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  • Expectations + Rewards = Innovation

    - by D'Arcy Lussier
    “Innovation” is a heavy word. We regard those that embrace it as “Innovators”. We describe organizations as being “Innovative”. We hold those associated with the word in high regard, even though its dictionary definition is very simple: Introducing something new. What our culture has done is wrapped Innovation in white robes and a gold crown. Innovation is rarely just introducing something new. Innovations and innovators are typically associated with other terms: groundbreaking, genius, industry-changing, creative, leading. Being a true innovator and creating innovations are a big deal, and something companies try to strive for…or at least say they strive for. There’s huge value in being recognized as an innovator in an industry, since the idea is that innovation equates to increased profitability. IBM ran an ad a few years back that showed what their view of innovation is: “The point of innovation is to make actual money.” If the money aspect makes you feel uneasy, consider it another way: the point of innovation is to <insert payoff here>. Companies that innovate will be more successful. Non-profits that innovate can better serve their target clients. Governments that innovate can better provide services to their citizens. True innovation is not easy to come by though. As with anything in business, how well an organization will innovate is reliant on the employees it retains, the expectations placed on those employees, and the rewards available to them. In a previous blog post I talked about one formula: Right Employees + Happy Employees = Productive Employees I want to introduce a new one, that builds upon the previous one: Expectations + Rewards = Innovation  The level of innovation your organization will realize is directly associated with the expectations you place on your staff and the rewards you make available to them. Expectations We may feel uncomfortable with the idea of placing expectations on our staff, mainly because expectation has somewhat of a negative or cold connotation to it: “I expect you to act this way or else!” The problem is in the or-else part…we focus on the negative aspects of failing to meet expectations instead of looking at the positive side. “I expect you to act this way because it will produce <insert benefit here>”. Expectations should not be set to punish but instead be set to ensure quality. At a recent conference I spoke with some Microsoft employees who told me that you have five years from starting with the company to reach a “Senior” level. If you don’t, then you’re let go. The expectation Microsoft placed on their staff is that they should be working towards improving themselves, taking more responsibility, and thus ensure that there is a constant level of quality in the workforce. Rewards Let me be clear: a paycheck is not a reward. A paycheck is simply the employer’s responsibility in the employee/employer relationship. A paycheck will never be the key motivator to drive innovation. Offering employees something over and above their required compensation can spur them to greater performance and achievement. Working in the food service industry, this tactic was used again and again: whoever has the highest sales over lunch will receive a free lunch/gift certificate/entry into a draw/etc. There was something to strive for, to try beyond the baseline of what our serving jobs were. It was through this that innovative sales techniques would be tried and honed, with key servers being top sellers time and time again. At a code camp I spoke at, I was amazed to see that all the employees from one company receive $100 Visa gift cards as a thank you for taking time to speak. Again, offering something over and above that can give that extra push for employees. Rewards work. But what about the fairness angle? In the restaurant example I gave, there were servers that would never win the competition. They just weren’t good enough at selling and never seemed to get better. So should those that did work at performing better and produce more sales for the restaurant not get rewarded because those who weren’t working at performing better might get upset? Of course not! Organizations succeed because of their top performers and those that strive to join their ranks. The Expectation/Reward Graph While the Expectations + Rewards = Innovation formula may seem like a simple mathematics formula, there’s much more going under the hood. In fact there are three different outcomes that could occur based on what you put in as values for Expectations and Rewards. Consider the graph below and the descriptions that follow: Disgruntled – High Expectation, Low Reward I worked at a company where the mantra was “Company First, Because We Pay You”. Even today I still hear stories of how this sentiment continues to be perpetuated: They provide you a paycheck and a means to live, therefore you should always put them as your top priority. Of course, this is a huge imbalance in the expectation/reward equation. Why would anyone willingly meet high expectations of availability, workload, deadlines, etc. when there is no reward other than a paycheck to show for it? Remember: paychecks are not rewards! Instead, you see employees be disgruntled which not only affects the level of production but also the level of quality within an organization. It also means that you see higher turnover. Complacent – Low Expectation, Low Reward Complacency is a systemic problem that typically exists throughout all levels of an organization. With no real expectations or rewards, nobody needs to excel. In fact, those that do try to innovate, improve, or introduce new things into the organization might be shunned or pushed out by the rest of the staff who are just doing things the same way they’ve always done it. The bigger issue for the organization with low/low values is that at best they’ll never grow beyond their current size (and may shrink actually), and at worst will cease to exist. Entitled – Low Expectation, High Reward It’s one thing to say you have the best people and reward them as such, but its another thing to actually have the best people and reward them as such. Organizations with Entitled employees are the former: their organization provides them with all types of comforts, benefits, and perks. But there’s no requirement before the rewards are dolled out, and there’s no short-list of who receives the rewards. Everyone in the company is treated the same and is given equal share of the spoils. Entitlement is actually almost identical with Complacency with one notable difference: just try to introduce higher expectations into an entitled organization! Entitled employees have been spoiled for so long that they can’t fathom having rewards taken from them, or having to achieve specific levels of performance before attaining them. Those running the organization also buy in to the Entitled sentiment, feeling that they must persist the same level of comforts to appease their staff…even though the quality of the employee pool may be suspect. Innovative – High Expectation, High Reward Finally we have the Innovative organization which places high expectations but also provides high rewards. This organization gets it: if you truly want the best employees you need to apply equal doses of pressure and praise. Realize that I’m not suggesting crazy overtime or un-realistic working conditions. I do not agree with the “Glengary-Glenross” method of encouragement. But as anyone who follows sports can tell you, the teams that win are the ones where the coaches push their players to be their best; to achieve new levels of performance that they didn’t know they could receive. And the result for the players is more money, fame, and opportunity. It’s in this environment that organizations can focus on innovation – true innovation that builds the business and allows everyone involved to truly benefit. In Closing Organizations love to use the word “Innovation” and its derivatives, but very few actually do innovate. For many, the term has just become another marketing buzzword to lump in with all the other business terms that get overused. But for those organizations that truly get the value of innovation, they will be the ones surging forward while other companies simply fade into the background. And they will be the organizations that expect more from their employees, and give them their just rewards.

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  • Unlocking Productivity

    - by Michael Snow
    Unlocking Productivity in Life Sciences with Consolidated Content Management by Joe Golemba, Vice President, Product Management, Oracle WebCenter As life sciences organizations look to become more operationally efficient, the ability to effectively leverage information is a competitive advantage. Whether data mining at the drug discovery phase or prepping the sales team before a product launch, content management can play a key role in developing, organizing, and disseminating vital information. The goal of content management is relatively straightforward: put the information that people need where they can find it. A number of issues can complicate this; information sits in many different systems, each of those systems has its own security, and the information in those systems exists in many different formats. Identifying and extracting pertinent information from mountains of farflung data is no simple job, but the alternative—wasted effort or even regulatory compliance issues—is worse. An integrated information architecture can enable health sciences organizations to make better decisions, accelerate clinical operations, and be more competitive. Unstructured data matters Often when we think of drug development data, we think of structured data that fits neatly into one or more research databases. But structured data is often directly supported by unstructured data such as experimental protocols, reaction conditions, lot numbers, run times, analyses, and research notes. As life sciences companies seek integrated views of data, they are typically finding diverse islands of data that seemingly have no relationship to other data in the organization. Information like sales reports or call center reports can be locked into siloed systems, and unavailable to the discovery process. Additionally, in the increasingly networked clinical environment, Web pages, instant messages, videos, scientific imaging, sales and marketing data, collaborative workspaces, and predictive modeling data are likely to be present within an organization, and each source potentially possesses information that can help to better inform specific efforts. Historically, content management solutions that had 21CFR Part 11 capabilities—electronic records and signatures—were focused mainly on content-enabling manufacturing-related processes. Today, life sciences companies have many standalone repositories, requiring different skills, service level agreements, and vendor support costs to manage them. With the amount of content doubling every three to six months, companies have recognized the need to manage unstructured content from the beginning, in order to increase employee productivity and operational efficiency. Using scalable and secure enterprise content management (ECM) solutions, organizations can better manage their unstructured content. These solutions can also be integrated with enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems or research systems, making content available immediately, in the context of the application and within the flow of the employee’s typical business activity. Administrative safeguards—such as content de-duplication—can also be applied within ECM systems, so documents are never recreated, eliminating redundant efforts, ensuring one source of truth, and maintaining content standards in the organization. Putting it in context Consolidating structured and unstructured information in a single system can greatly simplify access to relevant information when it is needed through contextual search. Using contextual filters, results can include therapeutic area, position in the value chain, semantic commonalities, technology-specific factors, specific researchers involved, or potential business impact. The use of taxonomies is essential to organizing information and enabling contextual searches. Taxonomy solutions are composed of a hierarchical tree that defines the relationship between different life science terms. When overlaid with additional indexing related to research and/or business processes, it becomes possible to effectively narrow down the amount of data that is returned during searches, as well as prioritize results based on specific criteria and/or prior search history. Thus, search results are more accurate and relevant to an employee’s day-to-day work. For example, a search for the word "tissue" by a lab researcher would return significantly different results than a search for the same word performed by someone in procurement. Of course, diverse data repositories, combined with the immense amounts of data present in an organization, necessitate that the data elements be regularly indexed and cached beforehand to enable reasonable search response times. In its simplest form, indexing of a single, consolidated data warehouse can be expected to be a relatively straightforward effort. However, organizations require the ability to index multiple data repositories, enabling a single search to reference multiple data sources and provide an integrated results listing. Security and compliance Beyond yielding efficiencies and supporting new insight, an enterprise search environment can support important security considerations as well as compliance initiatives. For example, the systems enable organizations to retain the relevance and the security of the indexed systems, so users can only see the results to which they are granted access. This is especially important as life sciences companies are working in an increasingly networked environment and need to provide secure, role-based access to information across multiple partners. Although not officially required by the 21 CFR Part 11 regulation, the U.S. Food and Drug Administraiton has begun to extend the type of content considered when performing relevant audits and discoveries. Having an ECM infrastructure that provides centralized management of all content enterprise-wide—with the ability to consistently apply records and retention policies along with the appropriate controls, validations, audit trails, and electronic signatures—is becoming increasingly critical for life sciences companies. Making the move Creating an enterprise-wide ECM environment requires moving large amounts of content into a single enterprise repository, a daunting and risk-laden initiative. The first key is to focus on data taxonomy, allowing content to be mapped across systems. The second is to take advantage new tools which can dramatically speed and reduce the cost of the data migration process through automation. Additional content need not be frozen while it is migrated, enabling productivity throughout the process. The ability to effectively leverage information into success has been gaining importance in the life sciences industry for years. The rapid adoption of enterprise content management, both in operational processes as well as in scientific management, are clear indicators that the companies are looking to use all available data to be better informed, improve decision making, minimize risk, and increase time to market, to maintain profitability and be more competitive. As more and more varieties and sources of information are brought under the strategic management umbrella, the ability to divine knowledge from the vast pool of information is increasingly difficult. Simple search engines and basic content management are increasingly unable to effectively extract the right information from the mountains of data available. By bringing these tools into context and integrating them with business processes and applications, we can effectively focus on the right decisions that make our organizations more profitable. More Information Oracle will be exhibiting at DIA 2012 in Philadelphia on June 25-27. Stop by our booth Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} (#2825) to learn more about the advantages of a centralized ECM strategy and see the Oracle WebCenter Content solution, our 21 CFR Part 11 compliant content management platform.

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  • How I Work: Staying Productive Whilst Traveling

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

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  • Alcatel-Lucent: Enterprise 2.0: The Top 5 Things I would Do Over

    - by Kellsey Ruppel
    Happy Monday! Does anyone else feel as if the weekend went entirely too quickly? At least for those of us in the United States, we have the 4th of July Holiday next week to look forward to This week on the blog, we are going to focus on "WebCenter by Example" and highlight best practices from customers and partners. I recently came across this article and I think this is a great example of how we can learn from one another when it comes to social collaboration adoption. Do you agree with Jem? What things or best practices have you learned in your organizations?  By Jem Janik, Enterprise community manager, Alcatel-Lucent  Not so long ago, Engage, the Alcatel-Lucent employee social network and collaboration platform, celebrated its third birthday. With more than 25,000 members actively interacting each month, Engage has been a big enough success that it’s been the subject of external articles, and often those of us who helped launch it will go out and speak about what aspects contributed to that success. Hindsight is still 20/20 and what it takes to successfully launch an enterprise 2.0 community is fairly well-known now.  Today I want to tell you what I suspect you really want to know about.  As the enterprise community manager for Engage, after three years in, what are the top 5 things I wish we (and I mostly mean me) could do over? #5 Define your analytics solution from the start There is so much to do when you launch a community and initially growing it without complete chaos is quite a task.  It doesn’t take too long to get to a point where you want to focus your continued efforts in growing company collaboration.  Do people truly talk across regional boundaries or have we shifted siloed conversations to a new platform.  Is there one organization that doesn’t interact with another? If you are lucky you’ll have someone in your community team well versed in the world of databases and SQL queries, but it takes time to figure out what backend analytics data actually means. Professional support can be expensive and it may be hard to justify later as it typically has the community manager as the only main customer.  Figure out what you think you’ll want to know and how to get it early on. The sooner the better even if it doesn’t seem that critical at the time. #4 Lobbies guide you to the right places One piece of feedback that comes up more and more as we keep growing Engage is it’s hard to find stuff, or new people are not sure where to start. Something we’re doing now is defining some general topic areas of interest to be like “lobbies” into the platform and some common hashtags to go with them. I liken this to walking into a large medical or professional building for the first time.  There are hundreds of offices, and you look to a sign in the lobby to get guided to the right place for you.  We’re building that sign for members now, but again we missed the boat as the majority of the company has had their initial Engage experience. #3 Clean up, clean up, clean up Knowledge work and folksonomies are messy! The day we opened the doors to Engage I would have said we should keep everything ever created in Engage with an argument that it was a window into our collective knowledge so nothing should go.  Well, 6000+ groups and 200,000+ pieces of content later, I’ve changed my mind.  As previously mentioned, with too much “stuff” the system can be overwhelming to new members and it makes it harder to get what you’re looking for.   Do we need that help document about a tool we no longer have? NO!  Do we need that group that had 1 document and 2 discussions in the last two years? NO! Should we only have one group about a given topic instead of 4?  YES! Last fall, Engage defined a cleanup process for groups not used for a long time.  We also formed a volunteer cleaning army who are extra eyes on the hunt for “stuff” that should be updated, merged, or deleted.  It’s better late than never, but in line with what’s becoming a theme I wish these efforts had started earlier. #2 Communications & local community management One of the most important aspects of my job is to make sure people who should be talking to each other are actually doing it.  Connecting people to the other people they should know, the groups they should join, a piece of content that shouldn’t be missed.   I have worked both inside and outside of communications teams, and they are the best informed people in your company.  They know when something big is coming, how it impacts employees, how it fits with strategy, who else knows more, etc.  Having communications professionals who are power users can help scale up community management because they are already so well connected.  They also need to have the platform skills to pay attention without suffering email overload, how to grab someone’s attention, etc.  I wish I’d had figured this out much earlier.  If I had I would have groomed more communications colleagues into advocates and power members right at the start. #1 Grooming advocates vs. natural advocates I’ve just alluded to this above already. The very best advocates are those who naturally embrace your platform and automatically start to see new ways to work within it.  Those advocates seem to come out of the woodwork naturally since some of them are early adopters.  Not surprisingly, our best advocates today are those same people who were willing to come kick the tires when the community was completely empty.  Unfortunately, we didn’t get a global spread of those natural advocates.  I did ask around when we first launched for other people who might be good candidates, but didn’t push too hard as there were so many other things to get ready.  That was a mistake.  If I could get a redo I would have formally asked for people to be assigned where there were gaps and groomed them into an advocate.  Today as we find new advocates to fill the gaps, people are hesitant as the initial set has three years of practice are ahead of the curve power members; it definitely would have been easier earlier on. As fairly early adopters to corporate scale enterprise collaboration, there hasn’t been a roadmap to follow as we’ve grown Engage, which is part of the fun! It’s clear a lot of issues are more easily tackled the earlier you identify and begin to correct them, and I’ve identified the main five I wish I could redo.  In the spirit of collaboration, I hope someone else learns from my mistakes! View the original article by Jem here. 

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  • Webcast Q&A: Qualcomm Provides a Seamless Experience for Customers with Oracle WebCenter

    - by kellsey.ruppel
    Last Thursday we had the second webcast in our WebCenter in Action webcast series, "Qualcomm Provides a Seamless Experience for Customers with Oracle WebCenter, where customer Michael Chander from Qualcomm and Vince Casarez & Gourav Goyal from Oracle Partner Keste shared how Oracle WebCenter is powering Qualcomm’s externally facing website and providing a seamless experience for their customers. In case you missed it, here's a recap of the Q&A.   Mike Chandler, Qualcomm Q: Did you run into any issues when integrating all of the different applications together?A: Definitely, our main challenges were in the area of user provisioning and security propagation, all the standard stuff you might expect when hooking up SSO for authentication and authorization. In addition, we spent several iterations getting the UI’s in sync. While everyone was given the same digital material to build too, each team interpreted and implemented it their own way. Initially as a user navigated, if you were looking for it, you could slight variations in color or font or width , stuff like that. So we had to pull all the developers responsible for the UI together and get pixel level agreement on a lot of things so we could ensure seamless transitions across applications. Q: What has been the biggest benefit your end users have seen?A: Wow, there have been several. An SSO enabled environment was huge a win for our users. The portal application that this replaced had not really been invested in by the business. With this project, we had full business participation and backing, and it really showed in some key areas like the shopping experience. For example, while ordering in the previous site, the items did not have any pictures or really usable descriptions. A tremendous amount of work was done to try and make the site more intuitive and user friendly. Site performance has also drastically improved thanks to new hardware, improved database design, and of course the fact that ADF has made great strides in runtime performance. Q: Was there any resistance internally when implementing the solution? If so, how did you overcome that?A: Within a large company, I’m sure there is always going to be competition for large projects, as there was here. Once we got through the technical analysis and settled on the technology choices, it was actually no resistance to implementing the solution. This project was fully driven by the business with the aim of long term growth. I can confidently say that the fact that this project was given the utmost importance by both the business and IT really help put down any resistance that you would typically see while implementing a new solution. Q: Given the performance, what do you estimate to be the top end capacity of the system? A:I think our top end capacity is really only limited by our hardware. I’m comfortable saying we could grow 10x on our current hardware, both in terms of transactions and users. We can easily spin up new JVM instances if needed. We already use less JVM’s than we had planned. In addition, ADF is doing a very good job with his connection pooling and application module pooling, so we see a very good ratio of users connected to the systems vs db connections, without impacting performace. Q: What's the overview or summary of feedback from the users interacting with the site?A: Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive from both the business and our customers. They’re very happy with the new SSO environment , the new LAF, and the performance of the site. Of course, it’s not all roses. No matter what, there are always going to be people that don’t like the layout or the color scheme, etc. By and large though, customers are happy and the business is happy. Q: Can you describe the impressions about the site before and after the project within Qualcomm?A: Before the project, the site worked and people were using it, but most people were not happy with it. It was slow and tended to be a bit tempermental, for example a user would perform a transaction and the system would throw and unexpected error. The user could back up and retry the steps and things would work fine, so why didn’t work the first time?. From a UI perspective, we’d hear comments like it looked like it was built by a high school student.  Vince Casarez & Gourav Goyal, Keste Q: Did you run into any obstacles when implementing the solution?A: It's interesting some people call them "obstacles" on this project we just called them "dependencies".  There were both technical and business related dependencies that we had to work out. Mike points out the SSO dependencies and the coordination and synchronization between the teams to have a seamless login experience and a seamless end user experience.  There was also a set of dependencies on the User Acceptance testing to make sure that everyone understood the use cases for how the system would be used.  With a branching into a new market and trying to match a simple user experience as many consumer sites have today, there was always a tendency for the team members to provide their suggestions on how things could be simpler.  But with all the work up front on the user design and getting the business driving this set of experiences, this minimized the downstream suggestions that tend to distract a team.  In this case, all the work up front allowed us to enumerate the "dependencies" and keep the distractions to a minimum. Q: Was there a lot of custom work that needed to be done for this particular solution?A: The focus for this particular solution was really on the custom processes. The interesting thing is that with the data flows and the integration with applications, there are some pre-built integrations, but realistically for the process flow, we had to build those. The framework and tooling we used made things easier so we didn’t have to implement core functionality, like transitioning from screen to screen or from flow to flow. The design feature of Task Flows really helped speed the development and keep the component infrastructure in line with the dynamic processes.  Task flows and other elements like Skins are core to the infrastructure or technology stack of Oracle. This then allowed the team to center the project focus around the business flows and use cases to meet the core requirements and keep the project on time. Q: What do you think were the keys to success for rolling out WebCenter?A:  The 5 main keys to success were: 1) Sponsorship from the whole organization around this project from senior executive agreement, business owners driving functionality, and IT development alignment; 2) Upfront design planning and use case definition to clearly define the project scope and requirements; 3) Focussed development and project management aligned with the top level goals and drivers; 4) User acceptance and usability testing along the way to identify potential issues and direct resolution of the issues;  and 5) Constant prioritization of the issues for development to fix by the business.  It also helps to have great team chemistry and really smart people working on the project. If you missed the webcast, be sure to catch the replay to see a live demonstration of WebCenter in action!  Qualcomm Provides a Seamless Experience for Customers with Oracle WebCenter from Oracle WebCenter

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  • Testing Workflows &ndash; Test-First

    - by Timothy Klenke
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/TimothyK/archive/2014/05/30/testing-workflows-ndash-test-first.aspxThis is the second of two posts on some common strategies for approaching the job of writing tests.  The previous post covered test-after workflows where as this will focus on test-first.  Each workflow presented is a method of attack for adding tests to a project.  The more tools in your tool belt the better.  So here is a partial list of some test-first methodologies. Ping Pong Ping Pong is a methodology commonly used in pair programing.  One developer will write a new failing test.  Then they hand the keyboard to their partner.  The partner writes the production code to get the test passing.  The partner then writes the next test before passing the keyboard back to the original developer. The reasoning behind this testing methodology is to facilitate pair programming.  That is to say that this testing methodology shares all the benefits of pair programming, including ensuring multiple team members are familiar with the code base (i.e. low bus number). Test Blazer Test Blazing, in some respects, is also a pairing strategy.  The developers don’t work side by side on the same task at the same time.  Instead one developer is dedicated to writing tests at their own desk.  They write failing test after failing test, never touching the production code.  With these tests they are defining the specification for the system.  The developer most familiar with the specifications would be assigned this task. The next day or later in the same day another developer fetches the latest test suite.  Their job is to write the production code to get those tests passing.  Once all the tests pass they fetch from source control the latest version of the test project to get the newer tests. This methodology has some of the benefits of pair programming, namely lowering the bus number.  This can be good way adding an extra developer to a project without slowing it down too much.  The production coder isn’t slowed down writing tests.  The tests are in another project from the production code, so there shouldn’t be any merge conflicts despite two developers working on the same solution. This methodology is also a good test for the tests.  Can another developer figure out what system should do just by reading the tests?  This question will be answered as the production coder works there way through the test blazer’s tests. Test Driven Development (TDD) TDD is a highly disciplined practice that calls for a new test and an new production code to be written every few minutes.  There are strict rules for when you should be writing test or production code.  You start by writing a failing (red) test, then write the simplest production code possible to get the code working (green), then you clean up the code (refactor).  This is known as the red-green-refactor cycle. The goal of TDD isn’t the creation of a suite of tests, however that is an advantageous side effect.  The real goal of TDD is to follow a practice that yields a better design.  The practice is meant to push the design toward small, decoupled, modularized components.  This is generally considered a better design that large, highly coupled ball of mud. TDD accomplishes this through the refactoring cycle.  Refactoring is only possible to do safely when tests are in place.  In order to use TDD developers must be trained in how to look for and repair code smells in the system.  Through repairing these sections of smelly code (i.e. a refactoring) the design of the system emerges. For further information on TDD, I highly recommend the series “Is TDD Dead?”.  It discusses its pros and cons and when it is best used. Acceptance Test Driven Development (ATDD) Whereas TDD focuses on small unit tests that concentrate on a small piece of the system, Acceptance Tests focuses on the larger integrated environment.  Acceptance Tests usually correspond to user stories, which come directly from the customer. The unit tests focus on the inputs and outputs of smaller parts of the system, which are too low level to be of interest to the customer. ATDD generally uses the same tools as TDD.  However, ATDD uses fewer mocks and test doubles than TDD. ATDD often complements TDD; they aren’t competing methods.  A full test suite will usually consist of a large number of unit (created via TDD) tests and a smaller number of acceptance tests. Behaviour Driven Development (BDD) BDD is more about audience than workflow.  BDD pushes the testing realm out towards the client.  Developers, managers and the client all work together to define the tests. Typically different tooling is used for BDD than acceptance and unit testing.  This is done because the audience is not just developers.  Tools using the Gherkin family of languages allow for test scenarios to be described in an English format.  Other tools such as MSpec or FitNesse also strive for highly readable behaviour driven test suites. Because these tests are public facing (viewable by people outside the development team), the terminology usually changes.  You can’t get away with the same technobabble you can with unit tests written in a programming language that only developers understand.  For starters, they usually aren’t called tests.  Usually they’re called “examples”, “behaviours”, “scenarios”, or “specifications”. This may seem like a very subtle difference, but I’ve seen this small terminology change have a huge impact on the acceptance of the process.  Many people have a bias that testing is something that comes at the end of a project.  When you say we need to define the tests at the start of the project many people will immediately give that a lower priority on the project schedule.  But if you say we need to define the specification or behaviour of the system before we can start, you’ll get more cooperation.   Keep these test-first and test-after workflows in your tool belt.  With them you’ll be able to find new opportunities to apply them.

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  • Delight and Excite

    - by Applications User Experience
    Mick McGee, CEO & President, EchoUser Editor’s Note: EchoUser is a User Experience design firm in San Francisco and a member of the Oracle Usability Advisory Board. Mick and his staff regularly consult on Oracle Applications UX projects. Being part of a user experience design firm, we have the luxury of working with a lot of great people across many great companies. We get to help people solve their problems.  At least we used to. The basic design challenge is still the same; however, the goal is not necessarily to solve “problems” anymore; it is, “I want our products to delight and excite!” The question for us as UX professionals is how to design to those goals, and then how to assess them from a usability perspective. I’m not sure where I first heard “delight and excite” (A book? blog post? Facebook  status? Steve Jobs quote?), but now I hear these listed as user experience goals all the time. In particular, somewhat paradoxically, I routinely hear them in enterprise software conversations. And when asking these same enterprise companies what will make the project successful, we very often hear, “Make it like Apple.” In past days, it was “make it like Yahoo (or Amazon or Google“) but now Apple is the common benchmark. Steve Jobs and Apple were not secrets, but with Jobs’ passing and Apple becoming the world’s most valuable company in the last year, the impact of great design and experience is suddenly very widespread. In particular, users’ expectations have gone way up. Being an enterprise company is no shield to the general expectations that users now have, for all products. Designing a “Minimum Viable Product” The user experience challenge has historically been, to echo the words of Eric Ries (author of Lean Startup) , to create a “minimum viable product”: the proverbial, “make it good enough”. But, in our profession, the “minimum viable” part of that phrase has oftentimes, unfortunately, referred to the design and user experience. Technology typically dominated the focus of the biggest, most successful companies. Few have had the laser focus of Apple to also create and sell design and user experience alongside great technology. But now that Apple is the most valuable company in the world, copying their success is a common undertaking. Great design is now a premium offering that everyone wants, from the one-person startup to the largest companies, consumer and enterprise. This emerging business paradigm will have significant impact across the user experience design process and profession. One area that particularly interests me is, how are we going to evaluate these new emerging “delight and excite” experiences, which are further customized to each particular domain? How to Measure “Delight and Excite” Traditional usability measures of task completion rate, assists, time, and errors are still extremely useful in many situations; however, they are too blunt to offer much insight into emerging experiences “Satisfaction” is usually assessed in user testing, in roughly equivalent importance to the above objective metrics. Various surveys and scales have provided ways to measure satisfying UX, with whatever questions they include. However, to meet the demands of new business goals and keep users at the center of design and development processes, we have to explore new methods to better capture custom-experience goals and emotion-driven user responses. We have had success assessing custom experiences, including “delight and excite”, by employing a variety of user testing methods that tend to combine formative and summative techniques (formative being focused more on identifying usability issues and ways to improve design, and summative focused more on metrics). Our most successful tool has been one we’ve been using for a long time, Magnitude Estimation Technique (MET). But it’s not necessarily about MET as a measure, rather how it is created. Caption: For one client, EchoUser did two rounds of testing.  Each test was a mix of performing representative tasks and gathering qualitative impressions. Each user participated in an in-person moderated 1-on-1 session for 1 hour, using a testing set-up where they held the phone. The primary goal was to identify usability issues and recommend design improvements. MET is based on a definition of the desired experience, which users will then use to rate items of interest (usually tasks in a usability test). In other words, a custom experience definition needs to be created. This can then be used to measure satisfaction in accomplishing tasks; “delight and excite”; or anything else from strategic goals, user demands, or elsewhere. For reference, our standard MET definition in usability testing is: “User experience is your perception of how easy to use, well designed and productive an interface is to complete tasks.” Articulating the User Experience We’ve helped construct experience definitions for several clients to better match their business goals. One example is a modification of the above that was needed for a company that makes medical-related products: “User experience is your perception of how easy to use, well-designed, productive and safe an interface is for conducting tasks. ‘Safe’ is how free an environment (including devices, software, facilities, people, etc.) is from danger, risk, and injury.” Another example is from a company that is pushing hard to incorporate “delight” into their enterprise business line: “User experience is your perception of a product’s ease of use and learning, satisfaction and delight in design, and ability to accomplish objectives.” I find the last one particularly compelling in that there is little that identifies the experience as being for a highly technical enterprise application. That definition could easily be applied to any number of consumer products. We have gone further than the above, including “sexy” and “cool” where decision-makers insisted they were part of the desired experience. We also applied it to completely different experiences where the “interface” was, for example, riding public transit, the “tasks” were train rides, and we followed the participants through the train-riding journey and rated various aspects accordingly: “A good public transportation experience is a cost-effective way of reliably, conveniently, and safely getting me to my intended destination on time.” To construct these definitions, we’ve employed both bottom-up and top-down approaches, depending on circumstances. For bottom-up, user inputs help dictate the terms that best fit the desired experience (usually by way of cluster and factor analysis). Top-down depends on strategic, visionary goals expressed by upper management that we then attempt to integrate into product development (e.g., “delight and excite”). We like a combination of both approaches to push the innovation envelope, but still be mindful of current user concerns. Hopefully the idea of crafting your own custom experience, and a way to measure it, can provide you with some ideas how you can adapt your user experience needs to whatever company you are in. Whether product-development or service-oriented, nearly every company is ultimately providing a user experience. The Bottom Line Creating great experiences may have been popularized by Steve Jobs and Apple, but I’ll be honest, it’s a good feeling to be moving from “good enough” to “delight and excite,” despite the challenge that entails. In fact, it’s because of that challenge that we will expand what we do as UX professionals to help deliver and assess those experiences. I’m excited to see how we, Oracle, and the rest of the industry will live up to that challenge.

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  • PASS: SQLRally Thoughts

    - by Bill Graziano
    The PASS Board recently decided that we wouldn’t put another US-based SQLRally on the calendar until we had a chance to review the program. I wanted to provide some of my thinking around this. Keep in mind that this is the opinion of one Board member. The Board committed to complete two SQLRally events to determine if an event modeled between SQL Saturday and the Summit was viable. We’ve completed the two events and now it’s time to step back and review the program. This is my seventh year on the PASS Board. Over that time people have asked me why PASS does certain things. Many, many times my answer has been “Because that’s the way we did it last year”. And I am tired of giving that answer. We need to take a step back and review the US-based SQLRally before we schedule another one. It would be irresponsible for me as a Board member to commit resources to this without validating that what we’re doing makes sense for the organization and our members. I have no doubt that this was a great event for the attendees. We just need to validate it’s the best use of our resources. Please keep in mind that we haven’t cancelled the event. We’ve just said we need to review it before scheduling another one. My opinion is that some fairly serious changes are needed to the model before we consider it again – IF we do it again. I’ve come to that conclusion after speaking with the Dallas organizers, our HQ team, our Marketing team, other Board members (including one of the Orlando organizers), attendees in Orlando and Dallas and visiting other similar events. I should point out that their views aren’t unanimous on nearly any part of this event -- which is one of the reasons I want to take some time and think about this before continuing. I think it’s helpful to look at the original goals of what we were trying to accomplish. Andy Warren wrote these up in August of 2010. My summary of these goals and some thoughts on each one is below. Many of these thoughts revolve around the growth of SQL Saturdays. In the two years since that document was written these events have grown significantly. The largest SQL Saturdays are now over 500 people which mean they are nearly the same size as our recent SQLRally. Our goals included: Geographic diversity. We wanted an event in an area of the country that was away from any given Summit location. I think that’s still a valid goal. But we also have SQL Saturdays all over the country. What does SQLRally bring to this that SQLSaturday doesn’t? Speaker growth. One of the stated goals was to build a “farm club” for speakers. This gives us a way for speakers to work up to speaking at Summit by speaking in front of larger crowds. What does SQLRally bring to this that the larger SQL Saturdays aren’t providing? Pre-Conference speakers is one obvious answer here. Lower price. On a per-day basis, SQLRally is roughly 1/4th the price of the Summit. We wanted a way for people to experience something Summit-like at a lower price point. The challenge is that we are very budget constrained at that lower price point. International Event Model.  (I need to write more about this but I’m out of time.  I’ll cover it in the next installment.) There are a number of things I really like about SQLRally. I love the smaller conferences. They give me a chance to meet more people than at something the size of Summit. I like the two day format. That gives you two evenings to be at social events with people. Seeing someone a second day is a great way to build a bond with that person. That’s more difficult to do at a SQL Saturday. We also need to talk about the financial aspects of the event. Last year generated a small $17,000 profit on revenues of $200,000. Percentage-wise that’s reasonable but on an absolute basis it’s not a huge amount in our budget. We think this year will lose between $30,000 and $50,000 and take roughly 1,000 hours of HQ time. We don’t have detailed financials back yet but that’s our best guess at this point. Part of that was driven by using a convention center instead of a hotel. Until we get detailed financials back we won’t have the full picture around the financial impact. This event also takes time and mindshare from our Marketing team. This may sound like a small thing but please don’t underestimate it. Our original vision for this was something that would take very little time from our Marketing team and just a few mentions in the Connector. It turned out to need more than that. And all those mentions and emails take up space we could use to talk about other events and other programs. Last I wanted to talk about some of the things I’m thinking about. I don’t think it’s as simple as saying if we just fix “X” it all gets better. Is this that much better of an event than SQL Saturdays? What if we gave a few SQL Saturdays some extra resources? When SQL Saturdays were around 250 people that wasn’t as viable. With some of those events over 500 we need to reconsider this. We need to get back to a hotel venue. That will help with cost and networking. Is this the best use of the 1,000 HQ hours that we invested in the event? Is our price-point correct? I’m leaning toward raising our price closer to Summit on a per-day basis. I think this will let us put on a higher quality event and alleviate much of the budget pressure. Should growing speakers be a focus? Having top-line pre-conference speakers helps market the event. It will also have an impact on pricing and overall profit. We should also ask if it actually does grow speakers. How many of these people will eventually register for Summit? Attend chapters? Is SQLRally a driver into PASS or is it something that chapters, etc. drive people to? Should we have one paid day and one free instead of two paid days? This is a very interesting model that is used by SQLBits in the UK. This gives you the two day aspect as well as offering options for paid and free attendees. I’m very intrigued by this. Should we focus on a topic? Buried in the minutes is a discussion of whether PASS should have a Business Analytics conference separate from Summit. This is an interesting question to consider. Would making SQLRally be focused on a particular topic make it more attractive? Would that even be a SQLRally? Can PASS effectively manage the two events? (FYI - Probably not.) Would it help differentiate it from Summit and SQL Saturday? These are all questions that I think should be asked and answered before we do this event again. And we can’t do that if we don’t take time to have the discussion. I wanted to get this published before I take off for a few days of vacation. When I get back I’d like to write more about why the international events are different and talk about where we go from here.

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  • What's New in Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.2?

    - by Fat Bloke
    A year is a long time in the IT industry. Since the last VirtualBox feature release, which was a little over a year ago, we've seen: new releases of cool new operating systems, such as Windows 8, ChromeOS, and Mountain Lion; we've seen a myriad of new Linux releases from big Enterprise class distributions like Oracle 6.3, to accessible desktop distros like Ubuntu 12.04 and Fedora 17; and we've also seen the spec of a typical PC or laptop double in power. All of these events have influenced our new VirtualBox version which we're releasing today. Here's how... Powerful hosts  One of the trends we've seen is that as the average host platform becomes more powerful, our users are consistently running more and more vm's. Some of our users have large libraries of vm's of various vintages, whilst others have groups of vm's that are run together as an assembly of the various tiers in a multi-tiered software solution, for example, a database tier, middleware tier, and front-ends.  So we're pleased to unveil a more powerful VirtualBox Manager to address the needs of these users: VM Groups Groups allow you to organize your VM library in a sensible way, e.g.  by platform type, by project, by version, by whatever. To create groups you can drag one VM onto another or select one or more VM's and choose Machine...Group from the menu bar. You can expand and collapse groups to save screen real estate, and you can Enter and Leave a group (think iPad navigation here) by using the right and left arrow keys when groups are selected. But groups are more than passive folders, because you can now also perform operations on groups, rather than all the individual VMs. So if you have a multi-tiered solution you can start the whole stack up with just one click. Autostart Many VirtualBox users run dedicated services in their VMs, for example, running a Wiki. With these types of VM workloads, you really want the VM start up when the host machine boots up. So with 4.2 we've introduced a cross-platform Auto-start mechanism to allow you to treat VMs as host services. Headless VM Launching With VM's such as web servers, wikis, and other types of server-class workloads, the Console of the VM is pretty much redundant. For some time now VirtualBox has offered a separate launch mechanism for these VM's, namely the command-line interface commands VBoxHeadless or VBoxManage startvm ... --type headless commands. But with 4.2 we also allow you launch headless VMs from the Manager. Simply hold down Shift when launching the VM from the Manager.  It's that easy. But how do you stop a headless VM? Well, with 4.2 we allow you to Close the VM from the Manager. (BTW best to use the ACPI Shutdown method which allows the guest VM to close down gracefully.) Easy VM Creation For our expert users, the  New VM Wizard was a little tiresome, so now there's a faster 2-click VM creation mode. Just Hide the description when creating a new VM. Powerful VMs  As the hosts have become more powerful, so are the guests that are running inside them. Here are some of the 4.2 features to accommodate them: Virtual Network Interface Cards  With 4.2, it's now possible to create VMs with up to 36 NICs, when using the ICH9 chipset emulation. But with great power comes great responsibility (didn't Obi-Wan say something similar?), and so we have also introduced bandwidth limiting to prevent a rogue VM stealing the whole pipe. VLAN tagging Some of our users leverage VLANs extensively so we've enhanced the E1000 NICs to support this.  Processor Performance If you are running a CPU which supports Nested Paging (aka EPT in the Intel world) such as most of the Core i5 and i7 CPUs, or are running an AMD Bulldozer or later, you should see some performance improvements from our work with these processors. And while we're talking Processors, we've added support for some of the more modern VIA CPUs too. Powerful Automation Because VirtualBox runs atop a fully blown operating system, it makes sense to leverage the capabilities of the host to run scripts that can drive the guest VMs. Guest Automation was introduced in a prior release but with 4.2 we've revamped the APIs to allow a richer and more powerful set of operations to be executed by the guest. Check out the IGuest APIs in the VirtualBox Programming Guide and Reference (SDK). Powerful Platforms  All the hardcore engineering that has gone into 4.2 has been done for a purpose and that is to deliver a fast and powerful engine that can run almost any x86 OS because of the integrity of the virtualization. So we're pleased to add support for these platforms: Mac OS X "Mountain Lion"  Windows 8 Windows Server 2012 Ubuntu 12.04 (“Precise Pangolin”) Fedora 17 Oracle Linux 6.3  Here's the proof: We don't have time to go into the myriad of smaller improvements such as support for burning audio CDs from a guest, bi-directional clipboard control,  drag-and-drop of files into Linux guests, etc. so we'll leave that as an exercise for the user as soon as you've downloaded from the Oracle or community site and taken a peek at the User Guide. So all in all, a pretty solid release, one that we hope you'll enjoy discovering. - FB 

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  • using Silverlight 3's HtmlPage.Window.Navigate method to reuse an already open browser window

    - by Phil
    Hi, I want to use an external browser window to implement a preview functionality in a silverlight application. There is a list of items and whenever the user clicks one of these items, it's opened in a separate browser window (the content is a pdf document, which is why it is handled ouside of the SL app). Now, to achieve this, I simply use HtmlPage.Window.Navigate(new Uri("http://www.bing.com")); which works fine. Now my client doesn't like the fact that every click opens up a new browser window. He would like to see the browser window reused every time an item is clicked. So I went out and tried implementing this: Option 1 - Use the overload of the Navigate method, like so: HtmlPage.Window.Navigate(new Uri("http://www.bing.com"), "foo"); I was assuming that the window would be reused when the same target parameter value (foo) would be used in subsequent calls. This does not work. I get a new window every time. Option 2 - Use the PopupWindow method on the HtmlPage HtmlPage.PopupWindow(new Uri("http://www.bing.com"), "blah", new HtmlPopupWindowOptions()); This does not work. I get a new window every time. Option 3 - Get a handle to the opened window and reuse that in subsequent calls private HtmlWindow window; private void navigationButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { if (window == null) window = HtmlPage.Window.Navigate(new Uri("http://www.bing.com"), "blah"); else window.Navigate(new Uri("http://www.bing.com"), "blah"); if (window == null) MessageBox.Show("it's null"); } This does not work. I tried the same for the PopupWindow() method and the window is null every time, so a new window is opened on every click. I have checked both the EnableHtmlAccess and the IsPopupWindowAllowed properties, and they return true, as they should. Option 4 - Use Eval method to execute some custom javascript private const string javascript = @"var popup = window.open('', 'blah') ; if(popup.location != 'http://www.bing.com' ){ popup.location = 'http://www.bing.com'; } popup.focus();"; private void navigationButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { HtmlPage.Window.Eval(javascript); } This does not work. I get a new window every time. option 5 - Use CreateInstance to run some custom javascript on the page private void navigationButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { HtmlPage.Window.CreateInstance("thisIsPlainHell"); } and in my aspx I have function thisIsPlainHell() { var popup = window.open('http://www.bing.com', 'blah'); popup.focus(); } Guess what? This does work. The only thing is that the window behaves a little strange and I'm not sure why: I'm behind a proxy and in all other scenarios I'm being prompted for my password. In this case however I am not (and am thus not able to reach the external site - bing in this case). This is not really a huge issue atm, but I just don't understand what's goign on here. Whenever I type another url in the address bar of the popup window (eg www.google.com) and press enter, it opens up another window and prompts me for my proxy password. As a temporary solution option 5 could do, but I don't like the fact that Silverlight is not able to manage this. One of the main reasons my client has opted for Silverlight is to be protected against all the browser specific hacking that comes with javascript. Am I doing something wrong? I'm definitely no javascript expert, so I'm hoping it's something obvious I'm missing here. Cheers, Phil

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  • Is there a way to make a zenity dialog modal?

    - by math
    How can I make them modal? With modal I mean: The dialog should block the desktop so the user has only two options: Either cancel the dialog or enter text into it. (I want this basically because new windows might popup and can steal focus and additionally that other programs can access configuration files inside that container) Background: I want to ask a passphrase after login for an encfs container. So either entering a pass, or continue with cancellation of this dialog. Note: This is not a duplicate of modal dialog popup alarm, as I am interested especially in a solution to Zenity dialogs.

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  • iPhone/Obj-C: Accessing a UIScrollView from a View displayed within it.

    - by Daniel I-S
    I'm writing a simple iPhone app which lets a user access a series of calculators. It consists of the following: UITableViewController (RootViewController), with the list of calculators. UIViewController + UIScrollView (UniversalScroller), which represents an empty scroll view - and has a 'displayedViewController' property. UIViewController (Calculators 1-9), each of which contains a view with controls that represents a particular calculator. Each calculator takes 3-5 values via UITextFields and UISliders, and has a 'calculate' button. They can potentially be taller than 460px(iPhone screen height). The idea is: User taps on a particular menu item in the RootViewController. This loads and inits UniversalScroller, ALSO loads and inits the UIViewcontroller for the particular calculator that was selected, sets the displayedViewController property of UniversalScroller to the newly loaded calculator UIViewcontroller, and pushes the UniversalScroller to the front. When the UniversalScroller hits its 'viewDidLoad' event, it sets its contentSize to the view frame size of its 'displayedViewController' object. It then adds the displayedViewController's view as a subview to itself, and sets its own title to equal that of the displayedViewController. It now displays the calculator, along with the correct title, in a scrollable form. Conceptually (and currently; this stuff has all been implemented already), this works great - I can design the calculators how I see fit, as tall as they end up being, and they will automatically be accommodated and displayed in an appropriately configured UIScrollView. However, there is one problem: The main reason I wanted to display things in a UIScrollView was so that, when the on-screen-keyboard appeared, I could shift the view up to focus on the control that is currently being edited. To do this, I need access to the UniversalScroller object that is holding the current calculator's view. On the beganEditing: event of each control, I intended to use the [UniversalScroller.view scrollRectToVisible: animated:] method to move focus to the correct control. However, I am having trouble accessing the UniversalScroller. I tried assigning a reference to it as a property of each calculator UIViewController, but did't seem to have much luck. I've read about using Delegates but have had trouble working out exactly how they work. I'm looking for one of three things: Some explanation of how I can access the methods of a UIScrollView from a UIViewController whose view is contained within it. or Confirmation of my suspicions that making users scroll on a data entry form is bad, and I should just abandon scrollviews altogether and move the view up and down to the relevant position when the keyboard appears, then back when it disappears. or Some pointers on how I could go about redesigning the calculators (which are basically simple data entry forms using labels, sliders and textfields) to be contained within UITableViewCells (presumably in a UITableView, which I understand is a scrollview deep down) - I read a post on SO saying that that's a more pleasing way to make a data entry form, but I couldn't find any examples of that online. Screenshots would be nice. Anything to make my app more usable and naturally 'iPhone-like', since shuffling labels and textboxes around makes me feel like I am building a winforms app! I've only recently started with this platform and language, and despite being largely an Apple skeptic I definitely see the beauty in the way that it works. Help me solve this problem and I might fall in love completely. Dan

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  • Should I be afraid of Linux server administration?

    - by markle976
    I've been trying to figure out what to focus on. I finally realized that the root of my quandary is that I am unsure about learning Linux server administration. I have been getting pretty good with PHP/MySQL and web development, but I am not very familiar with Linux. Is it hard to learn? What would I need to know in order to manage a LAMP stack? Also, which version is most used in enterprises? I think I have also hesitated to dive in because it seems like it is mostly used in small companies, but I guess that could be a good thing.

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  • WPF, UserControl, and Commands? Oh my!

    - by Greg D
    (This question is related to another one, but different enough that I think it warrants placement here.) Here's a (heavily snipped) Window: <Window x:Class="Gmd.TimeTracker2.TimeTrackerMainForm" xmlns:local="clr-namespace:Gmd.TimeTracker2" xmlns:localcommands="clr-namespace:Gmd.TimeTracker2.Commands" x:Name="This" DataContext="{Binding ElementName=This}"> <Window.CommandBindings> <CommandBinding Command="localcommands:TaskCommands.ViewTaskProperties" Executed="HandleViewTaskProperties" CanExecute="CanViewTaskPropertiesExecute" /> </Window.CommandBindings> <DockPanel> <!-- snip stuff --> <Grid> <Grid.RowDefinitions> <RowDefinition /> <RowDefinition Height="Auto" /> </Grid.RowDefinitions> <!-- snip more stuff --> <Button Content="_Create a new task" Grid.Row="1" x:Name="btnAddTask" Click="HandleNewTaskClick" /> </Grid> </DockPanel> </Window> and here's a (heavily snipped) UserControl: <UserControl x:Class="Gmd.TimeTracker2.TaskStopwatchControl" xmlns:local="clr-namespace:Gmd.TimeTracker2" xmlns:localcommands="clr-namespace:Gmd.TimeTracker2.Commands" x:Name="This" DataContext="{Binding ElementName=This}"> <UserControl.ContextMenu> <ContextMenu> <MenuItem x:Name="mnuProperties" Header="_Properties" Command="{x:Static localcommands:TaskCommands.ViewTaskProperties}" CommandTarget="What goes here?" /> </ContextMenu> </UserControl.ContextMenu> <StackPanel> <TextBlock MaxWidth="100" Text="{Binding Task.TaskName, Mode=TwoWay}" TextWrapping="WrapWithOverflow" TextAlignment="Center" /> <TextBlock Text="{Binding Path=ElapsedTime}" TextAlignment="Center" /> <Button Content="{Binding Path=IsRunning, Converter={StaticResource boolToString}, ConverterParameter='Stop Start'}" Click="HandleStartStopClicked" /> </StackPanel> </UserControl> Through various techniques, a UserControl can be dynamically added to the Window. Perhaps via the Button in the window. Perhaps, more problematically, from a persistent backing store when the application is started. As can be seen from the xaml, I've decided that it makes sense for me to try to use Commands as a way to handle various operations that the user can perform with Tasks. I'm doing this with the eventual goal of factoring all command logic into a more formally-defined Controller layer, but I'm trying to refactor one step at a time. The problem that I'm encountering is related to the interaction between the command in the UserControl's ContextMenu and the command's CanExecute, defined in the Window. When the application first starts and the saved Tasks are restored into TaskStopwatches on the Window, no actual UI elements are selected. If I then immediately r-click a UserControl in the Window in an attempt to execute the ViewTaskProperties command, the CanExecute handler never runs and the menu item remains disabled. If I then click some UI element (e.g., the button) just to give something focus, the CanExecute handlers are run with the CanExecuteRoutedEventArgs's Source property set to the UI element that has the focus. In some respect, this behavior seems to be known-- I've learned that menus automat

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  • Is HAProxy able to pass SSL requests to Apache + mod_ssl?

    - by Josh Smeaton
    Most of the documentation I've read regarding HAProxy and SSL seems to suggest that SSL must be handled before it reaches HAProxy. Most solutions focus on using stunnel, and a few suggest Apache + mod_ssl infront of HAProxy. Our problem though, is that we use Apache as a reverse proxy to a number of other sites which use their own certificates. Ideally what we'd like, is for HAProxy to pass all SSL traffic to Apache, and let Apache handle either the SSL or reverse proxying. Our current setup: Apache Reverse Proxy -> Apache + mod_ssl -> Application What I'd like to do: HAProxy -> Apache Reverse Proxy -> Apache + mod_ssl -> Application Is it possible to do this? Is HAProxy capable of forwarding SSL traffic to be handled by a server BEHIND it?

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  • Can I shorten my directory commands in ubuntu?

    - by Spencer Cooley
    When working on a rails app I like to open all of my files through the command line like so cd my_app gedit app/views/user/show.html.erb Is there a way that I could shorten this so that I could just write something like gedit user_views/show.html.erb ? I would like the console to stay in the main directory, I just don't like having to type out app/controller/user_controler.rb every time I want to open the user controller. I know that I could just open the file with my mouse, but I feel like moving from keyboard to mouse breaks my focus a little bit. When I can just tap away at the keyboard it seems like I have a more smooth workflow.

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  • Can I shorten my directory commands in ubuntu?

    - by Spencer Cooley
    When working on a rails app I like to open all of my files through the command line like so cd my_app gedit app/views/user/show.html.erb Is there a way that I could shorten this so that I could just write something like gedit user_views/show.html.erb ? I would like the console to stay in the main directory, I just don't like having to type out app/controller/user_controler.rb every time I want to open the user controller. I know that I could just open the file with my mouse, but I feel like moving from keyboard to mouse breaks my focus a little bit. When I can just tap away at the keyboard it seems like I have a more smooth workflow.

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  • Cannot install .NET Framework 4.0 on Windows XP SP3

    - by Bob
    I'm using Windows XP SP3 logged in as the administrator. I had RAID Mirroring running. The motherboard broke earlier in the year. When I got a new battery I did not resync. I just use the disks as two separate disks. I searched Google for the errors but I didn't find anything detailed enough. The following Microsoft components are in Add/Remove programs: .NET Framework 1.1 .NET Framework 2.0 Service Pack 2 .NET Framework 3.0 Service Pack 2 .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 Microsoft Compression Client Pack 1.0 for Windows XP Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007 Microsoft Silverlight Microsoft USB Flash Driver Manager Micrsoft User-mode Driver Framework Feature Pack 1.0 Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 ATL Update KB 973923 x86 8.050727.4053 Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Redistributable This is the installation log: Exists: evaluating... [10/21/2011, 22:17:14]MsiGetProductInfo with product code {3C3901C5-3455-3E0A-A214-0B093A5070A6} found no matches [10/21/2011, 22:17:14] Exists evaluated to false [10/21/2011, 22:15:50]calling PerformAction on an installing performer [10/21/2011, 22:15:50] Action: Performing actions on all Items... [10/21/2011, 22:15:50]Wait for Item (clr_optimization_v2.0.50727_32) to be available [10/21/2011, 22:15:50]clr_optimization_v2.0.50727_32 is now available to install [10/21/2011, 22:15:50]Creating new Performer for ServiceControl item [10/21/2011, 22:15:50] Action: ServiceControl - Stop clr_optimization_v2.0.50727_32... [10/21/2011, 22:15:50]ServiceControl operation succeeded! [10/21/2011, 22:15:50] Action complete [10/21/2011, 22:15:50]Error 0 is mapped to Custom Error: [10/21/2011, 22:15:50]Wait for Item (Windows6.0-KB956250-v6001-x86.msu) to be available [10/21/2011, 22:15:51]Windows6.0-KB956250-v6001-x86.msu is now available to install [10/21/2011, 22:15:51]Created new DoNothingPerformer for File item [10/21/2011, 22:15:51]No CustomError defined for this item. [10/21/2011, 22:15:51]Wait for Item (Windows6.1-KB958488-v6001-x86.msu) to be available [10/21/2011, 22:15:51]Windows6.1-KB958488-v6001-x86.msu is now available to install [10/21/2011, 22:15:51]Created new DoNothingPerformer for File item [10/21/2011, 22:15:51]No CustomError defined for this item. [10/21/2011, 22:15:51]Wait for Item (netfx_Core.mzz) to be available [10/21/2011, 22:15:52]netfx_Core.mzz is now available to install [10/21/2011, 22:15:52]Created new DoNothingPerformer for File item [10/21/2011, 22:15:52]No CustomError defined for this item. [10/21/2011, 22:15:52]Wait for Item (netfx_Core_x86.msi) to be available [10/21/2011, 22:15:52]netfx_Core_x86.msi is now available to install [10/21/2011, 22:15:52]Creating new Performer for MSI item [10/21/2011, 22:15:52] Action: Performing Action on MSI at F:\DOCUME~1\Owner\LOCALS~1\Temp\Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Client Profile Setup_4.0.30319\netfx_Core_x86.msi... [10/21/2011, 22:15:52]Log File F:\DOCUME~1\Owner\LOCALS~1\Temp\Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Client Profile Setup_20111021_221545515-MSI_netfx_Core_x86.msi.txt does not yet exist but may do at Watson upload time [10/21/2011, 22:15:52]Calling MsiInstallProduct(F:\DOCUME~1\Owner\LOCALS~1\Temp\Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Client Profile Setup_4.0.30319\netfx_Core_x86.msi, EXTUI=1 [10/21/2011, 22:17:14]MSI (F:\DOCUME~1\Owner\LOCALS~1\Temp\Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Client Profile Setup_4.0.30319\netfx_Core_x86.msi) Installation failed. Msi Log: Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Client Profile Setup_20111021_221545515-MSI_netfx_Core_x86.msi.txt [10/21/2011, 22:17:14]PerformOperation returned 1603 (translates to HRESULT = 0x80070643) [10/21/2011, 22:17:14] Action complete [10/21/2011, 22:17:14]OnFailureBehavior for this item is to Rollback. [10/21/2011, 22:17:14] Action: Performing actions on all Items... [10/21/2011, 22:17:14] Action complete [10/21/2011, 22:17:14] Action complete [10/21/2011, 22:17:14]Final Result: Installation failed with error code: (0x80070643), "Fatal error during installation. " (Elapsed time: 0 00:01:29). [10/21/2011, 22:17:41]WM_ACTIVATEAPP: Focus stealer's windows WAS visible, NOT taking back focus SECOND LOG REQUESTED BELOW: MSI (s) (6C:EC) [22:17:13:828]: Invoking remote custom action. DLL: F:\WINDOWS\Installer\MSIBB4.tmp, Entrypoint: NgenUpdateHighestVersionRollback MSI (s) (6C:64) [22:17:13:984]: Executing op: ActionStart(Name=CA_NgenRemoveNicPFROs_I_DEF_x86.3643236F_FC70_11D3_A536_0090278A1BB8,,) MSI (s) (6C:64) [22:17:13:984]: Executing op: ActionStart(Name=CA_NgenRemoveNicPFROs_I_RB_x86.3643236F_FC70_11D3_A536_0090278A1BB8,,) MSI (s) (6C:64) [22:17:13:984]: Executing op: CustomActionRollback(Action=CA_NgenRemoveNicPFROs_I_RB_x86.3643236F_FC70_11D3_A536_0090278A1BB8,ActionType=17729,Source=BinaryData,Target=NgenRemoveNicPFROs,) MSI (s) (6C:AC) [22:17:13:984]: Invoking remote custom action. DLL: F:\WINDOWS\Installer\MSIBB5.tmp, Entrypoint: NgenRemoveNicPFROs MSI (s) (6C:64) [22:17:14:000]: Executing op: End(Checksum=0,ProgressTotalHDWord=0,ProgressTotalLDWord=0) MSI (s) (6C:64) [22:17:14:000]: Error in rollback skipped. Return: 5 MSI (s) (6C:64) [22:17:14:015]: No System Restore sequence number for this installation. MSI (s) (6C:64) [22:17:14:015]: Unlocking Server MSI (s) (6C:64) [22:17:14:015]: PROPERTY CHANGE: Deleting UpdateStarted property. Its current value is '1'. MSI (s) (6C:64) [22:17:14:031]: Note: 1: 1708 MSI (s) (6C:64) [22:17:14:031]: Product: Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Client Profile -- Installation failed. MSI (s) (6C:64) [22:17:14:078]: Cleaning up uninstalled install packages, if any exist MSI (s) (6C:64) [22:17:14:078]: MainEngineThread is returning 1603 MSI (s) (6C:EC) [22:17:14:171]: Destroying RemoteAPI object. MSI (s) (6C:9C) [22:17:14:171]: Custom Action Manager thread ending. MSI (c) (F4:C4) [22:17:14:203]: Decrementing counter to disable shutdown. If counter >= 0, shutdown will be denied. Counter after decrement: -1 MSI (c) (F4:C4) [22:17:14:203]: MainEngineThread is returning 1603 === Verbose logging stopped: 10/21/2011 22:17:14 ===

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  • .htaccess blocking images on some internal pages

    - by jethomas
    I'm doing some web design for a friend and I noticed that everywhere else on her site images will load fine except for the subdirectory I'm working in. I looked in her .htaccess file and sure enough it is setup to deny people from stealing her images. Fair Enough, except the pages i'm working on are in her domain and yet I still get the 403 error. I'm pasting the .htaccess contents below but I replaced the domain names with xyz, 123 and abc. So specifically the page I'm on (xyz.com/DesignGallery.asp) pulls images from (xyz.com/machform/data/form_1/files) and it results in a forbidden error. RewriteEngine on <Files 403.shtml> order allow,deny allow from all </Files> RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://xyz.com/.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://xyz.com/machform/.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://xyz.com/machform/data/form_1/files/.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://xyz.com$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://abc.com/.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://abc.com$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://abc.xyz.com/.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://abc.xyz.com$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://123.com/.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://123.com$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://123.xyz.com/.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://123.xyz.com$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.xyz.com/.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.xyz.com/machform/.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.xyz.com/machform/$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.xyz.com/machform/data/form_1/files/.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.xyz.com$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.abc.com/.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.abc.com$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.abc.xyz.com/.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.abc.xyz.com$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.123.com/.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.123.com$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.123.xyz.com/.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.123.xyz.com$ [NC] RewriteRule .*\.(jpg|jpeg|gif|png|bmp)$ - [F,NC] deny from 69.49.149.17 RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^.*$ RewriteRule ^vendors\.html$ "http\:\/\/www\.xyz\.com\/Design_Gallery_1\.htm" [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^.*$ RewriteRule ^vendors\.asp$ "http\:\/\/www\.xyz\.com\/Design_Gallery_1\.htm" [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^.*$ RewriteRule ^ArtGraphics\.html$ "http\:\/\/www\.xyz\.com\/Art_Gallery_1\.htm" [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^.*$ RewriteRule ^ArtGraphics\.asp$ "http\:\/\/www\.xyz\.com\/Art_Gallery_1\.htm" [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^.*$ RewriteRule ^Gear\.asp$ "http\:\/\/www\.xyz\.com\/Gear_Gallery_1\.htm" [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^.*$ RewriteRule ^Gear\.html$ "http\:\/\/www\.xyz\.com\/Gear_Gallery_1\.htm" [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^.*$ RewriteRule ^NewsletterSign\-Up\.html$ "http\:\/\/www\.xyz\.com\/Newsletter\.htm" [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^.*$ RewriteRule ^NewsletterSign\-Up\.asp$ "http\:\/\/www\.xyz\.com\/Newsletter\.htm" [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^.*$ RewriteRule ^KidzStuff\.html$ "http\:\/\/www\.xyz\.com\/KidzStuff1\.htm" [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^.*$ RewriteRule ^KidzStuff\.asp$ "http\:\/\/www\.xyz\.com\/KidzStuff1\.htm" [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^.*$ RewriteRule ^Vendors\.html$ "http\:\/\/www\.xyz\.com\/Design_Gallery_1\.htm" [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^.*$ RewriteRule ^Vendors\.asp$ "http\:\/\/www\.xyz\.com\/Design_Gallery_1\.htm" [R=301,L]

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  • Security Resources

    - by dr.pooter
    What types of sites do you visit, on a regular basis, to stay current on information security issues? Some examples from my list include: http://isc.sans.org/ http://www.kaspersky.com/viruswatch3 http://www.schneier.com/blog/ http://blog.fireeye.com/research/ As well as following the security heavyweights on twitter. I'm curious to hear what resources you recommend for daily monitoring. Anything specific to particular operating systems or other software. Are mailing lists still considered valuable. My goal would be to trim the cruft of all the things I'm currently subscribed to and focus on the essentials.

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  • Necesity of ModSecurity if Apache is behind Nginx

    - by Saif Bechan
    I have my Apache installed behind Nginx. So every request that comes in is first handeled by Nginx. If there is dynamic content needed the request is send to Apache which listens on port 8080. Pretty basic reverse proxy setup. Now with this setup the first entry point is Nginx. Is it still needed to install ModSecurity to protect Apache against unwanted request. Or should I just focus on protecting Nginx as this is the first entry point. All suggestions are welcome.

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  • Can I be a wireless server WITHOUT offering internet?

    - by Kenny Hendrick
    I would like to pull into a truck stop and offer a folder of free documentaries to quell some of the ignorance LOL I run Linux ";-) Very happy to have made that switch by the way...and have an internal wireless in the laptop but my bus has an antenna on the roof which I connect via usb to create a wireless signal (this is the one I'd like to focus on since it will offer the most reach to all those truckers out there. My question is this. I'm running apache2 and have a bunch of videos tossed into the www folder and can access it locally and would like others that frown on paying to use the truckstops slow internet service and would like an alternative by simply logging onto me and getting the narrow content I offer freely without passwords and the like. Has anyone a good means of doing this? p.s. I've done this in the past but am getting old and forgetful (my crutch)

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  • Recommended apps for securing/protecting a new desktop machine install?

    - by Eddie Parker
    I'm hoping to harness the collective tips of superuser to gather recommended apps/configurations to keep a new desktop clean, virus free, and hopefully lower software rot. I ask because I've recently come across tools like dropbox, deepfreeze, returnil, etc, and I'm curious what other ones are out there to protect a new box. I personally am interested in Windows, but feel free to comment on whatever OS you'd like, freeware or otherwise. Ideally specify the OS in your answer(s). One answer per program please. Then, rather than duplicate posts, vote for the program if it is already listed. UPDATE: It's been noted that there are other questions similar to this one [1], so I'd ask that these answers focus on security and protection. [1] Related questions: http://superuser.com/questions/1241/what-are-some-must-have-windows-programs http://superuser.com/questions/1191/what-are-some-must-have-mac-os-x-programs http://superuser.com/questions/1430/must-have-linux-software http://superuser.com/questions/3855/must-have-networking-security-tools

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  • International Dvorak keyboard doesn't trigger hot-keys

    - by akurtser
    Hi, I just configured a Hebrew-Dvorak keyboard with Keyboard Layout Manager. What this means is that when I hold Shift+any key, the input is the capital English letter. It works just fine, however, hot-keys that involves the Ctrl key aren't being triggered when the input language is set to Hebrew (i.e Ctrl+L in FF which should set the focus on the URL bar) If however I hit the matching Qwerty key (input lang=Hebrew) I get the desirable result (i.e the URL bar get focused). The only thing I can think of is completely removing the US-Qwerty layout, but I don't know how this can be achieved, and besides, it may not solve the problem. Thanks, Almog.

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  • How to dismiss the Windows 8.1 Upgrade banner?

    - by user81430
    As of today, my Windows 8 system is displaying a large banner covering about a quarter of the screen, demanding that I upgrade to Windows 8.1 for free. The banner helpfully informs me that that I can continue to use the computer while the upgrade is downloading. There's a button to go to the store for the upgrade, but no other choices, such as No Thanks, Maybe Later, or Absolutely Not. I can't find a way to dismiss the banner, and I can start programs but can't give them focus while the banner is present. So I'm dead in the water. How can I fix this? Bringing up Task Manager doesn't give me any options. My employer doesn't yet support Windows 8.1 (which is also an issue, but beyond my control) so I won't be able to connect to work if install the upgrade. So there is no way on God's green earth that I'm going to install this upgrade now.

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