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  • In Case You Weren’t There: Blogwell NYC

    - by Mike Stiles
    0 0 1 1009 5755 Vitrue 47 13 6751 14.0 Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";} Your roving reporter roved out to another one of Socialmedia.org’s fantastic Blogwell events, this time in NYC. As Central Park and incredible weather beckoned, some of the biggest brand names in the world gathered to talk about how they’re incorporating social into marketing and CRM, as well as extending social across their entire organizations internally. Below we present a collection of the live tweets from many of the key sessions GE @generalelectricJon Lombardo, Leader of Social Media COE How GE builds and extends emotional connections with consumers around health and reaps the benefits of increased brand equity in the process. GE has a social platform around Healthyimagination to create better health for people. If you and a friend are trying to get healthy together, you’ll do better. Health is inherently. Get health challenges via Facebook and share with friends to achieve goals together. They’re creating an emotional connection around the health context. You don’t influence people at large. Your sphere of real influence is around 5-10 people. They find relevant conversations about health on Twitter and engage sounding like a friend, not a brand. Why would people share on behalf of a brand? Because you tapped into an activity and emotion they’re already having. To create better habits in health, GE gave away inexpensive, relevant gifts related to their goals. Create the context, give the relevant gift, get social acknowledgment for giving it. What you get when you get acknowledgment for your engagement and gift is user generated microcontent. GE got 12,000 unique users engaged and 1400 organic posts with the healthy gift campaign. The Dow Chemical Company @DowChemicalAbby Klanecky, Director of Digital & Social Media Learn how Dow Chemical is finding, training, and empowering their scientists to be their storytellers in social media. There are 1m jobs coming open in science. Only 200k are qualified for them. Dow Chemical wanted to use social to attract and talk to scientists. Dow Chemical decided to use real scientists as their storytellers. Scientists are incredibly passionate, the key ingredient of a great storyteller. Step 1 was getting scientists to focus on a few platforms, blog, Twitter, LinkedIn. Dow Chemical social flow is Core Digital Team - #CMs – ambassadors – advocates. The scientists were trained in social etiquette via practice scenarios. It’s not just about sales. It’s about growing influence and the business. Dow Chemical trained about 100 scientists, 55 are active and there’s a waiting list for the next sessions. In person social training produced faster results and better participation. Sometimes you have to tell pieces of the story instead of selling your execs on the whole vision. Social Media Ethics Briefing: Staying Out of TroubleAndy Sernovitz, CEO @SocialMediaOrg How do we get people to share our message for us? We have to have their trust. The difference between being honest and being sleazy is disclosure. Disclosure does not hurt the effectiveness of your marketing. No one will get mad if you tell them up front you’re a paid spokesperson for a company. It’s a legal requirement by the FTC, it’s the law, to disclose if you’re being paid for an endorsement. Require disclosure and truthfulness in all your social media outreach. Don’t lie to people. Monitor the conversation and correct misstatements. Create social media policies and training programs. If you want to stay safe, never pay cash for social media. Money changes everything. As soon as you pay, it’s not social media, it’s advertising. Disclosure, to the feds, means clear, conspicuous, and understandable to the average reader. This phrase will keep you in the clear, “I work for ___ and this is my personal opinion.” Who are you? Were you paid? Are you giving an honest opinion based on a real experience? You as a brand are responsible for what an agency or employee or contactor does in your behalf. SocialMedia.org makes available a Disclosure Best Practices Toolkit. Socialmedia.org/disclosure. The point is to not ethically mess up and taint social media as happened to e-mail. Not only is the FTC cracking down, so is Google and Facebook. Visa @VisaNewsLucas Mast, Senior Business Leader, Global Corporate Social Media Visa built a mobile studio for the Olympics for execs and athletes. They wanted to do postcard style real time coverage of Visa’s Olympics sponsorships, and on a shoestring. Challenges included Olympic rules, difficulty getting interviews, time zone trouble, and resourcing. Another problem was they got bogged down with their own internal approval processes. Despite all the restrictions, they created and published a variety of and fair amount of content. They amassed 1000+ views of videos posted to the Visa Communication YouTube channel. Less corporate content yields more interest from media outlets and bloggers. They did real world video demos of how their products work in the field vs. an exec doing a demo in a studio. Don’t make exec interview videos dull and corporate. Keep answers short, shoot it in an interesting place, do takes until they’re comfortable and natural. Not everything will work. Not everything will get a retweet. But like the lottery, you can’t win if you don’t play. Promoting content is as important as creating it. McGraw-Hill Companies @McGrawHillCosPatrick Durando, Senior Director of Global New Media McGraw-Hill has 26,000 employees. McGraw-Hill created a social intranet called Buzz. Intranets create operational efficiency, help product dev, facilitate crowdsourcing, and breaks down geo silos. Intranets help with talent development, acquisition, retention. They replaced the corporate directory with their own version of LinkedIn. The company intranet has really cut down on the use of email. Long email threats become organized, permanent social discussions. The intranet is particularly useful in HR for researching and getting answers surrounding benefits and policies. Using a profile on your company intranet can establish and promote your internal professional brand. If you’re going to make an intranet, it has to look great, work great, and employees are going have to want to go there. You can’t order them to like it. 

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  • Beginning on MySQL 5.6? Take the New MySQL for Beginners Training

    - by Antoinette O'Sullivan
    The MySQL for Beginners training course is a great way of for you to learn about the world's more popular open source database. During this 4 day course, epxert instructors will teach you how to use MySQL Server 5.6 and the latest tools while helping you develop deeper knowledge of using relational databases. You can take this live-instructor course as a: Live-Virtual event: Take this course from your own desk, choosing from a selection of events on the schedule to suit different time-zones. In-Class Event: Travel to an education center to follow this course. Below is a selection of events already on the schedule.  Location  Date  Delivery Language  Brussels, Belgium  8 September 2013  English  London, England  1 July 2013  English  Berlin, Germany  2 September 2013  German  Stuttgart, Germany  28 October 2013  German  Riga, Latvia  26 August 2013  Latvian Utrecht, Netherlands  9 September 2013  English   Warsaw, Poland  15 July 2013  Polish  Cape Town, South Africa  22 July 2013  English  Petaling Jaya, Malaysia  22 July 2013  English  Sao Paulo, Brazil  7 October 2013  Brazilian Portugese To register for this course or to learn more about the authentic MySQL curriculum, go to http://oracle.com/education/mysql.

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  • How to Use the Signature Editor in Outlook 2013

    - by Lori Kaufman
    The Signature Editor in Outlook 2013 allows you to create a custom signature from text, graphics, or business cards. We will show you how to use the various features of the Signature Editor to customize your signatures. To open the Signature Editor, click the File tab and select Options on the left side of the Account Information screen. Then, click Mail on the left side of the Options dialog box and click the Signatures button. For more details, refer to one of the articles mentioned above. Changing the font for your signature is pretty self-explanatory. Select the text for which you want to change the font and select the desired font from the drop-down list. You can also set the justification (left, center, right) for each line of text separately. The drop-down list that reads Automatic by default allows you to change the color of the selected text. Click OK to accept your changes and close the Signatures and Stationery dialog box. To see your signature in an email, click Mail on the Navigation Bar. Click New Email on the Home tab. The Message window displays and your default signature is inserted into the body of the email. NOTE: You shouldn’t use fonts that are not common in your signatures. In order for the recipient to see your signature as you intended, the font you choose also needs to be installed on the recipient’s computer. If the font is not installed, the recipient would see a different font, the wrong characters, or even placeholder characters, which are empty square boxes. Close the Message window using the File tab or the X button in the upper, right corner of the Message window. You can save it as a draft if you want, but it’s not necessary. If you decide to use a font that is not common, a better way to do so would be to create a signature as an image, or logo. Create your image or logo in an image editing program making it the exact size you want to use in your signature. Save the image in a file size as small as possible. The .jpg format works well for pictures, the .png format works well for detailed graphics, and the .gif format works well for simple graphics. The .gif format generally produces the smallest files. To insert an image in your signature, open the Signatures and Stationery dialog box again. Either delete the text currently in the editor, if any, or create a new signature. Then, click the image button on the editor’s toolbar. On the Insert Picture dialog box, navigate to the location of your image, select the file, and click Insert. If you want to insert an image from the web, you must enter the full URL for the image in the File name edit box (instead of the local image filename). For example, http://www.somedomain.com/images/signaturepic.gif. If you want to link to the image at the specified URL, you must also select Link to File from the Insert drop-down list to maintain the URL reference. The image is inserted into the Edit signature box. Click OK to accept your changes and close the Signatures and Stationery dialog box. Create a new email message again. You’ll notice the image you inserted into the signature displays in the body of the message. Close the Message window using the File tab or the X button in the upper, right corner of the Message window. You may want to put a link to a webpage or an email link in your signature. To do this, open the Signatures and Stationery dialog box again. Enter the text to display for the link, highlight the text, and click the Hyperlink button on the editor’s toolbar. On the Insert Hyperlink dialog box, select the type of link from the list on the left and enter the webpage, email, or other type of address in the Address edit box. You can change the text that will display in the signature for the link in the Text to display edit box. Click OK to accept your changes and close the dialog box. The link displays in the editor with the default blue, underlined text. Click OK to accept your changes and close the Signatures and Stationery dialog box. Here’s an example of an email message with a link in the signature. Close the Message window using the File tab or the X button in the upper, right corner of the Message window. You can also insert your contact information into your signature as a Business Card. To do so, click Business Card on the editor’s toolbar. On the Insert Business Card dialog box, select the contact you want to insert as a Business Card. Select a size for the Business Card image from the Size drop-down list. Click OK. The Business Card image displays in the Signature Editor. Click OK to accept your changes and close the Signatures and Stationery dialog box. When you insert a Business Card into your signature, the Business Card image displays in the body of the email message and a .vcf file containing your contact information is attached to the email. This .vcf file can be imported into programs like Outlook that support this format. Close the Message window using the File tab or the X button in the upper, right corner of the Message window. You can also insert your Business Card into your signature without the image or without the .vcf file attached. If you want to provide recipients your contact info in a .vcf file, but don’t want to attach it to every email, you can upload the .vcf file to a location on the internet and add a link to the file, such as “Get my vCard,” in your signature. NOTE: If you want to edit your business card, such as applying a different template to it, you must select a different View other than People for your Contacts folder so you can open the full contact editing window.     

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  • ASP.NET MVC 3 Hosting :: MVC 2 Strongly Typed HTML Helper and Enhanced Validation Sample

    - by mbridge
    In lue of the off the official release of ASP.NET MVC 2 RTM, I decided I would put together a quick sample of the enhanced HTML.Helpers and validation controls. I am going to use my sample event site where I will have a form so a user can search for information about a certain events. So when the Search page loads the Search action is fired return my strongly typed model. to the view.    1: [HttpGet]    2: public ViewResult Search(): public ViewResult Search()    3: {    4:     IList<EventsModel> result = _eventsService.GetEventList();    5:     var viewModel = new EventSearchModel    6:                         {    7:                             EventList = new SelectList(result, "EventCode","EventName","Select Event")    8:                         };    9:     return View(viewModel);  10: } Nothing special here, although I did want to show how to load up a strongly typed drop down list because that hung me up for a little bit. So to that, I am going to pass back a SelectList to the view and my HTML helper should no how to load this. So lets take a look at the mark up for the view.    1: <%@ Page Title="" Language="C#" MasterPageFile="~/Views/Shared/Site.Master"    2: Inherits="System.Web.Mvc.ViewPage<EventsSample.Models.EventSearchModel>" %>    3:     4: <asp:Content ID="Content1" ContentPlaceHolderID="TitleContent" runat="server">    5:     Search    6: </asp:Content>    7:     8: <asp:Content ID="Content2" ContentPlaceHolderID="MainContent" runat="server">    9:   10:     <h2>Search for Events</h2>  11:   12:     <% using (Html.BeginForm("Search","Events")) {%>  13:         <%= Html.ValidationSummary(true) %>  14:          15:         <fieldset>  16:             <legend>Fields</legend>  17:              18:             <div class="editor-label">  19:                 <%= Html.LabelFor(model => model.EventNumber) %>  20:             </div>  21:             <div class="editor-field">  22:                 <%= Html.TextBoxFor(model => model.EventNumber) %>  23:                 <%= Html.ValidationMessageFor(model => model.EventNumber) %>  24:             </div>  25:              26:             <div class="editor-label">  27:                 <%= Html.LabelFor(model => model.GuestLastName) %>  28:             </div>  29:             <div class="editor-field">  30:                 <%= Html.TextBoxFor(model => model.GuestLastName) %>  31:                 <%= Html.ValidationMessageFor(model => model.GuestLastName) %>  32:             </div>  33:              34:             <div class="editor-label">  35:                 <%= Html.LabelFor(model => model.EventName) %>  36:             </div>  37:             <div class="editor-field">  38:                 <%= Html.DropDownListFor(model => model.EventName, Model.EventList,"Select Event") %>  39:                 <%= Html.ValidationMessageFor(model => model.EventName) %>  40:             </div>  41:              42:             <p>  43:                 <input type="submit" value="Save" />  44:             </p>  45:         </fieldset>  46:   47:     <% } %>  48:   49:     <div>  50:         <%= Html.ActionLink("Back to List", "Index") %>  51:     </div>  52:   53: </asp:Content> A nice feature is the scaffolding that MVC has to generate code. I simply right clicked inside my Search() action, inside the EventsController and selected “Add View” and then I selected my strongly typed object that I wanted to pass to the view and also selected that I wanted the content type be “Edit”. With that the aspx page was completely generated, although I did have to go back in and change the textbox for the Event Names to a drop down list of the names to select from. The new feature with MVC 2 are the strongly typed HTML helpers. So now, my textboxes, drop down list, and validation helpers are all strongly typed to my model.  This features gives you the benefits of intellisense and also makes it easier to debug. “The Gu” has a great post about the feature in case you want more details. The DropDownListFor function to generate the drop down list was a little tricky for me. You first need to use a Lanbda expression to pass in the property you want the selected value assigned to in your model, and then you need to pass in the list directly from the model. Validations To validate the form, you can use the strongly type validation HTML helpers which will inspect your model and return errors if the validation fails. The definitions of these rules are set directly on the Model itself so lets take a look.    1: using System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations;    2: using System.Web.Mvc;    3:     4: namespace EventsSample.Models    5: {    6:     public class EventSearchModel    7:     {    8:         [Required(ErrorMessage = "Please enter the event number.")]    9:         [RegularExpression(@"\w{6}",  10:             ErrorMessage = "The Event Number must be 6 letters and/or numbers.")]  11:         public string EventNumber { get; set; }  12:   13:         [Required(ErrorMessage = "Please enter the guest's last name.")]  14:         [RegularExpression(@"^[A-Za-zÀ-ÖØ-öø-ÿ1-9 '\-\.]{1,22}$",  15:             ErrorMessage = "The gueest's last name must 1 to 20 characters.")]  16:         public string GuestLastName { get; set; }  17:   18:         public string EventName { get; set; }  19:         public SelectList EventList { get; set; }  20:     }  21: } Pretty cool! Okay, the only thing left to do is perform the validation in the POST action.    1: [HttpPost]    2: public ViewResult Search(EventSearchModel eventSearchModel)    3: {    4:     if (ModelState.IsValid) return View("SearchResults");    5:     else    6:     {    7:          IList<EventsModel> result = _eventsService.GetEventList();    8:         eventSearchModel.EventList = new SelectList(result, "EVentCode","EventName");   9:   10:         return View(eventSearchModel);  11:     }  12: }  13:     } If the form entries are valid, here I am simply displaying the SearchResult, but in a real world sample I would also go out get the results first. You get the idea though. In my case, when the form is not valid, I also had to reload my SelectList with the event names before I loaded the page again. Remember this is MVC, no _VieState here :) So that’s it. Now my form is validating the data and when it fails it looks like this.

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  • The Java Specialist: An Interview with Java Champion Heinz Kabutz

    - by Janice J. Heiss
    Dr. Heinz Kabutz is well known for his Java Specialists’ Newsletter, initiated in November 2000, where he displays his acute grasp of the intricacies of the Java platform for an estimated 70,000 readers; for his work as a consultant; and for his workshops and trainings at his home on the Island of Crete where he has lived since 2006 -- where he is known to curl up on the beach with his laptop to hack away, in between dips in the Mediterranean. Kabutz was born of German parents and raised in Cape Town, South Africa, where he developed a love of programming in junior high school through his explorations on a ZX Spectrum computer. He received a B.S. from the University of Cape Town, and at 25, a Ph.D., both in computer science. He will be leading a two-hour hands-on lab session, HOL6500 – “Finding and Solving Java Deadlocks,” at this year’s JavaOne that will explore what causes deadlocks and how to solve them. Q: Tell us about your JavaOne plans.A: I am arriving on Sunday evening and have just one hands-on-lab to do on Monday morning. This is the first time that a non-Oracle team is doing a HOL at JavaOne under Oracle's stewardship and we are all a bit nervous about how it will turn out. Oracle has been immensely helpful in getting us set up. I have a great team helping me: Kirk Pepperdine, Dario Laverde, Benjamin Evans and Martijn Verburg from jClarity, Nathan Reynolds from Oracle, Henri Tremblay of OCTO Technology and Jeff Genender of Savoir Technologies. Monday will be hard work, but after that, I will hopefully get to network with fellow Java experts, attend interesting sessions and just enjoy San Francisco. Oh, and my kids have already given me a shopping list of things to get, like a GoPro Hero 2 dive housing for shooting those nice videos of Crete. (That's me at the beginning diving down.) Q: What sessions are you attending that we should know about?A: Sometimes the most unusual sessions are the best. I avoid the "big names". They often are spread too thin with all their sessions, which makes it difficult for them to deliver what I would consider deep content. I also avoid entertainers who might be good at presenting but who do not say that much.In 2010, I attended a session by Vladimir Yaroslavskiy where he talked about sorting. Although he struggled to speak English, what he had to say was spectacular. There was hardly anybody in the room, having not heard of Vladimir before. To me that was the highlight of 2010. Funnily enough, he was supposed to speak with Joshua Bloch, but if you remember, Google cancelled. If Bloch has been there, the room would have been packed to capacity.Q: Give us an update on the Java Specialists’ Newsletter.A: The Java Specialists' Newsletter continues being read by an elite audience around the world. The apostrophe in the name is significant.  It is a newsletter for Java specialists. When I started it twelve years ago, I was trying to find non-obvious things in Java to write about. Things that would be interesting to an advanced audience.As an April Fool's joke, I told my readers in Issue 44 that subscribing would remain free, but that they would have to pay US$5 to US$7 depending on their geographical location. I received quite a few angry emails from that one. I would have not earned that much from unsubscriptions. Most readers stay for a very long time.After Oracle bought Sun, the Java community held its breath for about two years whilst Oracle was figuring out what to do with Java. For a while, we were quite concerned that there was not much progress shown by Oracle. My newsletter still continued, but it was quite difficult finding new things to write about. We have probably about 70,000 readers, which is quite a small number for a Java publication. However, our readers are the top in the Java industry. So I don't mind having "only" 70000 readers, as long as they are the top 0.7%.Java concurrency is a very important topic that programmers think they should know about, but often neglect to fully understand. I continued writing about that and made some interesting discoveries. For example, in Issue 165, I showed how we can get thread starvation with the ReadWriteLock. This was a bug in Java 5, which was corrected in Java 6, but perhaps a bit too much. Whereas we could get starvation of writers in Java 5, in Java 6 we could now get starvation of readers. All of these interesting findings make their way into my courseware to help companies avoid these pitfalls.Another interesting discovery was how polymorphism works in the Server HotSpot compiler in Issue 157 and Issue 158. HotSpot can inline methods from interfaces that have only one implementation class in the JVM. When a new subclass is instantiated and called for the first time, the JVM will undo the previous optimization and re-optimize differently.Here is a little memory puzzle for your readers: public class JavaMemoryPuzzle {  private final int dataSize =      (int) (Runtime.getRuntime().maxMemory() * 0.6);  public void f() {    {      byte[] data = new byte[dataSize];    }    byte[] data2 = new byte[dataSize];  }  public static void main(String[] args) {    JavaMemoryPuzzle jmp = new JavaMemoryPuzzle();    jmp.f();  }}When you run this you will always get an OutOfMemoryError, even though the local variable data is no longer visible outside of the code block.So here comes the puzzle, that I'd like you to ponder a bit. If you very politely ask the VM to release memory, then you don't get an OutOfMemoryError: public class JavaMemoryPuzzlePolite {  private final int dataSize =      (int) (Runtime.getRuntime().maxMemory() * 0.6);  public void f() {    {      byte[] data = new byte[dataSize];    }    for(int i=0; i<10; i++) {      System.out.println("Please be so kind and release memory");    }    byte[] data2 = new byte[dataSize];  }  public static void main(String[] args) {    JavaMemoryPuzzlePolite jmp = new JavaMemoryPuzzlePolite();    jmp.f();    System.out.println("No OutOfMemoryError");  }}Why does this work? When I published this in my newsletter, I received over 400 emails from excited readers around the world, most of whom sent me the wrong explanation. After the 300th wrong answer, my replies became unfortunately a bit curt. Have a look at Issue 174 for a detailed explanation, but before you do, put on your thinking caps and try to figure it out yourself. Q: What do you think Java developers should know that they currently do not know?A: They should definitely get to know more about concurrency. It is a tough subject that most programmers try to avoid. Unfortunately we do come in contact with it. And when we do, we need to know how to protect ourselves and how to solve tricky system errors.Knowing your IDE is also useful. Most IDEs have a ton of shortcuts, which can make you a lot more productive in moving code around. Another thing that is useful is being able to read GC logs. Kirk Pepperdine has a great talk at JavaOne that I can recommend if you want to learn more. It's this: CON5405 – “Are Your Garbage Collection Logs Speaking to You?” Q: What are you looking forward to in Java 8?A: I'm quite excited about lambdas, though I must confess that I have not studied them in detail yet. Maurice Naftalin's Lambda FAQ is quite a good start to document what you can do with them. I'm looking forward to finding all the interesting bugs that we will now get due to lambdas obscuring what is really going on underneath, just like we had with generics.I am quite impressed with what the team at Oracle did with OpenJDK's performance. A lot of the benchmarks now run faster.Hopefully Java 8 will come with JSR 310, the Date and Time API. It still boggles my mind that such an important API has been left out in the cold for so long.What I am not looking forward to is losing perm space. Even though some systems run out of perm space, at least the problem is contained and they usually manage to work around it. In most cases, this is due to a memory leak in that region of memory. Once they bundle perm space with the old generation, I predict that memory leaks in perm space will be harder to find. More contracts for us, but also more pain for our customers. Originally published on blogs.oracle.com/javaone.

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  • The Java Specialist: An Interview with Java Champion Heinz Kabutz

    - by Janice J. Heiss
    Dr. Heinz Kabutz is well known for his Java Specialists’ Newsletter, initiated in November 2000, where he displays his acute grasp of the intricacies of the Java platform for an estimated 70,000 readers; for his work as a consultant; and for his workshops and trainings at his home on the Island of Crete where he has lived since 2006 -- where he is known to curl up on the beach with his laptop to hack away, in between dips in the Mediterranean. Kabutz was born of German parents and raised in Cape Town, South Africa, where he developed a love of programming in junior high school through his explorations on a ZX Spectrum computer. He received a B.S. from the University of Cape Town, and at 25, a Ph.D., both in computer science. He will be leading a two-hour hands-on lab session, HOL6500 – “Finding and Solving Java Deadlocks,” at this year’s JavaOne that will explore what causes deadlocks and how to solve them. Q: Tell us about your JavaOne plans.A: I am arriving on Sunday evening and have just one hands-on-lab to do on Monday morning. This is the first time that a non-Oracle team is doing a HOL at JavaOne under Oracle's stewardship and we are all a bit nervous about how it will turn out. Oracle has been immensely helpful in getting us set up. I have a great team helping me: Kirk Pepperdine, Dario Laverde, Benjamin Evans and Martijn Verburg from jClarity, Nathan Reynolds from Oracle, Henri Tremblay of OCTO Technology and Jeff Genender of Savoir Technologies. Monday will be hard work, but after that, I will hopefully get to network with fellow Java experts, attend interesting sessions and just enjoy San Francisco. Oh, and my kids have already given me a shopping list of things to get, like a GoPro Hero 2 dive housing for shooting those nice videos of Crete. (That's me at the beginning diving down.) Q: What sessions are you attending that we should know about?A: Sometimes the most unusual sessions are the best. I avoid the "big names". They often are spread too thin with all their sessions, which makes it difficult for them to deliver what I would consider deep content. I also avoid entertainers who might be good at presenting but who do not say that much.In 2010, I attended a session by Vladimir Yaroslavskiy where he talked about sorting. Although he struggled to speak English, what he had to say was spectacular. There was hardly anybody in the room, having not heard of Vladimir before. To me that was the highlight of 2010. Funnily enough, he was supposed to speak with Joshua Bloch, but if you remember, Google cancelled. If Bloch has been there, the room would have been packed to capacity.Q: Give us an update on the Java Specialists’ Newsletter.A: The Java Specialists' Newsletter continues being read by an elite audience around the world. The apostrophe in the name is significant.  It is a newsletter for Java specialists. When I started it twelve years ago, I was trying to find non-obvious things in Java to write about. Things that would be interesting to an advanced audience.As an April Fool's joke, I told my readers in Issue 44 that subscribing would remain free, but that they would have to pay US$5 to US$7 depending on their geographical location. I received quite a few angry emails from that one. I would have not earned that much from unsubscriptions. Most readers stay for a very long time.After Oracle bought Sun, the Java community held its breath for about two years whilst Oracle was figuring out what to do with Java. For a while, we were quite concerned that there was not much progress shown by Oracle. My newsletter still continued, but it was quite difficult finding new things to write about. We have probably about 70,000 readers, which is quite a small number for a Java publication. However, our readers are the top in the Java industry. So I don't mind having "only" 70000 readers, as long as they are the top 0.7%.Java concurrency is a very important topic that programmers think they should know about, but often neglect to fully understand. I continued writing about that and made some interesting discoveries. For example, in Issue 165, I showed how we can get thread starvation with the ReadWriteLock. This was a bug in Java 5, which was corrected in Java 6, but perhaps a bit too much. Whereas we could get starvation of writers in Java 5, in Java 6 we could now get starvation of readers. All of these interesting findings make their way into my courseware to help companies avoid these pitfalls.Another interesting discovery was how polymorphism works in the Server HotSpot compiler in Issue 157 and Issue 158. HotSpot can inline methods from interfaces that have only one implementation class in the JVM. When a new subclass is instantiated and called for the first time, the JVM will undo the previous optimization and re-optimize differently.Here is a little memory puzzle for your readers: public class JavaMemoryPuzzle {  private final int dataSize =      (int) (Runtime.getRuntime().maxMemory() * 0.6);  public void f() {    {      byte[] data = new byte[dataSize];    }    byte[] data2 = new byte[dataSize];  }  public static void main(String[] args) {    JavaMemoryPuzzle jmp = new JavaMemoryPuzzle();    jmp.f();  }}When you run this you will always get an OutOfMemoryError, even though the local variable data is no longer visible outside of the code block.So here comes the puzzle, that I'd like you to ponder a bit. If you very politely ask the VM to release memory, then you don't get an OutOfMemoryError: public class JavaMemoryPuzzlePolite {  private final int dataSize =      (int) (Runtime.getRuntime().maxMemory() * 0.6);  public void f() {    {      byte[] data = new byte[dataSize];    }    for(int i=0; i<10; i++) {      System.out.println("Please be so kind and release memory");    }    byte[] data2 = new byte[dataSize];  }  public static void main(String[] args) {    JavaMemoryPuzzlePolite jmp = new JavaMemoryPuzzlePolite();    jmp.f();    System.out.println("No OutOfMemoryError");  }}Why does this work? When I published this in my newsletter, I received over 400 emails from excited readers around the world, most of whom sent me the wrong explanation. After the 300th wrong answer, my replies became unfortunately a bit curt. Have a look at Issue 174 for a detailed explanation, but before you do, put on your thinking caps and try to figure it out yourself. Q: What do you think Java developers should know that they currently do not know?A: They should definitely get to know more about concurrency. It is a tough subject that most programmers try to avoid. Unfortunately we do come in contact with it. And when we do, we need to know how to protect ourselves and how to solve tricky system errors.Knowing your IDE is also useful. Most IDEs have a ton of shortcuts, which can make you a lot more productive in moving code around. Another thing that is useful is being able to read GC logs. Kirk Pepperdine has a great talk at JavaOne that I can recommend if you want to learn more. It's this: CON5405 – “Are Your Garbage Collection Logs Speaking to You?” Q: What are you looking forward to in Java 8?A: I'm quite excited about lambdas, though I must confess that I have not studied them in detail yet. Maurice Naftalin's Lambda FAQ is quite a good start to document what you can do with them. I'm looking forward to finding all the interesting bugs that we will now get due to lambdas obscuring what is really going on underneath, just like we had with generics.I am quite impressed with what the team at Oracle did with OpenJDK's performance. A lot of the benchmarks now run faster.Hopefully Java 8 will come with JSR 310, the Date and Time API. It still boggles my mind that such an important API has been left out in the cold for so long.What I am not looking forward to is losing perm space. Even though some systems run out of perm space, at least the problem is contained and they usually manage to work around it. In most cases, this is due to a memory leak in that region of memory. Once they bundle perm space with the old generation, I predict that memory leaks in perm space will be harder to find. More contracts for us, but also more pain for our customers.

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  • Pet Peeves with the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace

    - by Bil Simser
    Have you ever noticed how something things just gnaw at your very being. This is the case with the WP7 marketplace, the Zune software, and the things that drive me batshit crazy with a side of fries. To go. I wanted to share. XBox Live is Not the Centre of the Universe Okay, it’s fine that the Zune software has an XBox live tag for games so can see them clearly but do we really need to have it shoved down our throats. On every click? Click on Games in the marketplace: The first thing that it defaults to on the filters on the right is XBox Live: Okay. Fine. However if you change it (say to Paid) then click onto a title when you come back from that title is the filter still set to Paid? No. It’s back to XBox Live again. Really? Give us a break. If you change to any filter on any other genre then click on the selected title, it doesn’t revert back to anything. It stays on the selection you picked. Let’s be fair here. The Games genre should behave just like every other one. If I pick Paid then when I come back to the list please remember that. Double Dipping On the subject of XBox Live titles, Microsoft (and developers who have an agreement with Microsoft to produce Live titles, which generally rules out indie game developers) is double dipping with regards to exposure of their titles. Here’s the Puzzle and Trivia Game section on the Marketplace for XBox Live titles: And here’s the same category filtered on Paid titles: See the problem? Two indie titles while the rest are XBox Live ones. So while XBL has it’s filter, they also get to showcase their wares in the Paid and Free filters as well. If you’re going to have an XBox Live filter then use it and stop pushing down indie titles until they’re off the screen (on some genres this is already the case). Free and Paid titles should be just that and not include XBox Live ones. If you’re really stoked that people can’t find the Free XBox Live titles vs. the paid ones, then create a Free XBox Live filter and a Paid XBox Live filter. I don’t think we would mind much. Whose Trial is it Anyways? You might notice apps in the marketplace with titles like “My Fart App Professional Lite” or “Silicon Lamb Spleen Builder Free”. When you submit and app to the marketplace it can either be free or paid. If it’s a paid app you also have the option to submit it with Trial capabilities. It’s up to you to decide what you offer in the trial version but trial versions can be purchased from within the app so after someone trys out your app (for free) and wants to unlock the Super Secret Obama Spy Ring Level, they can just go to the marketplace from your app (if you built that functionality in) and upgrade to the paid version. However it creates a rift of sorts when it comes to visibility. Some developers go the route of the paid app with a trial version, others decide to submit *two* apps instead of one. One app is the “Free” or “Lite” verions and the other is the paid version. Why go to the hassle of submitting two apps when you can just create a trial version in the same app? Again, visibility. There’s no way to tell Paid apps with Trial versions and ones without (it’s an option, you don’t have to provide trial versions, although I think it’s a good idea). However there is a way to see the Free apps from the Paid ones so some submit the two apps and have the Free version have links to buy the paid one (again through the Marketplace tasks in the API). What we as developers need for visibility is a new filter. Trial. That’s it. It would simply filter on Paid apps that have trial capabilities and surface up those apps just like the free ones. If Microsoft added this filter to the marketplace, it would eliminate the need for people to submit their “Free” and “Lite” versions and make it easier for the developer not to have to maintain two systems. I mean, is it really that hard? Can’t be any more difficult than the XBox Live Filter that’s already there. Location is Everything The last thing on my bucket list is about location. When I launch Zune I’m running in my native location setting, Canada. What’s great is that I navigate to the Travel Tools section where I have one of my apps and behold the splendour that I see: There are my apps in the number 1 and number 4 slot for top selling in that category. I show it to my wife to make up for the sleepless nights writing this stuff and we dance around and celebrate. Then I change my location on my operation system to United States and re-launch Zune. WTF? My flight app has slipped to the 10th spot (I’m only showing 4 across here out of the 7 in Zune) and my border check app that was #1 is now in the 32nd spot! End of celebration. Not only is relevance being looked at here, I value the comments people make on may apps as do most developers. I want to respond to them and show them that I’m listening. The next version of my border app will provide multiple camera angles. However when I’m running in my native Canada location, I only see two reviews. Changing over to United States I see fourteen! While there are tools out there to provide with you a unified view, I shouldn’t have to rely on them. My own Zune desktop software should allow me to see everything. I realize that some developers will submit an app and only target it for some locations and that’s their choice. However I shouldn’t have to jump through hoops to see what apps are ahead of mine, or see people comments and ratings. Another proposal. Either unify the marketplace (i.e. when I’m looking at it show me everything combined) or let me choose a filter. I think the first option might be difficult as you’re trying to average out top selling apps across all markets and have to deal with some apps that have been omitted from some markets. Although I think you could come up with a set of use cases that would handle that, maybe that’s too much work. At the very least, let us developers view the markets in a drop down or something from within the Zune desktop. Having to shut down Zune, change our location, and re-launch Zune to see other perspectives is just too onerous. A Call to Action These are just one mans opinion. Do you agree? Disagree? Feel hungry for a bacon sandwich? Let everyone know via the comments below. Perhaps someone from Microsoft will be reading and take some of these ideas under advisement. Maybe not, but at least let’s get the word out that we really want to see some change. Egypt can do it, why not WP7 developers!

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  • links for 2011-03-07

    - by Bob Rhubart
    DON CIO News: DON CIO Discusses Future IT Initiatives Audio links and a little background information on a recent town hall meetings hosted by Department of the Navy Chief Information Officer Terry Halvorsen. (tags: usgov usnavy cio enterprisearchitecture) Strassmann's Blog: Why So Many Data Centers? "The idea of datacenter consolidation involves much more that applying simple technical solutions." - Paul Strassmann (tags: enterprisearchitecture datacenter consolidation) Satyajith Nair: Coherence - The next big thing for the cloud!! "Disk-based computing is fraught with performance and management issues and doing away with Disks though not practical now, maybe true in the future. This also calls for a re-think of our current application architecture which is so focussed on disk-based persistence." - Satyajith Nair (tags: oracle infosys coherence grid cloud) TechCast: GlassFish Server and WebLogic - Interoperability and Integration - Oracle media - developer Fusion VP Development Anil Gaur and Product Manager Adam Leftik explain Oracle&#39;s strategy for creating increasing integration between GlassFish Server and Oracle WebLogic Server with an overview of new features and functionality for developers in GlassFish 3.1. (tags: ping.fm) Oracle Fusion and Oracle Fusion Applications : Overview | OracleApps Epicenter So WHAT IS ORACLE FUSION? People often get confuse with this term .To start with, it will be a good idea to know the difference between Fusion (tags: ping.fm) Marc Kelderman: OSB: Automatic update of Service Acounts Solution architect Marc Kelderman shares a work-around for using different Service Accounts for multiple environments. (tags: oracle otn sca bpel soa bpm servicebus) Perfect Integration 1 - Architectural Approach "First post in a series of 5-10, I will release all my views and opinions on the Art of Integration. I challenge you to disagree, and bash me with arguments and reasoning." -- Martijn Linssen (tags: enterprisearchitecture integration) Edwin Biemond: Set the Initial Focus on a component in a Page or a Fragment Edwin says: "This is not so hard to do, but sometimes it can be tricky to find the id of a component when you use regions ( Bounded Task Flows )." (tags: oracle otn oracleace java soa) Oracle Linux and Oracle Virtualization at Collaborate 2011 Information on more than 200 Oracle-hosted sessions with the latest insights and guidance from Oracle executives, product managers, and developers. (tags: oracle virtualization linux ioug oaug)

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  • Testing Workflows &ndash; Test-After

    - by Timothy Klenke
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/TimothyK/archive/2014/05/30/testing-workflows-ndash-test-after.aspxIn this post I’m going to outline a few common methods that can be used to increase the coverage of of your test suite.  This won’t be yet another post on why you should be doing testing; there are plenty of those types of posts already out there.  Assuming you know you should be testing, then comes the problem of how do I actual fit that into my day job.  When the opportunity to automate testing comes do you take it, or do you even recognize it? There are a lot of ways (workflows) to go about creating automated tests, just like there are many workflows to writing a program.  When writing a program you can do it from a top-down approach where you write the main skeleton of the algorithm and call out to dummy stub functions, or a bottom-up approach where the low level functionality is fully implement before it is quickly wired together at the end.  Both approaches are perfectly valid under certain contexts. Each approach you are skilled at applying is another tool in your tool belt.  The more vectors of attack you have on a problem – the better.  So here is a short, incomplete list of some of the workflows that can be applied to increasing the amount of automation in your testing and level of quality in general.  Think of each workflow as an opportunity that is available for you to take. Test workflows basically fall into 2 categories:  test first or test after.  Test first is the best approach.  However, this post isn’t about the one and only best approach.  I want to focus more on the lesser known, less ideal approaches that still provide an opportunity for adding tests.  In this post I’ll enumerate some test-after workflows.  In my next post I’ll cover test-first. Bug Reporting When someone calls you up or forwards you a email with a vague description of a bug its usually standard procedure to create or verify a reproduction plan for the bug via manual testing and log that in a bug tracking system.  This can be problematic.  Often reproduction plans when written down might skip a step that seemed obvious to the tester at the time or they might be missing some crucial environment setting. Instead of data entry into a bug tracking system, try opening up the test project and adding a failing unit test to prove the bug.  The test project guarantees that all aspects of the environment are setup properly and no steps are missing.  The language in the test project is much more precise than the English that goes into a bug tracking system. This workflow can easily be extended for Enhancement Requests as well as Bug Reporting. Exploratory Testing Exploratory testing comes in when you aren’t sure how the system will behave in a new scenario.  The scenario wasn’t planned for in the initial system requirements and there isn’t an existing test for it.  By definition the system behaviour is “undefined”. So write a new unit test to define that behaviour.  Add assertions to the tests to confirm your assumptions.  The new test becomes part of the living system specification that is kept up to date with the test suite. Examples This workflow is especially good when developing APIs.  When you are finally done your production API then comes the job of writing documentation on how to consume the API.  Good documentation will also include code examples.  Don’t let these code examples merely exist in some accompanying manual; implement them in a test suite. Example tests and documentation do not have to be created after the production API is complete.  It is best to write the example code (tests) as you go just before the production code. Smoke Tests Every system has a typical use case.  This represents the basic, core functionality of the system.  If this fails after an upgrade the end users will be hosed and they will be scratching their heads as to how it could be possible that an update got released with this core functionality broken. The tests for this core functionality are referred to as “smoke tests”.  It is a good idea to have them automated and run with each build in order to avoid extreme embarrassment and angry customers. Coverage Analysis Code coverage analysis is a tool that reports how much of the production code base is exercised by the test suite.  In Visual Studio this can be found under the Test main menu item. The tool will report a total number for the code coverage, which can be anywhere between 0 and 100%.  Coverage Analysis shouldn’t be used strictly for numbers reporting.  Companies shouldn’t set minimum coverage targets that mandate that all projects must have at least 80% or 100% test coverage.  These arbitrary requirements just invite gaming of the coverage analysis, which makes the numbers useless. The analysis tool will break down the coverage by the various classes and methods in projects.  Instead of focusing on the total number, drill down into this view and see which classes have high or low coverage.  It you are surprised by a low number on a class this is an opportunity to add tests. When drilling through the classes there will be generally two types of reaction to a surprising low test coverage number.  The first reaction type is a recognition that there is low hanging fruit to be picked.  There may be some classes or methods that aren’t being tested, which could easy be.  The other reaction type is “OMG”.  This were you find a critical piece of code that isn’t under test.  In both cases, go and add the missing tests. Test Refactoring The general theme of this post up to this point has been how to add more and more tests to a test suite.  I’ll step back from that a bit and remind that every line of code is a liability.  Each line of code has to be read and maintained, which costs money.  This is true regardless whether the code is production code or test code. Remember that the primary goal of the test suite is that it be easy to read so that people can easily determine the specifications of the system.  Make sure that adding more and more tests doesn’t interfere with this primary goal. Perform code reviews on the test suite as often as on production code.  Hold the test code up to the same high readability standards as the production code.  If the tests are hard to read then change them.  Look to remove duplication.  Duplicate setup code between two or more test methods that can be moved to a shared function.  Entire test methods can be removed if it is found that the scenario it tests is covered by other tests.  Its OK to delete a test that isn’t pulling its own weight anymore. Remember to only start refactoring when all the test are green.  Don’t refactor the tests and the production code at the same time.  An automated test suite can be thought of as a double entry book keeping system.  The unchanging, passing production code serves as the tests for the test suite while refactoring the tests. As with all refactoring, it is best to fit this into your regular work rather than asking for time later to get it done.  Fit this into the standard red-green-refactor cycle.  The refactor step no only applies to production code but also the tests, but not at the same time.  Perhaps the cycle should be called red-green-refactor production-refactor tests (not quite as catchy).   That about covers most of the test-after workflows I can think of.  In my next post I’ll get into test-first workflows.

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  • Will adding top level directories with similar structure to existing directories change the SEO of my site?

    - by Russell Sims
    I've been pointed this way for SEO related questions and this one has had me pondering for a little while now. I'm recreating a site's structure. The website's content is generated through several feeds and unless I want to place each and every - of the 10,000 odd - venues into their own category manually, I can't avoid categorising each item by using its address. The current the structure looks like this Homepage > region > county > city/town > venue page and the URL looks like domain/region/county/city/venue/ I'm relatively happy to use this structure as it's not too convoluted. However we also promote deals and we also group the venues into their respective franchise, so that leads to URLs such as: domain/groups AND domain/deals My question is: how would the directory structure look with these new additions? Would I have a URL that looks like domain/deals/region/county/city/venue or domain/group/region/county/city/venue and just put a 301 or a canonical link tag on the page to prevent the duplicate pages competing with each other? Am I just worrying about it needlessly and perhaps link straight from domain/deals to the venue page URL domain/region/county/city/venue, this bothers me a bit though as the deals and groups will not be in the breadcrumbs.

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  • ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for 2012-03-29

    - by Bob Rhubart
    A surefire recipe for cloud failure | @DavidLinthicum www.infoworld.com "Foundational planning for the use of cloud computing is an architectural problem," says David Linthicum. "You need to consider the enterprise holistically, starting with the applications, data, services, and storage. Understand where it is and what it does." Validating an Oracle IDM Environment (including a Fusion Apps build out) | Brian Eidelman fusionsecurity.blogspot.com Brian Eidelman shows how to "validate an Oracle Identity Management build out containing OID, OVD, OIM, and OAM." Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center 12c Launch - Interactive Webcast and Live Chat www.oracle.com Thursday, April 12, 2012. 9 a.m. PT / 12 p.m. ET / 4 p.m. GMT. Learn how your enterprise cloud can achieve 10x improved performance and 12x operational agility. Includes demo session. Speakers: Steve Wilson (VP Systems Management, Oracle) John Fowler (Exec VP Systems, Oracle) Brad Cameron (VP Development, Oracle Fusion Middleware) Bill Nesheim (VP Oracle Solaris) Dennis Reno (VP Customer Portal Experience, Oracle) Mike Wookey (Chief Architect, Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center) Prasad Pai (Sr Director, Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center) 2012 Real World Performance Tour Dates |Performance Tuning | Performance Engineering www.ioug.org Coming to your town: a full day of real world database performance with Tom Kyte, Andrew Holdsworth, and Graham Wood. Rochester, NY - March 8 Los Angeles, CA - April 30 Orange County, CA - May 1 Redwood Shores, CA - May 3 Thought for the Day "At first sight, the idea of any rules or principles being superimposed on the creative mind seems more likely to hinder than to help, but this is quite untrue in practice. Disciplined thinking focuses inspiration rather than blinkers it." — G. L. Glegg

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  • Spotlight on an Office – Reading TVP offices

    - by Maria Sandu
    This month we’re in the UK at the Reading offices, for ‘Spotlight on an office’. The Reading Office, which is Oracle’s UK Headquarters, is based in Thames Valley Park (TVP), which is a bustling hive of activity that houses many different companies, a gym, and even a nursery. Overlooking the Thames and some of England’s beautiful countryside, this office, just a short free bus ride from Reading Town Centre is in a fantastic location. The offices themselves are made up of 5 different buildings, each with their own car park, restaurant, and design. The main building or TVP 510 as it is referred to, sits resplendent next to an extremely blue (for the UK) pond, filled with large koi-carp that on a sunny day like to come to the surface of the lake and bask. As the main hub of activity, TVP 510 is where you will find our Dry Cleaning service, the Ozone Gym, the main restaurant (which never fails to have someone in it), and the Marquee which sits outside the back amongst the picnic benches, and is where we have Barbeques in the summer time. Another highlight of the Reading Offices is tucked away in TVP530; the home of H20, and our sports and social club. This is the building that can be best be described as having the ‘cool’ vibe, where you can relax and unwind, all whilst sipping a Starbucks (or Costa if you prefer, located in TVP550), and playing a game of Pool in the cafeteria, or alternatively you can sit back and enjoy a seat in one of the luxury massage chairs! If you feel so inclined, you can also hire out an OraBike from any of the TVP offices, and if you are anything like some of my team, cycle from Reading to Bath using the towpath starting in Thames Valley Park. Oracle’s Reading Offices are a great place to work, they are home to a diverse range of people and have great atmosphere which would suit a graduate, intern, or anyone who is looking to come and work for Oracle in the UK.

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  • Internship in License Contract Management

    - by cristian.condurache(at)oracle.com
    Hi Everyone, My name is Luca. I am an intern in the License Contract Management team in Italy. I have studied Economics and Business in Pescara and finished my Master’s Degree in July 2009. After a short work experience near my home town I decided to look for a job in an International Company. I got in touch with Oracle in January 2010. I had a telephone interview and then a face-to-face interview. On a cold and grey morning, I arrived in Milan....my first impression was fantastic....a big modern building with wide TVs everywhere. I was a little nervous but very excited. I understood this could be a great opportunity... The interview went well and I started to work in March. After a training period I was quickly involved in the closing of the last quarter of the fiscal year - of which May is the last month at Oracle. Working as a License Contract Manager is a real challenge for a fresh graduate. It involves thoroughly understanding the Oracle Policies and Practices with regards to License Contracts. In my experience, especially in May, I learnt to work under high pressure, within time constrains, and to keep up with constant changes. In this period I also had the opportunity to be involved in different negotiations, being directly in contact with the customers. This helped me to develop my relational skills during complex transactions. Looking back at the nine months at Oracle I can say I have a better understanding of the IT world. It is a complex environment that changes continously, offering new challenges to learn from everytime. If you have any questions related to this article feel free to contact [email protected]. You can find our job opportunities via http://campus.oracle.com. Technorati Tags: License Contract Management,oppotunity,Oracle Policies,internship

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  • ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for 2012-03-22

    - by Bob Rhubart
    2012 Real World Performance Tour Dates |Performance Tuning | Performance Engineering www.ioug.org Coming to your town: a full day of real world database performance with Tom Kyte, Andrew Holdsworth, and Graham Wood. Rochester, NY - March 8 Los Angeles, CA - April 30 Orange County, CA - May 1 Redwood Shores, CA - May 3. Oracle Cloud Conference: dates and locations worldwide http://www.oracle.com Find the cloud strategy that’s right for your enterprise. 2 new Cloud Computing resources added to free IT Strategies from Oracle library www.oracle.com IT Strategies from Oracle, the free authorized library of guidelines and reference architectures, has just been updated to include two new documents: A Pragmatic Approach to Cloud Adoption Data Sheet: Oracle's Approach to Cloud SOA! SOA! SOA!; OSB 11g Recipes and Author Interviews www.oracle.com Featured this week on the OTN Architect Homepage, along with the latest articles, white papers, blogs, events, and other resources for software architects. Enterprise app shops announcements are everywhere | Andy Mulholland www.capgemini.com Capgemini's Andy Mulholland discusses "the 'front office' revolution using new technologies in a different manner to the standard role of IT and its attendant monolithic applications based on Client-Server technologies." Encapsulating OIM API’s in a Web Service for OIM Custom SOA Composites | Alex Lopez fusionsecurity.blogspot.com Alex Lopez describes "how to encapsulate OIM API calls in a Web Service for use in a custom SOA composite to be included as an approval process in a request template." Thought for the Day "Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats." — Howard H. Aiken

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  • Game-a-Week One

    - by Matt Christian
    Anyone who chats with me on a semi-regular basis knows I am absolutely horrible at completing something from beginnning to end.  Often times I'll begin something, lose interest at some point, and end up moving onto the next thing.  For example, I have 1/2 a full game created, 1/3 of a novel written, and half of a model set created.  Needless to say, unless I have some sort of pressure to finish something I don't stick to it. Recently however one of my online buddies challenged me to create a simple game.  The start date was last Thursday and the final game needed to be delivered by this next Sunday (giving me just over a week).  However, I am going out of town this Friday so will need to deliver it by Thursday, giving me exactly 1 week to develop a game.  Here is what the game needed to include: The player should be able to shoot Shooting things should score points Sounds very simple, but given a single week to produce all art assets plus the game isn't an easy task.  So far I've developed: An animated Main Menu that loads via script files, allows the user to start a new game or exit the game The game is 3D and the player can move around the play area with an 'over-the-shoulder' camera HUD elements are drawn to display the player's current score When the player presses Esc they are shown a pause menu where they can resume the game by pressing Esc again, or quit the game by pressing Space There are also 2 items implemented that don't work perfectly: JigLibX physics library implementation On the main menu there is an arrow symbol that rotates to always point at your mouse I've got 2 days of development left so hopefully I can get collision working, some of the art cleaned up, and some more of the camera functionality working.  Also, I'll need to take some time to package the game up which hopefully shouldn't take too long.

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  • How or why would this mechanic (not) work to bring game balance to a singleplayer RPG? [closed]

    - by 0xFFF1
    Mechanic details The player, the monsters, and the merchants act as three separate parties. The player needs to beat up monsters for exp points and resources to sell and to buy potions from merchants to continue to fight. The monsters need healing and reviving to survive (also bought from merchants) and the merchants need potion ingredients from the player and the monsters to make potions to sell. These potions are only able to be processed in such bulk by merchants thus their potions would be cheaper than making them yourself. Only the monsters can farm ingredients in bulk. Only the player is or has to be overly aggressive (in bulk). Monsters can farm and produce "Level up candies" that do the work of exp. they are eaten right away after they are made and are never stockpiled or held for fear of the player and merchants who want to sell to the player. The monsters will defend themselves. Reviving is very expensive. The merchants can be found either with a concerned expression or a grinning expression based on how much profit they are making compared to their morale standing. The economies of each monster town and merchant city are distinct but interconnected. Magic Swords are worth a lot. So what I need to know is what concerns would there be to design a game around this mechanic and/or design this mechanic around a developing game. which would fare better? Is game balance an issue here? (how strong the monsters get or how quickly they die off based on the player's input into the system), Or is game balance solely in the hands of the player? (he decides if he overkills monsters or get underleveled.) What do I need to think about to make sure it isn't too easy or too hard to swing the amount/strength of monsters compared to the player and the amount of profit the merchants get vs the player. Would indicating how out of whack things are getting in game help with this?

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  • Free Software for Billing (Columbia)

    - by Yoimir Yamit Castrillon Duque
    English I'm looking for a billing application (also inventories, shopping, clients, providers, accounts, etc) for small businesses. The software should adapt with Colombia's necessities. I searched for it in Google, and I found several ERP such as OpenBravo and Adempiere, but these applications are very big and difficult to use, in fact, I couldn't make them work. I found an application called Ubifactura (made specifically for Colombia), I downloaded the Java source code, but I don't have any idea about how to compile it. I need someone to help me to compile it or just some recommendations for similar software. The idea is to help small business from my town with one of these applications (it doesn't matter if it is for Windows or Linux), the idea is to help. All help is welcome. Spanish (Español) Estoy buscando una aplicacion de facturacion (tambien inventario, compras, clientes, proveedores, cuentas, etc) para pequeñas empresas, que se adaptade a las necesidades de Colombia, en google encontre varios ERP como openbravo y adempiere, pero aplicaciones muy grandes y dificiles de manejas, de hecho no puede hacerlas funcionar. Encontre un programa llamado Ubifactura, hecho para facturar en Colomabia, descarge los archivos de codigo fuente en java, pero no tengo ni idea de como ponerlo a funcionar, pues habla de eclipce, de un servsdor CVS, que no tengo ni idea de como poner a funcionar, necesito si alguien me puede ayudar a trabajar con estos archivos java, o me suguieran aplicacion de acuerdo a mis necesidades. La idea es bebeficiar a varias pequeñas empresas de mi pueblo con una aplicacion de estas, ni importa si en entorno windows o ubuntu, la idea es aportarles algo desde el software libre. Saludos y a la espera de respuestas. Toda ayuda es bienvenida.

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  • Any Practical Alternative to the Signals + Slots model for GUI Programming?

    - by IntermediateHacker
    The majority of GUI Toolkits nowadays use the Signals + Slots model. It was Qt and GTK+, if I am not wrong, who pioneered it. You know, the widgets or graphical objects (sometimes even ones that aren't displayed) send signals to the main-loop handler. The main-loop handler then calls the events, callbacks or slots assigned for that widget / graphical object. There are usually default (and in most cases virtual) event-handlers already provided by the toolkit for handling all pre-defined signals, therefore, unlike previous designs where the developer had to write the entire main-loop and handler for each and every message himself (think WINAPI), the developer only has to worry about the signals he needs to implement new functionality on. Now this design is being used in most modern toolkits as far as I know. There are Qt, GTK+, FLTK etc. There is Java Swing. C# even has a language feature for it ( events and delegates ), and Windows Forms has been developed on this design. In fact, over the last decade, this design for GUI programming has become a kind of an unwritten standard. Since it increases productivity and provides greater abstraction. However, my question is: Is there any alternative design, that is parallel or practical for modern GUI programming? i.e Is the Signals + Slots design, the only practical one in town? Is it feasible to do GUI Programming with any other design? Are any modern (preferably successful and popular) GUI toolkits built on an alternative design?

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  • How do I pick which agency to go through?

    - by RoboShop
    I work in a town where the majority of work comes from the government. As a contractor, I generally have to apply for work through agencies which are on the government's preferred vendor's list. Most jobs are publicly listed and to apply for them, you generally need an agency to represent you by submitting your application with a rate which is usually your rate plus their commission. I've been trying to figure out what the agencies do, and it seems a large part of what they do is 1) get on that preferred vendor's list and 2) forward resumes. So right now, my policy is that since their commission affects how expensive I am, one - I don't work with companies that do not disclose their margin. And two, I go for the agency that takes the least amount of commission for the job I want to apply for. IS that the best approach? I would think applying for a job with the most competitive rate is the best approach but I also wonder whether which agency you're applying through actually matter? I know some agencies actually build personal relationships with senior managers but how do I know which one? How do I know that actually affect my job prospects? What criteria should I use to decide which agent I go through for the job?

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  • Why Wouldn't Root Be Able to Change a Zone's IP Address in Oracle Solaris 11?

    - by rickramsey
    You might assume that if you have root access to an Oracle Solaris zone, you'd be able to change the root's IP address. If so, you'd proceed along these lines ... First, you'd log in: root@global_zone:~# zlogin user-zone Then you'd remove the IP interface: root@user-zone:~# ipadm delete-ip vnic0 Next, you'd create a new IP interface: root@user-zone:~# ipadm create-ip vnic0 Then you'd assign the IP interface a new IP address (10.0.0.10): root@user-zone:~# ipadm create-addr -a local=10.0.0.10/24 vnic0/v4 ipadm: cannot create address: Permission denied Why would that happen? Here are some potential reasons: You're in the wrong zone Nobody bothered to tell you that you were fired last week. The sysadmin for the global zone (probably your ex-girlfriend) enabled link protection mode on the zone with this sweet little command: root@global_zone:~# dladm set-linkprop -p \ protection=mac-nospoof,restricted,ip-nospoof vnic0 How'd your ex-girlfriend learn to do that? By reading this article: Securing a Cloud-Based Data Center with Oracle Solaris 11 by Orgad Kimchi, Ron Larson, and Richard Friedman When you build a private cloud, you need to protect sensitive data not only while it's in storage, but also during transmission between servers and clients, and when it's being used by an application. When a project is completed, the cloud must securely delete sensitive data and make sure the original data is kept secure. These are just some of the many security precautions a sysadmin needs to take to secure data in a cloud infrastructure. Orgad, Ron, and Richard and explain the rest and show you how to employ the security features in Oracle Solaris 11 to protect your cloud infrastructure. Part 2 of a three-part article on cloud deployments that use the Oracle Solaris Remote Lab as a case study. About the Photograph That's the fence separating a small group of tourist cabins from a pasture in the small town of Tropic, Utah. Follow Rick on: Personal Blog | Personal Twitter | Oracle Forums   Follow OTN Garage on: Web | Facebook | Twitter | YouTube

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  • Feedback on meeting of the Linux User Group of Mauritius

    Once upon a time in a country far far away... Okay, actually it's not that bad but it has been a while since the last meeting of the Linux User Group of Mauritius (LUGM). There have been plans in the past but it never really happened. Finally, Selven took the opportunity and organised a new meetup with low administrative overhead, proper scheduling on alternative dates and a small attendee's survey on the preferred option. All the pre-work was nicely executed. First, I wasn't sure whether it would be possible to attend. Luckily I got some additional information, like children should come, too, and I was sold to this community gathering. According to other long-term members of the LUGM it was the first time 'ever' that a gathering was organised outside of Quatre Bornes, and I have to admit it was great! LUGM - user group meeting on the 15.06.2013 in L'Escalier Quick overview of Linux & the LUGM With a little bit of delay the LUGM meeting officially started with a quick overview and introduction to Linux presented by Avinash. During the session he told the audience that there had been quite some activity over the island some years ago but unfortunately it had been quiet during recent times. Of course, we also spoke about the acknowledged world dominance of Linux - thanks to Android - and the interesting possibilities for countries like Mauritius. It is known that a couple of public institutions have there back-end infrastructure running on Red Hat Linux systems but the presence on the desktop is still very low. Users are simply hanging on to Windows XP and older versions of Microsoft Office. Following the introduction of the LUGM Ajay joined into the session and it quickly changed into a panel discussion with lots of interesting questions and answers, sharing of first-hand experience either on the job or in private use of Linux, and a couple of ideas about how the LUGM could promote Linux a bit more in Mauritius. It was great to get an insight into other attendee's opinion and activities. Especially taking into consideration that I'm already using Linux since around 1996/97. Frankly speaking, I bought a SuSE 4.x distribution back in those days because I couldn't achieve certain tasks on Windows NT 4.0 without spending a fortune. OpenELEC Mediacenter Next, Selven gave us decent introduction on OpenELEC: Open Embedded Linux Entertainment Center (OpenELEC) is a small Linux distribution built from scratch as a platform to turn your computer into an XBMC media center. OpenELEC is designed to make your system boot fast, and the install is so easy that anyone can turn a blank PC into a media machine in less than 15 minutes. I didn't know about it until this presentation. In the past, I was mainly attached to Video Disk Recorder (VDR) as it allows the use of satellite receiver cards very easily. Hm, somehow I'm still missing my precious HTPC that I had to leave back in Germany years ago. It was great piece of hardware and software; self-built PC in a standard HiFi-sized (43cm) black desktop casing with 2 full-featured Hauppauge DVB-s cards, an old-fashioned Voodoo graphics card, WiFi card, Pioneer slot-in DVD drive, and fully remote controlled via infra-red thanks to Debian, VDR and LIRC. With EP Guide, scheduled recordings and general multimedia centre it offered all the necessary comfort in the living room, besides a Nintendo game console; actually a GameCube at that time... But I have to admit that putting OpenELEC on a Raspberry Pi would be a cool DIY project in the near future. LUGM - our next generation of linux users (15.06.2013) Project Evil Genius (PEG) Don't be scared of the paragraph header. Ish gave us a cool explanation why he named it PEG - Project Evil Genius; it's because of the time of the day when he was scripting down his ideas to be able to build, package and provide software applications to various Linux distributions. The main influence came from openSuSE but the platform didn't cater for his needs and ideas, so he started to work out something on his own. During his passionate session he also talked about the amazing experience he had due to other Linux users from all over the world. During the next couple of days Ish promised to put his script to GitHub... Looking forward to that. Check out Ish's personal blog over at hacklog.in. Highly recommended to read. Why India? Simply because the registration fees per year for an Indian domain are approximately 20 times less than for a Mauritian domain (.mu). Exploring the beach of L'Escalier af the meeting 'After-party' at the beach of L'Escalier Puh, after such interesting sessions, ideas around Linux and good conversation during the breaks and over lunch it was time for a little break-out. Selven suggested that we all should head down to the beach of L'Escalier and get some impressions of nature down here in the south of the island. Talking about 'beach' ;-) - absolutely not comparable to the white-sanded ones here in Flic en Flac... There are no lagoons down at the south coast of Mauriitus, and watching the breaking waves is a different experience and joy after all. Unfortunately, I was a little bit worried about the thoughtless littering at such a remote location. You have to drive on natural paths through the sugar cane fields and I was really shocked by the amount of rubbish lying around almost everywhere. Sad, really sad and it concurs with Yasir's recent article on the same topic. Resumé & outlook It was a great event. I met with new people, had some good conversations, and even my children enjoyed themselves the whole day. The location was well-chosen, enough space for each and everyone, parking spaces and even a playground for the children. Also, a big "Thank You" to Selven and his helpers for the organisation and preparation of lunch. I'm kind of sure that this was an exceptional meeting of LUGM and I'm really looking forward to the next gathering of Linux geeks. Hopefully, soon. All images are courtesy of Avinash Meetoo. More pictures are available on Flickr.

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  • Use Your Android Phone to Comparison Shop: 4 Scanner Apps Reviewed

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    A smart phone in your pocket is great for on the go news, web browsing, and—of course—mobile gaming. It’s also fantastic for comparison shopping. Today we take a look at four Android scanners and price comparison engines. It’s quite a neat time to be a consumer. Historically if you wanted to do serious price comparisons you had to haul yourself around town, gather flyers from the newspapers, and otherwise invest way too much energy into potential savings that might not even break into double digits. Now you can comparison shop with an ease that borders on magic: by simply pulling out your smart phone and scanning the barcode or typing in the name of the item you wish to compare. Today we’re taking a look at some of the more popular and powerful barcode scanners and price comparison engines available for the Android platform. Before we get to that, a word on our methodology. To test the barcode scanners and the resulting search results we wandered around and rounded up some relatively random items from around the How-To Geek offices. This included a children’s graphic novel, a Wii game, a board game, a pack of razors, a box of tea, and a bottle of nail polish. It’s a decent spread of consumer items that covers several genres. For each application we scanned all the items, looked for the best price at the time, and noted any other relevant benefits of using one scanner over another. It’s worth noting that our primary focus was on the speed and ease of use. You may find that certain scanners have specific features that best suit your needs. What we focused on was how fast you could scan, compare prices, and purchase items if you desired. Since all the scanners are free-as-in-beer, feel free to download them all and run your own tests to confirm our conclusions. Use Your Android Phone to Comparison Shop: 4 Scanner Apps Reviewed How to Run Android Apps on Your Desktop the Easy Way HTG Explains: Do You Really Need to Defrag Your PC?

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  • Can non-IT people handle a wiki?

    - by Andrew Heath
    (I'm hoping that some of you will have encountered this issue before and can offer some insights...) My company is looking to improve their market research data management. Current data management style: "Hey Jimbo, where's that picture of our WhatZit 2.0? "yeah I remember that email about that company from that guy, gimme a few minutes to search my Outlook" "who has the newest copy of the Important Competitor's product catalogue? Mine is from '09." ... "Colleen does, and she's on maternity leave. You'll have to call her to get her workstation password..." Desired data management style: data organized neatly by topic (legal, economic, industrial, competitor) for each topic, multiple media types stored together (company product images, press releases, contact info) but still neatly sorted by type data editing histories communal access (no data silos) I was thinking about setting up a department wiki for all users to access. It seems to satisfy the four criteria above, but I'm a little concerned about how user-friendly (read: decipherable to non-technical people) it is for the more advanced features like image galleries, article formatting, and the like. Has anyone here setup a wiki for non-IT people and had it not catch on fire//become a ghost town//look like Geocities? Bonus question: can you see any obvious drawbacks to my choice of MediaWiki (or any other wiki) for solving this problem? Thank you.

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  • Gems In The Visual Studio 2010 Training Kit &ndash; Introduction to MEF: Learning Labs

    - by Jim Duffy
    No, this post doesn’t have anything to do with cooking up illegal drugs in some rundown shack outside of town. That, my friends, would be a meth lab and fortunately that is waaaaay outside my area of expertise. Now I can talk Kentucky bourbon, or as Homer Simpson would say “mmmmmmmmmmm bourbon”, with you but please refrain from asking me meth questions. :-) Anyway, what I’m talking about are the MEF (Managed Extensibility Framework) Learning Labs contained in the Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Training Kit. Not sure what MEF is and need an overview? Then start here or here. Ok, so you’ve read a bit about MEF or heard about MEF and you’re thinking it might be something you and your development team might want to take a hands-on look at. I have good news then because contained in the Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Training Kit is a series of hands-on learning labs for MEF. I’ve added working my way through them to my “things I want to take a closer look at” list. Have a day. :-|

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  • A Poem Before OpenWorld

    - by Oracle OpenWorld Blog Team
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";} (with apologies to Clement C. Moore) By Karen Shamban ‘Twas the days before OpenWorld, and all through the city Many people were working, for them not take pity; At Moscone the reg booths were built with true care, Knowing that thousands would soon be right there; The riggers on Howard were raising the tent, The results are all worth it, the money well spent; ORACLE TEAM USA sails into YBG, Knowing that many the team will come see, Backstage the techs and designers do work, Ensuring the keynotes will see not a quirk; Here many things social will come to fruition, Use Twitter or Facebook or your intuition, Exhibits there are many in two great big halls, Moscone West, Moscone South—who needs those malls? There will be great music throughout all the town, See some or see all and you won’t wear a frown, The sessions are thousands, and demos, it’s true, Labs, lounges, and meetups there are more than a few; You can shuttle, and hustle, and pedicab while there, Getting from one place to another can take quite a flair, So let the conference begin and the thousands descend, Throughout San Francisco their ways they will wend; It’s Larry’s big keynotes they all come to hear, Let Oracle OpenWorld begin - it's the best of the year!

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