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  • Android threads trouble wrapping my head around design

    - by semajhan
    I am having trouble wrapping my head around game design. On the android platform, I have an activity and set its content view with a custom surface view. The custom surface view acts as my panel and I create instances of all classes and do all the drawing and calculation in there. Question: Should I instead create the instances of other classes in my activity? Now I create a custom thread class that handles the game loop. Question: How do I use this one class in all my activities? Or do I have to create a separate thread each time? In my previous game, I had multiple levels that had to create an instance of the thread class and in the thread class I had to set constructor methods for each separate level and in the loop use a switch statement to check which level it needs to render and update. Sorry if that sounds confusing. I just want to know if the method I am using is inefficient (which it probably is) and how to go about designing it the correct way. I have read many tutorials out there and I am still having lots of trouble with this particular topic. Maybe a link to a some tutorials that explain this? Thanks.

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  • dynamic 2d texture creation in unity from script

    - by gman
    I'm coming from HTML5 and I'm used to having the 2D Canvas API I can use to generate textures. Is there anything similar in Unity3D? For example, let's say at runtime I want to render a circle, put 3 initials in the middle and then take the result and put that in a texture. In HTML5 I'd do this var initials = "GAT"; var textureWidth = 256; var textureHeight = 256; // create a canvas var c = document.createElement("canvas"); c.width = textureWidth; c.height = textureHeight; var ctx = c.getContext("2d"); // Set the origin to the center of the canvas ctx.translate(textureWidth / 2, textureHeight / 2); // Draw a yellow circle ctx.fillStyle = "rgb(255,255,0)"; // yellow ctx.beginPath(); var radius = (Math.min(textureWidth, textureHeight) - 2) / 2; ctx.arc(0, 0, radius, 0, Math.PI * 2, true); ctx.fill(); // Draw some black initials in the middle. ctx.fillStyle = "rgb(0,0,0)"; ctx.font = "60pt Arial"; ctx.textAlign = "center"; ctx.fillText(initials, 0, 30); // now I can make a texture from that var tex = gl.createTexture(); gl.bindTexture(gl.TEXTURE_2D, tex); gl.texImage2D(gl.TEXTURE_2D, 0, gl.RGBA, gl.RGBA, gl.UNSIGNED_BYTE, c); gl.generateMipmap(gl.TEXTURE_2D); I know I can edit individual pixels in a Unity texture but is there any higher level API for drawing to texture in unity?

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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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  • Java Applet or Unity3D for Cross-Platform 3D Surveying App

    - by Jake M
    Do you think a Java Applet or Unity3D Application is the best option to make a cross-browser 3d web-app? I intend to make a web application that displays 3d environments that can be navigated by dragging(with a finger or mouse depending on the platform). The web app will render 3d environments of development sites including contours, water pipeline locations, buildings etc. The application must work on Windows Desktop, Android, iOS and Windows Phone. So this is why I am tending towards a web-app as opposed to cross-platform smart phone library(like Mosync or Marmalade). The 3d environments will be navigable(by dragging around) and contain simple(not detailed) 3d objects like buildings, mountains, pipelines, etc. One thing I know is that WebGL is out because it doesn't work on IE and has limited support on Smart Phones(am I correct to completely disregard WebGL?). Will future Smart Phone browsers continue to support Java Applets? Also is it really true I can write ONE Application/Game in Unity3D and simply compile it to run on Windows Windows, Mac, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii, iPad, iPhone and Android? Would you suggest the Unity3D application path or the Unity3D Web Player path? Concerning Unity3D, there's one thing I am unsure about: do all Unity3D features work on iOS and Android?

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  • Starting an HTML canvas game with no graphics skills

    - by Jacob
    I want to do some hobby game development, but I have some unfortunate handicaps that have me stuck in indecision; I have no artistic talent, and I also have no experience with 3D graphics. But this is just a hobby project that might not go anywhere, so I want to develop the stuff I care about; if the game shows good potential, my graphic "stubs" can be replaced with something more sophisticated. I do, however, want my graphics engine to render something approximate to the end goal. The game is tile-based, with each tile being a square. Each tile also has an elevation. My target platform (subject to modification) is JavaScript rendering to the HTML 5 canvas, either with a 2D or WebGL context. My question to those of you with game development experience is whether it's easier to develop an isometric game using a 2D graphics engine and sprites or a 3D game using rudimentary 3D primitives and basic textures? I realize that there are limitations to isometric projection, but if it makes developing my throwaway graphics engine easier, I'm OK with the visual warts that would be introduced. Or is representing a 3D world with an actual 3D engine easier?

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  • How do I use depth testing and texture transparency together in my 2.5D world?

    - by nbolton
    Note: I've already found an answer (which I will post after this question) - I was just wondering if I was doing it right, or if there is a better way. I'm making a "2.5D" isometric game using OpenGL ES (JOGL). By "2.5D", I mean that the world is 3D, but it is rendered using 2D isometric tiles. The original problem I had to solve was that my textures had to be rendered in order (from back to front), so that the tiles overlapped properly to create the proper effect. After some reading, I quickly realised that this is the "old hat" 2D approach. This became difficult to do efficiently, since the 3D world can be modified by the player (so stuff can appear anywhere in 3D space) - so it seemed logical that I take advantage of the depth buffer. This meant that I didn't have to worry about rendering stuff in the correct order. However, I faced a problem. If you use GL_DEPTH_TEST and GL_BLEND together, it creates an effect where objects are blended with the background before they are "sorted" by z order (meaning that you get a weird kind of overlap where the transparency should be). Here's some pseudo code that should illustrate the problem (incidentally, I'm using libgdx for Android). create() { // ... // some other code here // ... Gdx.gl.glEnable(GL10.GL_DEPTH_TEST); Gdx.gl.glEnable(GL10.GL_BLEND); } render() { Gdx.gl.glClear(GL10.GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT | GL10.GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT); Gdx.gl.glBlendFunc(GL10.GL_SRC_ALPHA, GL10.GL_ONE_MINUS_SRC_ALPHA); // ... // bind texture and create vertices // ... } So the question is: How do I solve the transparency overlap problem?

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  • Light mask map and camera for static lights in XNA Platformer

    - by JiminyCricket
    Using the example for some basic light maps found here : http://blog.josack.com/2011/07/xna-2d-dynamic-lighting.html, I've managed to create a lightmap texture using individual lightmaps and display it over a 2D tiled world as in the Platformer example. I'm using the very basic 2D camera example as found here : http://www.david-amador.com/2009/10/xna-camera-2d-with-zoom-and-rotation/, and the problem is that the lightmap texture scrolls with the player sprite. This looks pretty good and would be excellent for lighting the player sprite as it moves. But, I also want to be able to place static lights (or some initial position for the lights) that do not move with the player or camera. When I turn off the camera or give it a static position, it works as a series of static lights so I believe it's probably caused by the camera transformation matrix following the player around. I'm using RenderTarget2Ds, one for the main game screen after all the backgrounds and tiles are rendered, and one for the "lightmap" which consists of a black background and a bunch of lighting textures which are merged with it using additive blending. For now, I'm doing all of this in PlatformerGame.cs where the camera transformation and position is set and the level.Draw() call is made. I can't figure out how to separate the drawing of the lightmap and the camera following the player. I was thinking it would be better to render the shadows and lighting directly in the drawing of the level itself, but I'm not sure how to do that either because this technique requires RenderTarget2Ds and calling SpriteBatch.Begin()/End().

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  • Raspberry Pi and Java SE: A Platform for the Masses

    - by Jim Connors
    One of the more exciting developments in the embedded systems world has been the announcement and availability of the Raspberry Pi, a very capable computer that is no bigger than a credit card.  At $35 US, initial demand for the device was so significant, that very long back orders quickly ensued. After months of patiently waiting, mine finally arrived.  Those initial growing pains appear to have been fixed, so availability now should be much more reasonable. At a very high level, here are some of the important specs: Broadcom BCM2835 System on a chip (SoC) ARM1176JZFS, with floating point, running at 700MHz Videocore 4 GPU capable of BluRay quality playback 256Mb RAM 2 USB ports and Ethernet Boots from SD card Linux distributions (e.g. Debian) available So what's taking place taking place with respect to the Java platform and Raspberry Pi? A Java SE Embedded binary suitable for the Raspberry Pi is available for download (Arm v6/7) here.  Note, this is based on the armel architecture, a variety of Arm designed to support floating point through a compatibility library that operates on more platforms, but can hamper performance.  In order to use this Java SE binary, select the available Debian distribution for your Raspberry Pi. The more recent Raspbian distribution is based on the armhf (hard float) architecture, which provides for more efficient hardware-based floating point operations.  However armhf is not binary compatible with armel.  As of the writing of this blog, Java SE Embedded binaries are not yet publicly available for the armhf-based Raspbian distro, but as mentioned in Henrik Stahl's blog, an armhf release is in the works. As demonstrated at the just-completed JavaOne 2012 San Francisco event, the graphics processing unit inside the Raspberry Pi is very capable indeed, and makes for an excellent candidate for JavaFX.  As such, plans also call for a Pi-optimized version of JavaFX in a future release too. A thriving community around the Raspberry Pi has developed at light speed, and as evidenced by the packed attendance at Pi-specific sessions at Java One 2012, the interest in Java for this platform is following suit. So stay tuned for more developments...

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  • TechEd 2010 Day Two – No SQL Server in Sight

    - by BuckWoody
    Today I worked the booth at TechEd 2010, manning the new “Surface” computer, which is just the coolest object on the planet. After that I didn’t attend a single SQL Server session – instead I’ve been frequenting SharePoint, Microsoft Office, and even the High-Performance Computing sessions. The reason is that I get really high quality SQL Server presentations at PASS, SQL Saturdays, and online from Microsoft and other vendors. While there are SQL Server sessions here (after all, I’m giving one of them!) I tend to try and see things that I don’t normally get to learn about. And the cross-pollination between those technologies and mine is fantastic.     I’ve even managed to go to an Entity Framework presentation for the developers. I actually have (a little) more respect for that technology – and I’ve modified my presentation to encompass more of that information. So whenever you have the chance, take a walk outside your comfort zone. Even at PASS and SQL Saturdays (and certainly online) you can investigate technologies other than the ones you know best.  Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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  • Connecting Clinical and Administrative Processes: Oracle SOA Suite for Healthcare Integration

    - by Mala Ramakrishnan
    One of the biggest IT challenges facing today’s health care industry is the difficulty finding reliable, secure, and cost-effective ways to exchange information. Payers and providers need versatile platforms for enterprise-wide information sharing. Clinicians require accurate information to provide quality care to patients while administrators need integrated information for all facets of the business operation. Both sides of the organization must be able to access information from research and development systems, practice management systems, claims systems, financial systems, and many others. Externally, these organizations must share claims data, patient records, pharmaceutical data, lab reports, and diagnostic information among third party entities—all while complying with emerging standards for formatting, processing, and storing electronic health records (EHR). Service-oriented architecture (SOA) enables developers to integrate many types of software applications, databases and computing platforms within a particular health network as well as with community, state, and national health information exchanges. The Oracle SOA Suite for healthcare integration is designed to provide healthcare organizations with comprehensive integration capabilities within a unified middleware platform, as well as with healthcare libraries and templates for streamlining healthcare IT projects. It reduces the need for specialized skills and enforces an enterprise-wide view of critical healthcare data.  Here is a new white paper that details more about this offering: Oracle SOA Suite for Healthcare Integration

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  • lirc_zilog IR transmission no longer working with HD-PVR on 12.04

    - by johnf
    I have been running a ubuntu 10.04 with a patched version of lirc_zilog for two years. I upgraded to 12.04 and lirc_zilog is no longer working with my HD-PVR. The MythTV wiki reports that it did work out of the box with 11.04. The error message I get on irsend is as follows: johnf@carbon:~$ /usr/local/bin/irsend SEND_ONCE blaster 0_130_KEY_POWER irsend: command failed: SEND_ONCE blaster 0_130_KEY_POWER irsend: hardware does not support sending The lircd daemon, run interactively, reports the following: lircd: accepted new client on /var/run/lirc/lircd lircd: could not get hardware features lircd: this device driver does not support the LIRC ioctl interface lircd: major number of /dev/lirc0 is 250 lircd: LIRC major number is 61 lircd: check if /dev/lirc0 is a LIRC device lircd: WARNING: Failed to initialize hardware lircd: error processing command: SEND_ONCE blaster 0_130_KEY_POWER lircd: hardware does not support sending lircd: removed client Checking dmesg seems to indicate that the kernel module is loading properly: [56497.730743] lirc_zilog: module is from the staging directory, the quality is unknown, you have been warned. [56497.730999] lirc_zilog: Zilog/Hauppauge IR driver initializing [56497.732484] lirc_zilog: ir_probe: ir_rx_z8f0811_hdpvr on i2c-0 (Hauppage HD PVR I2C), client addr=0x71 [56497.732493] lirc_zilog: ir_probe: ir_tx_z8f0811_hdpvr on i2c-0 (Hauppage HD PVR I2C), client addr=0x70 [56497.732496] lirc_zilog: probing IR Tx on Hauppage HD PVR I2C (i2c-0) [56497.756822] lirc_zilog: firmware of size 302355 loaded [56497.756945] lirc_zilog: 743 IR blaster codesets loaded [56497.757030] i2c i2c-0: lirc_dev: driver lirc_zilog registered at minor = 0 [56497.757033] lirc_zilog: IR unit on Hauppage HD PVR I2C (i2c-0) registered as lirc0 and ready [56497.757035] lirc_zilog: probe of IR Tx on Hauppage HD PVR I2C (i2c-0) done [56497.757056] lirc_zilog: initialization complete Here is my /etc/lirc/hardware.conf #Chosen IR Transmitter TRANSMITTER="HD-PVR" TRANSMITTER_MODULES="lirc_dev lirc_zilog" TRANSMITTER_DRIVER="" TRANSMITTER_DEVICE="/dev/lirc0" TRANSMITTER_SOCKET="" TRANSMITTER_LIRCD_CONF="" TRANSMITTER_LIRCD_ARGS="" My lircd.conf is a copy of the recommended one. Examination of the kernel source seems to indicate that the lirc_zilog module should support transmission, it's newer than the patched version I was manually compiling on 10.04. I was previously using a manually built version of lirc 0.8.7 and not the packaged one. I'm now running the packaged version 9.0. I can provide any additional information required and will perform tests quickly. I'm very eager to get this issue resolved.

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  • Seeking solution for printing-reporting .NET

    - by Parhs
    I am developing an application that prints in separate threads in extreme cases about 20-25 pages per minute to various thermal printers. Currently templates for these are XAML xps documents. All printers have graphics drivers that support EMF/GDI printing. So GDI-EMF is done by operating system resulting in slower performance. Sending raw text for printing is another good solution but doesnt work always , because some clients have old chinese thermal printer that nobody support thus impossible to change codepage / emulation. So it doesnt work always. Also most computers running my software are low end ATOM CPU. So I am thinking to return to GDI, EMF printing and have both Text-Only reports and EMF reports. Another reason i want EMF is because here receipts are signed by Electronic Fiscal Memory device.Most of these dont do good job extracting text from XPS as they dont follow the standard but how windows convert GDI to XPS.Even with text-only mode some of them dont support all character encodings and are impossible to send paper cut command after the sign. I know that using a reporting engine would solve rendering problem but I dont want to buy one. All I want is to be able to show tabular data and insert an image and replaced text.I know there is StringTemplate that could do the generation of template but the problem is i should parse somehow the template and render it using GDI commands. Is there any other solution/approach for this ? Or is there anything ready ?

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  • links for 2011-03-18

    - by Bob Rhubart
    Events Overview (tags: ping.fm entarch) No description available. (tags: ping.fm) Andrejus Baranovskis: SOA & E2.0 Partner Community Forum Slides Oracle ACE Director Andrejus Baranovskis shares slides from his presentation at the SOA & E2.0 Partner Community Forum in Netherlands. (tags: oracle otn oracleace soa enterprise2.0 webcenter) ODTUG Kaleidoscope 2011 - The Premier Conference for Oracle Fusion Middleware AMIS Technology blog Oracle ACE Director Lucas Jellema shares information on what he considers "the best event for anyone doing, dabbling in or considering doing Oracle Fusion Middleware." (tags: oracle otn oracleace odtug fusionmiddleware) Mark Rittman: ODTUG K-Scope 2011 Early Bird Deadline is Closing "The deadline for Early Bird registrations for Kscope is fast approaching [March 25]. If you want to attend at the discounted rate, sign up soon." - Oracle ACE Director Mark Rittman (tags: oracle otn oracleace odtug) Master Data Management and Cloud Computing (Oracle Master Data Management) "Cloud Computing has the potential to significantly degrade data quality across the enterprise over time. Deploying a Master Data Management solution prior to or in conjunction with a move to the Cloud can insure that the data flowing into the enterprise from the Cloud is clean and governed." - David Butler (tags: oracle otn mdm cloud)

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  • Impossible to select folders and files with mouse (Ubuntu 12.04)

    - by François
    First-time post for me here (after being a regular reader for two years though) so thank you all for the quality of replies and help provided. My problem is very simple apparently but a tricky one. I just installed the Ubuntu 12.04(1) along with the Gnome3-shell environment on my new pc desktop Acer Aspire X3995 (see config below). Everything work (more or less) so far (I still have problems of sound and disabled 2-fingers gestures with my screen -- which I will have to deal with xconfig settings I think -- though), but the main problem is that I cannot select files/folders with my USB mouse. When I try to double click on them, nothing happen (sometimes one folder or file is selected but then unselected again). Note that the navigation works perfectly from the USB keyboard and from the touch-screen (I am using a 23" wide touch-screen Acer Monitor T231Hbmid). Also, the mouse works perfectly with other menu navigation, with the only difference that the text of certain menus is selected as if I was holding the left click on them. So I assume the problem is only related to the mouse. Needless to say that the usual basic hardware checks have been performed (unplugging, powered-off, etc.). My level is simply "advanced user", meaning that if you provide me with intelligible input I should find my way, but please don't expect too much technical/specific knowledge... :) Please let me know if you need more information on this bug. Now, fingers crossed... and thanks in advance! Ciao, François Config of Acer Aspire X3995: Ubuntu 12.04 / Gnome3-shell environment / Intel Core i5 3450 / nVidia GeForce 605, 1Gb. Screen: Acer Monitor TFT 23" wide T231Hbmid

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  • Simple monitoring of a Raspberry Pi powered screen - Part 2

    - by Chris Houston
    If you have read my previous blog post Raspberry Pi entrance signed backed by Umbraco - Part 1 which describes how we used a Raspberry Pi to drive an Entrance sign for QV Offices you will have seen I mentioned a follow up post about monitoring the sign.As the sign is mounted in the entrance of the building on the ground floor and the reception is on the 1st floor, this meant that if there was a fault of any kind showing on the screen, the first person to see this was inevitably one of QV Offices' clients as they walked into the building.Although the QV Offices' team were able to check the Umbraco website address that the sign uses, this did not always mean that everything was working as expected. We noticed a couple of times that the sign had Wifi issues (it is now hard wired) and this caused the Chromium browser to render a 404 error when it tried to refresh the screen.The simple monitoring solutionWe added the following line to our refresh script, so that after the sign had been refreshed a screen shot of the Raspberry Pi would be taken:import -display :0 -window root ~/screenshot.jpgFinally we wrote a small Crontab task that ran on a QV Offices Mac that grabs this screen shot and saved it on the desktop, admittedly we have used a package that it not mega secure, but in reality this is an internal system that only runs an office sign, so we are not to concerned about it being hacked.*/5 * * * * /usr/local/bin/sshpass -p 'password' /usr/bin/scp [email protected]:screenshot.jpg Desktop/QVScreenShot.jpgAs the file icon updates, if the image changes, this gives a quick visual indication of the status of the sign, if for some reason the icon does not look correct the QV Offices administrator can just click on the file to see the exact image currently displayed on the sign.Sometimes a quick and easy solution is better than a more complex and expensive one.

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  • How to update entity states and animations in a component-based game

    - by mivic
    I'm trying to design a component-based entity system for learning purposes (and later use on some games) and I'm having some troubles when it comes to updating entity states. I don't want to have an update() method inside the Component to prevent dependencies between Components. What I currently have in mind is that components hold data and systems update components. So, if I have a simple 2D game with some entities (e.g. player, enemy1, enemy 2) that have Transform, Movement, State, Animation and Rendering components I think I should have: A MovementSystem that moves all the Movement components and updates the State components And a RenderSystem that updates the Animation components (the animation component should have one animation (i.e. a set of frames/textures) for each state and updating it means selecting the animation corresponding to the current state (e.g. jumping, moving_left, etc), and updating the frame index). Then, the RenderSystem updates the Render components with the texture corresponding to the current frame of each entity's Animation and renders everything on screen. I've seen some implementations like Artemis framework, but I don't know how to solve this situation: Let's say that my game has the following entities. Each entity have a set of states and one animation for each state: player: "idle", "moving_right", "jumping" enemy1: "moving_up", "moving_down" enemy2: "moving_left", "moving_right" What are the most accepted approaches in order to update the current state of each entity? The only thing that I can think of is having separate systems for each group of entities and separate State and Animation components so I would have PlayerState, PlayerAnimation, Enemy1State, Enemy1Animation... PlayerMovementSystem, PlayerRenderingSystem... but I think this is a bad solution and breaks the purpose of having a component-based system. As you can see, I'm quite lost here, so I'd very much appreciate any help.

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  • Low pagerank backlinks - does Google penalize?

    - by Programmer Joe
    I have a new stock discussion forum and I would like to promote it. Specifically, I have two ideas in mind to help promote it: 1) Become a member at other stock discussion forums. Make high quality posts, build a good reputation, and leave a link to my own forum in a non intrusive way (ie. in signature or at the end of my posts). This approach makes sense because you can find other members in other forums that are interested in stock discussion and a backlink to your forum, as long as it is not done in an intrusive/spammy way, should come across as acceptable. 2) Promote my site by writing articles at Squidoo, Hubpages, etc. This approach also makes sense because that's what Squidoo and Hubpages is for. The problem with both these approaches is that when I leave a backlink to my site, the page that I am leaving a backlink from may have a low PR - most likely, a PR of 0. Now, I have read that after the Penguin update by Google, your site can be penalized if you have too many backlinks from low PR pages: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/224339 So, I am caught in a dilemma: a) If I start promoting my site via other stock forums, Squidoo, Hubpages, etc, but the backlink to my site comes from a page with low PR, Google may penalize my site. b) However, if I don't promote my site, nobody will ever discover it (aside from other promotion techniques like social media promotion, directories, etc).

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  • POP Forums will be at Mix!

    - by Jeff
    If you've never been to Mix, you're missing out on what is arguably one of the best conferences that Microsoft does. I'm not just saying that because I work here... I felt that way before, having been to most of them. The breadth of people and disciplines make it a really exciting event that pushes it well beyond the "Redmond bubble," as I like to call it. You should go.In any case, there's an Open Source Fest happening the night before Mix starts, on Monday, from 6 to 9 p.m. There will be people there representing a ton of great projects, some as enormous as Umbraco, as well as people doing SDK's, controls and other neat stuff. Best of all, you get to vote for your favorites. Unless your favorite is Orchard, because Microsoft is sponsoring that directly. Or if it's POP Forums, not because Microsoft is sponsoring it, but because that's where I work in my day job. No prizes for me! Come by and say hello. I think the app will be nearly final by then, and it's already running on MouseZoom, one of my little side projects.The quality and diversity of open source projects around the Microsoft stack just keeps getting better. Our platform is also pretty great at running stuff we don't make. This will be a pretty exciting Mix. Can't wait!

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  • Does Google sometime prevent new white hat sites from ranking at all in some verticals?

    - by JVerstry
    Assuming someone wants to implement a new viagra or akai berry e-commerce website. There is a lot of competition and this site does not really bring something new, other than a new online counter to buy products at a nice price. Assuming this site does not use any black hat techniques and that it stays with Google quality guidelines, and assuming it has no (or few) backlinks (from non-authoritative websites). Assuming this website's pages are indexed properly in Webmaster Tool, and that no penalties are reported. No site improvements are suggested. Google crawls the site daily as reported in GWT. No robots.txt configuration issues. Does Google sometime decide to no rank this site for any user query (for weeks), because of lack of original content? The reason I am asking this is that I am trying to understand the possible cause of a similar situation I am observing with two sites. If so, what is the way out to start ranking for these site? If not, does it mean the cause is elsewhere for sure? Any confirmed info to get out of the maze is welcome.

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  • Small, fast shopping cart setup

    - by R..
    I'm looking for an open source shopping cart solution that's simple and easy to setup. The requirements are: Quick setup for someone familiar with *nix webservers. Checkout via PayPal (other payment methods not needed). Customers should not have to create an account to make a purchase. At least a minimal level of inventory control. Ability to print/export a list of orders in compact form. Any recommendations for something I should try? Ability to get it up and working quickly is really my priority right now; if it's not ideal, it can be replaced (or, as I'm looking for open source, I can adapt it to fit the requirements better) at a later time. Edit: Really what I'm looking for is simplicity. This will be for a small local business, and the orders will consist of 1-10 items that are being delivered by a driver who needs a simple list of what each customer received when making delivery. Looking like a giant online computer/electronics/etc. store is definitely not a desirable quality. The simpler the interface presented to customers (who are used to purchasing through dumb web forms and paying COD), the better.

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  • Static "LoD" hack opinions

    - by David Lively
    I've been playing with implementing dynamic level of detail for rendering a very large mesh in XNA. It occurred to me that (duh) the whole point of this is to generate small triangles close to the camera, and larger ones far away. Given that, rather than constantly modifying or swapping index buffers based on a feature's rendered size or distance from the camera, it would be a lot easier (and potentially quite a bit faster), to render a single "fan" or flat wedge/frustum-shaped planar mesh that is tessellated into small triangles close to the near or small end of the frustum and larger ones at the far end, sort of like this (overhead view) (Pardon the gap in the middle - I drew one side and mirrored it) The triangle sizes are chosen so that all are approximately the same size when projected. Then, that mesh would be transformed to track the camera so that the Z axis (center vertical in this image) is always aligned with the view direction projected into the XZ plane. The vertex shader would then read terrain heights from a height texture and adjust the Y coordinate of the mesh to match a height field that defines the terrain. This eliminates the need for culling (since the mesh is generated to match the viewport dimensions) and the need to modify the index and/or vertex buffers when drawing the terrain. Obviously this doesn't address terrain with overhangs, etc, but that could be handled to a certain extent by including a second mesh that defines a sort of "ceiling" via a different texture. The other LoD schemes I've seen aren't particularly difficult to implement and, in some cases, are a lot more flexible, but this seemed like a decent quick-and-dirty way to handle height map-based terrain without getting into geometry manipulation. Has anyone tried this? Opinions?

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  • Uwall.tv Turns YouTube into a Video Jukebox

    - by ETC
    If you frequently hit up YouTube to get your music fix, Uwall.tv is a video playlist service that turns YouTube into your personal music video jukebox. Visit Uwall.tv, plug in an artist or band name, and Uwall.tv generates a playlist of music by the act you’re interested in. You can further filter by popularity, upload date, rating, and video quality. Uwall.tv also suggests other artists you might be interested in. If you login with Facebook Connect you can also build custom playlists and break free from the one-artist-list limitation. UWall.tv is a free service, login only required for creating and saving custom playlists. UWall.tv [via Google Tutor] Latest Features How-To Geek ETC Learn To Adjust Contrast Like a Pro in Photoshop, GIMP, and Paint.NET Have You Ever Wondered How Your Operating System Got Its Name? Should You Delete Windows 7 Service Pack Backup Files to Save Space? What Can Super Mario Teach Us About Graphics Technology? Windows 7 Service Pack 1 is Released: But Should You Install It? How To Make Hundreds of Complex Photo Edits in Seconds With Photoshop Actions Add a “Textmate Style” Lightweight Text Editor with Dropbox Syncing to Chrome and Iron Is the Forcefield Really On or Not? [Star Wars Parody Video] Google Updates Picasa Web Albums; Emphasis on Sharing and Showcasing Uwall.tv Turns YouTube into a Video Jukebox Early Morning Sunrise at the Beach Wallpaper Data Networks Visualized via Light Paintings [Video]

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  • High resolution graphical representation of the Earth's surface

    - by Simon
    I've got a library, which I inherited, which presents a zoomable representation of the Earth. It's a Mercator projection and is constructed from triangles, the properties of which are stored in binary files. The surface is built up, for any given view port, by drawing these triangles in an overlapping fashion to produce the image. The definition of each triangle is the lat/long of the vertices. It looks OK at low values of zoom but looks progressively more ragged as the user zooms in. The view ports are primarily referenced though a rectangle of lat/long co-ordinates. I'd like to replace it with a better quality approach. The problem is, I don't know where to begin researching the options as I am not familiar either with the projections needed nor the graphics techniques used to render them. For example, I imagine that I could acquire high resolution images, say Mercator projections although I'm open to anything, break them into tiles and somehow wrap them onto a graphical representation of a sphere. I'm not asking for "how do I", more where should I begin to understand what might be involved and the techniques I will need to learn. I am most grateful for any "Earth rendering 101" pointers folks might have.

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  • A new mission statement for my school's algorithms class

    - by Eric Fode
    The teacher at Eastern Washington University that is now teaching the algorithms course is new to eastern and as a result the course has changed drastically mostly in the right direction. That being said I feel that the class could use a more specific, and industry oriented (since that is where most students will go, though suggestions for an academia oriented class are also welcome) direction, having only worked in industry for 2 years I would like the community's (a wider and much more collectively experienced and in the end plausibly more credible) opinion on the quality of this as a statement for the purpose an algorithms class, and if I am completely off target your suggestion for the purpose of a required Jr. level Algorithms class that is standalone (so no other classes focusing specifically on algorithms are required). The statement is as follows: The purpose of the algorithms class is to do three things: Primarily, to teach how to learn, do basic analysis, and implement a given algorithm found outside of the class. Secondly, to teach the student how to model a problem in their mind so that they can find a an existing algorithm or have a direction to start the development of a new algorithm. Third, to overview a variety of algorithms that exist and to deeply understand and analyze one algorithm in each of the basic algorithmic design strategies: Divide and Conquer, Reduce and Conquer, Transform and Conquer, Greedy, Brute Force, Iterative Improvement and Dynamic Programming. The Question in short is: do you agree with this statement of the purpose of an algorithms course, so that it would be useful in the real world, if not what would you suggest?

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  • How can I make an infinite cave using stage3d?

    - by ifree
    I want to make an infinite cave in my 3d game using flash stage3d. But I got no idea about how to build that cave. Can anyone can give me some solution or hint? update: I've tried agal fragment shader like squeae tunnel in shader toy code: var fragmentProgramCode:String = AGALUtils.build() .mov("ft0","v0") .div("ft1","ft0.xy","fc3.xy") .mul("ft2","fc6.x","ft1") .sub("ft3","ft2","fc5.x")//vec2 p = -1.0 + 2.0 * gl_FragCoord.xy / resolution.xy; .mul("ft1","ft3.x","ft3.x") .mul("ft2","ft3.y","ft3.y") .pow("ft4","ft1","fc6.z")//float r = pow( pow(p.x*p.x,16.0) + pow(p.y*p.y,16.0), 1.0/32.0 ); .pow("ft5","ft2","fc6.z") .add("ft1","ft4","ft5") .pow("ft4","ft1","fc6.w") .mov("ft5","fc5")//uv .sub("ft1","fc7.x","ft4") .add("ft5.x","fc7.x","ft1")//uv.x = .5*time + 0.5/r; .mov("ft6","fc0")//for atan .atan2("ft5.y","ft3.y","ft3.x",new <String>["fc7.y","fc5.x","fc7.z","fc7.w","fc8.x","fc8.y","fc8.z","fc8.w","fc9.x","fc9.y"],"ft6") .tex("ft0","ft5","fs0","repeat","linear","nomip")//tex .mul("ft1","ft4","ft4") .mul("ft2","ft1","ft4")//r*r*r .mul("ft1","ft0.xyz","ft2") .mov("ft0.w","fc5.x") .mov("oc","ft1").toString() it can only apply one material,but my project requires different types of material (like floor,ceilling). so ,I create a 3d model Is there anyway to make that 3d model render like "infinity cave"? use agal to make each side of cave's texture move? thanks for your help

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