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  • Language Club – Battle of the Dynamic Languages

    - by Ben Griswold
    After dedicating the last eight weeks to learning Ruby, it’s time to move onto another language.  I really dig Ruby.  I really enjoy its dynamism and expressiveness and always-openness and it’s been the highlight of our coding club for me so far. But that’s just my take on the language.  I know a lot of coders who’s stomachs turn with the mere thought of Ruby.  They say it’s Ruby’s openness which has them feeling uneasy.  I’d say “write a bunch of tests and get over it,” but I figure there must be more to it than always open classes and possible method collisions. Yes, there’s something else to it alright. The folks who didn’t fall head over heals for Ruby are already in love with Python.  You might remember that Python was the first language we tackled in our coding club.  My time with Python was okay but it didn’t feel as natural to me as Ruby.  But let’s say we started with Ruby and then moved onto Python.  Would I see Python in a different light right now.  Might I even prefer Python over Ruby?  I suppose it’s possible but it’s pretty tough to test that theory – unless we visit Python for a second time. That’s right. The language club is going to focus on Python again and in my attempt to learn Python – yet again – in the open, I’ll be posting my solutions here just as I did for Ruby.  We don’t always have second chances so I going about this relearning with two primary goals in mind:  First, I’m going to use IronPython and the IronPython tools which provide a Python code editor, a file-based project system, and an interactive Python interpreter, all inside Visual Studio 2010.  As a note, the IronPython tools are now part of the main IronPython installer which is Version 2.7 Alpha 1 (not the latest stable version, 2.6.1) and I’d be crazy not to use them.  Second, I’d like to make sure I’m still learning Python without a complete MS skew so I’m going to run my code through Eclipse using the PyDev plugin as well.  Heck, I might use IDLE too. I already have this setup on my machine so it’s no big deal. Okay, that’s it for now.  I worked on the first ten Euler problems last night and the solutions will be posted shortly. Wish me luck.

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  • SQLAuthority News – Presented at Bangalore DevCon August 4, 2012

    - by pinaldave
    Bangalore Devcon 2012 was a great fun. Earlier this month I was fortunate to be invited to present at Dev Con. The event was very well planned and had excellent response. There were more than 140 attendees at any time in the sessions. There were two tracks and both tracks were running parallel to each other in the Microsoft Bangalore building. The venue is fantastic and the enthusiasm of the community is impeccable. We had a total of 12 sessions during the day. I had decided to attend each session if I can. We have so many fantastic speakers and I did not want to miss any of the sessions. As sessions were running parallel, I attended every session for 30 minutes and switched to another session. I had fun doing this experiment as tit gave me a good idea about every session. I presented personally on the session of SQL Tips and Tricks for Web Developer. DBA is a very common word and every time when we say SQL Server – lots of people think of DBA in their mind, however, SQL Server is used by many developers as well. In this session I tried to cover a few of the simple concepts where developers must pay special attention while writing T-SQL code. Sometimes a very small mistake can be very fatal on performance in the future. Here are few of the photos of the event. Btw, the two sessions which clearly stand out were Vinod Kumar‘s session on Leadership and Lohith‘s session on Visual Studio Tips and Tricks. Additional Read: Following are the blog posts by community on the Bangalore DevCon Experience. I encourage you to read them all and leave a comment which one you liked the most. http://abhishekbhat.wordpress.com/2012/08/07/devcon-2012-experience/ http://praveenprajapati.wordpress.com/2012/08/07/devcon-2012-part-2/ http://tomsblogsspot.blogspot.in/2012/08/devcon-2012.html?view=classic https://manasdash.wordpress.com/2012/08/06/devcon-2012-by-bdotnet-4th-august-2012/ http://www.jagan-bhathri.com/2012/08/bangalore-developer-conference-2012-by.html Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority Author Visit, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology

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  • Announcing the ASP.NET and Web Tools 2012.2 Release Candidate

    - by ScottGu
    This week the ASP.NET and Visual Web Developer teams delivered the Release Candidate of the ASP.NET and Web Tools 2012.2 update (formerly ASP.NET Fall 2012 Update BUILD Prerelease). This update extends the existing ASP.NET runtime and adds new web tooling to Visual Studio 2012. Whether you use Web Forms, MVC, Web API, or any other ASP.NET technology, there is something cool in this update for you. You can download and install the RC today: http://www.asp.net/vnext. Great ASP.NET Enhancements This update adds new ASP.NET templates and features, including: New ASP.NET MVC templates. Creating Facebook applications just became easier using the new Facebook Application template. In just a few easy steps you can create a Facebook application that gets data from the logged in user as well as integrates with their friends. A new Single Page Application template allows developers to build interactive client-side web apps using Knockout, jQuery, and ASP.NET Web API. Real-time communication support with ASP.NET SignalR.  This enables you to easily take advantage of the new WebSocket support in .NET 4.5, while also automatically degrading to long-polling and other protocols for older clients.  If you haven’t tried SignalR yet you should – it is awesome. New ASP.NET Web API functionality, including support for OData, integrated tracing, and automatically generating help page documentation for your API. New ASP.NET Friendly URL functionality. This new feature makes it very easy for Web Forms developers to generate cleaner looking URLs (without the .aspx extension). The Friendly URLs feature also makes it easier for developers to add mobile support to their applications with support for mobile .ASPX pages and  supporting switching between desktop and mobile views. It can be used with existing ASP.NET v4.0 applications. Visual Studio 2012 Web publishing enhancements. Web site projects now have the same publish experience as web application projects (including to Windows Azure Web Sites), and you can selectively publish files, see the differences between local and remote files, and update local to remote files or vice versa. Visual Studio 2012 Page Inspector enhancements. JavaScript selection mapping is now supported, and you can CSS updates in real-time. Visual Studio 2012 editor support for Knockout IntelliSense and pasting JSON as a .NET class (which makes it even easier to consume Web APIs from others). Visual Studio 2012 Project Template updates, including the latest versions of jQuery, jQuery UI, jQuery Validation, Modernirz, Knockout and more… How it is delivered You can download and install an integrated setup that contains the above enhancements today from http://www.asp.net/vnext. The new runtime functionality is delivered to ASP.NET via additional NuGet packages. This means that installing this update does not make any changes to the existing ASP.NET binaries, and thus does not cause any compatibility issues with existing projects. New projects will contain the new functionality and existing projects can be updated with the new NuGet packages. Summary Web development is changing, and ASP.NET is rapidly delivering new capabilities to developers that help them take full advantage of new capabilities.  The ASP.NET and Web Tools 2012.2 update installs in minutes without altering the current ASP.NET run time components. For a complete description see the Release Notes. Next week I plan to publish a tutorial showing how to build a cool Facebook application using the new Facebook template. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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  • DevExpress XAF, Behavior Driven Development (BDD), Domain Driven Development (DDD) and more&ndash;Introduction

    - by Patrick Liekhus
    OK.  I admit it.  I have been horrible at this blogging thing.  However, I have made a commitment to get better at it so here goes.  I have many crazy ideas when it comes to coding and how to make my processes better and now is the time to get them down on paper and get your feedback.  Now, these ideas might not be nearly as wild and crazy as Charlie Sheen, but at least they help me get through my coding assignments. So let’s start by laying out the vision and objectives of this exercise.  I have been trying to come up with the best set of tools, tips and practices so I can get a small team to be as productive as possible without burning out my resources.  My thoughts tend to lean towards the coding practices first as this is what I have been doing for years.  However, as one looks at the process as a whole, we need to remember to keep the users in mind.  If we don’t have a user to accept our application, do we really have an application in the first place? I have been using a commercial framework from DevExpress called eXpress Application Framework (XAF) with their eXpress Persistent Objects (XPO) behind the scenes for a few years.  We have had tremendous success with it and even implemented a code generation layer to save us some time.  Now we want more!!! My goals here are to create a technical stack that employs as many UI’s as possible, while being true to the layers and documenting the process along the way.  I will continue to have a series of these posts that will walk through each step as I work on it.  Right now here is what I have planned: Defining the solution SCRUM/Agile Story Planning Overview of Architectural Plan Feature Driven Development Domain Driven Development Persistence Layer with XPO Windows UI with XAF/XPO Web UI with XAF/XPO OData Services Layer Windows Mobile UI Android UI iPhone UI Blackberry UI Excel UI Outlook UI Lessons Learned I will explain the solution that I plan to implement in the next post.  Thanks again and let me know what you think.

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  • Is SugarCRM really adequate for custom development?

    - by dukeofgaming
    I used SugarCRM for a project about two years ago, I ran into errors from the very installation, having to hack the actual installation file to deploy the software in the server... and other erros that I can't recall now. Two years after, I'm picking it up for a project once again... oh dear, I'm feeling like I should have developed the whole thing from scratch myself. Some examples: I couldn't install it in the server (again)... I had to install it locally, then copy the files and database over to the server and manually edit the config file. Constantly getting deployment errors from the module builder... one reason is SugarCRM keeps creating a record in the upgrade_history table for a file that does not exist, I keep deleting such record and it keeps coming back corrupt. I get other deployment errors, but have not figured them out... then I have to rollback all files and database to try again. I deleted a custom module with relationships, the relationships stayed in the other modules and cannot be deleted anymore, PHP warnings all over the place. Quick create for custom modules does not appear, hack needed. Its whole cache directory is a joke, permanent data/files are stored there. The module builder interface disappears required fields. Edit the wrong thing, module builder won't deploy again... then pray Quick Repair and/or Rebuild Relationships do the trick. My impression of SugarCRM now is that, regardless of its pretty exterior and apparent functionality, it is a very low quality piece of software. This even scared me more: http://amplicate.com/hate/sugarcrm; a quote: I wis this info had been available when I tried to implement it 2 years ago... I searched high and low and the only info I found was positive. Yes, it's a piece of crap. The community edition was full of bugs... nothing worked. Essentially I got fired for implementing it. I'm glad though, because now I work for myself, am much happier and make more money... so, I should really thank SugarCRM for sucking so much I guess! I figured that perhaps some of you have had similar experiences, and have either sticked with SugarCRM or moved on to another solution. I'm very interested in knowing what your resolutions were -or your current situations are- to make up my own mind, since the project I'm working on is long term and I'm feeling SugarCRM will be more an obstacle than an aid. Thanks in advance.

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  • CodeStock 2012 Review: Michael Eaton( @mjeaton ) - 3 Simple Things for Increased Productivity

    3 Simple Things for Increased ProductivitySpeaker: Michael EatonTwitter: @mjeatonBlog: http://mjeaton.net/blog This was the first time I had seen Michael Eaton speak but have hear a lot of really good things about his speaking abilities. Needless to say I was really looking forward to his session. He basically addressed the topic of distractions and how they can decrease or increase your productivity as a developer. He makes the case that in order to become more productive you must block/limit all distractions. For example, he covered his top distractions as a developer. Top Distractions Social Media(Twitter, Reddit, Facebook) Wiki sites Phone Email Video Games Coworkers, Friends, Family Michael stated that he uses various types of music to help him block out these distractions in order for him to get into his coding zone. While he states that music works for him, he also notes that he knows of others that cannot really work with music. I have to say I am in the latter group because I require a quiet environment in order to work. A few session attendees also recommended listening to really loud white noise or music in another language other than your own. This allows for less focus to be placed on words being sung compared to the rhythmic beats being played. I have to say that I have not tried these suggestions yet but will in the near future. However, distractions can be very beneficial to productivity in that they give your mind a chance to relax and not think about the issues at hand. He spoke highly of taking vacations, and setting boundaries at work so that develops prevent the problem of burnout. One way he suggested that developer’s combat distractions is to use the Pomodoro technique. In his example he selects one task to do for 20 minutes and he can only do that task during that time. He ignores all other distractions until this task or time limit is complete. After it is completed he allows himself to relax and distract himself for another 5- 10 minutes before his next Pomodoro. This allows him to stay completely focused on a task and when the time is up he can then focus on other things.

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  • Oracle Data Integration 12c: Simplified, Future-Ready, High-Performance Solutions

    - by Thanos Terentes Printzios
    In today’s data-driven business environment, organizations need to cost-effectively manage the ever-growing streams of information originating both inside and outside the firewall and address emerging deployment styles like cloud, big data analytics, and real-time replication. Oracle Data Integration delivers pervasive and continuous access to timely and trusted data across heterogeneous systems. Oracle is enhancing its data integration offering announcing the general availability of 12c release for the key data integration products: Oracle Data Integrator 12c and Oracle GoldenGate 12c, delivering Simplified and High-Performance Solutions for Cloud, Big Data Analytics, and Real-Time Replication. The new release delivers extreme performance, increase IT productivity, and simplify deployment, while helping IT organizations to keep pace with new data-oriented technology trends including cloud computing, big data analytics, real-time business intelligence. With the 12c release Oracle becomes the new leader in the data integration and replication technologies as no other vendor offers such a complete set of data integration capabilities for pervasive, continuous access to trusted data across Oracle platforms as well as third-party systems and applications. Oracle Data Integration 12c release addresses data-driven organizations’ critical and evolving data integration requirements under 3 key themes: Future-Ready Solutions : Supporting Current and Emerging Initiatives Extreme Performance : Even higher performance than ever before Fast Time-to-Value : Higher IT Productivity and Simplified Solutions  With the new capabilities in Oracle Data Integrator 12c, customers can benefit from: Superior developer productivity, ease of use, and rapid time-to-market with the new flow-based mapping model, reusable mappings, and step-by-step debugger. Increased performance when executing data integration processes due to improved parallelism. Improved productivity and monitoring via tighter integration with Oracle GoldenGate 12c and Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c. Improved interoperability with Oracle Warehouse Builder which enables faster and easier migration to Oracle Data Integrator’s strategic data integration offering. Faster implementation of business analytics through Oracle Data Integrator pre-integrated with Oracle BI Applications’ latest release. Oracle Data Integrator also integrates simply and easily with Oracle Business Analytics tools, including OBI-EE and Oracle Hyperion. Support for loading and transforming big and fast data, enabled by integration with big data technologies: Hadoop, Hive, HDFS, and Oracle Big Data Appliance. Only Oracle GoldenGate provides the best-of-breed real-time replication of data in heterogeneous data environments. With the new capabilities in Oracle GoldenGate 12c, customers can benefit from: Simplified setup and management of Oracle GoldenGate 12c when using multiple database delivery processes via a new Coordinated Delivery feature for non-Oracle databases. Expanded heterogeneity through added support for the latest versions of major databases such as Sybase ASE v 15.7, MySQL NDB Clusters 7.2, and MySQL 5.6., as well as integration with Oracle Coherence. Enhanced high availability and data protection via integration with Oracle Data Guard and Fast-Start Failover integration. Enhanced security for credentials and encryption keys using Oracle Wallet. Real-time replication for databases hosted on public cloud environments supported by third-party clouds. Tight integration between Oracle Data Integrator 12c and Oracle GoldenGate 12c and other Oracle technologies, such as Oracle Database 12c and Oracle Applications, provides a number of benefits for organizations: Tight integration between Oracle Data Integrator 12c and Oracle GoldenGate 12c enables developers to leverage Oracle GoldenGate’s low overhead, real-time change data capture completely within the Oracle Data Integrator Studio without additional training. Integration with Oracle Database 12c provides a strong foundation for seamless private cloud deployments. Delivers real-time data for reporting, zero downtime migration, and improved performance and availability for Oracle Applications, such as Oracle E-Business Suite and ATG Web Commerce . Oracle’s data integration offering is optimized for Oracle Engineered Systems and is an integral part of Oracle’s fast data, real-time analytics strategy on Oracle Exadata Database Machine and Oracle Exalytics In-Memory Machine. Oracle Data Integrator 12c and Oracle GoldenGate 12c differentiate the new offering on data integration with these many new features. This is just a quick glimpse into Oracle Data Integrator 12c and Oracle GoldenGate 12c. Find out much more about the new release in the video webcast "Introducing 12c for Oracle Data Integration", where customer and partner speakers, including SolarWorld, BT, Rittman Mead will join us in launching the new release. Resource Kits Meet Oracle Data Integration 12c  Discover what's new with Oracle Goldengate 12c  Oracle EMEA DIS (Data Integration Solutions) Partner Community is available for all your questions, while additional partner focused webcasts will be made available through our blog here, so stay connected. For any questions please contact us at partner.imc-AT-beehiveonline.oracle-DOT-com Stay Connected Oracle Newsletters

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  • Site Search Engine for 1,000 page website

    - by Ian
    I manage a website with about 1,000 articles that need to be searchable by my members. The site search engines I've tried all had their own problems: Fluid Dynamics Search Engine Since it's written in perl, it was a bit hacky to integrate with my PHP-based CMS. I basically had to file_get_contents the search results page. However, FDSE had the best search results. Google CSE Ugh, the search results SUCK. It can't find documents even using unique strings. I'm so surprised that a Google search product is this bad. Nor can I get any answers on their 'help' forums, and I am a paying user. Boo, Google. Boo. Sphider Again, bad search results. Unable to locate some phrases used in link text. Better results than Google CSE though. Shame on Google that a free PHP script has better search results than their paid application. IndexTank This one looked really promising. I got all set up with their PHP API client. But it would only randomly add articles that I submitted. Out of 700+ articles I pushed to the index through their API, only 8 made it in. Unable to find any help on this subject. Update for IndexTank -- Got the above issue fixed, so this looks most promising so far. The site itself runs on php/mysql and FreeBSD, though this shouldn't matter for a web crawling indexer. I've looked at Lucene, but I don't know anything about Java or installing Java programs on my web server. I also do not have root access on my web server, if this would be required for installation. I really don't need a lot of fancy features. It just needs to be able to crawl my web site and return great (even decent!) search results. I don't need any crazy search operators. It doesn't need to index off my primary domain. It just needs to work! Thanks, Hive Mind!

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  • Chunking a List - .NET vs Python

    - by Abhijeet Patel
    Chunking a List As I mentioned last time, I'm knee deep in python these days. I come from a statically typed background so it's definitely a mental adjustment. List comprehensions is BIG in Python and having worked with a few of them I can see why. Let's say we need to chunk a list into sublists of a specified size. Here is how we'd do it in C#  static class Extensions   {       public static IEnumerable<List<T>> Chunk<T>(this List<T> l, int chunkSize)       {           if (chunkSize <0)           {               throw new ArgumentException("chunkSize cannot be negative", "chunkSize");           }           for (int i = 0; i < l.Count; i += chunkSize)           {               yield return new List<T>(l.Skip(i).Take(chunkSize));           }       }    }    static void Main(string[] args)  {           var l = new List<string> { "a", "b", "c", "d", "e", "f","g" };             foreach (var list in l.Chunk(7))           {               string str = list.Aggregate((s1, s2) => s1 + "," + s2);               Console.WriteLine(str);           }   }   A little wordy but still pretty concise thanks to LINQ.We skip the iteration number plus chunkSize elements and yield out a new List of chunkSize elements on each iteration. The python implementation is a bit more terse. def chunkIterable(iter, chunkSize):      '''Chunks an iterable         object into a list of the specified chunkSize     '''        assert hasattr(iter, "__iter__"), "iter is not an iterable"      for i in xrange(0, len(iter), chunkSize):          yield iter[i:i + chunkSize]    if __name__ == '__main__':      l = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e', 'f']      generator = chunkIterable(l,2)      try:          while(1):              print generator.next()      except StopIteration:          pass   xrange generates elements in the specified range taking in a seed and returning a generator. which can be used in a for loop(much like using a C# iterator in a foreach loop) Since chunkIterable has a yield statement, it turns this method into a generator as well. iter[i:i + chunkSize] essentially slices the list based on the current iteration index and chunksize and creates a new list that we yield out to the caller one at a time. A generator much like an iterator is a state machine and each subsequent call to it remembers the state at which the last call left off and resumes execution from that point. The caveat to keep in mind is that since variables are not explicitly typed we need to ensure that the object passed in is iterable using hasattr(iter, "__iter__").This way we can perform chunking on any object which is an "iterable", very similar to accepting an IEnumerable in the .NET land

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  • Gawker Passwords

    - by Nick Harrison
    There has been much news about the hack of the Gawker web sites. There has even been an analysis of the common passwords found. This list is embarrassing in many ways. The most common password was "123456". The second most common password was "password". Much has also been written providing advice on how to create good passwords. This article provides some interesting advice, none of which should be taken. Anyone reading my blog, probably already knows the importance of strong passwords, so I am not going to reiterate the reasons here. My target audience is more the folks defining password complexity requirements. A user cannot come up with a strong password, if we have complexity requirements that don't make sense. With that in mind, here are a few guidelines:  Long Passwords Insist on long passwords. In some cases, you may need to change to allow a long password. I have seen many places that cap passwords at 8 characters. Passwords need to be at least 8 characters minimal. Consider how much stronger the passwords would be if you double the length. Passwords that are 15-20 characters will be that much harder to crack. There is no need to have limit passwords to 8 characters. Don't Require Special Characters Many complexity rules will require that your password include a capital letter, a lower case letter, a number, and one of the "special" characters, the shits above the number keys. The problem with such rules is that the resulting passwords are harder to remember. It also means that you will have a smaller set of characters in the resulting passwords. If you must include one of the 9 digits and one of the 9 "special" characters, then you have dramatically reduced the character set that will make up the final password. Two characters will be one of 10 possible values instead of one of 70. Two additional characters will be one of 26 possible characters instead of a 70 character potential character set. If you limit passwords to 8 characters, you are left with only 7 characters having the full set of 70 potential values. With these character restrictions in place, there are 1.6 x1012 possible passwords. Without these special character restrictions, but allowing numbers and special characters, you get a total of 5.76x1014 possible passwords. Even if you only allowed upper and lower case characters, you will still have 2.18X1014 passwords. You can do the math any number of ways, requiring special characters will always weaken passwords. Now imagine the number of passwords when you require more than 8 characters.  If you are responsible for defining complexity rules, I urge you to take these guidelines into account. What other guidelines do you follow?

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  • Open the SQL Server Error Log with PowerShell

    - by BuckWoody
    Using the Server Management Objects (SMO) library, you don’t even need to have the SQL Server 2008 PowerShell Provider to read the SQL Server Error Logs – in fact, you can use regular old everyday PowerShell. Keep in mind you will need the SMO libraries – which can be installed separately or by installing the Client Tools from the SQL Server install media. You could search for errors, store a result as a variable, or act on the returned values in some other way. Replace the Machine Name with your server and Instance Name with your instance, but leave the quotes, to make this work on your system: [reflection.assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("Microsoft.SqlServer.Smo") $machineName = "UNIVAC" $instanceName = "Production" $sqlServer = new-object ("Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo.Server") "$machineName\$instanceName" $sqlServer.ReadErrorLog() Want to search for something specific, like the word “Error”? Replace the last line with this: $sqlServer.ReadErrorLog() | where {$_.Text -like "Error*"} Script Disclaimer, for people who need to be told this sort of thing: Never trust any script, including those that you find here, until you understand exactly what it does and how it will act on your systems. Always check the script on a test system or Virtual Machine, not a production system. Yes, there are always multiple ways to do things, and this script may not work in every situation, for everything. It’s just a script, people. All scripts on this site are performed by a professional stunt driver on a closed course. Your mileage may vary. Void where prohibited. Offer good for a limited time only. Keep out of reach of small children. Do not operate heavy machinery while using this script. If you experience blurry vision, indigestion or diarrhea during the operation of this script, see a physician immediately. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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  • Giving a Bomberman AI intelligent bomb placement

    - by Paul Manta
    I'm trying to implement an AI algorithm for Bomberman. Currently I have a working but not very smart rudimentary implementation (the current AI is overzealous in placing bombs). This is the first AI I've ever tried implementing and I'm a bit stuck. The more sophisticated algorithms I have in mind (the ones that I expect to make better decisions) are too convoluted to be good solutions. What general tips do you have for implementing a Bomberman AI? Are there radically different approaches for making the bot either more defensive or offensive? Edit: Current algorithm My current algorithm goes something like this (pseudo-code): 1) Try to place a bomb and then find a cell that is safe from all the bombs, including the one that you just placed. To find that cell, iterate over the four directions; if you can find any safe divergent cell and reach it in time (eg. if the direction is up or down, look for a cell that is found to the left or right of this path), then it's safe to place a bomb and move in that direction. 2) If you can't find and safe divergent cells, try NOT placing a bomb and look again. This time you'll only need to look for a safe cell in only one direction (you don't have to diverge from it). 3) If you still can't find a safe cell, don't do anything. for $(direction) in (up, down, left, right): place bomb at current location if (can find and reach divergent safe cell in current $(direction)): bomb = true move = $(direction) return for $(direction) in (up, down, left, right): do not place bomb at current location if (any safe cell in the current $(direction)): bomb = false move = $(direction) return else: bomb = false move = stay_put This algorithm makes the bot very trigger-happy (it'll place bombs very frequently). It doesn't kill itself, but it does have a habit of making itself vulnerable by going into dead ends where it can be blocked and killed by the other players. Do you have any suggestions on how I might improve this algorithm? Or maybe I should try something completely different? One of the problems with this algorithm is that it tends to leave the bot with very few (frequently just one) safe cells on which it can stand. This is because the bot leaves a trail of bombs behind it, as long as it doesn't kill itself. However, leaving a trail of bombs behind leaves few places where you can hide. If one of the other players or bots decide to place a bomb somewhere near you, it often happens that you have no place to hide and you die. I need a better way to decide when to place bombs.

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  • Recruitment Drive - Things Don't Always Go As Planned - Stay Flexible by Kalyan Neelagiri

    - by david.talamelli
    I am one of the Recruiters for Oracle and work in our India Recruitment Team. When we are hiring for multiple positions we often hold Recruitment Events to interview a large number of people as effectively as possible. These Events are often held on the weekend as many people are not free to attend an all day event during the working week. Just recently during a recruitment campaign we were running I was tasked to set up a Recruitment Event for some roles we were hiring for. I have set up and run weekend recruitment events in the past which have all run smoothly. However, this time arranging this recruitment event was quite a challenge for me. The planned event was taking place on a Saturday. I had almost sent out the confirmed scheduled list of candidates to the respective hiring team on Friday and was on track for the event to take place, but unfortunately there was breaking news in the media that there was a strike called in the city because of some political agitations and protests taking place on the event day. The hiring manager had rushed to me asking for my thoughts and ideas. I was in two minds on what to do. One on hand I was not ready to cancel the event because of all the work that so many people had put into getting this prepared and also I did not want to reschedule the event at the last minute if I did not need to. On the other hand I understood it may be best to reschedule the event as people may not be able to attend based on the political protests taking place on the day. In the end I decided to gather and check for other options because this might cause confusion and a problem for the scheduled candidates to drive in to the venue. So we had concluded to reschedule our event plans and moved the event to the next week. The good news is that we successfully executed this recruitment drive the following Saturday. We were glad that 100% of the candidates we able to make it to the new interview date and despite all the agitations in the city we were successful in hiring people for all the roles we had open. Things do not always go as planned. The best laid plans can sometimes be for nought based on external factors outside of our control. What this experience has taught me is that rather than focus on the negatives when you are thrown a curveball the best approach is to stay flexible and focus on finding ways to reach your outcome. Your plans may need to change but you can still achieve the results you are after if you have the right mind set.

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  • Archbeat Link-O-Rama Top 10 Facebook Faves - June 23-29, 2013

    - by Bob Rhubart
    2,947 people now follow OTN ArchBeat on Facebook. Here are the Top 10 items shared on that page for June 23-29, 2013. Podcast Show Notes: DevOps, Cloud, and Role Creep After some confusion (my bad) all three CORRECT parts of this podcast are now available. The panelists for this discussion are all Oracle ACE Directors: Ron Batra, Basheer Khan, and Cary Millsap. SOA Suite 11g Developers Cookbook Published | Antony Reynolds "The book focuses on areas that we felt we had neglected in the Developers Guide, says co-author Antony Reynolds. "There is more about Java integration and OSB, both of which we see a lot of questions about when working with customers." Using Oracle TimesTen With Oracle BI Applications (Part 2) | Peter Scott Peter Scott follows up an earlier post with a look at some of the OBIA structures and a discussion of some of the features of TimesTen. Linux-Containers — Part 1: Overview | Lenz Grimmer OTN Garage blogger Lenz Grimmer kicks off a series and expands your mind with deep detail on Linux Containers Slides from my ODTUG Kscope13 Presentation | Zeeshan Baig Oracle ACE Zeeshan Baig shares the slides from his KScope13 presentation, "Build Your Business Services Using ADF Task Flows." Fun with Enterprise Manager | Rene van Wijk Oracle ACE Rene van Wijk shares some background and some tuning and other tech tips for working with Oracle Enterprise Manager. Using VirtualBox to test drive Windows Blue | The Fat Bloke The Fat Bloke shares a tech tip for those interested in giving Windows Blue a try on Virtual Box. Podcast Show Notes: The Fusion Middleware A-Team and the Chronicles of Architecture In this three-part series Oracle Fusion Middleware A-Team members Jennifer Briscoe, Clifford Musante, Mikael Ottosson, and Pardha Reddy talk about the origins and mission of the FMW A-Team and about the great technical content you'll find on the recently launched Oracle A-Team blog. Part one is now available. 5 Best Practices - Laying the Foundation for WebCenter Projects | John Brunswick Oracle WebCenter expert John Brunswick shares best practices that "enable the creation of portal solutions with minimal resource overhead, while offering the greatest flexibility for progressive elaboration." Oracle Magazine - July/Aug 2013 The digital edition of the July/August edition of Oracle Magazine is now available. This issue includes my architect community column, "The CX Factor." which features insight from community members on "why and how CX has become a significant factor in enterprise IT." h

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  • Is inline SQL still classed as bad practice now that we have Micro ORMs?

    - by Grofit
    This is a bit of an open ended question but I wanted some opinions, as I grew up in a world where inline SQL scripts were the norm, then we were all made very aware of SQL injection based issues, and how fragile the sql was when doing string manipulations all over the place. Then came the dawn of the ORM where you were explaining the query to the ORM and letting it generate its own SQL, which in a lot of cases was not optimal but was safe and easy. Another good thing about ORMs or database abstraction layers were that the SQL was generated with its database engine in mind, so I could use Hibernate/Nhibernate with MSSQL, MYSQL and my code never changed it was just a configuration detail. Now fast forward to current day, where Micro ORMs seem to be winning over more developers I was wondering why we have seemingly taken a U-Turn on the whole in-line sql subject. I must admit I do like the idea of no ORM config files and being able to write my query in a more optimal manner but it feels like I am opening myself back up to the old vulnerabilities such as SQL injection and I am also tying myself to one database engine so if I want my software to support multiple database engines I would need to do some more string hackery which seems to then start to make code unreadable and more fragile. (Just before someone mentions it I know you can use parameter based arguments with most micro orms which offers protection in most cases from sql injection) So what are peoples opinions on this sort of thing? I am using Dapper as my Micro ORM in this instance and NHibernate as my regular ORM in this scenario, however most in each field are quite similar. What I term as inline sql is SQL strings within source code. There used to be design debates over SQL strings in source code detracting from the fundamental intent of the logic, which is why statically typed linq style queries became so popular its still just 1 language, but with lets say C# and Sql in one page you have 2 languages intermingled in your raw source code now. Just to clarify, the SQL injection is just one of the known issues with using sql strings, I already mention you can stop this from happening with parameter based queries, however I highlight other issues with having SQL queries ingrained in your source code, such as the lack of DB Vendor abstraction as well as losing any level of compile time error capturing on string based queries, these are all issues which we managed to side step with the dawn of ORMs with their higher level querying functionality, such as HQL or LINQ etc (not all of the issues but most of them). So I am less focused on the individual highlighted issues and more the bigger picture of is it now becoming more acceptable to have SQL strings directly in your source code again, as most Micro ORMs use this mechanism. Here is a similar question which has a few different view points, although is more about the inline sql without the micro orm context: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5303746/is-inline-sql-hard-coding

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  • Share Your Top 30 Visited Domains with Visitation Cloud for Firefox

    - by Asian Angel
    Curious about the domains that you visit most or perhaps you want a way to share that information on a social website? Now you can see and share the 30 most visited domains in your browser’s history with the Visitation Cloud extension. Accessing Visitation Cloud As soon as you install the extension you can get started using it. Depending on how your browser’s UI is set up there are three methods for accessing Visitation Cloud: a “Visitation Cloud Button” inserted at the end of your “Bookmarks Toolbar”, a menu listing in the “Tools Menu”, and a “Toolbar Button” (not shown here). Visitation Cloud in Action As soon as you activate Visitation Cloud a new window will appear with your top domains displayed in a cloud format. Keep in mind that this is more than just a static image…each listing is actually a clickable link. Clicking on any of the listings will open that domain in a new tab or window depending on your particular browser settings. If you feel that you have a great set of links and want to share it with your friends then that is easy to do. Right click anywhere within the Visitation Cloud Window and select “Save as…”. The “cloud image” can be saved in “.png, .jpg, or Scalable Vector Graphics (.svg)” format. For our example we chose the “.svg format”. Perhaps you love the set of links but not the layout…right click and select “Randomize” to change how the cloud looks. Here is our cloud after being “Randomized”. Things definitely got moved around… Accessing the Visitation Cloud Image in other Browsers Once you have your “cloud image” saved you can share it with friends or save it for your own future use in other browsers. Here is our “cloud image” open in Opera Browser with link opening in progress. The same “cloud image” open in Google Chrome. Very nice… Conclusion While this may not be something that everyone will use Visitation Cloud does make for a rather unique, interesting, & fun way to access and share your most visited domains. Links Download the Visitation Cloud extension (Mozilla Add-ons) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Fix "Security Error: Domain Name Mismatch" Warning in FirefoxAdd Variety to Your Searches with Search CloudletRestore Your Missing/Deleted Smart Bookmarks Folder in Firefox 3Blocking Spam from International Senders in Windows Vista MailSee Where a Package is Installed on Ubuntu TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Share High Res Photos using Divvyshot Draw Online using Harmony How to Browse Privately in Firefox Kill Processes Quickly with Process Assassin Need to Come Up with a Good Name? Try Wordoid StockFox puts a Lightweight Stock Ticker in your Statusbar

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  • Defining Social Media Terms

    - by David Dorf
    As I talk about social in the context of retail, I sometimes get tripped up on different terms. I know what I mean, but the audience may have something else in mind. So I decided to see if I could find some well accepted definitions for common terms. While there are definitions on the Internet, I'm not sure they are well accepted. After reviewing several, here's what I came up with: Social Network: a structure of individuals and groups connected together by commonality. That seems pretty straightforward. A group of friends, co-workers, music fans, etc. The key here is that they have something in common that connects them. Social Media: Internet channels that support the collaborative publishing of information by and for social networks. The key here is to differentiate between traditional one-way media, and conversational social media. When its social its two-way, allowing both the publishing and consuming of information. Examples are blogs, wikis, Twitter, Facebook, etc. Social Marketing: the use of social media for marketing, public relations, and customer service. Wikipedia actually includes "selling" here but I think that's separate from marketing, as you'll see further down below. Most people look at social media as entertainment, but the marketing angle adds business value. This is where retailers discover and engage customers to build a relationship. Social Merchandising: the integration of social media and product discovery. Whereas marketing is focused more on brand image, customer engagement, and promotions, merchandising is more directly trying to convert browsers into purchases. This includes deciding what customers want, often by asking the social network, and deciding how to position products to the social network. Social Selling: the incorporation of e-commerce into social media. While on a social media site, social selling enables the purchasing of goods/services in the user's context, without leaving the social media channel. If a user clicks on an advertisement and is taken to an e-commerce site, then that's really just web advertising and not social selling. Well, do these terms and definitions make sense? Let me know what you think.

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  • SharePoint 2010 Hosting :: Hiding SharePoint 2010 Ribbon From Anonymous Users

    - by mbridge
    The user interface improvements in SharePoint 2010 as a whole are truly amazing. Microsoft has brought this already impressive product leaps and bounds in terms of accessibility, standards, and usability. One thing you might be aware of is the new and quite useful “ribbon” control that appears by default at the top of every SharePoint 2010 master page. Here’s a sneak peek: You’ll see this ribbon not only in the 2010 web interface, but also throughout the entire family of Office products coming out this year. Even SharePoint Designer 2010 makes use of the ribbon in a very flexible and useful way. Hiding The Ribbon In SharePoint 2010, the ribbon is used almost exclusively for content creation and site administration. It doesn’t make much sense to show the ribbon on a public-facing internet site (in fact, it can really retract from your site’s design when it appears), so you’ll probably want to hide the ribbon when users aren’t logged in. Here’s how it works: <SharePoint:SPSecurityTrimmedControl PermissionsString="ManagePermissions" runat="server">     <div id="s4-ribbonrow" class="s4-pr s4-ribbonrowhidetitle">         <!-- Ribbon code appears here... -->     </div> </SharePoint:SPSecurityTrimmedControl> In your master page, find the SharePoint ribbon by looking for the line of code that begins with <div id=”s4-ribbonrow”>. Place the SPSecurityTrimmedControl code around your ribbon to conditionally hide it based on user permissions. In our example, we’ve hidden the ribbon from any user who doesn’t have the ManagePermissions ability, which is going to be almost any user short of a site administrator. Other Permission Levels You can specify different permission levels for the SPSecurityTrimmedControl, allowing you to configure exactly who can see the SharePoint 2010 ribbon. Basically, this control will hide anything inside of it when users don’t have the specified PermissionString. The available options include: 1. List Permissions - ManageLists - CancelCheckout - AddListItems - EditListItems - DeleteListItems - ViewListItems - ApproveItems - OpenItems - ViewVersionsDeleteVersions - CreateAlerts - ViewFormPages 2. Site Permissions - ManagePermissions - ViewUsageData - ManageSubwebs - ManageWeb - AddAndCustomizePages - ApplyThemeAndBorder - ApplyStyleSheets - CreateGroups - BrowseDirectories - CreateSSCSite - ViewPages - EnumeratePermissions - BrowseUserInfo - ManageAlerts - UseRemoteAPIs - UseClientIntegration - Open - EditMyUserInfo 3. Personal Permissions - ManagePersonalViews - AddDelPrivateWebParts - UpdatePersonalWebParts You can use this control to hide anything in your master page or on related page layouts, so be sure to keep it in mind when you’re trying to hide/show things conditionally based on user permission. The One Catch You may notice that the login control (or welcome control) is actually inside the ribbon by default in SharePoint 2010. You’ll probably want to pull this control out of the ribbon and place it elsewhere on your page. Just look for the line of code that looks like this: <wssuc:Welcome id="IdWelcome" runat="server" EnableViewState=”false”/> Move this code out of the ribbon and into another location within your master page. Save your changes, check in and approve all files, and anonymous users will never know your site is built on SharePoint 2010!

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  • Samsung introduces smart watch. But without any smartness!

    - by Gopinath
    The era of mobile phone can be classified as before iPhone and after iPhone. When iPhone was introduced they were revolutionary, smart, awesome and technologically far advanced than any other phone available in the market. iPhone is the first true smartphone and a game changer. With the same goal in mind, Samsung tried revolutionizing watch industry by announcing Galaxy Gear watches. They branded them as a smart watch, hyped its release as if it’s going to revolutionize the way we use watches. But in reality there is nothing exciting about it. Instead it’s an expensive (300$) one, battery lasts less than a day, user interface is very very slow, has small memory capacity, not much of use if not connected to a Samsung phone!! With so many negative, how can it be a smart watch? Reviews on Galaxy Gear smart watch The Next Web Smartwatches are still too dumb The Verge Samsung’s Galaxy Gear isn’t really a smartwatch Gizmodo $300 is a lot for a souped up fitness tracker, and as far as the basic smartphone functions Galaxy Gear is capable of, those feel a little strange and counterintuitive ZD NET Samsung has left the door wide open with the Galaxy Gear, which looks both rushed and exorbitantly priced at the same time. Few Tweets on Galaxy Gear 1. Apple surprises with iPhone 2. Tablet rumors 3. Others rush crap to market 4. iPad 5. ‘iWatch’ Rumors 6. Others rush crap to market 7. ? — Matthew Panzarino (@panzer) September 4, 2013 Camera, phone, music… There’s one thing that the Gear doesn’t seem to have: a purpose | http://t.co/raK4Rgy6Fm by @SamGrobart — Businessweek (@BW) September 5, 2013   Galaxy Gear Video demo shows how slow it is Here is a Galaxy Gear hands on video from slashgear. You can see how slow the device performs   With the rumors of Apple building smart watch, Samsung rushed to the market with its own version of (smart) watch as a preemptive strike. But with a half baked product and without any innovation it back fired on it own reputation. This would’ve been great chance to Samsung to prove that the company is innovative and not a copy cat. But it failed to innovate and missed a chance.

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  • CodeStock 2012 Review: Michael Eaton( @mjeaton ) - 3 Simple Things for Increased Productivity

    3 Simple Things for Increased ProductivitySpeaker: Michael EatonTwitter: @mjeatonBlog: http://mjeaton.net/blog This was the first time I had seen Michael Eaton speak but have hear a lot of really good things about his speaking abilities. Needless to say I was really looking forward to his session. He basically addressed the topic of distractions and how they can decrease or increase your productivity as a developer. He makes the case that in order to become more productive you must block/limit all distractions. For example, he covered his top distractions as a developer. Top Distractions Social Media(Twitter, Reddit, Facebook) Wiki sites Phone Email Video Games Coworkers, Friends, Family Michael stated that he uses various types of music to help him block out these distractions in order for him to get into his coding zone. While he states that music works for him, he also notes that he knows of others that cannot really work with music. I have to say I am in the latter group because I require a quiet environment in order to work. A few session attendees also recommended listening to really loud white noise or music in another language other than your own. This allows for less focus to be placed on words being sung compared to the rhythmic beats being played. I have to say that I have not tried these suggestions yet but will in the near future. However, distractions can be very beneficial to productivity in that they give your mind a chance to relax and not think about the issues at hand. He spoke highly of taking vacations, and setting boundaries at work so that develops prevent the problem of burnout. One way he suggested that developer’s combat distractions is to use the Pomodoro technique. In his example he selects one task to do for 20 minutes and he can only do that task during that time. He ignores all other distractions until this task or time limit is complete. After it is completed he allows himself to relax and distract himself for another 5- 10 minutes before his next Pomodoro. This allows him to stay completely focused on a task and when the time is up he can then focus on other things.

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  • How to develop RPG Damage Formulas?

    - by user127817
    I'm developing a classical 2d RPG (in a similar vein to final fantasy) and I was wondering if anyone had some advice on how to do damage formulas/links to resources/examples? I'll explain my current setup. Hopefully I'm not overdoing it with this question, and I apologize if my questions is too large/broad My Characters stats are composed of the following: enum Stat { HP = 0, MP = 1, SP = 2, Strength = 3, Vitality = 4, Magic = 5, Spirit = 6, Skill = 7, Speed = 8, //Speed/Agility are the same thing Agility = 8, Evasion = 9, MgEvasion = 10, Accuracy = 11, Luck = 12, }; Vitality is basically defense to physical attacks and spirit is defense to magic attacks. All stats have fixed maximums (9999 for HP, 999 for MP/SP and 255 for the rest). With abilities, the maximums can be increased (99999 for HP, 9999 for HP/SP, 999 for the rest) with typical values (at level 100) before/after abilities+equipment+etc will be 8000/20,000 for HP, 800/2000 for SP/MP, 180/350 for other stats Late game Enemy HP will typically be in the lower millions (with a super boss having the maximum of ~12 million). I was wondering how do people actually develop proper damage formulas that scale correctly? For instance, based on this data, using the damage formulas for Final Fantasy X as a base looked very promising. A full reference here http://www.gamefaqs.com/ps2/197344-final-fantasy-x/faqs/31381 but as a quick example: Str = 127, 'Attack' command used, enemy Def = 34. 1. Physical Damage Calculation: Step 1 ------------------------------------- [{(Stat^3 ÷ 32) + 32} x DmCon ÷16] Step 2 ---------------------------------------- [{(127^3 ÷ 32) + 32} x 16 ÷ 16] Step 3 -------------------------------------- [{(2048383 ÷ 32) + 32} x 16 ÷ 16] Step 4 --------------------------------------------------- [{(64011) + 32} x 1] Step 5 -------------------------------------------------------- [{(64043 x 1)}] Step 6 ---------------------------------------------------- Base Damage = 64043 Step 7 ----------------------------------------- [{(Def - 280.4)^2} ÷ 110] + 16 Step 8 ------------------------------------------ [{(34 - 280.4)^2} ÷ 110] + 16 Step 9 ------------------------------------------------- [(-246)^2) ÷ 110] + 16 Step 10 ---------------------------------------------------- [60516 ÷ 110] + 16 Step 11 ------------------------------------------------------------ [550] + 16 Step 12 ---------------------------------------------------------- DefNum = 566 Step 13 ---------------------------------------------- [BaseDmg * DefNum ÷ 730] Step 14 --------------------------------------------------- [64043 * 566 ÷ 730] Step 15 ------------------------------------------------------ [36248338 ÷ 730] Step 16 ------------------------------------------------- Base Damage 2 = 49655 Step 17 ------------ Base Damage 2 * {730 - (Def * 51 - Def^2 ÷ 11) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 18 ---------------------- 49655 * {730 - (34 * 51 - 34^2 ÷ 11) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 19 ------------------------- 49655 * {730 - (1734 - 1156 ÷ 11) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 20 ------------------------------- 49655 * {730 - (1734 - 105) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 21 ------------------------------------- 49655 * {730 - (1629) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 22 --------------------------------------------- 49655 * {730 - 162} ÷ 730 Step 23 ----------------------------------------------------- 49655 * 568 ÷ 730 Step 24 -------------------------------------------------- Final Damage = 38635 I simply modified the dividers to include the attack rating of weapons and the armor rating of armor. Magic Damage is calculated as follows: Mag = 255, Ultima is used, enemy MDef = 1 Step 1 ----------------------------------- [DmCon * ([Stat^2 ÷ 6] + DmCon) ÷ 4] Step 2 ------------------------------------------ [70 * ([255^2 ÷ 6] + 70) ÷ 4] Step 3 ------------------------------------------ [70 * ([65025 ÷ 6] + 70) ÷ 4] Step 4 ------------------------------------------------ [70 * (10837 + 70) ÷ 4] Step 5 ----------------------------------------------------- [70 * (10907) ÷ 4] Step 6 ------------------------------------ Base Damage = 190872 [cut to 99999] Step 7 ---------------------------------------- [{(MDef - 280.4)^2} ÷ 110] + 16 Step 8 ------------------------------------------- [{(1 - 280.4)^2} ÷ 110] + 16 Step 9 ---------------------------------------------- [{(-279.4)^2} ÷ 110] + 16 Step 10 -------------------------------------------------- [(78064) ÷ 110] + 16 Step 11 ------------------------------------------------------------ [709] + 16 Step 12 --------------------------------------------------------- MDefNum = 725 Step 13 --------------------------------------------- [BaseDmg * MDefNum ÷ 730] Step 14 --------------------------------------------------- [99999 * 725 ÷ 730] Step 15 ------------------------------------------------- Base Damage 2 = 99314 Step 16 ---------- Base Damage 2 * {730 - (MDef * 51 - MDef^2 ÷ 11) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 17 ------------------------ 99314 * {730 - (1 * 51 - 1^2 ÷ 11) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 18 ------------------------------ 99314 * {730 - (51 - 1 ÷ 11) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 19 --------------------------------------- 99314 * {730 - (49) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 20 ----------------------------------------------------- 99314 * 725 ÷ 730 Step 21 -------------------------------------------------- Final Damage = 98633 The problem is that the formulas completely fall apart once stats start going above 255. In particular Defense values over 300 or so start generating really strange behavior. High Strength + Defense stats lead to massive negative values for instance. While I might be able to modify the formulas to work correctly for my use case, it'd probably be easier just to use a completely new formula. How do people actually develop damage formulas? I was considering opening excel and trying to build the formula that way (mapping Attack Stats vs. Defense Stats for instance) but I was wondering if there's an easier way? While I can't convey the full game mechanics of my game here, might someone be able to suggest a good starting place for building a damage formula? Thanks

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  • Oracle and Eloqua Welcome Compendium’s Content Marketing

    - by Mike Stiles
    Yesterday, Oracle announced its acquisition of Compendium, a cloud-based content marketing provider that helps companies plan, produce and deliver engaging content across multiple channels throughout their customers' lifecycle. Why? Because every part of the above paragraph speaks to where modern marketing is and where it’s headed. Customers have now been empowered, thanks to the Internet and particularly social, with access to almost limitless amounts of information about companies and products. This includes the especially influential voices of friends and objective acquaintances that have experience with the product or brand. With mobile, this info is available instantly in the palm of their hand. All of this research and influence mind you, is taking place long before a prospect will ever engage with the brand itself or one of its sales reps. So how does a brand effectively insert itself into these conversations and this flow of the customer journey? Now, more than ever, marketers must deliver relevant and engaging content across multiple channels and throughout the entire customer journey to be useful, helpful, and influential. Compendium has a data-driven content marketing platform that lines up relevant content with customer data and personas so brands can accelerate the conversion of prospects. Now think about combining that with the Oracle Eloqua Marketing Cloud, part of Oracle's comprehensive CX solution. Marketers will be able to automate content delivery across channels by aligning persona-based content with customers' digital body language. Better customer engagement, improved sales lead quality, better return on marketing investment, and higher customer loyalty. Now we’re talking. Does data-driven content marketing have an impact? Compendium customer CVENT is a SaaS company specializing in meetings management tech. They wanted to increase leads & ad performance on their blog and dramatically increase their content. They also wanted to manage the creation, workflow, promotion and distribution of that content. With Compendium, CVENT created over 9,000 content elements, and sales-ready leads grew 325%. So Oracle Eloqua helps you target audiences, know buyers, and automate multi-channel marketing campaigns. Compendium lets you plan, publish, manage and measure content across content types and channels. Now kick it up yet another notch with Oracle’s Analytics, Big Data and Social solutions, and you’re using your marketing dollars to reach the right people in the right place at the right time with the right content. And as if that weren’t enough, your customers will love you for it. @mikestiles

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  • Friday Fun: Snow Crusher

    - by Asian Angel
    It has probably been a long week whether you have already returned to work or are finishing up the last of your vacation time. If you are in need of some stress relief, then we have we the perfect game for you. This week you get to be totally fiendish and use a monster size snowball to destroy as many cars as possible at the local snow lodge. Snow Crusher The object of the game is simple…create as large of a monster snowball as you can and then send it down over the side of the mountain to destroy the cars at the snow lodge. You can choose from three different sizes of monster snowballs to create. We chose the “Snowflake Size” for our reign of destruction. Once you have chosen a monster snowball size, all that is left to do is select the control method that works best for you. As soon as you select the control method, your monster snowball creation will automatically begin. Keep in mind that the faster your snowball goes the harder it can become to steer if you make sudden movements… At the top you can watch your progress towards the drop-off point and the green boxes highlighted at the bottom indicate how large of an item (such as trees or boulders) your snowball can roll over and add to the total mass. Snowball speed is shown in the lower right corner. Time to roll! As soon as the first green box is lit up you can start adding small trees to your snowball’s mass. You will want to avoid larger items as you go because they will penalize your score, slow you down, and reduce the size of your snowball! Halfway to the drop-off point and our snowball is now able to grab up larger trees. If you have not hit any large items along the way, your snowball will definitely be moving along at a good rate by now. When you reach the end of the mass building area, your snowball will pop out into the open and get ready to drop off over the side of the mountain. Go snowball go! Yes! Thirteen cars crushed and ready for the scrap yard… If the “Snowflake Size” snowball can do this, just think what the “Avalanche Size” can do with three minutes of time to build up mass! Have fun with those monster snowballs! Play Snow Crusher Latest Features How-To Geek ETC The 20 Best How-To Geek Linux Articles of 2010 The 50 Best How-To Geek Windows Articles of 2010 The 20 Best How-To Geek Explainer Topics for 2010 How to Disable Caps Lock Key in Windows 7 or Vista How to Use the Avira Rescue CD to Clean Your Infected PC The Complete List of iPad Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials Classic Super Mario Brothers Theme for Chrome and Iron Experimental Firefox Builds Put Tabs on the Title Bar (Available for Download) Android Trojan Found in the Wild Chaos, Panic, and Disorder Wallpaper Enjoy Christmas Beyond the Holiday with Christmas Eve Crisis Parrotfish Extends the Number of Services Accessible in Twitter Previews

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  • Windows 8: Everything from design, build, and how to sell a Metro style app

    - by Thomas Mason
    For me, there are a lot of similarities between an application developed for Windows Phone and a Metro style app developed for Windows 8. A Windows Phone 7 application (rather than an XNA game) is built in .NET and XAML against a subset of the .NET framework and the application has a lifecycle which needs to be conscious of battery life and so is split out into foreground/background pieces. The application is sandboxed in terms of its interactions with the local device and is packaged with a manifest which describes those interactions. The app needs to be aware of network connectivity status and its work on the network is done asynchronously to preserve the user experience.The app is packaged and deployed to a Marketplace which the user browses to find the app, read reviews, perhaps purchase it and then install it and receive updates over time. Quite a lot of those statements are as true of a Windows 8 Metro style app as they are for a Windows Phone app and so a Windows Phone app developer already has a good head start when it comes to building Metro style apps for Windows 8. With that in mind, there is an event to help developers with a Windows Phone app in Marketplace to begin the process of looking at Windows 8 and whether you can get a quick win by bringing your Phone application onto Windows. The idea of the event was to provide a space where developers can get together over 2 days and take the time out to look at what it means to take their app from Windows Phone to Windows 8. Kicking off on Saturday 16th June at 10am, we are told they have plenty of power sockets, WiFi, whiteboards, drinks, pizza, games, prizes and some quiet space that you can work in. Including people on hand with Windows Phone and Windows 8 experience to help everything along the way. There will be an attendee-voted schedule of talks but we’ll keep these out of your way if you just want to get on and code. We’ll also provide information around submitting your app to the Windows Store If you have a Windows Phone app in Marketplace, now’s a great time to look at getting it onto Windows 8. Sign up. Bring your laptop. Bring your app. Bring Windows 8 and Visual Studio 11. And everyone will their best to help you get your app onto Windows 8. Location & Venue TBA but it will be in central London, accessible by major railway and underground transportation. Day 1 Saturday 16th June 10am – 9pm Day 2 Sunday 17th June 10am – 4pm

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  • VLC will sometimes have issues displaying video in fullscreen. What could cause this? How would I troubleshoot the issue?

    - by George Marian
    Recently VLC has been having issues displaying video in fullscreen mode. AFAIK, nothing has changed with the video card drivers and it's certainly the same version of VLC. (/me shakes a fist at the repository maintainers) This has worked without issue in the past. In fact, I've had as many as 6 instances of VLC running, each playing a video. One was always fullscreen on my second monitor, while the others were tiled on my primary monitor. I was able to toggle any of the other 5 into fullscreen mode and the video displayed without issue. Lately, I've been having trouble running 2 instances in fullscreen mode. (Sometimes, even a single instance will not display the video in fullscreen.) VLC will continue to play the video, but in fullscreen mode I see nothing but a black screen. Sometimes, the video will display if I maximize the VLC window. Other times, I have to settle for a smaller sized window. I don't know if this is pertinent, but sometimes changing the min/max state of a Firefox window (Minefield, specifically) seemed to allow the troublesome instance to display the video in fullscreen mode. However, that did not prove to be a consistent workaround. Sometimes, it seemed that closing a Firefox window did the trick, though that isn't consistently successful either. (I futzed with Firefox, because with the crazy number of windows and tabs that I normally have open, it regularly hogs about 1 GB of RAM.) Another bit of funkiness that comes to mind is the fact that my secondary monitor is considered the primary on boot-up. I use xrandr to designate the real 1st monitor as primary after boot-up, as suggested by someone in a question I asked on the Unix & Linux SE site. Specs: Ubuntu 10.10 w/ Gnome and Compiz 8GB RAM AMD Phenom II 965 Black Edition Asus M4A79 Deluxe mobo XFX ATI Radeon HD 5750 w/ 1GB RAM VLC is configured to use the hardware overlay for video (as per the default setting) Does anyone have an idea what may cause this issue or how I may go about troubleshooting it? Update: Right now I have 2 instances of VLC playing, each in fullscreen mode on a separate monitor. This is what I see:

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