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Articles indexed Wednesday February 23 2011

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• How do I convince my boss to come here and see how "good" companies are doing?

  - by Vimvq1987

  My company is bad, I admit it. Inefficient project management, very low quality code, ... I won't get into it. It's partly based on our country's culture, but mostly because our boss is not looking at how good companies are actually going about producing good software/service. I want to bring my boss here, so he can see these things, to convince him to create a better development place for us. How can I do that? Thank you so much. Ps: If I fail to do this, you know, I'm thinking seriously of leaving

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• Is there a measure of code rot?

  - by DarenW

  I'm dealing, again, with a messy C++ application, tons of classes with confusing names, objects have pointers into each other and all over, longwinded Boost and STL data types, etc. (Pause and consider your favorite terror of messy legacy code. We probably have it.) The phrase "code rot" oft comes to mind when I work on this project. Is there a quantitative way to measure code rot? I wouldn't expect anything highly meaningful or scientific, since no other measure of code productivity or quality is so fine. I'm not looking for a mere opposite of measures of code quality, but specifically a measure of how many bad things happened after a series of maintenance software "engineers" have had turns hacking at the code. A general measure applying to any language, or many languages, would be great. If there's no such thing, at least for C++, which is a better than average language for creating messes. Maybe something involving a measure of topology of how objects connect during runtime, a count of chunks of commented out code, how mane files a typical variable's usage is scattered over, I don't know... but surely now, a decade into the 21st Century, someone has attempted to define some sort of rot measure. It would be especially interesting to automate a series of svn checkouts, measure the "rottenosity" of each, and plot the decay over time.

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• Do professional software developers still dream of creating industry/world-changing apps?

  - by Andrew Heath

  I'm a hobby programmer. The absence of real world deadlines, customer feedback, or performance reviews leaves me free to daydream about having and implementing The Next Great Idea That Changes the World. Of course I'm aware I probably have a better chance of winning the lottery, but it's fun to imagine knocking out some fully-homebrewed app that destroys the status quo. I know many professional programmers have side projects, some for profit others not. I was wondering on the way to work this morning (non-IT boring work) if having to code for your food tended to dampen the dreaming? Does greater experience leave you jaded and more focused on the projects at hand? Not trying to be a downer, just interested in the mindset of the real software professional :-)

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• 25 years old and considering a career change...possible? practical?

  - by mq330

  Hi all, I'm new to this site and new to programming as well. I've spent some time going through an intro cs book that uses python as the language of choice. I find the exercises interesting and engaging and I generally have had a favorable experience programming so far. I've gone through some of the basics with python like writing simple programs, basics of GUIs, manipulating strings, lists, defining functions, etc. And I've always loved technology. Although I've never done any real hardcore programming yet, I was inclined to building websites from a very young age but I never really developed my skills. Now, the thing is I'm 25, I have my bacholors in environmental studies and two masters degrees in urban planning and landscape architecture respectively. I know, it would be quite a departure to pursue a career in programming at this point. Currently, I'm working as a geographic information systems intern. I've taken some GIS classes and have a lot of experience with making maps, doing spatial analysis etc. So what I'm thinking is maybe I can learn some solid programming skills and apply these skills in the field of GIS. From what I've seen, .net languages are the norm in this arena. Could you perhaps provide some guidance to me in terms of what languages I should focus on or courses I should take at this point? What about for building web mapping applications? Also, I was thinking about getting a certificate in programming from a university extension program. Do you think it would be worth it? And furthermore, do you think potential employers would be interested in hiring someone like me (once I get a couple of languages down pretty well) as an intern or in an entry level position? I'll be living in the bay area so I feel that there should be decent opportunities even though I don't have a b.s. in cs.

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• How to bill a client for frequently-interrupted time

  - by Greg

  I find that when I'm working on hourly-billable projects (in particular, those that are research/design/architecture-oriented as opposed to straight coding) that I'm easily distracted by any number of things (email, grab a drink (loss of focus, but nature happens), link off the webpage I was reading, wandering mind (easy when the job calls for a lot of thinking), etc.) This results in very fragmented time, far too incremental IMO to accurately track with a timeclock, and some time very gray. I frequently end up billing for only some fraction of the elapsed time I spent in order to feel fair, but sometimes it takes a really long time to put in an 8-hour day. By contrast, when I've worked for salary I've not worried about whether I'm actively working at any given minute, I just get the job done, and I've never had anything but stellar reviews/feedback from past salaried employers, so I think I get the job done well. I personally believe in an 80/20 cycle: I get 80% of my work done during an inspired 20% of my time. But I have to screw around the other 80% of the time in order to get that first 20%. So the question: what billing/time-tracking policy can I adopt in order to be fair to my hourly customers without having to write off my own less-productive 80% that a salaried employer is willing to overlook in light of the complete package? Note: This question is not about how to be more productive or focused. It's about how to work around whatever salient limitations that I have in a way that's both fair to me and to my customers. Update: A little clarification (to pre-emptively stop some righteous indignation): I currently have a half dozen different project/client groups. It's not a great situation and I'm working at reducing it down to two, but that's my current reality. It's very easy to get off on a thread related to a different project than the one I'm clocking, and I'm not always conscious of it at the time. [I did not intend the question to mean that I was off playing games or making personal calls, etc., and have adjusted wording above to be clearer. Most of the time. I am only human, and sometimes the mind does force you to take a break! :-)]

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• anyone familiar with these analytic questions?

  - by Moon

  So...my recruiter just called me to confirm my interview on Thurs. He also mentioned that I am going to be asked to answer for two analytic questions. He gave me a little bit about those questions. There are eight balls. One of them is defective. There are three incandescent light bulbs inside a room, but switches are placed outside. These are all he said. I think that these are not completed question. Anyone knows what questions these are?? Does my question belong to programmer.stackexchange.com? I thought it would because it is related to interview questions.

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• What languages do you support when localizing?

  - by Javoid

  I recently converted an iphone app to support different languages, and was wondering which ones I should include, and which ones aren't worth the trouble. What I mean by that is best illustrated by an example. In Ireland, the Irish language is spoken by very few of the people there. It could be considered a dying language. Almost everybody speaks English (if not everybody). So in this example, I don't think it's worth the trouble to support. In addition, the number of people using modern technology may be limited as well. For example, most people in Cambodia would not be likely to purchase software, and therefore the benefits of localization are reduced. What languages do you support when localizing?

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• Legitimate use of the Windows "Documents" folder in programs.

  - by romkyns

  Anyone who likes their Documents folder to contain only things they place there knows that the standard Documents folder is completely unsuitable for this task. Every program seems to want to put its settings, data, or something equally irrelevant into the Documents folder, despite the fact that there are folders specifically for this job1. So that this doesn't sound empty, take my personal "Documents" folder as an example. I don't ever use it, in that I never, under any circumstances, save anything into this folder myself. And yet, it contains 46 folders and 3 files at the top level, for a total of 800 files in 500 folders. That's 190 MB of "documents" I didn't create. Obviously any actual documents would immediately get lost in this mess. My question is: can anything be done to improve the situation sufficiently to make "Documents" useful again, say over the next 5 years? Can programmers be somehow educated en-masse not to use it as a dumping ground? Could the OS start reporting some "fake" location hidden under AppData through the existing APIs, while only allowing Explorer and the various Open/Save dialogs to know where the "real" Documents folder resides? Or are any attempts completely futile or even unnecessary? 1For the record, here's a quick summary of the various standard directories that should be used instead of "Documents": RoamingAppData for user-specific data and settings. This is the directory to use for user-specific non-temporary data. Anything placed here will be available on any machine that a given user logs on to in networks where this is configured. Do not place large files here though, because they slow down login/logout in such environments. LocalAppData for user-and-machine-specific data and settings. This data differs for every user and every machine. This is also where very large user-specific data should be placed. ProgramData for machine-specific data and settings. These are the same regardless of which user is logged on, and will not roam to other machines in a network. GetTempPath for all files that may be wiped without loss of data when not in use. This is also the place for things like caches, because like temporary data, a cache does not need to be backed up. Place your huge cache here and you'll save your user some backup trouble. "Documents" itself should only ever be used if the user specified it manually by entering a path or selecting it in a Save dialog. That is the only time it is ever appropriate to save stuff in "Documents".

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• Quit my job (for a new job). Old job wants me to be available for contracting. Steps to take?

  - by Zak

  The company I am leaving has asked that I make myself available to answer questions and/or debug programs occasionally should the need arise. I'm not opposed to this. After searching google for some king of standard contract for this sort of thing, I didn't see any. Is there a standard contract for this sort of thing that you use? Are there any other steps I should take to ensure this kind of arrangement works smoothly?

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• How do you stay productive when dealing with extremely badly written code?

  - by gaearon

  I don't have much experience in working in software industry, being self-taught and having participated in open source before deciding to take a job. Now that I work for money, I also have to deal with some unpleasant stuff, which is normal of course. Recently I was assigned to add logging to a large SharePoint project which is written by some programmer who obviously was learning to code on the job. After 2 years of collaboration, the client switched to our company, but the damage was done, and now somehow I need to maintain this code. Not that the code was too hard to read. Despite problems - each project has one class with several copy-pasted methods, enormous if nestings, Systems Hungarian, undisposed connections — it's still readable. However, I found myself absolutely unproductive despite working on something as simple as adding logging. Basically, I just need to go through the code step by step and add some trace calls. However, the idiocy of the code is so annoying that I get tired within 10 minutes of starting. In the beginning, I used to add using constructs, reduce nesting by reversing if's, rename the variables to readable names—but the project is large, and eventually I gave up. I know this is not the task I should be doing, but at least reducing the mess gave me some kind of psychological reward so I could keep going. Now the trick stopped working, and I still have 60% of my work to do. I started having headaches after work, and I no longer get the feeling of satisfaction I used to get - which would usually allow me to code for 10 hours straight and still feel fresh. This is not just one big rant, for I really do have an actual question: Is there a way to stay productive and not to fight the windmills? Is there some kind of psychological trick to stay focused on the task, instead of thinking “How stupid is that?” each time I see another clever trick by the previous programmer? The problem with adding logging is that I actually have to understand what the code does, and doing so hurts my brain in an unpleasant fashion.

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• Help me choose an Open-Source license

  - by Spartan-117A

  So I've done lots of open-source work. I have released many projects, most of which have fallen under GPL, LGPL, or BSD licensing. Now I have a new project (an implementation library), and I can't find a license that meets my needs (although I believe one may exist, hence this question). This is the list of things I'm looking for in the license. Appropriate credit given for ALL usage or derivative works. No warranty expressed or implied. The library may be freely used in ANY other open-source/free-software product (regardless of license, GPL, BSD, EPL, etc). The library may be used in closed-source/commercial products ONLY WITH WRITTEN PERMISSION. GPL - Useless to me, obviously, as it completely precludes any and all closed-source use, violating requirement (4). BSD/LGPL/MIT - Won't work, because they wouldn't require closed-source developers to get my permission, violating requirement (4). If it wasn't for that, BSD (FreeBSD in particular) would look like a good choice here. EPL/MPL - Won't work either, as the code couldn't be combined with GPL-code, therefore violating requirement (3). Also I'm pretty sure they allow commercial works without asking permission, so they don't meet (4) either. Dual-licensing is an option, but in that case, what combination would hold to all four requirements? Basically, I want BSD minus the commercial use, plus an option to use in commercial/closed-source as long as the developer has my written permission. EDIT: At the moment, thinking something like multiple-licensing under GPL/LGPL plus something else for commercial?

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• Video crashes with 10.10

  - by John Mahon

  I have installed both the 64bit and 32 bit versions of 10.10 on my Compaq Presario PC. I first installed the 64 bit version of the OS.The video often crashed when switching user. It also went haywire occasionally when I visited some web-sites. I read that there may be some problems with the 64 bit OS. So I installed the 32 bit version on another disk. This version seemed even less well behaved. HP's model number for the computer is SR1838NX. The hardware is listed at http://bizsupport1.austin.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?objectID=c00628274&lang=en&cc=us&contentType=SupportFAQ&prodSeriesId=1841793&prodTypeId=12454&printver=true#A0 I think the important info is that the chip set is "ATI Radeon Xpress 200" and the processor is "Athlon 64 (S) 3700+ 2.2 GHz" Has anyone else had video problems with similar machines? Is there a work around or an update? I have had previous versions of Ubuntu working on this machine and other flavors of Linux as well. Thanks in advance. John

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• Cannot find install-sh, install.sh, or shtool in ac-aux

  - by Micah

  This is my first time trying to compile and install anything on a linux machine. I got the latest version of https://github.com/processone/exmpp via git and read the instructions which state: 2. Build and install Exmpp uses the Autotools. Therefore the process is quite common: $ ./configure $ make $ sudo make install after type ./configure I get the error Cannot find install-sh, install.sh, or shtool in ac-aux Google was of little to no help. Not sure at all what I'm supposed to do. Any help would be much appreciated

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• How to apply disk quota in ubuntu server on a VPS?

  - by Pedram

  I have a VPS with ubuntu server 10.04 installed on it.Now I want to have some shell users with limited home folder size. It seems quota is the best way to do this, but all tutorials require editing /etc/fstab and add usrquota or grpquota to /home partition options. As my /etc/fstab looks like this: proc /proc proc defaults 0 0 none /dev/pts devpts rw 0 0 how can I apply quota?

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• How can you print a text file via gedit from the command line?

  - by dan

  I'd like to use gedit or some similar program just as a page formatter and pipe some text through it and onto the printer. | lpr just doesn't cut it in the presentation department. The printed output is subpar, even if I try to tinker with the margin and font size options. But I like the way text looks like when printed from gedit. Is there a way to have the best of both worlds and use a command line pipeline to print a text file with gedit-quality formatting?

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• Cannot mount Android phone and sync with Banshee

  - by Brett Alton

  I can't get my LG Optimus One to sync with Banshee. I read somewhere that the root needs to have an empty file called '.is_audio_player'. I did that and it still doesn't mount. I ran dmesg however and it appears that the card is unmounting before I even have a change to run Banshee. [ 7250.321359] usb 1-1.4: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 10 [ 7250.444795] scsi12 : usb-storage 1-1.4:1.0 [ 7251.567946] scsi 12:0:0:0: Direct-Access Multiple Card Reader 1.00 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0 [ 7251.568839] sd 12:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg3 type 0 [ 7252.232433] sd 12:0:0:0: [sdc] 15564800 512-byte logical blocks: (7.96 GB/7.42 GiB) [ 7252.233299] sd 12:0:0:0: [sdc] Write Protect is off [ 7252.233306] sd 12:0:0:0: [sdc] Mode Sense: 03 00 00 00 [ 7252.233309] sd 12:0:0:0: [sdc] Assuming drive cache: write through [ 7252.235658] sd 12:0:0:0: [sdc] Assuming drive cache: write through [ 7252.235666] sdc: sdc1 [ 7252.239132] sd 12:0:0:0: [sdc] Assuming drive cache: write through [ 7252.239140] sd 12:0:0:0: [sdc] Attached SCSI removable disk [ 7272.573437] usb 1-1.4: USB disconnect, address 10 Suggestions?

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• Ubuntu installer thinks my drive is empty, does not see windows paritions.

  - by John

  Hello, I am trying to install Ubuntu10.10 64bit. I just installed Windows 7 64bit moments ago. My drive is currently partitioned like so: 100MB Boot partition (automatically made by windows 7 installer) 390GB Windows partition ~1.6TB free space When I go through the Ubuntu installer it does not give me the option to install alongside another operating system. My only options are to use the entire disk or to specify partitions manually. When I chose to specify partitions manually it tells me that the drive is all free space! Windows is still booting and behaving normally, and I had not doing anything in Windows yet (had simply installed, booted for first time, then immediately restarted). I am even able to mount the windows partition within Ubuntu Live CD, and see it in the disk viewer (not gparted). Gparted in Ubuntu Live CD again reports no partitions, all free space. Not sure what to do :S. I have installed Windows7 alongside Ubuntu countless times, even Ubuntu 10.10. Thank you very much for your help :).

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• How do I get network working on a Dell n5010 - Ubuntu 10.04

  - by cyberroger

  Hey. I just formatted a Dell n5010 and installed Ubuntu 10.04. Now,when i try to access the Internet it doesn't find the available networks. Informations about it: My network is set to broadcast SSID; Already typed lspci, and it doesnt returns my wireless card; Tried installing windows drivers from fabricant cd usind diswrapper, but it says it cant complete the installation because it cant find some "Device" folder; I don't know what else to do, I switch the wireless button on/off and it just can't see any wireless connection, includin mine. Here are the informations about lspci: *-network UNCLAIMED description: Network controller product: Broadcom Corporation vendor: Broadcom Corporation physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:12:00.0 version: 01 width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list configuration: latency=0 resources: memory:fbc00000-fbc03fff And this: 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor DRAM Controller (rev 18) 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 18) 00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset HECI Controller (rev 06) 00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset USB2 Enhanced Host Controller (rev 06) 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset High Definition Audio (rev 06) 00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev 06) 00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 2 (rev 06) 00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 3 (rev 06) 00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 5 (rev 06) 00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset USB2 Enhanced Host Controller (rev 06) 00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev a6) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 5 Series Chipset LPC Interface Controller (rev 06) 00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset 6 port SATA AHCI Controller (rev 06) 00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset SMBus Controller (rev 06) 00:1f.6 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset Thermal Subsystem (rev 06) 12:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation Device 4727 (rev 01) 13:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller (rev 02) Thanks!

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• Compiling midnight commander

  - by notabene

  Hello, I need help with compiling midnight commander so that I can make some changes (for educational purposes). Or even creating the make files. After downloading latest version from git. I try to perform ./autogen.sh . Result is: maint/autopoint: 418: cannot open /usr/share/gettext/archive.tar.gz: No such file tar: This does not look like a tar archive tar: Exiting with failure status due to previous errors cvs checkout: cannot find module `archive' - ignored find: `archive': No such file or directory find: `archive': No such file or directory find: `archive': No such file or directory autopoint: *** infrastructure files for version 0.14.3 not found; this is autopoint from GNU gettext-tools 0.17 autopoint: *** Stop. I have installed gettext and folder /usr/share/gettext does exist. But there is no archive.tar.gz. I have no idea what should this archive contain or where to get it. Can you help me please?

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• Setting Up Audio on a Server Install

  - by tdcrenshaw

  I'm running on a clean install of 10.10 Server edition and have alsa-base, alsa-tools, alsa-utils, alsaplayer, and alsa-firmware-loader installed. At one point I installed pulseaudio, but I have since removed it. I've tried the following lspci | grep audio 00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 01) 01:06.0 Multimedia audio controller: Creative Labs [SB Live! Value] EMU10k1X aplay -l aplay: device_list:235: no soundcards found... alsamixer can not open mixer: No such file or directory When I search for modules with find /lib/modules/`uname -r` | grep snd I do get a list of modules I'm not very experienced with alsa setup, so I'm not sure where to go from here

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• My site is getting popular, bandwidth expensive

  - by ElbertF

  I'm running a (small) image hosting site which has been getting a little bit of traction lately (2,000 to 5,000 visitors a day, spikes up to 10,000). It's hosted on Linode and I've already run out of the bandwidth for this month (300 GB). I've experimented with Amazon S3 but that was costing me $5 a day, Linode currently costs me $30 a month. I get a tiny bit of revenue from ads (Adsense and Black Label Ads) but it's not enough to break even. What should I do? Obviously I'd like to keep running the site but not if it starts costing me a lot of money.

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• Why don't TITLE tags get indexed in google?

  - by Sam

  Hi folks, a question: When I seach "Ride On" + my sites name, I see its indexed But when I search for "Green Horse" + my site's name, I dont see my site appearing in the results anywhere! <td><a href="#" title="Green Horse Ride">Ride On</a></td> Question1 Does this mean that title="" attributes are not indexed/shown by google at all? Question2 What is better to use ? Alt? what are my other alternatives except title and alt?

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• Problem in Addon Domain name binding with existing directory in my webspace

  - by articlestack

  I recently purchased a domain thinkzarahatke.com. At the time of purchasing i selected an option, say url redirect, to my existing site. Further I had entered Naming server detail. But I dint find any other option to change URL rewrite parameters under Domain Name Manager. From the cPanel of my hosting space, I had added new domain as addon and set a sundirectory for it. Now If I am trying to access my new domain directly, it is automatically redirecting to my old website. While if i access some inside directory, like thinkzarahatke.com/blog, then i am able to access to my new site. What wrong i done? Please tell me if i need to do some more settings with addon domain.

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• Open Source AI Bot interfaces

  - by David Young

  What are some open source AI Bot interfaces? Similar to Pogamut 3 GameBots2004 for custom Unreal Tournament bots or Brood Wars API for Starcraft bots etc. If you could please post one AI bot interface per answer (make sure to provide a link) and give a brief summary as to the content of the blog posts. Please include what type of bot interface structure it is, client/server, server/server, etc e.g. BWAPI is client/server which emulates a real player

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• How do I display a field's hidden characters in the result of a query in Oracle?

  - by Chris Williams

  I have two rows that have a varchar column that are different according to a Java .equals(). I can't easily change or debug the Java code that's running against this particular database but I do have access to do queries directly against the database using SQLDeveloper. The fields look the same to me (they are street addresses with two lines separated by some new line or carriage feed/new line combo). Is there a way to see all of the hidden characters as the result of a query?I'd like to avoid having to use the ascii() function with substr() on each of the rows to figure out which hidden character is different. I'd also accept some query that shows me which character is the first difference between the two fields.

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