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• How to create an extensible rope in Box2D?

  - by Thomas

  Let's say I'm trying to create a ninja lowering himself down a rope, or pulling himself back up, all whilst he might be swinging from side to side or hit by objects. Basically like http://ninja.frozenfractal.com/ but with Box2D instead of hacky JavaScript. Ideally I would like to use a rope joint in Box2D that allows me to change the length after construction. The standard Box2D RopeJoint doesn't offer that functionality. I've considered a PulleyJoint, connecting the other end of the "pulley" to an invisible kinematic body that I can control to change the length, but PulleyJoint is more like a rod than a rope: it constrains maximum length, but unlike RopeJoint it constrains the minimum as well. Re-creating a RopeJoint every frame using a new length is rather inefficient, and I'm not even sure it would work properly in the simulation. I could create a "chain" of bodies connected by RotationJoints but that is also less efficient, and less robust. I also wouldn't be able to change the length arbitrarily, but only by adding and removing a whole number of links, and it's not obvious how I would connect the remainder without violating existing joints. This sounds like something that should be straightforward to do. Am I overlooking something?

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• How to mange big amount users at server side?

  - by Rami

  I built a social android application in which users can see other users around them by gps location. at the beginning thing went well as i had low number of users, But now that I have increasing number of users (about 1500 +100 every day) I revealed a major problem in my design. In my Google App Engine servlet I have static HashMap that holding all the users profiles objects, currenty 1500 and this number will increase as more users register. Why I'm doing it Every user that requesting for the users around him compares his gps with other users and check if they are in his 10km radius, this happens every 5 min on average. That is why I can't get the users from db every time because GAE read/write operation quota will tare me apart. The problem with this desgin is As the number of users increased the Hashmap turns to null every 4-6 hours, I thing that this time is getting shorten but I'm not sure. I'm fixing this by reloading the users from the db every time I detect that it became null, But this causes DOS to my users for 30 sec, So I'm looking for better solution. I'm guessing that it happens because the size of the hashmap, Am I right? I have been advised to use spatial database, but that mean that I can't work with GAE any more and that mean that I need to build my big server all over again and lose my existing DB. Is there something I can do with the existing tools? Thanks.

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• Google analytics - drop in traffic

  - by Andy

  Bit of a general question here. We are in the process of converting a number of our clients from older web sites to new ones. The problem we are getting, and sorry for being so general here, is we are getting a sharp decline in traffic as reported on Google Analytics. It's not a gradual decline, it seems to hit almost as soon as the new site goes live. I've just got a few questions to see if there is something we are doing wrong: a) We are using the same analytics accounts going from old to new site. Is this a bad idea? b) The actual analytics code is integrated into the pages using a server-side include. IS this a bad idea? c) We structure our sites differently to our old site. IE. The old sites would pretty must have all the web pages in the root directory, and hyperlinks would be linked to the page files: EG. <a href="somepage.aspx">Link</a> Our new sites now have a directory structure that pretty much reflects the navigation structure, and hyper links link to the pages directory instead of the actual page: EG. <a href="/new-items/shoes/">New shoes</a> Is this a bad idea. I'm really searching for a needle in a haystack here. Would appriciate any help or advice as to why we are getting such a sharp and sudden drop in traffic. Again, so this is such a general question. Thanks in advance.

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• How do I create an encrypted file system inside a file?

  - by darent

  Recently i've found this interesting tutorial: http://flossstuff.wordpress.com/2011/08/07/using-a-file-as-a-storage-device/ It explains how to create an empty file, format it as ext4, and mount it as a device. I'd like to know if it can be created as an encrypted ext4 file system. I've tried using palimpsest (the disk utility found in System menu) to format the already created file system but it doesn't works as it detects the file system being used. If I try to unmount the file system, it won't work neither because it doesn't detect the device (since it's not a real device like a hardrive or a usb drive). So my question is, is there an option to create the file system encrypted from the begining? I've used these commands: Create an empty file 200Mb size: dd if=/dev/zero of=/path/to/file bs=1M count=200 Make it ext4: mkfs -t ext4 file Mount it in a folder inside my home: sudo mount -o loop file /path/to/mount_point Is there any way the mkfs command creates the ext4 encrypted asking for a decryption password? I'm planing to use this as a way to encrypt files inside Dropbox. Thanks for your time.

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• Broad topics needed for teaching game development

  - by livingtech

  I am going to be doing a presentation on game development to an iPhone user group in the near(ish) future. My audience are iPhone developers, but not necessarily very experienced ones, and this is meant to be an introduction. My question is, what broad topics are needed to understand game development? I acknowledge that this is fairly subjective, but I really am hoping for a comprehensive list of high-level topics that apply to a broad enough swath of games that anyone interested in the topic SHOULD know about them. I would be ecstatic with some pointers to any resources that attempt to make a list such as this this. (I have looked, but my google-fu is failing me tonight.) Here's what I have so far: The Game Loop a sub-note about event driven games 2D Animation sprites/texture maps 3D Animation importance of frameworks modeling software Particles and particle effects hit detection AI Obviously I will not be covering all these topics with any depth, more like simply defining them so that after my talk, the audience will (hopefully) be able to wrap their heads around how any given game might be developed. What am I missing?

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• If statement causing xna sprites to draw frame by frame

  - by user1489599

  I’m a bit new to XNA but I wanted to write a simple program that would fire a cannon ball from a cannon at a 45 degree angle. It works fine outside of my keyboard i/o if statement, but when I encapsulate the code around an if statement checking to see if the user hits the space bar, the sprite will draw one frame at a time every time the space bar is hit. This is the code in question if (currentKeyboardState.IsKeyUp(Keys.Space) && previousKeyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Space) && !skullBall.Alive) { //works outside the keyboard input if statement //{ skullBall.Position = cannon.Position; skullBall.DeltaY = -(float)(Math.Sin(MathHelper.ToRadians(45)) * 50/*39.7577*/ * time + 0.5 * (gravity * (time * time))); skullBall.DeltaX = (float)(Math.Cos(MathHelper.ToRadians(45)) * 50/*39.7577*/ * time); skullBall.Alive = true; //} } The skull ball represents the cannon ball and the cannon is just the starting point. DeltaX and DeltaY are the values I’m using to update the cannon balls position per update. I know it's dumb to have the cannon ball start at the cannons position every time the update is called but it’s not really noticeable right now. I was wondering if after examining my code, if anyone noticed any errors that would cause the sprite to display frame by frame instead of drawing it as a full animation of the cannon ball leaving the cannon and moving from there.

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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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• Running multiple box2D world objects on a server

  - by CharbelAbdo

  I'm creating a multiplayer game using LibGdx (with Box2d) and Kryonet. Since this is the first time I work on multiplayer games, I read a bit about server - client implementations, and it turns out that the server should handle important tasks like collision detection, hits, characters dying etc... Based on some articles (like the excellent Gabriel Gambetta Fast paced multiplayer series), I also know that the client should work in parallel to avoid the lag while the server responds to commands. Physics wise, each game will have 2 players, and any projectiles fired. What I'm thinking of doing is the following: Create a physics world on the client When the game is signaled to start, I create the same physics world on the server (without any rendering obviously). Whenever the player issues a command (move or fire), I send the command to the server and immediately start processing it on the client. When the server receives the command, it applies it on the server's world (set velocity etc...) Each 100ms, the server sends the new state to the client which corrects what was calculated locally. Any critical action (hit, death, level up) is calculated only on the server and sent to the client. Essentially, I would have a Box2d World object running on the server for each game in progress, in sync with the worlds running on the clients. The alternative would be to do my own calculations on the server instead of relying on Box2D to do them for me, but I'm trying to avoid that. My question is: Is it wise to have, for example, 1000 instances of the World object running and executing steps on the server? Tomcat used around 750 MBytes of memory when trying it without any object added to the world. Anybody tried that before? If not, is there any alternative? Google did not help me, are there any guidelines to use when you want to have physics on both the client and the server? Thanks for any help.

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• Fresh install of Ubuntu 12.10 won't boot on Asus X101CH Eee PC

  - by Najdmie

  I did a fresh install of Ubuntu 12.10 in my Asus X101CH Eee PC, using a live usb which I made using startup disk creator, replacing Ubuntu 12.04. The installation ran smoothly, but when I boot, it goes to a purple screen for a second, then a lot of text like the following shows up in sequence: Starting crash report submission daemon [OK] Starting CPU interrupts balancing daemon [OK] Stopping save kernel messages [OK] _ And the cursor just keeps blinking for hours. I can't log in. Pressing Alt + F2 did not bring me to console mode. I thought it might be a partition problem so I formatted the whole disk, by creating a new partition table using gparted in Ubuntu 12.04 live USB. I noticed that I can't try Ubuntu using 12.10 live USB either; it just went to a blank screen when I hit the 'try ubuntu' button. But the same problem arose. I even changed the pen drive for the live USB a couple of times. I happened to know that the Intel Atom N2600 Cedar Trail CPU in my computer is not well supported in Linux, I managed to install its drivers in Ubuntu 12.04, although the computer went blank during the installation.

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• What follows after lexical analysis?

  - by madflame991

  I'm working on a toy compiler (for some simple language like PL/0) and I have my lexer up and running. At this point I should start working on building the parse tree, but before I start I was wondering: How much information can one gather from just the string of tokens? Here's what I gathered so far: One can already do syntax highlighting having only the list of tokens. Numbers and operators get coloured accordingly and keywords also. Autoformatting (indenting) should also be possible. How? Specify for each token type how many white spaces or new line characters should follow it. Also when you print tokens modify an alignment variable (when the code printer reads "{" increment the alignment variable by 1, and decrement by 1 for "}". Whenever it starts printing on a new line the code printer will align according to this alignment variable) In languages without nested subroutines one can get a complete list of subroutines and their signature. How? Just read what follows after the "procedure" or "function" keyword until you hit the first ")" (this should work fine in a Pascal language with no nested subroutines) In languages like Pascal you can even determine local variables and their types, as they are declared in a special place (ok, you can't handle initialization as well, but you can parse sequences like: "var a, b, c: integer") Detection of recursive functions may also be possible, or even a graph representation of which subroutine calls who. If one can identify the body of a function then one can also search if there are any mentions of other function's names. Gathering statistics about the code, like number of lines, instructions, subroutines EDIT: I clarified why I think some processes are possible. As I read comments and responses I realise that the answer depends very much on the language that I'm parsing.

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• 12.04 LTS boot hangs at "SP5100 TCO timer: mmio address 0xfec000f0 already in use", didn't yesterday

  - by DarkIron112

  Dual-booting Windows 7 and Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. I went to reboot from Win to Ubu, and found a few interesting things. My POST screen is covered in blocks of epileptic colors until I hit GRUB, which continues when I try to boot into Ubuntu. These color blocks don't appear when I use my on-board VGA, so I'll just attribute to that. Grub dimensions are swapped (card vs onboard, probably), but, when interfacing with onboard VGA, the Grub Timeout Counter works and when using my card, it does not (see "[!!!]" below for more information) Booting into Ubuntu directly causes the error: SP5100 TCO timer: mmio address 0xfec000f0 already in use Booting into recovery mode, meanwhile, and then "resuming normal boot" gets me to the desktop without native 1440x900 resolution and graphic drivers can't tell the monitor it's looking at (I assume this is because it's not a full graphic boot, and as it says, some drivers won't run?) [!!!] When I reboot after going into recovery mode, the countdown timer works ONCE, puts me back into default ubuntu boot, and then does not work again until after another recovery-mode boot. Windows 7 can boot perfectly with no issues whatsoever from epilepsy color blocks or driver detection. This makes me wonder /why/ the POST screen can't handle my video card anymore. Amidst all the diagnostics, I opened my case and re-seated the videocard securely, ensuring it wasn't a loose connection-- But this did nothing to help me. Hardware I am running an NVidia GeForce GTX 8800 video card in a PCI slot. I have 4.8GiB memory, an AMD Athlon II Quad-core 640 Processor, on an MSI K9N6GM Series Mobo. Onboard video is an NVidia GeForce MCP61(V/S/P) card. Note: I did not have any of these problems yesterday, and I have been using Ubuntu intensively for a week, though it's been working flawlessly for months. I've recently been using it to mod my Android phone, perhaps I messed something up in the file system?

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• Detecting collision between ball (circle) and brick(rectangle)?

  - by James Harrison

  Ok so this is for a small uni project. My lecturer provided me with a framework for a simple brickbreaker game. I am currently trying to overcome to problem of detecting a collision between the two game objects. One object is always the ball and the other objects can either be the bricks or the bat. public Collision hitBy( GameObject obj ) { //obj is the bat or the bricks //the current object is the ball // if ball hits top of object if(topX + width >= obj.topX && topX <= obj.topX + obj.width && topY + height >= obj.topY - 2 && topY + height <= obj.topY){ return Collision.HITY; } //if ball hits left hand side else if(topY + height >= obj.topY && topY <= obj.topY + obj.height && topX + width >= obj.topX -2 && topX + width <= obj.topX){ return Collision.HITX; } else return Collision.NO_HIT; } So far I have a method that is used to detect this collision. The the current obj is a ball and the obj passed into the method is the the bricks. At the moment I have only added statement to check for left and top collisions but do not want to continue as I have a few problems. The ball reacts perfectly if it hits the top of the bricks or bat but when it hits the ball often does not change directing. It seems that it is happening toward the top of the left hand edge but I cannot figure out why. I would like to know if there is another way of approaching this or if people know where I'm going wrong. Lastly the collision.HITX calls another method later on the changes the x direction likewise with y.

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• Agile project management, agile development: early integration

  - by Matías Fidemraizer

  I believe that agile works if everything is agile. In software development area, in my opinion, if team members' code is integrated early, code will be more in sync and this has a lot of pros: Early integration helps team members to avoid painful merges. Encourages better coding habits, because everyone makes sure that they don't break co-workers' code everyday. Both developers and architects (code reviewers) may detect bad design decisions or just wrong development directions in real-time, preventing useless work. Actually I'm talking about getting the latest version of code base and checking-in your own code to the source control in a daily basis. When you start your coding day (i.e. you arrive to your work), your first action is updating your code base with the latest version from the source control. In the other hand, when you're about an hour to leave from your work and go home, your last action is checking-in your code to the source control and be sure that your day work doesn't break the project's build process. Rather than updating and checking-in your code once you finished an entire task, I believe the best approach is fixing small and flexible personal milestones and checking-in the code once you finish one of these. I really believe that this coding approach fits better in the agile project management concept. Do you know some document, blog post, wiki, article or whatever that you can suggest me that could be in sync with my opinion?. And, do you find any problem working with this approach?. Thank you in advance.

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• Breakout ball collision detection, bouncing against the walls

  - by Sri Harsha Chilakapati

  I'm currently trying to program a breakout game to distribute it as an example game for my own game engine. http://game-engine-for-java.googlecode.com/ But the problem here is that I can't get the bouncing condition working properly. Here's what I'm using. public void collision(GObject other){ if (other instanceof Bat || other instanceof Block){ bounce(); } else if (other instanceof Stone){ other.destroy(); bounce(); } //Breakout.HIT.play(); } And here's by bounce() method public void bounce(){ boolean left = false; boolean right = false; boolean up = false; boolean down = false; if (dx < 0) { left = true; } else if (dx > 0) { right = true; } if (dy < 0) { up = true; } else if (dy > 0) { down = true; } if (left && up) { dx = -dx; } if (left && down) { dy = -dy; } if (right && up) { dx = -dx; } if (right && down) { dy = -dy; } } The ball bounces the bat and blocks but when the block is on top of the ball, it won't bounce and moves upwards out of the game. What I'm missing? Is there anything to implement? Please help me.. Thanks

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• How best to keep bumbling, non-technical managers at bay and still deliver good work?

  - by Curious

  This question may be considered subjective (I got a warning) and be closed, but I will risk it, as I need some good advice/experience on this. I read the following at the 'About' page of Fog Creek Software, the company that Joel Spolsky founded and is CEO of: Back in the year 2000, the founders of Fog Creek, Joel Spolsky and Michael Pryor, were having trouble finding a place to work where programmers had decent working conditions and got an opportunity to do great work, without bumbling, non-technical managers getting in the way. Every high tech company claimed they wanted great programmers, but they wouldn’t put their money where their mouth was. It started with the physical environment (with dozens of cubicles jammed into a noisy, dark room, where the salespeople shouting on the phone make it impossible for developers to concentrate). But it went much deeper than that. Managers, terrified of change, treated any new idea as a bizarre virus to be quarantined. Napoleon-complex junior managers insisted that things be done exactly their way or you’re fired. Corporate Furniture Police writhed in agony when anyone taped up a movie poster in their cubicle. Disorganization was so rampant that even if the ideas were good, it would have been impossible to make a product out of them. Inexperienced managers practiced hit-and-run management, issuing stern orders on exactly how to do things without sticking around to see the farcical results of their fiats. And worst of all, the MBA-types in charge thought that coding was a support function, basically a fancy form of typing. A blunt truth about most of today's big software companies! Unfortunately not every developer is as gutsy (or lucky, may I say?) as Joel Spolsky! So my question is: How best to work with such managers, keep them at bay and still deliver great work?

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• Google ranking, page crawl

  - by Nawaf Mubarak

  please don't mind me for asking this newbie question about Google ranking. I know that in order to get ranked the page has to be crawled by Google bots, I have had a page example of which I will get a better understanding of how the system works with Google. I have made a page on my website last month, it got indexed pretty quickly, then I found that it's in Google's page 15 on my keyword as a start, next day it made it to page 13, then after a week it was jumping back and forth in page 17/18 up to 20. Now a month passed by, when and it isn't listed in any position of that 'keyword' sometimes I will find it in page 30, but later I won't find it anywhere, keep happening this way these days. Even if it isn't listed in any page for my keyword if I do a search for "site:thepageadress" it will be listed which means I'm not penalized and my page is there for google to see, but it isn't in the search result for my keyword. But when I write "site:thepage_adress" and I hit "search tools" option and click on "Past day" or "past week" it isn't listed, it is only listed when I click on "Past month" which I think means that Google indexed the page, looked at it once when I published it, and never looked at it again, is this a fair statement? So two questions that comes to mind here. 1- Should Google keep looking at a page even if I haven't changed any info for it? and is this an indication for me that my page is doing fine? or is it normal that Google see's it once and thats it? 2- Why and how to fix the fact that my page keeps jumping back and forth in the ranking result for keyword, and sometimes it isn't even listed, what does that mean? Sorry for the long msg, I hope to god that somebody help me with this. Thank you!

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• Windows Azure Training Kit (November 2010 Release Update)&ndash;Fantastic Azure training resource

  - by Jim Duffy

  At PDC 2010 in October Microsoft announced a number of new enhancements/features for Windows Azure. In case you missed it, these new enhancements/features have been released in the new Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio November release (v1.3). The Windows Azure team blog is an excellent resource for information about the new release. Along with the new release the Azure team has also updated the Windows Azure Platform Training Kit. What is the Windows Azure Platform Training Kit you ask? It is a comprehensive set of hands-on training labs and videos designed to help you quickly get up to speed with Windows Azure, SQL Azure, and the Windows Azure AppFabric. The training kit contains updated labs including a couple I would suggest you hit first. Introduction to Windows Azure - updated to use the new Windows Azure platform Portal Introduction to SQL Azure - updated to use the new Windows Azure platform Portal The training kit contains a number of new labs as well including: Advanced Web and Worker Role – shows how to use admin mode and startup tasks Connecting Apps With Windows Azure Connect – shows how to use Project Sydney Virtual Machine Role – shows how to get started with VM Role by creating and deploying a VHD Windows Azure CDN – simple introduction to the CDN Introduction to the Windows Azure AppFabric Service Bus Futures – shows how to use the new Service Bus features in the AppFabric labs environment Building Windows Azure Apps with Caching Service – shows how to use the new Windows Azure AppFabric Caching service Introduction to the AppFabric Access Control Service V2 – shows how to build a simple web application that supports multiple identity providers Ok, that’s enough reading, go start learning! Have a day.

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• Build & Install Ruby Gems with Rake

  - by kerry

  Are you using rake to build your gems?  Have you ever wished there were an install task to install it to your machine?  I, for one, have written something like this a few times: 1: desc 'Install the gem' 2: task :install do 3: exec 'gem install pkg/goodies-0.1.gem' 4: end 5:  That is pretty straightforward.  However, this will not work under JRuby on Mac where the command should be ‘jgem’.  So we can enhance it to detect the platform, and host OS: 1: desc 'Install the gem' 2: task :install do 3: executable = RUBY_PLATFORM[/java/] && Config::CONFIG[/darwin/] ? 'jgem' : 'gem' 4: exec "#{executable} install pkg/goodies-0.1.gem" 5: end This is a little better.  I am still not comfortable with the sloppiness of building a shell command and executing it though.  It is possible to do it with strictly Ruby.  I am also going namespace it to integrate better with the GemPackageTask.  Now it will be accessed via ‘rake gem:install’ 1: desc 'Install the gem' 2: namespace 'gem' do 3: task :install do 4: Gem::Installer.new('pkg/goodies-0.1.gem').install 5: end 6: end   I have included this in the goodies gem 0.2, so go ahead and install it!  ‘gem install goodies’

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• XSF-FO intellisense and national languages with Apache FOP

  - by Lukasz Kurylo

  Some time ago I showed how to get an intellisense and how to configure the FO.NET to acquire national characters inside the generated pdf files. Due to the limitations that I mensioned in my previous post, I started playing with the Apache FOP. In this post I want to show, how to acquire the same result as I showed in the two posts related to FO.NET.   Intellisense   To get the intellisense from the XSL-FO templates set the xsi:schemaLocation the same way I showed it in this post. The only diffrence to FO.NET is that, during generating the document by the code I showed last time we will get an exception:   org.apache.fop.fo.ValidationException: Invalid property encountered on "fo:root": xsi:schemaLocation (See position 6:11)   Fortunatelly there is a very easy way to resolve this without removing the entire attribute along with the intellisense. Add to the FopFactory the ignoreNamespace by:   FopFactory fopFactory = FopFactory.newInstance(); fopFactory.ignoreNamespace(http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance);   Notice that, the url specified in this method this is a namespace for the xmlns:xsi namespace, not xsi.schemaLocation.   Fonts / national characters   This point is a little dfferent to acquire, but not more complicated that it was with FO.NET. To set the fonts in Apache FOP 1.0, we need a configuration file. A sample one can be get from the directory where we unpacked the fop binaries, from conf subdirectory. There is a file called fop.xconf. We must copy this file to our solution. In the simplest way, in the <fonts> tag we can add  <auto-detect/>. Thanks to this, FOP will index all fonts available on the installed operating system. There probably should be no problem, if we have a http handler or a WCF Service on the server that serves the generated pdf documents. In this situation we can use all available fonts on this server.   To use this config file, we must set a path to it:   FopFactory fopFactory = FopFactory.newInstance(); fopFactory.setUserConfig(new File("fop.xconf"));

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• Sending changes to a terrain heightmap over UDP

  - by Floomi

  This is a more conceptual, thinking-out-loud question than a technical one. I have a 3D heightmapped terrain as part of a multiplayer RTS that I would like to terraform over a network. The terraforming will be done by units within the gameworld; the player will paint a "target heightmap" that they'd like the current terrain to resemble and units will deform towards that on their own (a la Perimeter). Given my terrain is 257x257 vertices, the naive approach of sending heights when they change will flood the bandwidth very quickly - updating a quarter of the terrain every second will hit ~66kB/s. This is clearly way too much. My next thought was to move to a brush-based system, where you send e.g. the centre of a circle, its radius, and some function defining the influence of the brush from the centre going outwards. But even with reliable UDP the "start" and "stop" messages could still be delayed. I guess I could compare timestamps and compensate for this, although it'd likely mean that clients would deform verts too much on their local simulations and then have to smooth them back to the correct heights. I could also send absolute vert heights in the "start" and "stop" messages to guarantee correct data on the clients. Alternatively I could treat brushes in a similar way to units, and do the standard position + velocity + client-side prediction jazz on them, with the added stipulation that they deform terrain within a certain radius around them. The server could then intermittently do a pass and send (a subset of) recently updated verts to clients as and when there's bandwidth to spare. Any other suggestions, or indications that I'm on the right (or wrong!) track with any of these ideas would be greatly appreciated.

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• Modelling work-flow plus interaction with a database - quick and accessible options

  - by cjmUK

  I'm wanting to model a (proposed) manufacturing line, with specific emphasis on interaction with a traceability database. That is, various process engineers have already mapped the manufacturing process - I'm only interested in the various stations along the line that have to talk to the DB. The intended audience is a mixture of project managers, engineers and IT people - the purpose is to identify: points at which the line interacts with the DB (perhaps going so far as indicating the Store Procs called at each point, perhaps even which parameters are passed.) the communication source (PC/Handheld device/PLC) the communication medium (wireless/fibre/copper) control flow (if leak test fails, unit is diverted to repair station) Basically, the model will be used as a focus different groups on outstanding tasks; for example, I'm interested in the DB and any front-end app needed, process engineers need to be thinking about the workflow and liaising with the PLC suppliers, the other IT guys need to make sure we have the hardware and comms in place. Obviously I could just improvise in Visio, but I was wondering if there was a particular modelling technique that might particularly suit my needs or my audience. I'm thinking of a visual model with supporting documentation (as little as possible, as much as is necessary). Clearly, I don't want something that will take me ages to (effectively) learn, nor one that will alienate non-technical members of the project team. So far I've had brief looks at BPMN, EPC Diagrams, standard Flow Diagrams... and I've forgotten most of what I used to know about UML... And I'm not against picking and mixing... as long as it is quick, clear and effective. Conclusion: In the end, I opted for a quasi-workflow/dataflow diagram. I mapped out the parts of the manufacturing process that interact with the traceability DB, and indicated in a significantly-simplified form, the data flows and DB activity. Alongside which, I have a supporting document which outlines each process, the data being transacted for each process (a 'data dictionary' of sorts) and details of hardware and connectivity required. I can't decide whether is a product of genius or a crime against established software development practices, but I do think that is will hit the mark for this particular audience.

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• Efficiency concerning thread granularity

  - by MaelmDev

  Lately, I've been thinking of ways to use multithreading to improve the speed of different parts of a game engine. What confuses me is the appropriate granularity of threads, especially when dealing with single-instruction-multiple-data (SIMD) tasks. Let's use line-of-sight detection as an example. Each AI actor must be able to detect objects of interest around them and mark them. There are three basic ways to go about this with multithreading: Don't use threading at all. Create a thread for each actor. Create a thread for each actor-object combination. Option 1 is obviously going to be the least efficient method. However, choosing between the next two options is more difficult. Only using one thread per actor is still running through every object in series instead of in parallel. However, are CPU's able to create and join threads in the granularity posed in Option 3 efficiently? It seems like that many calls to the OS could be really slow, and varying enormously between different hardware.

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• Huawei e303c data-card not working for Ubuntu 11.04?

  - by Umashankar

  Cheers to you. I got a problem in making a Mobile-BroadBand connection in Ubuntu 11.04, using 'Huawei e303c' usb data-card. I'm using Tata Docomo 3G sim-card (India, circle: Maharastra). My observations: 1.) I installed the device's driver 'Mobile-Partner For Linux'(which came up with the device). But it is not detecting my device. 2.) In Network Manager, Adding a Mobile-BroadBand connection is not able to detect the device (with or without the device's driver installed). 3.)I tried softwares like usb_modeswitch, gnomeppp, wvdial, sakis3G and followed their guidelines. These too didn't work. 4.) Without the driver, the system is able to identify the device (Mobile-Partner icon comes-up, that leads to driver setup files). But after installing the driver, nothing comes-up there. 5.) In all the above cases, when 'lsusb' cmd is fired, the prompt shows the connected data card (as 'DEVICE_ID:VENDOR_ID Huawei Technologies Ltd.,'). This is my problem. Give a solution to get my device connected. -Umash

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• Bad archive mirror using PXE boot method

  - by user11566

  I'm trying to automatically install Ubuntu on a client PC by using the PXE BOOT method....my Objectives are below: I am following the steps given in this link installation using PXE BOOT the server will have a KICKSTART config file which contains the parameters for the OS installation and the files which are required for the OS installations. the client will have to detect this configuration along with the setup files and complete the installation without any input from the user. In my server I have installed DHCP3-server,Apache2 and TFTP to help me with the installation. I have nearly achieved my first objective, I am able to boot my client using the files stored in the server but during the installation stage it is asking me to CHOOSE A MIRROR OF UBUNTU ARCHIVE I gave the server's IP address and the path in the server where the files are located but then its giving me this error BAD ARCHIVE MIRROR So is it possible that instead of downloading all the files from the internet and storing them on my disk can I use the files which comes with the UBUNTU-CD, and how to store these files in what format (should I zip them) on the disk? secondly I am also generating the ks.cfg which I wanted to give to the client for automatic installation of the OS. So how should the configuration file be given to the installation process?

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• How can I set my resolution to 1280x1024 on an Acer Aspire Revo 3700?

  - by torbengb

  I've just set up a new nettop computer (Acer Aspire Revo 3700: CPU:Atom D525, GPU:Nvidia ION2). I've just made a clean install of Ubuntu 10.10 using the standard USB pendrive method. Almost everything works OK, but the graphics are not OK: the recommended Nvidia driver is activated but the monitor is not detected, so the resolution is wrong. How can I make Ubuntu detect my monitor? How can I get the proper resolution (1280x1024) in Ubuntu? I know that my monitor is not a CRT but an LCD: it's a BenQ, model T905, with 1280x1024 resolution at 60Hz, connected via a normal VGA cable. DVI or HDMI is not an option. When I go to SystemPrefsMonitors, I get: It appears that your graphics driver does not support the necessary extensions to use this tool. Do you want to use your graphics driver vendor's tool instead? YES NO If I say NO then I get a window: or for YES I get this: In both cases I don't see that I can fix this problem. The main reason for getting this new computer was that I was sick of having graphics problems on the old one with a very ugly solution that didn't give me hardware support - but at least I got the resultion. Why is this so difficult... sigh!

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