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What are the most likely bottlenecks determining the performance of CamStudio screen recording?

- by Steve314

When doing screen recording, I can get a frame rate of maybe 15 frames per second for the full screen on my 1080p monitor using the XVID codec. I can increase the speed a bit by recording a region, changing screen modes, and tweaking other settings, but I'm curious what hardware upgrades might give me the biggest bang for my buck. My PC is budget, but modern... Athlon 2 X4 645 (3.1GHz, quad core, limited cache) processor. 4GB single channel DDR3 1066 RAM. ASRock motherboard with NVidia GeForce 7025/nForce 630a Chipset. ATI Radeon HD 5450 graphics card - 512MB on board, not configured to steal system RAM. I dual-boot Windows XP and Windows 7. For the moment, XP is my bigger performance concern as it's still my getting-things-done O/S as opposed to my browser-host O/S. My goal is to make a few programming-related tutorials. For a lot of that I don't need screen recording - I can make up some slides, record audio with the PC switched off, yada yada. When I do need screen recording, I'll mostly be recording Notepad++, Visual Studio or a command prompt. Occasionally, I may be recording some kind of graphics or diagram program and using my pre-Bamboo cheap Wacom tablet - I have the CS2 versions of Photoshop and Illustrator, but I'd much more likely be using Microsoft Paint. Basically, what I'll be recording won't be making huge demands on the machine - but recording a fair number of pixels (720p preferred) will be useful. What's particularly wierd - not so long ago I still had a five-year-old Pentium 4 based PC. And (with the same 1080p monitor) it could record at not far from the same frame rate. So clearly the performance issues are more subtle than just throw-money-at-it. My first guess would be that the main bottleneck is the bandwidth for transferring data to/from the graphics card. Is that likely to be correct? In support of that, see this [Radeon HD 5450 review][1] - the memory bandwidth is only 12.8 GB/s. If you can't get data out of graphics memory quickly, you can't transfer it back to the system memory quickly. Apparently, that's slower than some top-end cards in 2002.

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HP Proliant G7 hardware RAID configuration automation with ribcl

- by karthik

I have been trying to automate hardware RAID configuration of HP proliant machines before OS installation (So I can not use hpacucli) ssh into iLO3 doesn't have option for RAID configuration I use ribcl but there is no command for RAID config, however I see this under the command GET_EMBEDDED_HEALTH. <STORAGE> <CONTROLLER> <LABEL VALUE="Controller on System Board"/> <STATUS VALUE="OK"/> <CONTROLLER_STATUS VALUE="OK"/> <SERIAL_NUMBER VALUE="50014380215F0070"/> <MODEL VALUE="HP Smart Array P420i Controller"/> <FW_VERSION VALUE="3.41"/> <DRIVE_ENCLOSURE> <LABEL VALUE="Port 1I Box 1"/> <STATUS VALUE="OK"/> <DRIVE_BAY VALUE="04"/> </DRIVE_ENCLOSURE> <DRIVE_ENCLOSURE> <LABEL VALUE="Port 2I Box 0"/> <STATUS VALUE="OK"/> <DRIVE_BAY VALUE="01"/> </DRIVE_ENCLOSURE> <LOGICAL_DRIVE> <LABEL VALUE="01"/> <STATUS VALUE="OK"/> <CAPACITY VALUE="68 GB"/> <FAULT_TOLERANCE VALUE="RAID 0"/> <PHYSICAL_DRIVE> <LABEL VALUE="Port 1I Box 1 Bay 3"/> <STATUS VALUE="OK"/> <SERIAL_NUMBER VALUE="6TA0N3SZ0000B231CYDT"/> <MODEL VALUE="EH0072FAWJA"/> <CAPACITY VALUE="68 GB"/> <LOCATION VALUE="Port 1I Box 1 Bay 3"/> <FW_VERSION VALUE="HPDH"/> <DRIVE_CONFIGURATION VALUE="Configured"/> </PHYSICAL_DRIVE> </LOGICAL_DRIVE> </CONTROLLER> </STORAGE> My question is, is there a way I modify/create this xml piece (say I have 2 Logical drive with one spare) and reboot the server it takes effect ? If this approach is not correct are there any other ways to automate hardware raid config ?

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Remote Debian System Preventing Logon

- by choobablue

I have a dozen or so single board computers on a network running Debian (squeeze) and access them via ssh (ssh server is dropbear). To give an idea of the hardware of these computers they're 1.2 GHz x86 processors, 1GB of RAM and 4GB flash drives formatted as ext2 (I avoided ext3 to prevent the added flash write stress from journaling), there is also a swap partition on the drive. Normally the setup I'm using works great and I can access all the computers. Every once in a while one will prevent access. What happens is I try to connect via ssh (putty) and it gives me the login prompt, I enter the username and password and it responds 'Access Denied' and it will also refuse any public key in ~/.ssh/authorized_keys. The credentials are correct as they worked previously. The computer responds to pings and putty recognizes the server public key, which implies to me the system is still running. Restarting the server fixes the problem and I can log in again. (I tried a temporary fix of putting shutdown -r now in the root crontab but this doesn't seem to reliably be run once the hang happens) Once I restart however there doesn't seem to be any information in any of the system logs to indicate what happened, the logs are simply empty for that time period, as if the system had crashed. There is some custom software running on the system which appears to stop working (which is why I wanted to ssh to begin with). I'm assuming that this program is the source of the problems but I'm unsure of how it would cause it and how to debug what is happening. The most likely explanation I can think of is that there is a memory leak in the other program that then prevents dropbear from spawning a new login shell (and crontab from executing shutdown) as there is not enough free memory. But looking at memory usage of the other (working) computers there doesn't seem to be any meaningful increase in memory to indicate a leak (unless it's a very big, fast acting and rare leak). I would think that when the OS ran out of memory it would restart the system or kill processes (the Linux kernel restarts right?). The other thing I wonder about is if the fact that they are running off a flash drive could have some effect, especially the swap partition (which I think I should remove to prevent wear of the flash), but the flash drives are young (~1 month) and I don't think that wear would be a factor yet. Does anybody have an idea of what could cause these symptoms, if it could be done by a memory leak, or something else I haven't thought of. And does anybody know of a method to try to debug the problem and find out more information about what's going wrong?

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How to loop through all illustrator files in a folder (CS6)

- by Julian

I have written some JavaScript to save .ai files to two separate locations with different resolutions, one of them being cropped to a reduced size art board. (Courtesy of John Otterud / Articmill for the main part). There are other variables in the script that I am not using at present but I want to leave the functionality there for a later date/additional layers to export/other resolutions etc. I can't get it to loop through all files in a folder. I cannot find the script that works - or insert it at the right place. I can get as far a selecting the folder and I suppose creating an array but after that what next? This is the create array part of the script - // JavaScript Document //Set up vairaibles var destDoc, sourceDoc, sourceFolder, newLayer; // Select the source folder. sourceFolder = Folder.selectDialog('Select the folder with Illustrator files that you want to mere into one', '~'); destDoc = app.documents.add(); // If a valid folder is selected if (sourceFolder != null) { files = new Array(); // Get all files matching the pattern files = sourceFolder.getFiles(); I have inserted this at the beginning of the main script (probably where I am going wrong because I can select the folder but then nothing more) #target illustrator var docRef = app.activeDocument; with (docRef) { if (layers[i].name = 'HEADER') { layers[i].name = '#'+ activeDocument.name; save() } } // *** Export Layers as PNG files (in multiple resolutions) *** var subFolderName = "For_PLMA"; var subFolderTwoName = "For_VLP"; var saveInMultipleResolutions = true; // ... // Note: only use one character! var exportLayersStartingWith = "%"; var exportLayersWithArtboardClippingStartingWith = "#"; // ... var normalResolutionFileAppend = "_VLP"; var highResolutionFileAppend = "_PLMA"; // ... var normalResolutionScale = 100; var highResolutionScale = 200; var veryhighResolutionScale = 300; // *** Start of script *** var doc = app.activeDocument; // Make sure we have saved the document if (doc.path != "") { Then the rest of the export script runs on from there.

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Professional WordPress Business Themes

- by Matt

Every now and then JustSkins.com receives quote requests for WordPress design for business websites. Most companies now keep up to date with a blog on their corporate website, that showcases their day to day activities & progresses. Getting such professional wordpress driven website designed from the scratch costs you a lot. If you have decided to make WordPress the CMS for your business website, there are some Professional WordPress themes you can take a look at. We have created this list to help you save some time to do all the trying and the testing. Optimize by WooThemes Last year one of the most popular Business theme by WooThemes was the Coffee Break theme, Optimize is further adaptation of the same. It is simple, sleek design with great functionality. The customizable front page lets you showcase your work or product etc. Demo | Price: $70, Developer Price: $150 | DOWNLOAD WooThemes is also offering their whole Business theme pack for a very very reasonable fee, If you like multiple designs from them you can get this big deal for only $125 Onyx , Impacto by Simple Themes Simple Themes has been making very crisp & beautiful WordPress Themes & are also very reasonably priced. If their themes solve your purpose $39 membership for 3 months is a good deal. If you are looking to create quick website, landing page or micro site their templates are best. Demo | Price: $39 for 3 Months Membership Rejuvenate by Templatic One of the most beautiful Premium WordPress Theme, Available in 4 elegant color schemes. This theme can be used for your Beauty, Spa and Studio Business. Demo | Price: $65 | DOWNLOAD Templatic has created great professional business templates, such as Gourmet, Real Estate, Job Board, Automobile & lots More. You can also get a Best Value Offer in $299 for all of Templatic Themes. TheProfessional by ElegantThemes Elegant Themes is known to provide very beautiful & straightforward designs. The professional wordpress theme is a simple, crisp & concise Theme you can use to create a business website. The 3 short blurbs on the homepage are simple, which can be used to point them to your major offerings and the prominent slider indicates a clear call to action. There are 52 themes to choose from & Elegant Themes is giving a great offer at such a small yearly fee. Demo | Price: $39 Yearly Membership | DOWNLOAD Elegant Themes has a cluster of 52 magnificent themes, and all you have to do is pay $39 to win access to all of them. Join today! Some of the Professional designs that I like for a business website are SimplePress and Corporation. Extatic by Chimera Themes The theme includes plenty of great features including custom feature tour pages, portfolio sections, static feature areas, pricing table page, 20+ shortcodes, multiple page/post options, unlimited custom sidebars which can be assigned to posts/pages, advanced theme style editor and options page and much more. Its a must buy Demo | Price: $37 | DOWNLOAD Corporate by Clover Themes Simple Theme for a small business. Corporate is an clean, powerful and feature-rich corporate theme with dynamic and energy design. Demo | Price: $69.95 | DOWNLOAD Bizco by Themify Bizco is a very professional template for wordpress targeted at corporate and product based businesses. This theme is simple yet highly functional and is suitable for showcasing features of your service or product. With the custom page template you can change the display of your pages and posts easily with our visual custom panel. Demo | Price: $70 |DOWNLOAD Devision by Themetrust Devision is a small business wordpress theme that can be used to make a business website within a few minutes. It makes it very easy to showcase and highlight your services or product on the homepage. Demo | Price: Euro 39 | DOWNLOAD BizPress by WPZoom A professional business WordPress theme from WPZoom suitable for companies, organizations, product showcases or other business websites. The theme comes with 4 colour options, featured products / services slider on the homepage, drop down menus, theme options page etc. Demo | Price: $ 69 | DOWNLOAD Clean Classy Corporate by ThemeFuse A very impressive WordPress business theme, that can be used in multiple ways. It is suitable for many kinds, like web products, services, hosting etc etc. Clean Classy Corporate WordPress Theme has a clean crisp look and is professional in appeal. Demo | Price: $49 | DOWNLOAD Insdustry by ThemeJam A powerful Business WordPress Template along with lots of options, colors, and customizable features. This is one for almost any kind of blogger, corporate, or organization. Lots of features, gives it the kind of scalability you might need to create any kind of website. Demo | Price: $ 59 | DOWNLOAD AppPress by ChimeraThemes This professional business WordPress theme includes 5 different colour schemes, advanced theme options page, multiple homepage sliders, custom widgets and page templates. The theme also includes a range of other unique features such as custom title, live style editor to modify colours, font styles, sizes etc, and 20+ shortcodes for creating pricing tables, content columns, boxes, buttons and others. Demo | Price: $ 37 | DOWNLOAD Why WordPress Professional Template? You can modify them, these usually come with a lot of fancy features that enable you to create the website as per your usability & choice. In some cases the Premium WordPress business themes can be accessed through a subscription service. Premium Vs Free WordPress Themes There are very good Free WordPress themes out there that you can use to modify and code further or create what you want, but this possible when you are technically able. On the contrary Premium WordPress business themes offers great features & can save you a lot of time and money. It varies from business to business, some like to keep their website simple while most want to keep cool nifty features and abilities to scale it differently for various sections, products or categories. All this & more is possible with a Professional Business theme that is suitable/close to your needs.

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12.04lts: no network internet

- by dgermann

Friends-- Cannot connect reliably to ethernet nor at all to Internet: Symptoms: About 2 weeks ago did an upgrade. Have not been able to connect to ethernet nor Internet. Today, for example, boot up this System76 laptop and there was no network connection. Did sudo mount -a and got some internal network connectivity: doug@ubuntu:/sam$ ping earth PING earth (192.168.0.201) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from earth (192.168.0.201): icmp_req=1 ttl=64 time=0.160 ms 64 bytes from earth (192.168.0.201): icmp_req=2 ttl=64 time=0.177 ms 64 bytes from earth (192.168.0.201): icmp_req=3 ttl=64 time=0.159 ms ^C --- earth ping statistics --- 3 packets transmitted, 3 received, 0% packet loss, time 1998ms rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.159/0.165/0.177/0.013 ms doug@ubuntu:/sam$ ping doug2 PING doug (192.168.0.4) 56(84) bytes of data. ^C --- doug ping statistics --- 3 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 1999ms doug@ubuntu:/sam$ ping sharon PING sharon (192.168.0.111) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from sharon (192.168.0.111): icmp_req=1 ttl=128 time=0.276 ms ^C --- sharon ping statistics --- 6 packets transmitted, 1 received, 83% packet loss, time 5031ms rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.276/0.276/0.276/0.000 ms doug@ubuntu:/sam$ ping 192.168.0.1 PING 192.168.0.1 (192.168.0.1) 56(84) bytes of data. ^C --- 192.168.0.1 ping statistics --- 6 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 4999ms doug@ubuntu:/sam$ ping earth PING earth (192.168.0.201) 56(84) bytes of data. ^C --- earth ping statistics --- 5 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 4032ms doug@ubuntu:/sam$ ping yahoo.com ping: unknown host yahoo.com doug@ubuntu:/sam$ ping ubuntu.com ping: unknown host ubuntu.com doug@ubuntu:/sam$ ping 8.8.8.8 PING 8.8.8.8 (8.8.8.8) 56(84) bytes of data. ^C --- 8.8.8.8 ping statistics --- 14 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 13103ms Note that earth is the cifs server, and one time pinging it worked, later failed. Clues: doug@ubuntu:/sam$ grep -i eth /var/log/syslog |tail Aug 23 15:32:46 ubuntu kernel: [ 5328.070401] [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=[BLANKED]--- SRC=192.168.0.1 DST=224.0.0.1 LEN=32 TOS=0x00 PREC=0xC0 TTL=1 ID=0 DF PROTO=2 Aug 23 15:32:48 ubuntu kernel: [ 5330.651139] [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=[BLANKED]--- SRC=192.168.0.5 DST=224.0.0.251 LEN=32 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=1 ID=19090 PROTO=2 Aug 23 15:34:51 ubuntu kernel: [ 5453.072279] [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=[BLANKED]--- SRC=192.168.0.1 DST=224.0.0.1 LEN=32 TOS=0x00 PREC=0xC0 TTL=1 ID=0 DF PROTO=2 Aug 23 15:34:55 ubuntu kernel: [ 5457.085433] [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=[BLANKED]--- SRC=192.168.0.10 DST=224.0.0.251 LEN=32 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=1 ID=16137 PROTO=2 Aug 23 15:36:56 ubuntu kernel: [ 5578.074492] [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=[BLANKED]--- SRC=192.168.0.1 DST=224.0.0.1 LEN=32 TOS=0x00 PREC=0xC0 TTL=1 ID=0 DF PROTO=2 Aug 23 15:37:00 ubuntu kernel: [ 5582.359006] [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=[BLANKED]--- SRC=192.168.0.10 DST=224.0.0.251 LEN=32 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=1 ID=16150 PROTO=2 Aug 23 15:39:01 ubuntu kernel: [ 5703.074410] [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=[BLANKED]--- SRC=192.168.0.1 DST=224.0.0.1 LEN=32 TOS=0x00 PREC=0xC0 TTL=1 ID=0 DF PROTO=2 Aug 23 15:39:03 ubuntu kernel: [ 5705.070122] [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=[BLANKED]--- SRC=192.168.0.10 DST=224.0.0.251 LEN=32 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=1 ID=16163 PROTO=2 Aug 23 15:41:06 ubuntu kernel: [ 5828.074387] [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=[BLANKED]--- SRC=192.168.0.1 DST=224.0.0.1 LEN=32 TOS=0x00 PREC=0xC0 TTL=1 ID=0 DF PROTO=2 Aug 23 15:41:13 ubuntu kernel: [ 5835.319941] [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=[BLANKED]--- SRC=192.168.0.5 DST=224.0.0.251 LEN=32 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=1 ID=23298 PROTO=2 doug@ubuntu:/sam$ ifconfig -a eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr [BLANKED] inet addr:192.168.0.7 Bcast:192.168.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 inet6 addr: fe80::21b:fcff:fe29:9dfc/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:3961 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:2007 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:991204 (991.2 KB) TX bytes:252908 (252.9 KB) Interrupt:16 Base address:0xec00 lo Link encap:Local Loopback inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0 inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1 RX packets:2190 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:2190 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:168052 (168.0 KB) TX bytes:168052 (168.0 KB) wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:19:d2:72:5a:0c UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B) doug@ubuntu:/sam$ iwconfig lo no wireless extensions. wlan0 IEEE 802.11abg ESSID:off/any Mode:Managed Access Point: Not-Associated Tx-Power=15 dBm Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off Power Management:off eth0 no wireless extensions. doug@ubuntu:/sam$ lsmod Module Size Used by des_generic 21191 0 md4 12523 0 nls_iso8859_1 12617 1 nls_cp437 12751 1 vfat 17308 1 fat 55605 1 vfat usb_storage 39646 1 dm_crypt 22528 1 joydev 17393 0 snd_hda_codec_analog 75395 1 snd_hda_intel 32719 2 pcmcia 39826 0 snd_hda_codec 109562 2 snd_hda_codec_analog,snd_hda_intel snd_hwdep 13276 1 snd_hda_codec ip6t_LOG 16846 4 xt_hl 12465 6 ip6t_rt 12473 3 snd_pcm 80916 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec nf_conntrack_ipv6 13581 7 nf_defrag_ipv6 13175 1 nf_conntrack_ipv6 ipt_REJECT 12512 1 ipt_LOG 12783 5 xt_limit 12541 12 xt_tcpudp 12531 21 xt_addrtype 12596 4 snd_seq_midi 13132 0 xt_state 12514 14 ip6table_filter 12711 1 ip6_tables 22528 3 ip6t_LOG,ip6t_rt,ip6table_filter nf_conntrack_netbios_ns 12585 0 nf_conntrack_broadcast 12541 1 nf_conntrack_netbios_ns nf_nat_ftp 12595 0 nf_nat 24959 1 nf_nat_ftp nf_conntrack_ipv4 19084 9 nf_nat nf_defrag_ipv4 12649 1 nf_conntrack_ipv4 nf_conntrack_ftp 13183 1 nf_nat_ftp nf_conntrack 73847 8 nf_conntrack_ipv6,xt_state,nf_conntrack_netbios_ns,nf_conntrack_broadcast,nf_nat_ftp,nf_nat,nf_conntrack_ipv4,nf_conntrack_ftp iptable_filter 12706 1 ip_tables 18106 1 iptable_filter snd_rawmidi 25424 1 snd_seq_midi psmouse 86982 0 x_tables 22011 13 ip6t_LOG,xt_hl,ip6t_rt,ipt_REJECT,ipt_LOG,xt_limit,xt_tcpudp,xt_addrtype,xt_state,ip6table_filter,ip6_tables,iptable_filter,ip_tables arc4 12473 2 r592 17808 0 snd_seq_midi_event 14475 1 snd_seq_midi memstick 15857 1 r592 yenta_socket 27465 0 serio_raw 13027 0 pcmcia_rsrc 18367 1 yenta_socket iwl3945 73186 0 pcmcia_core 21511 3 pcmcia,yenta_socket,pcmcia_rsrc iwl_legacy 71334 1 iwl3945 snd_seq 51592 2 snd_seq_midi,snd_seq_midi_event mac80211 436493 2 iwl3945,iwl_legacy snd_timer 28931 2 snd_pcm,snd_seq snd_seq_device 14172 3 snd_seq_midi,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq rfcomm 38139 0 bnep 17830 2 parport_pc 32114 0 bluetooth 158447 10 rfcomm,bnep ppdev 12849 0 cfg80211 178877 3 iwl3945,iwl_legacy,mac80211 asus_laptop 23693 0 sparse_keymap 13658 1 asus_laptop input_polldev 13648 1 asus_laptop nls_utf8 12493 6 cifs 258037 10 snd 62218 13 snd_hda_codec_analog,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec,snd_hwdep,snd_pcm,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq,snd_timer,snd_seq_device soundcore 14635 1 snd mac_hid 13077 0 snd_page_alloc 14108 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm lp 17455 0 parport 40930 3 parport_pc,ppdev,lp i915 428418 3 firewire_ohci 40172 0 sdhci_pci 18324 0 sdhci 28241 1 sdhci_pci firewire_core 56940 1 firewire_ohci crc_itu_t 12627 1 firewire_core r8169 56396 0 drm_kms_helper 45466 1 i915 drm 197641 4 i915,drm_kms_helper i2c_algo_bit 13199 1 i915 video 19115 1 i915 doug@ubuntu:/sam$ dmesg |grep eth [ 0.116936] i2c-core: driver [aat2870] using legacy suspend method [ 0.116939] i2c-core: driver [aat2870] using legacy resume method [ 1.453811] r8169 0000:03:07.0: eth0: RTL8169sb/8110sb at 0xf840ec00, [BLANKED], XID 10000000 IRQ 16 [ 1.453815] r8169 0000:03:07.0: eth0: jumbo features [frames: 7152 bytes, tx checksumming: ok] [ 25.681231] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): eth0: link is not ready [ 154.037318] r8169 0000:03:07.0: eth0: link down [ 154.037329] r8169 0000:03:07.0: eth0: link down [ 154.037596] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): eth0: link is not ready [ 155.583162] r8169 0000:03:07.0: eth0: link up [ 155.583366] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): eth0: link becomes ready [ 156.637048] r8169 0000:03:07.0: eth0: link down [ 156.637066] r8169 0000:03:07.0: eth0: link down [ 156.637339] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): eth0: link is not ready [ 156.773699] r8169 0000:03:07.0: eth0: link down [ 156.773983] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): eth0: link is not ready [ 158.456181] r8169 0000:03:07.0: eth0: link up [ 158.456378] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): eth0: link becomes ready [ 159.364468] [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=[BLANKED]--- SRC=192.168.0.1 DST=224.0.0.1 LEN=32 TOS=0x00 PREC=0xC0 TTL=1 ID=0 DF PROTO=2 [ 162.384496] [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=[BLANKED]--- SRC=192.168.0.5 DST=224.0.0.251 LEN=32 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=1 ID=38877 PROTO=2 [ 166.272457] [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=[BLANKED]--- SRC=192.168.0.1 DST=224.0.0.1 LEN=32 TOS=0x00 PREC=0xC0 TTL=1 ID=0 DF PROTO=2 [ 166.422333] [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=[BLANKED]--- SRC=192.168.0.5 DST=224.0.0.251 LEN=32 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=1 ID=40695 PROTO=2 [ 168.736049] eth0: no IPv6 routers present [ 183.572472] r8169 0000:03:07.0: eth0: link down [ 183.572490] r8169 0000:03:07.0: eth0: link down [ 183.572934] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): eth0: link is not ready [ 185.204801] r8169 0000:03:07.0: eth0: link up [ 185.205005] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): eth0: link becomes ready [ 3620.680451] [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=[BLANKED]--- SRC=192.168.0.1 DST=224.0.0.1 LEN=32 TOS=0x00 PREC=0xC0 TTL=1 ID=0 DF PROTO=2 [ 3621.068431] [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=[BLANKED]--- SRC=192.168.0.1 DST=224.0.0.1 LEN=32 TOS=0x00 PREC=0xC0 TTL=1 ID=0 DF PROTO=2 [ 3624.912973] [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=[BLANKED]--- SRC=192.168.0.5 DST=224.0.0.251 LEN=32 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=1 ID=9118 PROTO=2 [ 3631.088069] eth0: no IPv6 routers present [ 3703.062980] [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=[BLANKED]--- SRC=192.168.0.1 DST=224.0.0.1 LEN=32 TOS=0x00 PREC=0xC0 TTL=1 ID=0 DF PROTO=2 [ 3703.465330] [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=[BLANKED]--- SRC=192.168.0.5 DST=224.0.0.251 LEN=32 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=1 ID=9210 PROTO=2 [ 3828.062951] [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=[BLANKED]--- SRC=192.168.0.1 DST=224.0.0.1 LEN=32 TOS=0x00 PREC=0xC0 TTL=1 ID=0 DF PROTO=2 [ 3833.617772] [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=[BLANKED]--- SRC=192.168.0.5 DST=224.0.0.251 LEN=32 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=1 ID=9749 PROTO=2 [ 3953.062920] [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=[BLANKED]--- SRC=192.168.0.1 DST=224.0.0.1 LEN=32 TOS=0x00 PREC=0xC0 TTL=1 ID=0 DF PROTO=2 [ 3955.675129] [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=[BLANKED]--- SRC=192.168.0.10 DST=224.0.0.251 LEN=32 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=1 ID=15983 PROTO=2 [ 4078.062922] [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=[BLANKED]--- SRC=192.168.0.1 DST=224.0.0.1 LEN=32 TOS=0x00 PREC=0xC0 TTL=1 ID=0 DF PROTO=2 [ 4078.386319] [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=[BLANKED]--- SRC=192.168.0.10 DST=224.0.0.251 LEN=32 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=1 ID=15997 PROTO=2 [ 4203.062899] [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=[BLANKED]--- SRC=192.168.0.1 DST=224.0.0.1 LEN=32 TOS=0x00 PREC=0xC0 TTL=1 ID=0 DF PROTO=2 [ 4203.559241] [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=[BLANKED]--- SRC=192.168.0.10 DST=224.0.0.251 LEN=32 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=1 ID=16011 PROTO=2 [ 4328.062833] [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=[BLANKED]--- SRC=192.168.0.1 DST=224.0.0.1 LEN=32 TOS=0x00 PREC=0xC0 TTL=1 ID=0 DF PROTO=2 [ 4328.930922] [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=[BLANKED]--- SRC=192.168.0.10 DST=224.0.0.251 LEN=32 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=1 ID=16027 PROTO=2 [ 4453.062811] [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=[BLANKED]--- SRC=192.168.0.1 DST=224.0.0.1 LEN=32 TOS=0x00 PREC=0xC0 TTL=1 ID=0 DF PROTO=2 [ 4453.950224] [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=[BLANKED]--- SRC=192.168.0.10 DST=224.0.0.251 LEN=32 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=1 ID=16039 PROTO=2 [ 4578.062742] [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=[BLANKED]--- SRC=192.168.0.1 DST=224.0.0.1 LEN=32 TOS=0x00 PREC=0xC0 TTL=1 ID=0 DF PROTO=2 [ 4580.626432] [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=[BLANKED]--- SRC=192.168.0.5 DST=224.0.0.251 LEN=32 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=1 ID=13738 PROTO=2 [ 4703.062704] [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=[BLANKED]--- SRC=192.168.0.1 DST=224.0.0.1 LEN=32 TOS=0x00 PREC=0xC0 TTL=1 ID=0 DF PROTO=2 [ 4706.310170] [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=[BLANKED]--- SRC=192.168.0.5 DST=224.0.0.251 LEN=32 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=1 ID=15942 PROTO=2 [ 4828.062707] [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=[BLANKED]--- SRC=192.168.0.1 DST=224.0.0.1 LEN=32 TOS=0x00 PREC=0xC0 TTL=1 ID=0 DF PROTO=2 [ 4832.174324] [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=[BLANKED]--- SRC=192.168.0.5 DST=224.0.0.251 LEN=32 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=1 ID=16505 PROTO=2 [ 4953.062628] [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=[BLANKED]--- SRC=192.168.0.1 DST=224.0.0.1 LEN=32 TOS=0x00 PREC=0xC0 TTL=1 ID=0 DF PROTO=2 [ 4961.469282] [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=[BLANKED]--- SRC=192.168.0.10 DST=224.0.0.251 LEN=32 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=1 ID=16090 PROTO=2 [ 5078.062552] [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=[BLANKED]--- SRC=192.168.0.1 DST=224.0.0.1 LEN=32 TOS=0x00 PREC=0xC0 TTL=1 ID=0 DF PROTO=2 [ 5080.776462] [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=[BLANKED]--- SRC=192.168.0.5 DST=224.0.0.251 LEN=32 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=1 ID=17239 PROTO=2 [ 5203.070394] [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=[BLANKED]--- SRC=192.168.0.1 DST=224.0.0.1 LEN=32 TOS=0x00 PREC=0xC0 TTL=1 ID=0 DF PROTO=2 [ 5205.358134] [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=[BLANKED]--- SRC=192.168.0.5 DST=224.0.0.251 LEN=32 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=1 ID=17665 PROTO=2 [ 5328.070401] [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=[BLANKED]--- SRC=192.168.0.1 DST=224.0.0.1 LEN=32 TOS=0x00 PREC=0xC0 TTL=1 ID=0 DF PROTO=2 [ 5330.651139] [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=[BLANKED]--- SRC=192.168.0.5 DST=224.0.0.251 LEN=32 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=1 ID=19090 PROTO=2 [ 5453.072279] [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=[BLANKED]--- SRC=192.168.0.1 DST=224.0.0.1 LEN=32 TOS=0x00 PREC=0xC0 TTL=1 ID=0 DF PROTO=2 [ 5457.085433] [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=[BLANKED]--- SRC=192.168.0.10 DST=224.0.0.251 LEN=32 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=1 ID=16137 PROTO=2 [ 5578.074492] [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=[BLANKED]--- SRC=192.168.0.1 DST=224.0.0.1 LEN=32 TOS=0x00 PREC=0xC0 TTL=1 ID=0 DF PROTO=2 [ 5582.359006] [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=[BLANKED]--- SRC=192.168.0.10 DST=224.0.0.251 LEN=32 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=1 ID=16150 PROTO=2 [ 5703.074410] [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=[BLANKED]--- SRC=192.168.0.1 DST=224.0.0.1 LEN=32 TOS=0x00 PREC=0xC0 TTL=1 ID=0 DF PROTO=2 [ 5705.070122] [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=[BLANKED]--- SRC=192.168.0.10 DST=224.0.0.251 LEN=32 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=1 ID=16163 PROTO=2 [ 5828.074387] [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=[BLANKED][BLANKED]--- SRC=192.168.0.1 DST=224.0.0.1 LEN=32 TOS=0x00 PREC=0xC0 TTL=1 ID=0 DF PROTO=2 [ 5835.319941] [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=[BLANKED][BLANKED]--- SRC=192.168.0.5 DST=224.0.0.251 LEN=32 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=1 ID=23298 PROTO=2 [ 5953.074429] [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=[BLANKED][BLANKED]--- SRC=192.168.0.1 DST=224.0.0.1 LEN=32 TOS=0x00 PREC=0xC0 TTL=1 ID=0 DF PROTO=2 [ 5961.925481] [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=[BLANKED][BLANKED]--- SRC=192.168.0.5 DST=224.0.0.251 LEN=32 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=1 ID=24261 PROTO=2 doug@ubuntu:/sam$ lspci -nnk |grep -iA2 eth 03:07.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8169 PCI Gigabit Ethernet Controller [10ec:8169] (rev 10) Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device [1043:11e5] Kernel driver in use: r8169 doug@ubuntu:/sam$ route -n Kernel IP routing table Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface 0.0.0.0 192.168.0.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth0 169.254.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.0.0 U 1000 0 0 eth0 192.168.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 1 0 0 eth0 doug@ubuntu:/sam$ nm-tool NetworkManager Tool State: connected (global) - Device: eth0 [Ifupdown (eth0)] ---------------------------------------------- Type: Wired Driver: r8169 State: connected Default: yes HW Address: [BLANKED] Capabilities: Carrier Detect: yes Speed: 100 Mb/s Wired Properties Carrier: on IPv4 Settings: Address: 192.168.0.7 Prefix: 24 (255.255.255.0) Gateway: 192.168.0.1 DNS: 192.168.0.1 - Device: wlan0 ---------------------------------------------------------------- Type: 802.11 WiFi Driver: iwl3945 State: disconnected Default: no HW Address: 00:19:D2:72:5A:0C Capabilities: Wireless Properties WEP Encryption: yes WPA Encryption: yes WPA2 Encryption: yes Wireless Access Points ATT592: Infra, 30:60:23:76:FE:60, Freq 2437 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 24 WPA WPA2 doug@ubuntu:/sam$ nslookup ubuntu.com ;; connection timed out; no servers could be reached doug@ubuntu:/sam$ dig ubuntuforums.org ; <<>> DiG 9.8.1-P1 <<>> ubuntuforums.org ;; global options: +cmd ;; connection timed out; no servers could be reached doug@ubuntu:/sam$ sudo ifconfig eth0 up doug@ubuntu:/sam$ dhcpcd eth0 The program 'dhcpcd' can be found in the following packages: * dhcpcd * dhcpcd5 Try: sudo apt-get install <selected package> doug@ubuntu:/sam$ lspci -k 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/PM/GMS, 943/940GML and 945GT Express Memory Controller Hub (rev 03) Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 1297 Kernel driver in use: agpgart-intel 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS, 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03) Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 1252 Kernel driver in use: i915 Kernel modules: intelfb, i915 00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS/GME, 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03) Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 1252 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 02) Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 1297 Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel Kernel modules: snd-hda-intel 00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family PCI Express Port 1 (rev 02) Kernel driver in use: pcieport Kernel modules: shpchp 00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family PCI Express Port 2 (rev 02) Kernel driver in use: pcieport Kernel modules: shpchp 00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02) Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 1297 Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd 00:1d.1 USB controller: Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 02) Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 1297 Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd 00:1d.2 USB controller: Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 02) Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 1297 Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd 00:1d.3 USB controller: Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 02) Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 1297 Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd 00:1d.7 USB controller: Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 02) Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 1297 Kernel driver in use: ehci_hcd 00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev e2) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GBM (ICH7-M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 02) Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 1297 Kernel modules: leds-ss4200, iTCO_wdt, intel-rng 00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) IDE Controller (rev 02) Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 1297 Kernel driver in use: ata_piix 00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family SMBus Controller (rev 02) Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 1297 Kernel modules: i2c-i801 02:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG [Golan] Network Connection (rev 02) Subsystem: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection Kernel driver in use: iwl3945 Kernel modules: iwl3945 03:01.0 CardBus bridge: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c476 II (rev b3) Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 1297 Kernel driver in use: yenta_cardbus Kernel modules: yenta_socket 03:01.1 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C552 IEEE 1394 Controller (rev 08) Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 1297 Kernel driver in use: firewire_ohci Kernel modules: firewire-ohci 03:01.2 SD Host controller: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 17) Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 1297 Kernel driver in use: sdhci-pci Kernel modules: sdhci-pci 03:01.3 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C592 Memory Stick Bus Host Adapter (rev 08) Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 1297 Kernel driver in use: r592 Kernel modules: r592 03:07.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8169 PCI Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 10) Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 11e5 Kernel driver in use: r8169 Kernel modules: r8169 doug@ubuntu:/sam$ Things I have tried: sudo start network-manager: no help gksudo gedit /etc/network/interfaces changed line to iface eth0 inet dhcp: no help gksudo gedit /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf, I changed managed=false to managed=true. Then sudo service network-manager restart: no help: network is unreachable sudo pkill -9 NetworkManager: no help gksudo gedit /etc/resolve.conf added line nameseriver 8.8.8.8: no help I know very little about networking; to date this has simply worked. Thanks for your help! :- Doug.

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Adopting DBVCS

- by Wes McClure

Identify early adopters Pick a small project with a small(ish) team. This can be a legacy application or a green-field application. Strive to find a team of early adopters that will be eager to try something new. Get the team on board! Research Research the tool(s) that you want to use. Some tools provide all of the features you would need while some only provide a slice of the pie. DBVCS requires the ability to manage a set of change scripts that update a database from one version to the next. Ideally a tool can track database versions and automatically apply updates. The change script generation process can be manual, but having diff tools available to automatically generate it can really reduce the overhead to adoption. Finally, an automated tool to generate a script file per database object is an added bonus as your version control system can quickly identify what was changed in a commit (add/del/modify), just like with code changes. Don’t settle on just one tool, identify several. Then work with the team to evaluate the tools. Have the team do some tests of the following scenarios with each tool: Baseline an existing database: can the migration tool work with legacy databases? Caution: most migration platforms do not support baselines or have poor support, especially the fad of fluent APIs. Add/drop tables Add/drop procedures/functions/views Alter tables (rename columns, add columns, remove columns) Massage data – migrations sometimes involve changing data types that cannot be implicitly casted and require you to decide how the data is explicitly cast to the new type. This is a requirement for a migrations platform. Think about a case where you might want to combine fields, or move a field from one table to another, you wouldn’t want to lose the data. Run the tool via the command line. If you cannot automate the tool in Continuous Integration what is the point? Create a copy of a database on demand. Backup/restore databases locally. Let the team give feedback and decide together, what tool they would like to try out. My recommendation at this point would be to include TSqlMigrations and RoundHouse as SQL based migration platforms. In general I would recommend staying away from the fluent platforms as they often lack baseline capabilities and add overhead to learn a new API when SQL is already a very well known DSL. Code migrations often get messy with procedures/views/functions as these have to be created with SQL and aren’t cross platform anyways. IMO stick to SQL based migrations. Reconciling Production If your project is a legacy application, you will need to reconcile the current state of production with your development databases. Find changes in production and bring them down to development, even if they are old and need to be removed. Once complete, produce a baseline of either dev or prod as they are now in sync. Commit this to your VCS of choice. Add whatever schema changes tracking mechanism your tool requires to your development database. This often requires adding a table to track the schema version of that database. Your tool should support doing this for you. You can add this table to production when you do your next release. Script out any changes currently in dev. Remove production artifacts that you brought down during reconciliation. Add change scripts for any outstanding changes in dev since the last production release. Commit these to your repository. Say No to Shared Dev DBs Simply put, you wouldn’t dream of sharing a code checkout, why would you share a development database? If you have a shared dev database, back it up, distribute the backups and take the shared version offline (including the dev db server once all projects are using DB VCS). Doing DB VCS with a shared database is bound to cause problems as people won’t be able to easily script out their own changes from those that others are working on. First prod release Copy prod to your beta/testing environment. Add the schema changes table (or mechanism) and do a test run of your changes. If successful you can schedule this to be run on production. Evaluation After your first release, evaluate the pain points of the process. Try to find tools or modifications to existing tools to help fix them. Don’t leave stones unturned, iteratively evolve your tools and practices to make the process as seamless as possible. This is why I suggest open source alternatives. Nothing is set in stone, a good example was adding transactional support to TSqlMigrations. We ran into situations where an update would break a database, so I added a feature to do transactional updates and rollback on errors! Another good example is generating change scripts. We have been manually making these for months now. I found an open source project called Open DB Diff and integrated this with TSqlMigrations. These were things we just accepted at the time when we began adopting our tool set. Once we became comfortable with the base functionality, it was time to start automating more of the process. Just like anything else with development, never be afraid to try to find tools to make your job easier! Enjoy -Wes

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Last week I was presented with a Microsoft MVP award in Virtual Machines – time to thank all who hel

- by Liam Westley

MVP in Virtual Machines Last week, on 1st April, I received an e-mail from Microsoft letting me know that I had been presented with a 2010 Microsoft® MVP Award for outstanding contributions in Virtual Machine technical communities during the past year. It was an honour to be nominated, and is a great reflection on the vibrancy of the UK user group community which made this possible. Virtualisation for developers, not just IT Pros I consider it a special honour as my expertise in virtualisation is as a software developer utilising virtual machines to aid my software development, rather than an IT Pro who manages data centre and network infrastructure. I’ve been on a minor mission over the past few years to enthuse developers in a topic usually seen as only for network admins, but which can make their life a whole lot easier once understood properly. Continuous learning is fun In 1676, the scientist Isaac Newton, in a letter to Robert Hooke used the phrase (http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/268025.html) ‘If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants’ I’m a nuclear physicist by education, so I am more than comfortable that any knowledge I have is based on the work of others. Although far from a science, software development and IT is equally built upon the work of others. It’s one of the reasons I despise software patents. So in that sense this MVP award is a result of all the great minds that have provided virtualisation solutions for me to talk about. I hope that I have always acknowledged those whose work I have used when blogging or giving presentations, and that I have executed my responsibility to share any knowledge gained as widely as possible. Thanks to all those who helped – a big thanks to the UK user group community I reckon this journey started in 2003 when I started attending a user group called the London .Net Users Group (http://www.dnug.org.uk) started by a nice chap called Ian Cooper. The great thing about Ian was that he always encouraged non professional speakers to take the stage at the user group, and my first ever presentation was on 30th September 2003; SQL Server CE 2.0 and the.NET Compact Framework. In 2005 Ian Cooper was on the committee for the first DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper! day, the free community conference held at Microsoft’s UK HQ in Thames Valley park in Reading. He encouraged me to take part and so on 14th May 2005 I presented a talk previously given to the London .Net User Group on Simplifying access to multiple DB providers in .NET. From that point on I definitely had the bug; presenting at DDD2, DDD3, groking at DDD4 and SQLBits I and after a break, DDD7, DDD Scotland and DDD8. What definitely made me keen was the encouragement and infectious enthusiasm of some of the other DDD organisers; Craig Murphy, Barry Dorrans, Phil Winstanley and Colin Mackay. During the first few DDD events I met the Dave McMahon and Richard Costall from NxtGenUG who made it easy to start presenting at their user groups. Along the way I’ve met a load of great user group organisers; Guy Smith-Ferrier of the .Net Developer Network, Jimmy Skowronski of GL.Net and the double act of Ray Booysen and Gavin Osborn behind what was Vista Squad and is now Edge UG. Final thanks to those who suggested virtualisation as a topic ... Final thanks have to go the people who inspired me to create my Virtualisation for Developers talk. Toby Henderson (@holytshirt) ensured I took notice of Sun’s VirtualBox, Peter Ibbotson for being a fine sounding board at the Kew Railway over quite a few Adnam’s Broadside and to Guy Smith-Ferrier for allowing his user group to be the guinea pigs for the talk before it was seen at DDD7. Thanks to all of you I now know much more about virtualisation than I would have thought possible and it continues to be great fun. Conclusion If this was an academy award acceptance speech I would have been cut off after the first few paragraphs, so well done if you made it this far. I’ll be doing my best to do justice to the MVP award and the UK community. I’m fortunate in having a new employer who considers presenting at user groups as a good thing, so don’t expect me to stop any time soon. If you’ve never seen me in action, then you can view the original DDD7 Virtualisation for Developers presentation (filmed by the Microsoft Channel 9 team) as part of the full DDD7 video list here, http://www.craigmurphy.com/blog/?p=1591. Also thanks to Craig Murphy’s fine video work you can also view my latest DDD8 presentation on Commercial Software Development, here, http://vimeo.com/9216563 P.S. If I’ve missed anyone out, do feel free to lambast me in comments, it’s your duty.

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Nerdstock 2012: A photo review of Microsoft TechEd North America 2012

- by The Un-T Guy

Not only could I not fathom that I would ever be attending a tech event of the magnitude of TechEd, neither could any of my co-workers. As the least technical person in the history of Information Technology ever, I felt as though I were walking into the belly of the beast, fearing I’d not be allowed out until I could write SSIS packages, program in Visual Basic, or at least arm wrestle a DBA. Most of my fears were unrealized. But I made it. I was here. I even got to wear the Mark of the Geek neck package with schedule, eyeglass cleaners, name badge (company name obfuscated so they don’t fire me), and a pen. The name badge was seemingly the key element, as every vendor in the place wanted to scan it to capture name, email address, and numbers to show their bosses back home. It also let me eat the food and drink the coffee so that’s a fair trade. A recurring theme throughout the presentations and vendor demos was “the Cloud” and BYOD (bring your own device). The below was a common site throughout the week, as attendees from all over the world brought their own devices and were able to (seemingly) seamlessly connect to the Worldwide Innerwebs. Apparently proof that Microsoft and the event organizers were practicing what they were preaching. “Cavernous” is one way to describe the downstairs facility itself. “Freaking cavernous” might be more accurate. Work sessions were held in classrooms on the second and third floors but the real action was happening downstairs. Microsoft bookstore, blogger hub (shoutout to Geekswithblogs.net), The Wall (sans Pink Floyd, sadly), couches, recharging stations… …a game zone with pool and air hockey tables, pinball machines, foosball… …vintage video games… …and a even giant chess board. Looked like this guy was opening with the Kaspersky parry. The blend of technology and fantasy even went so far as to bring childhood favorites to life. Assuming, of course, your childhood was pre-video games (like mine) and you were stuck with electric football and Rock ‘em Sock ‘em robots: And, lest the “combatants” become unruly or – God forbid – afternoon snacks were late, Orange County’s finest was on the scene to keep the peace. On a high-tech mode of transport, of course. She wasn’t the only one to think this was a swell way to transition from one concourse to the next. Given the level of support provided by the entire Orange County Convention Center staff, I knew they had to have some secret. Here’s one entrance to the vendor zone/”Technical Learning Center.” Couldn’t help but think of them as the remora attached to the Whale Shark that is Microsoft… …or perhaps planets orbiting the sun. Microsoft is just that huge and it seemed like every vendor in the industry looks forward to partnering with the tech behemoth. Aside from the free stuff from the vendors, probably the most popular place in the house was the dining area. Amazing spreads every day, multiple times a day. While no attendance numbers were available at press time, literally thousands of attendees were fed, and fed well, every day. And lest you think my post from earlier in the week exaggerated about the backpacks… …or that I’m exaggerating about the lunch crowds. This represents only about between 25-30% of the lunch crowd – it was all my camera could capture at once. No one went away hungry. The only thing missing was a a vat of Red Bull but apparently organizers went old school, with probably 100 urns of the original energy drink – coffee – all around the venue. Of course, following lunch and afternoon sessions, some preferred the even older school method of re-energizing. There were rumors that Microsoft was serving graham crackers and milk in this area. But they were only rumors. Cannot overstate the wonderful service provided by the Orange County Convention Center staff. Coffee, soft drinks, juice, and water were available always. Buffet meals were delicious with a wide range of healthy options available, in addition to hundreds (at least) special meal requests supported every day. Ever tried to keep up with an estimated 9,000 hungry and thirsty IT-ers? These folks did. Kudos to all of the staff and many thanks! And while I occasionally poke fun at the Whale Shark, if nothing else this experience convinced me of one thing: Microsoft knows how to put on a professional event. Hundreds of informative, professionally delivered sessions, covering a wide range of topics set at varying levels of expertise (some that even I was able to follow), social activities, vendor partnerships…they brought everything you could ask for to inform, educate, and inspire an entire IT industry. So as I depart the belly of the beast, I can both take pride in the fact that I survived the week and marvel at the brilliance surrounding me. The IT industry – or at least the segment associated with Microsoft – is in good, professional hands. And what won’t fit in their hands can be toted in the Microsoft provided backpacks. Win-win. Until New Orleans…

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Review of Samsung Focus Windows Phone 7

- by mbcrump

I recently acquired a Samsung Focus Windows Phone 7 device from AT&T and wanted to share what I thought of it as an end-user. Before I get started, here are several of my write-ups for the Windows Phone 7. You may want to check out the second article titled: Hands-on WP7 Review of Prototype Hardware. From start to finish with the final version of Visual Studio Tools for Windows Phone 7 Hands-on : Windows Phone 7 Review on Prototype Hardware. Deploying your Windows Phone 7 Application to the actual hardware. Profile your Windows Phone 7 Application for Free Submitting a Windows Phone 7 Application to the Market. Samsung Focus i917 Phone Size: Perfect! I have been carrying around a Dell Streak (Android) and it is about half the size. It is really nice to have a phone that fits in your pocket without a lot of extra bulk. I bought a case for the Focus and it is still a perfect size. The phone just feels right. Screen: It has a beautiful Super AMOLED 480x800 screen. I only wish it supported a higher resolution. The colors are beautiful especially in an Xbox Live Game. 3G: I use AT&T and I've had spotty reception. This really can't be blamed on the phone as much as the actual carrier. Battery: I've had excellent battery life compared to my iPhone and Android devices. I usually use my phone throughout the day on and off and still have a charge at the end of the day. Camera/Video: I'm still looking for the option to send the video to YouTube or the Image to Twitter. The images look good, but the phone needs a forward facing camera. I like the iPhone/Android (Dell Streak) camera better. Built-in Speaker: Sounds great. It’s not a wimpy speaker that you cannot hear. CPU: Very smooth transitioning from one screen to another. The prototype Windows Phone 7 that I had, was no where near as smooth. (It was also running a slower processor though). OS: I actually like the OS but a few things could be better. CONS: Copy and Paste (Supposed to come in the next update) We need more apps (Pandora missing was a big one for me and Slacker’s advertisement sucks!). As time passes, and more developers get on board then this will be fixed. The browser needs some major work. I have tried to make cross-platform (WP7, Android, iPhone and iPad) web apps and the browser that ships with WP7 just can’t handle it. Apps need to be organized better. Instead of throw them all on one screen, it would help to allow the user to create categories. PROS: Hands down the best gaming experience on a phone. I have all three major phones (iphone, android and wp7). Nothing compares to the gaming experience on the WP7. The phone just works. I’ve had a LOT of glitches with my Android device. I’ve had maybe 2 with my WP7 device. Exchange and Office support are great. Nice integration with Twitter/Facebook and social media. Easy to navigate and find the information you need on one screen. Let’s look at a few pictures and we will wrap up with my final thoughts on the phone. WP7 Home Screen. Back of the phone is as stylish. It is hard to see due to the shadow but it is a very thin phone. What’s included? Manuals Ear buds Data Cable plus Power Adapter Phone Click a picture to enlarge So, what are my final thoughts on the Phone/OS? I love the Samsung Focus and would recommend it to anyone looking for a WP7 device. Like any first generation product, you need to give it a little while to mature. Right now the phone is missing several features that we are all used to using. That doesn’t mean a year from now it will be in the same situation. (I sure hope we won’t). If you are looking to get into mobile development, I believe WP7 is the easiest platform to develop from. This is especially true if you have a background in Silverlight or WPF. Subscribe to my feed

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HR According to Batman

- by D'Arcy Lussier

Any idea who that guy is running alongside the Caped Crusader? That’s Nightwing, but you may know him as Robin…well, the first Robin anyway. There were actually like 5 Robin’s according to Wikipedia: Dick Grayson, the original, who’s parents were circus performers killed by a gangster. Jason Todd, who was caught trying to steal tires off of the Batmobile. Tim Drake, who saw Dick’s parents die and figured out who Batman and Robin were. and a few others that get into recent time travel/altered reality storylines. What does this have to do with HR? Well, it somewhat ties in with an article by Alex Papadimoulis from 2008. In the article he talks about the “Cravath System”. The Craveth system was developed by a law firm called Cravath, Swaine & Moore back in the 19th century. In a nutshell, they believed in hiring the best and brightest straight out of school. These aspiring lawyers would then begin a fight for survival in the firm, with the strong surviving. In what’s termed the “Up and Out” rule, employees needed to be promoted within 3 years or leave the company. They should achieve partner within 7 – 8 years and no later than 10 after initially coming on board (read all about the system on Wikipedia here). Back to Alex’s article, he quotes from a book published in 1947 about the lawfirm: Under the “Cravath system” of taking a substantial number of men annually and keeping a current constantly moving up in the office, and its philosophy of tenure, men are constantly leaving… it is often difficult to keep the best men long enough to determine whether they shall be made partners, for Cravath-trained men are always in demand, usually at premium salaries. And so we see a pattern forming here: 1. Hire a whole whack of smart college graduates 2. Put them to work 3. The ones that stick around should move up the ladder. The ones that don’t stick around served the company well and left to expound the quality of the Cravath firm. Those that didn’t fall into either of those categories were just let go. There’s some interesting undercurrents to these ideas. If you stick around, you better keep your feet moving! I was at a Microsoft shindig a few months back, and was talking to a Microsoft employee. He shared that at MS you have 5 years to achieve a “senior” position within the company. Once you hit that mark, you can stay there for the rest of your career (he told about a guy who’s a “senior” developer and has been for the last 20+ years working on audio drivers for Windows), but you *must* hit that mark within the timeframe. What we see with Microsoft is Cravath’s system in action, whether intentional or not: bring in smart young people and see which ones stick. You need to give people something to work towards. Saying “You must reach this level or else!” is one way to look at it. The other way is to see achieving a higher rank in the organization as something for ambitious employees to reach towards. It’s important for an organization to always have the next generation of executives waiting in the wings, and unless you’re encouraging that early on you may find yourself in a position of needing to fill positions that nobody has been working towards. Now, you might suggest that this isn’t that big of a deal because you could just hire someone from outside the organization, but the Cravath system holds to the tenet of promoting internally; develop your own talent, since your business is the best place for the future leadership to learn teh business from. It’s OK for people to quit. Alex’s article really drives this point home, but its worth noting here also: its OK for your people to quit. In fact its inevitable…and more inevitable that it’ll be good people that leave. Some will stay and work towards the internal awards of promotion, but a number will get experience, serve the organization well, and then move on to something else. This should be expected and treated as a natural business occurrence. The idea of an alumni of an organization begins to come into play here: “That guy used to work for <insert company here>”. There’s a benefit in that: those best and brightest will be drawn to your organization and your reputation will permeate your market through former staff that are sought after because of how well you nurtured them. The Batman Hook All of this brings us back to Batman and his HR practice: when Dick decided he’d had enough of the Robin schtick, he quit and became his own…but he was always associated with Batman and people understood where his training had come from. To the Dark Knight’s credit, he continued training partners under the Robin brand. Luckily he didn’t have to worry about firing any of them (the ship sort of sails when you reveal a secret identity), although there was that unfortunate “quitting” of the second Robin when the Joker blew him up…but regardless, we see the Cravath system at work: bring in talent, expect great things, and be ok with whatever they decide for their careers. It’s an interesting way to approach HR, and luckily for us our business isn’t as dangerous or over-the-top as the caped crusader’s.

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SQL Saturday #44 Huntington Beach Recap

What a great day. It was long and tiring, but rewarding in so many ways. On Sunday morning, I was driving home and I decided to take the Pacific Coast Highway from Huntington Beach. It was a great chance to exhale and just enjoy the sun and smells of the beach (I really love SoCal sometimes). And for future reference for all you speakers, the beach and ocean are only 5 minutes from the SQL Saturday location. I just could help noticing also the shocking number of high priced cars on the road (4 Bentleys, 3 Ferraris, 1 Aston Martins, 3 Maserati, 1 Rolls Royce, and 2 Lamborghinis). It made me think about this: Price of all those cars: $ 150,000+. Impacting the ability of people to learn: Priceless. We have positively impacted the education, knowledge, capabilities of not only our attendees, but also all of their companies and people they might help as well. That is just staggering and something to be immensely proud of. To all of my fellow community leaders, I salute you. So lets talk about the event Overall We had over 220 people register for the event and had 180+ people attend the event. I was shooting for the magical 200 number, but I guess it just gives us more motivation to make it even bigger and better next time. We had a few snags along the way, but what event doesnt, but I think everything turned out great. I did not hear any negative comments and heard lots of positive comments along with people asking when the next one is going to be (More on that later). Location- Golden West College We could not have asked for a better partner for the event. Herb Cohen from Golden West College was the wizard behind the curtains. From the beginning, he was our advocate to the GWC Board and was instrumental in getting our event approved. The day off, Herb was a HUGE help getting any and all logistics that we needed taken care of. In the craziness of the early morning registration crush it was a big help knowing that he and Bret Stateham (Blog | Twitter) were taking care of testing projectors in all the rooms. Anything we needed he was there and was even proactive in getting some things that I had not even thought of (i.e. a dumpster for all of our garbage). I cannot thank Herb enough along with other members of the GWC staff including Minnie Higgins of the Career and Technical Education Division office, Jack Taylor, public safety, and Ron Pryor, Tech Services Support. And last, but not least, the Wireless on campus was absolutely FANTASTIC! Some lessons learned Unless you are a glutton for punishment, as I no doubt am, you most certainly want to give yourself more than six weeks to plan the event. I am lucky that I have a very understanding wife and had a wonderful set of co-coordinators helping me out. A big thanks goes out to Phil, Marlon (Blog | Twitter), Nitin (Twitter), Thomas (Blog | Twitter), Bret (Blog | Twitter), Ben, and Laurie. Thankfully, the sponsor and speaker community was hugely supportive and we were able to fill out the entire event with speakers and sponsors. I have to say that there is not a lot that I would change after this years event. There are obviously going to be some things that we can do better or differently next time, but overall I think it was a great event and I was more than happy with the response we received from the community. Sponsors We obviously could not have put together our event without our sponsors. So certainly have to show them some love. Platinum Sponsors Quest Software http://www.quest.com My Space http://www.myspace.com/ Gold Strategy Companion http://www.strategycompanion.com Silver Fusion-IO http://www.fusionio.com Bronze WestClinTech http://westclintech.com Professional Association For SQL Server http://www.sqlpass.org Attunity http://www.attunity.com Sharepoint 360 http://www.sharepoint360.com Some additional Thanks Andy Warren (Blog | Twitter) Always there to answer my question and help out when I had some issues or questions with the website. The amount of work that he and everyone else put into SQL Saturday is very amazing. What a great gift to the community! Einstein Bros. Bagels They were our Breakfast Vendor and arrived perfectly on time with yummy bagels, sweets and most importantly coffee. Luccis Deli (http://www.luccisdeli.com) Luccis was out Lunch Vendor. They were great to work with and the food was excellent. They worked with us to give us a great price. Heard lots of great comments about the lunches. Definitely not your ordinary box lunch. Moving Forward Unfortunately, the work does not end after the event. We have a few things to clear up such as surveys, sponsor stuff, presentations uploaded to the website, expense reimbursement, stuff like that. Hopefully, all that should be cleared up within the next couple weeks. After that as a group we are going to get together and decide what our next steps are. We definitely want to keep some of the momentum that we are building as a SQL Community and channel that into future SQL Saturdays and other types of community events. In the meantime, for additional training be sure to check out your local User Group and PASS. San Diego SQL Server Users Group ( http://www.sdsqlug.org/home/index.cfm ) Orange County SQL Server Users Group ( http://www.sqloc.com/ ) L.A. SQL Server Users Group ( http://www.sql.la/ ) SQL PASS ( http://www.sqlpass.org/ ) 24 Hours of PASS ( http://www.sqlpass.org/24hours/2010/ ) So stay tuned, there will be more events to come in SoCal!!Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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Identity Management Monday at Oracle OpenWorld

- by Tanu Sood

What a great start to Oracle OpenWorld! Did you catch Larry Ellison’s keynote last evening? As expected, it was a packed house and the keynote received a tremendous response both from the live audience as well as the online community as evidenced by the frequent spontaneous applause in house and the twitter buzz. Here’s but a sampling of some of the tweets that flowed in: @paulvallee: I freaking love that #oracle has been born again in it's interest in core tech #oow (so good for #pythian) @rwang0: MyPOV: #oracle just leapfrogged the competition on the tech front across the board. All they need is the content delivery network #oow12 @roh1: LJE more astute & engaging this year. Nice announcements this year with 12c the MTDB sounding real good. #oow12 @brooke: Cool to see @larryellison interrupted multiple times by applause from the audience. Great speaker. #OOW And there’s lot more to come this week. Identity Management sessions kick-off today. Here’s a quick preview of what’s in store for you today for Identity Management: CON9405: Trends in Identity Management 10:45 a.m. – 11:45 a.m., Moscone West 3003 Hear directly from subject matter experts from Kaiser Permanente and SuperValu who would share the stage with Amit Jasuja, Senior Vice President, Oracle Identity Management and Security, to discuss how the latest advances in Identity Management that made it in Oracle Identity Management 11g Release 2 are helping customers address emerging requirements for securely enabling cloud, social and mobile environments. CON9492: Simplifying your Identity Management Implementation 3:15 p.m. – 4:15 p.m., Moscone West 3008 Implementation experts from British Telecom, Kaiser Permanente and UPMC participate in a panel to discuss best practices, key strategies and lessons learned based on their own experiences. Attendees will hear first-hand what they can do to streamline and simplify their identity management implementation framework for a quick return-on-investment and maximum efficiency. This session will also explore the architectural simplifications of Oracle Identity Governance 11gR2, focusing on how these enhancements simply deployments. CON9444: Modernized and Complete Access Management 4:45 p.m. – 5:45 p.m., Moscone West 3008 We have come a long way from the days of web single sign-on addressing the core business requirements. Today, as technology and business evolves, organizations are seeking new capabilities like federation, token services, fine grained authorizations, web fraud prevention and strong authentication. This session will explore the emerging requirements for access management, what a complete solution is like, complemented with real-world customer case studies from ETS, Kaiser Permanente and TURKCELL and product demonstrations. HOL10478: Complete Access Management Monday, October 1, 1:45 p.m. – 2:45 p.m., Marriott Marquis - Salon 1/2 And, get your hands on technology today. Register and attend the Hands-On-Lab session that demonstrates Oracle’s complete and scalable access management solution, which includes single sign-on, authorization, federation, and integration with social identity providers. Further, the session shows how to securely extend identity services to mobile applications and devices—all while leveraging a common set of policies and a single instance. Product Demonstrations The latest technology in Identity Management is also being showcased in the Exhibition Hall so do find some time to visit our product demonstrations there. Experts will be at hand to answer any questions. DEMOS LOCATION EXHIBITION HALL HOURS Access Management: Complete and Scalable Access Management Moscone South, Right - S-218 Monday, October 1 9:30 a.m.–6:00 p.m. 9:30 a.m.–10:45 a.m. (Dedicated Hours) Tuesday, October 2 9:45 a.m.–6:00 p.m. 2:15 p.m.–2:45 p.m. (Dedicated Hours) Wednesday, October 3 9:45 a.m.–4:00 p.m. 2:15 p.m.–3:30 p.m. (Dedicated Hours) Access Management: Federating and Leveraging Social Identities Moscone South, Right - S-220 Access Management: Mobile Access Management Moscone South, Right - S-219 Access Management: Real-Time Authorizations Moscone South, Right - S-217 Access Management: Secure SOA and Web Services Security Moscone South, Right - S-223 Identity Governance: Modern Administration and Tooling Moscone South, Right - S-210 Identity Management Monitoring with Oracle Enterprise Manager Moscone South, Right - S-212 Oracle Directory Services Plus: Performant, Cloud-Ready Moscone South, Right - S-222 Oracle Identity Management: Closed-Loop Access Certification Moscone South, Right - S-221 We recommend you keep the Focus on Identity Management document handy. And don’t forget, if you are not on site, you can catch all the keynotes LIVE from the comfort of your desk on YouTube.com/Oracle. Keep the conversation going on @oracleidm. Use #OOW and #IDM and get engaged today. Photo Courtesy: @OracleOpenWorld

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Winners of the Oracle Excellence Award—Eco-Enterprise Innovation

- by Evelyn Neumayr

Did you get a chance to attend Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco? With 60,000 attendees and hundreds of sessions to choose from—there was a lot going on. One of my favorite sessions was the Eco-Enterprise Awards and Sustainability Executive Panel Discussion. During this session, Jeff Henley, Oracle Chairman of the Board, announced the winners of the 2013 Oracle Excellence Award—Eco-Enterprise Innovation. It was an enlightening session as we heard several of the winning customers discuss the importance of sustainability to their company and how they’re using various Oracle products to help with their sustainability initiatives. The winning customers include: Centennial Coal, Indaver nv, Korea Enterprise Data, National Guard Health Affairs, Schneider National, SThree, Telstra International Group, Trex Company, University of Salzburg, Walmart, and Yeoncheon County Office. Stay tuned for additional blogs where you’ll learn more about these winning companies’ environmental best practices and why they won this award. 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; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Several partners were also recognized for helping these customers with their sustainability initiatives. Those partners include: CSS International, Daesang Information Technology, i4BI, Infosys, Knowledge Global, Solutions for Retails Brands Limited, and SysGen. During this same session, Jeff Henley also awarded Robert Kaplan, Director of Sustainability at Walmart, with Oracle’s Chief Sustainability Officer of the Year award. Robert was honored for helping improve Walmart’s supply chain efficiency with their Sustainability Hub. The Sustainability Hub, powered by Oracle Service Cloud, is a central location for Walmart suppliers, associates and business partners to learn, connect, inspire and drive sustainability through collaboration. While at Oracle OpenWorld, I also got a chance to hear Robert Kaplan discuss their Sustainability Hub during an Oracle OpenWorld Live taping. 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; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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PASS Summit 2010 Recap

- by AjarnMark

Last week I attended my eighth PASS Summit in nine years, and every year it is a fantastic event! I was fortunate my first year to have a contact (Bill Graziano (blog | Twitter) from SQLTeam) that I was expecting to meet, and who got me started on a good track of making new contacts. Each year I have made a few more, and renewed friendships from years past. Many of the attendees agree that the pure networking opportunities are one of the best benefits of attending the Summit. And there’s a lot of great technical stuff, too, some of the things that stick out for me this year include… Pre-Con Monday: PowerShell with Allen White (blog | Twitter). This was the first time that I attended a pre-con. For those not familiar with the concept, the regular sessions for the conference are 75-90 minutes long. For an extra fee, you can attend a full-day session on a single topic during a pre- or post-conference training day. I had been meaning for several months to dive in and learn PowerShell, but just never seemed to find (or make) the time for it, so when I saw this was one of the all-day sessions, and I was planning to be there on Monday anyway, I decided to go for it. And it was well worth it! I definitely came out of there with a good foundation to build my own PowerShell scripts, plus several sample scripts that he showed which already cover the first four or five things I was planning to do with PowerShell anyway. This looks like the right tool for me to build an automated version of our software deployment process, which right now contains many repeated steps. Thanks Allen! Service Broker with Denny Cherry (blog | Twitter). I remembered reading Denny’s blog post on Using Service Broker instead of Replication, and ever since then I have been thinking about using this to populate a new reporting-focused Data Repository that we will be building in the near future. When I saw he was doing this session, I thought it would be great to get more information and be able to ask the author questions. When I brought this idea back to my boss, he really liked it, as we had previously been discussing doing nightly data loads, with an option to manually trigger a mid-day load if up-to-the-minute data was needed for something. If we go the Service Broker route, we can keep the Repository current in near real-time. Hooray! DBA Mythbusters with Paul Randal (blog | Twitter). Even though I read every one of the posts in Paul’s blog series of the same name, I had to go see the legend in person. It was great, and I still learned something new! How to Conduct Effective Meetings with Joe Webb (blog | Twitter). I always like to sit in on a session that Joe does. I met Joe several years ago when both he and Bill Graziano were on the PASS Board of Directors together, and we have kept in touch. Joe is very well-spoken and has great experience with both SQL Server and business. And we could certainly use some pointers at my work (probably yours, too) on making our meetings more effective and to run on-time. Of course, now that I’m the Chapter Leader for the Professional Development virtual chapter, I also had to sit in on this ProfDev session and recruit Joe to do a presentation or two for the chapter next year. Query Optimization with David DeWitt. Anyone who has seen Dr. David DeWitt present the 3rd keynote at a PASS Summit over the last three years knows what a great time it is to sit and listen to him make some really complicated and advanced topic easy to understand (although it still makes your head hurt). It still amazes me that the simple two-table join query from pubs that he used in his example can possibly have 22 million possible physical query plans. Ouch! Exhibit Hall: This year I spent more serious time in the exhibit hall than any year past. I have talked my boss into making a significant (for us) investment in monitoring tools next year, and this was a great opportunity to talk with all the big-hitters. Readers of mine may recall that I fell in love with the SQL Sentry Power Suite several months ago and wrote a blog entry about it just from the trial version. Well as things turned out, short-term budget priorities shifted, and we weren’t able to make the purchase then. I have it in the budget for next year, but since I was going to the Summit, my boss wanted me to look at the other options to see if this was really the one that we wanted. I spent a couple of hours talking with representatives from Red-Gate, Idera, Confio, and Quest about their offerings, and giving them each the same 3 scenarios that I wanted to be able to accomplish based on the questions and issues that arise in our company. It was interesting to discover the different approaches or “world view” that each vendor takes to the subject of performance monitoring and troubleshooting. I may write a separate article that goes into this in more depth, but the product that best aligned with our point of view, and met the current needs we have is still the SQL Sentry Power Suite. I’m not saying that the others are bad or wrong or anything like that, just that the way they tackled the issue did not align as well with our particular needs as does SQL Sentry’s product. And that was something I learned too, when you go shopping for these products, you really need to know what you want to get from them. It’s best if you have a few example scenarios from work that you can use to test out how well each tool fits your particular needs. Overall, another GREAT event. I can’t wait to get the DVDs so I can sit in on a bunch of other sessions that I couldn’t get to because I was in one of the ones above. And I can hardly wait until next year!

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JavaOne Afterglow by Simon Ritter

- by JuergenKress

Last week was the eighteenth JavaOne conference and I thought it would be a good idea to write up my thoughts about how things went. Firstly thanks to Yoshio Terada for the photos, I didn't bother bringing a camera with me so it's good to have some pictures to add to the words. Things kicked off full-throttle on Sunday. We had the Java Champions and JUG leaders breakfast, which was a great way to meet up with a lot of familiar faces and start talking all things Java. At midday the show really started with the Strategy and Technical Keynotes. This was always going to be tougher job than some years because there was no big shiny ball to reveal to the audience. With the Java EE 7 spec being finalised a few months ago and Java SE 8, Java ME 8 and JDK8 not due until the start of next year there was not going to be any big announcement. I thought both keynotes worked really well each focusing on the things most important to Java developers: Strategy One of the things that is becoming more and more prominent in many companies marketing is the Internet of Things (IoT). We've moved from the conventional desktop/laptop environment to much more mobile connected computing with smart phones and tablets. The next wave of the internet is not just billions of people connected, but 10s or 100s of billions of devices connected to the network, all generating data and providing much more precise control of almost any process you can imagine. This ties into the ideas of Big Data and Cloud Computing, but implementation is certainly not without its challenges. As Peter Utzschneider explained it's about three Vs: Volume, Velocity and Value. All these devices will create huge volumes of data at very high speed; to avoid being overloaded these devices will need some sort of processing capabilities that can filter the useful data from the redundant. The raw data then needs to be turned into useful information that has value. To make this happen will require applications on devices, at gateways and on the back-end servers, all very tightly integrated. This is where Java plays a pivotal role, write once, run everywhere becomes essential, having nine million developers fluent in the language makes it the defacto lingua franca of IoT. There will be lots more information on how this will become a reality, so watch this space. Technical How do we make the IoT a reality, technically? Using the game of chess Mark Reinhold, with the help of people like John Ceccarelli, Jasper Potts and Richard Bair, showed what you could do. Using Java EE on the back end, Java SE and JavaFX on the desktop and Java ME Embedded and JavaFX on devices they showed a complete end-to-end demo. This was really impressive, using 3D features from JavaFX 8 (that's included with JDK8) to make a 3D animated Duke chess board. Jasper also unveiled the "DukePad" a home made tablet using a Raspberry Pi, touch screen and accelerometer. Although the Raspberry Pi doesn't have earth shattering CPU performance (about the same level as a mid 1990s Pentium), it does have really quite good GPU performance so the GUI works really well. The plans are all open sourced and available here. One small, but very significant announcement was that Java SE will now be included with the NOOB and Raspbian Linux distros provided by the Raspberry Pi foundation (these can be found here). No more hassle having to download and install the JDK after you've flashed your SD card OS image. The finale was the Raspberry Pi powered chess playing robot. Really very, very cool. I talked to Jasper about this and he told me each of the chess pieces had been 3D printed and then he had to use acetone to give them a glossy finish (not sure what his wife thought of him spending hours in the kitchen in a gas mask!) The way the robot arm worked was very impressive as it did not have any positioning data (like a potentiometer connected to each motor), but relied purely on carefully calibrated timings to get the arm to the right place. Having done things like this myself in the past I know how easy it is to find a small error gets magnified into very big mistakes. Here's some pictures from the keynote: The "Dukepad" architecture Nice clear perspex case so you can see the innards. The very nice 3D chess set. Maya's obviously a great tool. Read the full article here. WebLogic Partner Community For regular information become a member in the WebLogic Partner Community please visit: http://www.oracle.com/partners/goto/wls-emea ( OPN account required). If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Wiki Technorati Tags: Simon Ritter,Java One,OOW,Oracle OpenWorld,WebLogic,WebLogic Community,Oracle,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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Gene Hunt Says:

- by BizTalk Visionary

"She's as nervous as a very small nun at a penguin shoot" "He's got fingers in more pies than a leper on a cookery course" "You so much as belch out of line and I'll have your scrotum on a barbed wire plate" "Let's go play slappyface" "your surrounded by armed barstewards" “Right, get out and find this murdering scum right now!” [pause] “Scratch that, we start 9am sharp tomorrow, it's beer-o-clock.” "So then Cartwright, you're such a good Detective.... Go and Detect me a packet of Garibaldies" "You're not the one who is going to have to knit himself a new arsehole after 25 years of aggressive male love in prison" “A dream for me is Diana Dors and a bottle of chip fat." “A dream for me is Diana Dors and a bottle of chip fat." “They reckon you've got concussion - but personally, I couldn't give a tart's furry cup if half your brains are falling out. Don't ever waltz into my kingdom playing king of the jungle.” “You great... soft... sissy... girlie... nancy... french... bender... Man-United supporting POOF!!” “Drugs eh? What's the point. They make you forget, make you talk funny, make you see things that aren't there. My old grandma got all of that for free when she had a stroke.” “He's Dead! It's quite serious!” “Fanny in the flat...Nice Work” “SoopaDoopa” “Tits in a Jumper!” “Drop your weapons! You are surrounded by armed bastards!” “It's 1973, almost dinnertime. I'm 'avin 'oops!” “Trust the Gene Genie!” “I wanna hump Britt Ekland...What're we gonna do...!” “Was that 'E' and you don't know the rest?! or you going 'Eeee, I Dunno'” “Good Girl! Prostate probe and no jelly. “ “Give over, it's nothing like Spain!” “I'll come over your houses and stamp on all your toys!” “The Wizard will sort it out. It's cos of the wonderful things he does” “Cartwright can jump up and down on his knackers!” “It's not a windup love, he really thinks like this!” “Women! You can't say two words to them” “I was thinking, maybe, a Berni Inn!” “If I wanted a bollocking for drinking too much...!” “Shhhh...hear that...that's the sound of this case being closed! “Chicken!? In a basket!?” “Seems a large quantity of cocaine...” “You probably thought he kept his cock in his keks!” “The tail-end of Rays demotion speech!” “Stephen Warren is gay!?” “You're a smart boy, use your initiative!” “Don't be such a Jessie!” “I find the idea of a bird brushing her teeth...!” “Never been tempted to the Magic talcum powder?” “Make sure she's got nice tits!” “You're more likely to find an ostrich with a plum up it's arse!” “Drink this lot under the table and have a pint on the way home!” “Never be a female Prime Minister!” “Pub? Pub! pub!.....Pub!” “Thou shalt not suck off rent boys!” “The number for the special clinic is on the notice board!” “If me uncle had tits, would he be me auntie!” “Got your vicars in a twist!” “We Done?!” “Your mates got balls...If they were any bigger he'd need a wheelbarrow!” “The Ending - from 'I want to go home' to the end music.”

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What's going on with INETA and the Regional Speakers Bureau?

- by Chris Williams

For those of you that have been waiting patiently (and not so patiently) I'm happy to say that we're very near completion on some changes/enhancements/improvements that will allow us to finally go live with the INETA Regional Speakers Bureau. I know quite a few of you have already registered, which is great (though some of you may need to come back and update your info) and we've had a few folks submit requests, mostly in a test capacity, but soon we'll be up and live. Here's how it breaks down. Be sure to read this, because things have changed a bit from when we initially announced it. 1. The majority of our speaker/event funding is going into the Regional Speakers Bureau. The National Bureau still exists, but it's a good bit smaller than it was before, and it's not an "every group" benefit anymore. We'll be using the National Bureau as more of a strategic task force, targeting high impact events and areas that need some community building love from INETA. These will be identified and handled on a case by case basis, and may include more than just user group events. 2. You're going to get more events per group, per year than you did before. Not only are we focusing more resources on this program, but we're also making a lot of efforts to use it more effectively. With the INETA Regional Speakers Bureau, you should be able to get 2-3 INETA speakers per year, on average. Not every geographical area will have exactly the same experience, but we're doing the best we can. 3. It's not a farm team program for the National Bureau. Unsurprisingly, I managed to offend a number of people when I previously made the comment that the Regional Speakers Bureau program was a farm team or stepping stone to the National Bureau. It was a poor choice of words. Anyone can participate in the Regional Speakers Bureau, and I look forward to working with all of you. 4. There is assistance for your efforts. The exact final details are still being hammered out, but expect it to look something like this: (all distances listed are based on a round trip) Distances < 120 miles = $0 121 miles - 240 miles = $50 (effectively 1 to 2 hours, each way) 241 miles - 360 miles = $100 (effectively 2 to 3 hours, each way) 361 miles - 480 miles = $200 (effectively 3 to 4 hours, each way) For those of you who travel a lot, we're working on a solution to handle group visits when you're away from home. These will (for now) be handled on a case by case basis. 5. We're going to make it as easy as possible to work with the program. In order to do this, we need a few things from you. For speakers, that means your home address. It also means (maybe) filling out a simple 1 line expense report via the INETA website. For user groups, it means making sure your meeting address is up to date as well. 6. Distances will be automatically calculated from your home of record to the user group event and back. We realize that this is not a perfect solution to every instance, but we're not paying you to speak at an event, and you won't be taxed on this money. It's simply some assistance to make your community efforts easier. Our way of saying thanks for everything you do. 7. Sounds good so far, what's the catch? There's always a catch, right? In this case there are two of them: 1) At this time, Microsoft employees are welcome to use the website to line up speaking engagements with user groups, but are not eligible for financial assistance. 2) Anyone can register and use the website to line up speaking engagements with user groups, however you must receive and maintain a net score of 3+ positive ratings (we're implementing a thumbs up / thumbs down system) in order to receive financial assistance. These ratings are provided by the User Group leaders after the meeting has taken place. 8. Involvement by the User Group leaders is a key factor in the success of this program. Your job isn't done once you request a speaker. After you've had your meeting, it's critical that you go back to the website and take a very small survey. Doing this ensures that the speaker gets rated (and compensated if eligible) and also ensures that you can make another request, since you won't be able to make a new request if you have an old one outstanding. 9. What about Canada? We're definitely working on that. Unfortunately nothing new to report on that front, other than to say that we're trying. So... this is where things stand currently. We're working very quickly to get this in place and get speakers and groups together. If you have any questions, please leave a comment below and I'll answer them as quickly as possible. If I've forgotten anything, or if things change, I'll update it here. Thanks, Chris G. Williams INETA Board of Directors

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Meet our 2009 Oracle Graduates in South Africa

- by anca.rosu

Focusing on the broader Oracle community, Oracle South Africa initiated its first skills development programme in May 1988. Since its inception the programme has developed and improved and every year more graduates are taken on board. The Oracle Graduate Programme is made up of specific learning paths designed around customer, partner and Oracle specifications and is structured to meet the urgent skills requirements in the Oracle “economy”. The training programmes have a specific duration and incorporate both theoretical and practical application of Oracle product sets. It is aimed at creating: Meaningful employment for graduates; Learning opportunities for individuals within the organization so that career growth opportunities are exploited to the fullest; Capacity building for small enterprises which is aligned to Oracle’s Enterprise Development Programme Meet our five graduates who joined us in December 2008 and have spent over a year with us! Let’s get their initial feedback on the graduate programme and on their assignment to Jordan. Lector On the Oracle Graduate Programme: “The Oracle Graduate Programme is an experience of a life time. I would not trade it for anything. It’s challenging and rewarding. I am proud and happy to be in an organization like Oracle” On the assignment in Jordan: "Friendly, welcoming people, world class instructors always willing to go the extra mile. What more can you ask for?" Lungile On the Oracle Graduate Programme: “I joined Oracle as part of the graduate intake for pre-sales in order to develop my skills and knowledge. Working at Oracle has been an overwhelmingly positive experience as it has encouraged me to progress with my personal development. I am hugely grateful. It has been a great challenge and an awesome opportunity.” On the assignment to Jordan: “Going to Jordan was a great opportunity and the experience of a lifetime. The people were very welcoming and friendly. The culture was totally different from ours - the food, the clothes and the weather. It was an amazingly different experience to work from Sunday to Thursday with Friday and Saturday as the weekend.” Thabo On the Oracle Graduate Programme: “Life is an infinite learning path. I truly value growth. I believe for one to grow, one needs to be challenged to your full potential. The Oracle Graduate Programme offers real growth – and so much more.” On the assignment to Jordan: “I was amazed by the cultural differences. I now understood that to be part of the global community, I must embrace our similarities and understand our differences.” Albeauty On the Oracle Graduate Programme: “Responsibility, dedication, focus and taking initiative … these are the key points I learned from Oracle. It is such an honour to finally be part of the Oracle family. The graduate programme itself was a great experience as I managed to learn how Oracle operates – it has been the highlight of my year. I believe that my hard work will assist in the growth of the company.” On the Jordan assignment: “A memory worth embracing. Going to Jordan was a great opportunity as I learned a lot with respect to integration between different cultures and getting to adapt to all things different. I, along with almost every other graduate, discovered that Oracle is far more than a database company. Now I know there is far more to the ‘Big Red’ name.” Emmanuel On the Oracle Graduate Programme: “The programme gave me invaluable exposure to the ICT sector and also provided an opportunity to travel, network and exchange ideas with others. The formal training helped me to improve my presentation skills and gave me a better understanding of business etiquette and communication.” On the assignment to Jordan: “It was my first trip abroad. It was a great chance to get to know each other. I had the opportunity to share ideas, share personal stuff as a team. We met experts who gave us superb training in Oracle Technologies. It was great.” If you have any questions related to this article feel free to contact [email protected]. You can find our job opportunities via http://campus.oracle.com. Technorati Tags: Oracle community,South Africa,Graduate Programme,Jordan,Technologies

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Towards an F# .NET Reflector add-in

- by CliveT

When I had the opportunity to spent some time during Red Gate's recent "down tools" week on a project of my choice, the obvious project was an F# add-in for Reflector . To be honest, this was a bit of a misnomer as the amount of time in the designated week for coding was really less than three days, so it was always unlikely that very much progress would be made in such a small amount of time (and that certainly proved to be the case), but I did learn some things from the experiment. Like lots of problems, one useful technique is to take examples, get them to work, and then generalise to get something that works across the board. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough time to do the last stage. The obvious first step is to take a few function definitions, starting with the obvious hello world, moving on to a non-recursive function and finishing with the ubiquitous recursive Fibonacci function. let rec printMessage message = printfn message let foo x = (x + 1) let rec fib x = if (x >= 2) then (fib (x - 1) + fib (x - 2)) else 1 The major problem in decompiling these simple functions is that Reflector has an in-memory object model that is designed to support object-oriented languages. In particular it has a return statement that allows function bodies to finish early. I used some of the in-built functionality to take the IL and produce an in-memory object model for the language, but then needed to write a transformer to push the return statements to the top of the tree to make it easy to render the code into a functional language. This tree transform works in some scenarios, but not in others where we simply regenerate code that looks more like CPS style. The next thing to get working was library level bindings of values where these values are calculated at runtime. let x = [1 ; 2 ; 3 ; 4] let y = List.map (fun x -> foo x) x The way that this is translated into a set of classes for the underlying platform means that the code needs to follow references around, from the property exposing the calculated value to the class in which the code for generating the value is embedded. One of the strongest selling points of functional languages is the algebraic datatypes, which allow definitions via standard mathematical-style inductive definitions across the union cases. type Foo = | Something of int | Nothing type 'a Foo2 = | Something2 of 'a | Nothing2 Such a definition is compiled into a number of classes for the cases of the union, which all inherit from a class representing the type itself. It wasn't too hard to get such a de-compilation happening in the cases I tried. What did I learn from this? Firstly, that there are various bits of functionality inside Reflector that it would be useful for us to allow add-in writers to access. In particular, there are various implementations of the Visitor pattern which implement algorithms such as calculating the number of references for particular variables, and which perform various substitutions which could be more generally useful to add-in writers. I hope to do something about this at some point in the future. Secondly, when you transform a functional language into something that runs on top of an object-based platform, you lose some fidelity in the representation. The F# compiler leaves attributes in place so that tools can tell which classes represent classes from the source program and which are there for purposes of the implementation, allowing the decompiler to regenerate these constructs again. However, decompilation technology is a long way from being able to take unannotated IL and transform it into a program in a different language. For a simple function definition, like Fibonacci, I could write a simple static function and have it come out in F# as the same function, but it would be practically impossible to take a mass of class definitions and have a decompiler translate it automatically into an F# algebraic data type. What have we got out of this? Some data on the feasibility of implementing an F# decompiler inside Reflector, though it's hard at the moment to say how long this would take to do. The work we did is included the 6.5 EAP for Reflector that you can get from the EAP forum. All things considered though, it was a useful way to gain more familiarity with the process of writing an add-in and understand difficulties other add-in authors might experience. If you'd like to check out a video of Down Tools Week, click here.

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Oracle Delivers Latest Release of Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c

- by Scott McNeil

Richer Service Catalog for Database and Middleware as a Service; Enhanced Database and Middleware Management Help Drive Enterprise-Scale Private Cloud Adoption News Summary IT organizations are adopting private clouds as a stepping-stone to business-driven, self-service IT. Successful implementations hinge on the ability to efficiently deploy and manage cloud services at enterprise scale. Having a complete cloud management solution integrated with an enterprise-class technology stack is a fundamental requirement for IT. Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Release 4 meets that requirement by helping businesses become more agile and responsive, while reducing cost, complexity, and risk. News Facts Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Release 4, available today, lets organizations rapidly adopt Oracle-based, enterprise-scale private clouds. New capabilities provide advanced technology stack management, secure database administration, and enterprise service governance, enabling Oracle customers and partners to maximize database and application performance and drive innovation using self-service IT platforms. The enhancements have been driven by customers and the growing Oracle Enterprise Manager Ecosystem, comprised of more than 750 Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) Specialized partners. Oracle and its partners and customers have built over 140 plug-ins and connectors for Oracle Enterprise Manager. Watch the video highlights. Automation for Broader Cloud Services Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Release 4 allows for a rapid enterprise-wide adoption of database, middleware and infrastructure services in the private cloud, driven by an enhanced API-enabled service catalog. The release features “push button” style provisioning of complete environments such as SOA and Oracle Active Data Guard, and fast data cloning that enables rapid deployment and testing of enterprise applications. Out-of-the-box capabilities to detect data and configuration vulnerabilities provide enhanced cloud service governance along with greater operational control through a flexible and extensible showback mechanism. Enhanced Database Management A new performance warehouse enables predictive database diagnostics and trend analysis and helps identify database problems before they occur. New enterprise data-governance capabilities enhance security by helping systematically discover and protect sensitive data. Step-by-step orchestration of upgrades with the ability to rollback changes enables faster adoption of Oracle Database 12c. Expanded Fusion Middleware Management A new consolidated view of Oracle Fusion Middleware 12c deployments with a guided management capability lets administrators apply best management practices to diverse middleware environments and identify performance issues quickly. A Java VM Diagnostics as a Service feature allows governed access to diagnostics data for IT workers across multiple disciplines for accelerated DevOps resolutions of defects and performance optimization. New automated provisioning for SOA lets middleware administrators perform mass SOA provisioning with ease. Superior Enterprise-Grade Management Private roles and preferred credentials have been added to Oracle Enterprise Manager to provide additional fine-grained security for organizations with complex access control requirements. A new security console provides a single point of control for managing the security of Oracle Enterprise Manager environments. Support for the latest industry standard SNMP v3 protocol, including encryption, enables more secure heterogeneous management. “Smart monitoring” adapts to observed environmental changes and adds self-management capabilities to help Oracle Enterprise Manager run at peak performance, while demanding less IT supervision. Supporting Quotes “Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has a strong tradition of technology breakthroughs and leadership. As a member of Oracle’s Customer Advisory Board for Oracle Enterprise Manager, we have consistently provided feedback and guidance in the areas of enterprise-scale cloud, self-diagnosability, and secure administration for the product,” said Tim Frazier, CIO, NIF and Photon Sciences, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. “We intend to take advantage of the Release 4 features that support enterprise-scale availability and fine-grained security capabilities for private cloud deployments.” “IDC's most recent CloudTrack survey shows that most enterprises plan to adopt hybrid cloud architectures over the next three years,” said Mary Johnston Turner, Research Vice President, Enterprise System Management Software, IDC. “These organizations plan to deploy a wide range of workloads into cloud environments including mission critical database and middleware services that require high levels of fault tolerance and disaster recovery. Such capabilities were traditionally custom configured for each application but cloud offers the possibility to incorporate such properties within the service definition, enabling organizations to adopt cloud without compromise. With the latest release of Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c, Oracle is providing customers with an out-of-the-box experience for delivering highly-resilient cloud services for databases and applications.” “Since its inception, Oracle has been leading the way in innovative, scalable and high performance solutions for the enterprise. With this release of Oracle Enterprise Manager, we are extending this leadership by providing enterprise-scale capabilities for planning, delivering, and managing private clouds. We call this ‘zero-to-cloud – accelerated.’ These enhancements help our customers to expedite their adoption of cloud computing and prepares them for the next generation of self-service IT,” said Prakash Ramamurthy, senior vice president of Systems and Cloud Management at Oracle. Supporting Resources Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Video: Cerner Delivers High Performance Private Cloud Video: BIAS Achieves Outstanding Results with Private Cloud Press Release Stay Connected: Twitter | Facebook | YouTube | Linkedin | Newsletter Download the Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Mobile app

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Cant get lm-sensors to load ATI Radeon temp or fan

- by woody

New to Linux and having minor issues :/ . I followed this guide initially but did not recieve the proper output and did not show my ATI Radeon HD 5000 temp or fan speed. Then used this guide, same problems exhibited. No issues installing and no errors. I think its not reading i2c for some reason. The proprietary driver is installed and functioning correctly according fglrxinfo. I can use aticonfig commands and view both temp and fan. Any ideas on how to get it working under 'sensors'? When i run 'sudo sensors-detect' this is my ouput # sensors-detect revision 5984 (2011-07-10 21:22:53 +0200) # System: LENOVO IdeaPad Y560 (laptop) # Board: Lenovo KL3 This program will help you determine which kernel modules you need to load to use lm_sensors most effectively. It is generally safe and recommended to accept the default answers to all questions, unless you know what you're doing. Some south bridges, CPUs or memory controllers contain embedded sensors. Do you want to scan for them? This is totally safe. (YES/no): y Silicon Integrated Systems SIS5595... No VIA VT82C686 Integrated Sensors... No VIA VT8231 Integrated Sensors... No AMD K8 thermal sensors... No AMD Family 10h thermal sensors... No AMD Family 11h thermal sensors... No AMD Family 12h and 14h thermal sensors... No AMD Family 15h thermal sensors... No AMD Family 15h power sensors... No Intel digital thermal sensor... Success! (driver `coretemp') Intel AMB FB-DIMM thermal sensor... No VIA C7 thermal sensor... No VIA Nano thermal sensor... No Some Super I/O chips contain embedded sensors. We have to write to standard I/O ports to probe them. This is usually safe. Do you want to scan for Super I/O sensors? (YES/no): y Probing for Super-I/O at 0x2e/0x2f Trying family `National Semiconductor/ITE'... Yes Found unknown chip with ID 0x8502 Probing for Super-I/O at 0x4e/0x4f Trying family `National Semiconductor/ITE'... No Trying family `SMSC'... No Trying family `VIA/Winbond/Nuvoton/Fintek'... No Trying family `ITE'... No Some hardware monitoring chips are accessible through the ISA I/O ports. We have to write to arbitrary I/O ports to probe them. This is usually safe though. Yes, you do have ISA I/O ports even if you do not have any ISA slots! Do you want to scan the ISA I/O ports? (YES/no): y Probing for `National Semiconductor LM78' at 0x290... No Probing for `National Semiconductor LM79' at 0x290... No Probing for `Winbond W83781D' at 0x290... No Probing for `Winbond W83782D' at 0x290... No Lastly, we can probe the I2C/SMBus adapters for connected hardware monitoring devices. This is the most risky part, and while it works reasonably well on most systems, it has been reported to cause trouble on some systems. Do you want to probe the I2C/SMBus adapters now? (YES/no): y Using driver `i2c-i801' for device 0000:00:1f.3: Intel 3400/5 Series (PCH) Now follows a summary of the probes I have just done. Just press ENTER to continue: Driver `coretemp': * Chip `Intel digital thermal sensor' (confidence: 9) To load everything that is needed, add this to /etc/modules: #----cut here---- # Chip drivers coretemp #----cut here---- If you have some drivers built into your kernel, the list above will contain too many modules. Skip the appropriate ones! Do you want to add these lines automatically to /etc/modules? (yes/NO) My output for 'sensors' is: acpitz-virtual-0 Adapter: Virtual device temp1: +58.0°C (crit = +100.0°C) coretemp-isa-0000 Adapter: ISA adapter Core 0: +56.0°C (high = +84.0°C, crit = +100.0°C) Core 1: +57.0°C (high = +84.0°C, crit = +100.0°C) Core 2: +58.0°C (high = +84.0°C, crit = +100.0°C) Core 3: +57.0°C (high = +84.0°C, crit = +100.0°C) and my '/etc/modules' is: # /etc/modules: kernel modules to load at boot time. # # This file contains the names of kernel modules that should be loaded # at boot time, one per line. Lines beginning with "#" are ignored. lp rtc # Generated by sensors-detect on Fri Nov 30 23:24:31 2012 # Chip drivers coretemp

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Kill a tree, save your website? Content strategy in action, part III

- by Roger Hart

A lot has been written about how driving content strategy from within an organisation is hard. And that's true. Red Gate is pretty receptive to new ideas, so although I've not had a total walk in the park, it's been a hike with charming scenery. But I'm one of the lucky ones. Lots of people are involved in content, and depending on your organisation some of those people might be the kind who'll gleefully call themselves "stakeholders". People holding a stake generally want to stick it through something's heart and bury it at a crossroads. Winning them over is not always easy. (Richard Ingram has made a nice visual summary of how this can feel - Content strategy Snakes & ladders - pdf ) So yes, a lot of content strategy advocates are having a hard time. And sure, we've got a nice opportunity to get together and have a hug and a cry, but in the interim we could use a hand. What to do? My preferred approach is, I'll confess, brutal. I'd like nothing so much as to take a scorched earth approach to our website. Burn it, salt the ground, and build the new one right: focusing on clearly delineated business and user content goals, and instrumented so we can tell if we're doing it right. I'm never getting buy-in for that, but a boy can dream. So how about just getting buy-in for some small, tenable improvements? Easier, but still non-trivial. I sat down for a chat with our marketing and design guys. It seemed like a good place to start, even if they weren't up for my "Ctrl-A + Delete" solution. We talked through some of this stuff, and we pretty much agreed that our content is a bit more broken than we'd ideally like. But to get everybody on board, the problems needed visibility. Doing a visual content inventory Print out the internet. Make a Wall Of Content. Seriously. If you've already done a content inventory, you know your architecture, and you know the scale of the problem. But it's quite likely that very few other people do. So make it big and visual. I'm going to carbon hell, but it seems to be working. This morning, I printed out a tiny, tiny part of our website: the non-support content pertaining to SQL Compare I made big, visual, A3 blowups of each page, and covered a wall with them. A page per web page, spread over something like 6M x 2M, with metrics, right in front of people. Even if nobody reads it (and they are doing) the sheer scale is shocking. 53 pages, all told. Some are redundant, some outdated, some trivial, a few fantastic, and frighteningly many that are great ideas delivered not-quite-right. You have to stand quite far away to get it all in your field of vision. For a lot of today, a whole bunch of folks have been gawping in amazement, talking each other through it, peering at the details, and generally getting excited about content. Developers, sales guys, our CEO, the marketing folks - they're engaged. Will it last? I make no promises. But this sort of wave of interest is vital to getting a content strategy project kicked off. While the content strategist is a saucer-eyed orphan in the cupboard under the stairs, they're not getting a whole lot done. Of course, just printing the site won't necessarily cut it. You have to know your content, and be able to talk about it. Ideally, you'll also have page view and time-on-page metrics. One of the most powerful things you can do is, when people are staring at your wall of content, ask them what they think half of it is for. Pretty soon, you've made a case for content strategy. We're also going to get folks to mark it up - cover it with notes and post-its, let us know how they feel about our content. I'll be blogging about how that goes, but it's exciting. Different business functions have different needs from content, so the more exposure the content gets, and the more feedback, the more you know about those needs. Fingers crossed for awesome.

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EU Digital Agenda scores 85/100

- by trond-arne.undheim

If the Digital Agenda was a bottle of wine and I were wine critic Robert Parker, I would say the Digital Agenda has "a great bouquet, many good elements, with astringent, dry and puckering mouth feel that will not please everyone, but still displaying some finesse. A somewhat controlled effort with no surprises and a few noticeable flaws in the delivery. Noticeably shorter aftertaste than advertised by the producers. Score: 85/100. Enjoy now". The EU Digital Agenda states that "standards are vital for interoperability" and has a whole chapter on interoperability and standards. With this strong emphasis, there is hope the EU's outdated standardization system finally is headed for reform. It has been 23 years since the legal framework of standardisation was completed by Council Decision 87/95/EEC8 in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector. Standardization is market driven. For several decades the IT industry has been developing standards and specifications in global open standards development organisations (fora/consortia), many of which have transparency procedures and practices far superior to the European Standards Organizations. The Digital Agenda rightly states: "reflecting the rise and growing importance of ICT standards developed by certain global fora and consortia". Some fora/consortia, of course, are distorted, influenced by single vendors, have poor track record, and need constant vigilance, but they are the minority. Therefore, the recognition needs to be accompanied by eligibility criteria focused on openness. Will the EU reform its ICT standardization by the end of 2010? Possibly, and only if DG Enterprise takes on board that Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) have driven half of the productivity growth in Europe over the past 15 years, a prominent fact in the EU's excellent Digital Competitiveness report 2010 published on Monday 17 May. It is ok to single out the ICT sector. It simply is the most important sector right now as it fuels growth in all other sectors. Let's not wait for the entire standardization package which may take another few years. Europe does not have time. The Digital Agenda is an umbrella strategy with deliveries from a host of actors across the Commission. For instance, the EU promises to issue "guidance on transparent ex-ante disclosure rules for essential intellectual property rights and licensing terms and conditions in the context of standard setting", by 2011 in the Horisontal Guidelines now out for public consultation by DG COMP and to some extent by DG ENTR's standardization policy reform. This is important. The EU will issue procurement guidance as interoperability frameworks are put into practice. This is a joint responsibility of several DGs, and is likely to suffer coordination problems, controversy and delays. We have seen plenty of the latter already and I have commented on the Commission's own interoperability elsewhere, with mixed luck. :( Yesterday, I watched the cartoonesque Korean western film The Good, the Bad and the Weird. In the movie (and I meant in the movie only), a bandit, a thief, and a bounty hunter, all excellent at whatever they do, fight for a treasure map. Whether that is a good analogy for the situation within the Commission, others are better judges of than I. However, as a movie fanatic, I still await the final shoot-out, and, as in the film, the only certainty is that "life is about chasing and being chased". The missed opportunity (in this case not following up the push from Member States to better define open standards based interoperability) is a casualty of the chaos ensued in the European Wild West (and I mean that in the most endearing sense, and my excuses beforehand to actors who possibly justifiably cannot bear being compared to fictional movie characters). Instead of exposing the ongoing fight, the EU opted for the legalistic use of the term "standards" throughout the document. This is a term that--to the EU-- excludes most standards used by the IT industry world wide. So, while it, for a moment, meant "weapon down", it will not lead to lasting peace. The Digital Agenda calls for the Member States to "Implement commitments on interoperability and standards in the Malmö and Granada Declarations by 2013". This is a far cry from the actual Ministerial Declarations which called upon the Commission to help them with this implementation by recognizing and further defining open standards based interoperability. Unless there is more forthcoming from the Commission, the market's judgement will be: you simply fall short. Generally, I think the EU focus now should be "from policy to practice" and the Digital Agenda does indeed stop short of tackling some highly practical issues. There is need for progress beyond the Digital Agenda. Here are some suggestions that would help Europe re-take global leadership on openness, public sector reform, and economic growth: A strong European software strategy centred around open standards based interoperability by 2011. An ambitious new eCommission strategy for 2011-15 focused on migration to open standards by 2015. Aligning the IT portfolio across the Commission into one Digital Agenda DG by 2012. Focusing all best practice exchange in eGovernment on one social networking site, epractice.eu (full disclosure: I had a role in getting that site up and running) Prioritizing public sector needs in global standardization over European standardization by 2014.

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Justifiable Perks.

- by Phil Factor

I was once the director of a start-up IT Company, and had the task of recruiting a proportion of the management team. As my background was in IT management, I was rather more familiar with recruiting Geeks for technology jobs, but here, one of my early tasks was interviewing a Marketing Director. The small group of financiers had suggested a rather strange Irishman called Halleran. From my background in City of London dealing-rooms, I was slightly unprepared for the experience of interviewing anyone wearing a pink suit. Many of my older City colleagues would have required resuscitation after seeing his white leather shoes. However, nobody will accuse me of prejudging an interviewee. After all, many Linux experts who I’ve come to rely on have appeared for interview dressed as hobbits. In fact, the interview went well, and we had even settled his salary. I was somewhat unprepared for the coda. ‘And I will need to be provided with a Ferrari by the company.’ ‘Hmm. That seems reasonable.’ Initially, he looked startled, and then a slow smile of victory spread across his face. ‘What colour would you like?’ I asked genially. ‘It has to be red.’ He looked very earnest on this point. ‘Fine. I have to go past Hamleys on the way home this evening, so I’ll pick one up then for you.’ ‘Er.. Hamley’s is a toyshop, not a Ferrari Dealership.’ I stared at him in bafflement for a few seconds. ‘You’re not seriously asking for a real Ferrari are you?’ ‘Well, yes. Not for my own sake, you understand. I’d much prefer a simple run-about, but my position demands it. How could I maintain the necessary status in the office without one? How could I do my job in marketing when my grey Datsun was all too visible in the car Park? It is a tool of the job.’ ‘Excuse me a moment, but I must confer with the MD’ I popped out to see Chris, the MD. ‘Chris, I’m interviewing a lunatic in a pink suit who is trying to demand that a Ferrari is a precondition of his employment. I tried the ‘misunderstanding trick’ but it didn’t faze him.’ ‘Sorry, Phil, but we’ve got to hire him. The VCs insist on it. You’ve got to think of something that doesn’t involve committing to the purchase of a Ferrari. Current funding barely covers the rent for the building.’ ‘OK boss. Leave it to me.’ On return, I slapped O’Halleran’s file on the table with a genial, paternalistic smile. ‘Of course you should have a Ferrari. The only trouble is that it will require a justification document that can be presented to the board. I’m sure you’ll have no problem in preparing this document in the required format.’ The initial look of despair was quickly followed by a bland look of acquiescence. He had, earlier in the interview, argued with great eloquence his skill in preparing the tiresome documents that underpin the essential corporate and government deals that were vital to the success of this new enterprise. The justification of a Ferrari should be a doddle. After the interview, Chris nervously asked how I’d fared. ‘I think it is all solved.’ ‘… without promising a Ferrari, I hope.’ ‘Well, I did actually; on condition he justified it in writing.’ Chris issued a stream of invective. The strain of juggling the resources in an underfunded startup was beginning to show. ‘Don’t worry. In the unlikely event of him coming back with the required document, I’ll give him mine.’ ‘Yours?’ He strode over to the window to stare down at the car park. He needn’t have worried: I knew that his breed of marketing man could more easily lay an ostrich egg than to prepare a decent justification document. My Ferrari is still there at the back of my garage. Few know of the Ferrari cultivator, a simple inexpensive motorized device designed for the subsistence farmers of southern Italy. It is the very devil to start, but it creates a perfect tilth for the seedbed.

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