Search Results

Search found 30146 results on 1206 pages for 'back to the future'.

Page 92/1206 | < Previous Page | 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99  | Next Page >

  • Save and restore multiple layers within a Photoshop action that flattens

    - by SuitCase
    I'm editing comic pages with layers - "background", "foreground", "lineart" and "over lineart". I have a Photoshop action that includes a Mode-Bitmap command, which requires the image to be flattened. I need this part of the action because I use the Halftone Screen method of reducing the greyscale image to bitmap on the "background" layer, creating a certain effect. I am pretty sure there is no filter or anything else that gives the same effect. After the mode is changed to bitmap, my action changes things back to greyscale for further changes. This poses a problem. I only want to do the bitmap mode change on the background layer, and after I do the change I want to restore the layer structure as it was - with the foreground, lineart and over lineart layers back above the now-halftoned background. My current method of saving these layers and restoring them is clumsy. My action is able to automatically save the "foreground" layer by selecting it, cutting it, then pasting it back in after the mode changing is over. But, for the "ink" and "over ink" layers, I have to manually cut these layers, paste them into a new document, and later re-cut and re-paste after running my action. This is so clunky! What I would like to know is if it's possible to set aside my layers in an automated way, and then bring them back in, also in an automated way. An ugly (but functional) solution would be to replicate my actions of creating new documents and pasting them temporarily there, but I don't think Photoshop allows you to do things outside of your current document with an action. It seems to me that the only way to do what I want is to use the "hack" of incorporating the clipboard into the action as a clever hack, but that leaves me stuck as I have two more layers that can't fit onto that same clipboard. Help or suggestions would be appreciated. I can keep on doing it manually, but to have a comprehensive action would save me a ton of time.

    Read the article

  • IIS no longer saving session variables

    - by John
    I'm running IIS v7 on a Win7 development machine. I have PHP code that saves session variables and calls them back later. This has been working on this machine for some time. For some reason now, the session variables dissapear immediatly after saving. Code that used to work fine on http://localhost/, suddenly now does not. I have tested different browsers - the vars dissapear regardless of browser. I have tested identical code on different servers. The problem exists only on this development machine. I tried some code that saves a session var, then reads it back and displays it, then shows a link to click on to read it back and display again. What happens is the session var DOES get written and read back and displayed ok. But when you click the link to view it again, it's gone. I don't recall making any changes to IIS. But I did run several malware scanners and clean-up tools. Is anyone aware of any setting in IIS that disallows session vars? Any other throughts?

    Read the article

  • Strange focus bug in Firefox (chrome vs content)

    - by Marius
    Here is a strange bug I'm experiencing in Firefox: I can only use either the chrome, or the content, not both at the same time! For example, I can click on tabs and the toolbar icons, focus the search bar and write in it as well as the address bar, but if I try to click on anything in the content (eg a link or a textfield to write something), then nothing happens. The mouse pointer doesn't change either, it just stays a pointer when I hover over things, and the links I hover don't react either. But if I alt-tab to another program (or click on it in the taskbar), then back to Firefox, then I can use the area that I click on. So if I click somewhere on the webpage to get focus back to Firefox, then I can click on links and write things (like this text), but I cannot click on tabs or refresh or anything else in the chrome. I can't even click on the minimize, restore and close icons! To get focus back on the chrome I have to alt-tab to another program, and then click on the chrome to get back to Firefox to be able to use the chrome again. I've tried closing and starting it again, but the bug is still there. I have experienced this before, but I don't remember what I did to fix it. This bug seems to occur sometimes when I wake up the computer from standby, but I leave by computer in standby all the time, so that is not the only factor.

    Read the article

  • What could be causing windows to fail to sleep or hibernate, and revert system settings?

    - by xdumaine
    I am running Windows 8.1 on my system (Dell e6520) and the symptoms are this: My PC won't sleep or hibernate. It the screen turns off, but the fans just run and run, and after a little while, it completely shuts down, and when I start it back up, everything is closed, like it was a fresh boot/restart. I'm have a weird issue with outlook described here and the fix works fine - modifying a registry value. The weirder part is that after my computer fails to sleep or hibernate, and it starts back up, the registry value is GONE, like I never modified it, and thus the outlook error message is back. I thought maybe a graphics driver was preventing the sleep/hibernate, so I attempted to uninstall the NVIDIA graphics driver and control panel. HOWEVER, once the computer fails to sleep/hibernate, the NVIDIA graphics driver and control panel appear BACK on my system, like I didn't uninstall them. What could be happening here? I really need to be able to sleep/hibernate so I don't lose work or my work state, and these issues are really concerning. What I've tried, without success: Uninstalling graphics driver mentioned above Disabling hibernate and using sleep disabling/re-enabling hibernate Disabling startup items Sleeping as local system admin account disconnecting all USB, network, and bluetooth devices

    Read the article

  • 8 Backup Tools Explained for Windows 7 and 8

    - by Chris Hoffman
    Backups on Windows can be confusing. Whether you’re using Windows 7 or 8, you have quite a few integrated backup tools to think about. Windows 8 made quite a few changes, too. You can also use third-party backup software, whether you want to back up to an external drive or back up your files to online storage. We won’t cover third-party tools here — just the ones built into Windows. Backup and Restore on Windows 7 Windows 7 has its own Backup and Restore feature that lets you create backups manually or on a schedule. You’ll find it under Backup and Restore in the Control Panel. The original version of Windows 8 still contained this tool, and named it Windows 7 File Recovery. This allowed former Windows 7 users to restore files from those old Windows 7 backups or keep using the familiar backup tool for a little while. Windows 7 File Recovery was removed in Windows 8.1. System Restore System Restore on both Windows 7 and 8 functions as a sort of automatic system backup feature. It creates backup copies of important system and program files on a schedule or when you perform certain tasks, such as installing a hardware driver. If system files become corrupted or your computer’s software becomes unstable, you can use System Restore to restore your system and program files from a System Restore point. This isn’t a way to back up your personal files. It’s more of a troubleshooting feature that uses backups to restore your system to its previous working state. Previous Versions on Windows 7 Windows 7′s Previous Versions feature allows you to restore older versions of files — or deleted files. These files can come from backups created with Windows 7′s Backup and Restore feature, but they can also come from System Restore points. When Windows 7 creates a System Restore point, it will sometimes contain your personal files. Previous Versions allows you to extract these personal files from restore points. This only applies to Windows 7. On Windows 8, System Restore won’t create backup copies of your personal files. The Previous Versions feature was removed on Windows 8. File History Windows 8 replaced Windows 7′s backup tools with File History, although this feature isn’t enabled by default. File History is designed to be a simple, easy way to create backups of your data files on an external drive or network location. File History replaces both Windows 7′s Backup and Previous Versions features. Windows System Restore won’t create copies of personal files on Windows 8. This means you can’t actually recover older versions of files until you enable File History yourself — it isn’t enabled by default. System Image Backups Windows also allows you to create system image backups. These are backup images of your entire operating system, including your system files, installed programs, and personal files. This feature was included in both Windows 7 and Windows 8, but it was hidden in the preview versions of Windows 8.1. After many user complaints, it was restored and is still available in the final version of Windows 8.1 — click System Image Backup on the File History Control Panel. Storage Space Mirroring Windows 8′s Storage Spaces feature allows you to set up RAID-like features in software. For example, you can use Storage Space to set up two hard disks of the same size in a mirroring configuration. They’ll appear as a single drive in Windows. When you write to this virtual drive, the files will be saved to both physical drives. If one drive fails, your files will still be available on the other drive. This isn’t a good long-term backup solution, but it is a way of ensuring you won’t lose important files if a single drive fails. Microsoft Account Settings Backup Windows 8 and 8.1 allow you to back up a variety of system settings — including personalization, desktop, and input settings. If you’re signing in with a Microsoft account, OneDrive settings backup is enabled automatically. This feature can be controlled under OneDrive > Sync settings in the PC settings app. This feature only backs up a few settings. It’s really more of a way to sync settings between devices. OneDrive Cloud Storage Microsoft hasn’t been talking much about File History since Windows 8 was released. That’s because they want people to use OneDrive instead. OneDrive — formerly known as SkyDrive — was added to the Windows desktop in Windows 8.1. Save your files here and they’ll be stored online tied to your Microsoft account. You can then sign in on any other computer, smartphone, tablet, or even via the web and access your files. Microsoft wants typical PC users “backing up” their files with OneDrive so they’ll be available on any device. You don’t have to worry about all these features. Just choose a backup strategy to ensure your files are safe if your computer’s hard disk fails you. Whether it’s an integrated backup tool or a third-party backup application, be sure to back up your files.

    Read the article

  • Laissez les bon temps rouler! (Microsoft BI Conference 2010)

    - by smisner
    "Laissez les bons temps rouler" is a Cajun phrase that I heard frequently when I lived in New Orleans in the mid-1990s. It means "Let the good times roll!" and encapsulates a feeling of happy expectation. As I met with many of my peers and new acquaintances at the Microsoft BI Conference last week, this phrase kept running through my mind as people spoke about their plans in their respective businesses, the benefits and opportunities that the recent releases in the BI stack are providing, and their expectations about the future of the BI stack. Notwithstanding some jabs here and there to point out the platform is neither perfect now nor will be anytime soon (along with admissions that the competitors are also not perfect), and notwithstanding several missteps by the event organizers (which I don't care to enumerate), the overarching mood at the conference was positive. It was a refreshing change from the doom and gloom hovering over several conferences that I attended in 2009. Although many people expect economic hardships to continue over the coming year or so, everyone I know in the BI field is busier than ever and expects to stay busy for quite a while. Self-Service BI Self-service was definitely a theme of the BI conference. In the keynote, Ted Kummert opened with a look back to a fairy tale vision of self-service BI that he told in 2008. At that time, the fairy tale future was a time when "every end user was able to use BI technologies within their job in order to move forward more effectively" and transitioned to the present time in which SQL Server 2008 R2, Office 2010, and SharePoint 2010 are available to deliver managed self-service BI. This set of technologies is presumably poised to address the needs of the 80% of users that Kummert said do not use BI today. He proceeded to outline a series of activities that users ought to be able to do themselves--from simple changes to a report like formatting or an addtional data visualization to integration of an additional data source. The keynote then continued with a series of demonstrations of both current and future technology in support of self-service BI. Some highlights that interested me: PowerPivot, of course, is the flagship product for self-service BI in the Microsoft BI stack. In the TechEd keynote, which was open to the BI conference attendees, Amir Netz (twitter) impressed the audience by demonstrating interactivity with a workbook containing 100 million rows. He upped the ante at the BI keynote with his demonstration of a future-state PowerPivot workbook containing over 2 billion records. It's important to note that this volume of data is being processed by a server engine, and not in the PowerPivot client engine. (Yes, I think it's impressive, but none of my clients are typically wrangling with 2 billion records at a time. Maybe they're thinking too small. This ability to work quickly with large data sets has greater implications for BI solutions than for self-service BI, in my opinion.) Amir also demonstrated KPIs for the future PowerPivot, which appeared to be easier to implement than in any other Microsoft product that supports KPIs, apart from simple KPIs in SharePoint. (My initial reaction is that we have one more place to build KPIs. Great. It's confusing enough. I haven't seen how well those KPIs integrate with other BI tools, which will be important for adoption.) One more PowerPivot feature that Amir showed was a graphical display of the lineage for calculations. (This is hugely practical, especially if you build up calculations incrementally. You can more easily follow the logic from calculation to calculation. Furthermore, if you need to make a change to one calculation, you can assess the impact on other calculations.) Another product demonstration will be available within the next 30 days--Pivot for Reporting Services. If you haven't seen this technology yet, check it out at www.getpivot.com. (It definitely has a wow factor, but I'm skeptical about its practicality. However, I'm looking forward to trying it out with data that I understand.) Michael Tejedor (twitter) demonstrated a feature that I think is really interesting and not emphasized nearly enough--overshadowed by PowerPivot, no doubt. That feature is the Microsoft Business Intelligence Indexing Connector, which enables search of the content of Excel workbooks and Reporting Services reports. (This capability existed in MOSS 2007, but was more cumbersome to implement. The search results in SharePoint 2010 are not only cooler, but more useful by describing whether the content is found in a table or a chart, for example.) This may yet be the dawning of the age of self-service BI - a phrase I've heard repeated from time to time over the last decade - but I think BI professionals are likely to stay busy for a long while, and need not start looking for a new line of work. Kummert repeatedly referenced strategic BI solutions in contrast to self-service BI to emphasize that self-service BI is not a replacement for the services that BI professionals provide. After all, self-service BI does not appear magically on user desktops (or whatever device they want to use). A supporting infrastructure is necessary, and grows in complexity in proportion to the need to simplify BI for users. It's one thing to hear the party line touted by Microsoft employees at the BI keynote, but it's another to hear from the people who are responsible for implementing and supporting it within an organization. Rob Collie (blog | twitter), Kasper de Jonge (blog | twitter), Vidas Matelis (site | twitter), and I were invited to join Andrew Brust (blog | twitter) as he led a Birds of a Feather session at TechEd entitled "PowerPivot: Is It the BI Deal-Changer for Developers and IT Pros?" I would single out the prevailing concern in this session as the issue of control. On one side of this issue were those who were concerned that they would lose control once PowerPivot is implemented. On the other side were those who believed that data should be freely accessible to users in PowerPivot, and even acknowledgment that users would get the data they want even if it meant they would have to manually enter into a workbook to have it ready for analysis. For another viewpoint on how PowerPivot played out at the conference, see Rob Collie's observations. Collaborative BI I have been intrigued by the notion of collaborative BI for a very long time. Before I discovered BI, I was a Lotus Notes developer and later a manager of developers, working in a software company that enabled collaboration in the legal industry. Not only did I help create collaborative systems for our clients, I created a complete project management from the ground up to collaboratively manage our custom development work. In that case, collaboration involved my team, my client contacts, and me. I was also able to produce my own BI from that system as well, but didn't know that's what I was doing at the time. Only in recent years has SharePoint begun to catch up with the capabilities that I had with Lotus Notes more than a decade ago. Eventually, I had the opportunity at that job to formally investigate BI as another product offering for our software, and the rest - as they say - is history. I built my first data warehouse with Scott Cameron (who has also ventured into the authoring world by writing Analysis Services 2008 Step by Step and was at the BI Conference last week where I got to reminisce with him for a bit) and that began a career that I never imagined at the time. Fast forward to 2010, and I'm still lauding the virtues of collaborative BI, if only the tools will catch up to my vision! Thus, I was anxious to see what Donald Farmer (blog | twitter) and Rita Sallam of Gartner had to say on the subject in their session "Collaborative Decision Making." As I suspected, the tools aren't quite there yet, but the vendors are moving in the right direction. One thing I liked about this session was a non-Microsoft perspective of the state of the industry with regard to collaborative BI. In addition, this session included a better demonstration of SharePoint collaborative BI capabilities than appeared in the BI keynote. Check out the video in the link to the session to see the demonstration. One of the use cases that was demonstrated was linking from information to a person, because, as Donald put it, "People don't trust data, they trust people." The Microsoft BI Stack in General A question I hear all the time from students when I'm teaching is how to know what tools to use when there is overlap between products in the BI stack. I've never taken the time to codify my thoughts on the subject, but saw that my friend Dan Bulos provided good insight on this topic from a variety of perspectives in his session, "So Many BI Tools, So Little Time." I thought one of his best points was that ideally you should be able to design in your tool of choice, and then deploy to your tool of choice. Unfortunately, the ideal is yet to become real across the platform. The closest we come is with the RDL in Reporting Services which can be produced from two different tools (Report Builder or Business Intelligence Development Studio's Report Designer), manually, or by a third-party or custom application. I have touted the idea for years (and publicly said so about 5 years ago) that eventually more products would be RDL producers or consumers, but we aren't there yet. Maybe in another 5 years. Another interesting session that covered the BI stack against a backdrop of competitive products was delivered by Andrew Brust. Andrew did a marvelous job of consolidating a lot of information in a way that clearly communicated how various vendors' offerings compared to the Microsoft BI stack. He also made a particularly compelling argument about how the existence of an ecosystem around the Microsoft BI stack provided innovation and opportunities lacking for other vendors. Check out his presentation, "How Does the Microsoft BI Stack...Stack Up?" Expo Hall I had planned to spend more time in the Expo Hall to see who was doing new things with the BI stack, but didn't manage to get very far. Each time I set out on an exploratory mission, I got caught up in some fascinating conversations with one or more of my peers. I find interacting with people that I meet at conferences just as important as attending sessions to learn something new. There were a couple of items that really caught me eye, however, that I'll share here. Pragmatic Works. Whether you develop SSIS packages, build SSAS cubes, or author SSRS reports (or all of the above), you really must take a look at BI Documenter. Brian Knight (twitter) walked me through the key features, and I must say I was impressed. Once you've seen what this product can do, you won't want to document your BI projects any other way. You can download a free single-user database edition, or choose from more feature-rich standard or professional editions. Microsoft Press ebooks. I also stopped by the O'Reilly Media booth to meet some folks that one of my acquisitions editors at Microsoft Press recommended. In case you haven't heard, Microsoft Press has partnered with O'Reilly Media for distribution and publishing. Apart from my interest in learning more about O'Reilly Media as an author, an advertisement in their booth caught me eye which I think is a really great move. When you buy Microsoft Press ebooks through the O'Reilly web site, you can receive it in any (or all) of the following formats where possible: PDF, epub, .mobi for Kindle and .apk for Android. You also have lifetime DRM-free access to the ebooks. As someone who is an avid collector of books, I fnd myself running out of room for storage. In addition, I travel a lot, and it's hard to lug my reference library with me. Today's e-reader options make the move to digital books a more viable way to grow my library. Having a variety of formats means I am not limited to a single device, and lifetime access means I don't have to worry about keeping track of where I've stored my files. Because the e-books are DRM-free, I can copy and paste when I'm compiling notes, and I can print pages when necessary. That's a winning combination in my mind! Overall, I was pleased with the BI conference. There were many more sessions that I couldn't attend, either because the room was full when I got there or there were multiple sessions running concurrently that I wanted to see. Fortunately, many of the sessions are accessible for viewing online at http://www.msteched.com/2010/NorthAmerica along with the TechEd sessions. You can spot the BI sessions by the yellow skyline on the title slide of the presentation as shown below. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

    Read the article

  • Backup options in SharePoint 2007

    - by sreejukg
    It is very important to make sure the server farm backup is taking properly, making sure that in case of any disaster, the administrator has the latest backup that can be used to restore. This articles addresses some of the options available for backup/restore in SharePoint 2007 Backup There are two options that can be utilized to take backup of SharePoint sites. Using SharePoint Central Administration website Using SharePoint central administration website, you can do backup/restore from user interface. Using central administration website you can back up the following · Server farm · Web application · Content databases Follow these steps to take backup of the server farm using central administration 1. Open Central administration website 2. Navigate to Operations -> Backup and Restore -> Perform a backup 3. Here you will have options to choose the item to back up. Select Farm (the top most item in the list) 4. Once you select the items to backup, click on “Continue to backup options” 5. Select “Full” as type of backup. 6. In the backup file location, enter the path where you need to store the backup. The path should be according to the UNC, for e.g. for c drive you may use \\server\c$\mybackupFolder 7. Click ok 8. Now you will be redirected to Backup and Restore Status page. This page shows the progress for the backup operation. You can use the refresh button to update the status of backup(this page will automatically refresh in every 30 seconds). Once completed you can find the files in the specified folder. Using STSADM website SharePoint comes with a STSADM command line tool. STSADM provides lot of administrative operations that can be performed on SharePoint 2007 sites. You can find STSADM command from the following location C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft shared\web server extensions\12\bin (You may change the drive letter according to your installation) STSADM provides a method for performing the Office SharePoint Server 2007 administration tasks at the command line or by using batch files or scripts. STSADM provides access to operations not available by using the Central Administration site The general syntax for STSADM is as follows STSADM -operation Operation Name –parameter1 value1 –parameter2 value2 ……….. Using STSADM you can back up the following · Server farm · Web application · Content databases To perform any STSADM, operation you need to be a member of administrators group. Follow these steps to take backup of SharePoint server farm using STSADM tool. Note: make sure you are logged in to the computer where central administration website is installed. 1. Open the Command prompt (You should run command prompt with administrator privileges) 2. Change the working directory to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft shared\web server extensions\12\bin 3. Enter the command, then press enter Stsadm –o backup -directory <UNC path> -backupmethod full 4. You will get success / failure message once the command finishes. How to schedule the backup There is no option to schedule a backup using central administration site. Also there is no operation provided by STSADM to automate the backup. The farm administrators need to take backup in regular intervals. To achieve this, you can write a batch file that includes STSADM command to take full backup of the server. This batch file can be scheduled using windows task scheduler to execute in certain intervals. Sample of the batch file 1. Open notepad(or any other text editor) 2. Enter the following commands @echo off echo =============================================================== echo Back up the farm to <C:\backup> echo =============================================================== cd %COMMONPROGRAMFILES%\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN @echo off stsadm.exe -o backup -directory "<\backup>" -backupmethod full echo completed 3. Save the file with .bat extension You can schedule this batch file as you require. Other Options Using STSADM tool, you will be able to take backup for individual site collection. The syntax for this is stsadm -o backup -url <URL name for site collection> -filename <file name> [-overwrite] The explanations for the parameters are as follows. -url The url of the site collection you need to backup -filename The name of the backup file. E.g. c:\backup.bak -overwrite optional. Indicates if the filename specified exists, whether to overwrite or not. If you are creating the batch file for scheduling the backup for a site collection, you may need to specify the backup filename automatically created. It is an option that you can generate the filename with date so that you can keep backup for each day. e.g. The following commands can be utilized create a site collection backup. @echo off echo =============================================================== echo Back up the farm to <C:\backup> echo =============================================================== echo =============================================================== echo getting todays date to a variable echo =============================================================== @For /F "tokens=1,2,3 delims=/ " %%A in (‘Date /t’) do @( Set Day=%%A Set Month=%%B Set Year=%%C Set todayDate=%%C%%B%%A ) cd %COMMONPROGRAMFILES%\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN @echo off stsadm -o backup -url <sitecollection url> -filename \\ServerName\ShareName\Backup_%todayDate%.bak -overwrite echo completed To read more about backup STSADM operation, read this http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263441.aspx

    Read the article

  • Understanding the value of Customer Experience & Loyalty for the Telecommunications Industry

    - by raul.goycoolea
    Worried by economic woes and market forces, especially in mature markets, communications service providers (CSPs) increasingly focus on improving customer experience. In fact, it seems difficult to find a major message by a C-level executive in the developed world that does not include something on "meeting and exceeding customers' needs". Frequently in customer satisfaction studies by prominent firms, CSPs fall short of the leadership demonstrated by other industries that take customer-centric approaches to their bottom-line strategies. Consider the following:Despite the continued impact of global economic crisis, in July 2010, Apple Computer posted record revenue and net quarterly profit. Those who attribute the results primarily to the iPhone 4 launch should note that Apple also shipped around 30% more Macintosh computers than the same period the previous year. Even sales of the iPod line increased by 8% in a highly commoditized, shrinking media player market. Finally, Apple began selling iPads during the quarter, with total sales of more than 3 million units. What does Apple have that the others lack? Well, some great products (and services) to be sure, but it also excels at customer service and support, marketing, and distribution, and has one of the strongest brands globally. Its products are useful, simple to use, easy to acquire and augment, high quality, and considered very cool. They also evoke such an emotional response from many of Apple's customers, which they turn up their noses at competitive products.In other words, Apple appears to have mastered virtually every aspect of customer experience and the resultant loyalty of its customer base - even in difficult financial times. Through that unwavering customer focus, Apple continues to drive its revenues and profits to new heights. Other customer loyalty leaders like Wal-Mart, Google, Toyota and Honda are also doing well by focusing on customer experience as an essential driver of profitability. Service providers should note this performance and ask themselves how they might leverage the same principles to increase their own profitability. After all, that is what customer experience and loyalty are all about: profitability.To successfully manage all the critical touch points of customer experience, CSPs must shun the one-size-fits-all approach. They can no longer afford to view customer service fundamentally as an act of altruism - which mentality dates back to the industry's civil service days, when CSPs were typically government organizations that were critical to economic development and public safety.As regulators and public officials have pushed, and continue to push, service providers to new heights of reliability - using incentives and punishments - most CSPs already have some of the fundamental building blocks of customer service in place. Yet despite that history and experience, service providers still lag other industries in providing what is seen as good customer service.As we observed in the TMF's 2009 Insights Research report, Customer Experience Management: Driving Loyalty & Profitability there has been resurgence in interest by CSPs. More and more of them have stated ambitions to catch up other industries, and they are realizing that good customer service is a powerful strategy for increasing business performance and profitability, not an act of good will.CSPs are recognizing the connection between customer experience and profitability, as demonstrated in many studies. For example, according to research by Bain & Company, a 5 percent improvement in customer retention rates can yield as much as a 75 percent increase in profits for companies across a range of industries.After decades of customer experience strategy formulation, Bain partner and business author, Frederick Reichheld, considers "would you recommend us to a friend?" as the ultimate question for a customer. How many times have you or your friends recommended an iPod, iPhone or a Mac? What do your children recommend to their peers? Their peers to them?There are certain steps service providers have to take to create more personalized relationships with their customers, as well as reduce churn and increase profitability, all while becoming leaner and more agile. First, they have to define customer experience, we define it as the result of the sum of observations, perceptions, thoughts and feelings arising from interactions and relationships between customers and their service provider(s). Virtually every customer touch point - whether directly or indirectly linked to service providers and their partners - contributes to customer perception, satisfaction, loyalty, and ultimately profitability. Gaining leadership in customer experience and satisfaction will not be a simple task, as it is affected by virtually every customer-facing aspect of the service provider, and in turn impacts the service provider deeply - especially on the all-important bottom line. The scope of issues affecting customer experience is complex and dynamic.With new services, devices and applications extending the basis of customer experience to domains beyond the direct control of the service provider, it is likely to increase in complexity and dynamism.Customer loyalty = increased profitsAs stated earlier, customer experience programs are not fundamentally altruistic exercises, but a strategic means of improving competitiveness and profitability in the short and long term. Loyalty is essential to deriving long term profits from customers.Some of the earliest loyalty programs date back to the 1930s, when packaged goods companies offered embedded coupons for rewards to buyers, and eventually retail chains began offering reward programs to frequent shoppers. These programs continued for decades but were leapfrogged in the 1980s by more aggressive programs from the airlines.This movement was led by American Airlines, which launched the first full-scale loyalty marketing program of the modern era with the AAdvantage frequent flyer scheme. It was the first to reward frequent fliers with notional air miles that could be accumulated and later redeemed for free travel. Figure 1: Opportunities example of Customer loyalty driven profitOther airlines and travel providers were quick to grasp the incredible value of providing customers with an incentive to use their company exclusively. Within a few years, dozens of travel industry companies launched similar initiatives and now loyalty programs are achieving near-ubiquity in many service industries, especially those in which it is difficult to differentiate offerings by product attributes.The belief is that increased profitability will result from customer retention efforts because:•    The cost of acquisition occurs only at the beginning of a relationship: the longer the relationship, the lower the amortized cost;•    Account maintenance costs decline as a percentage of total costs, or as a percentage of revenue, over the lifetime of the relationship;•    Long term customers tend to be less inclined to switch and less price sensitive which can result in stable unit sales volume and increases in dollar-sales volume;•    Long term customers may initiate word-of-mouth promotions and referrals, which cost the company nothing and arguably are the most effective form of advertising;•    Long-term customers are more likely to buy ancillary products and higher margin supplemental products;•    Long term customers tend to be satisfied with their relationship with the company and are less likely to switch to competitors, making market entry or competitors gaining market share difficult;•    Regular customers tend to be less expensive to service, as they are familiar with the processes involved, require less 'education', and are consistent in their order placement;•    Increased customer retention and loyalty makes the employees' jobs easier and more satisfying. In turn, happy employees feed back into higher customer satisfaction in a virtuous circle. Figure 2: The virtuous circle of customer loyaltyFigure 2 represents a high-level example of a virtuous cycle driven by customer satisfaction and loyalty, depicting how superiority in product and service offerings, as well as strong customer support by competent employees, lead to higher sales and ultimately profitability. As stated above, this is not a new concept, but succeeding with it is difficult. It has eluded many a company driven to achieve profitability goals. Of course, for this circle to be virtuous, the customer relationship(s) must be profitable.Trying to maintain the loyalty of unprofitable customers is not a viable business strategy. It is, therefore, important that marketers can assess the profitability of each customer (or customer segment), and either improve or terminate relationships that are not profitable. This means each customer's 'relationship costs' must be understood and compared to their 'relationship revenue'. Customer lifetime value (CLV) is the most commonly used metric here, as it is generally accepted as a representation of exactly how much each customer is worth in monetary terms, and therefore a determinant of exactly how much a service provider should be willing to spend to acquire or retain that customer.CLV models make several simplifying assumptions and often involve the following inputs:•    Churn rate represents the percentage of customers who end their relationship with a company in a given period;•    Retention rate is calculated by subtracting the churn rate percentage from 100;•    Period/horizon equates to the units of time into which a customer relationship can be divided for analysis. A year is the most commonly used period for this purpose. Customer lifetime value is a multi-period calculation, often projecting three to seven years into the future. In practice, analysis beyond this point is viewed as too speculative to be reliable. The model horizon is the number of periods used in the calculation;•    Periodic revenue is the amount of revenue collected from a customer in a given period (though this is often extended across multiple periods into the future to understand lifetime value), such as usage revenue, revenues anticipated from cross and upselling, and often some weighting for referrals by a loyal customer to others; •    Retention cost describes the amount of money the service provider must spend, in a given period, to retain an existing customer. Again, this is often forecast across multiple periods. Retention costs include customer support, billing, promotional incentives and so on;•    Discount rate means the cost of capital used to discount future revenue from a customer. Discounting is an advanced method used in more sophisticated CLV calculations;•    Profit margin is the projected profit as a percentage of revenue for the period. This may be reflected as a percentage of gross or net profit. Again, this is generally projected across the model horizon to understand lifetime value.A strong focus on managing these inputs can help service providers realize stronger customer relationships and profits, but there are some obstacles to overcome in achieving accurate calculations of CLV, such as the complexity of allocating costs across the customer base. There are many costs that serve all customers which must be properly allocated across the base, and often a simple proportional allocation across the whole base or a segment may not accurately reflect the true cost of serving that customer;  This is made worse by the fragmentation of customer information, which is likely to be across a variety of product or operations groups, and may be difficult to aggregate due to different representations.In addition, there is the complexity of account relationships and structures to take into consideration. Complex account structures may not be understood or properly represented. For example, a profitable customer may have a separate account for a second home or another family member, which may appear to be unprofitable. If the service provider cannot relate the two accounts, CLV is not properly represented and any resultant cancellation of the apparently unprofitable account may result in the customer churning from the profitable one.In summary, if service providers are to realize strong customer relationships and their attendant profits, there must be a very strong focus on data management. This needs to be coupled with analytics that help business managers and those who work in customer-facing functions offer highly personalized solutions to customers, while maintaining profitability for the service provider. It's clear that acquiring new customers is expensive. Advertising costs, campaign management expenses, promotional service pricing and discounting, and equipment subsidies make a serious dent in a new customer's profitability. That is especially true given the rising subsidies for Smartphone users, which service providers hope will result in greater profits from profits from data services profitability in futureThe situation is made worse by falling prices and greater competition in mature markets.Customer acquisition through industry consolidation isn't cheap either. A North American service provider spent about $2,000 per subscriber in its acquisition of a smaller company earlier this year. While this has allowed it to leapfrog to become the largest mobile service provider in the country, it required a total investment of more than $28 billion (including assumption of the acquiree's debt).While many operating cost synergies clearly made this deal more attractive to the acquiring company, this is certainly an expensive way to acquire customers: the cost per subscriber in this case is not out of line with the prices others have paid for acquisitions.While growth by acquisition certainly increases overall revenues, it often creates tremendous challenges for profitability. Organic growth through increased customer loyalty and retention is a more effective driver of profit, as well as a stronger predictor of future profitability. Service providers, especially those in mature markets, are increasingly recognizing this and taking steps toward a creating a more personalized, flexible and satisfying experience for their customers.In summary, the clearest path to profitability for companies in virtually all industries is through customer retention and maximization of lifetime value. Service providers would do well to recognize this and focus attention on profitable customer relationships.

    Read the article

  • Oracle Solaris: Zones on Shared Storage

    - by Jeff Victor
    Oracle Solaris 11.1 has several new features. At oracle.com you can find a detailed list. One of the significant new features, and the most significant new feature releated to Oracle Solaris Zones, is casually called "Zones on Shared Storage" or simply ZOSS (rhymes with "moss"). ZOSS offers much more flexibility because you can store Solaris Zones on shared storage (surprise!) so that you can perform quick and easy migration of a zone from one system to another. This blog entry describes and demonstrates the use of ZOSS. ZOSS provides complete support for a Solaris Zone that is stored on "shared storage." In this case, "shared storage" refers to fiber channel (FC) or iSCSI devices, although there is one lone exception that I will demonstrate soon. The primary intent is to enable you to store a zone on FC or iSCSI storage so that it can be migrated from one host computer to another much more easily and safely than in the past. With this blog entry, I wanted to make it easy for you to try this yourself. I couldn't assume that you have a SAN available - which is a good thing, because neither do I! What could I use, instead? [There he goes, foreshadowing again... -Ed.] Developing this entry reinforced the lesson that the solution to every lab problem is VirtualBox. Oracle VM VirtualBox (its formal name) helps here in a couple of important ways. It offers the ability to easily install multiple copies of Solaris as guests on top of any popular system (Microsoft Windows, MacOS, Solaris, Oracle Linux (and other Linuxes) etc.). It also offers the ability to create a separate virtual disk drive (VDI) that appears as a local hard disk to a guest. This virtual disk can be moved very easily from one guest to another. In other words, you can follow the steps below on a laptop or larger x86 system. Please note that the ability to use ZOSS to store a zone on a local disk is very useful for a lab environment, but not so useful for production. I do not suggest regularly moving disk drives among computers. In the method I describe below, that virtual hard disk will contain the zone that will be migrated among the (virtual) hosts. In production, you would use FC or iSCSI LUNs instead. The zonecfg(1M) man page details the syntax for each of the three types of devices. Why Migrate? Why is the migration of virtual servers important? Some of the most common reasons are: Moving a workload to a different computer so that the original computer can be turned off for extensive maintenance. Moving a workload to a larger system because the workload has outgrown its original system. If the workload runs in an environment (such as a Solaris Zone) that is stored on shared storage, you can restore the service of the workload on an alternate computer if the original computer has failed and will not reboot. You can simplify lifecycle management of a workload by developing it on a laptop, migrating it to a test platform when it's ready, and finally moving it to a production system. Concepts For ZOSS, the important new concept is named "rootzpool". You can read about it in the zonecfg(1M) man page, but here's the short version: it's the backing store (hard disk(s), or LUN(s)) that will be used to make a ZFS zpool - the zpool that will hold the zone. This zpool: contains the zone's Solaris content, i.e. the root file system does not contain any content not related to the zone can only be mounted by one Solaris instance at a time Method Overview Here is a brief list of the steps to create a zone on shared storage and migrate it. The next section shows the commands and output. You will need a host system with an x86 CPU (hopefully at least a couple of CPU cores), at least 2GB of RAM, and at least 25GB of free disk space. (The steps below will not actually use 25GB of disk space, but I don't want to lead you down a path that ends in a big sign that says "Your HDD is full. Good luck!") Configure the zone on both systems, specifying the rootzpool that both will use. The best way is to configure it on one system and then copy the output of "zonecfg export" to the other system to be used as input to zonecfg. This method reduces the chances of pilot error. (It is not necessary to configure the zone on both systems before creating it. You can configure this zone in multiple places, whenever you want, and migrate it to one of those places at any time - as long as those systems all have access to the shared storage.) Install the zone on one system, onto shared storage. Boot the zone. Provide system configuration information to the zone. (In the Real World(tm) you will usually automate this step.) Shutdown the zone. Detach the zone from the original system. Attach the zone to its new "home" system. Boot the zone. The zone can be used normally, and even migrated back, or to a different system. Details The rest of this shows the commands and output. The two hostnames are "sysA" and "sysB". Note that each Solaris guest might use a different device name for the VDI that they share. I used the device names shown below, but you must discover the device name(s) after booting each guest. In a production environment you would also discover the device name first and then configure the zone with that name. Fortunately, you can use the command "zpool import" or "format" to discover the device on the "new" host for the zone. The first steps create the VirtualBox guests and the shared disk drive. I describe the steps here without demonstrating them. Download VirtualBox and install it using a method normal for your host OS. You can read the complete instructions. Create two VirtualBox guests, each to run Solaris 11.1. Each will use its own VDI as its root disk. Install Solaris 11.1 in each guest.Install Solaris 11.1 in each guest. To install a Solaris 11.1 guest, you can either download a pre-built VirtualBox guest, and import it, or install Solaris 11.1 from the "text install" media. If you use the latter method, after booting you will not see a windowing system. To install the GUI and other important things, login and run "pkg install solaris-desktop" and take a break while it installs those important things. Life is usually easier if you install the VirtualBox Guest Additions because then you can copy and paste between the host and guests, etc. You can find the guest additions in the folder matching the version of VirtualBox you are using. You can also read the instructions for installing the guest additions. To create the zone's shared VDI in VirtualBox, you can open the storage configuration for one of the two guests, select the SATA controller, and click on the "Add Hard Disk" icon nearby. Choose "Create New Disk" and specify an appropriate path name for the file that will contain the VDI. The shared VDI must be at least 1.5 GB. Note that the guest must be stopped to do this. Add that VDI to the other guest - using its Storage configuration - so that each can access it while running. The steps start out the same, except that you choose "Choose Existing Disk" instead of "Create New Disk." Because the disk is configured on both of them, VirtualBox prevents you from running both guests at the same time. Identify device names of that VDI, in each of the guests. Solaris chooses the name based on existing devices. The names may be the same, or may be different from each other. This step is shown below as "Step 1." Assumptions In the example shown below, I make these assumptions. The guest that will own the zone at the beginning is named sysA. The guest that will own the zone after the first migration is named sysB. On sysA, the shared disk is named /dev/dsk/c7t2d0 On sysB, the shared disk is named /dev/dsk/c7t3d0 (Finally!) The Steps Step 1) Determine the name of the disk that will move back and forth between the systems. root@sysA:~# format Searching for disks...done AVAILABLE DISK SELECTIONS: 0. c7t0d0 /pci@0,0/pci8086,2829@d/disk@0,0 1. c7t2d0 /pci@0,0/pci8086,2829@d/disk@2,0 Specify disk (enter its number): ^D Step 2) The first thing to do is partition and label the disk. The magic needed to write an EFI label is not overly complicated. root@sysA:~# format -e c7t2d0 selecting c7t2d0 [disk formatted] FORMAT MENU: ... format fdisk No fdisk table exists. The default partition for the disk is: a 100% "SOLARIS System" partition Type "y" to accept the default partition, otherwise type "n" to edit the partition table. n SELECT ONE OF THE FOLLOWING: ... Enter Selection: 1 ... G=EFI_SYS 0=Exit? f SELECT ONE... ... 6 format label ... Specify Label type[1]: 1 Ready to label disk, continue? y format quit root@sysA:~# ls /dev/dsk/c7t2d0 /dev/dsk/c7t2d0 Step 3) Configure zone1 on sysA. root@sysA:~# zonecfg -z zone1 Use 'create' to begin configuring a new zone. zonecfg:zone1 create create: Using system default template 'SYSdefault' zonecfg:zone1 set zonename=zone1 zonecfg:zone1 set zonepath=/zones/zone1 zonecfg:zone1 add rootzpool zonecfg:zone1:rootzpool add storage dev:dsk/c7t2d0 zonecfg:zone1:rootzpool end zonecfg:zone1 exit root@sysA:~# oot@sysA:~# zonecfg -z zone1 info zonename: zone1 zonepath: /zones/zone1 brand: solaris autoboot: false bootargs: file-mac-profile: pool: limitpriv: scheduling-class: ip-type: exclusive hostid: fs-allowed: anet: ... rootzpool: storage: dev:dsk/c7t2d0 Step 4) Install the zone. This step takes the most time, but you can wander off for a snack or a few laps around the gym - or both! (Just not at the same time...) root@sysA:~# zoneadm -z zone1 install Created zone zpool: zone1_rpool Progress being logged to /var/log/zones/zoneadm.20121022T163634Z.zone1.install Image: Preparing at /zones/zone1/root. AI Manifest: /tmp/manifest.xml.RXaycg SC Profile: /usr/share/auto_install/sc_profiles/enable_sci.xml Zonename: zone1 Installation: Starting ... Creating IPS image Startup linked: 1/1 done Installing packages from: solaris origin: http://pkg.us.oracle.com/support/ DOWNLOAD PKGS FILES XFER (MB) SPEED Completed 183/183 33556/33556 222.2/222.2 2.8M/s PHASE ITEMS Installing new actions 46825/46825 Updating package state database Done Updating image state Done Creating fast lookup database Done Installation: Succeeded Note: Man pages can be obtained by installing pkg:/system/manual done. Done: Installation completed in 1696.847 seconds. Next Steps: Boot the zone, then log into the zone console (zlogin -C) to complete the configuration process. Log saved in non-global zone as /zones/zone1/root/var/log/zones/zoneadm.20121022T163634Z.zone1.install Step 5) Boot the Zone. root@sysA:~# zoneadm -z zone1 boot Step 6) Login to zone's console to complete the specification of system information. root@sysA:~# zlogin -C zone1 Answer the usual questions and wait for a login prompt. Then you can end the console session with the usual "~." incantation. Step 7) Shutdown the zone so it can be "moved." root@sysA:~# zoneadm -z zone1 shutdown Step 8) Detach the zone so that the original global zone can't use it. root@sysA:~# zoneadm list -cv ID NAME STATUS PATH BRAND IP 0 global running / solaris shared - zone1 installed /zones/zone1 solaris excl root@sysA:~# zpool list NAME SIZE ALLOC FREE CAP DEDUP HEALTH ALTROOT rpool 17.6G 11.2G 6.47G 63% 1.00x ONLINE - zone1_rpool 1.98G 484M 1.51G 23% 1.00x ONLINE - root@sysA:~# zoneadm -z zone1 detach Exported zone zpool: zone1_rpool Step 9) Review the result and shutdown sysA so that sysB can use the shared disk. root@sysA:~# zpool list NAME SIZE ALLOC FREE CAP DEDUP HEALTH ALTROOT rpool 17.6G 11.2G 6.47G 63% 1.00x ONLINE - root@sysA:~# zoneadm list -cv ID NAME STATUS PATH BRAND IP 0 global running / solaris shared - zone1 configured /zones/zone1 solaris excl root@sysA:~# init 0 Step 10) Now boot sysB and configure a zone with the parameters shown above in Step 1. (Again, the safest method is to use "zonecfg ... export" on sysA as described in section "Method Overview" above.) The one difference is the name of the rootzpool storage device, which was shown in the list of assumptions, and which you must determine by booting sysB and using the "format" or "zpool import" command. When that is done, you should see the output shown next. (I used the same zonename - "zone1" - in this example, but you can choose any valid zonename you want.) root@sysB:~# zoneadm list -cv ID NAME STATUS PATH BRAND IP 0 global running / solaris shared - zone1 configured /zones/zone1 solaris excl root@sysB:~# zonecfg -z zone1 info zonename: zone1 zonepath: /zones/zone1 brand: solaris autoboot: false bootargs: file-mac-profile: pool: limitpriv: scheduling-class: ip-type: exclusive hostid: fs-allowed: anet: linkname: net0 ... rootzpool: storage: dev:dsk/c7t3d0 Step 11) Attaching the zone automatically imports the zpool. root@sysB:~# zoneadm -z zone1 attach Imported zone zpool: zone1_rpool Progress being logged to /var/log/zones/zoneadm.20121022T184034Z.zone1.attach Installing: Using existing zone boot environment Zone BE root dataset: zone1_rpool/rpool/ROOT/solaris Cache: Using /var/pkg/publisher. Updating non-global zone: Linking to image /. Processing linked: 1/1 done Updating non-global zone: Auditing packages. No updates necessary for this image. Updating non-global zone: Zone updated. Result: Attach Succeeded. Log saved in non-global zone as /zones/zone1/root/var/log/zones/zoneadm.20121022T184034Z.zone1.attach root@sysB:~# zoneadm -z zone1 boot root@sysB:~# zlogin zone1 [Connected to zone 'zone1' pts/2] Oracle Corporation SunOS 5.11 11.1 September 2012 Step 12) Now let's migrate the zone back to sysA. Create a file in zone1 so we can verify it exists after we migrate the zone back, then begin migrating it back. root@zone1:~# ls /opt root@zone1:~# touch /opt/fileA root@zone1:~# ls -l /opt/fileA -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Oct 22 14:47 /opt/fileA root@zone1:~# exit logout [Connection to zone 'zone1' pts/2 closed] root@sysB:~# zoneadm -z zone1 shutdown root@sysB:~# zoneadm -z zone1 detach Exported zone zpool: zone1_rpool root@sysB:~# init 0 Step 13) Back on sysA, check the status. Oracle Corporation SunOS 5.11 11.1 September 2012 root@sysA:~# zoneadm list -cv ID NAME STATUS PATH BRAND IP 0 global running / solaris shared - zone1 configured /zones/zone1 solaris excl root@sysA:~# zpool list NAME SIZE ALLOC FREE CAP DEDUP HEALTH ALTROOT rpool 17.6G 11.2G 6.47G 63% 1.00x ONLINE - Step 14) Re-attach the zone back to sysA. root@sysA:~# zoneadm -z zone1 attach Imported zone zpool: zone1_rpool Progress being logged to /var/log/zones/zoneadm.20121022T190441Z.zone1.attach Installing: Using existing zone boot environment Zone BE root dataset: zone1_rpool/rpool/ROOT/solaris Cache: Using /var/pkg/publisher. Updating non-global zone: Linking to image /. Processing linked: 1/1 done Updating non-global zone: Auditing packages. No updates necessary for this image. Updating non-global zone: Zone updated. Result: Attach Succeeded. Log saved in non-global zone as /zones/zone1/root/var/log/zones/zoneadm.20121022T190441Z.zone1.attach root@sysA:~# zpool list NAME SIZE ALLOC FREE CAP DEDUP HEALTH ALTROOT rpool 17.6G 11.2G 6.47G 63% 1.00x ONLINE - zone1_rpool 1.98G 491M 1.51G 24% 1.00x ONLINE - root@sysA:~# zoneadm -z zone1 boot root@sysA:~# zlogin zone1 [Connected to zone 'zone1' pts/2] Oracle Corporation SunOS 5.11 11.1 September 2012 root@zone1:~# zpool list NAME SIZE ALLOC FREE CAP DEDUP HEALTH ALTROOT rpool 1.98G 538M 1.46G 26% 1.00x ONLINE - Step 15) Check for the file created on sysB, earlier. root@zone1:~# ls -l /opt total 1 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Oct 22 14:47 fileA Next Steps Here is a brief list of some of the fun things you can try next. Add space to the zone by adding a second storage device to the rootzpool. Make sure that you add it to the configurations of both zones! Create a new zone, specifying two disks in the rootzpool when you first configure the zone. When you install that zone, or clone it from another zone, zoneadm uses those two disks to create a mirrored pool. (Three disks will result in a three-way mirror, etc.) Conclusion Hopefully you have seen the ease with which you can now move Solaris Zones from one system to another.

    Read the article

  • Why is my external USB hard drive sometimes completely inaccessible?

    - by Eliah Kagan
    I have an external USB hard drive, consisting of an 1 TB SATA drive in a Rosewill RX35-AT-SU SLV Aluminum 3.5" Silver USB 2.0 External Enclosure, plugged into my SONY VAIO VGN-NS310F laptop. It is plugged directly into the computer (not through a hub). The drive inside the enclosure is a 7200 rpm Western Digital, but I don't remember the exact model. I can remove the drive from the enclosure (again), if people think it's necessary to know that detail. The drive is formatted ext4. I mount it dynamically with udisks on my Lubuntu 11.10 system, usually automatically via PCManFM. (I have had Lubuntu 12.04 on this machine, and experienced all this same behavior with that too.) Every once in a while--once or twice a day--it becomes inaccessible, and difficult to unmount. Attempting to unmount it with sudo umount ... gives an error message saying the drive is in use and suggesting fuser and lsof to find out what is using it. Killing processes found to be using the drive with fuser and lsof is sometimes sufficient to let me unmount it, but usually isn't. Once the drive is unmounted or the machine is rebooted, the drive will not mount. Plugging in the drive and turning it on registers nothing on the computer. dmesg is unchanged. The drive's access light usually blinks vigorously, as though the drive is being accessed constantly. Then eventually, after I keep the drive off for a while (half an hour), I am able to mount it again. While the drive doesn't work on this machine for a while, it will work immediately on another machine running the same version of Ubuntu. Sometimes bringing it back over from the other machine seems to "fix" it. Sometimes it doesn't. The drive doesn't always stop being accessible while mounted, before becoming unmountable. Sometimes it works fine, I turn off the computer, I turn the computer back on, and I cannot mount the drive. Currently this is the only drive with which I have this problem, but I've had problems that I think are the same as this, with different drives, on different Ubuntu machines. This laptop has another external USB drive plugged into it regularly, which doesn't have this problem. Unplugging that drive before plugging in the "problem" drive doesn't fix the problem. I've opened the drive up and made sure the connections were tight in the past, and that didn't seem to help (any more than waiting the same amount of time that it took to open and close the drive, before attempting to remount it). Does anyone have any ideas about what could be causing this, what troubleshooting steps I should perform, and/or how I could fix this problem altogether? Update: I tried replacing the USB data cable (from the enclosure to the laptop), as Merlin suggested. I should've tried that long ago, since it fits the symptoms perfectly (the drive works on another machine, which would make sense because the cable would be bent at a different angle, possibly completing a circuit of frayed wires). Unfortunately, though, this did not help--I have the same problem with the new cable. I'll try to provide additional detailed information about the drive inside the enclosure, next time I'm able to get the drive working. (At the moment I don't have another machine available to attach it.) Major Update (28 June 2012) The drive seems to have deteriorated considerably. I think this is so, because I've attached it to another machine and gotten lots of errors about invalid characters, when copying files from it. I am less interested in recovering data from the drive than I am in figuring out what is wrong with it. I specifically want to figure out if the problem is the drive or the enclosure. Now, when I plug the drive into the original machine where I was having the problems, it still doesn't appear (including with sudo fdisk -l), but it is recognized by the kernel and messages are added to dmesg. Most of the message consist of errors like this, repeated many times: [ 7.707593] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdc] Unhandled sense code [ 7.707599] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdc] Result: hostbyte=invalid driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE [ 7.707606] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdc] Sense Key : Medium Error [current] [ 7.707614] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdc] Add. Sense: Unrecovered read error [ 7.707621] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdc] CDB: Read(10): 28 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00 [ 7.707636] end_request: critical target error, dev sdc, sector 0 [ 7.707641] Buffer I/O error on device sdc, logical block 0 Here are all the lines from dmesg starting with when the drive is recognized. Please note that: I'm back to running Lubuntu 12.04 on this machine (and perhaps that's a factor in better error messages). Now that the drive has been plugged into another machine and back into this one, and also now that this machine is back to running 12.04, the drive's access light doesn't blink as I had described. Looking at the drive, it would appear as though it is working normally, with low or no access. This behavior (the errors) occurs when rebooting the machine with the drive plugged in, and also when manually plugging in the drive. A few of the messages are about /dev/sdb. That drive is working fine. The bad drive is /dev/sdc. I just didn't want to edit anything out from the middle.

    Read the article

  • Laissez les bon temps rouler! (Microsoft BI Conference 2010)

    - by smisner
    Laissez les bons temps rouler" is a Cajun phrase that I heard frequently when I lived in New Orleans in the mid-1990s. It means "Let the good times roll!" and encapsulates a feeling of happy expectation. As I met with many of my peers and new acquaintances at the Microsoft BI Conference last week, this phrase kept running through my mind as people spoke about their plans in their respective businesses, the benefits and opportunities that the recent releases in the BI stack are providing, and their expectations about the future of the BI stack.Notwithstanding some jabs here and there to point out the platform is neither perfect now nor will be anytime soon (along with admissions that the competitors are also not perfect), and notwithstanding several missteps by the event organizers (which I don't care to enumerate), the overarching mood at the conference was positive. It was a refreshing change from the doom and gloom hovering over several conferences that I attended in 2009. Although many people expect economic hardships to continue over the coming year or so, everyone I know in the BI field is busier than ever and expects to stay busy for quite a while.Self-Service BISelf-service was definitely a theme of the BI conference. In the keynote, Ted Kummert opened with a look back to a fairy tale vision of self-service BI that he told in 2008. At that time, the fairy tale future was a time when "every end user was able to use BI technologies within their job in order to move forward more effectively" and transitioned to the present time in which SQL Server 2008 R2, Office 2010, and SharePoint 2010 are available to deliver managed self-service BI.This set of technologies is presumably poised to address the needs of the 80% of users that Kummert said do not use BI today. He proceeded to outline a series of activities that users ought to be able to do themselves--from simple changes to a report like formatting or an addtional data visualization to integration of an additional data source. The keynote then continued with a series of demonstrations of both current and future technology in support of self-service BI. Some highlights that interested me:PowerPivot, of course, is the flagship product for self-service BI in the Microsoft BI stack. In the TechEd keynote, which was open to the BI conference attendees, Amir Netz (twitter) impressed the audience by demonstrating interactivity with a workbook containing 100 million rows. He upped the ante at the BI keynote with his demonstration of a future-state PowerPivot workbook containing over 2 billion records. It's important to note that this volume of data is being processed by a server engine, and not in the PowerPivot client engine. (Yes, I think it's impressive, but none of my clients are typically wrangling with 2 billion records at a time. Maybe they're thinking too small. This ability to work quickly with large data sets has greater implications for BI solutions than for self-service BI, in my opinion.)Amir also demonstrated KPIs for the future PowerPivot, which appeared to be easier to implement than in any other Microsoft product that supports KPIs, apart from simple KPIs in SharePoint. (My initial reaction is that we have one more place to build KPIs. Great. It's confusing enough. I haven't seen how well those KPIs integrate with other BI tools, which will be important for adoption.)One more PowerPivot feature that Amir showed was a graphical display of the lineage for calculations. (This is hugely practical, especially if you build up calculations incrementally. You can more easily follow the logic from calculation to calculation. Furthermore, if you need to make a change to one calculation, you can assess the impact on other calculations.)Another product demonstration will be available within the next 30 days--Pivot for Reporting Services. If you haven't seen this technology yet, check it out at www.getpivot.com. (It definitely has a wow factor, but I'm skeptical about its practicality. However, I'm looking forward to trying it out with data that I understand.)Michael Tejedor (twitter) demonstrated a feature that I think is really interesting and not emphasized nearly enough--overshadowed by PowerPivot, no doubt. That feature is the Microsoft Business Intelligence Indexing Connector, which enables search of the content of Excel workbooks and Reporting Services reports. (This capability existed in MOSS 2007, but was more cumbersome to implement. The search results in SharePoint 2010 are not only cooler, but more useful by describing whether the content is found in a table or a chart, for example.)This may yet be the dawning of the age of self-service BI - a phrase I've heard repeated from time to time over the last decade - but I think BI professionals are likely to stay busy for a long while, and need not start looking for a new line of work. Kummert repeatedly referenced strategic BI solutions in contrast to self-service BI to emphasize that self-service BI is not a replacement for the services that BI professionals provide. After all, self-service BI does not appear magically on user desktops (or whatever device they want to use). A supporting infrastructure is necessary, and grows in complexity in proportion to the need to simplify BI for users.It's one thing to hear the party line touted by Microsoft employees at the BI keynote, but it's another to hear from the people who are responsible for implementing and supporting it within an organization. Rob Collie (blog | twitter), Kasper de Jonge (blog | twitter), Vidas Matelis (site | twitter), and I were invited to join Andrew Brust (blog | twitter) as he led a Birds of a Feather session at TechEd entitled "PowerPivot: Is It the BI Deal-Changer for Developers and IT Pros?" I would single out the prevailing concern in this session as the issue of control. On one side of this issue were those who were concerned that they would lose control once PowerPivot is implemented. On the other side were those who believed that data should be freely accessible to users in PowerPivot, and even acknowledgment that users would get the data they want even if it meant they would have to manually enter into a workbook to have it ready for analysis. For another viewpoint on how PowerPivot played out at the conference, see Rob Collie's observations.Collaborative BII have been intrigued by the notion of collaborative BI for a very long time. Before I discovered BI, I was a Lotus Notes developer and later a manager of developers, working in a software company that enabled collaboration in the legal industry. Not only did I help create collaborative systems for our clients, I created a complete project management from the ground up to collaboratively manage our custom development work. In that case, collaboration involved my team, my client contacts, and me. I was also able to produce my own BI from that system as well, but didn't know that's what I was doing at the time. Only in recent years has SharePoint begun to catch up with the capabilities that I had with Lotus Notes more than a decade ago. Eventually, I had the opportunity at that job to formally investigate BI as another product offering for our software, and the rest - as they say - is history. I built my first data warehouse with Scott Cameron (who has also ventured into the authoring world by writing Analysis Services 2008 Step by Step and was at the BI Conference last week where I got to reminisce with him for a bit) and that began a career that I never imagined at the time.Fast forward to 2010, and I'm still lauding the virtues of collaborative BI, if only the tools will catch up to my vision! Thus, I was anxious to see what Donald Farmer (blog | twitter) and Rita Sallam of Gartner had to say on the subject in their session "Collaborative Decision Making." As I suspected, the tools aren't quite there yet, but the vendors are moving in the right direction. One thing I liked about this session was a non-Microsoft perspective of the state of the industry with regard to collaborative BI. In addition, this session included a better demonstration of SharePoint collaborative BI capabilities than appeared in the BI keynote. Check out the video in the link to the session to see the demonstration. One of the use cases that was demonstrated was linking from information to a person, because, as Donald put it, "People don't trust data, they trust people."The Microsoft BI Stack in GeneralA question I hear all the time from students when I'm teaching is how to know what tools to use when there is overlap between products in the BI stack. I've never taken the time to codify my thoughts on the subject, but saw that my friend Dan Bulos provided good insight on this topic from a variety of perspectives in his session, "So Many BI Tools, So Little Time." I thought one of his best points was that ideally you should be able to design in your tool of choice, and then deploy to your tool of choice. Unfortunately, the ideal is yet to become real across the platform. The closest we come is with the RDL in Reporting Services which can be produced from two different tools (Report Builder or Business Intelligence Development Studio's Report Designer), manually, or by a third-party or custom application. I have touted the idea for years (and publicly said so about 5 years ago) that eventually more products would be RDL producers or consumers, but we aren't there yet. Maybe in another 5 years.Another interesting session that covered the BI stack against a backdrop of competitive products was delivered by Andrew Brust. Andrew did a marvelous job of consolidating a lot of information in a way that clearly communicated how various vendors' offerings compared to the Microsoft BI stack. He also made a particularly compelling argument about how the existence of an ecosystem around the Microsoft BI stack provided innovation and opportunities lacking for other vendors. Check out his presentation, "How Does the Microsoft BI Stack...Stack Up?"Expo HallI had planned to spend more time in the Expo Hall to see who was doing new things with the BI stack, but didn't manage to get very far. Each time I set out on an exploratory mission, I got caught up in some fascinating conversations with one or more of my peers. I find interacting with people that I meet at conferences just as important as attending sessions to learn something new. There were a couple of items that really caught me eye, however, that I'll share here.Pragmatic Works. Whether you develop SSIS packages, build SSAS cubes, or author SSRS reports (or all of the above), you really must take a look at BI Documenter. Brian Knight (twitter) walked me through the key features, and I must say I was impressed. Once you've seen what this product can do, you won't want to document your BI projects any other way. You can download a free single-user database edition, or choose from more feature-rich standard or professional editions.Microsoft Press ebooks. I also stopped by the O'Reilly Media booth to meet some folks that one of my acquisitions editors at Microsoft Press recommended. In case you haven't heard, Microsoft Press has partnered with O'Reilly Media for distribution and publishing. Apart from my interest in learning more about O'Reilly Media as an author, an advertisement in their booth caught me eye which I think is a really great move. When you buy Microsoft Press ebooks through the O'Reilly web site, you can receive it in any (or all) of the following formats where possible: PDF, epub, .mobi for Kindle and .apk for Android. You also have lifetime DRM-free access to the ebooks. As someone who is an avid collector of books, I fnd myself running out of room for storage. In addition, I travel a lot, and it's hard to lug my reference library with me. Today's e-reader options make the move to digital books a more viable way to grow my library. Having a variety of formats means I am not limited to a single device, and lifetime access means I don't have to worry about keeping track of where I've stored my files. Because the e-books are DRM-free, I can copy and paste when I'm compiling notes, and I can print pages when necessary. That's a winning combination in my mind!Overall, I was pleased with the BI conference. There were many more sessions that I couldn't attend, either because the room was full when I got there or there were multiple sessions running concurrently that I wanted to see. Fortunately, many of the sessions are accessible for viewing online at http://www.msteched.com/2010/NorthAmerica along with the TechEd sessions. You can spot the BI sessions by the yellow skyline on the title slide of the presentation as shown below. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

    Read the article

  • Camera doesnt move on opengl qt

    - by hugo
    Here is my code, as my subject indicates i have implemented a camera but i couldnt make it move,Thanks in advance. #define PI_OVER_180 0.0174532925f define GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE 0x812F include "metinalifeyyaz.h" include include include include include include include metinalifeyyaz::metinalifeyyaz(QWidget *parent) : QGLWidget(parent) { this->setFocusPolicy(Qt:: StrongFocus); time = QTime::currentTime(); timer = new QTimer(this); timer->setSingleShot(true); connect(timer, SIGNAL(timeout()), this, SLOT(updateGL())); xpos = yrot = zpos = 0; walkbias = walkbiasangle = lookupdown = 0.0f; keyUp = keyDown = keyLeft = keyRight = keyPageUp = keyPageDown = false; } void metinalifeyyaz::drawBall() { //glTranslatef(6,0,4); glutSolidSphere(0.10005,300,30); } metinalifeyyaz:: ~metinalifeyyaz(){ glDeleteTextures(1,texture); } void metinalifeyyaz::initializeGL(){ glShadeModel(GL_SMOOTH); glClearColor(1.0,1.0,1.0,0.5); glClearDepth(1.0f); glEnable(GL_DEPTH_TEST); glEnable(GL_TEXTURE_2D); glDepthFunc(GL_LEQUAL); glClearColor(1.0,1.0,1.0,1.0); glShadeModel(GL_SMOOTH); GLfloat mat_specular[]={1.0,1.0,1.0,1.0}; GLfloat mat_shininess []={30.0}; GLfloat light_position[]={1.0,1.0,1.0}; glMaterialfv(GL_FRONT, GL_SPECULAR, mat_specular); glMaterialfv(GL_FRONT,GL_SHININESS,mat_shininess); glLightfv(GL_LIGHT0, GL_POSITION, light_position); glEnable(GL_LIGHT0); glEnable(GL_LIGHTING); QImage img1 = convertToGLFormat(QImage(":/new/prefix1/halisaha2.bmp")); QImage img2 = convertToGLFormat(QImage(":/new/prefix1/white.bmp")); glGenTextures(2,texture); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, texture[0]); glTexImage2D(GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0, GL_RGB, img1.width(), img1.height(), 0, GL_RGBA, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, img1.bits()); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D,GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, GL_LINEAR); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D,GL_TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER, GL_LINEAR); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D,GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_S, GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D,GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_T, GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, texture[1]); glTexImage2D(GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0, GL_RGB, img2.width(), img2.height(), 0, GL_RGBA, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, img2.bits()); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D,GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, GL_LINEAR); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D,GL_TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER, GL_LINEAR); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D,GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_S, GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D,GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_T, GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE); glHint(GL_PERSPECTIVE_CORRECTION_HINT, GL_NICEST); // Really nice perspective calculations } void metinalifeyyaz::resizeGL(int w, int h){ if(h==0) h=1; glViewport(0,0,w,h); glMatrixMode(GL_PROJECTION); glLoadIdentity(); gluPerspective(45.0f, static_cast<GLfloat>(w)/h,0.1f,100.0f); glMatrixMode(GL_MODELVIEW); glLoadIdentity(); } void metinalifeyyaz::paintGL(){ movePlayer(); glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT | GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT); glLoadIdentity(); GLfloat xtrans = -xpos; GLfloat ytrans = -walkbias - 0.50f; GLfloat ztrans = -zpos; GLfloat sceneroty = 360.0f - yrot; glLoadIdentity(); glRotatef(lookupdown, 1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f); glRotatef(sceneroty, 0.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f); glTranslatef(xtrans, ytrans+50, ztrans-130); glLoadIdentity(); glTranslatef(1.0f,0.0f,-18.0f); glRotatef(45,1,0,0); drawScene(); int delay = time.msecsTo(QTime::currentTime()); if (delay == 0) delay = 1; time = QTime::currentTime(); timer->start(qMax(0,10 - delay)); } void metinalifeyyaz::movePlayer() { if (keyUp) { xpos -= sin(yrot * PI_OVER_180) * 0.5f; zpos -= cos(yrot * PI_OVER_180) * 0.5f; if (walkbiasangle >= 360.0f) walkbiasangle = 0.0f; else walkbiasangle += 7.0f; walkbias = sin(walkbiasangle * PI_OVER_180) / 10.0f; } else if (keyDown) { xpos += sin(yrot * PI_OVER_180)*0.5f; zpos += cos(yrot * PI_OVER_180)*0.5f ; if (walkbiasangle <= 7.0f) walkbiasangle = 360.0f; else walkbiasangle -= 7.0f; walkbias = sin(walkbiasangle * PI_OVER_180) / 10.0f; } if (keyLeft) yrot += 0.5f; else if (keyRight) yrot -= 0.5f; if (keyPageUp) lookupdown -= 0.5; else if (keyPageDown) lookupdown += 0.5; } void metinalifeyyaz::keyPressEvent(QKeyEvent *event) { switch (event->key()) { case Qt::Key_Escape: close(); break; case Qt::Key_F1: setWindowState(windowState() ^ Qt::WindowFullScreen); break; default: QGLWidget::keyPressEvent(event); case Qt::Key_PageUp: keyPageUp = true; break; case Qt::Key_PageDown: keyPageDown = true; break; case Qt::Key_Left: keyLeft = true; break; case Qt::Key_Right: keyRight = true; break; case Qt::Key_Up: keyUp = true; break; case Qt::Key_Down: keyDown = true; break; } } void metinalifeyyaz::changeEvent(QEvent *event) { switch (event->type()) { case QEvent::WindowStateChange: if (windowState() == Qt::WindowFullScreen) setCursor(Qt::BlankCursor); else unsetCursor(); break; default: break; } } void metinalifeyyaz::keyReleaseEvent(QKeyEvent *event) { switch (event->key()) { case Qt::Key_PageUp: keyPageUp = false; break; case Qt::Key_PageDown: keyPageDown = false; break; case Qt::Key_Left: keyLeft = false; break; case Qt::Key_Right: keyRight = false; break; case Qt::Key_Up: keyUp = false; break; case Qt::Key_Down: keyDown = false; break; default: QGLWidget::keyReleaseEvent(event); } } void metinalifeyyaz::drawScene(){ glBegin(GL_QUADS); glNormal3f(0.0f,0.0f,1.0f); // glColor3f(0,0,1); //back glVertex3f(-6,0,-4); glVertex3f(-6,-0.5,-4); glVertex3f(6,-0.5,-4); glVertex3f(6,0,-4); glEnd(); glBegin(GL_QUADS); glNormal3f(0.0f,0.0f,-1.0f); //front glVertex3f(6,0,4); glVertex3f(6,-0.5,4); glVertex3f(-6,-0.5,4); glVertex3f(-6,0,4); glEnd(); glBegin(GL_QUADS); glNormal3f(-1.0f,0.0f,0.0f); // glColor3f(0,0,1); //left glVertex3f(-6,0,4); glVertex3f(-6,-0.5,4); glVertex3f(-6,-0.5,-4); glVertex3f(-6,0,-4); glEnd(); glBegin(GL_QUADS); glNormal3f(1.0f,0.0f,0.0f); // glColor3f(0,0,1); //right glVertex3f(6,0,-4); glVertex3f(6,-0.5,-4); glVertex3f(6,-0.5,4); glVertex3f(6,0,4); glEnd(); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, texture[0]); glBegin(GL_QUADS); glNormal3f(0.0f,1.0f,0.0f);//top glTexCoord2f(1.0f,0.0f); glVertex3f(6,0,-4); glTexCoord2f(1.0f,1.0f); glVertex3f(6,0,4); glTexCoord2f(0.0f,1.0f); glVertex3f(-6,0,4); glTexCoord2f(0.0f,0.0f); glVertex3f(-6,0,-4); glEnd(); glBegin(GL_QUADS); glNormal3f(0.0f,-1.0f,0.0f); //glColor3f(0,0,1); //bottom glVertex3f(6,-0.5,-4); glVertex3f(6,-0.5,4); glVertex3f(-6,-0.5,4); glVertex3f(-6,-0.5,-4); glEnd(); // glPushMatrix(); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, texture[1]); glBegin(GL_QUADS); glNormal3f(1.0f,0.0f,0.0f); glTexCoord2f(1.0f,0.0f); //right far goal post front face glVertex3f(5,0.5,-0.95); glTexCoord2f(1.0f,1.0f); glVertex3f(5,0,-0.95); glTexCoord2f(0.0f,1.0f); glVertex3f(5,0,-1); glTexCoord2f(0.0f,0.0f); glVertex3f(5, 0.5, -1); glColor3f(1,1,1); //right far goal post back face glVertex3f(5.05,0.5,-0.95); glVertex3f(5.05,0,-0.95); glVertex3f(5.05,0,-1); glVertex3f(5.05, 0.5, -1); glColor3f(1,1,1); //right far goal post left face glVertex3f(5,0.5,-1); glVertex3f(5,0,-1); glVertex3f(5.05,0,-1); glVertex3f(5.05, 0.5, -1); glColor3f(1,1,1); //right far goal post right face glVertex3f(5.05,0.5,-0.95); glVertex3f(5.05,0,-0.95); glVertex3f(5,0,-0.95); glVertex3f(5, 0.5, -0.95); glColor3f(1,1,1); //right near goal post front face glVertex3f(5,0.5,0.95); glVertex3f(5,0,0.95); glVertex3f(5,0,1); glVertex3f(5,0.5, 1); glColor3f(1,1,1); //right near goal post back face glVertex3f(5.05,0.5,0.95); glVertex3f(5.05,0,0.95); glVertex3f(5.05,0,1); glVertex3f(5.05,0.5, 1); glColor3f(1,1,1); //right near goal post left face glVertex3f(5,0.5,1); glVertex3f(5,0,1); glVertex3f(5.05,0,1); glVertex3f(5.05,0.5, 1); glColor3f(1,1,1); //right near goal post right face glVertex3f(5.05,0.5,0.95); glVertex3f(5.05,0,0.95); glVertex3f(5,0,0.95); glVertex3f(5,0.5, 0.95); glColor3f(1,1,1); //right crossbar front face glVertex3f(5,0.55,-1); glVertex3f(5,0.55,1); glVertex3f(5,0.5,1); glVertex3f(5,0.5,-1); glColor3f(1,1,1); //right crossbar back face glVertex3f(5.05,0.55,-1); glVertex3f(5.05,0.55,1); glVertex3f(5.05,0.5,1); glVertex3f(5.05,0.5,-1); glColor3f(1,1,1); //right crossbar bottom face glVertex3f(5.05,0.5,-1); glVertex3f(5.05,0.5,1); glVertex3f(5,0.5,1); glVertex3f(5,0.5,-1); glColor3f(1,1,1); //right crossbar top face glVertex3f(5.05,0.55,-1); glVertex3f(5.05,0.55,1); glVertex3f(5,0.55,1); glVertex3f(5,0.55,-1); glColor3f(1,1,1); //left far goal post front face glVertex3f(-5,0.5,-0.95); glVertex3f(-5,0,-0.95); glVertex3f(-5,0,-1); glVertex3f(-5, 0.5, -1); glColor3f(1,1,1); //right far goal post back face glVertex3f(-5.05,0.5,-0.95); glVertex3f(-5.05,0,-0.95); glVertex3f(-5.05,0,-1); glVertex3f(-5.05, 0.5, -1); glColor3f(1,1,1); //right far goal post left face glVertex3f(-5,0.5,-1); glVertex3f(-5,0,-1); glVertex3f(-5.05,0,-1); glVertex3f(-5.05, 0.5, -1); glColor3f(1,1,1); //right far goal post right face glVertex3f(-5.05,0.5,-0.95); glVertex3f(-5.05,0,-0.95); glVertex3f(-5,0,-0.95); glVertex3f(-5, 0.5, -0.95); glColor3f(1,1,1); //left near goal post front face glVertex3f(-5,0.5,0.95); glVertex3f(-5,0,0.95); glVertex3f(-5,0,1); glVertex3f(-5,0.5, 1); glColor3f(1,1,1); //right near goal post back face glVertex3f(-5.05,0.5,0.95); glVertex3f(-5.05,0,0.95); glVertex3f(-5.05,0,1); glVertex3f(-5.05,0.5, 1); glColor3f(1,1,1); //right near goal post left face glVertex3f(-5,0.5,1); glVertex3f(-5,0,1); glVertex3f(-5.05,0,1); glVertex3f(-5.05,0.5, 1); glColor3f(1,1,1); //right near goal post right face glVertex3f(-5.05,0.5,0.95); glVertex3f(-5.05,0,0.95); glVertex3f(-5,0,0.95); glVertex3f(-5,0.5, 0.95); glColor3f(1,1,1); //left crossbar front face glVertex3f(-5,0.55,-1); glVertex3f(-5,0.55,1); glVertex3f(-5,0.5,1); glVertex3f(-5,0.5,-1); glColor3f(1,1,1); //right crossbar back face glVertex3f(-5.05,0.55,-1); glVertex3f(-5.05,0.55,1); glVertex3f(-5.05,0.5,1); glVertex3f(-5.05,0.5,-1); glColor3f(1,1,1); //right crossbar bottom face glVertex3f(-5.05,0.5,-1); glVertex3f(-5.05,0.5,1); glVertex3f(-5,0.5,1); glVertex3f(-5,0.5,-1); glColor3f(1,1,1); //right crossbar top face glVertex3f(-5.05,0.55,-1); glVertex3f(-5.05,0.55,1); glVertex3f(-5,0.55,1); glVertex3f(-5,0.55,-1); glEnd(); // glPopMatrix(); // glPushMatrix(); // glTranslatef(0,0,0); // glutSolidSphere(0.10005,500,30); // glPopMatrix(); }

    Read the article

  • Poor Customer Service Example

    - by MightyZot
    Lately I have been frustrated by examples of poor customer service. At least one is worth writing about because I don’t think companies realize the effects of their service policies on loyal customers. Bad Customer Service Example #1 Recently, I received an offer in the mail from my cable company, suddenLink. The offer was for an updated TiVo for $12/mo. Normally I ignore offers like this one because I already have the service they’re offering and many times advertisers are offering alternatives to what is already an excellent product offering. I tend to exhibit a high level of loyalty to the products and brands that I use. In this case, we were looking to upgrade our TiVo and this deal is attractive for several reasons: I don’t want to pay a huge amount up-front for the device, so paying a monthly amount for the device is attractive to me. My entertainment is almost all on a single invoice. I’m no longer going to be billed by suddenLink and TiVo. TiVo is still involved, so I am still loyal to the brand I love. I have resisted moving to other DVRs and services for over a decade. I called suddenLink to order the new TiVo and was rewarded with great customer service. In fact, I can’t remember ever getting poor customer service from suddenLink. They are always there to answer my technical support questions and they are very responsive to outages. Then I called TiVo. First of all, I chose the option on the phone system to change or cancel my service, which was consequently met by an inordinate hold time. (I’m calling this time inordinate because I get through very quickly if I want to purchase something.) This is a trend that I’ve noticed with companies – if you want me to be loyal to you, it should be just as easy to cancel your service as it is to purchase it. Because, I should never be cancelling because I am unhappy. And, if you ever want my business again, or more importantly a reference, then you’d better make the exit door open just as easy as the enter door. After quite some time on hold, I talked to “Victor” who was very courteous. Victor canceled my service and then told me that I could keep my current TiVo and transfer recorded programs to it from the new TiVo.  Cool I said, but what about the cost?  He said there was no extra cost.  This was also attractive to me because I paid for my TiVo and it would be good to use it for something at least.  That was four months ago. This month I noticed that TiVo was still charging me for my original service. I was a little upset, but I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt. After all, I am a loyal TiVo customer and I have resisted moving to other solutions for over a decade. I’m sure they will do whatever it takes to keep my business, through TiVo or through suddenLink. After quite some time on hold, I was able to talk to a customer service representative, “Les”. I explained that I am a loyal TiVo customer, but I purchased this deal through my cable provider. I’m still with TiVo, I just wanted a single bill and to take advantage of the pay-over-time option. “Les” told me that he was very sorry to hear that I’m leaving TiVo, to which I responded again that I wasn’t leaving TiVo, I just want one invoice, and to take advantage of the pay-over-time. So, after explaining that I requested a termination of the non-suddenLink account (TiVo can see both of course), I was put on hold again for quite some time while my refund was “approved”.  “Les” said that he could see my cancellation request back in July. Note that it is now November, so they have billed me inappropriately four times. After quite some time, he came back on the line and told me that he was able to “get me most of my money back.” He got approval to refund 90 days. Even though I requested cancellation of one of my accounts, TiVo has that cancellation request on file and they admit overbilling me, I am going to get “most” of my money back. To top this experience off, when we were ready to hang up, “Les” told me that he was sorry to see me go and that he hoped I would come back to TiVo again. Again, I explained to “Les” that I have not left TiVo. I am just paying them through suddenLink. At that point, he went into a small dissertation about how this is a special arrangement they have with suddenLink and very few others. He made me feel like I was doing something wrong. Why should I feel that way? TiVo made the deal with suddenLink, not me, and the deal seemed like a good compromise for me to be able to get what I need. Here is what TiVo Customer Service accomplished on those two calls – I no longer feel like I need to be loyal to the TiVo brand or service. If I had been treated better on these two calls, I would still be recommending TiVo to my friends. They would still be getting revenue from a loyal customer, who paid the same rate for over a decade, and this article wouldn’t be here for you to read. Interesting… In my opinion, if you want brand loyalty, be loyal to your customers!

    Read the article

  • Office 2010: It&rsquo;s not just DOC(X) and XLS(X)

    - by andrewbrust
    Office 2010 has released to manufacturing.  The bits have left the (product team’s) building.  Will you upgrade? This version of Office is officially numbered 14, a designation that correlates with the various releases, through the years, of Microsoft Word.  There were six major versions of Word for DOS, during whose release cycles came three 16-bit Windows versions.  Then, starting with Word 95 and counting through Word 2007, there have been six more versions – all for the 32-bit Windows platform.  Skip version 13 to ward off folksy bad luck (and, perhaps, the bugs that could come with it) and that brings us to version 14, which includes implementations for both 32- and 64-bit Windows platforms.  We’ve come a long way baby.  Or have we? As it does every three years or so, debate will now start to rage on over whether we need a “14th” version the PC platform’s standard word processor, or a “13th” version of the spreadsheet.  If you accept the premise of that question, then you may be on a slippery slope toward answering it in the negative.  Thing is, that premise is valid for certain customers and not others. The Microsoft Office product has morphed from one that offered core word processing, spreadsheet, presentation and email functionality to a suite of applications that provides unique, new value-added features, and even whole applications, in the context of those core services.  The core apps thus grow in mission: Excel is a BI tool.  Word is a collaborative editorial system for the production of publications.  PowerPoint is a media production platform for for live presentations and, increasingly, for delivering more effective presentations online.  Outlook is a time and task management system.  Access is a rich client front-end for data-driven self-service SharePoint applications.  OneNote helps you capture ideas, corral random thoughts in a semi-structured way, and then tie them back to other, more rigidly structured, Office documents. Google Docs and other cloud productivity platforms like Zoho don’t really do these things.  And there is a growing chorus of voices who say that they shouldn’t, because those ancillary capabilities are over-engineered, over-produced and “under-necessary.”  They might say Microsoft is layering on superfluous capabilities to avoid admitting that Office’s core capabilities, the ones people really need, have become commoditized. It’s hard to take sides in that argument, because different people, and the different companies that employ them, have different needs.  For my own needs, it all comes down to three basic questions: will the new version of Office save me time, will it make the mundane parts of my job easier, and will it augment my services to customers?  I need my time back.  I need to spend more of it with my family, and more of it focusing on my own core capabilities rather than the administrative tasks around them.  And I also need my customers to be able to get more value out of the services I provide. Help me triage my inbox, help me get proposals done more quickly and make them easier to read.  Let me get my presentations done faster, make them more effective and make it easier for me to reuse materials from other presentations.  And, since I’m in the BI and data business, help me and my customers manage data and analytics more easily, both on the desktop and online. Those are my criteria.  And, with those in mind, Office 2010 is looking like a worthwhile upgrade.  Perhaps it’s not earth-shattering, but it offers a combination of incremental improvements and a few new major capabilities that I think are quite compelling.  I provide a brief roundup of them here.  It’s admittedly arbitrary and not comprehensive, but I think it tells the Office 2010 story effectively. Across the Suite More than any other, this release of Office aims to give collaboration a real workout.  In certain apps, for the first time, documents can be opened simultaneously by multiple users, with colleagues’ changes appearing in near real-time.  Web-browser-based versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote will be available to extend collaboration to contributors who are off the corporate network. The ribbon user interface is now more pervasive (for example, it appears in OneNote and in Outlook’s main window).  It’s also customizable, allowing users to add, easily, buttons and options of their choosing, into new tabs, or into new groups within existing tabs. Microsoft has also taken the File menu (which was the “Office Button” menu in the 2007 release) and made it into a full-screen “Backstage” view where document-wide operations, like saving, printing and online publishing are performed. And because, more and more, heavily formatted content is cut and pasted between documents and applications, Office 2010 makes it easier to manage the retention or jettisoning of that formatting right as the paste operation is performed.  That’s much nicer than stripping it off, or adding it back, afterwards. And, speaking of pasting, a number of Office apps now make it especially easy to insert screenshots within their documents.  I know that’s useful to me, because I often document or critique applications and need to show them in action.  For the vast majority of users, I expect that this feature will be more useful for capturing snapshots of Web pages, but we’ll have to see whether this feature becomes popular.   Excel At first glance, Excel 2010 looks and acts nearly identically to the 2007 version.  But additional glances are necessary.  It’s important to understand that lots of people in the working world use Excel as more of a database, analytics and mathematical modeling tool than merely as a spreadsheet.  And it’s also important to understand that Excel wasn’t designed to handle such workloads past a certain scale.  That all changes with this release. The first reason things change is that Excel has been tuned for performance.  It’s been optimized for multi-threaded operation; previously lengthy processes have been shortened, especially for large data sets; more rows and columns are allowed and, for the first time, Excel (and the rest of Office) is available in a 64-bit version.  For Excel, this means users can take advantage of more than the 2GB of memory that the 32-bit version is limited to. On the analysis side, Excel 2010 adds Sparklines (tiny charts that fit into a single cell and can therefore be presented down an entire column or across a row) and Slicers (a more user-friendly filter mechanism for PivotTables and charts, which visually indicates what the filtered state of a given data member is).  But most important, Excel 2010 supports the new PowerPIvot add-in which brings true self-service BI to Office.  PowerPivot allows users to import data from almost anywhere, model it, and then analyze it.  Rather than forcing users to build “spreadmarts” or use corporate-built data warehouses, PowerPivot models function as true columnar, in-memory OLAP cubes that can accommodate millions of rows of data and deliver fast drill-down performance. And speaking of OLAP, Excel 2010 now supports an important Analysis Services OLAP feature called write-back.  Write-back is especially useful in financial forecasting scenarios for which Excel is the natural home.  Support for write-back is long overdue, but I’m still glad it’s there, because I had almost given up on it.   PowerPoint This version of PowerPoint marks its progression from a presentation tool to a video and photo editing and production tool.  Whether or not it’s successful in this pursuit, and if offering this is even a sensible goal, is another question. Regardless, the new capabilities are kind of interesting.  A greatly enhanced set of slide transitions with 3D effects; in-product photo and video editing; accommodation of embedded videos from services such as YouTube; and the ability to save a presentation as a video each lay testimony to PowerPoint’s transformation into a media tool and away from a pure presentation tool. These capabilities also recognize the importance of the Web as both a source for materials and a channel for disseminating PowerPoint output. Congruent with that is PowerPoint’s new ability to broadcast a slide presentation, using a quickly-generated public URL, without involving the hassle or expense of a Web meeting service like GoToMeeting or Microsoft’s own LiveMeeting.  Slides presented through this broadcast feature retain full color fidelity and transitions and animations are preserved as well.   Outlook Microsoft’s ubiquitous email/calendar/contact/task management tool gains long overdue speed improvements, especially against POP3 email accounts.  Outlook 2010 also supports multiple Exchange accounts, rather than just one; tighter integration with OneNote; and a new Social Connector providing integration with, and presence information from, online social network services like LinkedIn and Facebook (not to mention Windows Live).  A revamped conversation view now includes messages that are part of a given thread regardless of which folder they may be stored in. I don’t know yet how well the Social Connector will work or whether it will keep Outlook relevant to those who live on Facebook and LinkedIn.  But among the other features, there’s very little not to like.   OneNote To me, OneNote is the part of Office that just keeps getting better.  There is one major caveat to this, which I’ll cover in a moment, but let’s first catalog what new stuff OneNote 2010 brings.  The best part of OneNote, is the way each of its versions have managed hierarchy: Notebooks have sections, sections have pages, pages have sub pages, multiple notes can be contained in either, and each note supports infinite levels of indentation.  None of that is new to 2010, but the new version does make creation of pages and subpages easier and also makes simple work out of promoting and demoting pages from sub page to full page status.  And relationships between pages are quite easy to create now: much like a Wiki, simply typing a page’s name in double-square-brackets (“[[…]]”) creates a link to it. OneNote is also great at integrating content outside of its notebooks.  With a new Dock to Desktop feature, OneNote becomes aware of what window is displayed in the rest of the screen and, if it’s an Office document or a Web page, links the notes you’re typing, at the time, to it.  A single click from your notes later on will bring that same document or Web page back on-screen.  Embedding content from Web pages and elsewhere is also easier.  Using OneNote’s Windows Key+S combination to grab part of the screen now allows you to specify the destination of that bitmap instead of automatically creating a new note in the Unfiled Notes area.  Using the Send to OneNote buttons in Internet Explorer and Outlook result in the same choice. Collaboration gets better too.  Real-time multi-author editing is better accommodated and determining author lineage of particular changes is easily carried out. My one pet peeve with OneNote is the difficulty using it when I’m not one a Windows PC.  OneNote’s main competitor, Evernote, while I believe inferior in terms of features, has client versions for PC, Mac, Windows Mobile, Android, iPhone, iPad and Web browsers.  Since I have an Android phone and an iPad, I am practically forced to use it.  However, the OneNote Web app should help here, as should a forthcoming version of OneNote for Windows Phone 7.  In the mean time, it turns out that using OneNote’s Email Page ribbon button lets you move a OneNote page easily into EverNote (since every EverNote account gets a unique email address for adding notes) and that Evernote’s Email function combined with Outlook’s Send to OneNote button (in the Move group of the ribbon’s Home tab) can achieve the reverse.   Access To me, the big change in Access 2007 was its tight integration with SharePoint lists.  Access 2010 and SharePoint 2010 continue this integration with the introduction of SharePoint’s Access Services.  Much as Excel Services provides a SharePoint-hosted experience for viewing (and now editing) Excel spreadsheet, PivotTable and chart content, Access Services allows for SharePoint browser-hosted editing of Access data within the forms that are built in the Access client itself. To me this makes all kinds of sense.  Although it does beg the question of where to draw the line between Access, InfoPath, SharePoint list maintenance and SharePoint 2010’s new Business Connectivity Services.  Each of these tools provide overlapping data entry and data maintenance functionality. But if you do prefer Access, then you’ll like  things like templates and application parts that make it easier to get off the blank page.  These features help you quickly get tables, forms and reports built out.  To make things look nice, Access even gets its own version of Excel’s Conditional Formatting feature, letting you add data bars and data-driven text formatting.   Word As I said at the beginning of this post, upgrades to Office are about much more than enhancing the suite’s flagship word processing application. So are there any enhancements in Word worth mentioning?  I think so.  The most important one has to be the collaboration features.  Essentially, when a user opens a Word document that is in a SharePoint document library (or Windows Live SkyDrive folder), rather than the whole document being locked, Word has the ability to observe more granular locks on the individual paragraphs being edited.  Word also shows you who’s editing what and its Save function morphs into a sync feature that both saves your changes and loads those made by anyone editing the document concurrently. There’s also a new navigation pane that lets you manage sections in your document in much the same way as you manage slides in a PowerPoint deck.  Using the navigation pane, you can reorder sections, insert new ones, or promote and demote sections in the outline hierarchy.  Not earth shattering, but nice.   Other Apps and Summarized Findings What about InfoPath, Publisher, Visio and Project?  I haven’t looked at them yet.  And for this post, I think that’s fine.  While those apps (and, arguably, Access) cater to specific tasks, I think the apps we’ve looked at in this post service the general purpose needs of most users.  And the theme in those 2010 apps is clear: collaboration is key, the Web and productivity are indivisible, and making data and analytics into a self-service amenity is the way to go.  But perhaps most of all, features are still important, as long as they get you through your day faster, rather than adding complexity for its own sake.  I would argue that this is true for just about every product Microsoft makes: users want utility, not complexity.

    Read the article

  • Camera doesn't move

    - by hugo
    Here is my code, as my subject indicates i have implemented a camera but I couldn't make it move. #define PI_OVER_180 0.0174532925f #define GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE 0x812F #include "metinalifeyyaz.h" #include <GL/glu.h> #include <GL/glut.h> #include <QTimer> #include <cmath> #include <QKeyEvent> #include <QWidget> #include <QDebug> metinalifeyyaz::metinalifeyyaz(QWidget *parent) : QGLWidget(parent) { this->setFocusPolicy(Qt:: StrongFocus); time = QTime::currentTime(); timer = new QTimer(this); timer->setSingleShot(true); connect(timer, SIGNAL(timeout()), this, SLOT(updateGL())); xpos = yrot = zpos = 0; walkbias = walkbiasangle = lookupdown = 0.0f; keyUp = keyDown = keyLeft = keyRight = keyPageUp = keyPageDown = false; } void metinalifeyyaz::drawBall() { //glTranslatef(6,0,4); glutSolidSphere(0.10005,300,30); } metinalifeyyaz:: ~metinalifeyyaz(){ glDeleteTextures(1,texture); } void metinalifeyyaz::initializeGL(){ glShadeModel(GL_SMOOTH); glClearColor(1.0,1.0,1.0,0.5); glClearDepth(1.0f); glEnable(GL_DEPTH_TEST); glEnable(GL_TEXTURE_2D); glDepthFunc(GL_LEQUAL); glClearColor(1.0,1.0,1.0,1.0); glShadeModel(GL_SMOOTH); GLfloat mat_specular[]={1.0,1.0,1.0,1.0}; GLfloat mat_shininess []={30.0}; GLfloat light_position[]={1.0,1.0,1.0}; glMaterialfv(GL_FRONT, GL_SPECULAR, mat_specular); glMaterialfv(GL_FRONT,GL_SHININESS,mat_shininess); glLightfv(GL_LIGHT0, GL_POSITION, light_position); glEnable(GL_LIGHT0); glEnable(GL_LIGHTING); QImage img1 = convertToGLFormat(QImage(":/new/prefix1/halisaha2.bmp")); QImage img2 = convertToGLFormat(QImage(":/new/prefix1/white.bmp")); glGenTextures(2,texture); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, texture[0]); glTexImage2D(GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0, GL_RGB, img1.width(), img1.height(), 0, GL_RGBA, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, img1.bits()); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D,GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, GL_LINEAR); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D,GL_TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER, GL_LINEAR); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D,GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_S, GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D,GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_T, GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, texture[1]); glTexImage2D(GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0, GL_RGB, img2.width(), img2.height(), 0, GL_RGBA, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, img2.bits()); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D,GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, GL_LINEAR); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D,GL_TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER, GL_LINEAR); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D,GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_S, GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D,GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_T, GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE); glHint(GL_PERSPECTIVE_CORRECTION_HINT, GL_NICEST); // Really nice perspective calculations } void metinalifeyyaz::resizeGL(int w, int h){ if(h==0) h=1; glViewport(0,0,w,h); glMatrixMode(GL_PROJECTION); glLoadIdentity(); gluPerspective(45.0f, static_cast<GLfloat>(w)/h,0.1f,100.0f); glMatrixMode(GL_MODELVIEW); glLoadIdentity(); } void metinalifeyyaz::paintGL(){ movePlayer(); glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT | GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT); glLoadIdentity(); GLfloat xtrans = -xpos; GLfloat ytrans = -walkbias - 0.50f; GLfloat ztrans = -zpos; GLfloat sceneroty = 360.0f - yrot; glLoadIdentity(); glRotatef(lookupdown, 1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f); glRotatef(sceneroty, 0.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f); glTranslatef(xtrans, ytrans+50, ztrans-130); glLoadIdentity(); glTranslatef(1.0f,0.0f,-18.0f); glRotatef(45,1,0,0); drawScene(); int delay = time.msecsTo(QTime::currentTime()); if (delay == 0) delay = 1; time = QTime::currentTime(); timer->start(qMax(0,10 - delay)); } void metinalifeyyaz::movePlayer() { if (keyUp) { xpos -= sin(yrot * PI_OVER_180) * 0.5f; zpos -= cos(yrot * PI_OVER_180) * 0.5f; if (walkbiasangle >= 360.0f) walkbiasangle = 0.0f; else walkbiasangle += 7.0f; walkbias = sin(walkbiasangle * PI_OVER_180) / 10.0f; } else if (keyDown) { xpos += sin(yrot * PI_OVER_180)*0.5f; zpos += cos(yrot * PI_OVER_180)*0.5f ; if (walkbiasangle <= 7.0f) walkbiasangle = 360.0f; else walkbiasangle -= 7.0f; walkbias = sin(walkbiasangle * PI_OVER_180) / 10.0f; } if (keyLeft) yrot += 0.5f; else if (keyRight) yrot -= 0.5f; if (keyPageUp) lookupdown -= 0.5; else if (keyPageDown) lookupdown += 0.5; } void metinalifeyyaz::keyPressEvent(QKeyEvent *event) { switch (event->key()) { case Qt::Key_Escape: close(); break; case Qt::Key_F1: setWindowState(windowState() ^ Qt::WindowFullScreen); break; default: QGLWidget::keyPressEvent(event); case Qt::Key_PageUp: keyPageUp = true; break; case Qt::Key_PageDown: keyPageDown = true; break; case Qt::Key_Left: keyLeft = true; break; case Qt::Key_Right: keyRight = true; break; case Qt::Key_Up: keyUp = true; break; case Qt::Key_Down: keyDown = true; break; } } void metinalifeyyaz::changeEvent(QEvent *event) { switch (event->type()) { case QEvent::WindowStateChange: if (windowState() == Qt::WindowFullScreen) setCursor(Qt::BlankCursor); else unsetCursor(); break; default: break; } } void metinalifeyyaz::keyReleaseEvent(QKeyEvent *event) { switch (event->key()) { case Qt::Key_PageUp: keyPageUp = false; break; case Qt::Key_PageDown: keyPageDown = false; break; case Qt::Key_Left: keyLeft = false; break; case Qt::Key_Right: keyRight = false; break; case Qt::Key_Up: keyUp = false; break; case Qt::Key_Down: keyDown = false; break; default: QGLWidget::keyReleaseEvent(event); } } void metinalifeyyaz::drawScene(){ glBegin(GL_QUADS); glNormal3f(0.0f,0.0f,1.0f); // glColor3f(0,0,1); //back glVertex3f(-6,0,-4); glVertex3f(-6,-0.5,-4); glVertex3f(6,-0.5,-4); glVertex3f(6,0,-4); glEnd(); glBegin(GL_QUADS); glNormal3f(0.0f,0.0f,-1.0f); //front glVertex3f(6,0,4); glVertex3f(6,-0.5,4); glVertex3f(-6,-0.5,4); glVertex3f(-6,0,4); glEnd(); glBegin(GL_QUADS); glNormal3f(-1.0f,0.0f,0.0f); // glColor3f(0,0,1); //left glVertex3f(-6,0,4); glVertex3f(-6,-0.5,4); glVertex3f(-6,-0.5,-4); glVertex3f(-6,0,-4); glEnd(); glBegin(GL_QUADS); glNormal3f(1.0f,0.0f,0.0f); // glColor3f(0,0,1); //right glVertex3f(6,0,-4); glVertex3f(6,-0.5,-4); glVertex3f(6,-0.5,4); glVertex3f(6,0,4); glEnd(); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, texture[0]); glBegin(GL_QUADS); glNormal3f(0.0f,1.0f,0.0f);//top glTexCoord2f(1.0f,0.0f); glVertex3f(6,0,-4); glTexCoord2f(1.0f,1.0f); glVertex3f(6,0,4); glTexCoord2f(0.0f,1.0f); glVertex3f(-6,0,4); glTexCoord2f(0.0f,0.0f); glVertex3f(-6,0,-4); glEnd(); glBegin(GL_QUADS); glNormal3f(0.0f,-1.0f,0.0f); //glColor3f(0,0,1); //bottom glVertex3f(6,-0.5,-4); glVertex3f(6,-0.5,4); glVertex3f(-6,-0.5,4); glVertex3f(-6,-0.5,-4); glEnd(); // glPushMatrix(); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, texture[1]); glBegin(GL_QUADS); glNormal3f(1.0f,0.0f,0.0f); glTexCoord2f(1.0f,0.0f); //right far goal post front face glVertex3f(5,0.5,-0.95); glTexCoord2f(1.0f,1.0f); glVertex3f(5,0,-0.95); glTexCoord2f(0.0f,1.0f); glVertex3f(5,0,-1); glTexCoord2f(0.0f,0.0f); glVertex3f(5, 0.5, -1); glColor3f(1,1,1); //right far goal post back face glVertex3f(5.05,0.5,-0.95); glVertex3f(5.05,0,-0.95); glVertex3f(5.05,0,-1); glVertex3f(5.05, 0.5, -1); glColor3f(1,1,1); //right far goal post left face glVertex3f(5,0.5,-1); glVertex3f(5,0,-1); glVertex3f(5.05,0,-1); glVertex3f(5.05, 0.5, -1); glColor3f(1,1,1); //right far goal post right face glVertex3f(5.05,0.5,-0.95); glVertex3f(5.05,0,-0.95); glVertex3f(5,0,-0.95); glVertex3f(5, 0.5, -0.95); glColor3f(1,1,1); //right near goal post front face glVertex3f(5,0.5,0.95); glVertex3f(5,0,0.95); glVertex3f(5,0,1); glVertex3f(5,0.5, 1); glColor3f(1,1,1); //right near goal post back face glVertex3f(5.05,0.5,0.95); glVertex3f(5.05,0,0.95); glVertex3f(5.05,0,1); glVertex3f(5.05,0.5, 1); glColor3f(1,1,1); //right near goal post left face glVertex3f(5,0.5,1); glVertex3f(5,0,1); glVertex3f(5.05,0,1); glVertex3f(5.05,0.5, 1); glColor3f(1,1,1); //right near goal post right face glVertex3f(5.05,0.5,0.95); glVertex3f(5.05,0,0.95); glVertex3f(5,0,0.95); glVertex3f(5,0.5, 0.95); glColor3f(1,1,1); //right crossbar front face glVertex3f(5,0.55,-1); glVertex3f(5,0.55,1); glVertex3f(5,0.5,1); glVertex3f(5,0.5,-1); glColor3f(1,1,1); //right crossbar back face glVertex3f(5.05,0.55,-1); glVertex3f(5.05,0.55,1); glVertex3f(5.05,0.5,1); glVertex3f(5.05,0.5,-1); glColor3f(1,1,1); //right crossbar bottom face glVertex3f(5.05,0.5,-1); glVertex3f(5.05,0.5,1); glVertex3f(5,0.5,1); glVertex3f(5,0.5,-1); glColor3f(1,1,1); //right crossbar top face glVertex3f(5.05,0.55,-1); glVertex3f(5.05,0.55,1); glVertex3f(5,0.55,1); glVertex3f(5,0.55,-1); glColor3f(1,1,1); //left far goal post front face glVertex3f(-5,0.5,-0.95); glVertex3f(-5,0,-0.95); glVertex3f(-5,0,-1); glVertex3f(-5, 0.5, -1); glColor3f(1,1,1); //right far goal post back face glVertex3f(-5.05,0.5,-0.95); glVertex3f(-5.05,0,-0.95); glVertex3f(-5.05,0,-1); glVertex3f(-5.05, 0.5, -1); glColor3f(1,1,1); //right far goal post left face glVertex3f(-5,0.5,-1); glVertex3f(-5,0,-1); glVertex3f(-5.05,0,-1); glVertex3f(-5.05, 0.5, -1); glColor3f(1,1,1); //right far goal post right face glVertex3f(-5.05,0.5,-0.95); glVertex3f(-5.05,0,-0.95); glVertex3f(-5,0,-0.95); glVertex3f(-5, 0.5, -0.95); glColor3f(1,1,1); //left near goal post front face glVertex3f(-5,0.5,0.95); glVertex3f(-5,0,0.95); glVertex3f(-5,0,1); glVertex3f(-5,0.5, 1); glColor3f(1,1,1); //right near goal post back face glVertex3f(-5.05,0.5,0.95); glVertex3f(-5.05,0,0.95); glVertex3f(-5.05,0,1); glVertex3f(-5.05,0.5, 1); glColor3f(1,1,1); //right near goal post left face glVertex3f(-5,0.5,1); glVertex3f(-5,0,1); glVertex3f(-5.05,0,1); glVertex3f(-5.05,0.5, 1); glColor3f(1,1,1); //right near goal post right face glVertex3f(-5.05,0.5,0.95); glVertex3f(-5.05,0,0.95); glVertex3f(-5,0,0.95); glVertex3f(-5,0.5, 0.95); glColor3f(1,1,1); //left crossbar front face glVertex3f(-5,0.55,-1); glVertex3f(-5,0.55,1); glVertex3f(-5,0.5,1); glVertex3f(-5,0.5,-1); glColor3f(1,1,1); //right crossbar back face glVertex3f(-5.05,0.55,-1); glVertex3f(-5.05,0.55,1); glVertex3f(-5.05,0.5,1); glVertex3f(-5.05,0.5,-1); glColor3f(1,1,1); //right crossbar bottom face glVertex3f(-5.05,0.5,-1); glVertex3f(-5.05,0.5,1); glVertex3f(-5,0.5,1); glVertex3f(-5,0.5,-1); glColor3f(1,1,1); //right crossbar top face glVertex3f(-5.05,0.55,-1); glVertex3f(-5.05,0.55,1); glVertex3f(-5,0.55,1); glVertex3f(-5,0.55,-1); glEnd(); // glPopMatrix(); // glPushMatrix(); // glTranslatef(0,0,0); // glutSolidSphere(0.10005,500,30); // glPopMatrix(); }

    Read the article

  • Code Camp 2011 – Summary

    - by hajan
    Waiting whole twelve months to come this year’s Code Camp 2011 event was something which all Microsoft technologies (and even non-Microsoft techs.) developers were doing in the past year. Last year’s success was enough big to be heard and to influence everything around our developer community and beyond. Code Camp 2011 was nothing else but a invincible success which will remain in our memory for a long time from now. Darko Milevski (president of MKDOT.NET UG and SharePoint MVP) said something interesting at the event keynote that up to now we were looking at the past by saying what we did… now we will focus on the future and how to develop our community more and more in the future days, weeks, months and I hope so for many years… Even though it was held only two days ago (26th of November 2011), I already feel the nostalgia for everything that happened there and for the excellent time we have spent all together. ORGANIZED BY ENTHUSIASTS AND EXPERTS Code Camp 2011 was organized by number of community enthusiasts and experts who have unselfishly contributed with all their free time to make the best of this event. The event was organized by a known community group called MKDOT.NET User Group, name of a user group which is known not only in Macedonia, but also in many countries abroad. Organization mainly consists of software developers, technical leaders, team leaders in several known companies in Macedonia, as well as Microsoft MVPs. SPEAKERS There were 24 speakers at five parallel tracks. At Code Camp 2011 we had two groups of speakers: Professional Experts in various technologies and Student Speakers. The new interesting thing here is the Student Speakers, which draw attention a lot, especially to other students who were interested to see what their colleagues are going to speak about and how do they use Microsoft technologies in different coding scenarios and practices, in different topics. From the rest of the professional speakers, there were 7 Microsoft MVPs: Two ASP.NET/IIS MVPs, Two C# MVPs, and One MVP in SharePoint, SQL Server and Exchange Server. I must say that besides the MVP Speakers, who definitely did a great job as always… there were other excellent speakers as well, which were speaking on various technologies, such as: Web Development, Windows Phone Development, XNA, Windows 8, Games Development, Entity Framework, Event-driven programming, SOLID, SQLCLR, T-SQL, e.t.c. SESSIONS There were 25 sessions mainly all related to Microsoft technologies, but ranging from Windows 8, WP7, ASP.NET till Games Development, XNA and Event-driven programming. Sessions were going in five parallel tracks named as Red, Yellow, Green, Blue and Student track. Five presentations in each track, each with level 300 or 400. More info MY SESSION (ASP.NET MVC Best Practices) I must say that from the big number of speaking engagements I have had, this was one of my best performances and definitely I have set new records of attendees at my sessions and probably overall. I spoke on topic ASP.NET MVC Best Practices, where I have shown tips, tricks, guidelines and best practices on what to use and what to avoid by developing with one of the best web development frameworks nowadays, ASP.NET MVC. I had approximately 350+ attendees, the hall was full so that there was no room for staying at feet. Besides .NET developers, there were a lot of other technology oriented developers, who has also received the presentation very well and I really hope I gave them reason to think about ASP.NET as one of the best options for web development nowadays (if you ask me, it’s the best one ;-)). I have included 10 tips in using ASP.NET MVC each of them followed by a demo. Besides these 10 tips, I have briefly introduced the concept of ASP.NET MVC for those that haven’t been working with the framework and at the end some bonus tips. I must say there was lot of laugh for some funny sentences I have stated, like “If you code ASP.NET MVC, girls will love you more” – same goes for girls, only replace girls with boys :). [LINK TO SESSION WILL GO HERE, ONCE SESSIONS ARE AVAILABLE ON MK CODECAMP WEBSITE] VOLUNTEERS Without strong organization, such events wouldn’t be able to gather hundreds of attendees at one place and still stay perfectly organized to the smallest details, without dedicated organization and volunteers. I would like to dedicate this space in my blog to them and to say one big THANK YOU for supporting us before the event and during the whole day in the event. With such young and dedicated volunteers, we couldn’t achieve anything but great results. THANK YOU EVERYONE FOR YOUR CONTRIBUTION! NETWORKING One of the main reasons why we do such events is to gather all professionals in one place. Networking is what everyone wants because through this way of networking, we can meet incredible people in one place. It is amazing feeling to share your knowledge with others and exchange thoughts on various topics. Meet and talk to interesting people. I have had very special moments with many attendees especially after my presentation. Special Thank You to all of them who come to meet me in person, whether to ask a question, say congrats for my session or simply meet me and just smile :)… everything counts! Thank You! TWITTER During the event, twitter was one of the most useful event-wide communication tool where everyone could tweet with hash tag #mkcodecamp or #mkdotnet and say what he/she wants to say about the current state and happenings at that moment… In my next blog post I will list the top craziest tweets that were posted at this event… FUTURE OF MKDOT.NET Having such strong community around MKDOT.NET, the future seems very bright. The initial plans are to have sub-groups in several technologies, however all these sub-groups will belong to the MKDOT.NET UG which will be, somehow, the HEAD of these sub-groups. We are doing this to provide better divisions by technologies and organize ourselves better since our community is very big, around 500 members in MKDOT.NET.We will have five sub-groups:- Web User Group (Lead:Hajan Selmani - me)- Mobile User Group (Lead: Filip Kerazovski)- Visual C# User Group (Lead: Vekoslav Stefanovski)- SharePoint User Group (Lead: Darko Milevski)- Dynamics User Group (Lead: Vladimir Senih) SUMMARY Online registered attendees: ~1.200 Event attendees: ~800 Number of members in organization: 40+ Organized by: MKDOT.NET User Group Number of tracks: 5 Number of speakers: 24 Number of sessions: 25 Event official website: http://codecamp.mkdot.net Total number of sponsors: 20 Platinum Sponsors: Microsoft, INETA, Telerik Place held: FON University City and Country: Skopje, Macedonia THANK YOU FOR BEING PART OF THE BEST EVENT IN MACEDONIA, CODE CAMP 2011. Regards, Hajan

    Read the article

  • MSCC: Scripting - Administrator's­ toolbox of magic...

    Finally, we made it to have our April meetup - in May. The most obvious explanation is the increased amount of open source and IT activities that either the MSCC, the Linux User Group of Mauritius (LUGM), or the University of Mauritius Student's Computer Club is organising. It's absolutely incredible to see the recent hype of events here on the island. And I'm loving it! Unfortunately, we also had to deal with arranging for a location this time. It was kind of an odyssey as my requests (and phone calls) haven't been answered, even though I tried it several times - well, kind of disappointing and I have to look into that for future gatherings. In my opinion, it is essential that two parameters of a community meeting are fixed as early as possible: Location, and Date and time You can't just change one or both on the very last minute. Well, this time we had to do it due to unforeseen reasons, and I apologise to any MSCC member which couldn't make it to our April meetup. Okay, lesson learned but now back to the actual meetup report ... Shortly after the meeting I placed the following statement as my first impression: "Spontaneous and improvised :) No, seriously, Ish and Dan had well prepared presentations on shell scripting, mainly focused towards Bourne Again Shell (bash), and the pros and cons of scripting versus actually writing something in a decent programming language. I thought that I could cut myself out of the equation but the demand for information about PowerShell was higher than expected..." Well, it turned out that the interest in Windows PowerShell was high, as I even got a couple of questions on it via social media networks during the evening. I also like to mention that the number of attendees went back to what I would call a "standard" number of participation. This time there were 12 craftsmen, but again a good number of First Timers. Reactions of other attendees Here are some impressions and feedback from our participants: "Enjoyed the bash and powershell (linux / windows) presentations ..." -- Nadim on event comments "He [Daniel] also showed us some syntax loopholes in Bash that could leave someone with bad code." -- Ish on MSCC – Let's talk about Scripting   Glad to see a couple of first time attendees, especially students from the university itself. Some details on the presentations MSCC: First time visit at the University of Mauritius - Phase II Engineering Tower, room 2.9 Gimme some love ... bash and other shells Ish gave a great introduction into shell scripting as he spoke about existing shell environments and a little bit about their history. Furthermore, he talked about various built-in commands, the use of coreutils, the ability to daisy-chain multiple commands using pipes, the importance of the standard I/O streams and their file descriptors in advanced scripting techniques. Combined with a couple of sample statements in the Linux terminal on Ubuntu 14.04 machine it was a solid presentation. Have a closer look at his slides - published on his blog on MSCC – Let's talk about Scripting. Oddities of scripting After the brief introduction into bash it was Daniel's turn to highlight a good number of oddities when working with shell scripts. First of all, it should be clear that scripting is not supposed for any kind of implementations in terms of software but simply to automate administrative procedures and to simplify routine jobs on a system. One of the cool oddities that he mentioned is that everything (!) in a shell is represented by strings; there are no other types like integer, float, date-time, etc. that you'd like to use in a full-fledged programming language. Let's have a look at his sample:  more to come... What's the output? As a conclusion, Daniel suggests that shell scripting should be limited but not restricted to automatic repetitive command stacks and batch jobs, startup wrapper for applications in order to set up the execution environment, and other not too sophisticated jobs. But as soon as it might involve a little bit more logic or you might rely on performance it's better to write an application in Ruby, Python, or Perl (among others of course). This is also enables the possibility to test your code properly. MSCC: Ish talking about Bourne Again Shell (bash) and shell scripting to automate regular tasks MSCC: Daniel gives an overview about the pros and cons of shell scripting versus programming MSCC: PowerShell as your scripting solution on Windows operating systems The path of the Enlightened is long ... and tough. Honestly, even though PowerShell was mentioned without any further details on the meetup's agenda, I didn't expect that there would be demand to give a presentation on Microsoft PowerShell after all. I already took this topic out of the announcement but the audience wanted to have some information. Okay, then let's see what I could do - improvised style. While my machine booted and got hooked up to the projector, I started to talk about the beginnings of PowerShell from back in 2006, and its predecessors MS DOS and Command Prompt. A throwback in history... always good for young people. As usual, Microsoft didn't get it at that time. Instead of listening to their client's needs and demands they ignored the feasibility to administrate Windows server farms without any UI tools. PowerShell is actually a result of this, and seeing that shell scripting is a common, reliable and fast way in an administrator's toolbox for decades, Microsoft had to adapt from their Microsoft Management Console (MMC) to a broader approach. It's not like shell scripting was something new; it is in daily use by alternative operating systems like AIX, HP UX, Solaris, and last but not least Linux. Most interestingly, Microsoft is very good at renovating existing architectures, and over the years PowerShell not only replaced their own combination of Command Prompt and Scripting Hosts (VBScript and CScript) but really turned into a challenging competitor on the market. The shell is easy to extend with cmdlets, and open to other Microsoft products like SQL Server, SharePoint, as well as Third-party software applications. Similar to MMC PowerShell also offers the ability to administer other machine remotely - only without a graphical user interface and therefore it's easier to automate and schedule regular tasks. Following is a sample of a PowerShell script file (extension .ps1): $strComputer = "." $colItems = get-wmiobject -class Win32_BIOS -namespace root\CIMV2 -comp $strComputer foreach ($objItem in $colItems) {write-host "BIOS Characteristics: " $objItem.BiosCharacteristicswrite-host "BIOS Version: " $objItem.BIOSVersionwrite-host "Build Number: " $objItem.BuildNumberwrite-host "Caption: " $objItem.Captionwrite-host "Code Set: " $objItem.CodeSetwrite-host "Current Language: " $objItem.CurrentLanguagewrite-host "Description: " $objItem.Descriptionwrite-host "Identification Code: " $objItem.IdentificationCodewrite-host "Installable Languages: " $objItem.InstallableLanguageswrite-host "Installation Date: " $objItem.InstallDatewrite-host "Language Edition: " $objItem.LanguageEditionwrite-host "List Of Languages: " $objItem.ListOfLanguageswrite-host "Manufacturer: " $objItem.Manufacturerwrite-host "Name: " $objItem.Namewrite-host "Other Target Operating System: " $objItem.OtherTargetOSwrite-host "Primary BIOS: " $objItem.PrimaryBIOSwrite-host "Release Date: " $objItem.ReleaseDatewrite-host "Serial Number: " $objItem.SerialNumberwrite-host "SMBIOS BIOS Version: " $objItem.SMBIOSBIOSVersionwrite-host "SMBIOS Major Version: " $objItem.SMBIOSMajorVersionwrite-host "SMBIOS Minor Version: " $objItem.SMBIOSMinorVersionwrite-host "SMBIOS Present: " $objItem.SMBIOSPresentwrite-host "Software Element ID: " $objItem.SoftwareElementIDwrite-host "Software Element State: " $objItem.SoftwareElementStatewrite-host "Status: " $objItem.Statuswrite-host "Target Operating System: " $objItem.TargetOperatingSystemwrite-host "Version: " $objItem.Versionwrite-host} Which gives you information about your BIOS and Windows OS. Then change the computer name to another one on your network (NetBIOS based) and run the script again. There lots of samples and tutorials at the Microsoft Script Center, and I would advise you to pay a visit over there if you are more interested in PowerShell. The Script Center provides the download links, too. Upcoming Events What are the upcoming events here in Mauritius? So far, we have the following ones (incomplete list as usual) in chronological order: Hacking Defence (14. May 2014) WebCup Maurice (7. & 8. June 2014) Developers Conference (TBA ~ July 2014) Linuxfest 2014 (TBA ~ November 2014) Hopefully, there will be more announcements during the next couple of weeks and months. If you know about any other event, like a bootcamp, a code challenge or hackathon here in Mauritius, please drop me a note in the comment section below this article. Thanks! My resume of the day Spontaneous and improvised :) The new location at the University of Mauritius turned out very well, there is plenty of space, and it could be a good choice for future meetings. Especially, having the ability to get more and more students into our IT community sounds like a great opportunity. Later during the day, I got some promising mails from Nadim regarding future sessions at the local branch of the Middlesex University. Well, we will see in the future... But for now this will be on hold until approximately October when students resume their regular studies. Anyway, it was a good experience at the university, and thanks again to the UoM Student's Computer Club that made the necessary arrangements for the MSCC!

    Read the article

  • How I do VCS

    - by Wes McClure
    After years of dabbling with different version control systems and techniques, I wanted to share some of what I like and dislike in a few blog posts.  To start this out, I want to talk about how I use VCS in a team environment.  These come in a series of tips or best practices that I try to follow.  Note: This list is subject to change in the future. Always use some form of version control for all aspects of software development. Development is an evolution.  Looking back at where we were is an invaluable asset in that process.  This includes data schemas and documentation. Reverting / reapplying changes is absolutely critical for efficient development. The tools I use: Code: Hg (preferred), SVN Database: TSqlMigrations Documents: Sometimes in code repository, also SharePoint with versioning Always tag a commit (changeset) with comments This is a quick way to describe to someone else (or your future self) what the changeset entails. Be brief but courteous. One or two sentences about the task, not the actual changes. Use precommit hooks or setup the central repository to reject changes without comments. Link changesets to documentation If your project management system integrates with version control, or has a way to externally reference stories, tasks etc then leave a reference in the commit.  This helps locate more information about the commit and/or related changesets. It’s best to have a precommit hook or system that requires this information, otherwise it’s easy to forget. Ability to work offline is required, including commits and history Yes this requires a DVCS locally but doesn’t require the central repository to be a DVCS.  I prefer to use either Git or Hg but if it isn’t possible to migrate the central repository, it’s still possible for a developer to push / pull changes to that repository from a local Hg or Git repository. Never lock resources (files) in a central repository… Rude! We have merge tools for a reason, merging sucked a long time ago, it doesn’t anymore… stop locking files! This is unproductive, rude and annoying to other team members. Always review everything in your commit. Never ever commit a set of files without reviewing the changes in each. Never add a file without asking yourself, deep down inside, does this belong? If you leave to make changes during a review, start the review over when you come back.  Never assume you didn’t touch a file, double check. This is another reason why you want to avoid large, infrequent commits. Requirements for tools Quickly show pending changes for the entire repository. Default action for a resource with pending changes is a diff. Pluggable diff & merge tool Produce a unified diff or a diff of all changes.  This is helpful to bulk review changes instead of opening each file. The central repository is not your own personal dump yard.  Breaking this rule is a sure fire way to get the F bomb dropped in front of your name, multiple times. If you turn on Visual Studio’s commit on closing studio option, I will personally break your fingers. By the way, the person(s) in charge of this feature should be fired and never be allowed near programming, ever again. Commit (integrate) to the central repository / branch frequently I try to do this before leaving each day, especially without a DVCS.  One never knows when they might need to work from remote the following day. Never commit commented out code If it isn’t needed anymore, delete it! If you aren’t sure if it might be useful in the future, delete it! This is why we have history. If you don’t know why it’s commented out, figure it out and then either uncomment it or delete it. Don’t commit build artifacts, user preferences and temporary files. Build artifacts do not belong in VCS, everything in them is present in the code. (ie: bin\*, obj\*, *.dll, *.exe) User preferences are your settings, stop overriding my preferences files! (ie: *.suo and *.user files) Most tools allow you to ignore certain files and Hg/Git allow you to version this as an ignore file.  Set this up as a first step when creating a new repository! Be polite when merging unresolved conflicts. Count to 10, cuss, grab a stress ball and realize it’s not a big deal.  Actually, it’s an opportunity to let you know that someone else is working in the same area and you might want to communicate with them. Following the other rules, especially committing frequently, will reduce the likelihood of this. Suck it up, we all have to deal with this unintended consequence at times.  Just be careful and GET FAMILIAR with your merge tool.  It’s really not as scary as you think.  I personally prefer KDiff3 as its merging capabilities rock. Don’t blindly merge and then blindly commit your changes, this is rude and unprofessional.  Make sure you understand why the conflict occurred and which parts of the code you want to keep.  Apply scrutiny when you commit a manual merge: review the diff! Make sure you test the changes (build and run automated tests) Become intimate with your version control system and the tools you use with it. Avoid trial and error as much as is possible, sit down and test the tool out, read some tutorials etc.  Create test repositories and walk through common scenarios. Find the most efficient way to do your work.  These tools will be used repetitively, so inefficiencies will add up. Sometimes this involves a mix of tools, both GUI and CLI. I like a combination of both Tortoise Hg and hg cli to get the job efficiently. Always tag releases Create a way to find a given release, whether this be in comments or an explicit tag / branch.  This should be readily discoverable. Create release branches to patch bugs and then merge the changes back to other development branch(es). If using feature branches, strive for periodic integrations. Feature branches often cause forked code that becomes irreconcilable.  Strive to re-integrate somewhat frequently with the branch this code will ultimately be merged into.  This will avoid merge conflicts in the future. Feature branches are best when they are mutually exclusive of active development in other branches. Use and abuse local commits , at least one per task in a story. This builds a trail of changes in your local repository that can be pushed to a central repository when the story is complete. Never commit a broken build or failing tests to the central repository. It’s ok for a local commit to break the build and/or tests.  In fact, I encourage this if it helps group the changes more logically.  This is one of the main reasons I got excited about DVCS, when I wanted more than one changeset for a set of pending changes but some files could be grouped into both changesets (like solution file / project file changes). If you have more than a dozen outstanding changed resources, there should probably be more than one commit involved. Exceptions when maintaining code bases that require shotgun surgery, in this case, it’s a design smell :) Don’t version sensitive information Especially usernames / passwords   There is one area I haven’t found a solution I like yet: versioning 3rd party libraries and/or code.  I really dislike keeping any assemblies in the repository, but seems to be a common practice for external libraries.  Please feel free to share your ideas about this below.    -Wes

    Read the article

  • OpenGL basics: calling glDrawElements once per object

    - by Bethor
    Hi all, continuing on from my explorations of the basics of OpenGL (see this question), I'm trying to figure out the basic principles of drawing a scene with OpenGL. I am trying to render a simple cube repeated n times in every direction. My method appears to yield terrible performance : 1000 cubes brings performance below 50fps (on a QuadroFX 1800, roughly a GeForce 9600GT). My method for drawing these cubes is as follows: done once: set up a vertex buffer and array buffer containing my cube vertices in model space set up an array buffer indexing the cube for drawing as 12 triangles done for each frame: update uniform values used by the vertex shader to move all cubes at once done for each cube, for each frame: update uniform values used by the vertex shader to move each cube to its position call glDrawElements to draw the positioned cube Is this a sane method ? If not, how does one go about something like this ? I'm guessing I need to minimize calls to glUniform, glDrawElements, or both, but I'm not sure how to do that. Full code for my little test : (depends on gletools and pyglet) I'm aware that my init code (at least) is really ugly; I'm concerned with the rendering code for each frame right now, I'll move to something a little less insane for the creation of the vertex buffers and such later on. import pyglet from pyglet.gl import * from pyglet.window import key from numpy import deg2rad, tan from gletools import ShaderProgram, FragmentShader, VertexShader, GeometryShader vertexData = [-0.5, -0.5, -0.5, 1.0, -0.5, 0.5, -0.5, 1.0, 0.5, -0.5, -0.5, 1.0, 0.5, 0.5, -0.5, 1.0, -0.5, -0.5, 0.5, 1.0, -0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 1.0, 0.5, -0.5, 0.5, 1.0, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 1.0] elementArray = [2, 1, 0, 1, 2, 3,## back face 4, 7, 6, 4, 5, 7,## front face 1, 3, 5, 3, 7, 5,## top face 2, 0, 4, 2, 4, 6,## bottom face 1, 5, 4, 0, 1, 4,## left face 6, 7, 3, 6, 3, 2]## right face def toGLArray(input): return (GLfloat*len(input))(*input) def toGLushortArray(input): return (GLushort*len(input))(*input) def initPerspectiveMatrix(aspectRatio = 1.0, fov = 45): frustumScale = 1.0 / tan(deg2rad(fov) / 2.0) fzNear = 0.5 fzFar = 300.0 perspectiveMatrix = [frustumScale*aspectRatio, 0.0 , 0.0 , 0.0 , 0.0 , frustumScale, 0.0 , 0.0 , 0.0 , 0.0 , (fzFar+fzNear)/(fzNear-fzFar) , -1.0, 0.0 , 0.0 , (2*fzFar*fzNear)/(fzNear-fzFar), 0.0 ] return perspectiveMatrix class ModelObject(object): vbo = GLuint() vao = GLuint() eao = GLuint() initDone = False verticesPool = [] indexPool = [] def __init__(self, vertices, indexing): super(ModelObject, self).__init__() if not ModelObject.initDone: glGenVertexArrays(1, ModelObject.vao) glGenBuffers(1, ModelObject.vbo) glGenBuffers(1, ModelObject.eao) glBindVertexArray(ModelObject.vao) initDone = True self.numIndices = len(indexing) self.offsetIntoVerticesPool = len(ModelObject.verticesPool) ModelObject.verticesPool.extend(vertices) self.offsetIntoElementArray = len(ModelObject.indexPool) ModelObject.indexPool.extend(indexing) glBindBuffer(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, ModelObject.vbo) glEnableVertexAttribArray(0) #position glVertexAttribPointer(0, 4, GL_FLOAT, GL_FALSE, 0, 0) glBindBuffer(GL_ELEMENT_ARRAY_BUFFER, ModelObject.eao) glBufferData(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, len(ModelObject.verticesPool)*4, toGLArray(ModelObject.verticesPool), GL_STREAM_DRAW) glBufferData(GL_ELEMENT_ARRAY_BUFFER, len(ModelObject.indexPool)*2, toGLushortArray(ModelObject.indexPool), GL_STREAM_DRAW) def draw(self): glDrawElements(GL_TRIANGLES, self.numIndices, GL_UNSIGNED_SHORT, self.offsetIntoElementArray) class PositionedObject(object): def __init__(self, mesh, pos, objOffsetUf): super(PositionedObject, self).__init__() self.mesh = mesh self.pos = pos self.objOffsetUf = objOffsetUf def draw(self): glUniform3f(self.objOffsetUf, self.pos[0], self.pos[1], self.pos[2]) self.mesh.draw() w = 800 h = 600 AR = float(h)/float(w) window = pyglet.window.Window(width=w, height=h, vsync=False) window.set_exclusive_mouse(True) pyglet.clock.set_fps_limit(None) ## input forward = [False] left = [False] back = [False] right = [False] up = [False] down = [False] inputs = {key.Z: forward, key.Q: left, key.S: back, key.D: right, key.UP: forward, key.LEFT: left, key.DOWN: back, key.RIGHT: right, key.PAGEUP: up, key.PAGEDOWN: down} ## camera camX = 0.0 camY = 0.0 camZ = -1.0 def simulate(delta): global camZ, camX, camY scale = 10.0 move = scale*delta if forward[0]: camZ += move if back[0]: camZ += -move if left[0]: camX += move if right[0]: camX += -move if up[0]: camY += move if down[0]: camY += -move pyglet.clock.schedule(simulate) @window.event def on_key_press(symbol, modifiers): global forward, back, left, right, up, down if symbol in inputs.keys(): inputs[symbol][0] = True @window.event def on_key_release(symbol, modifiers): global forward, back, left, right, up, down if symbol in inputs.keys(): inputs[symbol][0] = False ## uniforms for shaders camOffsetUf = GLuint() objOffsetUf = GLuint() perspectiveMatrixUf = GLuint() camRotationUf = GLuint() program = ShaderProgram( VertexShader(''' #version 330 layout(location = 0) in vec4 objCoord; uniform vec3 objOffset; uniform vec3 cameraOffset; uniform mat4 perspMx; void main() { mat4 translateCamera = mat4(1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f, cameraOffset.x, cameraOffset.y, cameraOffset.z, 1.0f); mat4 translateObject = mat4(1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f, objOffset.x, objOffset.y, objOffset.z, 1.0f); vec4 modelCoord = objCoord; vec4 positionedModel = translateObject*modelCoord; vec4 cameraPos = translateCamera*positionedModel; gl_Position = perspMx * cameraPos; }'''), FragmentShader(''' #version 330 out vec4 outputColor; const vec4 fillColor = vec4(1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f); void main() { outputColor = fillColor; }''') ) shapes = [] def init(): global camOffsetUf, objOffsetUf with program: camOffsetUf = glGetUniformLocation(program.id, "cameraOffset") objOffsetUf = glGetUniformLocation(program.id, "objOffset") perspectiveMatrixUf = glGetUniformLocation(program.id, "perspMx") glUniformMatrix4fv(perspectiveMatrixUf, 1, GL_FALSE, toGLArray(initPerspectiveMatrix(AR))) obj = ModelObject(vertexData, elementArray) nb = 20 for i in range(nb): for j in range(nb): for k in range(nb): shapes.append(PositionedObject(obj, (float(i*2), float(j*2), float(k*2)), objOffsetUf)) glEnable(GL_CULL_FACE) glCullFace(GL_BACK) glFrontFace(GL_CW) glEnable(GL_DEPTH_TEST) glDepthMask(GL_TRUE) glDepthFunc(GL_LEQUAL) glDepthRange(0.0, 1.0) glClearDepth(1.0) def update(dt): print pyglet.clock.get_fps() pyglet.clock.schedule_interval(update, 1.0) @window.event def on_draw(): with program: pyglet.clock.tick() glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT|GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT) glUniform3f(camOffsetUf, camX, camY, camZ) for shape in shapes: shape.draw() init() pyglet.app.run()

    Read the article

  • Techniques for modeling a dynamic dataflow with Java concurrency API

    - by Maian
    Is there an elegant way to model a dynamic dataflow in Java? By dataflow, I mean there are various types of tasks, and these tasks can be "connected" arbitrarily, such that when a task finishes, successor tasks are executed in parallel using the finished tasks output as input, or when multiple tasks finish, their output is aggregated in a successor task (see flow-based programming). By dynamic, I mean that the type and number of successors tasks when a task finishes depends on the output of that finished task, so for example, task A may spawn task B if it has a certain output, but may spawn task C if has a different output. Another way of putting it is that each task (or set of tasks) is responsible for determining what the next tasks are. Sample dataflow for rendering a webpage: I have as task types: file downloader, HTML/CSS renderer, HTML parser/DOM builder, image renderer, JavaScript parser, JavaScript interpreter. File downloader task for HTML file HTML parser/DOM builder task File downloader task for each embedded file/link If image, image renderer If external JavaScript, JavaScript parser JavaScript interpreter Otherwise, just store in some var/field in HTML parser task JavaScript parser for each embedded script JavaScript interpreter Wait for above tasks to finish, then HTML/CSS renderer (obviously not optimal or perfectly correct, but this is simple) I'm not saying the solution needs to be some comprehensive framework (in fact, the closer to the JDK API, the better), and I absolutely don't want something as heavyweight is say Spring Web Flow or some declarative markup or other DSL. To be more specific, I'm trying to think of a good way to model this in Java with Callables, Executors, ExecutorCompletionServices, and perhaps various synchronizer classes (like Semaphore or CountDownLatch). There are a couple use cases and requirements: Don't make any assumptions on what executor(s) the tasks will run on. In fact, to simplify, just assume there's only one executor. It can be a fixed thread pool executor, so a naive implementation can result in deadlocks (e.g. imagine a task that submits another task and then blocks until that subtask is finished, and now imagine several of these tasks using up all the threads). To simplify, assume that the data is not streamed between tasks (task output-succeeding task input) - the finishing task and succeeding task won't exist together, so the input data to the succeeding task will not be changed by the preceeding task (since it's already done). There are only a couple operations that the dataflow "engine" should be able to handle: A mechanism where a task can queue more tasks A mechanism whereby a successor task is not queued until all the required input tasks are finished A mechanism whereby the main thread (or other threads not managed by the executor) blocks until the flow is finished A mechanism whereby the main thread (or other threads not managed by the executor) blocks until certain tasks have finished Since the dataflow is dynamic (depends on input/state of the task), the activation of these mechanisms should occur within the task code, e.g. the code in a Callable is itself responsible for queueing more Callables. The dataflow "internals" should not be exposed to the tasks (Callables) themselves - only the operations listed above should be available to the task. Note that the type of the data is not necessarily the same for all tasks, e.g. a file download task may accept a File as input but will output a String. If a task throws an uncaught exception (indicating some fatal error requiring all dataflow processing to stop), it must propagate up to the thread that initiated the dataflow as quickly as possible and cancel all tasks (or something fancier like a fatal error handler). Tasks should be launched as soon as possible. This along with the previous requirement should preclude simple Future polling + Thread.sleep(). As a bonus, I would like to dataflow engine itself to perform some action (like logging) every time task is finished or when no has finished in X time since last task has finished. Something like: ExecutorCompletionService<T> ecs; while (hasTasks()) { Future<T> future = ecs.poll(1 minute); some_action_like_logging(); if (future != null) { future.get() ... } ... } Are there straightforward ways to do all this with Java concurrency API? Or if it's going to complex no matter what with what's available in the JDK, is there a lightweight library that satisfies the requirements? I already have a partial solution that fits my particular use case (it cheats in a way, since I'm using two executors, and just so you know, it's not related at all to the web browser example I gave above), but I'd like to see a more general purpose and elegant solution.

    Read the article

  • Organization &amp; Architecture UNISA Studies &ndash; Chap 4

    - by MarkPearl
    Learning Outcomes Explain the characteristics of memory systems Describe the memory hierarchy Discuss cache memory principles Discuss issues relevant to cache design Describe the cache organization of the Pentium Computer Memory Systems There are key characteristics of memory… Location – internal or external Capacity – expressed in terms of bytes Unit of Transfer – the number of bits read out of or written into memory at a time Access Method – sequential, direct, random or associative From a users perspective the two most important characteristics of memory are… Capacity Performance – access time, memory cycle time, transfer rate The trade off for memory happens along three axis… Faster access time, greater cost per bit Greater capacity, smaller cost per bit Greater capacity, slower access time This leads to people using a tiered approach in their use of memory   As one goes down the hierarchy, the following occurs… Decreasing cost per bit Increasing capacity Increasing access time Decreasing frequency of access of the memory by the processor The use of two levels of memory to reduce average access time works in principle, but only if conditions 1 to 4 apply. A variety of technologies exist that allow us to accomplish this. Thus it is possible to organize data across the hierarchy such that the percentage of accesses to each successively lower level is substantially less than that of the level above. A portion of main memory can be used as a buffer to hold data temporarily that is to be read out to disk. This is sometimes referred to as a disk cache and improves performance in two ways… Disk writes are clustered. Instead of many small transfers of data, we have a few large transfers of data. This improves disk performance and minimizes processor involvement. Some data designed for write-out may be referenced by a program before the next dump to disk. In that case the data is retrieved rapidly from the software cache rather than slowly from disk. Cache Memory Principles Cache memory is substantially faster than main memory. A caching system works as follows.. When a processor attempts to read a word of memory, a check is made to see if this in in cache memory… If it is, the data is supplied, If it is not in the cache, a block of main memory, consisting of a fixed number of words is loaded to the cache. Because of the phenomenon of locality of references, when a block of data is fetched into the cache, it is likely that there will be future references to that same memory location or to other words in the block. Elements of Cache Design While there are a large number of cache implementations, there are a few basic design elements that serve to classify and differentiate cache architectures… Cache Addresses Cache Size Mapping Function Replacement Algorithm Write Policy Line Size Number of Caches Cache Addresses Almost all non-embedded processors support virtual memory. Virtual memory in essence allows a program to address memory from a logical point of view without needing to worry about the amount of physical memory available. When virtual addresses are used the designer may choose to place the cache between the MMU (memory management unit) and the processor or between the MMU and main memory. The disadvantage of virtual memory is that most virtual memory systems supply each application with the same virtual memory address space (each application sees virtual memory starting at memory address 0), which means the cache memory must be completely flushed with each application context switch or extra bits must be added to each line of the cache to identify which virtual address space the address refers to. Cache Size We would like the size of the cache to be small enough so that the overall average cost per bit is close to that of main memory alone and large enough so that the overall average access time is close to that of the cache alone. Also, larger caches are slightly slower than smaller ones. Mapping Function Because there are fewer cache lines than main memory blocks, an algorithm is needed for mapping main memory blocks into cache lines. The choice of mapping function dictates how the cache is organized. Three techniques can be used… Direct – simplest technique, maps each block of main memory into only one possible cache line Associative – Each main memory block to be loaded into any line of the cache Set Associative – exhibits the strengths of both the direct and associative approaches while reducing their disadvantages For detailed explanations of each approach – read the text book (page 148 – 154) Replacement Algorithm For associative and set associating mapping a replacement algorithm is needed to determine which of the existing blocks in the cache must be replaced by a new block. There are four common approaches… LRU (Least recently used) FIFO (First in first out) LFU (Least frequently used) Random selection Write Policy When a block resident in the cache is to be replaced, there are two cases to consider If no writes to that block have happened in the cache – discard it If a write has occurred, a process needs to be initiated where the changes in the cache are propagated back to the main memory. There are several approaches to achieve this including… Write Through – all writes to the cache are done to the main memory as well at the point of the change Write Back – when a block is replaced, all dirty bits are written back to main memory The problem is complicated when we have multiple caches, there are techniques to accommodate for this but I have not summarized them. Line Size When a block of data is retrieved and placed in the cache, not only the desired word but also some number of adjacent words are retrieved. As the block size increases from very small to larger sizes, the hit ratio will at first increase because of the principle of locality, which states that the data in the vicinity of a referenced word are likely to be referenced in the near future. As the block size increases, more useful data are brought into cache. The hit ratio will begin to decrease as the block becomes even bigger and the probability of using the newly fetched information becomes less than the probability of using the newly fetched information that has to be replaced. Two specific effects come into play… Larger blocks reduce the number of blocks that fit into a cache. Because each block fetch overwrites older cache contents, a small number of blocks results in data being overwritten shortly after they are fetched. As a block becomes larger, each additional word is farther from the requested word and therefore less likely to be needed in the near future. The relationship between block size and hit ratio is complex, and no set approach is judged to be the best in all circumstances.   Pentium 4 and ARM cache organizations The processor core consists of four major components: Fetch/decode unit – fetches program instruction in order from the L2 cache, decodes these into a series of micro-operations, and stores the results in the L2 instruction cache Out-of-order execution logic – Schedules execution of the micro-operations subject to data dependencies and resource availability – thus micro-operations may be scheduled for execution in a different order than they were fetched from the instruction stream. As time permits, this unit schedules speculative execution of micro-operations that may be required in the future Execution units – These units execute micro-operations, fetching the required data from the L1 data cache and temporarily storing results in registers Memory subsystem – This unit includes the L2 and L3 caches and the system bus, which is used to access main memory when the L1 and L2 caches have a cache miss and to access the system I/O resources

    Read the article

  • Clear/ Reset Result Table of Search page in OAF

    - by PRajkumar
    Normally problem faced by developers after creating Search Page is how to Clear/ Reset Result Table when developer open search page first time or after search when developer redirecting back to same search page from any other page (say delete page or update page)   Add following Code in your Search page Controller where you have constructed your Query Region   import oracle.apps.fnd.framework.webui.beans.layout.OAQueryBean; ... public void processRequest(OAPageContext pageContext, OAWebBean webBean) {  super.processRequest(pageContext, webBean);  OAQueryBean queryBean = (OAQueryBean)webBean.findChildRecursive("QueryRN");   // Here QueryRN is your Query Region Name as shown in following snap shot  queryBean.clearSearchPersistenceCache(pageContext); }     Note – After add this code, no need to worry about state of Application Module (AM). This code will clean up result table automatically every time when you will open Search page first time and when you are redirecting back to search page. But still as per good coding standard while redirecting back to search page always keep AM state to FALSE

    Read the article

  • Login to Windows 8 Desktop Mode Automatically with ClassicStarter [Downloads]

    - by Asian Angel
    The other day we shared a quick keyboard tip for going straight to Desktop Mode in Windows 8 when you logged in. Today we are back with a small app that gets you straight to Desktop Mode with ‘set it and forget it’ ease. You will need to install ClassicStarter after you have extracted the contents of the zip file. Once that is done simply start the app up and this is what you will see… The only thing you will need to do is click on the Classic Desktop Button. Once you have clicked on the Classic Desktop Button it will ‘grey out’. Simply exit the app, log out, and then log back into your system. The Start Screen will display for a moment or two, but everything will shift over to Desktop Mode automatically without any additional actions required on your part. To reverse the process and set the Start Screen as the default just start the app up again and click on the Metro Desktop Button, exit the app, and then log out/log back in. Download ClassicStarter (MediaFire) VirusTotal Scan Results for the ClassicStarter Zip File [via NirmalTV.com] How to Use an Xbox 360 Controller On Your Windows PC Download the Official How-To Geek Trivia App for Windows 8 How to Banish Duplicate Photos with VisiPic

    Read the article

  • I have bluescreen-phobia

    - by Charlie Somerville
    I'm scared of the Blue Screen of Death. Seriously. Whenever I hibernate or shutdown my computer, I have to turn the screen off in case it bluescreens during that process. Whenever I see a bluescreen, it makes my heart skip a beat and I jump a little - especially if it's on my own computer. I decided that this is getting ridiculous after I experienced a BSOD this evening. My computer booted back up and I decided to switch off the screen and leave the room. I came back about a minute later and it still hadn't got to the login screen. To find out what happened, I actually covered the screen with two A4 pages and gradually peeled them back after I saw that the screen wasn't blue. This is going way too far, but I can't help it. I am legitimately afraid of BSODs. Does anyone have any advice on how I can help myself?

    Read the article

  • Redhat Software RAID 1 not syncing

    - by hamstar
    Hey guys, I setup a software RAID 1 on a Redhat server, everything went sweet and it synced the first time. The other day the raid failedover for some reason and the disks hadn't been syncing since that first time, so it went back to 2 weeks ago when we did the first sync. We got the system back up running off the master only. However what would cause the software raid to not sync? I used mdadm to setup the RAID. Any ideas? EDIT: Sorry I don't have the output from /proc/mdstat before the raid failedover, it is now running on only the master... I can put the slave back in no problems but I was wondering how to make it sync all the time instead of only when I add it.

    Read the article

< Previous Page | 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99  | Next Page >