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• Ideas for time-keeping in a webbased RPG?

  - by ashy_32bit

  I'm assigned a task of doing the preliminary research stuff for a web-based MMO RPG. Now my buggiest problem here is "web based" vs "MMO RPG". I did some research about time keeping systems and I'm totally confused as how exactly something as real-time as an MMO-RPG can work on some pull-only (unidirectional) platform like HTTP. I know there is also a turn-based alternative to time keeping but can it work in an MMO setting ? EDIT: Take a battle for example, player A (human) wants to attack Player B (also human) in the open. How does it work when when player A issues the "attack" command on player B ? how do I inform player B that he is being attacked ? and then how exactly the battle goes on between the two in an HTTP based communication channel? To my knowledge this is impossible unless you resort to another technology (HTML is 1-way, that is you can just ask server and get response, server can't update you unless being asked to. this is very well-known and simply explained). So I though maybe I can somehow change the whole timekeeping model from real-time to a more non-real-time model (towards a turn based RPG for example) and somehow work around the whole problem of "interactivity". EDIT2: It is not that I don't wanna use any server side technologies. For sure it is not gonna work client-side-only even for the most trivial of the multi-player games, let alone an RPG. So sure there would be a (probably complex) server side component to it (the so called Game Engine I suppose). The problem is not the technology that implements the logic (game mechanics) bits but the communication technology and how it limits the game mechanics abilities (like how real-time or turn based it is gonna be). HTTP is a request-response protocol meaning you get served only if you ask for it (explicitly send a GET or POST request to the server). HTTP server can not inform you if anything of interest happens in the game world unless you refresh the page (as some suggested) or you use some bi-directional tech (totally different animals) like Flash, WebSock, HTML5 etc etc. So maybe the question is: Is it possible to implement a MMORPG using only HTML5/PHP and no periodic page refreshes? if so what would be rules to make it an MMO-RPG? Can't explain it any clearer. Sorry :D

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• What kind of position matches my skills, experience and interests? [closed]

  - by Ryan

  I work in a large firm and my current job covers a variety of different duties. Due to several factors I am seriously considering finding a new job (hours, pay-cut, limited career growth). I have worked for the company nearly 4 years and almost 2 years ago I transitioned into more of a business analyst role (previously I was working in a client facing role for our audit group). In this role I have overseen all aspects of the development of a large scale re-platforming of our firm's key tool in analyzing investment portfolios. I gathered requirements, wrote specs, designed the UI and functionality, worked closely with developers (onshore and offshore) to see to it the implementation was correct, managed schedules and was the lead tester. This is a large scale system used by thousands of people around the world. I've also written Excel macros, reports in SQL, given trainings, written technical manuals, interfaced with senior managers and partners, etc. I've been on a couple interviews sporadically, most of which were for positions aimed at higher management consulting type positions, dealing with strategy, overall process management, project management, etc. What really interests me is the technical stuff and overseeing a project from beginning to end (although I would rather not have to do so many of the tasks on my own). I genuinely like a lot of what I do, but the company culture and attitude towards overworking people combined with my recent pay-cut (my overtime was cut due to a promotion to a higher level) has lead me to want to seek work elsewhere. The problem is - what type of work could I realistically do? I feel like traditional business analysis is too much business and not enough tech stuff, and I've really taken a shine lately to beefing up my programming abilities and creating small programs to automate things around work. I also feel that because my actual years of experience as a business analyst (figure 1.5 years realistically) puts me at a junior level doing a lot of grunt requirements gathering, when the work that I have been doing with my current company is more in line with what a Program Manager does (depending on your definition I guess). So in reality, when I'm job hunting I get a bit perplexed because I feel like the traditional BA stuff wouldn't really suit me, and even if it did it's usually something along the lines of 5-10 years experience for the type of work that is similar to what I've done (and I've also found most BA jobs to be contract only which at the moment I'm not too keen on). Program Manager is something that interests me, but again I feel like the experience is lacking because that's a much more senior position. Am I in some kind of career no-man's land? Any idea what would best suit me given my experience and abilities, as well as my interests? I plan to keep learning programming on the side, but don't expect to get a job being a straight programmer given my relative inexperience with programming.

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• Please Help Me Install Firestorm?

  - by Elle Caszatt

  I have been trying for hours just to install one program. In this time, I've tried my best to follow directions and not screw everything up but I have. I'm new to Linux. I tried to install Firestorm and this is what happened: parent@ubuntu:~$ sudo '/home/parent/Downloads/Phoenix_Firestorm-Release_i686_4.2.1.29803/install.sh' [sudo] password for parent: Enter the desired installation directory [/opt/firestorm-install]: /home/parent/downloads - Installing to /home/parent/downloads /home/parent/Downloads/Phoenix_Firestorm-Release_i686_4.2.1.29803/install.sh: line 80: /home/parent/downloads/etc/refresh_desktop_app_entry.sh: Permission denied parent@ubuntu:~$ sudo opt/firestorm-install sudo: opt/firestorm-install: command not found parent@ubuntu:~$ ./etc/refresh_desktop_app_entry.sh bash: ./etc/refresh_desktop_app_entry.sh: No such file or directory parent@ubuntu:~$ sudo '/home/parent/Downloads/Phoenix_Firestorm-Release_i686_4.2.1.29803/install.sh' Enter the desired installation directory [/opt/firestorm-install]: /home/parent - Backing up previous installation to /home/parent.backup-2012-08-27 - Installing to /home/parent cp: cannot stat `/home/parent/Downloads/Phoenix_Firestorm-Release_i686_4.2.1.29803/*': No such file or directory Failed parent@ubuntu:~$ Now whenever I go into my files it says it can't find anything. Like Cannot find home/parent/Downloads. Now, I KNOW there are downloads. I don't know why it's doing this all of a sudden. I'm so frustrated that I'm ready to just go back to Windows. I've already had to uninstall/reinstall Ubuntu once today. It's looking like I"m going to have to do it again. How can I fix my file problem that I'm now having and can someone please, please tell me how to install Firestorm? I mean they don't even have their repository listed. It's ridiculous to have to go through this over a program. Spotify wasn't hard at all to install so why is this? Someone please help, and I'm sorry if I sound like a total idiot. I'm pretty tech savvy but I'm honestly pretty upset after struggling with this for hours. Edit Okay, I see the problem with the directory files (showing the error I mentioned above when I try to click on them). I can only access my downloads, desktop, ect, through the backup that was created when I tried to install Firestorm. It's like that's the real home now. How can I get it back to the way it was? Edit Ubuntu has stopped working for me on reboot now. It doesn't go past the login screen. This is exactly what happened when I had to uninstall it before after trying to install Firestorm. Maybe I'm giving up too easily but I think I'm just going to go back to Windows. If this is what's going to happen every time I innocently try to install a program then it's just not worth it. I installed it specifically to run Firestorm because Windows sucks up a lot of CPU and causes lag. I still appreciate any input but this is just too much hassle for something that shouldn't be hard.

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• On the art of self-promotion

  - by Tony Davis

  I attended Brent Ozar's Building the Fastest SQL Servers session at Tech Ed last week, and found myself engulfed in a 'perfect storm' of excellent technical and presentational skills coupled with an astute awareness of the value of promoting one's work. I spend a lot of time at such events talking to developers and DBAs about the value of blogging and writing articles, and my impression is that some could benefit from a touch less modesty and a little more self-promotion. I sense a reticence in many would-be writers. Is what I have to say important enough? Haven't far more qualified and established commentators, MVPs and so on, already said it? While it's a good idea to pick reasonably fresh and interesting topics, it's more important not to let such fears lead to writer's block. In the eyes of any future employer, your published writing is an extension of your resume. They will not care that a certain MVP knows how to solve problem x, but they will be very interested to see that you have tackled that same problem, and solved it in your own way, and described the process in your own voice. In your current job, your writing is one of the ways you can express to your peers, and to the organization as a whole, the value of what you contribute. Many Developers and DBAs seem to rely on the idea that their work will speak for itself, and that their skill shines out from it. Unfortunately, this isn't always true. Many Development DBAs, for example, will be painfully aware of the massive effort involved in tuning and adding resilience to rapidly developed applications. However, others in the organization who are unaware of what's involved in getting an application that is 'done' ready for production may dismiss such efforts as fussiness or conservatism. At the dark end of the development cycle, chickens come home to roost, but their droppings tend to land on those trying to clear up the mess. My advice is this: next time you fix a bug or improve the resilience or performance of a database or application, make sure that you use team meetings, informal discussions and so on to ensure that people understand what the problem was and what you had to do to fix it. Use your blog to describe, generally, the process you adopted, the resources you used and the insights that came from your work. Encourage your colleagues to do the same. By spreading the art of self-promotion to everyone involved in an IT project, we get a better idea of the extent of the work and the value of the contribution of all the team members. As always, we'd love to hear what you think. This very week, Simple-talk launches its new blogging platform. If any of this has moved you to 'throw your hat into the ring', drop us a mail at [email protected]. Cheers, Tony.

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• What shall I include in a 10 week web technologies course?

  - by Iain

  In September I will be teaching a university module on web technologies. This session will be available to 1st year (freshman) students who don't necessarily have any programming knowledge or know how the web works. In the 2nd semester I will be teaching Flash, which is my specialism, so I know exactly what I am going to teach, but in the 1st semester I will be teaching them web standards technologies - HTML, CSS, JS, jQuery, PHP and MySQL. Where I need advice is how to proportion the emphasis for each part, and which parts of each technology to cover. Another real issue I'm struggling with is how much of the bad old ways should I teach them? Do they need to know about bold as well as strong, etc. UPDATE: based, on your feedback I will only be teaching the latest version of everything - CSS3, HTML5 etc. I'm not sure exactly how long the semester will be but I'm guessing about 10-12 weeks. Each session is a 2 hour lab. Obviously there's only so much I can cover in that time and it will be up to the students to go a research this stuff properly on W3 schools etc. My ideas so far were: Lesson 0 - Course intro and overview of the current tech landscape. What is out there, what will we be learning, what won't we. What is a web server, URL etc. Looking at different example websites and discussing how they work. Lesson 1 - HTML basics (head, body, title, img, table, a, lists, h1, strong etc) Lesson 2 - CSS for styling and layout - fonts, webfonts, float etc Lesson 3 - Intro to programming JS (variables, loops, conditionals, functions) Lesson 4 - more JS programming fundamentals, DOM manipulation Lesson 5 - jQuery - making things fly about and look cool Lesson 6 - XML and Ajax Lesson 7 - PHP basics - syntax, server-side principles Lesson 8 - PHP and MySQL - forms, logins, saving user info Lesson 9 - don't know Lesson 10 - don't know Please let me know if you think this is the right order, what have I missed, how to use any spare sessions etc. Thanks :) UPDATE BASED ON RESPONSES: Thanks for all your responses - some great stuff. To be absolutely clear, this is not a computer science course, it is a practical module on a creative technology course. The emphasis definitely has to be on making cool things work rather than understanding how the backbone of the internet works. That can come later, if the students are interested. At the end of the module I would like the students to be able to produce a web page or pages that does something cool, using some or all of the technologies I cover. Many of these topics are of course far beyond the scope of a 2 hour session, however I do not have the option of reducing the syllabus, I will just have to explain what the technology does and encourage the student to research it in their own time.

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• Criteria for selecting timeout value?

  - by stijn

  Situation: a piece of software reads frames of data from a file in a seperate thread and puts it on a queue, emptied by another thread. That second thread periodically checks on the queue and fails rather gracefully, by showing an error message stating the read timed out, if no data is available within a certain amount of time. Initially this timeout was set to 200mSec. There was no real reasoning behind that constant though, but it worked fine. We measured on a couple of machines and for large data frames, larger than what would be used by customers, a read took like 20mSec whith no other load on the machine. However one customer now gets timeout errors now and then (on the second try all is fine, probably the file is in cache or the virus scanner leaves it alone). The programmers are like 'well, yeah, but that customer's machine is full of cruft, virus scanners, tons of unneeded background processes etc'. Of course the customer is like 'hey this should just work, shouldn't it'? While the programers have a point, since the software is heavy enough to validate the need for a dedicated machine, that does not make the customer happy. Increasing the timeout to 2 seconds, for example, solves the problem. But I'd like to make a proper decision now instead of just randomly pick some magic constant that is probably ok in 99% of cases. What criteria should be used for that? We could just pick a large number, but that feels wrong. (and then we end up with a program that has the horrible bahaviour of hanging when trying to read from a disconnected drive for instance, whereas we'd rather make it show an error right away). Or we could make the timeout value a user setting, but then we need to ducument it clearly and even then not all customers are tech savy enough to really understand what it does. Or we could try and wait until another customer reports timeouts and increase the value again. And again. Until we find something ok for 99.99% of the cases.. Any good practice for this type of situation?

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• Alert: It is No Longer 1982, So Why is CRM Still There?

  - by Mike Stiles

  Hot off the heels of Oracle’s recent LinkedIn integration announcement and Oracle Marketing Cloud Interact 2014, the Oracle Social Cloud is preparing for another big event, the CRM Evolution conference and exhibition in NYC. The role of social channels in customer engagement continues to grow, and social customer engagement will be a significant theme at the conference. According to Paul Greenberg, CRM Evolution Conference Chair, author, and Managing Principal at The 56 Group, social channels have become so pervasive that there is no longer a clear reason to make a distinction between “social CRM” and traditional CRM systems. Why not? Because social is a communication hub every bit as vital and used as the phone or email. What makes social different is that if you think of it as a phone, it’s a party line. That means customer interactions are far from secret, and social connections are listening in by the hundreds, hearing whether their friend is having a positive or negative experience with your brand. According to a Mention.com study, 76% of brand mentions are neutral, neither positive nor negative. These mentions fail to get much notice. So think what that means about the remaining 24% of mentions. They’re standing out, because a verdict, about you, is being rendered in them, usually with emotion. Suddenly, where the R of CRM has been lip service and somewhat expendable in the past, “relationship” takes on new meaning, seriousness, and urgency. Remarkably, legions of brands still approach CRM as if it were 1982. Today, brands must provide customer experiences the customer actually likes (how dare they expect such things). They must intimately know not only their customers, but each customer, because technology now makes personalized experiences possible. That’s why the Oracle Social Cloud has been so mission-oriented about seamlessly integrating social with sales, marketing and customer service interactions so the enterprise can have an actionable 360-degree view of the customer. It’s the key to that customer-centricity we hear so much about these days. If you’re attending CRM Evolution, Chris Moody, Director of Product Marketing for the Oracle Marketing Cloud, will show you how unified customer experiences and enhanced customer centricity will help you attract and keep ideal customers and brand advocates (“The Pursuit of Customer-Centricity” Aug 19 at 2:45p ET) And Meg Bear, Group Vice President for the Oracle Social Cloud, will sit on a panel talking about “terms of engagement” and the ways tech can now enhance your interactions with customers (Aug 20 at 10a ET). If you can’t be there, we’ll be doing our live-tweeting thing from the @oraclesocial handle, so make sure you’re a faithful follower. You’ll notice NOBODY is writing about the wisdom of “company-centricity.” Now is the time to bring your customer relationship management into the socially connected age. @mikestilesPhoto: Sue Pizarro, freeimages.com

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• What do I do when my offer letter is revoked? [closed]

  - by user-1134

  I was recently contacted for an interview by, I'd say, a top 20 tech company. I aced the technical interview and was offered an internship for the summer. I was very excited about this prospect and was very prompt in submitting required documents and forms. This was not my only offer for the summer, so I let them know I needed some time to consider. I asked if I could have two weeks and they said that was fine. Meanwhile I evaluated my 3 options. I asked the respective parties about the projects I'd be working on, work life, how hours and pay worked, housing, etc. I asked about salary and the relocation stipend. Of the three offers, this offer paid the lowest, but not poorly by any means. I inquired about the wage, challanging with a higher wage request. They declined, so, I inquired about the relocation stipend, reminding them I was coming from over seas. The recruiter said he had to check and see if they could adjust the stipend since it was originally calculated from my home address. When he got back to me, he made up some story about how after "countering their offer several times", they were implying that I was declining their offer and my the offer letter was now voided! This [more than] shocked me. I've never run into this situation before. Further, they had already presented me with a signed offer letter which stated the details of the offer, including that it was valid until date X (in the future). I immediately explained I was not countering their offer, but simply trying to evaluate all my options for the summer. I asked kindly for them to allow me the original two weeks we had agreed upon. As expected, they rejected and declined to speak with me regarding the.. misunderstanding. Is this legal? Has anyone encountered this before? Did I do something wrong? What can I do to avoid this in the future?

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• My 2011 Professional Development Goals

  - by kerry

  I thought it might be a good idea to post some professional goals for 2011.  Hopefully, I can look at this list at the end of the year and have accomplished most of them. Release an Android app to the marketplace – I figured I would put this first because I have one that I have been working on for a while and it is about ready.  Along with this, I would like to start another one and continue to develop my Android skills. Contribute free software to the community – Again, I have an SMF plugin that will fill this requirement nicely.  Just need to give it some polish and release it.  That’s not all, I would like to add a few more libraries on github, or possibly contribute to an open source project. Regularly attend a user group meetings outside of Java – A great way to meet people and learn new things. Obtain the Oracle Certified Web Developer Certification – I got the SCJP a few years ago and would like to obtain another one.  One step closer to Certified Enterprise Architect. Learn scala – As a language geek, I like to stick to the Pragmatic Programmer’s ‘learn a new language every year’ rule (last year was Ruby).  Scala presents some new concepts all wrapped in a JVM-based OOP language.  Time to dig in. Write an app using JSF – New JEE 6 features are pretty slick.  I want to really leverage them in an app. Present at a user group meeting – Last but not least, I would like to improve my public speaking and skills in presenting.  Also, is a great reason to dig in to some latest and greatest tech. Use git more, and more effectively – Trying to move all my personal projects from Subversion to Git. That’s it.  A little daunting, but I am confident I can at least touch on most of these and it’s a great roadmap to my professional development.

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• Second Monitor stays black/in power save mode

  - by Rob

  I'm using two Monitors, a Belinea o.display 1 (Recognized as a Rogen Tech Distribution Inc 20" by Ubuntu, but working fine) on the DVI-Output (connected via DVI-to-VGA-adapter) as my primary Monitor and a Dell 19" (Recognized correctly) on the HDMI-output (via HDMI-to-DVI adapter) as secondary monitor. The graphics controller is a GeForce 9500 GS. I'm running a fully updated Ubuntu 13.04 with nouveau 1:1.0.7-0ubuntu1. The problem is that the second monitor (Dell) never seems to come out of standby during boot: the screen stays black and the status led on the monitor stays orange (it's green when it's on). It is correctly recognized an the size of the desktop is set accordingly, it just stays black. Changing any setting via xrandr/arandr/etc. does nothing. The on-screen-menu of the monitor reports it to be in power save mode. When using the proprietary NVIDIA-Drivers, the second monitor works just find. But these drivers cause a lot of other problems on my system, so i would really like to avoid them. On Ubuntu 12.10 i had found a workaround: When moving the relative position of the second monitor slightly down and the up again, it would turn on and function normally: xrandr --output DVI-I-1 --mode 1680x1050 --pos 1280x0 --rotate normal --output HDMI-1 --mode 1280x1024 --pos 0x88 --rotate normal sleep 2 xrandr --output DVI-I-1 --mode 1680x1050 --pos 1280x0 --rotate normal --output HDMI-1 --mode 1280x1024 --pos 0x0 --rotate normal This workaround stop working after the update to 13.04, and now i'm looking for a new solution. Has anyone experienced something similarity? xrandr output: Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 2960 x 1050, maximum 8192 x 8192 DVI-I-1 connected 1680x1050+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 433mm x 270mm 1680x1050 60.0*+ 1280x1024 75.0 60.0 1280x960 60.0 1152x864 75.0 1024x768 75.1 72.0 70.1 60.0 832x624 74.6 800x600 72.2 75.0 60.3 56.2 640x480 72.8 75.0 66.7 60.0 720x400 70.1 HDMI-1 connected 1280x1024+1680+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 376mm x 301mm 1280x1024 60.0*+ 75.0 1152x864 75.0 1024x768 75.1 60.0 800x600 75.0 60.3 640x480 75.0 60.0 720x400 70.1 lshw -c video: *-display Beschreibung: VGA compatible controller Produkt: G96 [GeForce 9500 GS] Hersteller: NVIDIA Corporation Physische ID: 0 Bus-Informationen: pci@0000:01:00.0 Version: a1 Breite: 64 bits Takt: 33MHz Fähigkeiten: pm msi pciexpress vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom Konfiguration: driver=nouveau latency=0 Ressourcen: irq:16 memory:fa000000-faffffff memory:d0000000-dfffffff memory:f8000000-f9ffffff ioport:df00(Größe=128) memory:fb000000-fb07ffff Thanks for your help!

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• How do you take into account usability and user requirements for your application?

  - by voroninp

  Our team supports BackOffice application: a mix of WinForm and WPF windows. (about 80 including dialogs). Really a kind of a Swiss Army Knife. It is used by developers, tech writers, security developers, testers. The requirements for new features come quite often and sometimes we play Wizard of Oz to decide which GUI our users like the most. And it usually happens (I admit it can be just my subjective interpretation of the reality) that one tiny detail giving the flavor of good usability to our app requires a lot of time. This time is being spent on 'fighting' with GUI framework making it act like we need. And it very difficult to make estimations for this type of tasks (at least for me and most members of our team). Scrum poker is not a help either. Management often considers this usability perfectionism to be a waste of time. On the other hand an accumulated affect of features where each has some little usability flaw frustrates users. But the same users want frequent releases and instant bug fixes. Hence, no way to get the positive feedback: there is always somebody who is snuffy. I constantly feel myself as competing with ourselves: more features - more bugs/tasks/architecture. We are trying to outrun the cart we are pushing. New technologies arrive and some of them can potentially help to improve the design or decrease task implementation time but these technologies require learning, prototyping and so on. Well, that was a story. And now is the question: How do you balance between time pressure, product quality, users and management satisfaction? When and how do you decide to leave the problem with not a perfect but to some extent acceptable solution, how often do you make these decisions? How do you do with your own satisfaction? What are your priorities? P.S. Please keep in mind, we are a BackOffice team, we have neither dedicated technical writer nor GUI designer. The tester have joined us recently. We've much work to do and much freedom concerning 'how'. I like it because it fosters creativity but I don't want to become too nerdy perfectionist.

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• Specifying and applying broad changes to a program

  - by Victor Nicollet

  How do you handle incomplete feature requests, when the ones asking for the feature cannot possibly write a complete request? Consider an imaginary situation. You are a tech lead working on a piece of software that revolves around managing profiles (maybe they're contacts in a CRM-type application, or employees in an HR application), with many operations being directly or indirectly performed on those profiles — edit fields, add comments, attach documents, send e-mail... The higher-ups decide that a lock functionality should be added whereby a profile can be locked to prevent anyone else from doing any operations on it until it's unlocked — this feature would be used by security agents to prevent anyone from touching a profile pending a security audit. Obviously, such a feature interacts with many other existing features related to profiles. For example: Can one add a comment to a locked profile? Can one see e-mails that were sent by the system to the owner of a locked profile? Can one see who recently edited a locked profile? If an e-mail was in the process of being sent when the lock happened, is the e-mail sending canceled, delayed or performed as if nothing happened? If I just changed a profile and click the "cancel" link on the confirmation, does the lock prevent the cancel or does it still go through? In all of these cases, how do I tell the user that a lock is in place? Depending on the software, there could be hundreds of such interactions, and each interaction requires a decision — is the lock going to apply and if it does, how will it be displayed to the user? And the higher-ups asking for the feature probably only see a small fraction of these, so you will probably have a lot of questions coming up while you are working on the feature. How would you and your team handle this? Would you expect the higher-ups to come up with a complete description of all cases where the lock should apply (and how), and treat all other cases as if the lock did not exist? Would you try to determine all potential interactions based on existing specifications and code, list them and ask the higher-ups to make a decision on all those where the decision is not obvious? Would you just start working and ask questions as they come up? Would you try to change their minds and settle on a more easily described feature with similar effects? The information about existing features is, as I understand it, in the code — how do you bridge the gap between the decision-makers and that information they cannot access?

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• Are You Meeting Social Customer Service Expectations?

  - by Mike Stiles

  Whether it’s B2B or B2C, one sure path to repeat business is making sure your buyer has a memorably pleasant and successful customer service experience with you. If they get that kind of treatment consistently, that’s called a relationship. And those aren’t broken easily. Social customer service, driven by integrated SRM (social relationship management) technology, is the venue that can effectively connect customers not only to the brand, but to other customers. Positive experiences, once administered, don’t just rest with the recipient. They’re published in the form of public raves and peer-to-peer recommendation, a force far more actionable than push advertising. What’s more, your customers have come to expect access to you and satisfaction from you using social. An NM Incite study shows 83% of Twitter users and 71% of Facebook users expect to get an answer from brands the same day they post to them on their social assets. To make sure you’re responding, you’ve got to have a tech platform that’s set up to moderate and alert so you’ll know ASAP a customer needs help. The more integrated your social enterprise is, the faster you can not only respond, but respond with the answer they’re looking for, because your system is connected to the internal resources that can surface the answer or put wheels in motion to rectify the situation in the shortest amount of time possible. But if you go to the necessary lengths to make sure your customers feel valued and important, will they really reward you? The study says 71% of consumers who got quick and effective responses from companies they contacted via social were more likely to recommend the brand to their friends and followers. So yes, sweeping people off their feet pays big dividends in terms of word-of-mouth marketing. But you should be keenly aware of the reverse side of that coin. Give people a negative experience, either in real world or virtual customer service, and that message is highly likely to get amplified through social channels faster and louder. Only 36% of the NM Incite study’s respondents reported that their problems were solved quickly and effectively. 36%? That’s hardly an impressive number. It gets worse. 10% never got so much as a response - at all. Going back to the relationship analogy, companies that are this deep in the ditch where customer service is concerned are making their girl or boyfriends really easy for a competitor to steal. Given the technology tools and data available right now for having an intimate knowledge of the customer, what products they’ve purchased, likely problems with those products, effective resolutions to those problems, and follow-up communication to gauge satisfaction, there are fewer excuses than ever for making the lifeblood of your business feel like you couldn’t care less. @mikestiles

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• Spotlight on an office - Nairobi, Kenya

  - by Maria Sandu

  Hi everyone, my name is Joash Mitei. I am a graduate Intern at Oracle Systems Kenya and I will briefly take you through our offices and the working environment here in Nairobi, Kenya. I’ve been with Oracle since February 2012 and I’m responsible for Applications Pre-sales focusing on Oracle EPM and E-Business Suite. My background is Finance and Accounting therefore joining Oracle was almost a totally a different ball game but the transition has been smooth. The Oracle offices here are located on the second floor of Mebank Towers. We moved to the 2nd floor just three months ago from the 5th floor mainly because of the growing workforce. We are covering the whole Eastern Africa region hence diversity in culture is evident. This is a plus since you get to interact with people of very different backgrounds, cultures and ways of thinking. The building itself is on the outskirts of the CBD hence free from the hustle and bustle of the town. The office is split into different sections; there is a main working area which has an open desk design that fosters interaction between colleagues, there are 4 conference rooms for meetings and presentations, there are 3 quiet rooms for a little privacy when needed and there is a dining area for meals and ‘hanging out’. The working environment is world-class, to say the least. The employees are very professional, quite smart and needless to say, very busy. There are 4 interns covering sales and pre-sales in both Tech and Apps. As an intern you get support from your supervisor but you are required to show initiative yourself and thus the need to be very pro-active and inquisitive. The local management is well structured and communicative to ensure effectiveness and efficiency in the office. Apart from the daily work, we usually have events to boost staff morale such as ‘TGIF hang -out’, football matches against each other or versus other companies, and team building retreats. All these are monumental in fostering the RED POTENTIAL. We also do numerous CSR activities in the local communities . Well, that’s the Kenyan office for you. Glad to be your tour guide. Have a superb day!

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• Spotlight on an office - Moscow

  - by Maria Sandu

  Probably the most famous place in Moscow, after Red Square, is the centre of Moscow. Here you can find beautiful buildings that seem to touch the sky, located on the banks of the river. In one of these high towers you can find the Oracle offices, friendly and modern. The stunning view will keep capture your attention for a couple of minutes and then you can enjoy a delicious coffee and take a seat at your desk, starting a new day. My name is Dmitry and I can tell you that we’re enjoying every minute spent in the office and that’s because of the pleasant atmosphere. As soon as you enter the offices, the friendly environment will make you feel more relaxed. Even though the space is split between the different departments, we interact and communicate a lot. We take our cup of coffee or tea together and discuss our achievements and all sort of subjects in the kitchen or in the open space. One of my favorite parts are the festive events when we celebrate with cakes and goodies. Any birthday or new arrival is a good reason for a tea party! We have some work-related traditions that help us as employees. One of them is the monthly Tech Hour when Experts from the Pre-sales team discuss technical topics and about the most recent innovations within the company. Lunch is another good opportunity to interact and chat. We have a variety of options, such as the two kitchens or the vast number of restaurants where you can serve up anything you want. As we are right in the centre of Moscow, you can choose between Sushi, Italian Pasta and all sorts of food. We usually go with our colleagues to have lunch. If you care about your health, I have very good news for you as nearby there are two first-class fitness centres with swimming pools, yoga and various sport classes that you can attend. My suggestion would be to either start or end your day with a visit to the swimming pool for a well-deserved hour of relaxation. As I mentioned before, we’re right in the heart of Moscow, so after work you can spend some time in the large shopping centers where you can choose between many different entertainment options. We often go to bowling or to the cinema. I hope I have given you a glimpse into working life at the Oracle offices in Moscow, a really great and pleasant place to work in, so follow us on http://campus.oracle.com for our latest vacancies and internships.

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• Cisco PIX to Juniper Netscreen Policy-based VPN fails Phase 2 Proposal

  - by elint

  I've followed the instructions to configure a VPN between a netscreen device and a Cisco PIX as directed by Cisco's [netscreen to PIX VPN]http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk583/tk372/technologies_configuration_example09186a00801c4445.shtml article. The only differences are that I'm running PIX 6.3(5) and Juniper Netscreen 6.1.0r2.0 (Firewall+VPN). I followed both configurations exactly, and when I try to connect, the Juniper returns with: 2010-02-21 12:54:28 information IKE: Removed Phase 2 SAs after receiving a notification message. 2010-02-21 12:54:28 information IKE pix_public_IP: Received a notification message for DOI 1 14 NO-PROPOSAL-CHOSEN. 2010-02-21 12:54:28 information IKE pix_public_IP Phase 2: Initiated negotiations. On the Netscreen, I've created a Phase 2 Proposal called ToCorpOffice using DH Group#2, 3DES-CBC, and SHA-1, and when configuring the AutoKey IKE, I chose ToCorpOffice and removed all other transforms. I believe I've configured the same on the PIX with: sysopt connection permit-ipsec crypto ipsec transform-set mytrans esp-3des esp-sha-hmac crypto map mymap 10 ipsec-isakmp crypto map mymap 10 match address nonat crypto map mymap 10 set pfs group2 crypto map mymap 10 set peer netscreen_public_ip crypto map mymap 10 set transform-set mytrans crypto map mymap interface outside Saved that and rebooted, so here's the cryptomap info: PIX-FW1# show crypto map Crypto Map: "mymap" interfaces: { outside } Crypto Map "mymap" 10 ipsec-isakmp Peer = netscreen_public_ip access-list nonat; 1 elements access-list nonat line 1 permit ip 192.168.1.0 255.255.255.0 192.168.2.0 255.255.255.0 (hitcnt=0) Current peer: netscreen_public_ip Security association lifetime: 4608000 kilobytes/28800 seconds PFS (Y/N): Y DH group: group2 Transform sets={ mytrans, } PIX-FW1# Any idea why I'm getting a NO-PROPOSAL-CHOSEN error?

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• Timeline chart in Excel

  - by Axarydax

  Hi, I'd like to see a timeline of events from a database in a "timeline chart", that should look like this: http://i46.tinypic.com/sw3dj5.png - I've made me a small c# program that paints this onto a Bitmap, but that isn't the way to go. I have input data that has 3 fields: StartX EndX Y 2596 15008 1 5438 6783 2 5450 5453 4 5456 5459 4 5462 5466 4 5470 5474 4 5477 5657 5 5662 5665 4 5668 5671 4 As the picture shows, for each line I'd like to have a line from StartX to EndX with a Y value of Y. Stacked bar chart almost solves my problem, but I don't want to have a new line on the chart for every row, I have thousands of rows and I'd like to have X axis as the time axis, and view which events (Y is the type of the event) happened simultaneously. The image ( http://i46.tinypic.com/sw3dj5.png) I've generated with a simple C# program shows that the event SYSTEM was active all the time, and the events TECH and BREAK were almost exclusive, but had some overlaps. I'd like to at least know the correct direction which I should take; I'm lost in the multitude of Excel chart types. Thanks.

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• What registry key or windows file determines where monitors are placed in a multi monitor environmen

  - by dfree

  So I have a laptop with a usb to vga adapter (http://www.startech.com/item/USB2VGAE2-USB-VGA-External-Multi-Monitor-Video-Adapter.aspx) which allows me to add a third monitor to my laptop (the second monitor uses the onboard slot) It worked fine on windows vista - you could go into windows display settings and windows would recognize the third monitor and let you drag it around accordingly. With windows 7, the third monitor literally is not there in windows display settings. The driver allows you to display to the third monitor, but you can't move where it is. The display settings are misplaced relative to my other two (if you drag windows over to it, they end up on the bottom when it should be aligned). I called tech support and they said that there isn't a driver with this functionality for windows 7 yet. But here's my hunch. The monitor placement is still somewhat similar to where I had it on vista, it's just off about 500 pixels or so. I think there is either a registry key or driver file somewhere that is telling this monitor where to exist. If I could just modify the number and move it up 500 pixels, it would be in the right place and I don't have to wait 6 months for the company to come out with a new driver. Any ideas???

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• Hide account from login screen but can be used in UAC

  - by tvanover

  So I have a Windows 7 home machine with 2 user accounts. One is a standard user account and one is an administrator account. Now this is going to be put in the hands of a very low-tech user so I don't want them to be able to see the administrator account on logon, but they want to have a password to prevent someone else from using the machine. My goal is that when the user turns on the computer, they are presented with their login. After logging in to their non-administrator account, if something needs to be installed then the administrator account can be used through UAC. I have tried creating the reg key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\SpecialAccounts\UserList and adding a dword of the account name and set it to 0. It succeeded in hiding the account from th login screen. As well as hiding it from UAC. So it fails the second requirement, of being able to run things as administrator through UAC. Also since I didn't set an administrator password (left it blank) it seems that I have completely locked myself out of the machine since runas doesn't accept blank passwords. So I also cannot undo it, and have quite effectively bricked the install, prompting an OS reinstall. This is Windows 7 Home, so there is no Users management console.

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• Web server with static IP from cable provider

  - by Dmitri

  I have a subscription to 5 static IP addresses. I want to run a web server from behind a router. My network config is as follows: Server's local address is 10.1.10.2, has IIS running on it, port 80 and 443 (IIS is not my fault, had to be done) the server's ip address is static, the subnet mask is 255.255.255.0, gateway is 10.1.10.1, which is the local address of the cable modem / router / gateway thingy. All looks to be in textbook order as far as the LAN goes. I can get to anything on my LAN from any computer on my LAN, whether they have static IP or get it through DHCP from the cable modem/router thingy. however, I have no internet access form any of my LAN computers. I called Comcast tech support and they say they can connect to my modem/router just fine and can actually use it to ping any computer on the internet or any computer on my LAN from the router/modem (i checked, myself, this is in fact the case). However, nothing on my LAN has internet connectivity. I tried pinging the DNS servers, nothing. I tried directly typing in web sites' IP addresses, nothing, so doesn't seem to be a DNS issue. Any Ideas? What malfunction of a router could be causing such weird behavior? nay ideas or educated guesses are very much appreciated.

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• Dell 15Z. Trying to output image using Mini Displayport to a Yamasaki Q270. (2560 x 1440) rez monitor. Dual DVI-D to Mini Displayport

  - by michaelcku

  I have a Dell 15Z. GT525M Video card. Updated Driver via NVIDIA. Problem is I just purchased a Yamasaki Catleap Q270 monitor. It is a (2560x1440) monitor with only a Dual DVI-D out. 15Z only has HDMI and a Mini Display Port. I got a Active Dual DVI-D to Mini Display Port Active Adapter(Linked Below). http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=104&cp_id=10428&cs_id=1042802&p_id=6904&seq=1&format=2 The Setup works when i plug it into my Macbook air 13.3. However when I plug it into my 15Z it doesn't work. Tried everything I can thank of. Window control P. FN and F1. It just doesn't work. I believe the issue lies in the Mini Display Port but i can't be sure. No matter what i do, the Mini Display Port doesn't get recognized. Spent 3 hours on the phone with the XPS Tech team. They simply said it was not compatible.... Any help or suggestion would be greatly appreciated.

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• Does any Certificate Authority support both SAN and wildcards?

  - by nicholas a. evans

  My basic quandry is that wildcard certificates don't support subdomains of subdomains, nor do they help with alternate domain names. Basically, if my CN is example.com, I want a Subject Alternative Name field that looks roughly like so: DNS:example.com DNS*.example.com DNS:*.beta.example.com DNS:example.net DNS:*.example.net DNS:*.beta.example.net Using a self-signed cert, I verified that the browsers will work just fine with this. Unfortunately, none of the Certificate Authorities that I looked into (Thawte, GoDaddy, Verisign, Digicert) seemed to support both wildcard certs and Subject Alternative Name (sometimes referred to as "Multiple Domain UCC"). I even called up GoDaddy tech support to confirm. Is there a CA (trusted by 99% of browsers) that supports wildcards for the Subject Alternative Name? One little restriction: I'm saddled with Amazon EC2's single Elastic IP per instance limitation. Here are what I see as my backup plans: set up three extra EC2 instances, each configured for a different IP address and cert, and nginx reverse proxy from three of them into the app server(s) introduces latency(?), and even the cheapest EC2 instance isn't that cheap instead of dedicated reverse proxy instances, setup the four or more almost identical EC2 app servers, with nginx using the port to determine which cert to deliver, and use haproxy to distribute the traffic amongst themselves. complicated to configure and manage? I'm not using the cheapest EC2 instance type for my app servers. If I don't need 4+ app servers for the load, it raises the cost. set up an external server (outside of EC2) that doesn't have EC2's Elastic IP address restrictions, setup all of the alternate IP addresses and certificates on that server, and nginx reverse proxy from that server into the EC2 app servers. extra IP addresses are almost free (still need to pay for the server of course), but don't come with the robust "elasticity" that Amazon's Elastic IPs provide. even more latency than in the first scenario. Are these approaches crazy or reasonable? Do you have another one to suggest?

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• Openconnect for Cisco VPN doesn't recognize private key file - asn1 encoding routines:ASN1_CHECK_TLEN:wrong tag

  - by Alexander Skwar

  I'm trying to use my Synology DS212 NAS box also act as VPN gateway to my companies VPN. Sadly, they only use Cisco ASA and to complicate stuff even further, we've got to use personal certificates (which is of course more secure, but more complicate to get going…). So I compiled OpenConnect v4.06 from http://www.infradead.org/openconnect/. As a very basic test, I tried to build a connection by manually invoking openconnect, passing along the key and cert files, like so: /lib/ld-linux.so.3 --library-path /opt/lib \ /opt/openconnect/sbin/openconnect \ --certificate=$VPN_CFG/alexander.crt \ --sslkey=$VPN_CFG/alexander.key \ --cafile=$VPN_CFG/Company_VPN_CA.crt \ --user=alexander --verbose <ip>:443 It fails :( Attempting to connect to <ip>:443 Using certificate file $VPN_CFG/alexander.crt Using client certificate '/[email protected]/OU=Company VPN' 5919:error:0D0680A8:asn1 encoding routines:ASN1_CHECK_TLEN:wrong tag:tasn_dec.c:1315: Loading private key failed (see above errors) Loading certificate failed. Aborting. Failed to open HTTPS connection to <ip> Failed to obtain WebVPN cookie When I run the same command with the same cert/key files on a Ubuntu 12.04 box, it works: openconnect \ --certificate=$VPN_CFG/alexander.crt \ --sslkey=$VPN_CFG/alexander.key \ --cafile=$VPN_CFG/Company_VPN_CA.crt \ --user=alexander --verbose <ip>:443 Attempting to connect to <ip>:443 Using certificate file $VPN_CFG/alexander.crt Extra cert from cafile: '/CN=Company AG VPN CA/O=Company AG/L=Zurich/ST=ZH/C=CH' SSL negotiation with <ip> Server certificate verify failed: self signed certificate Certificate from VPN server "<ip>" failed verification. Reason: self signed certificate Enter 'yes' to accept, 'no' to abort; anything else to view: yes Connected to HTTPS on <ip> GET https://<ip>/ […] Well… The error on the NAS is this: 5919:error:0D0680A8:asn1 encoding routines:ASN1_CHECK_TLEN:wrong tag:tasn_dec.c:1315: Any ideas, what's causing this? On Syno, I use OpenConnect 4.06. On Ubuntu, I just compiled and installed to a custom location OpenConnect 4.06 as well. Thanks, Alexander

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• .com domain transfer failing

  - by digital

  Hi, I'm trying to transfer one of my .com addresses between registrars. I'm down as the owner contact (confirmed working) and the losing registrar is down as the tech and admin contact. Last week I received an email stating that the domain transfer had been rejected by the losing registrar. I contacted the losing registrar and they denied that. My money from the winning registrar was refunded and I was told to try again. I've initiated the transfer again and received confirmation of pending transfer, I gave the correct EPP code and confirmed the transfer. Currently the status on the domain is set as OK, should it not be transfer pending? According to my name.com transfer page if the transfer is not authd in 5 days it will auto transfer anyway. I don't believe this will happen. Name.com have been really helpful but they can't really do much more now. The losing registrar is not being helpful hence me turning here. What can I do to make sure the domain transfers? The domain transfer is set to expire on the 17th. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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• Cannot access SMC8014WG-SI provided by TimeWarner/RoadRunner administrative interface...

  - by Matt Rogish

  I just received installation of RoadRunner internet/TV/Voice and I was given a wi-fi router from the TimeWarner folks. The model is a SMC SMC8014WG-SI. Unfortunately, the password it uses is WEP and that is, as we all know, completely insecure. The tech that was here didn't know how to change it to something like WPA2 w/TKIP, and I was on hold for 20 minutes with the TimeWarner folks before I gave up. My problem is that the default web interface (http://192.168.0.1) isn't responding. I can ping it, I can access the internet through it, but I can't get to the admin interface. I did a "hard reset" of the device but still no dice. My suspicion is that the wi-fi admin interface is disabled (a common setting) but the wired interface isn't working on either of my two laptops (I've tried two laptops with two different cables, no link light activated). Am I SOL? Did they lock this down so I can't do what I want to do? Worst-case is I just hook up my go-to WRT54G router to the other modem and leave this one turned off, but I'd rather use their hardware to avoid any "It's not our problem" in the future. Any thoughts? Thanks!!

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