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  • How to view/mount other partitions on your hard drive

    - by Preston Zacharias
    Recently I have installed Ubuntu 12.04 Beta 2 on a USB flash drive and decided to install it on an old external HDD which I have taken out of the casing and succesfully mounted in my desktop computer. There is no other operating system besides the newly install Ubuntu. However, there is about 500gb of data on the drive. This is why i used a partitioning software on my windows 7 netbook to partition the hard drive to set aside 1tb for files, 350gb of space for linux and the remaining 650gb for Vista which i plan on installing soon. But this is where the problem sets in...when installing Ubuntu it does not recognize that the drive is partitioned at all, it's just one big open block of space...so I used the installers built in partitioning feature to set aside 300gb for main Ubuntu install and 50gb for swap space. I set both of these partitions to be created at the "end" so that it wouldn't delete or write over my data. And this is where i am really lost; when booting into Ubuntu i am able to use it perfectly fine, got on internet, etc...but i have NO CLUE as to how i can view files that were previously on the drive (all of my data that i had prior to install). How can I mount/be able to view the other partition so that i can have access to my data? Thank you ahead of time! I REALLY appreciate any help or advice! ~Preston

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  • Get Members of Band

    - by user168083
    If I look at the Freebase page for the band '311', I see Chad Sexton listed. http://www.freebase.com/view/en/311 I am trying to query for the members of a band : { "name" : "311", "/music/artist/album" : [{"name":null, "id":null, "optional": true}], "type|=" : ["/music/artist","/music/musical_group"], "/award/award_winner/awards_won" : ["award":null, "optional" => true], "/award/award_nominated_work/award_nominations" : ["award":null, "optional" => true], "/music/artist/supporting_artists":[{}] } I thought supporting_artists would return the band member names, but the array is always empty. But if I query for all properties related to Chad Sexton, I don't see 311 mentioned. But he is listed as member on the Freebase web info page (which is correct). { "*": null, "name": "Chad Sexton", "type": "/music/artist" } How can I grab the band member names along with the band info?

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  • Working with CPU cycles in Gameboy Advance

    - by Preston Sexton
    I am working on an GBA emulator and stuck at implementing CPU cycles. I just know the basic knowledge about it, each instruction of ARM and THUMB mode as each different set of cycles for each instructions. Currently I am simply saying every ARM instructions cost 4 cycles and THUMB instructions cost 2 cycles. But how do you implement it like the CPU documentation says? Does instruction cycles vary depending on which section of the memory it's currently accessing to? http://nocash.emubase.de/gbatek.htm#cpuinstructioncycletimes According to the above specification, it says different memory areas have different waitstates but I don't know what it exactly mean. Furthermore, what are Non-sequential cycle, Sequential cycle, Internal Cycle, Coprocessor Cycle for? I saw in some GBA source code that they are using PC to figure out how many cycles each instruction takes to complete, but how are they doing it?

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  • How to use MythBuntu to send TV signal to a 2nd frontend

    - by Mark Preston
    I guess the a MythTV or MythBuntu backend acts as a "server" for the frontends. I have MythBuntu installed. It runs fine, I can tune live TV, hear the sound, etc. To get this to work, I had to config the Wired Network IP4V settings to Method: Link-Local Only. The Local Backend IP address is: 127.0.0.1 and the info (bottom of screen) says that if there is another frontend, that this IP add. must be changed. 1 - Does this mean changed to the IP address of the 2nd frontend? 2 - What "Method" do I use to make 2 or more frontends? 3 - I have an ethernet switch which currently "sees" the tv signal, sends it to the computer's ethernet port where Mythbuntu makes use of it. 4 - How do I set up the Myth to send it's output (the tv shows) to both televisions? If you know of a How-To, or website, please give the URL or identifying keywords.

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  • Missing launcher after 12.04 upgrade

    - by Preston Zacharias
    I recently upgraded to ubuntu 12.04 and after doing some updates and such my application launcher and title bars (for window dialogues) are missing. Basically the entire unity GUI is missing! Not sure what happened so I installed gnome 3 and it was missing a launcher too, but did have title bars. In addition the bar found at the top that lets you know what's open and allows gnome extensions to be displayed is not interactive. I can't click, right click, alt + click (right or left), alt + super click (right or left) anywhere! I even installed an application menu from the gnome site and it is not interactive either. However, since there is no way to launch applications i have to use terminal and if i minimize an app it will disappear completely. Then i decided to try unity 2D and it is incredibly messed up. Black background, launcher is there but icons and top bar while on desktop are completely distorted. They're not just pixalated; they're all sorts of funky colors and when i open something from unity 2d launcher it will show it's opened in the launcher but nothing appears on my screen. When trying to view videos on youtube the video is distorted and looks just as unity 2d does. Strange enough: the audio works fine, just not videos. Pictures loads, but not ads that stream video. Any suggestions to get my launcher and the unity GUI back? I tried reinstalling gnome, unity 3d, and unity 2d from terminal. no change. also reinstalled unity desktop and tried resetting it: nothing happened.

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  • Setting up dual NICs under Server 2008

    - by Randall Sexton
    Hi, I'm trying to determine how to set up dual NICs on my Server 2008 box (not R2). I want all web traffic on one NIC and all Hyper-V traffic on the other. Is this possible? ( I assume that it is ) How is this done? ( A link to a tutorial you know of would be great ) Both NICs are the same (Intel PRO/1000 EB Network Connection with I/O Acceleration). Thanks in advance, Randall

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  • I have a new seagate 3tb hard drive and when i installed it it says 349gb free

    - by Joseph Sexton
    my new seagate sata drive keeps showing as a 249gb drive but in the setup part when i press del at the boot up it states there a 3000gb drive and i have searched for a solution but havent found one yet. I havent tried in a different pc yet and I have an asus gaming board with 2 video cards sli'ed and i have windows 7 ultimate 64 bit with 8gb ram and a hp 23" widescreen monitor and the sniper gaming case and a salitek lighted up gaming keyboard and a razor death adder gaming mouse and a corsair 850 watt power supply. Any help would be great and appriciated

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  • Advanced (?) Excel sorting

    - by Preston Grayskull
    First of all, I'd like to admit that I don't really know anything about Excel, but I have tried to look up a solution to this in Excel books and Googling. Here's what I'm trying to do: I have a really long spreadsheet There are 7 columns total, but only two columns that I'm most interested in. Here's an example CSV that is much more simple than my actual dataset, but the search/sort is analogous: John, Apple Dave, Apple Dave, Orange Steve, Apple Steve, Orange Steve, Kiwi Bob, Apple Bob, Banana I'm interested in extracting the entire rows (all of the columns) that meet the following criteria: ["Apple"] OR ["Apple" and "Orange"] NOT ["Apple" and "Orange" and Anything Else] NOT ["Apple" and Anything that isn't Orange] So with the above CSV, I would get the entire rows for John and Dave, but not Steve and not Bob. I started doing this manually, and will likely finish by the time this question has an answer, but I would like to know this for future reference. Thanks!

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  • Zipping folder with absolute path without keeping tree of folders

    - by Preston
    I am attempting to use the zip -r command to zip a folder which includes two files. I need to pass the absolute path of the folder with two files (/path/to/my/files/), which is causing all of the folders to be zipped with it, where as I only need the last folder (files/) and its contents to be zipped, so that when the file is unzipped, there is only one folder and the two files within it. How can I modify the command to be able to pass the absolute paths in the arguments while keeping only the last folder?

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  • Move Physical Windows Server 2008 into a Hyper-V VM

    - by Randall Sexton
    Hello, I'd like to import a real Windows Server 2008 server as a Hyper-V Virtual Server on another Windows Server 2008 instance. Anyone have any idea how to do this? I'm looking at the System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 but it doesn't seem to import Windows Server 2008 - nor is it free. Is there some other workaround (i.e. import the image into VMWare first, then convert to Hyper-V)? Please help. Regards, Randall

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  • POSTing JSON data to WCF REST

    - by Randall Sexton
    I'm trying to send data from a client application using jQuery to a REST WCF service based on the WCF REST starter kit. Here's what I have so far. Service Definition: [WebHelp(Comment = "Save PropertyValues to the database")] [WebInvoke(Method = "POST", UriTemplate = "PropertyValues_Save", BodyStyle = WebMessageBodyStyle.WrappedRequest, RequestFormat = WebMessageFormat.Json, ResponseFormat = WebMessageFormat.Json)] [OperationContract] public bool PropertyValues_Save(Guid assetId, Dictionary<Guid, string> newValues) { ... } Call from the client: $.ajax({ url:SVC_PROPERTYVALUES_SAVE, type: "POST", contentType: "application/json; charset=utf-8", data: jsonData, dataType: "json", error: function(XMLHttpRequest, textStatus, errorThrown) { alert(textStatus + ' ' + errorThrown); }, success: function(data) { if (data) { alert('Values saved'); $("#confirmSubmit").dialog('close'); } else { alert('Values failed to save'); $("#confirmSubmit").dialog('close'); } } }); Example of the JSON being passed: { "assetId": "d70714c3-e403-4cc5-b8a9-9713d05b2ee0", "newValues": [ { "key": "bd01aa88-b48d-47c7-8d3f-eadf47a46680", "value": "0e9fdf34-2d12-4639-8d70-19b88e753ab1" }, { "key": "06e8eda2-a004-450e-90ab-64df357013cf", "value": "1d490aec-f40e-47d5-865c-07fe9624f955" } ] } I'm using Windows Authentication on the virtual directory. When I call operations that are GETs, everything is fine. This code is prompting the browser to log in. When I enter my credentials, I simply get an alert in my browser which says "error undefined". Even if you can't help my specific error, do you see anything that looks wrong from glancing? I've been beating my head on this nearly all day. Thanks in advance.

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  • Fast word count function in Vim

    - by Greg Sexton
    I am trying to display a live word count in the vim statusline. I do this by setting my status line in my .vimrc and inserting a function into it. The idea of this function is to return the number of words in the current buffer. This number is then displayed on the status line. This should work nicely as the statusline is updated at just about every possible opportunity so the count will always remain 'live'. The problem is that the function I have currently defined is slow and so vim is obviously sluggish when it is used for all but the smallest files; due to this function being executed so frequently. In summary, does anyone have a clever trick for producing a function that is blazingly fast at calculating the number of words in the current buffer and returning the result?

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  • Change .NET Framework version of application pool to 3.5?

    - by Sean Sexton
    I've installed .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 on web server (Server 2008 Enterprise), so running IIS 7.0. I want to change the version of .NET Framework used by an existing site. So I right-click on appropriate Application Pool and selected Edit Application Pool. The .NET Framework dropdown does not include an explicit entry for framework 3.5, but just 2.0.50727. Does anyone know off the top of their head--is this just because the version of the core RTL in 3.5 is still 2.0? Or do I need to do something additional to get IIS to see version 3.5? (Did try restarting IIS). Thanks!

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  • Build path issues learning Guice

    - by Preston
    I can't figure out why I'm getting this error below I have included all the appropriate jars as far as I can tell(I have included eclipses .classpath file below.) All of the classpath entries resolve just fine. What am I missing? The type javax.servlet.ServletContextListener cannot be resolved. It is indirectly referenced from required .class files on the "extends GuiceServletContextListener" line - import com.google.inject.Guice; import com.google.inject.Injector; import com.google.inject.servlet.GuiceServletContextListener; import com.google.inject.servlet.ServletModule; public class ServletConfig extends GuiceServletContextListener { @Override protected Injector getInjector() { return Guice.createInjector(new ServletModule(){ @Override protected void configureServlets() { // TODO: add necessary code to bind } }); } } .Classpath <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <classpath> <classpathentry kind="src" path="src"/> <classpathentry kind="con" path="org.eclipse.jdt.launching.JRE_CONTAINER/org.eclipse.jdt.internal.debug.ui.launcher.StandardVMType/jdk1.7.0_21"> <attributes> <attribute name="owner.project.facets" value="java"/> </attributes> </classpathentry> <classpathentry kind="con" path="oracle.eclipse.tools.glassfish.lib.system"> <attributes> <attribute name="owner.project.facets" value="jst.web"/> </attributes> </classpathentry> <classpathentry kind="con" path="org.eclipse.jst.j2ee.internal.web.container"/> <classpathentry kind="con" path="org.eclipse.jst.j2ee.internal.module.container"/> <classpathentry kind="lib" path="guice-3.0/aopalliance.jar"/> <classpathentry kind="lib" path="guice-3.0/guice-3.0.jar"/> <classpathentry kind="lib" path="guice-3.0/guice-servlet-3.0.jar"/> <classpathentry kind="lib" path="guice-3.0/javax.inject.jar"/> <classpathentry kind="output" path="build/classes"/> </classpath>

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  • Proper use of HttpRequestInterceptor and CredentialsProvider in doing preemptive authentication with

    - by Preston
    I'm writing an application in Android that consumes some REST services I've created. These web services aren't issuing a standard Apache Basic challenge / response. Instead in the server-side code I'm wanting to interrogate the username and password from the HTTP(S) request and compare it against a database user to make sure they can run that service. I'm using HttpClient to do this and I have the credentials stored on the client after the initial login (at least that's how I see this working). So here is where I'm stuck. Preemptive authenticate under HttpClient requires you to setup an interceptor as a static member. This is the example Apache Components uses. HttpRequestInterceptor preemptiveAuth = new HttpRequestInterceptor() { @Override public void process( final HttpRequest request, final HttpContext context) throws HttpException, IOException { AuthState authState = (AuthState) context.getAttribute(ClientContext.TARGET_AUTH_STATE); CredentialsProvider credsProvider = (CredentialsProvider) context.getAttribute( ClientContext.CREDS_PROVIDER); HttpHost targetHost = (HttpHost) context.getAttribute(ExecutionContext.HTTP_TARGET_HOST); if (authState.getAuthScheme() == null) { AuthScope authScope = new AuthScope(targetHost.getHostName(), targetHost.getPort()); Credentials creds = credsProvider.getCredentials(authScope); if (creds != null) { authState.setAuthScheme(new BasicScheme()); authState.setCredentials(creds); } } } }; So the question would be this. What would the proper use of this be? Would I spin this up as part of the application when the application starts? Pulling the username and password out of memory and then using them to create this CredentialsProvider which is then utilized by the HttpRequestInterceptor? Or is there a way to do this more dynamically?

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  • Hibernate is persisting entity during flush when the entity has not changed

    - by Preston
    I'm having a problem where the entity manger is persisting an entity that I don't think has changed during the flush. I know the following code is the problem because if I comment it out the entity doesn't persist. In this code all I'm doing is loading the entity and calling some getters. Query qry = em.createNamedQuery("Clients.findByClientID"); qry.setParameter("clientID", clientID); Clients client = (Clients) qry.getSingleResult(); results.setFname(client.getFirstName()); results.setLname(client.getLastName()); ... return results; Later in a different method I do another namedQuery which causes the entity manger to flush. For some reason the client loaded above is persisted. The reason this is a problem is because in the middle of all this, there is some old code that is making some straight JDBC changes to the client. When the entity manger persists the changes made by the straight JDBC are lost. The theory we have at moment is that the entity manger is comparing the entity to the underlying record, sees that it's different, then persists it. Can someone explain or confirm the behavior we're seeing?

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  • Another warning question: "Incompatible intiger to pointer conversion assigning to 'int *' from 'int'"

    - by Preston
    I have yet another pesky warning I would like gone. Basically, I have an int declared like this: @property (nonatomic, assign) int *myInt; and set like this: myInt = 0;. It is also synthesized in the implementation file. I am getting a warning on the line where I set the int's value and it says "Incompatible intiger to pointer conversion assigning to 'int *' from 'int'." What should I do to fix this?

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  • can't click on input element behind div element

    - by Preston
    On my site: http://alsite.com.br/solalev/ I have some elements on the bottom of page that I can't click through. Above the elements is a div called push.. I use this div to make the footer always stay on the bottom of my page even when the content is smaller... (I dont know if I do this right.. but it has worked).. So.. on Chrome and Firefox I can't click.. but on IE this works.... I use this: .push{ pointer-events: none; } but nothing happens...

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  • Can I get the item type from a BindingSource?

    - by Preston
    I would like to get the Type of item that a BindingSource is hooked up to or configured for. The BindingSource.DataSource property can be set to an object, list, or type. If it is a Type, it obviously does not have an bound item yet, but I would still like to get the Type. For a List, I need the item Type, not the list type. There is a method BindingSource.GetItemProperties, that accomplishes most of what I need. It gets the PropertyDescriptors for the Type, list item, or object specified by the DataSource and DataMember. The reason I ask, is that I have some components that I would like to re-use, but they are currently setup to work off of an item Type. The Type is mainly used to get PropertyInfos and then build a UI, but PropertyInfo and PropertyDescriptor is not exactly the same, so it is not immediately apparent that they can be reworked to use a PropertyDescriptor collection instead. Then there is cascading refactoring of everything already using these components and that adds up to a lot of work that I would rather not do. I've looked through the API docs for for a good way to do this, but so far I have not had any luck. Am I missing something or is this just something I can not or should not be doing?

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  • UIScrollView does not scroll

    - by Preston Cheung
    I got a problem about UIScrollView. I am making a custom view which inherits UIView. The view has a UIScrollView on which there are lots of buttons which should scroll left and right. The UIScrollView and buttons can show normally. But I cannot scroll the buttons. Could someone give me some suggestions? Thanks a lot! MZMPhotoCalenderSwitcher.h #import <UIKit/UIKit.h> @interface MZMPhotoCalenderSwitcher : UIView <UIScrollViewDelegate> @property (strong, nonatomic) UIScrollView *topSwitcher; @end MZMPhotoCalenderSwitcher.m - (void)viewDidLoad { [super viewDidLoad]; // Do any additional setup after loading the view. self.topSwitcher = [[UIScrollView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0, LABEL_HEIGHT + VIEW_Y, self.view.bounds.size.width, TOP_SWITCHER_HEIGHT)]; self.topSwitcher.backgroundColor = [UIColor greenColor]; self.topSwitcher.pagingEnabled = YES; self.topSwitcher.showsHorizontalScrollIndicator = NO; self.topSwitcher.showsVerticalScrollIndicator = NO; [self add:3 ButtonsOnView:self.topSwitcher withButtonWidth:44.8f andHeight:20.0f]; } - (void)add:(int)num ButtonsOnView:(UIScrollView *)view withButtonWidth:(CGFloat)width andHeight:(CGFloat)height { CGFloat totalTopSwitcherWidth = num * width; [view setContentSize:CGSizeMake(totalTopSwitcherWidth, view.bounds.size.height)]; CGFloat xOffset = 0.0f; for (int i=1; i<=num; i++) { UIButton *button = [UIButton buttonWithType:UIButtonTypeRoundedRect]; [button setFrame:CGRectMake(xOffset, 0, width, height)]; xOffset += width; [button setTitle:[NSString stringWithFormat:@"%d", i] forState:UIControlStateNormal]; button.titleLabel.font = [UIFont systemFontOfSize:10]; [button setTitleColor:[UIColor blueColor] forState:UIControlStateNormal]; [button setTitleColor:[UIColor blackColor] forState:UIControlStateSelected]; [button setTag:i]; [button addTarget:self action:@selector(buttonEvent) forControlEvents:UIControlEventTouchUpInside]; if (i % 2 == 0) [button setBackgroundColor:[UIColor yellowColor]]; else [button setBackgroundColor:[UIColor redColor]]; [view addSubview:button]; } }

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  • Should I use the cool, new and awesome stuff [closed]

    - by Ieyasu Sawada
    I'm in the field of Web Development. I follow a lot of awesome people on Twitter(Paul Irish, Alex Sexton, David Walsh, Rebecca Murphey, etc.) By following these people I'm constantly updated of the new and cool stuff in web development(backbone.js, angular.js, require.js, ember.js, jasmine, etc.) Now I'm creating a web application for a client and because of the different tools, libraries, plugins that I'm aware of I don't even know anymore when do I need to use those or do I even need those, or how do I even implement it in a sane way where I won't have to repeat myself(DRY). What's your advice on what I really need to do in order to become better. Do I really need to use these cool new tools or should I just stick with what I know for now and try to make my code better. Should I unfollow these people in order to not pollute my mind with stuff that I can't really use now because I don't have the necessary experience in order to use it. What sort of things should I really be focusing on for someone like me who has only about 2 years of experience in the field of web development.

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  • Cannot view, use, or open CDs or DVDs in Ubuntu 12.04

    - by user67592
    I am fairly new to Ubuntu 12.04 and I have encountered a rather irritating problem. Whenever I insert a CD or DVD (whether it have data, music, movies, or nothing at all), nothing pops up saying "you have inserted a CD", "play with Rhythmbox?" etc. It doesn't show the CD in the launcher/dock or anything of the sort. This is especially peculiar because not only do I have a standard IDE built-in optical drive, but I have an external USB optical drive. Neither work. In addition, whenever I go to "Computer///" and I click (double click, right click, or even left click) on "CD/DVD Drive" nothing happens, when I right click and select "Open" nothing happens either [for either of the two drives (both are listed in Computer///)] And if I insert a blank disk and go to a disk burning program such as Brasero, and try to burn to the drive it detects no CDs or DVDs of any kind. I'm rather stumped and can't seem to find a question similar to this. :( Thanks for all your help in advance!! :) ~Preston Output of sudo lshw *-cdrom description: DVD-RAM writer product: CD/DVDW TS-H652M vendor: TSSTcorp physical id: 0.0.0 bus info: scsi@5:0.0.0 logical name: /dev/cdrom logical name: /dev/cdrw logical name: /dev/dvd logical name: /dev/dvdrw logical name: /dev/sr0 version: 0414 capabilities: removable audio cd-r cd-rw dvd dvd-r dvd-ram configuration: ansiversion=5 status=nodisc *-cdrom description: DVD reader product: DVD Writer 300n vendor: HP physical id: 0.0.0 bus info: scsi@4:0.0.0 logical name: /dev/cdrom2 logical name: /dev/cdrw2 logical name: /dev/dvd2 logical name: /dev/sr1 version: 1.25 serial: [ capabilities: removable audio cd-r cd-rw dvd configuration: status=nodisc

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  • Transformation of Product Management in Telecommunications for Rapid Launch of Next Generation Products

    - by raul.goycoolea
    @font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Courier New"; }@font-face { font-family: "Wingdings"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }a:link, span.MsoHyperlink { color: blue; text-decoration: underline; }a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed { color: purple; text-decoration: underline; }p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }ol { margin-bottom: 0cm; }ul { margin-bottom: 0cm; } The Telecom industry continues to evolve through disruptive products, uncertain markets, shorter product lifecycles and convergence of technologies. Today’s market has moved from network centric to consumer centric and focuses primarily on the customer experience. It has resulted in several product management challenges such as an increased complexity and volume of offerings, creating product variants, accelerating time-to-market, ability to provide multiple product views for varied stakeholders, leveraging OSS intelligence to BSS layer, product co-creation and increasing audit and security concerns for service providers. The document discusses how enterprise product management enabled by PLM-based product catalogue solutions helps to launch next generation products rapidly in the context of the Telecommunication Industry.   1.0.       Introduction   Figure 1: Business Scenario   Modern business demands the launch of complex products in a very short timeframe and effecting changes in the price plan faster without IT intervention. One of the key transformation initiatives companies are focusing on is in the area of product management transformation and operational efficiency improvement. As part of these initiatives, companies are investing in best- in-class COTs-based Product Management solutions developed on industry-wide standards.   The new COTs packages are planned to integrate with existing or new B/OSS systems to provide a strategic end-to-end agile solution for reduced time-to-market and order journey time. In addition, system rationalization is being undertaken to phase out legacy systems and migrate to strategic systems.   2.0.       An Overview of Product Management in Telecom   Product data in telecom is multi- dimensional and difficult to manage. It increased significantly due to the complexity of the product, product offerings on the converged network, increased volume of offerings, bundled offering structures and ever increasing regulatory requirements.   In addition, the shrinking product lifecycle in telecom makes it difficult to manage the dynamic product data. Mergers and acquisitions coupled with organic growth pose major challenges in product portfolio management. It is a roadblock in the journey towards becoming an agile organization.       Figure 2: Complexity in Product Management   Network Technology’ is the new dimension in telecom product management where the same products are realized through different networks i.e., Soiled network to Converged network. Consequently, the product solution is different.     Figure 3: Current Scenario - Pain Points in Product Management   The major business implications arising out of the current scenario are slow time-to-market and an inefficient process that affects innovation.   3.0. Transformation of Next Generation Product Management   Companies must focus on their Product Management Transformation Journey in the areas of:   ·       Management of single truth of product information across the organization/geographies which is currently managed in heterogeneous systems   ·       Management of the Intellectual Property (IP) on the product concept and partnership in the design of discrete components to integrate into the system   ·       Leveraging structured and unstructured product data within the extended enterprise to extract consumer insights and drive innovation   ·       Management of effective operational separation to comply with regulatory bodies   ·       Reuse of existing designs and add relevant features such as value-added services to enable effective product bundling     Figure 4: Next generation needs   PLM-based Enterprise Product Catalogue solutions efficiently address the above requirements and act as an enabler towards product management transformation and rapid product launch.   4.0. PLM-based Enterprise Product Management     Figure 5: PLM-based Enterprise Product Mastering   Enterprise Product Management (EPM) enables the business to manage complex product attributes of data in complex environments. Product Mastering helps create a 'single view' of the product by creating a business-driven, IT-supported environment where a global 'single truth record' is created, managed and reused.   4.1 The Business Case for Telco PLM-based solutions for Enterprise Product Management   ·       Telco PLM-based Product Mastering solutions provide a centralized authoring environment for product definition and control of all product data and rules   ·       PLM packages are designed to support multiple perspectives of product data (ordering perspective, billing perspective, provisioning perspective)   ·       Maintains relationships/links between different elements of the entire product definition   ·       Telco PLM packages are specialized in next generation lifecycle management requirements of products such as revision and state management, test and release management, role management and impact analysis)   ·       Takes into consideration all aspects of OSS product requirements compared to CRM product catalogue solutions where the product data managed is mostly order oriented and transactional     ·       New breed of Telco PLM packages are designed with 'open' standards such as SID and eTOM. They are interoperable, support integration frameworks such as subscription and notification.   ·       Telco PLM packages have developed good collaboration frameworks to integrate suppliers and partners into the product development value chain   4.2 Various Architectures/Approaches for Product Mastering using Telco PLM systems   4. 2.a Single Central Product Management (Mastering) Approach   Figure 6: Single Central Product Management (Master) Approach       This approach is implemented across verticals such as aerospace and automotive. It focuses on a physically centralized product master to which other sources are dependent on. The product definition data (Product bundles, service bundles, price plans, offers and discounts, product configuration rules and market campaigns) is created and maintained physically in a centralized environment. In addition, the product definition/authoring environment is centralized. The existing legacy product definition data available in CRM product catalogue, billing catalogue and the legacy product catalogue is migrated to the centralized PLM-based Enterprise Product Management solution.   Architectural changes must be made in the existing business landscape of applications to create and revise data because the applications have to refer to the central repository for approvals and validation of product configurations. It is achieved by modifying how the applications write data or how the applications can be adapted to use the rules to be managed and published.   Complete product configuration validation will be done in enterprise / central product catalogue and final configuration will be sent to the B/OSS system through the SOA compliant product distribution architecture. The approach/architecture enables greater control in terms of product data management and product data governance.   4.2.b Federated Product Management (Mastering) Architecture     Figure 7: Federated Product Management (Mastering) Architecture   In the federated product mastering approach, the basic unique product definition data (product id, description product hierarchy, basic price plans and simple product design rules) will be centrally created and will be maintained. And, the advanced product definition (Product bundling, promotions, offers & discount plans) will be created in respective down stream OSS systems. The advanced product definition (Product bundling, promotions, offers and discount plans) will be created in respective downstream OSS systems.   For example, basic product definitions such as attributes, product hierarchy and basic price plans will be created and maintained in Enterprise/Central product reference catalogue and distributed to downstream OSS systems. Respective downstream OSS systems build product bundles, promotions, advanced price plans over the basic product definition and master the advanced product definition. Central reference database accesses the respective other source product master data and assembles a point-in-time consolidated view of the product. The approach is typically adapted in some merger and acquisition scenarios where there is a low probability of a central physical authority managing the data. In addition, the migration effort in this case is minimal and there are no big architectural changes to the organization application landscape. However, this approach will not result in better product data management and data governance.   5.0 Customer Scenario – Before EPC deployment   A leading global telecommunications service provider wanted to launch a quad play and triple play service offering in the shortest possible lead time. The service provider was offering Broadband and VoIP services to customers. The company wanted to reuse a majority of the Broadband services and price plans and bundle them with new wireless and IPTV services for quad play and triple play. The challenges in launching the new service offerings were:       Figure 8: Triple Play Plan   ·       Broadband product data was stored in multiple product catalogues (CRM catalogue, Billing catalogue, spread sheets)   ·       Product managers spent a lot of time performing tasks involving duplication or re-keying of data. Manual effort caused errors, cost and time over-runs.   ·       No effective product and price data governance mechanism. Price change issues arising from the lack of data consistency across systems resulted in leakage of customer value and revenue.   ·       Product data had re-usability issues and was not in a structured format. It resulted in uncontrolled product portfolio creation and product management issues.   ·       Lack of enterprise product model resulted into product distribution challenges and thus delays in product launch.   ·       Designers are constrained by existing legacy product management solutions to model product/service requirements and product configuration rules such as upgrading, downgrading and cross selling.    5.1 Customer Scenario - After EPC deployment     Figure 9: SOA-based end-to-end EPC Solution   The company deployed PLM-based Enterprise Product Catalogue solutions to launch quad play service after evaluating various product catalogues. The broadband product offering, service and price data were migrated to the new system, and the product and price plan hierarchy for new offerings were created using the entities defined in the Enterprise Product Model. Supplier product catalogue data such as routers and set up boxes were loaded onto the new solution through SOA-based web service. Price plans and configuration rules were built in the new system. The validated final product configurations were extracted from the product catalogue in a SID format and were distributed to the downstream B/OSS systems through exposed SOA-based web services. The transformations required for the B/OSS system were handled using the transformation layer as part of the solution.   6.0 How PLM enabled Product Management Transformation         Figure 10: Product Management Transformation     PLM-based Product Catalogue Solution helped the customer reduce the product launch cycle time by 30% and enable transformation of Product Management for next generation services.   7.0 Conclusion   On the one hand, the telecom industry is undergoing changes due to disruptions, uncertain product markets and increased complexity of products. On the other hand, the ARPU is decreasing year-on-year. Communications Service Providers are embarking on convergence, bundled service offerings, flexibility to cross-sell and up-sell, introduce new value-added services, leverage Web 2.0 concepts and network capabilities. Consequently, large scale IT transformation initiatives to improve their ARPU supporting network and business transformations are a business imperative. Product Management has become a focus area. Companies are investing in best-in- class COTS solutions to reduce time-to-market, ensure rapid service delivery and improve operational efficiency. An efficient PLM-based enterprise product mastering solution plays a key role in achieving zero touch automation and rapid product launch.   References:   1.     Preston G.Smith, Donald G.Reineristsem, Van Nostrand Reinhold “Developing Products in Half the time”.   2.     John G. Innes, "Achieving Successful Product Change", Pitman Publishing.   3.     D T Pham and R M Setchi (16th Jan, 2001) "Authoring environment for documentation development" University of Wales Cardiff, U.K., Proceedings on Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Vol. 215, Part B.   4.     Oracle Product Hub for Communications:   http://www.oracle.com/us/products/applications/master-data-management/product-hub-082059.html  

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