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• Frequent Disconnects with an Intel 3945ABG Wireless Card

  - by Alex Forsythe

  I'm brand new to Ubuntu, and I really love it so far, but one issue I have encountered is that my WLAN is disconnecting about every 5-10 minutes. Often times the connection is repaired automatically, but sometimes the network manager will repeatedly reject my encryption key (which of course is correct). Occasionally after a disconnect, the wireless network fails to show up at all. The only way I can solve this seems to be by completely restarting Ubuntu or connecting with a USB wireless adapter. I am using WPA/WPA2 encryption, which I've read can cause problems with network-manager, but I experience the exact same issues with WICD. I should probably note that I've not experienced any of these issues using Windows 7 on my other partition. I have a hunch that there may be a better driver out there for my card, but I have no idea how to go about searching for it or installing it. Any help would be really appreciated! lsb_release -a No LSB modules are available. Distributor ID: Ubuntu Description: Ubuntu 11.10 Release: 11.10 Codename: oneiric lspci -nnk 09:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5752 Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express [14e4:1600] (rev 02) Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:0201] Kernel driver in use: tg3 Kernel modules: tg3 0c:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG [Golan] Network Connection [8086:4222] (rev 02) Subsystem: Intel Corporation Device [8086:1020] Kernel driver in use: iwl3945 Kernel modules: iwl3945 rfkill list 0: phy0: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no 2: dell-wifi: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no 3: dell-bluetooth: Bluetooth Soft blocked: yes Hard blocked: no

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• Server-side Architecture for Online Game

  - by Draiken

  Hi, basically I have a game client that has communicate with a server for almost every action it takes, the game is in Java (using LWJGL) and right now I will start making the server. The base of the game is normally one client communicating with the server alone, but I will require later on for several clients to work together for some functionalities. I've already read how authentication server should be sepparated and I intend on doing it. The problem is I am completely inexperienced in this kind of server-side programming, all I've ever programmed were JSF web applications. I imagine I'll do socket connections for pretty much every game communication since HTML is very slow, but I still don't really know where to start on my server. I would appreciate reading material or guidelines on where to start, what architecture should the game server have and maybe some suggestions on frameworks that could help me getting the client-server communication. I've looked into JNAG but I have no experience with this kind of thing, so I can't really tell if it is a solid and good messaging layer. Any help is appreciated... Thanks !

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• Why is my wireless significantly slower on Ubuntu 12.04, as compared to windows 7?

  - by user89266

  I'm dual booting 12.04, and Win7. Just a tiny bit of background, I'm starting to get more and more interested in programming and 3d modelling, so I'd like to learn more about ubuntu as a result of those interests. Still a complete newb though! Anyway, When downloading on windows, I get 1.5mb/s easy. Now I swap over to Ubuntu, and it hasn't topped 150 kb/s since I installed it some 6 months ago. I'd downloaded most of my programs on windows, so I never really noticed it, but as I'm committing to ubuntu more, it's starting to hinder me. I'm with Shaw, on their Highspeed 20, which gives me 20 mbps down, and 6mbps up. Speedtest.com shows me varying figures somewhat close to what shaw says they give on both windows and ubuntu, which is to be expected, given that it is shaw afterall... So, I don't know what you guys need to know, and I know even less about how to get it to you. Whatever information you guys need, tell me how to get it, how to get it up here, and i'll get it on here! I thought it might be that I'm using a proprietary driver, when an open sourced one would work better? But I really have no clue. Any help would be very much appreciated. Thanks guys!

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• Doing powerups in a component-based system

  - by deft_code

  I'm just starting really getting my head around component based design. I don't know what the "right" way to do this is. Here's the scenario. The player can equip a shield. The the shield is drawn as bubble around the player, it has a separate collision shape, and reduces the damage the player receives from area effects. How is such a shield architected in a component based game? Where I get confused is that the shield obviously has three components associated with it. Damage reduction / filtering A sprite A collider. To make it worse different shield variations could have even more behaviors, all of which could be components: boost player maximum health health regen projectile deflection etc Am I overthinking this? Should the shield just be a super component? I really think this is wrong answer. So if you think this is the way to go please explain. Should the shield be its own entity that tracks the location of the player? That might make it hard to implement the damage filtering. It also kinda blurs the lines between attached components and entities. Should the shield be a component that houses other components? I've never seen or heard of anything like this, but maybe it's common and I'm just not deep enough yet. Should the shield just be a set of components that get added to the player? Possibly with an extra component to manage the others, e.g. so they can all be removed as a group. (accidentally leave behind the damage reduction component, now that would be fun). Something else that's obvious to someone with more component experience?

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• Semantic Form Markup for Yes or No Questions

  - by sholsinger

  I frequently receive mock-ups of HTML forms with the following prototype: Some long winded yes or no question?   (o) Yes   ( ) No The (o) and ( ) in this prototype represent radio buttons. My personal view is that if the question has only a true or false value then it should be a check box. That said, I have seen this sort of "layout" from almost every designer I've ever worked with. If I were not to question their decision, or question the client's decision, I'd probably mark it up like this: <p class="pseudo_label">Some long winded yes or no question?</p> <input type="radio" name="the_question" id="the_question_yes" value="1"> <label for="the_question_yes" class="after_radio">Yes</label> <input type="radio" name="the_question" id="the_question_no" value="0"> <label for="the_question_no" class="after_radio">No</label> I really don't want to do that. I want to push back and convince them that this should really be a check box and not two radio buttons. But my question is, if I can't convince them – you're welcome to help me try – how should I code that original design requirement such that it is semantic and at least understandable for screen reader users? If I were able to convince my tormentors to change their minds, I would likely code it in the following fashion: <label for="the_question">Some long winded yes or no question?</label> <input type="checkbox" name="the_question" id="the_question" value="1"> What do you think about this issue? Should I push back? Possibly more importantly is either way semantically correct? UPDATE: I have posted a related question on the UI SE per your suggestions. You can find it here: http://ui.stackexchange.com/q/3335/3493

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• Hardware compatibility on H97 chipset/hardware support

  - by user3238850

  I am aware that there is documentation about compatibility but it is way out dated. I am also aware that there is a hardware compatibility page on Ubuntu website, but that one is focused on the whole box rather than a single piece of hardware. I have some experience with Linux OS, and some experience playing Ubuntu Server in a virtual machine, but never worked on a machine that lives in the real internet. I am building a home server with an Intel H97 chipset motherboard. I have looked at several models and none of them has Linux in the supported OS category. I have the experience of installing Ubuntu Desktop 14.04 on my 4-years-old lap top, and except for some system errors on start up, there is not too much I can complain about, so I guess I should be fine. However, this time I am going to install Ubuntu Server 14.04 on a relatively new piece of hardware(I went to http://linux-drivers.org/ but found nothing really helpful). For example the ASUS motherboard has M.2 socket and Intel LAN I218V chip, the Gigabyte motherboard has two LAN chips(Intel LAN WGI217V and ATHEROS AR8161-BL3A-R). So I really want to make sure everything will work. Usually I would just trust Ubuntu and buy all hardware I need, but basing on my past experience with the Ubuntu Desktop version on my lap top, I am not so convinced. There is an easily noticeable difference: when the system is idle, the fan runs much more frequently and longer under Ubuntu. This leads to my suspicion that generally hardware will have worse support for Ubuntu, which is no surprising at all but enough for me to put this post here. And as far as I know, some Intel CPU features come with software that usually will not run under Linux. Any help, idea or thoughts would be greatly appreciated!

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• SQL Saturday Atlanta: Intro To Performance Tuning

  - by Mike Femenella

  I'm looking forward to speaking in Atlanta on the 24th, will be fun to get back down that way to visit with some friends and present two topics that I really enjoy. First, an introduction to performance tuning. Performance tuning is a very wide and deep topic and we're staying close to the surface. I direct this class for newbie sql users who have less than 2 years of experience. It's all the things I wish someone would have told me in my first 2 years about what to look for when the database was slow...or allegedly slow I should say. We'll cover using profiler to find slow performing queries and how to save the data off to a table as well as a tour of other features. The difference between clustered, non clustered and covering indexes. How to look at and understand an execution plan (at a high level) and finally the difference between a temp table and a table variable and what the implications are of using either one in your code. That pretty much takes up a full hour. Second presentation, Loading Data in Real Time. It's really a presentation about partitioning but with a twist that we used at work recently to solve a need to load some data quickly and put it into production with minimal downtime. We'll cover partition functions, schemes,$partition, merge, sys.partitions and show some examples of building a set of partitioned tables and using the switch statement to move it from one table to another. Finally we'll cover the differences in partitioning between 2005 and 2008. Hope to see you there! And if you read my blog please introduce yourself!

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• Visual Studio 2010 Keyboard Shortcut Posters Available

  - by Jim Duffy

  I’m a firm believer in the productivity gains you experience when using keyboard shortcuts in Visual Studio. If you’re not using keyboard shortcuts while coding then your productivity is suffering. Some of my favorites (omitting the obvious ones like F5 to start debugging) as are: Ctrl+K, C – Comment section of code Ctrl+K, U – Uncomment section of code Ctrl+K, D – Format the current document (indentation, etc.) Shift+Alt+C – Add new class to a project Shift+Alt+A – Add existing item to a project Ctrl+Shift+A – Add new item to a project The good news is all of these and a TON of others are all documented in the Visual Studio Keyboard Shortcut Posters (available as PDFs). The only problem is there are so many you need a printer capable of printing on larger paper because while you can read them all on 8 1/2 x 11 paper in landscape mode, for them to be a valuable quick reference on your cubicle wall you’re going to need to print them on large paper. If you don’t have a printer capable of producing large sized printouts head down to Office Depot, Staples, FedEx Office, or your favorite print shop and have them print one for you. Oh and one last thing, I’d really like Microsoft to take those people’s picture off them. Really? Do we need to look at these people when trying to improve our productivity? Have a day. :-|

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• How to Manage Technical Employees

  - by Ajarn Mark Caldwell

  In my current position as Software Engineering Manager I have been through a lot of ups and downs with staffing, ranging from laying-off everyone who was on my team as we went through the great economic downturn in 2007-2008, to numerous rounds of interviewing and hiring contractors, full-time employees, and converting some contractors to employee status.  I have not yet blogged much about my experiences, but I plan to do that more in the next few months.  But before I do that, let me point you to a great article that somebody else wrote on The Unspoken Truth About Managing Geeks that really hits the target.  If you are a non-technical person who manages technical employees, you definitely have to read that article.  And if you are a technical person who has been promoted into management, this article can really help you do your job and communicate up the line of command about your team.  When you move into management with all the new and different demands put on you, it is easy to forget how things work in the tech subculture, and to lose touch with your team.  This article will help you remember what’s going on behind the scenes and perhaps explain why people who used to get along great no longer are, or why things seem to have changed since your promotion. I have to give credit to Andy Leonard (blog | twitter) for helping me find that article.  I have been reading his series of ramble-rants on managing tech teams, and the above article is linked in the first rant in the series, entitled Goodwill, Negative and Positive.  I have read a handful of his entries in this series and so far I pretty much agree with everything he has said, so of course I would encourage you to read through that series, too.

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• Why does everybody hate SharePoint?

  - by Ryan Michela

  Reading this topic about the most over hyped technologies I noticed that SharePoint is almost universally reviled. My experience with SharePoint (especially the most recent versions) is that it accomplishes it's core competencies smartly. Namely: Centralized document repository - get all those office documents out of email (with versioning) User-editible content creation for internal information disemination - look, an HR site with current phone numbers and the vacation policy Project collaboration - a couple clicks creates a site with a project's documents, task list, simple schedule, threaded discussion, and possibly a list of all project related emails. Very basic business automation - when you fill out the vacation form, an email is sent to HR. My experience is that SharePoint only gets really ugly when an organization tries to push it in a direction it isn't designed for. SharePoint is not a CRM, ERP, bug database or external website. SharePoint is flexible enough to serve in a pinch, but it is no replacement for a dedicated tool. (Microsoft is just as guilty of pushing SharePoint into domains it doesn't belong.) If you use SharePoint for what it's designed for, it really does work. Thoughts?

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• Is Linq having a mind-numbing effect on .NET programmers?

  - by Aaronaught

  A lot of us started seeing this phenomenon with jQuery about a year ago when people started asking how to do absolutely insane things like retrieve the query string with jQuery. The difference between the library (jQuery) and the language (JavaScript) is apparently lost on many programmers, and results in a lot of inappropriate, convoluted code being written where it is not necessary. Maybe it's just my imagination, but I swear I'm starting to see an uptick in the number of questions where people are asking to do similarly insane things with Linq, like find ranges in a sorted array. I can't get over how thoroughly inappropriate the Linq extensions are for solving that problem, but more importantly the fact that the author just assumed that the ideal solution would involve Linq without actually thinking about it (as far as I can tell). It seems that we are repeating history, breeding a new generation of .NET programmers who can't tell the difference between the language (C#/VB.NET) and the library (Linq). What is responsible for this phenomenon? Is it just hype? Magpie tendencies? Has Linq picked up a reputation as a form of magic, where instead of actually writing code you just have to utter the right incantation? I'm hardly satisfied with those explanations but I can't really think of anything else. More importantly, is it really a problem, and if so, what's the best way to help enlighten these people?

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• How to prevent multiple playing sounds from destroying your hearing?

  - by Rookie

  The problem is that when I play 100 sounds almost at same time, all I hear is noise. It's not very attractive to listen it for 30 minutes straight. I tried to fix this by allowing only 1 sound of each sound type to be played at once. But it still sounds really ugly; eventually my brain keeps hearing only the very end of the shot sounds (or the start of it?), and that gets on my nerves really quickly. Eventually I would just decide to turn off the sounds completely. So is there any point of using sounds in a game like this at all? How does our dear reality handle this problem? If there is a war out there, how does it sound when hundred of men shoot almost at the same times? Edit: Here is how the game sounds currently; there isn't even 100 sounds playing at once, maybe 20? http://www.speedyshare.com/VTBDw/headache.mp3 At the beginning it sounds OK, but then it becomes unbearable! In that audio clip there is allowed only 1 sound to be played at once, so it will stop the previous playing sound when new sound is played. Edit2: And here is same headache but 32 simultaneous sounds allowed to be played at same time: http://www.speedyshare.com/TuWAR/headache-worse.mp3 Quite a torture, eh?

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• Were the first assemblers written in machine code?

  - by The111

  I am reading the book The Elements of Computing Systems: Building a Modern Computer from First Principles, which contains projects encompassing the build of a computer from boolean gates all the way to high level applications (in that order). The current project I'm working on is writing an assembler using a high level language of my choice, to translate from Hack assembly code to Hack machine code (Hack is the name of the hardware platform built in the previous chapters). Although the hardware has all been built in a simulator, I have tried to pretend that I am really constructing each level using only the tools available to me at that point in the real process. That said, it got me thinking. Using a high level language to write my assembler is certainly convenient, but for the very first assembler ever written (i.e. in history), wouldn't it need to be written in machine code, since that's all that existed at the time? And a correlated question... how about today? If a brand new CPU architecture comes out, with a brand new instruction set, and a brand new assembly syntax, how would the assembler be constructed? I'm assuming you could still use an existing high level language to generate binaries for the assembler program, since if you know the syntax of both the assembly and machine languages for your new platform, then the task of writing the assembler is really just a text analysis task and is not inherently related to that platform (i.e. needing to be written in that platform's machine language)... which is the very reason I am able to "cheat" while writing my Hack assembler in 2012, and use some preexisting high level language to help me out.

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• Where does jQuery fit-in with frameworks like JavaScriptMVC, BackboneJS, SproutCore and Knockout?

  - by Prisoner ZERO

  I have been happily using JQuery for the last 2 years and have been quite sucessful creating some really cool functionality with it...so I am very comfortable with it. I also beleive the future of the web will continue on the current client-side path. However... The next challenge seems to be coming in the form of various controller frameworks: KnockoutJS, BackboneJS, SproutCore, JavaScriptMVC (the list goes on). Additonally, there are some great AMD Loader tools for use like RequireJS or LabJS etc. However, jQuery now has define and then capabilities baked-in. It's getting harder-and-harder to keep track of it all... And now, my task seems to be to evaluate/decide-on a strategic-direction for using some form of either an MVC or MVVM framework client-side...but I have so many questions. Where does JQuery fit-in with the various controller-frameworks mentioned above? Is JQuery used alongside each or do some of them have their own 'JQuery-styled version' baked-in? Are tools like RequireJS still needed if you implement one of the various controller-frameworks mentioned above? Does the define and then capabilities baked-into JQuery now supercede the AMD Loader mentioned above? Which one seems most modular? (see notes below) NOTES: One thing I don't want in any future-framework is the requirement of having to take-in vast amounts of functionality that I don't use. Meaning, I would rather use a framework that is truly modular. For example, to use jQuery UI you have to take-in a lot other core libraries that you might not actually use. I will be experimenting with each one, but some REAL feedback would be great. I've seen some 'similar' questions, but none have really answered the above skew. Thanks in advance!

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• problems with installation of ubuntu 12.04 (64 and 32 bits)

  - by user76104

  I am a latinoamerican so.. sorry for my english I am trying to install ubuntu on my new pc but I have serious problems. When I put the installation cd and it runs, everything goes fine until that "window" when the user have to decide if want to try ubuntu or install it on the machine.. well that "window" apears in blank, and I see that my mouse and my keyboard turn really slowly and I can't do anything I have to shut it down by pressing power botton. The specification of my pc are this Gigabyte ex58 ud7 i7 950 wester digital caviar black 6gb memory corsair evga gtx580 Please i really neeed to install ubuntu or another linux distrubution, i am usign de sismic unix program on my laptop and well. it burns when i program a script! help! please :) what can i do..? what i have to download? i am not a pro in linux so please :( be pattient with me when it starts to load the achieve ubuntu environment to enter a menu with a graphical environment but I managed to get something sturdy and gave him to try ubuntu, started to load but freezes on the sign of ubuntu with red spots and only shows me the pointer not more ..... any other option? ps: had previously tried to install the alternate version of ubuntu not having success: S

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• Should a model binder populate all of the model?

  - by Richard

  Should a model binder populate all of the model, or only the bits that are being posted? For example, I am adding a product in my system and on the form i want the user to select which sites the new product will appear on. Therefore, in my model I want to populate a collection called "AllAvailableSites" to render the checkboxes for the user to choose from. I also need to populate the model with any chosen sites on a post in case the form does not validate, and I need to represent the form showing the initial selections. It would seem that I should let the model binder set the chosen sites on the model, and (once in the controller method) I set the "AllAvailableSites" on the model. Does that sound right? It seems more efficient to set everything in the model binder but someone is suggesting it is not quite right. I am grateful for any advice; I have to say that all the MVC model binding help online seems to cite really simple examples, nothing complicated. Do I really need a GET and a POST version of a method? Can't they just take the same view model? Then I check in my model binder if it is a GET/POST, and populate all the model accordingly.

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• How do you name/brand software?

  - by JasCav

  I am working on an application that is brand new. We have been using an internal name up to this point, but it's not very imaginative and is definitely not good from a branding standpoint. I have been tasked to come up with a name for the software. I am really struggling with this as every name I have thought about really doesn't seem to do the software justice. I have tried acronyms, mythology names, scientific names, etc. I may be being a bit picky, but I feel like the name should just hit me when its right. Here are my requirements: The name has to be easy to say (and hopefully catchy). The name has to relate back to what the software does. The name has to be able to be branded. (For example, vivid imagery, tagline, etc.) So, although I can't give the specifics of the software, I was hoping the brains here could provide some insight as to how I should go about naming/branding a piece of software?

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• Duplication of code (backend and javascript - knockout)

  - by Michal B.

  We have a new developer in our team. He seems a smart guy (he just came in so I cannot really judge). He started with implementing some small enhancements in the project (MVC3 web application using javascript - jquery and knockout). Let's say we have two values: A - quite complex calculation C - constant B = A + C On the screen there is value B and user can change it (normal texbox). When B changes, A changes as well because C is constant. So there is linear dependency between A and B. Now, all the calculations are done in the backend, but we need to recalculate A as user changes B (in js, I would use knockout). I thought about storing old A and B and when B changes by 10 then we know that new A will be old A + 10. He says this is dirty, because it's duplication of code (we make use of the fact that they are dependent and according to him that should be only in one place in our app). I understand it's not ideal, but making AJAX request after every key press seems a bit too much. It's a really small thing and I would not post if we haven't had long discussion about it. How do you deal with such problems? Also I can imagine that using knockout implies lots of calculations on the client side, which very often leads to duplication of the same calculations from the backend. Does anyone have links to some articles/thoughts on this topic?

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• To encryption=on or encryption=off a simple ZFS Crypto demo

  - by darrenm

  I've just been asked twice this week how I would demonstrate ZFS encryption really is encrypting the data on disk.  It needs to be really simple and the target isn't forensics or cryptanalysis just a quick demo to show the before and after. I usually do this small demo using a pool based on files so I can run strings(1) on the "disks" that make up the pool. The demo will work with real disks too but it will take a lot longer (how much longer depends on the size of your disks).  The file hamlet.txt is this one from gutenberg.org # mkfile 64m /tmp/pool1_file # zpool create clear_pool /tmp/pool1_file # cp hamlet.txt /clear_pool # grep -i hamlet /clear_pool/hamlet.txt | wc -l Note the number of times hamlet appears # zpool export clear_pool # strings /tmp/pool1_file | grep -i hamlet | wc -l Note the number of times hamlet appears on disk - it is 2 more because the file is called hamlet.txt and file names are in the clear as well and we keep at least two copies of metadata. Now lets encrypt the file systems in the pool. Note you MUST use a new pool file don't reuse the one from above. # mkfile 64m /tmp/pool2_file # zpool create -O encryption=on enc_pool /tmp/pool2_file Enter passphrase for 'enc_pool': Enter again: # cp hamlet.txt /enc_pool # grep -i hamlet /enc_pool/hamlet.txt | wc -l Note the number of times hamlet appears is the same as before # zpool export enc_pool # strings /tmp/pool2_file | grep -i hamlet | wc -l Note the word hamlet doesn't appear at all! As a said above this isn't indended as "proof" that ZFS does encryption properly just as a quick to do demo.

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• Why is a small fixed vocabulary seen as an advantage to RESTful services?

  - by Matt Esch

  So, a RESTful service has a fixed set of verbs in its vocabulary. A RESTful web service takes these from the HTTP methods. There are some supposed advantages to defining a fixed vocabulary, but I don't really grasp the point. Maybe someone can explain it. Why is a fixed vocabulary as outlined by REST better than dynamically defining a vocabulary for each state? For example, object oriented programming is a popular paradigm. RPC is described to define fixed interfaces, but I don't know why people assume that RPC is limited by these contraints. We could dynamically specify the interface just as a RESTful service dynamically describes its content structure. REST is supposed to be advantageous in that it can grow without extending the vocabulary. RESTful services grow dynamically by adding more resources. What's so wrong about extending a service by dynamically specifying a per-object vocabulary? Why don't we just use the methods that are defined on our objects as the vocabulary and have our services describe to the client what these methods are and whether or not they have side effects? Essentially I get the feeling that the description of a server side resource structure is equivalent to the definition of a vocabulary, but we are then forced to use the limited vocabulary in which to interact with these resources. Does a fixed vocabulary really decouple the concerns of the client from the concerns of the server? I surely have to be concerned with some configuration of the server, this is normally resource location in RESTful services. To complain at the use of a dynamic vocabulary seems unfair because we have to dynamically reason how to understand this configuration in some way anyway. A RESTful service describes the transitions you are able to make by identifying object structure through hypermedia. I just don't understand what makes a fixed vocabulary any better than any self-describing dynamic vocabulary, which could easily work very well in an RPC-like service. Is this just a poor reasoning for the limiting vocabulary of the HTTP protocol?

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• Live chat solutions

  - by Lèse majesté

  What good live chat/live help solutions are available (preferably for use on a site hosted on a LAMP stack and free)? I'm looking for a way to allow our sales and customer service reps to talk directly with visitors to our site. I've looked at phpopenchat, but it looks very unpolished. The only other free live chat app I've come across looked egregious. The aesthetics and UI design alone made me shudder to think what the underlying code might look like. This isn't a critical feature, and it wouldn't be hard to code up myself, so I'm not really looking for commercial software or paid services (unless there's a really compelling reason to use them). I'm just wondering if any other webmasters have come across a satisfactory free/open source solution for providing live customer support on their website. As a side note, live voice chat would also be an option, but it has to be be designed (or customizable) for customer support rather than a public chatroom. Edit: Looking at the responses, it looks like there probably aren't going to be many free solutions for this type of business-oriented chat solution, so feel free to post answers even if they are commercial solutions as long as they're a good value. Also feel free to post any alternate live support solutions (such as the Skype recommendation) that could be in someway integrated with a website. This will give me a good lay of the land for what people are actually using for live support, and I think will be more helpful to others reading this question.

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• Huge procedurally generated 'wilderness' worlds

  - by The Communist Duck

  I'm sure you all know of games like Dwarf Fortress - massive, procedural generated wilderness and land. Something like this, taken from this very useful article. However, I was wondering how I could apply this to a much larger scale; the scale of Minecraft comes to mind (isn't that something like 8x the size of the Earth's surface?). Pseudo-infinite, I think the best term would be. The article talks about fractal perlin noise. I am no way an expert on it, but I get the general idea (it's some kind of randomly generated noise which is semi-coherent, so not just random pixel values). I could just define regions X by X in size, add some region loading type stuff, and have one bit of noise generating a region. But this would result in just huge amounts of islands. On the other extreme, I don't think I can really generate a supermassive sheet of perlin noise. And it would just be one big island, I think. I am pretty sure Perlin noise, or some noise, would be the answer in some way. I mean, the map is really nice looking. And you could replace the ascii with tiles, and get something very nice looking. Anyone have any ideas? Thanks. :D

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• In a 2D platform game, how to ensure the player moves smoothly over sloping ground?

  - by Kovsa

  See image: http://i41.tinypic.com/huis13.jpg I'm developing a physics engine for a 2D platform game. I'm using the separating axis theorem for collision detection. The ground surface is constructed from oriented bounding boxes, with the player as an axis aligned bounding box. (Specifically, I'm using the algorithm from the book "Realtime Collision Detection" which performs swept collision detection for OBBs using SAT). I'm using a fairly small (close to zero) restitution coefficient in the collision response, to ensure that the dynamic objects don't penetrate the environment. The engine mostly works fine, it's just that I'm concerned about some edge cases that could possibly occur. For example, in the diagram, A, B and C are the ground surface. The player is heading left along B towards A. It seems to me that due to inaccuracy, the player box could be slightly below the box B as it continues up and left. When it reaches A, therefore, the bottom left corner of the player might then collide with the right side of A, which would be undesirable (as the intention is for the player to move smoothly over the top of A). It seems like a similar problem could happen when the player is on top of box C, moving left towards B - the most extreme point of B could collide with the left side of the player, instead of the player's bottom left corner sliding up and left above B. Box2D seems to handle this problem by storing connectivity information for its edge shapes, but I'm not really sure how it uses this information to solve the problem, and after looking at the code I don't really grasp what it's doing. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

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• Boot existing ubuntu installation on uefi, GPT BTRFS

  - by user204720

  I have looked through many of the questions, and haven't found anything that quite satisfies this problem. I have an ssd hard drive that is bootable from my old computer. It is a standard BIOS, however, I built a new computer with Z87 motherboard that is a UEFI. What I'd like to do is boot from this hard drive without wiping out the hard drive. I've tried booting from legacy mode, doesn't seem to work. Part of the multitude of problems is my partitioning scheme, which is GPT. sdx1 is the btrfs system, sdx2 swap, sdx3 is bios_grub. I've tried setting the UEFI/BIOS to boot in legacy mode, I've tried turning my swap partition into a Grub EFI boot, I've tried copying the file system onto a new drive installed on the new system. However, copying the information doesn't keep the filesystem or subvolumes intact. I've also tried boot-repair which is when I overwrote the swap space. I'd really rather not start over on a new install, so any other suggested trees to bark up would be appreciated. For the record, I hate you Microsoft, and ASUS I understand complying with microsoft, but make it optional... I'm really disappointed in that I have to deal with Windows 8 when I have nothing to do with it. Something I think I could try, but would like to hear from more experienced users. Moving the sdx1 (btrfs /@/@home) partion and opening up a 100 MB partition on the beginning sectors and install efi compatible Grub2 installation. Would it work? How to move a partition?

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• What can you do to decrease the number of live issues with applications?

  - by User Smith

  First off I have seen this post which is slightly similar to my question. : What can you do to decrease the number of deployment bugs of a live website? Let me layout the situation for you. The team of programmers that I belong to have metrics associated with our code. Over the last several months our errors in our live system have increased by a large amount. We require that our updates to applications be tested by at least one other programmer prior to going live. I personally am completely against this as I think that applications should be tested by end users as end users are much better testers than programmers, I am not against programmers testing, obviously programmers need to test code, but they are most of the times too close to the code. The reason I specify that I think end users should test in our scenario is due to the fact that we don't have business analysts, we just have programmers. I come from a background where BAs took care of all the testing once programmers checked off it was ready to go live. We do have a staging environment in place that is a clone of the live environment that we use to ensure that we don't have issues between development and live environments this does catch some bugs. We don't do end user testing really at all, I should say we don't really have anyone testing our code except programmers, which I think gets us into this mess (Ideally, we would have BAs or QA or professional testers test). We don't have a QA team or anything of that nature. We don't have test cases for our projects that are fully laid out. Ok, I am just a peon programmer at the bottom of the rung, but I am probably more tired of these issues than the managers complaining about them. So, I don't have the ability to tell them you are doing it all wrong.....I have tried gentle pushes in the correct direction. Any advice or suggestions on how to alleviate this issue is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

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