the strange thing is no stars are rendering. #include <SFML/System.hpp> #include <SFML/Window.hpp> #include <SFML/Graphics.hpp> #include <iostream> void processEvents(sf::Window *app); void processInput(sf::Window *app); void renderGlScene(sf::Window *app); void init(); int loadResources(); const int NUM_OF_STARS = 50; float triRot = 0.0f; float quadRot = 0.0f; bool twinkle = false; bool tKey = false; float zoom = 15.0f; float tilt = 90.0f; float spin = 0.0f; unsigned int loop; unsigned int texture_handle[1]; typedef struct { int r, g, b; float distance; float angle; } stars; stars star[NUM_OF_STARS]; int main() { sf::Window app(sf::VideoMode(800, 600, 32), "Nehe Lesson 9"); app.UseVerticalSync(false); init(); if (loadResources() == -1) { return EXIT_FAILURE; } while (app.IsOpened()) { processEvents(&app); processInput(&app); renderGlScene(&app); app.Display(); } return EXIT_SUCCESS; } int loadResources() { sf::Image img_data; // Load Texture if (!img_data.LoadFromFile("data/images/star.bmp")) { std::cout << "Could not load data/images/star.bmp"; return -1; } // Generate 1 texture glGenTextures(1, &texture_handle[0]); // Linear filtering glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, texture_handle[0]); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER, GL_LINEAR); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, GL_LINEAR); glTexImage2D(GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0, GL_RGBA, img_data.GetWidth(), img_data.GetHeight(), 0, GL_RGBA, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, img_data.GetPixelsPtr()); return 0; } void processInput(sf::Window *app) { const sf::Input& input = app->GetInput(); if (input.IsKeyDown(sf::Key::T) && !tKey) { tKey = true; twinkle = !twinkle; } if (!input.IsKeyDown(sf::Key::T)) { tKey = false; } if (input.IsKeyDown(sf::Key::Up)) { tilt -= 0.05f; } if (input.IsKeyDown(sf::Key::Down)) { tilt += 0.05f; } if (input.IsKeyDown(sf::Key::PageUp)) { zoom -= 0.02f; } if (input.IsKeyDown(sf::Key::Up)) { zoom += 0.02f; } } void init() { glClearDepth(1.f); glClearColor(0.f, 0.f, 0.f, 0.f); // Enable texturing glEnable(GL_TEXTURE_2D); //glDepthMask(GL_TRUE); // Setup a perpective projection glMatrixMode(GL_PROJECTION); glLoadIdentity(); gluPerspective(45.f, 1.f, 1.f, 500.f); glShadeModel(GL_SMOOTH); glBlendFunc(GL_SRC_ALPHA, GL_ONE); glEnable(GL_BLEND); for (loop = 0; loop < NUM_OF_STARS; loop++) { star[loop].distance = (float)loop / NUM_OF_STARS * 5.0f; // Calculate distance from the centre // Give stars random rgb value star[loop].r = rand() % 256; star[loop].g = rand() % 256; star[loop].b = rand() % 256; } } void processEvents(sf::Window *app) { sf::Event event; while (app->GetEvent(event)) { if (event.Type == sf::Event::Closed) { app->Close(); } if (event.Type == sf::Event::KeyPressed && event.Key.Code == sf::Key::Escape) { app->Close(); } } } void renderGlScene(sf::Window *app) { app->SetActive(); // Clear color depth buffer glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT | GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT); // Apply some transformations glMatrixMode(GL_MODELVIEW); glLoadIdentity(); // Select texture glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, texture_handle[0]); for (loop = 0; loop < NUM_OF_STARS; loop++) { glLoadIdentity(); // Reset The View Before We Draw Each Star glTranslatef(0.0f, 0.0f, zoom); // Zoom Into The Screen (Using The Value In 'zoom') glRotatef(tilt, 1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f); // Tilt The View (Using The Value In 'tilt') glRotatef(star[loop].angle, 0.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f); // Rotate To The Current Stars Angle glTranslatef(star[loop].distance, 0.0f, 0.0f); // Move Forward On The X Plane glRotatef(-star[loop].angle,0.0f,1.0f,0.0f); // Cancel The Current Stars Angle glRotatef(-tilt,1.0f,0.0f,0.0f); // Cancel The Screen Tilt if (twinkle) { glColor4ub(star[(NUM_OF_STARS - loop) - 1].r, star[(NUM_OF_STARS - loop)-1].g, star[(NUM_OF_STARS - loop) - 1].b, 255); glBegin(GL_QUADS); // Begin Drawing The Textured Quad glTexCoord2f(0.0f, 0.0f); glVertex3f(-1.0f, -1.0f, 0.0f); glTexCoord2f(1.0f, 0.0f); glVertex3f( 1.0f, -1.0f, 0.0f); glTexCoord2f(1.0f, 1.0f); glVertex3f( 1.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f); glTexCoord2f(0.0f, 1.0f); glVertex3f(-1.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f); glEnd(); // Done Drawing The Textured Quad } glRotatef(spin,0.0f,0.0f,1.0f); // Rotate The Star On The Z Axis // Assign A Color Using Bytes glColor4ub(star[loop].r, star[loop].g, star[loop].b, 255); glBegin(GL_QUADS); // Begin Drawing The Textured Quad glTexCoord2f(0.0f, 0.0f); glVertex3f(-1.0f,-1.0f, 0.0f); glTexCoord2f(1.0f, 0.0f); glVertex3f( 1.0f,-1.0f, 0.0f); glTexCoord2f(1.0f, 1.0f); glVertex3f( 1.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f); glTexCoord2f(0.0f, 1.0f); glVertex3f(-1.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f); glEnd(); // Done Drawing The Textured Quad spin += 0.01f; // Used To Spin The Stars star[loop].angle += (float)loop / NUM_OF_STARS; // Changes The Angle Of A Star star[loop].distance -= 0.01f; // Changes The Distance Of A Star if (star[loop].distance < 0.0f) { star[loop].distance += 5.0f; // Move The Star 5 Units From The Center star[loop].r = rand() % 256; // Give It A New Red Value star[loop].g = rand() % 256; // Give It A New Green Value star[loop].b = rand() % 256; // Give It A New Blue Value } } } I've looked over the code atleast 10 times now and I can't figure out the problem. Any help would be much appreciated.

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• Oracle OpenWorld 2013 – Wrap up by Sven Bernhardt

  - by JuergenKress

  OOW 2013 is over and we’re heading home, so it is time to lean back and reflecting about the impressions we have from the conference. First of all: OOW was great! It was a pleasure to be a part of it. As already mentioned in our last blog article: It was the biggest OOW ever. Parallel to the conference the America’s Cup took place in San Francisco and the Oracle Team America won. Amazing job by the team and again congratulations from our side Back to the conference. The main topics for us are: Oracle SOA / BPM Suite 12c Adaptive Case management (ACM) Big Data Fast Data Cloud Mobile Below we will go a little more into detail, what are the key takeaways regarding the mentioned points: Oracle SOA / BPM Suite 12c During the five days at OOW, first details of the upcoming major release of Oracle SOA Suite 12c and Oracle BPM Suite 12c have been introduced. Some new key features are: Managed File Transfer (MFT) for transferring big files from a source to a target location Enhanced REST support by introducing a new REST binding Introduction of a generic cloud adapter, which can be used to connect to different cloud providers, like Salesforce Enhanced analytics with BAM, which has been totally reengineered (BAM Console now also runs in Firefox!) Introduction of templates (OSB pipelines, component templates, BPEL activities templates) EM as a single monitoring console OSB design-time integration into JDeveloper (Really great!) Enterprise modeling capabilities in BPM Composer These are only a few points from what is coming with 12c. We are really looking forward for the new realese to come out, because this seems to be really great stuff. The suite becomes more and more integrated. From 10g to 11g it was an evolution in terms of developing SOA-based applications. With 12c, Oracle continues it’s way – very impressive. Adaptive Case Management Another fantastic topic was Adaptive Case Management (ACM). The Oracle PMs did a great job especially at the demo grounds in showing the upcoming Case Management UI (will be available in 11g with the next BPM Suite MLR Patch), the roadmap and the differences between traditional business process modeling. They have been very busy during the conference because a lot of partners and customers have been interested Big Data Big Data is one of the current hype themes. Because of huge data amounts from different internal or external sources, the handling of these data becomes more and more challenging. Companies have a need for analyzing the data to optimize their business. The challenge is here: the amount of data is growing daily! To store and analyze the data efficiently, it is necessary to have a scalable and flexible infrastructure. Here it is important that hardware and software are engineered to work together. Therefore several new features of the Oracle Database 12c, like the new in-memory option, have been presented by Larry Ellison himself. From a hardware side new server machines like Fujitsu M10 or new processors, such as Oracle’s new M6-32 have been announced. The performance improvements, when using one of these hardware components in connection with the improved software solutions were really impressive. For more details about this, please take look at our previous blog post. Regarding Big Data, Oracle also introduced their Big Data architecture, which consists of: Oracle Big Data Appliance that is preconfigured with Hadoop Oracle Exdata which stores a huge amount of data efficently, to achieve optimal query performance Oracle Exalytics as a fast and scalable Business analytics system Analysis of the stored data can be performed using SQL, by streaming the data directly from Hadoop to an Oracle Database 12c. Alternatively the analysis can be directly implemented in Hadoop using “R”. In addition Oracle BI Tools can be used to analyze the data. Fast Data Fast Data is a complementary approach to Big Data. A huge amount of mostly unstructured data comes in via different channels with a high frequency. The analysis of these data streams is also important for companies, because the incoming data has to be analyzed regarding business-relevant patterns in real-time. Therefore these patterns must be identified efficiently and performant. To do so, in-memory grid solutions in combination with Oracle Coherence and Oracle Event Processing demonstrated very impressive how efficient real-time data processing can be. One example for Fast Data solutions that was shown during the OOW was the analysis of twitter streams regarding customer satisfaction. The feeds with negative words like “bad” or “worse” have been filtered and after a defined treshold has been reached in a certain timeframe, a business event was triggered. Cloud Another key trend in the IT market is of course Cloud Computing and what it means for companies and their businesses. Oracle announced their Cloud strategy and vision – companies can focus on their real business while all of the applications are available via Cloud. This also includes Oracle Database or Oracle Weblogic, so that companies can also build, deploy and run their own applications within the cloud. Three different approaches have been introduced: Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) Platform as a Service (PaaS) Software as a Service (SaaS) Using the IaaS approach only the infrastructure components will be managed in the Cloud. Customers will be very flexible regarding memory, storage or number of CPUs because those parameters can be adjusted elastically. The PaaS approach means that besides the infrastructure also the platforms (such as databases or application servers) necessary for running applications will be provided within the Cloud. Here customers can also decide, if installation and management of these infrastructure components should be done by Oracle. The SaaS approach describes the most complete one, hence all applications a company uses are managed in the Cloud. Oracle is planning to provide all of their applications, like ERP systems or HR applications, as Cloud services. In conclusion this seems to be a very forward-thinking strategy, which opens up new possibilities for customers to manage their infrastructure and applications in a flexible, scalable and future-oriented manner. As you can see, our OOW days have been very very interresting. We collected many helpful informations for our projects. The new innovations presented at the confernce are great and being part of this was even greater! We are looking forward to next years’ conference! Links: http://www.oracle.com/openworld/index.html http://thecattlecrew.wordpress.com/2013/09/23/first-impressions-from-oracle-open-world-2013 SOA & BPM Partner Community For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Facebook Wiki Mix Forum Technorati Tags: cattleCrew,Sven Bernhard,OOW2013,SOA Community,Oracle SOA,Oracle BPM,Community,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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• A star algorithm implementation problems

  - by bryan226

  I’m having some trouble implementing the A* algorithm in a 2D tile based game. The problem is basically that the algorithm gets stuck when something gets in its direct way (e.g. walls) Note that it only allows Horizontal and Vertical movement. Here's a picture as it works fine across the map without something in its direct way: (Green tile = destination, Blue = In closed list, Green = in open list) This is what happens if I try to walk 'around' a wall: I calculate costs with the F = G + H formula: G = 1 Cost per Step H = 10 Cost per Step //Count how many tiles are between current-tile & destination-tile The functions: short c_astar::GuessH(short Startx,short Starty,short Destinationx,short Destinationy) { hgeVector Start, Destination; Start.x = Startx; Start.y = Starty; Destination.x = Destinationx; Destination.y = Destinationy; short a = 0; short b = 0; if(Start.x > Destination.x) a = Start.x - Destination.x; else a = Destination.x - Start.x; if(Start.y > Destination.y) b = Start.y - Destination.y; else b = Destination.y - Start.y; return (a+b)*10; } short c_astar::GuessG(short Startx,short Starty,short Currentx,short Currenty) { hgeVector Start, Destination; Start.x = Startx; Start.y = Starty; Destination.x = Currentx; Destination.y = Currenty; short a = 0; short b = 0; if(Start.x > Destination.x) a = Start.x - Destination.x; else a = Destination.x - Start.x; if(Start.y > Destination.y) b = Start.y - Destination.y; else b = Destination.y - Start.y; return (a+b); } At the end of the loop I check which tile is the cheapest to go according to its F value: Then some quick checks are done for each tile (UP,DOWN,LEFT,RIGHT): //...CX are holding the F value of the TILE specified // Info: C0 = Center (Current) // C1 = UP // C2 = DOWN // C3 = LEFT // C4 = RIGHT //Quick checks if(((C1 < C2) && (C1 < C3) && (C1 < C4))) { Current.y -= 1; bSimilar = false; if(DEBUG) hge->System_Log("C1 < ALL"); } //.. same for C2,C3 & C4 If there are multiple tiles with the same F value: It’s actually a switch for DOWNLEFT,UPRIGHT.. etc. Here’s one of it: case UPRIGHT: { //UP Temporary = Current; Temporary.y -= 1; bTileStatus[0] = IsTileWalkable(Temporary.x,Temporary.y); if(bTileStatus[0]) { //Proceed normal we are OK & walkable Tilex.Tile = map.at(Temporary.y).at(Temporary.x); //Search in lists if(SearchInClosedList(Tilex.Tile.ID,C0)) bFoundInClosedList[0] = true; if(SearchInOpenList(Tilex.Tile.ID,C0)) bFoundInOpenList[0] = true; //RIGHT Temporary = Current; Temporary.x += 1; bTileStatus[1] = IsTileWalkable(Temporary.x,Temporary.y); if(bTileStatus[1]) { //Proceed normal we are OK & walkable Tilex.Tile = map.at(Temporary.y).at(Temporary.x); //Search in lists if(SearchInClosedList(Tilex.Tile.ID,C0)) bFoundInClosedList[1] = true; if(SearchInOpenList(Tilex.Tile.ID,C0)) bFoundInOpenList[1] = true; //************************************************* // Purpose: ClosedList behavior //************************************************* if(bFoundInClosedList[0] && !bFoundInClosedList[1]) { //UP found in ClosedList. Go RIGHT return RIGHT; } if(!bFoundInClosedList[0] && bFoundInClosedList[1]) { //RIGHT found in ClosedList. Go UP return UP; } if(bFoundInClosedList[0] && bFoundInClosedList[1]) { //Both found in ClosedList. Random value switch(hge->Random_Int(8,9)) { case 8: return UP; break; case 9: return RIGHT; break; } } //************************************************* // Purpose: OpenList behavior //************************************************* if(bFoundInOpenList[0] && !bFoundInOpenList[1]) { //UP found in OpenList. Go RIGHT return RIGHT; } if(!bFoundInOpenList[0] && bFoundInOpenList[1]) { //RIGHT found in OpenList. Go UP return UP; } if(bFoundInOpenList[0] && bFoundInOpenList[1]) { //Both found in OpenList. Random value switch(hge->Random_Int(8,9)) { case 8: return UP; break; case 9: return RIGHT; break; } } } else if(!bTileStatus[1]) { //RIGHT is not walkable OR out of range //Choose UP return UP; } } else if(!bTileStatus[0]) { //UP is not walkable OR out of range //Fast check RIGHT Temporary = Current; Temporary.x += 1; bTileStatus[1] = IsTileWalkable(Temporary.x,Temporary.y); if(bTileStatus[1]) { return RIGHT; } else return FAILED; //Failed, no valid path found! } } break; A log for the second picture: (Cut down to ten passes, because it’s just repeating itself) ----------------------------------------------------- PASS: 1 | C1: 211 | C2: 191 | C3: 211 | C4: 191 DOWN + RIGHT SIMILAR Going DOWN ----------------------------------------------------- PASS: 2 | C1: 200 | C2: 182 | C3: 202 | C4: 182 DOWN + RIGHT SIMILAR Going DOWN ----------------------------------------------------- PASS: 3 | C1: 191 | C2: 193 | C3: 193 | C4: 173 C4 < ALL Tile(12.000000,6.000000) not walkable. MAX_F_VALUE set. ----------------------------------------------------- PASS: 4 | C1: 182 | C2: 184 | C3: 182 | C4: 999 UP + LEFT SIMILAR Going UP Tile(12.000000,5.000000) not walkable. MAX_F_VALUE set. ----------------------------------------------------- PASS: 5 | C1: 191 | C2: 173 | C3: 191 | C4: 999 C2 < ALL Tile(12.000000,6.000000) not walkable. MAX_F_VALUE set. ----------------------------------------------------- PASS: 6 | C1: 182 | C2: 184 | C3: 182 | C4: 999 UP + LEFT SIMILAR Going UP Tile(12.000000,5.000000) not walkable. MAX_F_VALUE set. ----------------------------------------------------- PASS: 7 | C1: 191 | C2: 173 | C3: 191 | C4: 999 C2 < ALL Tile(12.000000,6.000000) not walkable. MAX_F_VALUE set. ----------------------------------------------------- PASS: 8 | C1: 182 | C2: 184 | C3: 182 | C4: 999 UP + LEFT SIMILAR Going LEFT ----------------------------------------------------- PASS: 9 | C1: 191 | C2: 193 | C3: 193 | C4: 173 C4 < ALL Tile(12.000000,6.000000) not walkable. MAX_F_VALUE set. ----------------------------------------------------- PASS: 10 | C1: 182 | C2: 184 | C3: 182 | C4: 999 UP + LEFT SIMILAR Going LEFT ----------------------------------------------------- Its always going after the cheapest F value, which seems to be wrong. If someone could point me to the right direction I'd be thankful. Regards, bryan226

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• Unlocking Productivity

  - by Michael Snow

  Unlocking Productivity in Life Sciences with Consolidated Content Management by Joe Golemba, Vice President, Product Management, Oracle WebCenter As life sciences organizations look to become more operationally efficient, the ability to effectively leverage information is a competitive advantage. Whether data mining at the drug discovery phase or prepping the sales team before a product launch, content management can play a key role in developing, organizing, and disseminating vital information. The goal of content management is relatively straightforward: put the information that people need where they can find it. A number of issues can complicate this; information sits in many different systems, each of those systems has its own security, and the information in those systems exists in many different formats. Identifying and extracting pertinent information from mountains of farflung data is no simple job, but the alternative—wasted effort or even regulatory compliance issues—is worse. An integrated information architecture can enable health sciences organizations to make better decisions, accelerate clinical operations, and be more competitive. Unstructured data matters Often when we think of drug development data, we think of structured data that fits neatly into one or more research databases. But structured data is often directly supported by unstructured data such as experimental protocols, reaction conditions, lot numbers, run times, analyses, and research notes. As life sciences companies seek integrated views of data, they are typically finding diverse islands of data that seemingly have no relationship to other data in the organization. Information like sales reports or call center reports can be locked into siloed systems, and unavailable to the discovery process. Additionally, in the increasingly networked clinical environment, Web pages, instant messages, videos, scientific imaging, sales and marketing data, collaborative workspaces, and predictive modeling data are likely to be present within an organization, and each source potentially possesses information that can help to better inform specific efforts. Historically, content management solutions that had 21CFR Part 11 capabilities—electronic records and signatures—were focused mainly on content-enabling manufacturing-related processes. Today, life sciences companies have many standalone repositories, requiring different skills, service level agreements, and vendor support costs to manage them. With the amount of content doubling every three to six months, companies have recognized the need to manage unstructured content from the beginning, in order to increase employee productivity and operational efficiency. Using scalable and secure enterprise content management (ECM) solutions, organizations can better manage their unstructured content. These solutions can also be integrated with enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems or research systems, making content available immediately, in the context of the application and within the flow of the employee’s typical business activity. Administrative safeguards—such as content de-duplication—can also be applied within ECM systems, so documents are never recreated, eliminating redundant efforts, ensuring one source of truth, and maintaining content standards in the organization. Putting it in context Consolidating structured and unstructured information in a single system can greatly simplify access to relevant information when it is needed through contextual search. Using contextual filters, results can include therapeutic area, position in the value chain, semantic commonalities, technology-specific factors, specific researchers involved, or potential business impact. The use of taxonomies is essential to organizing information and enabling contextual searches. Taxonomy solutions are composed of a hierarchical tree that defines the relationship between different life science terms. When overlaid with additional indexing related to research and/or business processes, it becomes possible to effectively narrow down the amount of data that is returned during searches, as well as prioritize results based on specific criteria and/or prior search history. Thus, search results are more accurate and relevant to an employee’s day-to-day work. For example, a search for the word "tissue" by a lab researcher would return significantly different results than a search for the same word performed by someone in procurement. Of course, diverse data repositories, combined with the immense amounts of data present in an organization, necessitate that the data elements be regularly indexed and cached beforehand to enable reasonable search response times. In its simplest form, indexing of a single, consolidated data warehouse can be expected to be a relatively straightforward effort. However, organizations require the ability to index multiple data repositories, enabling a single search to reference multiple data sources and provide an integrated results listing. Security and compliance Beyond yielding efficiencies and supporting new insight, an enterprise search environment can support important security considerations as well as compliance initiatives. For example, the systems enable organizations to retain the relevance and the security of the indexed systems, so users can only see the results to which they are granted access. This is especially important as life sciences companies are working in an increasingly networked environment and need to provide secure, role-based access to information across multiple partners. Although not officially required by the 21 CFR Part 11 regulation, the U.S. Food and Drug Administraiton has begun to extend the type of content considered when performing relevant audits and discoveries. Having an ECM infrastructure that provides centralized management of all content enterprise-wide—with the ability to consistently apply records and retention policies along with the appropriate controls, validations, audit trails, and electronic signatures—is becoming increasingly critical for life sciences companies. Making the move Creating an enterprise-wide ECM environment requires moving large amounts of content into a single enterprise repository, a daunting and risk-laden initiative. The first key is to focus on data taxonomy, allowing content to be mapped across systems. The second is to take advantage new tools which can dramatically speed and reduce the cost of the data migration process through automation. Additional content need not be frozen while it is migrated, enabling productivity throughout the process. The ability to effectively leverage information into success has been gaining importance in the life sciences industry for years. The rapid adoption of enterprise content management, both in operational processes as well as in scientific management, are clear indicators that the companies are looking to use all available data to be better informed, improve decision making, minimize risk, and increase time to market, to maintain profitability and be more competitive. As more and more varieties and sources of information are brought under the strategic management umbrella, the ability to divine knowledge from the vast pool of information is increasingly difficult. Simple search engines and basic content management are increasingly unable to effectively extract the right information from the mountains of data available. By bringing these tools into context and integrating them with business processes and applications, we can effectively focus on the right decisions that make our organizations more profitable. More Information Oracle will be exhibiting at DIA 2012 in Philadelphia on June 25-27. Stop by our booth 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;} (#2825) to learn more about the advantages of a centralized ECM strategy and see the Oracle WebCenter Content solution, our 21 CFR Part 11 compliant content management platform.

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• Pathfinding results in false path costs that are too high

  - by user2144536

  I'm trying to implement pathfinding in a game I'm programming using this method. I'm implementing it with recursion but some of the values after the immediate circle of tiles around the player are way off. For some reason I cannot find the problem with it. This is a screen cap of the problem: The pathfinding values are displayed in the center of every tile. Clipped blocks are displayed with the value of 'c' because the values were too high and were covering up the next value. The red circle is the first value that is incorrect. The code below is the recursive method. //tileX is the coordinates of the current tile, val is the current pathfinding value, used[][] is a boolean //array to keep track of which tiles' values have already been assigned public void pathFind(int tileX, int tileY, int val, boolean[][] used) { //increment pathfinding value int curVal = val + 1; //set current tile to true if it hasn't been already used[tileX][tileY] = true; //booleans to know which tiles the recursive call needs to be used on boolean topLeftUsed = false, topUsed = false, topRightUsed = false, leftUsed = false, rightUsed = false, botomLeftUsed = false, botomUsed = false, botomRightUsed = false; //set value of top left tile if necessary if(tileX - 1 >= 0 && tileY - 1 >= 0) { //isClipped(int x, int y) returns true if the coordinates givin are in a tile that can't be walked through (IE walls) //occupied[][] is an array that keeps track of which tiles have an enemy in them // //if the tile is not clipped and not occupied set the pathfinding value if(isClipped((tileX - 1) * 50 + 25, (tileY - 1) * 50 + 25) == false && occupied[tileX - 1][tileY - 1] == false && !(used[tileX - 1][tileY - 1])) { pathFindingValues[tileX - 1][tileY - 1] = curVal; topLeftUsed = true; used[tileX - 1][tileY - 1] = true; } //if it is occupied set it to an arbitrary high number so enemies find alternate routes if the best is clogged if(occupied[tileX - 1][tileY - 1] == true) pathFindingValues[tileX - 1][tileY - 1] = 1000000000; //if it is clipped set it to an arbitrary higher number so enemies don't travel through walls if(isClipped((tileX - 1) * 50 + 25, (tileY - 1) * 50 + 25) == true) pathFindingValues[tileX - 1][tileY - 1] = 2000000000; } //top middle if(tileY - 1 >= 0 ) { if(isClipped(tileX * 50 + 25, (tileY - 1) * 50 + 25) == false && occupied[tileX][tileY - 1] == false && !(used[tileX][tileY - 1])) { pathFindingValues[tileX][tileY - 1] = curVal; topUsed = true; used[tileX][tileY - 1] = true; } if(occupied[tileX][tileY - 1] == true) pathFindingValues[tileX][tileY - 1] = 1000000000; if(isClipped(tileX * 50 + 25, (tileY - 1) * 50 + 25) == true) pathFindingValues[tileX][tileY - 1] = 2000000000; } //top right if(tileX + 1 <= used.length && tileY - 1 >= 0) { if(isClipped((tileX + 1) * 50 + 25, (tileY - 1) * 50 + 25) == false && occupied[tileX + 1][tileY - 1] == false && !(used[tileX + 1][tileY - 1])) { pathFindingValues[tileX + 1][tileY - 1] = curVal; topRightUsed = true; used[tileX + 1][tileY - 1] = true; } if(occupied[tileX + 1][tileY - 1] == true) pathFindingValues[tileX + 1][tileY - 1] = 1000000000; if(isClipped((tileX + 1) * 50 + 25, (tileY - 1) * 50 + 25) == true) pathFindingValues[tileX + 1][tileY - 1] = 2000000000; } //left if(tileX - 1 >= 0) { if(isClipped((tileX - 1) * 50 + 25, (tileY) * 50 + 25) == false && occupied[tileX - 1][tileY] == false && !(used[tileX - 1][tileY])) { pathFindingValues[tileX - 1][tileY] = curVal; leftUsed = true; used[tileX - 1][tileY] = true; } if(occupied[tileX - 1][tileY] == true) pathFindingValues[tileX - 1][tileY] = 1000000000; if(isClipped((tileX - 1) * 50 + 25, (tileY) * 50 + 25) == true) pathFindingValues[tileX - 1][tileY] = 2000000000; } //right if(tileX + 1 <= used.length) { if(isClipped((tileX + 1) * 50 + 25, (tileY) * 50 + 25) == false && occupied[tileX + 1][tileY] == false && !(used[tileX + 1][tileY])) { pathFindingValues[tileX + 1][tileY] = curVal; rightUsed = true; used[tileX + 1][tileY] = true; } if(occupied[tileX + 1][tileY] == true) pathFindingValues[tileX + 1][tileY] = 1000000000; if(isClipped((tileX + 1) * 50 + 25, (tileY) * 50 + 25) == true) pathFindingValues[tileX + 1][tileY] = 2000000000; } //botom left if(tileX - 1 >= 0 && tileY + 1 <= used[0].length) { if(isClipped((tileX - 1) * 50 + 25, (tileY + 1) * 50 + 25) == false && occupied[tileX - 1][tileY + 1] == false && !(used[tileX - 1][tileY + 1])) { pathFindingValues[tileX - 1][tileY + 1] = curVal; botomLeftUsed = true; used[tileX - 1][tileY + 1] = true; } if(occupied[tileX - 1][tileY + 1] == true) pathFindingValues[tileX - 1][tileY + 1] = 1000000000; if(isClipped((tileX - 1) * 50 + 25, (tileY + 1) * 50 + 25) == true) pathFindingValues[tileX - 1][tileY + 1] = 2000000000; } //botom middle if(tileY + 1 <= used[0].length) { if(isClipped((tileX) * 50 + 25, (tileY + 1) * 50 + 25) == false && occupied[tileX][tileY + 1] == false && !(used[tileX][tileY + 1])) { pathFindingValues[tileX][tileY + 1] = curVal; botomUsed = true; used[tileX][tileY + 1] = true; } if(occupied[tileX][tileY + 1] == true) pathFindingValues[tileX][tileY + 1] = 1000000000; if(isClipped((tileX) * 50 + 25, (tileY + 1) * 50 + 25) == true) pathFindingValues[tileX][tileY + 1] = 2000000000; } //botom right if(tileX + 1 <= used.length && tileY + 1 <= used[0].length) { if(isClipped((tileX + 1) * 50 + 25, (tileY + 1) * 50 + 25) == false && occupied[tileX + 1][tileY + 1] == false && !(used[tileX + 1][tileY + 1])) { pathFindingValues[tileX + 1][tileY + 1] = curVal; botomRightUsed = true; used[tileX + 1][tileY + 1] = true; } if(occupied[tileX + 1][tileY + 1] == true) pathFindingValues[tileX + 1][tileY + 1] = 1000000000; if(isClipped((tileX + 1) * 50 + 25, (tileY + 1) * 50 + 25) == true) pathFindingValues[tileX + 1][tileY + 1] = 2000000000; } //call the method on the tiles that need it if(tileX - 1 >= 0 && tileY - 1 >= 0 && topLeftUsed) pathFind(tileX - 1, tileY - 1, curVal, used); if(tileY - 1 >= 0 && topUsed) pathFind(tileX , tileY - 1, curVal, used); if(tileX + 1 <= used.length && tileY - 1 >= 0 && topRightUsed) pathFind(tileX + 1, tileY - 1, curVal, used); if(tileX - 1 >= 0 && leftUsed) pathFind(tileX - 1, tileY, curVal, used); if(tileX + 1 <= used.length && rightUsed) pathFind(tileX + 1, tileY, curVal, used); if(tileX - 1 >= 0 && tileY + 1 <= used[0].length && botomLeftUsed) pathFind(tileX - 1, tileY + 1, curVal, used); if(tileY + 1 <= used[0].length && botomUsed) pathFind(tileX, tileY + 1, curVal, used); if(tileX + 1 <= used.length && tileY + 1 <= used[0].length && botomRightUsed) pathFind(tileX + 1, tileY + 1, curVal, used); }

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• Corsair Hackers Reboot

  It wasn't easy for me to attend but it was absolutely worth to go. The Linux User Group of Mauritius (LUGM) organised another get-together for any open source enthusiast here on the island. Strangely named "Corsair Hackers Reboot" but it stands for a positive cause: "Corsair Hackers Reboot Event A collaborative activity involving LUGM, UoM Computer Club, Fortune Way Shopping Mall and several geeks from around the island, striving to put FOSS into homes & offices. The public is invited to discover and explore Free Software & Open Source." And it was a good opportunity for me and the kids to visit the east coast of Mauritius, too. Perfect timing It couldn't have been better... Why? Well, for two important reasons (in terms of IT): End of support for Microsoft Windows XP - 08.04.2014 Release of Ubuntu 14.04 Long Term Support - 17.04.2014 Quite funnily, those two IT dates weren't the initial reasons and only during the weeks of preparations we put those together. And therefore it was even more positive to promote the use of Linux and open source software in general to a broader audience. Getting there ... Thanks to the new motor way M3 and all the additional road work which has been completed recently it was very simple to get across the island in a very quick and relaxed manner. Compared to my trips in the early days of living in Mauritius (and riding on a scooter) it was very smooth and within less than an hour we hit Centrale de Flacq. Well, being in the city doesn't necessarily mean that one has arrived at the destination. But thanks to modern technology I had a quick look on Google Maps, and we finally managed to get a parking behind the huge bus terminal in Flacq. From there it was just a short walk to Fortune Way. The children were trying to count the number of buses... Well, lots and lots of buses - really impressive actually. What was presented? There were different areas set up. Right at the entrance one's attention was directly drawn towards the elevated hacker's stage. Similar to rock stars performing their gig there was bunch of computers, laptops and networking equipment in order to cater the right working conditions for coding/programming challenge(s) on the one hand and for the pen-testing or system hacking competition on the other hand. Personally, I was very impresses that actually Nitin took care of the pen-testing competition. He hardly started one year back with Linux in general, and Kali Linux specifically. Seeing his personal development from absolute newbie to a decent Linux system administrator within such a short period of time, is really impressive. His passion to open source software made him a living. Next, clock-wise seen, was the Kid's Corner with face-painting as the main attraction. Additionally, there were numerous paper print outs to colour. Plus a decent workstation with the educational suite GCompris. Of course, my little ones were into that. They already know GCompris since a while as they are allowed to use it on an IGEL thin client terminal here at home. To simplify my life, I set up GCompris as full-screen guest session on the server, and they can pass the login screen without any further obstacles. And because it's a thin client hooked up to a XDMCP remote session I don't have to worry about the hardware on their desk, too. The next section was the main attraction of the event: BYOD - Bring Your Own Device Well, compared to the usual context of BYOD the corsairs had a completely different intention. Here, you could bring your own laptop and a team of knowledgeable experts - read: geeks and so on - offered to fully convert your system on any Linux distribution of your choice. And even though I came later, I was told that the USB pen drives had been in permanent use. From being prepared via dd command over launching LiveCD session to finally installing a fresh Linux system on bare metal. Most interestingly, I did a similar job already a couple of months ago, while upgrading an existing Windows XP system to Xubuntu 13.10. So far, the female owner is very happy and enjoys her system almost every evening to go shopping online, checking mails, and reading latest news from the Anime world. Back to the Hackers event, Ish told me that they managed approximately 20 conversion during the day. Furthermore, Ajay and others gladly assisted some visitors with some tricky issues and by the end of the day you can call is a success. While I was around, there was a elderly male visitor that got a full-fledged system conversion to a Linux system running completely in French language. A little bit more to the centre it was Yasir's turn to demonstrate his Arduino hardware that he hooked up with an experimental electrical circuit board connected to an LCD matrix display. That's the real spirit of hacking, and he showed some minor adjustments on the fly while demo'ing the system. Also, very interesting there was a thermal sensor around. Personally, I think that platforms like the Arduino as well as the Raspberry Pi have a great potential at a very affordable price in order to bring a better understanding of electronics as well as computer programming to a broader audience. It would be great to see more of those experiments during future activities. And last but not least there were a small number of vendors. Amongst them was Emtel - once again as sponsor of the general internet connectivity - and another hardware supplier from Riche Terre shopping mall. They had a good collection of Android related gimmicks, like a autonomous web cam that can convert any TV with HDMI connector into an online video chat system given WiFi. It's actually kind of awesome to have a Skype or Google hangout video session on the big screen rather than on the laptop. Some pictures of the event LUGM: Great conversations on Linux, open source and free software during the Corsair Hackers Reboot LUGM: Educational workstation running GCompris suite attracted the youngest attendees of the day. Of course, face painting had to be done prior to hacking... LUGM: Nadim demoing some Linux specifics to interested visitors. Everyone was pretty busy during the whole day LUGM: The hacking competition, here pen-testing a wireless connection and access point between multiple machines LUGM: Well prepared workstations to be able to 'upgrade' visitors' machines to any Linux operating system Final thoughts Gratefully, during the preparations of the event I was invited to leave some comments or suggestions, and the team of the LUGM did a great job. The outdoor banner was a eye-catcher, the various flyers and posters for the event were clearly written and as far as I understood from the quick chats I had with Ish, Nadim, Nitin, Ajay, and of course others all were very happy about the event execution. Great job, LUGM! And I'm already looking forward to the next Corsair Hackers Reboot event ... Crossing fingers: Very soon and hopefully this year again :) Update: In the media The event had been announced in local media, too. L'Express: Salon informatique: Hacking Challenge à Flacq

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• MapRedux - PowerShell and Big Data

  - by Dittenhafer Solutions

  MapRedux – #PowerShell and #Big Data Have you been hearing about “big data”, “map reduce” and other large scale computing terms over the past couple of years and been curious to dig into more detail? Have you read some of the Apache Hadoop online documentation and unfortunately concluded that it wasn't feasible to setup a “test” hadoop environment on your machine? More recently, I have read about some of Microsoft’s work to enable Hadoop on the Azure cloud. Being a "Microsoft"-leaning technologist, I am more inclinded to be successful with experimentation when on the Windows platform. Of course, it is not that I am "religious" about one set of technologies other another, but rather more experienced. Anyway, within the past couple of weeks I have been thinking about PowerShell a bit more as the 2012 PowerShell Scripting Games approach and it occured to me that PowerShell's support for Windows Remote Management (WinRM), and some other inherent features of PowerShell might lend themselves particularly well to a simple implementation of the MapReduce framework. I fired up my PowerShell ISE and started writing just to see where it would take me. Quite simply, the ScriptBlock feature combined with the ability of Invoke-Command to create remote jobs on networked servers provides much of the plumbing of a distributed computing environment. There are some limiting factors of course. Microsoft provided some default settings which prevent PowerShell from taking over a network without administrative approval first. But even with just one adjustment, a given Windows-based machine can become a node in a MapReduce-style distributed computing environment. Ok, so enough introduction. Let's talk about the code. First, any machine that will participate as a remote "node" will need WinRM enabled for remote access, as shown below. This is not exactly practical for hundreds of intended nodes, but for one (or five) machines in a test environment it does just fine. C:> winrm quickconfig WinRM is not set up to receive requests on this machine. The following changes must be made: Set the WinRM service type to auto start. Start the WinRM service. Make these changes [y/n]? y Alternatively, you could take the approach described in the Remotely enable PSRemoting post from the TechNet forum and use PowerShell to create remote scheduled tasks that will call Enable-PSRemoting on each intended node. Invoke-MapRedux Moving on, now that you have one or more remote "nodes" enabled, you can consider the actual Map and Reduce algorithms. Consider the following snippet: $MyMrResults = Invoke-MapRedux -MapReduceItem $Mr -ComputerName $MyNodes -DataSet $dataset -Verbose Invoke-MapRedux takes an instance of a MapReduceItem which references the Map and Reduce scriptblocks, an array of computer names which are the remote nodes, and the initial data set to be processed. As simple as that, you can start working with concepts of big data and the MapReduce paradigm. Now, how did we get there? I have published the initial version of my PsMapRedux PowerShell Module on GitHub. The PsMapRedux module provides the Invoke-MapRedux function described above. Feel free to browse the underlying code and even contribute to the project! In a later post, I plan to show some of the inner workings of the module, but for now let's move on to how the Map and Reduce functions are defined. Map Both the Map and Reduce functions need to follow a prescribed prototype. The prototype for a Map function in the MapRedux module is as follows. A simple scriptblock that takes one PsObject parameter and returns a hashtable. It is important to note that the PsObject $dataset parameter is a MapRedux custom object that has a "Data" property which offers an array of data to be processed by the Map function. $aMap = { Param ( [PsObject] $dataset ) # Indicate the job is running on the remote node. Write-Host ($env:computername + "::Map"); # The hashtable to return $list = @{}; # ... Perform the mapping work and prepare the $list hashtable result with your custom PSObject... # ... The $dataset has a single 'Data' property which contains an array of data rows # which is a subset of the originally submitted data set. # Return the hashtable (Key, PSObject) Write-Output $list; } Reduce Likewise, with the Reduce function a simple prototype must be followed which takes a $key and a result $dataset from the MapRedux's partitioning function (which joins the Map results by key). Again, the $dataset is a MapRedux custom object that has a "Data" property as described in the Map section. $aReduce = { Param ( [object] $key, [PSObject] $dataset ) Write-Host ($env:computername + "::Reduce - Count: " + $dataset.Data.Count) # The hashtable to return $redux = @{}; # Return Write-Output $redux; } All Together Now When everything is put together in a short example script, you implement your Map and Reduce functions, query for some starting data, build the MapReduxItem via New-MapReduxItem and call Invoke-MapRedux to get the process started: # Import the MapRedux and SQL Server providers Import-Module "MapRedux" Import-Module “sqlps” -DisableNameChecking # Query the database for a dataset Set-Location SQLSERVER:\sql\dbserver1\default\databases\myDb $query = "SELECT MyKey, Date, Value1 FROM BigData ORDER BY MyKey"; Write-Host "Query: $query" $dataset = Invoke-SqlCmd -query $query # Build the Map function $MyMap = { Param ( [PsObject] $dataset ) Write-Host ($env:computername + "::Map"); $list = @{}; foreach($row in $dataset.Data) { # Write-Host ("Key: " + $row.MyKey.ToString()); if($list.ContainsKey($row.MyKey) -eq $true) { $s = $list.Item($row.MyKey); $s.Sum += $row.Value1; $s.Count++; } else { $s = New-Object PSObject; $s | Add-Member -Type NoteProperty -Name MyKey -Value $row.MyKey; $s | Add-Member -type NoteProperty -Name Sum -Value $row.Value1; $list.Add($row.MyKey, $s); } } Write-Output $list; } $MyReduce = { Param ( [object] $key, [PSObject] $dataset ) Write-Host ($env:computername + "::Reduce - Count: " + $dataset.Data.Count) $redux = @{}; $count = 0; foreach($s in $dataset.Data) { $sum += $s.Sum; $count += 1; } # Reduce $redux.Add($s.MyKey, $sum / $count); # Return Write-Output $redux; } # Create the item data $Mr = New-MapReduxItem "My Test MapReduce Job" $MyMap $MyReduce # Array of processing nodes... $MyNodes = ("node1", "node2", "node3", "node4", "localhost") # Run the Map Reduce routine... $MyMrResults = Invoke-MapRedux -MapReduceItem $Mr -ComputerName $MyNodes -DataSet $dataset -Verbose # Show the results Set-Location C:\ $MyMrResults | Out-GridView Conclusion I hope you have seen through this article that PowerShell has a significant infrastructure available for distributed computing. While it does take some code to expose a MapReduce-style framework, much of the work is already done and PowerShell could prove to be the the easiest platform to develop and run big data jobs in your corporate data center, potentially in the Azure cloud, or certainly as an academic excerise at home or school. Follow me on Twitter to stay up to date on the continuing progress of my Powershell MapRedux module, and thanks for reading! Daniel

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, September 06, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, September 06, 2012Popular Releasesmenu4web: menu4web 0.4.1 - javascript menu for web sites: This release is for those who believe that global variables are evil. menu4web has been wrapped into m4w singleton object. Added "Vertical Tabs" example which illustrates object notation.WinRT XAML Toolkit: WinRT XAML Toolkit - 1.2.1: WinRT XAML Toolkit based on the Windows 8 RTM SDK. Download the latest source from the SOURCE CODE page. For compiled version use NuGet. You can add it to your project in Visual Studio by going to View/Other Windows/Package Manager Console and entering: PM> Install-Package winrtxamltoolkit Features AsyncUI extensions Controls and control extensions Converters Debugging helpers Imaging IO helpers VisualTree helpers Samples Recent changes NOTE: Namespace changes DebugConsol...iPDC - Free Phasor Data Concentrator: iPDC-v1.3.1: iPDC suite version-1.3.1, Modifications and Bug Fixed (from v 1.3.0) New User Manual for iPDC-v1.3.1 available on websites. Bug resolved : PMU Simulator TCP connection error and hang connection for client (PDC). Now PMU Simulator (server) can communicate more than one PDCs (clients) over TCP and UDP parallely. PMU Simulator is now sending the exact data frames as mentioned in data rate by user. PMU Simulator data rate has been verified by iPDC database entries and PMU Connection Tes...Microsoft SQL Server Product Samples: Database: AdventureWorks OData Feed: The AdventureWorks OData service exposes resources based on specific SQL views. The SQL views are a limited subset of the AdventureWorks database that results in several consuming scenarios: CompanySales Documents ManufacturingInstructions ProductCatalog TerritorySalesDrilldown WorkOrderRouting How to install the sample You can consume the AdventureWorks OData feed from http://services.odata.org/AdventureWorksV3/AdventureWorks.svc. You can also consume the AdventureWorks OData fe...Desktop Google Reader: 1.4.6: Sorting feeds alphabetical is now optional (see preferences window)DotNetNuke® Community Edition CMS: 06.02.03: Major Highlights Fixed issue where mailto: links were not working when sending bulk email Fixed issue where uses did not see friendship relationships Problem is in 6.2, which does not show in the Versions Affected list above. Fixed the issue with cascade deletes in comments in CoreMessaging_Notification Fixed UI issue when using a date fields as a required profile property during user registration Fixed error when running the product in debug mode Fixed visibility issue when...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.65: Fixed null-reference error in the build task constructor.Active Forums for DotNetNuke CMS: Active Forums 5.0.0 RC: RC release of Active Forums 5.0.Droid Explorer: Droid Explorer 0.8.8.7 Beta: Bug in the display icon for apk's, will fix with next release Added fallback icon if unable to get the image/icon from the Cloud Service Removed some stale plugins that were either out dated or incomplete. Added handler for *.ab files for restoring backups Added plugin to create device backups Backups stored in %USERPROFILE%\Android Backups\%DEVICE_ID%\ Added custom folder icon for the android backups directory better error handling for installing an apk bug fixes for the Runn...BI System Monitor: v2.1: Data Audits report and supporting SQL, and SSIS package Environment Overview report enhancements, improving the appearance, addition of data audit finding indicators Note: SQL 2012 version coming soon.Hidden Capture (HC): Hidden Capture 1.1: Hidden Capture 1.1 by Mohsen E.Dawatgar http://Hidden-Capture.blogfa.comExt Spec: Ext Spec 0.2.1: Refined examples and improved distribution options.The Visual Guide for Building Team Foundation Server 2012 Environments: Version 1: --Nearforums - ASP.NET MVC forum engine: Nearforums v8.5: Version 8.5 of Nearforums, the ASP.NET MVC Forum Engine. New features include: Built-in search engine using Lucene.NET Flood control improvements Notifications improvements: sync option and mail body View Roadmap for more details webdeploy package sha1 checksum: 961aff884a9187b6e8a86d68913cdd31f8deaf83WiX Toolset: WiX Toolset v3.6: WiX Toolset v3.6 introduces the Burn bootstrapper/chaining engine and support for Visual Studio 2012 and .NET Framework 4.5. Other minor functionality includes: WixDependencyExtension supports dependency checking among MSI packages. WixFirewallExtension supports more features of Windows Firewall. WixTagExtension supports Software Id Tagging. WixUtilExtension now supports recursive directory deletion. Melt simplifies pure-WiX patching by extracting .msi package content and updating .w...Iveely Search Engine: Iveely Search Engine （0.2.0）: ????ISE?0.1.0??，?????，ISE?0.2.0?????????，???????，????????20???follow?ISE，????，??ISE??????????，??????????，?????????，?????????0.2.0??????，??????????。 Iveely Search Engine ?0.2.0?????????“??????????”，??????，?????????，???????，???????????????????，????、????????????。???0.1.0????????????： 1. ??“????” ??。??????????，?????????，???????????????????。??：????????，????????????，??????????????????。??????。 2. ??“????”??。?0.1.0??????，???????，???????????????，?????????????，????????，?0.2.0?，???????...GmailDefaultMaker: GmailDefaultMaker 3.0.0.2: Add QQ Mail BugfixSmart Data Access layer: Smart Data access Layer Ver 3: In this version support executing inline query is added. Check Documentation section for detail.DotNetNuke® Form and List: 06.00.04: DotNetNuke Form and List 06.00.04 Don't forget to backup your installation before upgrade. Changes in 06.00.04 Fix: Sql Scripts for 6.003 missed object qualifiers within stored procedures Fix: added missing resource "cmdCancel.Text" in form.ascx.resx Changes in 06.00.03 Fix: MakeThumbnail was broken if the application pool was configured to .Net 4 Change: Data is now stored in nvarchar(max) instead of ntext Changes in 06.00.02 The scripts are now compatible with SQL Azure, tested in a ne...Coevery - Free CRM: Coevery 1.0.0.24: Add a sample database, and installation instructions.New ProjectsAny-Service: AnyService is a .net 4.0 Windows service shell. It hosts any windows application in non-gui mode to run as a service.BabyCloudDrives - the multi cloud drive desktop's application: wpf ????BLACK ORANGE: Download The HPAD TEXT EDITOR and use it Wisely.. CodePlex New Release Checker: CodePlex New Release Checker is a small library that makes it easy to add, "New Version Available!" functionality to your CodePlex project.Collect: ????????！CSVManager: CSV??CSV?????，????CSV??，??????Exam Project: My Exam Project. Computer Vision, C and OpenCV-FTP: Hey guys thanks for checking out my ftp!Haushaltsbuch: 1ModMaker.Lua: ModMaker.Lua is an open source .NET library that parses and executes Lua code.MyJabbr: MyJabbr netduinoscope: Design shield and software to use netduino as oscilloscopeNetSurveillance Web Application: Net Surveillance Web ApplicationNiconicoApiHelper: ????API?????????OStega: A simple library for encrypt text into an bmp or png image.OURORM: ormTFS Cloud Deployment Toolkit: The TFS Cloud Deployment Toolkit is a set of tools that integrate with TFS 2010 to help manage configuration and deployment to various remote environments.The Visual Guide for Building Team Foundation Server 2012 Environments: A step-by-step guide for building Team Foundation Server 2012 environments that include SharePoint Server 2010, SQL Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 and more!WinRT LineChart: An attempt at creating an usable LineChart for everyone to use in his/her own Windows 8 Apps

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• Real tortoises keep it slow and steady. How about the backups?

  - by Maria Zakourdaev

    … Four tortoises were playing in the backyard when they decided they needed hibiscus flower snacks. They pooled their money and sent the smallest tortoise out to fetch the snacks. Two days passed and there was no sign of the tortoise. "You know, she is taking a lot of time", said one of the tortoises. A little voice from just out side the fence said, "If you are going to talk that way about me I won't go." Is it too much to request from the quite expensive 3rd party backup tool to be a way faster than the SQL server native backup? Or at least save a respectable amount of storage by producing a really smaller backup files?  By saying “really smaller”, I mean at least getting a file in half size. After Googling the internet in an attempt to understand what other “sql people” are using for database backups, I see that most people are using one of three tools which are the main players in SQL backup area:  LiteSpeed by Quest SQL Backup by Red Gate SQL Safe by Idera The feedbacks about those tools are truly emotional and happy. However, while reading the forums and blogs I have wondered, is it possible that many are accustomed to using the above tools since SQL 2000 and 2005.  This can easily be understood due to the fact that a 300GB database backup for instance, using regular a SQL 2005 backup statement would have run for about 3 hours and have produced ~150GB file (depending on the content, of course).  Then you take a 3rd party tool which performs the same backup in 30 minutes resulting in a 30GB file leaving you speechless, you run to management persuading them to buy it due to the fact that it is definitely worth the price. In addition to the increased speed and disk space savings you would also get backup file encryption and virtual restore -  features that are still missing from the SQL server. But in case you, as well as me, don’t need these additional features and only want a tool that performs a full backup MUCH faster AND produces a far smaller backup file (like the gain you observed back in SQL 2005 days) you will be quite disappointed. SQL Server backup compression feature has totally changed the market picture. Medium size database. Take a look at the table below, check out how my SQL server 2008 R2 compares to other tools when backing up a 300GB database. It appears that when talking about the backup speed, SQL 2008 R2 compresses and performs backup in similar overall times as all three other tools. 3rd party tools maximum compression level takes twice longer. Backup file gain is not that impressive, except the highest compression levels but the price that you pay is very high cpu load and much longer time. Only SQL Safe by Idera was quite fast with it’s maximum compression level but most of the run time have used 95% cpu on the server. Note that I have used two types of destination storage, SATA 11 disks and FC 53 disks and, obviously, on faster storage have got my backup ready in half time. Looking at the above results, should we spend money, bother with another layer of complexity and software middle-man for the medium sized databases? I’m definitely not going to do so.  Very large database As a next phase of this benchmark, I have moved to a 6 terabyte database which was actually my main backup target. Note, how multiple files usage enables the SQL Server backup operation to use parallel I/O and remarkably increases it’s speed, especially when the backup device is heavily striped. SQL Server supports a maximum of 64 backup devices for a single backup operation but the most speed is gained when using one file per CPU, in the case above 8 files for a 2 Quad CPU server. The impact of additional files is minimal.  However, SQLsafe doesn’t show any speed improvement between 4 files and 8 files. Of course, with such huge databases every half percent of the compression transforms into the noticeable numbers. Saving almost 470GB of space may turn the backup tool into quite valuable purchase. Still, the backup speed and high CPU are the variables that should be taken into the consideration. As for us, the backup speed is more critical than the storage and we cannot allow a production server to sustain 95% cpu for such a long time. Bottomline, 3rd party backup tool developers, we are waiting for some breakthrough release. There are a few unanswered questions, like the restore speed comparison between different tools and the impact of multiple backup files on restore operation. Stay tuned for the next benchmarks.    Benchmark server: SQL Server 2008 R2 sp1 2 Quad CPU Database location: NetApp FC 15K Aggregate 53 discs Backup statements: No matter how good that UI is, we need to run the backup tasks from inside of SQL Server Agent to make sure they are covered by our monitoring systems. I have used extended stored procedures (command line execution also is an option, I haven’t noticed any impact on the backup performance). SQL backup LiteSpeed SQL Backup SQL safe backup database <DBNAME> to disk= '\\<networkpath>\par1.bak' , disk= '\\<networkpath>\par2.bak', disk= '\\<networkpath>\par3.bak' with format, compression EXECUTE master.dbo.xp_backup_database @database = N'<DBName>', @backupname= N'<DBName> full backup', @desc = N'Test', @compressionlevel=8, @filename= N'\\<networkpath>\par1.bak', @filename= N'\\<networkpath>\par2.bak', @filename= N'\\<networkpath>\par3.bak', @init = 1 EXECUTE master.dbo.sqlbackup '-SQL "BACKUP DATABASE <DBNAME> TO DISK= ''\\<networkpath>\par1.sqb'', DISK= ''\\<networkpath>\par2.sqb'', DISK= ''\\<networkpath>\par3.sqb'' WITH DISKRETRYINTERVAL = 30, DISKRETRYCOUNT = 10, COMPRESSION = 4, INIT"' EXECUTE master.dbo.xp_ss_backup @database = 'UCMSDB', @filename = '\\<networkpath>\par1.bak', @backuptype = 'Full', @compressionlevel = 4, @backupfile = '\\<networkpath>\par2.bak', @backupfile = '\\<networkpath>\par3.bak' If you still insist on using 3rd party tools for the backups in your production environment with maximum compression level, you will definitely need to consider limiting cpu usage which will increase the backup operation time even more: RedGate : use THREADPRIORITY option ( values 0 – 6 ) LiteSpeed : use  @throttle ( percentage, like 70%) SQL safe :  the only thing I have found was @Threads option.   Yours, Maria

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• PASS: The Budget Process

  - by Bill Graziano

  Every fiscal year PASS creates a detailed budget.  This helps us set priorities and communicate to our members what we’re going to do in the upcoming year.  You can review the current budget on the PASS Governance page.  That page currently requires you to login but I’m talking with HQ to see if there are any legal issues with opening that up. The Accounting Team The PASS accounting team is two people.  The Executive Vice-President of Finance (“EVP”) and the PASS Accounting Manager.  Sandy Cherry is the accounting manager and works at PASS HQ.  Sandy has been with PASS since we switched management companies in 2007.  Throughout this document when I talk about any actual work related to the budget that’s all Sandy :)  She’s the glue that gets us through this process.  Last year we went through 32 iterations of the budget before the Board approved so it’s a pretty busy time for her us – well, mostly her. Fiscal Year The PASS fiscal year runs from July 1st through June 30th the following year.  Right now we’re in fiscal year 2011.  Our 2010 Summit actually occurred in FY2011.  We switched to this schedule from a calendar year in 2006.  Our goal was to have the Summit occur early in our fiscal year.  That gives us the rest of the year to handle any significant financial impact from the Summit.  If registrations are down we can reduce spending.  If registrations are up we can decide how much to increase our reserves and how much to spend.  Keep in mind that the Summit is budgeted to generate 82% of our revenue this year.  How it performs has a significant impact on our financials.  The other benefit of this fiscal year is that it matches the Microsoft fiscal year.  We sign an annual sponsorship agreement with Microsoft and it’s very helpful that our fiscal years match. This year our budget process will probably start in earnest in March or April.  I’d like to be done in early June so we can publish before July 1st.  I was late publishing it this year and I’m trying not to repeat that. Our Budget Our actual budget is an Excel spreadsheet with 36 sheets.  We remove some of those when we publish it since they include salary information.  The budget is broken up into various portfolios or departments.  We have 20 portfolios.  They include chapters, marketing, virtual chapters, marketing, etc.  Ideally each portfolio is assigned to a Board member.  Each portfolio also typically has a staff person assigned to it.  Portfolios that aren’t assigned to a Board member are monitored by HQ and the ExecVP-Finance (me).  These are typically smaller portfolios such as deferred membership or Summit futures.  (More on those in a later post.)  All portfolios are reviewed by all Board members during the budget approval process, when interim financials are released internally and at year-end. The Process Our first step is to budget revenues.  The Board determines a target attendee number.  We have formulas based on historical performance that convert that to an overall attendee revenue number.  Other revenue projections (such as vendor sponsorships) come from different parts of the organization.  I hope to have another post with more details on how we project revenues. The next step is to budget expenses.  Board members fill out a sample spreadsheet with their budget for the year.  They can add line items and notes describing what the amounts are for.  Each Board portfolio typically has from 10 to 30 line items.  Any new initiatives they want to pursue needs to be budgeted.  The Summit operations budget is managed by HQ.  It includes the cost for food, electrical, internet, etc.  Most of these come from our estimate of attendees and our contract with the convention center.  During this process the Board can ask for more or less to be spent on various line items.  For example, if we weren’t happy with the Internet at the last Summit we can ask them to look into different options and/or increasing the budget.  HQ will also make adjustments to these numbers based on what they see at the events and the feedback we receive on the surveys. After we have all the initial estimates we start reviewing the entire budget.  It is sent out to the Board and we can see what each portfolio requested and what the overall profit and loss number is.  We usually start with too much in expenses and need to cut.  In years past the Board started haggling over these numbers as a group.  This past year they decided I should take a first cut and present them with a reasonable budget and a list of what I changed.  That worked well and I think we’ll continue to do that in the future. We go through a number of iterations on the budget.  If I remember correctly, we went through 32 iterations before we passed the budget.  At each iteration various revenue and expense numbers can change.  Keep in mind that the PASS budget has 200+ line items spread over 20 portfolios.  Many of these depend on other numbers.  For example, if we decide increase the projected attendees that cascades through our budget.  At each iteration we list what changed and the impact.  Ideally these discussions will take place at a face-to-face Board meeting.  Many of them also take place over the phone.  Board members explain any increase they are asking for while performing due diligence on other budget requests.  Eventually a budget emerges and is passed. Publishing After the budget is passed we create a version without the formulas and salaries for posting on the web site.  Sandy also creates some charts to help our members understand the budget.  The EVP writes a nice little letter describing some of the changes from last year’s budget.  You can see my letter and our budget on the PASS Governance page. And then, eight months later, we start all over again.

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• Why Is Vertical Resolution Monitor Resolution so Often a Multiple of 360?

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  Stare at a list of monitor resolutions long enough and you might notice a pattern: many of the vertical resolutions, especially those of gaming or multimedia displays, are multiples of 360 (720, 1080, 1440, etc.) But why exactly is this the case? Is it arbitrary or is there something more at work? Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites. The Question SuperUser reader Trojandestroy recently noticed something about his display interface and needs answers: YouTube recently added 1440p functionality, and for the first time I realized that all (most?) vertical resolutions are multiples of 360. Is this just because the smallest common resolution is 480×360, and it’s convenient to use multiples? (Not doubting that multiples are convenient.) And/or was that the first viewable/conveniently sized resolution, so hardware (TVs, monitors, etc) grew with 360 in mind? Taking it further, why not have a square resolution? Or something else unusual? (Assuming it’s usual enough that it’s viewable). Is it merely a pleasing-the-eye situation? So why have the display be a multiple of 360? The Answer SuperUser contributor User26129 offers us not just an answer as to why the numerical pattern exists but a history of screen design in the process: Alright, there are a couple of questions and a lot of factors here. Resolutions are a really interesting field of psychooptics meeting marketing. First of all, why are the vertical resolutions on youtube multiples of 360. This is of course just arbitrary, there is no real reason this is the case. The reason is that resolution here is not the limiting factor for Youtube videos – bandwidth is. Youtube has to re-encode every video that is uploaded a couple of times, and tries to use as little re-encoding formats/bitrates/resolutions as possible to cover all the different use cases. For low-res mobile devices they have 360×240, for higher res mobile there’s 480p, and for the computer crowd there is 360p for 2xISDN/multiuser landlines, 720p for DSL and 1080p for higher speed internet. For a while there were some other codecs than h.264, but these are slowly being phased out with h.264 having essentially ‘won’ the format war and all computers being outfitted with hardware codecs for this. Now, there is some interesting psychooptics going on as well. As I said: resolution isn’t everything. 720p with really strong compression can and will look worse than 240p at a very high bitrate. But on the other side of the spectrum: throwing more bits at a certain resolution doesn’t magically make it better beyond some point. There is an optimum here, which of course depends on both resolution and codec. In general: the optimal bitrate is actually proportional to the resolution. So the next question is: what kind of resolution steps make sense? Apparently, people need about a 2x increase in resolution to really see (and prefer) a marked difference. Anything less than that and many people will simply not bother with the higher bitrates, they’d rather use their bandwidth for other stuff. This has been researched quite a long time ago and is the big reason why we went from 720×576 (415kpix) to 1280×720 (922kpix), and then again from 1280×720 to 1920×1080 (2MP). Stuff in between is not a viable optimization target. And again, 1440P is about 3.7MP, another ~2x increase over HD. You will see a difference there. 4K is the next step after that. Next up is that magical number of 360 vertical pixels. Actually, the magic number is 120 or 128. All resolutions are some kind of multiple of 120 pixels nowadays, back in the day they used to be multiples of 128. This is something that just grew out of LCD panel industry. LCD panels use what are called line drivers, little chips that sit on the sides of your LCD screen that control how bright each subpixel is. Because historically, for reasons I don’t really know for sure, probably memory constraints, these multiple-of-128 or multiple-of-120 resolutions already existed, the industry standard line drivers became drivers with 360 line outputs (1 per subpixel). If you would tear down your 1920×1080 screen, I would be putting money on there being 16 line drivers on the top/bottom and 9 on one of the sides. Oh hey, that’s 16:9. Guess how obvious that resolution choice was back when 16:9 was ‘invented’. Then there’s the issue of aspect ratio. This is really a completely different field of psychology, but it boils down to: historically, people have believed and measured that we have a sort of wide-screen view of the world. Naturally, people believed that the most natural representation of data on a screen would be in a wide-screen view, and this is where the great anamorphic revolution of the ’60s came from when films were shot in ever wider aspect ratios. Since then, this kind of knowledge has been refined and mostly debunked. Yes, we do have a wide-angle view, but the area where we can actually see sharply – the center of our vision – is fairly round. Slightly elliptical and squashed, but not really more than about 4:3 or 3:2. So for detailed viewing, for instance for reading text on a screen, you can utilize most of your detail vision by employing an almost-square screen, a bit like the screens up to the mid-2000s. However, again this is not how marketing took it. Computers in ye olden days were used mostly for productivity and detailed work, but as they commoditized and as the computer as media consumption device evolved, people didn’t necessarily use their computer for work most of the time. They used it to watch media content: movies, television series and photos. And for that kind of viewing, you get the most ‘immersion factor’ if the screen fills as much of your vision (including your peripheral vision) as possible. Which means widescreen. But there’s more marketing still. When detail work was still an important factor, people cared about resolution. As many pixels as possible on the screen. SGI was selling almost-4K CRTs! The most optimal way to get the maximum amount of pixels out of a glass substrate is to cut it as square as possible. 1:1 or 4:3 screens have the most pixels per diagonal inch. But with displays becoming more consumery, inch-size became more important, not amount of pixels. And this is a completely different optimization target. To get the most diagonal inches out of a substrate, you want to make the screen as wide as possible. First we got 16:10, then 16:9 and there have been moderately successful panel manufacturers making 22:9 and 2:1 screens (like Philips). Even though pixel density and absolute resolution went down for a couple of years, inch-sizes went up and that’s what sold. Why buy a 19″ 1280×1024 when you can buy a 21″ 1366×768? Eh… I think that about covers all the major aspects here. There’s more of course; bandwidth limits of HDMI, DVI, DP and of course VGA played a role, and if you go back to the pre-2000s, graphics memory, in-computer bandwdith and simply the limits of commercially available RAMDACs played an important role. But for today’s considerations, this is about all you need to know. Have something to add to the explanation? Sound off in the the comments. Want to read more answers from other tech-savvy Stack Exchange users? Check out the full discussion thread here.     

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• How I Work: Staying Productive Whilst Traveling

  - by BuckWoody

  I travel a lot. Not like some folks that are gone every week, mind you, although in the last month I’ve been to: Cambridge, UK; Anchorage, AK; San Jose, CA; Copenhagen, DK, Boston, MA; and I’m currently en-route to Anaheim, CA.  While this many places in a month is a bit unusual for me, I would say I travel frequently. I’ve travelled most of my 28+ years in IT, and at one time was a consultant traveling weekly.   With that much time away from my primary work location, I have to find ways to stay productive. Some might say “just rest – take a nap!” – but I’m not able to do that. For one thing, I’m a very light sleeper and I’ve never slept on a plane - even a 30+ hour trip to New Zealand in Business Class - so that just isn’t option. I also am not always in the plane, of course. There’s the hotel, the taxi/bus/train, the airport and then all that over again when I arrive. Since my regular jobs have many demands, I have to get work done.   Note: No, I’m not always focused on work. I need downtime just like everyone else. Sometimes I just think, watch a movie or listen to tunes – and I give myself permission to do that anytime – sometimes the whole trip. I have too fewheartbeats left in life to only focus on work – it’s just not that important, and neither am I. Some of these tasks are letters to friends and family, or other personal things. What I’m talking about here is a plan, not some task list I have to follow. When I get to the location I’m traveling to, I always build in as much time as I can to ensure I enjoy those sights and the people I’m with. I would find traveling to be a waste if not for that.   The Unrealistic Expectation As I would evaluate the trip I was taking – say a 6-8 hour flight – I would expect to get 10-12 hours of work done. After all, there’s the time at the airport, the taxi and so on, and then of course the time in the air with all of the room, power, internet and everything else I needed to get my work done. I would pile up tasks at home, pack my bags, and head happily to the magical land of the TSA.   Right. On return from the trip, I had accomplished little, had more e-mails and other work that had piled up, and I was tired, hungry, and unorganized. This had to change. So, I decided to do three things: Segment my work Set realistic expectations Plan accordingly  Segmenting By Available Resources The first task was to decide what kind of work I could do in each location – if any. I found that I was dependent on a few things to get work done, such as power, the Internet, and a place to sit down. Before I fly, I take some time at home to get all of the work I’d like to accomplish while away segmented into these areas, and print that out on paper, which goes in my suit-coat pocket along with a mechanical pencil. I print my tickets, and I’m all set for the adventure ahead. Then I simply do each kind of work whenever I’m in that situation. No power There are certain times when I don’t have power available. But not only that, I might not even be able to use most of my electronics. So I now schedule as many phone calls as I can for the taxi/bus/train ride and the airports as I can. I have a paper notebook (Moleskine, of course) and a pencil and I print out any notes or numbers I need prior to the trip. Once I’m airborne or at the airport, I work on my laptop. I check and respond to e-mails, create slides, write code, do architecture, whatever I can.  If I can’t use any electronics, or once the power runs out, I schedule time for reading. I can read at the airport or anywhere, actually, even in-flight or any other transport. I “read with a pencil”, meaning I take a lot of notes, which I liketo put in OneNote, but since in most cases I don’t have power, I use the Moleskine to do that. Speaking of which, sometimes as I’m thinking I come up with new topics, ideas, blog posts, or things to teach in my classes. Once again I take out the notebook and write it down. All of these notes get a check-mark when I get back to the office and transfer the writing to OneNote. I’ve tried those “smart pens” and so on to automate this, but it just never works out. Pencil and paper are just fine. As I mentioned, sometime I just need to think. I’ll do nothing, and let my mind wander, thinking of nothing in particular, or some math problem or science question I’m interested in. My only issue with this is that I communicate tothink, and I don’t want to drive people crazy by being that guy that won’t shut up, so I think in a different way. Power, but no Internet or Phone If I have power but no Internet or phone, I focus on the laptop and the tablet as before, and I also recharge my other gadgets. Power, Internet, Phone and a Place to Work At first I thought that when I arrived at the hotel or event I could get the same amount of work done that I do at the office. Not so. There’s simply too many distractions, things you need, or other issues that allow this. Of course, Ican work on any device, read, think, write or whatever, but I am simply not as productive as I am in my home office. So I plan for about 25-50% as much work getting done in this environment as I think I could really do. I’ve done some measurements, and this holds out to be true almost every time. The key is that I re-set my expectations (and my co-worker’s expectations as well) that this is the case. I use the Out-Of-Office notices to let people know that I’m just not going to be 100% at this time – it’s hard for everyone, but it’s more honest and realistic, and I’d rather they know that – and that I realize that – than to let them think I’m totally available. Because I’m not – I’m traveling. I don’t tend to put too much detail, because after all I don’t necessarily want to let people know when I’m not home :) but I do think it’s important to let people that depend on my know that I’ll get back with them later. I hope this helps you think through your own methodology of staying productive when you travel. Or perhaps you just go offline, and don’t worry about any of this – good for you! That’s completely valid as well.   (Oh, and yes, I wrote this at 35K feet, on Alaska Airlines on a trip. :)  Practice what you preach, Buck.)

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