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• How to identify process that's sending error messages to terminal?

  - by kjo

  The following error message occasionally appears in my terminal: Failed to open VDPAU backend libvdpau_nvidia.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory ...which is pretty annoying. I have searched online for solutions to this error, without success. Is there any way to at least identify the process responsible for sending these error messages to my terminal? EDIT: Let me clarify that, as far as I can tell, these error messages appear "out of the blue". In fact, they appear asynchronously with respect to my interactions with the terminal (more often than not see them for the first time when I return to a terminal window that has been unattended for some time). I'm sure there's a definite, deterministic cause for these messages, but it is not one that I can readily identify. In short, I have not noticed any pattern or regularity to their occurrence. In particular, in my case their occurrence has nothing to do with running mplayer, or any other video playback program. (Please my earlier post about it here.) For one thing, the machine in question is a work machine, and I rarely watch any videos with it. In the very few instances in which I've watched a video on this machine I've used VLC, not mplayer, and these errors never appeared in these rare occasions that I used VLC.

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• What's wrong with cplusplus.com?

  - by Kerrek SB

  This is perhaps not a perfectly suitable forum for this question, but let me give it a shot, at the risk of being moved away. There are several references for the C++ standard library, including the invaluable ISO standard, MSDN, IBM, cppreference, and cplusplus. Personally, when writing C++ I need a reference that has quick random access, short load times and usage examples, and I've been finding cplusplus.com pretty useful. However, I've been hearing negative opinions about that website frequently here on SO, so I would like to get specific: What are the errors, misconceptions or bad pieces of advice given by cplusplus.com? What are the risks of using it to make coding decisions? Let me add this point: I want to be able to answer questions here on SO with accurate quotes of the standard, and thus I would like to post immediately-usable links, and cplusplus.com would have been my choice site were it not for this issue. Update: There have been many great responses, and I have seriously changed my view on cplusplus.com. I'd like to list a few choice results here; feel free to suggest more (and keep posting answers). As of June 29, 2011: Incorrect description of some algorithms (e.g. remove). Information about the behaviour of functions is sometimes incorrect (atoi), fails to mention special cases (strncpy), or omits vital information (iterator invalidation). Examples contain deprecated code (#include style). Inexact terminology is doing a disservice to learners and the general community ("STL", "compiler" vs "toolchain"). Incorrect and misleading description of the typeid keyword.

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• Generate a Word document from list data

  - by PeterBrunone

  This came up on a discussion list lately, so I threw together some code to meet the need.  In short, a colleague needed to take the results of an InfoPath form survey and give them to the user in Word format.  The form data was already in a list item, so it was a simple matter of using the SharePoint API to get the list item, formatting the data appropriately, and using response headers to make the client machine treat the response as MS Word content.  The following rudimentary code can be run in an ASPX (or an assembly) in the 12 hive.  When you link to the page, send the list name and item ID in the querystring and use them to grab the appropriate data. // Clear the current response headers and set them up to look like a word doc.HttpContext.Current.Response.Clear();HttpContext.Current.Response.Charset ="";HttpContext.Current.Response.ContentType ="application/msword";string strFileName = "ThatWordFileYouWanted"+ ".doc";HttpContext.Current.Response.AddHeader("Content-Disposition", "inline;filename=" + strFileName);// Using the current site, get the List by name and then the Item by ID (from the URL).string myListName = HttpContext.Current.Request.Querystring["listName"];int myID = Convert.ToInt32(HttpContext.Current.Request.Querystring["itemID"]);SPSite oSite = SPContext.Current.Site;SPWeb oWeb = oSite.OpenWeb();SPList oList = oWeb.Lists["MyListName"];SPListItem oListItem = oList.Items.GetItemById(myID);// Build a string with the data -- format it with HTML if you like. StringBuilder strHTMLContent = newStringBuilder();// *// Here's where you pull individual fields out of the list item.// *// Once everything is ready, spit it out to the client machine.HttpContext.Current.Response.Write(strHTMLContent);HttpContext.Current.Response.End();HttpContext.Current.Response.Flush();

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• Any danger in using the Wine workaround in 12.04?

  - by TrailRider

  To run certain Windows programs in WINE you need to this workaround: echo 0|sudo tee /proc/sys/kernel/yama/ptrace_scope According to the support websites, this is due to a bug in the Ubuntu kernel that prevents ptrace and WINE playing well together. Using the above command you set the ptrace to 0 which according the research I've done(don't ask me which websites, I have seem a lot of them), ptrace has to do with the interactions between programs. The 0 setting is more permissive than the 1. I have to assume that there was a good reason Ubuntu wanted the ptrace=1 so this leads me back to the short form of the question. Are there any risks involved in setting ptrace=0. Lower security? problems debugging? any others that I haven't thought of??? P.S. for anybody reading this that wonders what the bug causes, the Windows programs will fail to open at all, in the System Monitor you will see many instances of the program trying to open and then they will eventually all quit and if you run the progam for the terminal you will get an error that tells you that the maximum number of program instances has been reached.

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• Should one reject over-scoped projects?

  - by Little Child

  I spoke to my first potential client today and he told me about the requirements of his project - an Android app. He is a well-known designer / photographer in my country and now wants me to "convert the website into an app, custom-tailored". So the requirements, details stripped out, are as follows: eCommerce Aggregating all his content like videos, blogs, tweets, etc. into the app Live streaming any of his studio demos Augmented reality. So that people can see what his painting will look like on their wall before they buy it Taxi Sharing Now, for a freelance project, it seems too over-scoped. I am not saying that I cannot do it. I can. But let me be realistic: There is a steep learning curve when it comes to VR. I am not a tester. I have never white-box tested my own apps. I always black-box test. Since he is a renowned artist, something short of perfect might harm his public image So, I asked him for 2 weeks' worth of time before I give him the final answer. Now knowing whom to consult for advise, I am posting the question here. Although interesting and personally challenging, I am split-minded about accepting a project like this. I will be the only developer for this. Should one reject a project that seems to be over-scoped for one's own abilities?

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• Develop in trunk and then branch off, or in release branch and then merge back?

  - by Torben Gundtofte-Bruun

  Say that we've decided on following a "release-based" branching strategy, so we'll have a branch for each release, and we can add maintenance updates as sub-branches from those. Does it matter whether we: develop and stabilize a new release in the trunk and then "save" that state in a new release branch; or first create that release branch and only merge into the trunk when the branch is stable? I find the former to be easier to deal with (less merging necessary), especially when we don't develop on multiple upcoming releases at the same time. Under normal circumstances we would all be working on the trunk, and only work on released branches if there are bugs to fix. What is the trunk actually used for in the latter approach? It seems to be almost obsolete, because I could create a future release branch based on the most recent released branch rather than from the trunk. Details based on comment below: Our product consists of a base platform and a number of modules on top; each is developed and even distributed separately from each other. Most team members work on several of these areas, so there's partial overlap between people. We generally work only on 1 future release and not at all on existing releases. One or two might work on a bugfix for an existing release for short periods of time. Our work isn't compiled and it's a mix of Unix shell scripts, XML configuration files, SQL packages, and more -- so there's no way to have push-button builds that can be tested. That's done manually, which is a bit laborious. A release cycle is typically half a year or more for the base platform; often 1 month for the modules.

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• Windows Defender Update KB915597 (Definition 1.135.415.0)? Killed My Live Discs

  - by user88311

  Here's my problem, for those willing to read for about 2 minutes here's the entire story, http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_vista-windows_update/bsod-after-windows-defender-update-kb915597/a4b5fca3-0274-47b4-97c4-61b34c4c4599, for those who want the short version here's what happened. After windows update automatically updated windows defender to kb915597, my computer starting getting bsods on shut down and start up and started experiencing problems withe the usb ports. So I decided to go to the microsoft answers site for help, I know that was probably my first mistake, so I followed their advice and they turned my computer into a large paper weight. Luckily I make physical backups of my c drive every few months and I have one from back in july, so I figured I'd boot up a ubuntu live disc, copy all my files from the past 2 months to a external drive and just copy the backup back to the c drive, that's where I ran into this problem. When I put in either a ubuntu or kubuntu disc, everything goes well, until it finishes the loading bar then when the OS would presumably start up, the computer resets, I've tried with ubuntu, kubuntu and gparted, and only gparted is able to get to the point where it starts up, but even then when I try to access the internet from it, the computer resets, and when I tried to copy the entire C drive partition to a blank external I wasn't able to. So I figured somehow maybe the C drive had something to do with it, so I unplugged the C drive so my computer was just a 2.8 ghz processor and 2 gigs of ram, should have had no problem starting a live disc but the problem still continues. After doing some googling around I've found whenever windows gets a update with the title KB915597 it's pretty much the kill switch for windows, I've tried contacting microsoft tech support and even managed to directly contact a software engineer but as soon as I mention KB915597 they all just blew me off. I hope anybody who reads this has any idea how to fix this, I'm going to attempt to install ubuntu or kubuntu to a external drive using the same computer and see what happens now.

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• phpBB - display a public message when the whole board is private

  - by Sparky672

  In my installation all discussion forums/boards are private and can only be seen after a user registers and admin approves their membership. This is working. When a user first comes to the main phpBB page and they're not logged in, they can see very little except for the login and registration functions. Now I'm trying to configure phpBB to display a Read Me posting that is available to general public before registration or login. The problem is that I'd have to create a whole "public" forum and it would likely contain only one topic thread called "Read Me". The users would have to click into the public forum and then click again to get into the Topic called "Read Me". Is it possible to have a Topic thread outside of a forum? If not, is there another, better, way to achieve this? I just want to display a message, maybe a few short paragraphs to the public, explaining the purpose of the Forum and that they must register and wait for approval in order to gain additional access. I'm not seeing anything like this in the ACP. Thank-you.

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• Software development company business plan

  - by Navi

  I apologize in advance if this is the wrong forum for this question, so please forward me to the right place. I have about 10 years professional experience as software developer. Mostly on the Java platform doing server side programs. I have picked up a bit of Linux skills on the way as well. I know HTML and Javascript, so I can make a website that would not be too ugly, but I am not going to win any prizes with it. In fact I think I am pretty terrible in the user interface department. My initial plan is to do Android development. I read a few Android books and tried making a few apps. Since it is Java based I think I got the technical side down. Lately I have been thinking about iphone and Mac development, because of the relevant app store/development programs. The trouble is I don't know Objective C. As a side question, how long would it take me to become proficient in Objective C? Considering that I am working on my own and could hire somebody to help me for a short time for low wages if necessary what are my options? What are the pro and cons of the development programs app stores of Android and Apple? Which development/app stores are out there beside the ones I mentioned? Do you think it is necessary to find funds to get me started or should I just use my savings? If you have positive/negative experiences in a similar situations can you please share them? Thanks for your help.

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• Using ASP.NET, Membership, and jQuery to Determine Username Availability

  Chances are, at some point you've tried creating a new user account on a website and were told that the username you selected was already taken. This is especially common on very large websites with millions of members, but can happen on smaller websites with common usernames, such as people's names or popular words or phrases in the lexicon of the online community that frequents the website. If the user registration process is short and sweet, most users won't balk when they are told their desired username has already been taken - they'll just try a new one. But if the user registration process is long, involving several questions and scrolling, it can be frustrating to complete the registration process only to be told you need to return to the top of the page to try a different username. Many websites use Ajax techniques to check whether a visitor's desired username is available as soon as they enter it (rather than waiting for them to submit the form). This article shows how to implement such a feature in an ASP.NET website using Membership and jQuery. This article includes a demo available for download that implements this behavior in an ASP.NET WebForms application that uses the CreateUserWizard control to register new users. However, the concepts in this article can be applied to ad-hoc user registration pages and ASP.NET MVC. Read on to learn more! Read More >

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• How to get started in the development industry? [closed]

  - by Peter Fren

  My life is coding. I was born in 1982 and my first computer was an amiga. I started learning Amiga BASIC. To cut a long story short, I know many things about several programming languages. Being unemployed(I achieved the german abitur, should be similar to a high school degree and I studied a few semesters of mechanical engineering in 2002(I learned JAVA back then)) I have no idea how to use this ability. I have never done commissional work, every task I solved was based on my own wishes and desires. I do not know how to write a FSD or PRD or put it into code. So the question is, why should anyone hire me? I specialized in kinect development but all jobs I applied for on odesk and similar were awarded to others without me knowing why. I don't know what I should do with my skills professionally. What do you suggest? As this board has weird rules, tell me where to find answers if this is the wrong place.

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• My computer may have been compromised, what should I do?

  - by InkBlend

  A few weeks ago, my machine (lets call it "main") was logged into wirelessly from an unauthorized host, probably using ssh. I did not detect the intrusion until a few days ago, and my machine is completely shut down. I found the login using this line from last: myusername pts/1 ipad Tue Oct 15 22:23 - 22:25 (00:02) Needless to say, not only does no one in my family own an iPad, but almost none of my friends do, either. This makes me suspect that whoever was behind this changed the hostname of their machine. Additionally, I discovered this line in the last output on another machine of mine ("secondary"): myusername pts/2 :0 Tue Oct 15 22:23 - 22:23 (00:00) This line coincides with the timestamp from main, which has password-less ssh access (through keys) to secondary. Is it possible that whoever broke in to main has also rooted secondary? How can I prevent this from happening again? Are there logs that I can look through to determine exactly how main was accessed (I am the only user on the system and have a very strong password)? Is it at all possible that this is just a weird bug that occurred? Should I, and where should I start looking for rootkits and/or keyloggers? In short, what should I do?

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• Is Wordpress more appropriate than Magento/Opencart for site like this?

  - by Alex

  The premise of the site is that a user pays a small fee to advertise an item that they want to sell. Therefore the user is responsible for adding the "products", not the administrator. The product upload will create a product page for that item. This is a rather common framework that I'm sure you're familiar with. My initial thought was that it would be best suited using Magento - mainly because it needs to accept payments - and the products will grow to form a catalog of categorized products. However - there is no concept of a shopping cart. A buyer does not buy the item online, or go to a checkout. They simply look at the product, and contact the seller if they like it. The buyer and seller then take it from there. For this reason, I then begin to suspect that Magento is perhaps too overkill, or just simply not the right CMS if there is on checkout procedure (other than the uploader making a payment) So then I begin to think Wordpress....Hmmm Feature requirements: User's can add content via a form process User's can be directed to a payment gateway For each product listing - a series of photographs shall be displayed, in thumbnail form Zoom capabilities/rotate on the images would be a welcome feature In short - e-commerce CMS, or something more simple?

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• How do sites avoid SEO issues / legalities with subdomain unique ids?

  - by JM4

  I was looking through a few websites recently and noticed a trend I'm not sure I understand. Sites are creating unique referral URLs for customers in the form of: http://customname.site.com (If somebody were to use http://www.site.com/customname it would function the same way). I can see the sites are using 302 redirects at some point using Google Chrome then doing some sort of htaccess redirect, taking the subdomain name (customname) and applying it as a referral parameter then keeping in session during the entire process. However, there must be thousands of these custom URLs that people are typing in. How are each one of these "subdomains" not treated as separate URLs which in turn are redirected to the same page (in short, generating tons of links all pointing to the same page which Google would normally frown upon)? Additionally, the links also appear on the site themselves as clickable links so I'm not sure how these are not tracked. Similarly, the "unique" url is not indexed or cached in any Google search results. How is this capability handled? It does NOT highlight the referral aspect, but a true example of this is visiting http://sfgiants.com which does a 302 redirect to the much longer proper San Francisco Giants MLB homepage. I am wondering how SFgiants.com is not indexed (assuming that direct shortened link appears on several MLB pages)? 1 - I know these are 302 redirects, I can see this on the sites network flow. 2 - These links do in fact appear on the page itself because in some areas (for example, the bottom of the page may say: send this page to a friend! http://name.site.com/ which in turn would again redirect to something like http://www.site.com?id=name so the id value could be stored in session

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• Banshee gapless playback does not work when playing mp3s

  - by ComputerGuy505

  Even though I have gapless playback enabled in Banshee's settings menu, there is a very short pause between songs. This might be due to the fact that my hard drive's partitions seem wierd. fdisk -l produces this output: Disk /dev/sda: 750.2 GB, 750156374016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 91201 cylinders, total 1465149168 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes Disk identifier: 0x4a73c3cb Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 * 2048 409599 203776 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT /dev/sda2 409600 724153740 361872070+ 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT /dev/sda3 1456826368 1465145343 4159488 c W95 FAT32 (LBA) /dev/sda4 724154366 1456826367 366336001 5 Extended Partition 4 does not start on physical sector boundary. /dev/sda5 1440159744 1456826367 8333312 82 Linux swap / Solaris /dev/sda6 724154368 1440159743 358002688 83 Linux Partition table entries are not in disk order Playing mp3's from /dev/sda2 or /dev/sda6 produces this problem. I don't seem to have gapless playback on Rhythmbox or Clementine either, if those media players are supposed to have it. I'm not sure what other info to provide. This is just annoying to me. Thanks for any help.

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• Costs/profit of/when starting an indie company

  - by Jack

  In short, I want to start a game company. I do not have much coding experience (just basic understanding and ability to write basic programs), any graphics design experience, any audio mixing experience, or whatever else technical. However, I do have a lot of ideas, great analytical skills and a very logical approach to life. I do not have any friends who are even remotely technical (or creative in regards to games for that matter). So now that we've cleared that up, my question is this: how much, minimally, would it cost me to start such a company? I know that a game could be developed in under half a year, which means it would have to operate for half a year prior, and that's assuming that the people working on the first project do their jobs good, don't leave game breaking bugs, a bunch of minor bugs, etc.. So how much would it cost me, and what would be the likely profit in half a year? I'm looking at minimal costs here, as to do it, I would have to sell my current apartment and buy a new, smaller one, pay taxes, and likely move to US/CA/UK to be closer to technologically advanced people (and be able to speak the language of course). EDIT: I'm looking at a small project for starters, not a huge AAA title.

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• Any examples of fair mmo games with quick completion

  - by Keith Player

  I'm looking for some example games for inspiration that allow from 10 to a large number of players at a time and can be completed in 10 to 30 minutes. I'm looking for something that would have extremely low bandwidth and not be dependent on chance or luck (i.e one player can't gain an unfair advantage because the computer put them in a better position). Realized on the way home that more clarifications might have been helpful. I'm looking to develop a pay-to-play competition that would allow a large number of players to compete in a relatively short period of time. One way would be to have an mmo that can be completed in 30 minutes, another way would be if you could have 10 person games that finish in under 5 minutes and then have the winners compete against each other until a winner is decided. I'm interested in any genre that would make for a fun/interesting game that doesn't depend on luck, so all players should have the same choice/availability of activities/resources and follow the same rules. Some possible games that could possibly be modified into what I want, would be bztanks (too easy to create a bot), diplomacy (takes too long), risk, some chess like game. I was just wondering if there are other game types to the ones I have been considering.

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• Dealing with Fine-Grained Cache Entries in Coherence

  - by jpurdy

  On occasion we have seen significant memory overhead when using very small cache entries. Consider the case where there is a small key (say a synthetic key stored in a long) and a small value (perhaps a number or short string). With most backing maps, each cache entry will require an instance of Map.Entry, and in the case of a LocalCache backing map (used for expiry and eviction), there is additional metadata stored (such as last access time). Given the size of this data (usually a few dozen bytes) and the granularity of Java memory allocation (often a minimum of 32 bytes per object, depending on the specific JVM implementation), it is easily possible to end up with the case where the cache entry appears to be a couple dozen bytes but ends up occupying several hundred bytes of actual heap, resulting in anywhere from a 5x to 10x increase in stated memory requirements. In most cases, this increase applies to only a few small NamedCaches, and is inconsequential -- but in some cases it might apply to one or more very large NamedCaches, in which case it may dominate memory sizing calculations. Ultimately, the requirement is to avoid the per-entry overhead, which can be done either at the application level by grouping multiple logical entries into single cache entries, or at the backing map level, again by combining multiple entries into a smaller number of larger heap objects. At the application level, it may be possible to combine objects based on parent-child or sibling relationships (basically the same requirements that would apply to using partition affinity). If there is no natural relationship, it may still be possible to combine objects, effectively using a Coherence NamedCache as a "map of maps". This forces the application to first find a collection of objects (by performing a partial hash) and then to look within that collection for the desired object. This is most naturally implemented as a collection of entry processors to avoid pulling unnecessary data back to the client (and also to encapsulate that logic within a service layer). At the backing map level, the NIO storage option keeps keys on heap, and so has limited benefit for this situation. The Elastic Data features of Coherence naturally combine entries into larger heap objects, with the caveat that only data -- and not indexes -- can be stored in Elastic Data.

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• How to handle the different frame rate on different devices?

  - by Fenwick

  I am not quite sure how frame per second works on a web page. I have a Canvas game that involves in moving an image from point A to B, and measuring the time elapsed. The code can be as simple as: var timeStamp = Date.now(); function update(){ obj.y += obj.speed; text = "Time: "+ (Date.now() - timeStamp) + "ms"; } The function update() is called every frame. The problem is that the time elapsed is different from device to device. It is pretty short on my PC, but get longer on my iPad, and is much longer on my cell phone. I thought it is because the FPS is smaller on mobile devices, so instead of calling update() every frame, I call it every 1ms by using a setInterval. But this does not solve the problem. In my understanding, the function for setInterval is invoked based on the increment in system time, other than frame rate, so it should fix the problem. Am I missing anything here? If the setInterval function is called based on FPS, is there any way to get around with the FPS difference across devices? On a side note, I have sort of a "water simulator" on the same canvas. It involves in redrawing about 60 objects which can be 600x600 pixels for every frame, so it could be a frame rate killer. I am using Phaser.js but not really using much of its functionalities, if that helps.

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• What do I need to Mod a Unreal Engine 3 game?

  - by RoadSideWarrior

  what I am looking for is some advise making a mod for a certain game and how I would go about making it. The game I am talking about is Blacklight: Retribution and what I wan't to know is; Is it possible? And if so, what programs will I need? It is an online only game so I was unsure how plausible a mod would be for it. Plus I have never made a video game before, but I do like the game and I wanted to do some things with it. Additionally, this will be my first time making anything video game related so I would appreciate any advise. To expand a bit, I plan to add something simple at first. A mod that would let you spectate another player in the first person. Then I plan do something a bit more complex where I want to make so the game optionally always records you playing (in short intervals most likely or you would run quickly out of memory). After all that is done I would add items, armor, weapons, and maybe make a map or not I am not sure but this in a shell what I hope to do. I don't know much about these things but I am reading anything I can get my hands on. So if this is overly ambitious or just plain out not a possibility any advise on what I should look to instead will be welcomed warmly. Thank you.

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• Login takes very long, annoying repaints once a minute when logged in: How to troubleshoot?

  - by user946850

  I am suffering from a strange problem with my Gnome Shell in Ubuntu 12.10. The login takes very long ( 30 sec), with a blank screen. In Google Chrome and Thunderbird (and perhaps in other applications), the main window freezes and is repainted in periodic intervals of less than one minute. The freeze takes several seconds, and it seems that font and appearance of, e.g., tabs and buttons briefly changes. Attempting to enable the second monitor show an error message related to XRANDR. Everything seems to have started three days ago, after I had to force-shutdown the machine while it was hibernating due to low power. (It was hibernating for quite a while and didn't want to stop.) Silly me. I have tried the following measures, with no avail: Checked all package file md5 hashes using debsums Reinstalled all packages using a variant of dpkg --get-selection \* | xargs apt-get install -reinstall Temporarily moved configuration directories such as .gconf, .config and .gnome2 to another location Created a new user account When I choose "Ubuntu" during login, the problems disappear. I am sort of frustrated that reinstalling all packages didn't fix the issue. How to troubleshoot this Gnome Shell (?) problem, short of reinstalling the system? (Or did anyone see this kind of behavior on their machine?)

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• Oracle is Child&rsquo;s Play&hellip;in NSW

  - by divya.malik

  A few weeks ago, my colleague Michael Seback posted a blog entry on Oracle’s acquisition of Haley.  We recently read  an interesting report from Down Under, and here was our press release on the  implementation of Oracle’s Policy automation software in New South Wales, which I thought I would share. We always love hearing about our software “at work”, and especially in the Public Sector- social services area, where it makes a big difference to people’s lives. Here were some of the reasons, why NSW chose Oracle software: “One of the things Oracle’s Policy Automation system is good at is allowing you take decision  trees and rules that are obviously written in English and code them up using very much a natural language approach,” said Holling (CIO for Human Services). “So it was quite a short process to translate the final set of rules that were written on paper into business rules that were actually embedded in the system.” “Another reason why we chose Oracle’s Automation tool is because with future versions of Siebel it comes very tightly integrated with that. It allows us to then to basically take the results of the Policy Automation survey and actually populate our client management system database with that information,” said Holling. As per Surend Dayal, North America VP, Oracle’s Policy automation has applications across a wide range of industries, including public sector—especially health and human services—also financial services, insurance, and even airline rewards programs. In other words, any business process that requires consistent, accurate decision-making where complex legislation and/or internal policies are involved. Click here to read more about Oracle and Haley.

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• When does a programmer know when a new job is not right?

  - by Mysterion

  I believe that the interview process is a selling of both parties - what can the employee offer the employer and vice versa. Assuming an individual has been careful in selecting their new employer (via thorough questioning in the interview process), however when they arrive at the job they find the employer has not been honest about certain aspects of the job. Examples of this dishonesty could include: The employee making it clear that technical excellence is an important factor, which is promised by the employer, but is not fully delivered or a good technical structure does not exist. The employee states they want to work on well architected and short (lets say less than 1 yr) long projects, yet when they start they find they are placed on a poorly architected older project. The employee being told of a pair programming environment to get him up to speed on the project, but being left to his own devices/questioning on arrival. The employee is promised a culture that encourages innovation and technical excellence but finds that this is not the case (eg. using technology for knowledge retention is laughed at). I know that a lot of famous developers feel that you make the place you work at. Is it realistic for a new employee with limited experience in the industry (say less than 5 years) to be able to join the company and change attitudes or even challenge the employer on the perceived dishonesty? Should they stay in this job or cut their losses?

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• Cheap ways to do scaling ops in shader?

  - by Nick Wiggill

  I've got an extensive world terrain that uses vec3 for the vertex position attribute. That's good, because the terrain has endless gradations due to the use of floating point. But I'm thinking about how to reduce the amount of data uploaded to the GPU. For my terrain, which uses discrete / grid-based vertex positions in x and z, it's pretty clear that I can replace my vec3s (floats, really) with shorts, halving the per-vertex position attribute cost from 12 bytes each to 6 bytes. Considering I've got little enough other vertex data, and an enormous amount of terrain data to push into the world, it's a major gain. Currently in my code, one unit in GLSL shaders is equal to 1m in the world. I like that scale. If I move over to using shorts, though, I won't be able to use the same scale, as I would then have a very blocky world where every step in height is an entire metre. So I see these potential solutions to scale the positional data correctly once it arrives at the vertex shader stage: Use 10:1 scaling, i.e. 1 short unit = 1 decimetre in CPU-side code. Do a division by 10 in the vertex shader to scale incoming decimetre values back to metres. Arbirary (non-PoT) divisions tend to be slow, however. Use (some-power-of-two):1 scaling (eg. 8:1), which enables the use of a bitshift (eg. val >> 3) to do the division... not sure how performant this is in shaders, though. Not as intuitive to read values, but possibly quite a bit faster than div by a non-PoT value. Use a texture as lookup table. I've heard that this is really fast. Or whatever solutions others can offer to achieve the same results -- minimal vertex data with sensible scaling.

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• Sub-systems in game engines

  - by Hillel

  So here's the problem- I'm writing my own engine library, and it works fine with stuff like menus and the actual game screen. The thing is, I can't really figure out how to integrate something like an intro or dialogue preceding certain levels into this system. Let's look at another example- say I have a game-specific engine which gets a Level object and runs it. Engine would have its own collision and physics system, all hard coded. Now, what if at some point in a level, I want the player to enter a mini-game with different rules? How do I morph the Engine class to support these sub-systems without having to deal with their code all the time (as in: if(regular game) ... else if(mini game) ...)? And what if I want an intro animation at the start of a level, and I want the player to be able to assume control of his character once the animation ends, do I implement the animation into the Engine class itself? Or maybe I need to run another class, CutScene, and when it ends, it calls Engine and starts the level? What if I want to add a dialogue system, where at the start of each level there's a short dialogue and the player can't control his character, and once it ends, he can? Would I then run the dialogue code inside the Engine code? Maybe these sub-systems should all be scripted? I don't know anything about scripting, is it necessary for this kind of situation? Any help would be appreciated.

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