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• Why would Copying a Large Image to the Clipboard Freeze a Computer?

  - by Akemi Iwaya

  Sometimes, something really odd happens when using our computers that makes no sense at all…such as copying a simple image to the clipboard and the computer freezing up because of it. An image is an image, right? Today’s SuperUser post has the answer to a puzzled reader’s dilemna. Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites. Original image courtesy of Wikimedia. The Question SuperUser reader Joban Dhillon wants to know why copying an image to the clipboard on his computer freezes it up: I was messing around with some height map images and found this one: (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/Srtm_ramp2.world.21600×10800.jpg) The image is 21,600*10,800 pixels in size. When I right click and select “Copy Image” in my browser (I am using Google Chrome), it slows down my computer until it freezes. After that I must restart. I am curious about why this happens. I presume it is the size of the image, although it is only about 6 MB when saved to my computer. I am also using Windows 8.1 Why would a simple image freeze Joban’s computer up after copying it to the clipboard? The Answer SuperUser contributor Mokubai has the answer for us: “Copy Image” is copying the raw image data, rather than the image file itself, to your clipboard. The raw image data will be 21,600 x 10,800 x 3 (24 bit image) = 699,840,000 bytes of data. That is approximately 700 MB of data your browser is trying to copy to the clipboard. JPEG compresses the raw data using a lossy algorithm and can get pretty good compression. Hence the compressed file is only 6 MB. The reason it makes your computer slow is that it is probably filling your memory up with at least the 700 MB of image data that your browser is using to show you the image, another 700 MB (along with whatever overhead the clipboard incurs) to store it on the clipboard, and a not insignificant amount of processing power to convert the image into a format that can be stored on the clipboard. Chances are that if you have less than 4 GB of physical RAM, then those copies of the image data are forcing your computer to page memory out to the swap file in an attempt to fulfil both memory demands at the same time. This will cause programs and disk access to be sluggish as they use the disk and try to use the data that may have just been paged out. In short: Do not use the clipboard for huge images unless you have a lot of memory and a bit of time to spare. Like pretty graphs? This is what happens when I load that image in Google Chrome, then copy it to the clipboard on my machine with 12 GB of RAM: It starts off at the lower point using 2.8 GB of RAM, loading the image punches it up to 3.6 GB (approximately the 700 MB), then copying it to the clipboard spikes way up there at 6.3 GB of RAM before settling back down at the 4.5-ish you would expect to see for a program and two copies of a rather large image. That is a whopping 3.7 GB of image data being worked on at the peak, which is probably the initial image, a reserved quantity for the clipboard, and perhaps a couple of conversion buffers. That is enough to bring any machine with less than 8 GB of RAM to its knees. Strangely, doing the same thing in Firefox just copies the image file rather than the image data (without the scary memory surge). Have something to add to the explanation? Sound off in the comments. Want to read more answers from other tech-savvy Stack Exchange users? Check out the full discussion thread here.

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• JCP Awards 10 Year Retrospective

  - by Heather VanCura

  As we celebrate 10 years of JCP Program Award recognition in 2012,  take a look back in the Retrospective article covering the history of the JCP awards.  Most recently, the JCP awards were  celebrated at JavaOne Latin America in Brazil, where SouJava was presented the JCP Member of the Year Award for 2012 (won jointly with the London Java Community) for their contributions and launch of the Global Adopt-a-JSR Program. This is also a good time to honor the JCP Award Nominees and Winners who have been designated as Star Spec Leads.  Spec Leads are key to the Java Community Process (JCP) program. Without them, none of the Java Specification Requests (JSRs) would have begun, much less completed and become implemented in shipping products.  Nominations for 2012 Start Spec Leads are now open until 31 December. The Star Spec Lead program recognizes Spec Leads who have repeatedly proven their merit by producing high quality specifications, establishing best practices, and mentoring others. The point of such honor is to endorse the good work that they do, showcase their methods for other Spec Leads to emulate, and motivate other JCP program members and participants to get involved in the JCP program. Ed Burns – A Star Spec Lead for 2009, Ed first got involved with the JCP program when he became co-Spec Lead of JSR 127, JavaServer Faces (JSF), a role he has continued through JSF 1.2 and now JSF 2.0, which is JSR 314. Linda DeMichiel – Linda thus involved in the JCP program from its very early days. She has been the Spec Lead on at least three JSRs and an EC member for another three. She holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University. Gavin King – Nominated as a JCP Outstanding Spec Lead for 2010, for his work with JSR 299. His endorsement said, “He was not only able to work through disputes and objections to the evolving programming model, but he resolved them into solutions that were more technically sound, and which gained support of its pundits.” Mike Milikich –  Nominated for his work on Java Micro Edition (ME) standards, implementations, tools, and Technology Compatibility Kits (TCKs), Mike was a 2009 Star Spec Lead for JSR 271, Mobile Information Device Profile 3. David Nuescheler – Serving as the CTO for Day Software, acquired by Adobe Systems, David has been a key player in the growth of the company’s global content management solution. In 2002, he became Spec Lead for JSR 170, Content Repository for Java Technology API, continuing for the subsequent version, JSR 283. Bill Shannon – A well-respected name in the Java community, Bill came to Oracle from Sun as a Distinguished Engineer and is still performing at full speed as Spec Lead for JSR 342, Java EE 7,  as an alternate EC member, and hands-on problem solver for the Java community as a whole. Jim Van Peursem – Jim holds a PhD in Computer Engineering. He was part of the Motorola team that worked with Sun labs on the Spotless VM that became the KVM. From within Motorola, Jim has been responsible for many aspects of Java technology deployment, from an independent Connected Limited Device Configuration (CLDC) and Mobile Information Device Profile (MIDP) implementations, to handset development, to working with the industry in defining many related standards. Participation in the JCP Program goes well beyond technical proficiency. The JCP Awards Program is an attempt to say “Thank You” to all of the JCP members, Expert Group Members, Spec Leads, and EC members who give their time to contribute to the evolution of Java technology.

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• The All New Hotmail Looks Very Impressive [Video Tour]

  - by Gopinath

  With loads of new new features being introduced into GMail every now and then, Microsoft can’t sit and relax any more. Microsoft realized this and worked hard to introduce really impressive features in upcoming version of Windows Live Hotmail that was previewed couple of days ago. Most of the new features announced in the upcoming version are focusing on the important need of email users – de-clutter the mail box and effectively manage email over load easily. Here is the list highlight of new features New Features Sweep away clutter – This is the most impressive in the set of new features. It allows you to manage email overload. If you’ve subscribed to a newsletter but decided to not to allow it into your inbox, you can activate the sweep feature to move all the messages of the newsletter in to a folder other than your inbox. This may sound similar to filters option in GMail but the workflow is very easy in Hotmail. Quickly find message – Easy to use options are provided to see mails in separate views likes mails from contacts, social networking mail, mails from e-mail subscription services, etc. Now it’s easy to prioritize email checking like how you wish to. I prefer to check mails from my contacts first, then social networking messages and then the newsletter subscriptions. Improved spam detection – The span detection rules are tightened for better spam protection and also hotmail learns from user actions to effectively catch spam No more mail box storage restrictions – With a smart decision of Microsoft, users  no longer need to worry about the storage restrictions of their mail box – large attachments of hotmail can be stored in Windows Live SkyDrive. With Hotmail, we’ve combined the simplicity of sending photos through email with the power of Windows Live SkyDrive so that you can send up to 200 photos, each up to 50 MB in size, all in a single email. You can send all your vacation photos at once without worrying about attachment limits, Excellent Integration With Office Web Apps -  View and editing of office documents attached to the emails are made very easy by integrating Office Web Apps with Hotmail. When you receive a document/presentation/spreadsheet in hotmail, you can view it, edit it, save it or even you can send the modified document to original sender – all these without leaving hotmail. Inline viewing options for Photos, Videos, Social Network Messages – You can view photos embedded in the mail as slideshows(with the help of SilverLight), YouTube  & Hulu videos can be played inline  and track shipping notifications. Threaded conversations – emails in Hotmail are grouped just like it happens in GMail Others - enhanced account protection, full-session SSL, multiple email accounts, subfolders, contact management Video Tour Of New Features Here is an impressive video tour of new Hotmail features. When are these new features coming to Hotmail? Majority of the new features announced today are rolled out in coming weeks gradually to all the users. But advanced features like Office Integration with Hotmail is expected to take couple of months for general availability. Will You Switch back to Hotmail? Will these features lure GMail/Yahoo users to switch back to Hotmail? May be not immediately but these features may hold the existing users from leaving Hotmail. I used Hotmail, in the pre GMail era and now I use  Hotmail id only to sign-in to Microsoft websites that requites Hotmail authentication. It’s been years since I composed a new email in Hotmail. Even though the new features announced by Hotmail are very impressive, I like the way how GMail rapidly brings new features at regular intervals. If Hotmail also keeps innovating with new features at regular intervals, then there are good chances for it’s old users to return home. Join us on Facebook to read all our stories right inside your Facebook news feed.

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• Oracle Social Network Developer Challenge: Fishbowl Solutions

  - by Kellsey Ruppel

  Originally posted by Jake Kuramoto on The Apps Lab blog. Today, I give you the final entry in the Oracle Social Network Developer Challenge, held last week during OpenWorld. This one comes from Friend of the ‘Lab and Fishbowl Solutions (@fishbowle20) hacker, John Sim (@jrsim_uix), whom you might remember from his XBox Kinect demo at COLLABORATE 12 (presentation slides and abstract) hacks and other exploits with WebCenter. We put this challenge together specifically for developers like John, who like to experiment with new tools and push the envelope of what’s possible and build cool things, and as you can see from his entry John did just that, mashing together Google Maps and Oracle Social Network into a mobile app built with PhoneGap that uses the device’s camera and GPS to keep teams on the move in touch. He calls it a Mobile GeoTagging Solution, but I think Avengers Assemble! would have equally descriptive, given that was obviously his inspiration. Here’s his description of the mobile app: My proposed solution was to design and simplify GeoLocation mapping, and automate updates for users and teams on the move; who don’t have access to a laptop or want to take their ipads out – but allow them to make quick updates to OSN and upload photos taken from their mobile device – there and then. As part of this; the plan was to include a rules engine that could be configured by the user to allow the device to automatically update and post messages when they arrived at a set location(s). Inspiration for this came from on{x} – automate your life. Unfortunately, John didn’t make it to the conference to show off his hard work in person, but luckily, he had a colleague from Fishbowl and a video to showcase his work.    Here are some shots of John’s mobile app for your viewing pleasure: John’s thinking is sound. Geolocation is usually relegated to consumer use cases, thanks to services like foursquare, but distributed teams working on projects out in the world definitely need a way to stay in contact. Consider a construction job. Different contractors all converge on a single location, and time is money. Rather than calling or texting each other and risking a distracted driving accident, an app like John’s allows everyone on the job to see exactly where the other contractors are. Using his GPS rules, they could easily be notified about how close each is to the site, definitely useful when you have a flooring contractor sitting idle, waiting for an electrician to finish the wiring. The best part is that the project manager or general contractor could stay updated on all the action (or inaction) using Oracle Social Network, either sitting at a desk using the browser app or desktop client or on the go, using one of the native mobile apps built for Oracle Social Network. I can see this being used by insurance adjusters too, and really any team that, erm, assembles at a given spot. Of course, it’s also useful for meeting at the pub after the day’s work is done. Beyond people, this solution could also be implemented for physical objects that are in route to a destination. Say you’re a customer waiting on rail shipment or a package delivery. You could track your valuable’s whereabouts easily as they report their progress via checkins. If they deviated from the GPS rules, you’d be notified. You might even be able to get a picture into Oracle Social Network with some light hacking. Thanks to John and his colleagues at Fishbowl for participating in our challenge. We hope everyone had a good experience. Make sure to check out John’s blog post on his work and the experience using Oracle Social Network. Although this is the final, official entry we had, tomorrow, I’ll show you the work of someone who finished code, but wasn’t able to make the judging event. Stay tuned.

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• Subterranean IL: Compiling C# exception handlers

  - by Simon Cooper

  An exception handler in C# combines the IL catch and finally exception handling clauses into a single try statement: try { Console.WriteLine("Try block") // ... } catch (IOException) { Console.WriteLine("IOException catch") // ... } catch (Exception e) { Console.WriteLine("Exception catch") // ... } finally { Console.WriteLine("Finally block") // ... } How does this get compiled into IL? Initial implementation If you remember from my earlier post, finally clauses must be specified with their own .try clause. So, for the initial implementation, we take the try/catch/finally, and simply split it up into two .try clauses (I have to use label syntax for this): StartTry: ldstr "Try block" call void [mscorlib]System.Console::WriteLine(string) // ... leave.s End EndTry: StartIOECatch: ldstr "IOException catch" call void [mscorlib]System.Console::WriteLine(string) // ... leave.s End EndIOECatch: StartECatch: ldstr "Exception catch" call void [mscorlib]System.Console::WriteLine(string) // ... leave.s End EndECatch: StartFinally: ldstr "Finally block" call void [mscorlib]System.Console::WriteLine(string) // ... endfinally EndFinally: End: // ... .try StartTry to EndTry catch [mscorlib]System.IO.IOException handler StartIOECatch to EndIOECatch catch [mscorlib]System.Exception handler StartECatch to EndECatch .try StartTry to EndTry finally handler StartFinally to EndFinally However, the resulting program isn't verifiable, and doesn't run: [IL]: Error: Shared try has finally or fault handler. Nested try blocks What's with the verification error? Well, it's a condition of IL verification that all exception handling regions (try, catch, filter, finally, fault) of a single .try clause have to be completely contained within any outer exception region, and they can't overlap with any other exception handling clause. In other words, IL exception handling clauses must to be representable in the scoped syntax, and in this example, we're overlapping catch and finally clauses. Not only is this example not verifiable, it isn't semantically correct. The finally handler is specified round the .try. What happens if you were able to run this code, and an exception was thrown? Program execution enters top of try block, and exception is thrown within it CLR searches for an exception handler, finds catch Because control flow is leaving .try, finally block is run The catch block is run leave.s End inside the catch handler branches to End label. We're actually running the finally before the catch! What we do about it What we actually need to do is put the catch clauses inside the finally clause, as this will ensure the finally gets executed at the correct time (this time using scoped syntax): .try { .try { ldstr "Try block" call void [mscorlib]System.Console::WriteLine(string) // ... leave.s End } catch [mscorlib]System.IO.IOException { ldstr "IOException catch" call void [mscorlib]System.Console::WriteLine(string) // ... leave.s End } catch [mscorlib]System.Exception { ldstr "Exception catch" call void [mscorlib]System.Console::WriteLine(string) // ... leave.s End } } finally { ldstr "Finally block" call void [mscorlib]System.Console::WriteLine(string) // ... endfinally } End: ret Returning from methods There is a further semantic mismatch that the C# compiler has to deal with; in C#, you are allowed to return from within an exception handling block: public int HandleMethod() { try { // ... return 0; } catch (Exception) { // ... return -1; } } However, you can't ret inside an exception handling block in IL. So the C# compiler does a leave.s to a ret outside the exception handling area, loading/storing any return value to a local variable along the way (as leave.s clears the stack): .method public instance int32 HandleMethod() { .locals init ( int32 retVal ) .try { // ... ldc.i4.0 stloc.0 leave.s End } catch [mscorlib]System.Exception { // ... ldc.i4.m1 stloc.0 leave.s End } End: ldloc.0 ret } Conclusion As you can see, the C# compiler has quite a few hoops to jump through to translate C# code into semantically-correct IL, and hides the numerous conditions on IL exception handling blocks from the C# programmer. Next up: catch-all blocks, and how the runtime deals with non-Exception exceptions.

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• Expanding the Partner Ecosystem with Third-Party Plug-ins

  - by Joe Diemer

  Oracle Enterprise Manager’s extensibility capabilities are designed to allow customers and partners to adapt Enterprise Manager for management of heterogeneous environments with Plug-ins and Connectors.  Third-party developers continue to take advantage of Oracle Enterprise Manager’s Extensibility Development Kit (EDK) to build plug-ins to Enterprise Manager 12c, such as F5’s BIG IP Plug-in and Entuity’s Eye of the Storm Network Management Plug-In.  Partners can also validate their plug-ins through the Oracle Validated Integration (OVI) program, which assures customers that the plug-in has been tested and is functionally and technically sound, is designed in a reliable and standardized manner, and operates and performs as documented.   Two very recent examples of partners which have beta versions of their plug-ins are Blue Medora's VMware vSphere plug-in and the NetApp Storage plug-in.  VMware vSphere Plug-in by Blue Medora Blue Medora, an Oracle Partner Network (OPN) “Gold” member, which just announced that it is now signing up customers to try a beta version of their new VMware vSphere plug-in for Enterprise Manager 12c.  According to Blue Medora, the vSphere plug-in monitors critical VMware metrics (CPU, Memory, Disk, Network, etc) at the Host, VM, Cluster and Resource Pool levels.  It has minimal performance impact via an “agentless” approach that requires no installation directly on VMware servers.  It has discovery capabilities for VMware Datacenters, ESX Hosts, Clusters, Virtual Machines, and Datastores.  It offers integration of native VMware Events into Enterprise Manager, and it provides over 300 VMware-related health, availability, performance, and configuration metrics.  It comes with more than 30 out-of-the-box pre-defined thresholds and can manage VMware via a series of jobs split between cluster, host and VM target types.The company reports that the Enterprise Manager 12c plug-in supports vSphere versions 4.0, 4.5 and 5.0.  Platforms supported include Linux 64-bit, Windows, AIX and Solaris SPARC and x86.  Information about the plug-in, including how to sign up for the beta, is available at their web site at http://bluemedora.com after selecting the "Products" tab. NetApp Storage Plug-in NetApp believes the combination of storage system monitoring with comprehensive management of Oracle systems with Enterprise Manager will help customers reduce the cost and complexity of managing applications that rely on NetApp storage and Oracle technologies.  So, NetApp built a plug-in and reports that it has comprehensive availability and performance information for NetApp storage systems.  Using the plug-in, Oracle Enterprise Manager customers with NetApp storage solutions can track the association between databases and storage components and thereby respond to faults and IO performance bottlenecks quickly. With the latest configuration management capabilities, one can also perform drift analysis to make sure all storage systems are configured as per established gold standards. The company is also now signing up beta customers, which can be done at the NetApp Communities site at https://communities.netapp.com/groups/netapp-storage-system-plug-in-for-oem12c-beta. Learn More about Enterprise Manager Extensibility More plug-ins from other partners are soon to come, which I'll be reporting on them here.  To learn more about Enterprise Manager and how customers and partners can build plug-ins using the EDK to manage a multi-vendor data center, go to http://oracle.com/enterprisemanager in the Heterogeneous Management solution area.  The site also lists the plug-ins available with information on how to obtain them.  More info about the Oracle Validated Integration program can be found at the OPN Enterprise Manager Knowledge Zone in the "Develop" tab.

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• SOA Community Newsletter May 2014

  - by JuergenKress

  Registration for the Fusion Middleware Summer Camps 2014 is open – Register asap for one of our bootcamps August 4th – 8th 2014 in Lisbon. Please read details and pre-requisitions careful before you register. We expect that like in the past, the conference will be booked out soon! If you can’t make it to Lisbon attend our SOA Suite 11c free on-demand Bootcamp or  Managing the Complexity of IoT online trainings. With more than 5000 customers, SOA Suite Achieves Significant Customer Adoption and Industry Recognition.Thanks to all our SOA Specialized partners for making our joins SOA customers successful! As a summary of the Industrial SOA series we published the Podcast Show Notes: SOA and Cloud - Where's This Relationship Going? Make sure you use the Oracle Demo Systems for your customer presentations. The demo systems are hosted by Oracle and include complete scenarios based on the latest Middleware version like the new B2B SOA Suite Demo System! For local presentations without fast internet use the SOA/BPM 11.1.1.7.1 Virtual Machine and Case Management Sample. At our SOA Community Workspace (SOA Community membership required) you can get new IoT presentations for Location Based Offers for Banking & Whitepaper and online Webcast & Utility presentation. In this newsletter you will find many articles about OSB: OSB 11g – A Hands-on Tutorial & Using Split-Joins in OSB Services for parallel processing of messages & OSB, Service Callouts and OQL & Working with Oracle Security Token Service. Thanks for sharing all the additional SOA articles within the community: How to configure Oracle SOA/BPM task auto release & Controlling BPEL process flow at runtime & Upgrading to Oracle SOA Suite 11g PS6 (11.1.1.7)? Do this. & BPEL and BPM's performance monitoring using DMS & SOA 11g - Create RESTful Service In Oracle SOA & Wrong timezone causes TopLink warning in SOA suite. Highlight of the BPM and ACM section is the IDC BPM vendor report. The new bundle Patch including the ACM UI is now available. If you want to learn more about ACM, get the ACM training material at our SOA Community Workspace (SOA Community membership required). A great demo for your next BPM presentation is the BPM iPad app. It’s simpleMobile BPM is Not An Option. It’s a Necessity. Thanks for sharing all the additional BPM articles within the community: BPM update adds Case Management Web Interface and REST APIs & Implementing deadline functionality with Oracle Adaptive Case Management & BPM 11g Timeout Heuristics & Humantask Assignment: Names and Expressions Assignment via Rules. In our last section Architecture, it is all about design. Usability is a key factor for customer satisfaction, worth to spend some time and read the Simplified User Experience Design Patterns eBook. Great blueprint for your project! See you in Lisbon! To read the newsletter please visit www.tinyurl.com/soaNewsMay2014 (OPN Account required) To become a member of the SOA Partner Community please register at http://www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Facebook Wiki Mix Forum Technorati Tags: newsletter,SOA Community newsletter,SOA Community,Oracle,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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• HTTP Module in detail

  - by Jalpesh P. Vadgama

  I know this post may sound like very beginner level. But I have already posted two topics regarding HTTP Handler and HTTP module and this will explain how http module works in the system. I have already posted What is the difference between HttpModule and HTTPHandler here. Same way I have posted about an HTTP Handler example here as people are still confused with it. In this post I am going to explain about HTTP Module in detail. What is HTTP Module As we all know that when ASP.NET Runtimes receives any request it will execute a series of HTTP Pipeline extensible objects. HTTP Module and HTTP handler play important role in extending this HTTP Pipelines. HTTP Module are classes that will pre and post process request as they pass into HTTP Pipelines.  So It’s one kind of filter we can say which will do some procession on begin request and end request. If we have to create HTTP Module we have to implement System.Web.IHttpModule interface in our custom class. An IHTTP Module contains two method dispose where you can write your clean up code and another is Init where your can write your custom code to handle request. Here you can your event handler that will execute at the time of begin request and end request. Let’s create an HTTP Module which will just print text in browser with every request. Here is the code for that. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Web; namespace Experiment { public class MyHttpModule:IHttpModule { public void Dispose() { //add clean up code here if required } public void Init(HttpApplication context) { context.BeginRequest+=new EventHandler(context_BeginRequest); context.EndRequest+=new EventHandler(context_EndRequest); } public void context_BeginRequest(object o, EventArgs args) { HttpApplication app = (HttpApplication)o; if (app != null) { app.Response.Write("<h1>Begin Request Executed</h1>"); } } public void context_EndRequest(object o, EventArgs args) { HttpApplication app = (HttpApplication)o; if (app != null) { app.Response.Write("<h1>End Request Executed</h1>"); } } } } Here in above code you can see that I have created two event handler context_Beginrequest and context_EndRequest which will execute at begin request and end request when request are processed. In this event handler I have just written a code to print text on browser. Now In order enable this HTTP Module in HTTP pipeline we have to put a settings in web.config  HTTPModules section to tell which HTTPModule is enabled. Below is code for HTTPModule. <configuration> <system.web> <compilation debug="true" targetFramework="4.0" /> <httpModules> <add name="MyHttpModule" type="Experiment.MyHttpModule,Experiment"/> </httpModules> </system.web> </configuration> Now I just have created a sample webform with following code in HTML like following. <form id="form1" runat="server"> <B>test of HTTP Module</B> </form> Now let’s run this web form in browser and you can see here it the output as expected.   Technorati Tags: HTTPModule,ASP.NET,Request

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• What is the SharePoint Action Framework and Why do I need it ?

  - by SAF

  For those out there that are a little curious as to whether SAF is any use to your organisation, please read this FAQ.  What is SAF ? SAF is free to use. SAF is the "SharePoint Action Framework", it was built by myself and Hugo (plus a few others along the way). SAF is written entirely in C# code available from : http://saf.codeplex.com.   SAF is a way to automate SharePoint configuration changes. An Action is a command/class/task/script written in C# that performs a unit of execution against SharePoint such as "CreateWeb"  or "AddLookupColumn". A SAF Macro is collection of one or more Actions. SAF Macro can be run from Msbuild, a Feature, StsAdm or common plain old .Net code. Parameters can be passed to a Macro at run-time from a variety of sources such as "Environment Variable", "*.config", "Msbuild Properties", Feature Properties, command line args, .net code. SAF emits lots of trace statements at run-time, these can be viewed using "DebugView". One Action can pass parameters to another Action. Parameters can be set using Expression Syntax such as "DateTime.Now".  You should consider SAF is you suffer from one of the following symptoms... "Our developers write lots of code to deploy changes at release time - it's always rushed" "I don't want my developers shelling out to Powershell or Stsadm from a Feature". "We have loads of Console applications now, I have lost track of where they are, or what they do" "We seem to be writing similar scripts against SharePoint in lots of ways, testing is hard". "My scripts often have lots of errors - they are done at the last minute". "When something goes wrong - I have no idea what went wrong or how to solve it". "Our Features get stuck and bomb out half way through - there no way to roll them back". "We have tons of Features now - I can't keep track". "We deploy Features to run one-off tasks" "We have a library of reusable scripts, but, we can only run it in one way, sometimes we want to run it from MSbuild and a Feature". "I want to automate the deployment of changes to our development environment". "I would like to run a housekeeping task on a scheduled basis"   So I like the sound of SAF - what's the problems ?  Realistically, there are few things that need to be considered: Someone on your team will need to spend a day or 2 understanding SAF and deciding exactly how you want to use it. I would suggest a Tech Lead, SysAdm or SP Architect will need to download it, try out the examples, look through the unit tests. Ask us questions. Although, SAF can be downloaded and set to go in a few minutes, you will still need to address issues such as - "Do you want to execute your Macros in MsBuild or from a Feature ?" You will need to decide who is going to do your deployments - is it each developer to themself, or do you require a dedicated Build Manager ? As most environments (Dev, QA, Live etc) require different settings (e.g. Urls, Database names, accounts etc), you will more than likely want to define these and set a properties file up for each environment. (These can then be injected into Saf at run-time). There may be no Action to solve your particular problem. If this is the case, suggest it to us - we can try and write it, or write it yourself. It's very easy to write a new Action - we have an approach to easily unit test it, document it and author it. For example, I wrote one to deploy  a WSP in 2 hours the other day. Alternatively, Saf can also call Stsadm commands and Powershell scripts.   Anyway, I do hope this helps! If you still need help, or a quick start, we can also offer consultancy around SAF. If you want to know more give us a call or drop an email to [email protected]

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• Who owns the IP rights of the software without written employment contract? Employer or employee? [closed]

  - by P T

  I am a software engineer who got an idea, and developed alone an integrated ERP software solution over the past 2 years. I got the idea and coded much of the software in my personal time, utilizing my own resources, but also as intern/employee at small wholesale retailer (company A). I had a verbal agreement with the company that I could keep the IP rights to the code and the company would have the "shop rights" to use "a copy" of the software without restrictions. Part of this agreement was that I was heavily underpaid to keep the rights. Recently things started to take a down turn in the company A as the company grew fairly large and new head management was formed, also new partners were brought in. The original owners distanced themselves from the business, and the new "greedy" group indicated that they want to claim the IP rights to my software, offering me a contract that would split the IP ownership into 50% co-ownership, completely disregarding the initial verbal agreements. As of now there was no single written job description and agreement/contract/policy that I signed with the company A, I signed only I-9 and W-4 forms. I now have an opportunity to leave the company A and form a new business with 2 partners (Company B), obviously using the software as the primary tool. There would be no direct conflict of interest as the company A sells wholesale goods. My core question is: "Who owns the code without contract? Me or the company A? (in FL, US)" Detailed questions: I am familiar with the "shop rights", I don't have any problem leaving a copy of the code in the company for them to use/enhance to run their wholesale business. What worries me, Can the company A make any legal claims to the software/code/IP and potential derived profits/interests after I leave and form a company B? Can applying for a copyright of the code at http://www.copyright.gov in my name prevent any legal disputes in the future? Can I use it as evidence for legal defense? Could adding a note specifying the company A as exclusive license holder clarify the arrangements? If I leave and the company A sues me, what evidence would they use against me? On what basis would the sue since their business is in completely different industry than software (wholesale goods). Every single source file was created/stored on my personal computer with proper documentation including a copyright notice with my credentials (name/email/addres/phone). It's also worth noting that I develop significant part of the software prior to my involvement with the company A as student. If I am forced to sign a contract and the company A doesn't honor the verbal agreement, making claims towards the ownership, what can I do settle the matter legally? I like to avoid legal process altogether as my budget for court battles is extremely limited at the moment. Would altering the code beyond recognition and using it for the company B prevent the company A make any copyright claims? My common sense tells me that what I developed is by default mine in terms of IP, unless there is a signed legal agreement stating otherwise. But looking online it may be completely backwards, this really worries me. I understand that this is not legal advice, and I know to get the ultimate answer I need to hire a lawyer. I am only hoping to get some valuable input/experience/advice/opinion from those who were in similar situation or are familiar with the topic. Thank you, PT

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• Updated SOA Documents now available in ITSO Reference Library

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Nine documents within the IT Strategies from Oracle (ITSO) reference library have recently been updated. (Access to the ITSO collection is free to registered Oracle.com members -- and that membership is free.) All nine documents fall within the Service Oriented Architecture section of the ITSO collection, and cover the following topics: SOA Practitioner Guides Creating an SOA Roadmap (PDF, 54 pages, published: February 2012) The secret to successful SOA is to build a roadmap that can be successfully executed. SOA offers an opportunity to adopt an iterative technique to deliver solutions incrementally. This document offers a structured, iterative methodology to help you stay focused on business results, mitigate technology and organizational risk, and deliver successful SOA projects. A Framework for SOA Governance (PDF, 58 pages, published: February 2012) Successful SOA requires a strong governance strategy that designs-in measurement, management, and enforcement procedures. Enterprise SOA adoption introduces new assets, processes, technologies, standards, roles, etc. which require application of appropriate governance policies and procedures. This document offers a framework for defining and building a proper SOA governance model. Determining ROI of SOA through Reuse (PDF, 28 pages, published: February 2012) SOA offers the opportunity to save millions of dollars annually through reuse. Sharing common services intuitively reduces workload, increases developer productivity, and decreases maintenance costs. This document provides an approach for estimating the reuse value of the various software assets contained in a typical portfolio. Identifying and Discovering Services (PDF, 64 pages, published: March 2012) What services should we build? How can we promote the reuse of existing services? A sound approach to answer these questions is a primary measure for the success of a SOA initiative. This document describes a pragmatic approach for collecting the necessary information for identifying proper services and facilitating service reuse. Software Engineering in an SOA Environment (PDF, 66 pages, published: March 2012) Traditional software delivery methods are too narrowly focused and need to be adjusted to enable SOA. This document describes an engineering approach for delivering projects within an SOA environment. It identifies the unique software engineering challenges faced by enterprises adopting SOA and provides a framework to remove the hurdles and improve the efficiency of the SOA initiative. SOA Reference Architectures SOA Foundation (PDF, 70 pages, published: February 2012) This document describes they key tenets for SOA design, development, and execution environments. Topics include: service definition, service layering, service types, the service model, composite applications, invocation patterns, and standards. SOA Infrastructure (PDF, 86 pages, published: February 2012) Properly architected, SOA provides a robust and manageable infrastructure that enables faster solution delivery. This document describes the role of infrastructure and its capabilities. Topics include: logical architecture, deployment views, and Oracle product mapping. SOA White Papers and Data Sheets Oracle's Approach to SOA (white paper) (PDF, 14 pages, published: February 2012) Oracle has developed a pragmatic, holistic approach, based on years of experience with numerous companies to help customers successfully adopt SOA and realize measureable business benefits. This executive datasheet and whitepaper describe Oracle's proven approach to SOA. Oracle's Approach to SOA (data sheet) (PDF, 3 pages, published: March 2012) SOA adoption is complex and success is far from assured. This is why Oracle has developed a pragmatic, holistic approach, based on years of experience with numerous companies, to help customers successfully adopt SOA and realize measurable business benefits. This data sheet provides an executive overview of Oracle's proven approach to SOA.

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• Best depth sorting method for a Top Down 2D game using a 3D physics engine

  - by Alic44

  I've spent many days googling this and still have issues with my game engine I'd like to ask about, which I haven't seen addressed before. I think the problem is that my game is an unusual combination of a completely 2D graphical approach using XNA's SpriteBatch, and a completely 3D engine (the amazing BEPU physics engine) with rotation mostly disabled. In essence, my question is similar to this one (the part about "faux 3D"), but the difference is that in my game, the player as well as every other creature is represented by 3D objects, and they can all jump, pick up other objects, and throw them around. What this means is that sorting by one value, such as a Z position (how far north/south a character is on the screen) won't work, because as soon as a smaller creature jumps on top of a larger creature, or a box, and walks backwards, the moment its z value is less than that other creature, it will appear to be behind the object it is actually standing on. I actually originally solved this problem by splitting every object in the game into physics boxes which MUST have a Y height equal to their Z depth. I then based the depth sorting value on the object's y position (how high it is off the ground) PLUS its z position (how far north or south it is on the screen). The problem with this approach is that it requires all moving objects in the game to be split graphically into chunks which match up with a physical box which has its y dimension equal to its z dimension. Which is stupid. So, I got inspired last night to rewrite with a fresh approach. My new method is a little more complex, but I think a little more sane: every object which needs to be sorted by depth in the game exposes the interface IDepthDrawable and is added to a list owned by the DepthDrawer object. IDepthDrawable contains: public interface IDepthDrawable { Rectangle Bounds { get; } //possibly change this to a class if struct copying of the xna Rectangle type becomes an issue DepthDrawShape DepthShape { get; } void Draw(SpriteBatch spriteBatch); } The Bounds Rectangle of each IDepthDrawable object represents the 2D Axis-Aligned Bounding Box it will take up when drawn to the screen. Anything that doesn't intersect the screen will be culled at this stage and the remaining on-screen IDepthDrawables will be Bounds tested for intersections with each other. This is where I get a little less sure of what I'm doing. Each group of collisions will be added to a list or other collection, and each list will sort itself based on its DepthShape property, which will have access to the object-to-be-drawn's physics information. For starting out, lets assume everything in the game is an axis aligned 3D Box shape. Boxes are pretty easy to sort. Something like: if (depthShape1.Back > depthShape2.Front) //if depthShape1 is in front of depthShape2. //depthShape1 goes on top. else if (depthShape1.Bottom > depthShape2.Top) //if depthShape1 is above depthShape2. //depthShape1 goes on top. //if neither of these are true, depthShape2 must be in front or above. So, by sorting draw order by several different factors from the physics engine, I believe I can get a really correct draw order. My question is, is this a good way of going about this, or is there some tried and true, tested way which is completely different and has somehow completely eluded me on the internets? And, if this does seem like a good way to remake my draw order sorting, what's the right sorting algorithm for reordering the Bounds Rectangle collision lists, and how do you deal with a Bounds Rectangle colliding with two different object which don't collide with eachother. I know these are solved problems, but I've only been programming for a year so any specific input here will be greatly appreciated. Thanks for reading this far, ye who made it -- sorry it was so long!

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• Convert old AVI files to a modern format

  - by iWerner

  Hi, we have a collection of old home videos that were saved in AVI format a long time ago. I want to convert these files to a more modern format because the Totem Movie Player that comes with Ubuntu 10.4 seems to be the only program capable of playing them. The files seem to be encoded with a MJPEG codec, and playing them in VLC or Windows Media Player plays only the sound but there is no video. Avidemux was able to open the files, but the quality of the video is severely degraded: The video skips frames and is interlaced (it's not interlaced when playing it in Totem). Neither ffmpeg nor mencoder seems to be able to read the video stream. mencoder reports that it is using ffmpeg's codec. Here's a section from its output: ========================================================================== Opening video decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg's libavcodec codec family [mjpeg @ 0x92a7260]mjpeg: using external huffman table [mjpeg @ 0x92a7260]mjpeg: error using external huffman table, switching back to internal Unsupported PixelFormat -1 Selected video codec: [ffmjpeg] vfm: ffmpeg (FFmpeg MJPEG) while running ffmpeg produces the following: $ ffmpeg -i input.avi output.avi FFmpeg version SVN-r0.5.1-4:0.5.1-1ubuntu1, Copyright (c) 2000-2009 Fabrice Bellard, et al. configuration: --extra-version=4:0.5.1-1ubuntu1 --prefix=/usr --enable-avfilter --enable-avfilter-lavf --enable-vdpau --enable-bzlib --enable-libgsm --enable-libschroedinger --enable-libspeex --enable-libtheora --enable-libvorbis --enable-pthreads --enable-zlib --disable-stripping --disable-vhook --enable-runtime-cpudetect --enable-gpl --enable-postproc --enable-swscale --enable-x11grab --enable-libdc1394 --enable-shared --disable-static libavutil 49.15. 0 / 49.15. 0 libavcodec 52.20. 1 / 52.20. 1 libavformat 52.31. 0 / 52.31. 0 libavdevice 52. 1. 0 / 52. 1. 0 libavfilter 0. 4. 0 / 0. 4. 0 libswscale 0. 7. 1 / 0. 7. 1 libpostproc 51. 2. 0 / 51. 2. 0 built on Mar 4 2010 12:35:30, gcc: 4.4.3 [avi @ 0x87952c0]non-interleaved AVI Input #0, avi, from 'input.avi': Duration: 00:00:15.24, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 22447 kb/s Stream #0.0: Video: mjpeg, yuvj422p, 720x544, 25 tbr, 25 tbn, 25 tbc Stream #0.1: Audio: pcm_s16le, 44100 Hz, stereo, s16, 1411 kb/s Output #0, avi, to 'output.avi': Stream #0.0: Video: mpeg4, yuv420p, 720x544, q=2-31, 200 kb/s, 90k tbn, 25 tbc Stream #0.1: Audio: mp2, 44100 Hz, stereo, s16, 64 kb/s Stream mapping: Stream #0.0 -> #0.0 Stream #0.1 -> #0.1 Press [q] to stop encoding frame= 0 fps= 0 q=0.0 Lsize= 143kB time=15.23 bitrate= 76.9kbits/s video:0kB audio:119kB global headers:0kB muxing overhead 20.101777% So the problem is that output does not contain any video, as evidenced by the video:0kB at the end. In all of the above cases the audio comes out fine. So my question is: What can I do to convert these files to a more modern format with more modern codecs?

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• vmware player xorg driver broke after ubuntu 12.04 LTS automatic system update on 06/07/2014

  - by user291828

  I am running Ubuntu 12.04 LTS as a virtual machine on a Windows 7 host using vmware player 6.0.2. On Sat. 06/07/2014, Ubuntu performed an automatic system update as it does regularly, however after reboot, the display driver seems to be broken which causes the screen to split into many identical panels. This pretty much rendered the VM unusable. Below is the log entry for that update from /var/log/apt/history.log It appears that at least one of these updates have caused this problem. The exact same problem has been reported on the vmware forum as well, see https://communities.vmware.com/message/2388776#2388776 So far I have not been able so find a solution. Content in /var/log/apt/history.log Start-Date: 2014-06-07 15:04:46 Commandline: aptdaemon role='role-commit-packages' sender=':1.65' Install: linux-headers-3.2.0-64:amd64 (3.2.0-64.97), linux-image-3.2.0-64-generic:amd64 (3.2.0-64.97), linux-headers-3.2.0-64-generic:amd64 (3.2.0-64.97) Upgrade: iproute:amd64 (20111117-1ubuntu2.1, 20111117-1ubuntu2.3), libknewstuff3-4:amd64 (4.8.5-0ubuntu0.2, 4.8.5-0ubuntu0.3), libkdeclarative5:amd64 (4.8.5-0ubuntu0.2, 4.8.5-0ubuntu0.3), libnepomukquery4a:amd64 (4.8.5-0ubuntu0.2, 4.8.5-0ubuntu0.3), libgnutls-openssl27:amd64 (2.12.14-5ubuntu3.7, 2.12.14-5ubuntu3.8), libthreadweaver4:amd64 (4.8.5-0ubuntu0.2, 4.8.5-0ubuntu0.3), libkdecore5:amd64 (4.8.5-0ubuntu0.2, 4.8.5-0ubuntu0.3), libnepomukutils4:amd64 (4.8.5-0ubuntu0.2, 4.8.5-0ubuntu0.3), libktexteditor4:amd64 (4.8.5-0ubuntu0.2, 4.8.5-0ubuntu0.3), linux-generic:amd64 (3.2.0.63.75, 3.2.0.64.76), libkmediaplayer4:amd64 (4.8.5-0ubuntu0.2, 4.8.5-0ubuntu0.3), libkrosscore4:amd64 (4.8.5-0ubuntu0.2, 4.8.5-0ubuntu0.3), libgnutls26:amd64 (2.12.14-5ubuntu3.7, 2.12.14-5ubuntu3.8), libgnutls26:i386 (2.12.14-5ubuntu3.7, 2.12.14-5ubuntu3.8), libsolid4:amd64 (4.8.5-0ubuntu0.2, 4.8.5-0ubuntu0.3), libnepomuk4:amd64 (4.8.5-0ubuntu0.2, 4.8.5-0ubuntu0.3), libkdnssd4:amd64 (4.8.5-0ubuntu0.2, 4.8.5-0ubuntu0.3), libkparts4:amd64 (4.8.5-0ubuntu0.2, 4.8.5-0ubuntu0.3), kdoctools:amd64 (4.8.5-0ubuntu0.2, 4.8.5-0ubuntu0.3), libssl-dev:amd64 (1.0.1-4ubuntu5.13, 1.0.1-4ubuntu5.14), libssl-doc:amd64 (1.0.1-4ubuntu5.13, 1.0.1-4ubuntu5.14), libkidletime4:amd64 (4.8.5-0ubuntu0.2, 4.8.5-0ubuntu0.3), linux-headers-generic:amd64 (3.2.0.63.75, 3.2.0.64.76), linux-image-generic:amd64 (3.2.0.63.75, 3.2.0.64.76), libkcmutils4:amd64 (4.8.5-0ubuntu0.2, 4.8.5-0ubuntu0.3), libkfile4:amd64 (4.8.5-0ubuntu0.2, 4.8.5-0ubuntu0.3), libkpty4:amd64 (4.8.5-0ubuntu0.2, 4.8.5-0ubuntu0.3), libkntlm4:amd64 (4.8.5-0ubuntu0.2, 4.8.5-0ubuntu0.3), libplasma3:amd64 (4.8.5-0ubuntu0.2, 4.8.5-0ubuntu0.3), libkemoticons4:amd64 (4.8.5-0ubuntu0.2, 4.8.5-0ubuntu0.3), kdelibs-bin:amd64 (4.8.5-0ubuntu0.2, 4.8.5-0ubuntu0.3), libkdewebkit5:amd64 (4.8.5-0ubuntu0.2, 4.8.5-0ubuntu0.3), libkjsembed4:amd64 (4.8.5-0ubuntu0.2, 4.8.5-0ubuntu0.3), libkio5:amd64 (4.8.5-0ubuntu0.2, 4.8.5-0ubuntu0.3), libkjsapi4:amd64 (4.8.5-0ubuntu0.2, 4.8.5-0ubuntu0.3), openssl:amd64 (1.0.1-4ubuntu5.13, 1.0.1-4ubuntu5.14), kdelibs5-data:amd64 (4.8.5-0ubuntu0.2, 4.8.5-0ubuntu0.3), linux-libc-dev:amd64 (3.2.0-63.95, 3.2.0-64.97), libkde3support4:amd64 (4.8.5-0ubuntu0.2, 4.8.5-0ubuntu0.3), libknotifyconfig4:amd64 (4.8.5-0ubuntu0.2, 4.8.5-0ubuntu0.3), kdelibs5-plugins:amd64 (4.8.5-0ubuntu0.2, 4.8.5-0ubuntu0.3), libkhtml5:amd64 (4.8.5-0ubuntu0.2, 4.8.5-0ubuntu0.3), libkdeui5:amd64 (4.8.5-0ubuntu0.2, 4.8.5-0ubuntu0.3), libkdesu5:amd64 (4.8.5-0ubuntu0.2, 4.8.5-0ubuntu0.3), libssl1.0.0:amd64 (1.0.1-4ubuntu5.13, 1.0.1-4ubuntu5.14), libssl1.0.0:i386 (1.0.1-4ubuntu5.13, 1.0.1-4ubuntu5.14) End-Date: 2014-06-07 15:09:08

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• If not now, then when?

  - by Chris Gardner

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/freestylecoding/archive/2013/10/25/if-not-now-then-when.aspx The time has been flying by this year. It seems like only yesterday that I mentioned the gorillagator, a simple construct of confusion to try to draw attention to my message. In reality, that message was sent over a month ago. During that time, the hours slipped to days and days to weeks. Many exciting things have happened to myself; I'm sure many exciting things have happened to you. I'm also sure that many terrifying things have happened to children and their families. 62 children enter treatment at a Children's Miracle Network Hospital every minute. That's nearly 60,000 children since I sent the last email. To put that number in perspective, that is more than the population of Greenland. If we expand that to the past year, they have been nearly 550,000 children treated. That is almost the population of Huntsville, Decatur, and all their suburbs combined. Over the past 4 years, I have raised a little more than $3,000 for Children's Hospital of Alabama. As a result, I received a call from the organizers of Extra Life thanking me for my dedicated work and informing me that I was the top supporters for Children's Hospital of Alabama ... with my measly three grand. We can do much better than that. It may sound like I'm trying to have fun by playing games for 24 hours. It is more than that. It is me using my time and body as a catalyst. It is me putting my passion to work for a cause. It is me turning my love into something tangible. I have been campaigning and fighting to give these children a chance for years. I have been asking you to help me support these children and families. I've been putting in countless hours of talking to people, impassioned emails, and carefully constructed tweets. I have been fighting with cutting edge, and sometimes expensive, technology to try to provide live streams of my marathons. I yearly put my body through 24 (and, this year, 25) hours of no sleep. I do this to represent the countless hours these families sit awake at their children's side. All I ask is a few minutes on a website and a few dollars. These few minutes and few dollars go a long way help people that are experiencing circumstances that only occur in our nightmares. I also ask that you take one extra step. Forward this plea to those that you know. I can only reach a small fraction of a percentage of the people that may be able to help. Together, we can reach the world. I raise money for Children's Hospital of Alabama. As this message branches out, people may wish to support a hospital closer to their area. I have included a link to the list of people that have dedicated their time and have received no donations. Find someone on the list supporting your local hospital and give them a donation. Let them know that their time and effort are appreciated. Together, we can do something great. Together, we can make a difference. Together, we all stand tall. Thank you. You can get more information at http://www.extra-life.org and http://childrensmiraclenetworkhospitals.org/" My donation page is http://www.extra-life.org/participant/cgardner The list of participants without donations is http://www.extra-life.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=donorDrive.eventParticipantList&page=629&eventID=512

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• How would you gather client's data on Google App Engine without using Datastore/Backend Instances too much?

  - by ruslan

  I'm relatively new to StackExchange and not sure if it's appropriate place to ask design question. Site gives me a hint "The question you're asking appears subjective and is likely to be closed". Please let me know. Anyway.. One of the projects I'm working on is online survey engine. It's my first big commercial project on Google App Engine. I need your advice on how to collect stats and efficiently record them in DataStore without bankrupting me. Initial requirements are: After user finishes survey client sends list of pairs [ID (int) + PercentHit (double)]. This list shows how close answers of this user match predefined answers of reference answerers (which identified by IDs). I call them "target IDs". Creator of the survey wants to see aggregated % for given IDs for last hour, particular timeframe or from the beginning of the survey. Some surveys may have thousands of target/reference answerers. So I created entity public class HitsStatsDO implements Serializable { @Id transient private Long id; transient private Long version = (long) 0; transient private Long startDate; @Parent transient private Key parent; // fake parent which contains target id @Transient int targetId; private double avgPercent; private long hitCount; } But writing HitsStatsDO for each target from each user would give a lot of data. For instance I had a survey with 3000 targets which was answered by ~4 million people within one week with 300K people taking survey in first day. Even if we assume they were answering it evenly for 24 hours it would give us ~1040 writes/second. Obviously it hits concurrent writes limit of Datastore. I decided I'll collect data for one hour and save that, that's why there are avgPercent and hitCount in HitsStatsDO. GAE instances are stateless so I had to use dynamic backend instance. There I have something like this: // Contains stats for one hour private class Shard { ReadWriteLock lock = new ReentrantReadWriteLock(); Map<Integer, HitsStatsDO> map = new HashMap<Integer, HitsStatsDO>(); // Key is target ID public void saveToDatastore(); public void updateStats(Long startDate, Map<Integer, Double> hits); } and map with shard for current hour and previous hour (which doesn't stay here for long) private HashMap<Long, Shard> shards = new HashMap<Long, Shard>(); // Key is HitsStatsDO.startDate So once per hour I dump Shard for previous hour to Datastore. Plus I have class LifetimeStats which keeps Map<Integer, HitsStatsDO> in memcached where map-key is target ID. Also in my backend shutdown hook method I dump stats for unfinished hour to Datastore. There is only one major issue here - I have only ONE backend instance :) It raises following questions on which I'd like to hear your opinion: Can I do this without using backend instance ? What if one instance is not enough ? How can I split data between multiple dynamic backend instances? It hard because I don't know how many I have because Google creates new one as load increases. I know I can launch exact number of resident backend instances. But how many ? 2, 5, 10 ? What if I have no load at all for a week. Constantly running 10 backend instances is too expensive. What do I do with data from clients while backend instance is dead/restarting? Thank you very much in advance for your thoughts.

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• Do you want to be an ALM Consultant?

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  Northwest Cadence is looking for our next great consultant! At Northwest Cadence, we have created a work environment that emphasizes excellence, integrity, and out-of-the-box thinking.  Our customers have high expectations (rightfully so) and we wouldn’t have it any other way!   Northwest Cadence has some of the most exciting customers I have ever worked with and even though I have only been here just over a month I have already: Provided training/consulting for 3 government departments Created and taught courseware for delivering Scrum to teams within a high profile multinational company Started presenting Microsoft's ALM Engagement Program  So if you are interested in helping companies build better software more efficiently, then.. Enquire at [email protected] Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Consultant An ALM Consultant with a minimum of 8 years of relevant experience with Application Lifecycle Management, Visual Studio (including Visual Studio Team System) and software design is needed. Must provide thought leadership on best practices for enterprise architecture, understand the Microsoft technology solution stack, and have a thorough understanding of enterprise application integration. The ALM Practice Lead will play a central role in designing and implementing the overall ALM Practice strategy, including creating, updating, and delivering ALM courseware and consultancy engagements. This person will also provide project support, deliverables, and quality solutions on Visual Studio Team System that exceed client expectations. Engagements will vary and will involve providing expert training, consulting, mentoring, formulating technical strategies and policies and acting as a “trusted advisor” to customers and internal teams. Sound sense of business and technical strategy required. Strong interpersonal skills as well as solid strategic thinking are key. The ideal candidate will be capable of envisioning the solution based on the early client requirements, communicating the vision to both technical and business stakeholders, leading teams through implementation, as well as training, mentoring, and hands-on software development. The ideal candidate will demonstrate successful use of both agile and formal software development methods, enterprise application patterns, and effective leadership on prior projects. Job Requirements Minimum Education: Bachelor’s Degree (computer science, engineering, or math preferred). Locale / Travel: The Practice Lead position requires estimated 50% travel, most of which will be in the Continental US (a valid national Passport must be maintained).  This is a full time position and will be based in the Kirkland office. Preferred Education: Master’s Degree in Information Technology or Software Engineering; Premium Microsoft Certifications on .NET (MCSD) or MCPD or relevant experience; Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT) or relevant experience. Minimum Experience and Skills: 7+ years experience with business information systems integration or custom business application design and development in a professional technology consulting, corporate MIS or software development environment. Essential Duties & Responsibilities: Provide training, consulting, and mentoring to organizations on topics that include Visual Studio Team System and ALM. Create content, including labs and demonstrations, to be delivered as training classes by Northwest Cadence employees. Lead development teams through the complete ALM and/or Visual Studio Team System solution. Be able to communicate in detail how a solution will integrate into the larger technical problem space for large, complex enterprises. Define technical solution requirements. Provide guidance to the customer and project team with respect to technical feasibility, complexity, and level of effort required to deliver a custom solution. Ensure that the solution is designed, developed and deployed in accordance with the agreed upon development work plan. Create and deliver weekly status reports of training and/or consulting progress. Engagement Responsibilities: · Provide a strong desire to provide thought leadership related to technology and to help grow the business. · Work effectively and professionally with employees at all levels of a customer’s organization. · Have strong verbal and written communication skills. · Have effective presentation, organizational and planning skills. · Have effective interpersonal skills and ability to work in a team environment. Enquire at [email protected]

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• Big Data – ClustrixDB – Extreme Scale SQL Database with Real-time Analytics, Releases Software Download – NewSQL

  - by Pinal Dave

  There are so many things to learn and there is so little time we all have. As we have little time we need to be selective to learn whatever we learn. I believe I know quite a lot of things in SQL but I still do not know what is around SQL. I have started to learn about NewSQL recently. If you wonder what is NewSQL I encourage all of you to read my blog post about NewSQL over here Big Data – Buzz Words: What is NewSQL – Day 10 of 21. NewSQL databases are quickly becoming popular – providing the scale of NoSQL with the SQL features and transactions. As a part of learning NewSQL database, I have recently started to learn about ClustrixDB. ClustrixDB has been the most mature NewSQL database used by some of the largest internet sites in the world for over 3 years, with extensive SQL support. In addition to scale, it provides fast real-time analytics by bringing massively parallel processing (MPP), available only in warehousing databases, to the transactional database. The reason I am more intrigued about learning ClustrixDB is their recent announcement on Oct 31. ClustrixDB was only available as an appliance, but now with their software release on Oct 31, everyone can use it. It is now available as forever free for up to 12 cores with community support, and there is a 45 day trial for unlimited cluster sizes. With the forever free world, I am indeed interested in ClustrixDB now. I know that few of the leading eCommerce sites in the world uses them for their transactional database. Here are few of the details I have quickly noted for ClustrixDB. ClustrixDB allows user to: Scale by simply adding nodes to the cluster with a single command Run billions of transactions a day Run fast real-time analytics Achieve high-availability with recovery from node failure Manages itself Easily migrate from MySQL as it is nearly plug-and-play compatible, use MySQL drivers, tools and replication. While I was going through the documentation I realized that ClustrixDB also has extensive support for SQL features including complex queries involving joins on a dozen or more tables, aggregates, sorts, sub-queries. It also supports stored procedures, triggers, foreign keys, partitioned and temporary tables, and fully online schema changes. It is indeed a very matured product and SQL solution. Indeed Clusterix sound very promising solution, I decided to dig a bit deeper to understand who are current customers of the Clustrix as they exist in the industry for quite a few years. Their client list is indeed very interesting and here is my quick research about them. Twoo.com – Europe’s largest social discovery (dating) site runs 4.4 Billion Transactions a day with table sizes over a Terabyte, on a 168 core cluster. EngageBDR – Top 3 in the online advertising category uses ClustrixDB to serve 6.9 billion ads a day through real-time bidding platform. Their reports went from 4 hours to 15 seconds. NoMoreRack – Top 2 fastest growing e-commerce company in US used ClustrixDB for high availability and fast growth through Amazon cloud. MakeMyTrip – India’s leading travel site runs on ClustrixDB with two clusters running as multi-master in Chennai and Bangalore. Many enterprises such as AOL, CSC, Rakuten, Symantec use ClustrixDB when their applications need scale. I must accept that I am impressed with the information I have learned so far and now is the time to do some hand’s on experience with their product. I want to learn this technology so in future when it is about NewSQL, I know what I am talking about. Read more why Clustrix explains why you ClustrixDB might be the right database for you. Download ClustrixDB with me today and install it on your machine so in future when we discuss the technical aspects of it, we all are on the same page. The software can be downloaded here. Reference : Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com)Filed under: Big Data, MySQL, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL Tagged: Clustrix

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• Open source adventures with... wait for it... Microsoft

  - by Jeff

  Last week, Microsoft announced that it was going to open source the rest of the ASP.NET MVC Web stack. The core MVC framework has been open source for a long time now, but the other pieces around it are also now out in the wild. Not only that, but it's not what I call "big bang" open source, where you release the source with each version. No, they're actually committing in real time to a public repository. They're also taking contributions where it makes sense. If that weren't exciting enough, CodePlex, which used to be a part of the team I was on, has been re-org'd to a different part of the company where it is getting the love and attention (and apparently money) that it deserves. For a period of several months, I lobbied to get a PM gig with that product, but got nowhere. A year and a half later, I'm happy to see it finally treated right. In any case, I found a bug in Razor, the rendering engine, before the beta came out. I informally sent the bug info to some people, but it wasn't fixed for the beta. Now, with the project being developed in the open, I was able to submit the issue, and went back and forth with the developer who wrote the code (I met him once at a meet up in Bellevue, I think), and he committed a fix. I tried it a day later, and the bug was gone. There's a lot to learn from all of this. That open source software is surprisingly efficient and often of high quality is one part of it. For me the win is that it demonstrates how open and collaborative processes, as light as possible, lead to better software. In other words, even if this were a project being developed internally, at a bank or something, getting stakeholders involved early and giving people the ability to respond leads to awesomeness. While there is always a place for big thinking, experience has shown time and time again that trying to figure everything out up front takes too long, and rarely meets expectations. This is a lesson that probably half of Microsoft has yet to learn, including the team I was on before I split. It's the reason that team still hasn't shipped anything to general availability. But I've seen what an open and iterative development style can do for teams, at Microsoft and other places that I've worked. When you can have a conversation with people, and take ideas and turn them into code quickly, you're winning. So why don't people like winning? I think there are a lot of reasons, and they can generally be categorized into fear, skepticism and bad experiences. I can't give the Web stack teams enough credit. Not only did they dream big, but they changed a culture that often seems immovable and hopelessly stuck. This is a very public example of this culture change, but it's starting to happen at every scale in Microsoft. It's really interesting to see in a company that has been written off as dead the last decade.

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• To SYNC or not to SYNC – Part 4

  - by AshishRay

  This is Part 4 of a multi-part blog article where we are discussing various aspects of setting up Data Guard synchronous redo transport (SYNC). In Part 1 of this article, I debunked the myth that Data Guard SYNC is similar to a two-phase commit operation. In Part 2, I discussed the various ways that network latency may or may not impact a Data Guard SYNC configuration. In Part 3, I talked in details regarding why Data Guard SYNC is a good thing, and the distance implications you have to keep in mind. In this final article of the series, I will talk about how you can nicely complement Data Guard SYNC with the ability to failover in seconds. Wait - Did I Say “Seconds”? Did I just say that some customers do Data Guard failover in seconds? Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. Data Guard has an automatic failover capability, aptly called Fast-Start Failover. Initially available with Oracle Database 10g Release 2 for Data Guard SYNC transport mode (and enhanced in Oracle Database 11g to support Data Guard ASYNC transport mode), this capability, managed by Data Guard Broker, lets your Data Guard configuration automatically failover to a designated standby database. Yes, this means no human intervention is required to do the failover. This process is controlled by a low footprint Data Guard Broker client called Observer, which makes sure that the primary database and the designated standby database are behaving like good kids. If something bad were to happen to the primary database, the Observer, after a configurable threshold period, tells that standby, “Your time has come, you are the chosen one!” The standby dutifully follows the Observer directives by assuming the role of the new primary database. The DBA or the Sys Admin doesn’t need to be involved. And - in case you are following this discussion very closely, and are wondering … “Hmmm … what if the old primary is not really dead, but just network isolated from the Observer or the standby - won’t this lead to a split-brain situation?” The answer is No - It Doesn’t. With respect to why-it-doesn’t, I am sure there are some smart DBAs in the audience who can explain the technical reasons. Otherwise - that will be the material for a future blog post. So - this combination of SYNC and Fast-Start Failover is the nirvana of lights-out, integrated HA and DR, as practiced by some of our advanced customers. They have observed failover times (with no data loss) ranging from single-digit seconds to tens of seconds. With this, they support operations in industry verticals such as manufacturing, retail, telecom, Internet, etc. that have the most demanding availability requirements. One of our leading customers with massive cloud deployment initiatives tells us that they know about server failures only after Data Guard has automatically completed the failover process and the app is back up and running! Needless to mention, Data Guard Broker has the integration hooks for interfaces such as JDBC and OCI, or even for custom apps, to ensure the application gets automatically rerouted to the new primary database after the database level failover completes. Net Net? To sum up this multi-part blog article, Data Guard with SYNC redo transport mode, plus Fast-Start Failover, gives you the ideal triple-combo - that is, it gives you the assurance that for critical outages, you can failover your Oracle databases: very fast without human intervention, and without losing any data. In short, it takes the element of risk out of critical IT operations. It does require you to be more careful with your network and systems planning, but as far as HA is concerned, the benefits outweigh the investment costs. So, this is what we in the MAA Development Team believe in. What do you think? How has your deployment experience been? We look forward to hearing from you!

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• Two Candidates + One Job = Two Different Outcomes

  - by david.talamelli

  Recruiters have always headhunted (sidenote: I do not like this word, in general I think the type of people who use the phrase “headhunting” are the ones who are trying to sound more important than what they likely are). Any serious Recruiter engages in direct recruiting activity, it is part and parcel of the business it is not something unique. With the uptake in Social Media the past 4-5 years, we have seen an increase in the number of Recruiters proactively reaching out to people about job opportunities. We have also seen this activity increase across all levels of hire, from help desk roles to C-Level Executives. While getting approached about a role can be a nice boost to a person’s ego, do not let it give you an inflated sense of entitlement. It is The way that people handle themselves during these calls and subsequent interviews will have a large impact on their potential to land that job. Last week I spoke to two very different candidates, both about the same position and both with very different outcomes. On paper, Candidate #1 looked fantastic; they ticked many of the boxes that we were looking for. The person is working at global IT company and working in a similar role as the one we were hiring for but not in as senior as the role we had. This role would have been the perfect step to getting involved in more complex work for the person. Candidate #2 had less polished IT experience, ticked some of the boxes we were looking for and on paper in comparison to Candidate #1 was not as close a fit as Candidate #1 was. It seemed like I was comparing apples and oranges. After speaking to both candidates it turns out I was comparing apples and oranges except the person better suited for our role was not the one I was expecting it would be. The first candidate on paper looked great – they had the experience we were looking for and appeared to be just right for the role, but after talking to them, they gave me the impression that they thought the world owed them. The impression I was left with was that they did not equate success with hard work, they seemed more interested in “what is in it for me”. Rather than having a proper conversation with me, I was often cut off and asked to hurry it up when explaining our business, what we are doing, etc... . This person seemed more interested in the job title and money than how rather than think about ways to make the role successful. Candidate #2 who had limited experience, made up for any perceived lack of experience and them some with a demonstrated motivation to succeed and do the things needed to make that happen. Candidate #2 made a great first impression, they did not seem afraid of hard work and demonstrated a “team player” attitude. In talking to them they kept me engaged, listened and asked thoughtful questions that made me think this is the type of person who creates their own luck and who would thrive in a place like Oracle. Skills, capabilities, experience and a good resume can certainly get your foot in the door, but the wrong attitude or approach to work can close those opportunities just as easily. On the other hand, hard work, effort and a genuine work ethic may help open those doors that would otherwise closed for you. A resume with all the credentials gets you in the front door but that is just the beginning of the process. It is not how we start the race that is important, it’s how things end that matter most.

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• Why Is Hibernation Still Used?

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  With the increased prevalence of fast solid-state hard drives, why do we still have system hibernation? Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites. The Question SuperUser reader Moses wants to know why he should use hibernate on a desktop machine: I’ve never quite understood the original purpose of the Hibernation power state in Windows. I understand how it works, what processes take place, and what happens when you boot back up from Hibernate, but I’ve never truly understood why it’s used. With today’s technology, most notably with SSDs, RAM and CPUs becoming faster and faster, a cold boot on a clean/efficient Windows installation can be pretty fast (for some people, mere seconds from pushing the power button). Standby is even faster, sometimes instantaneous. Even SATA drives from 5-6 years ago can accomplish these fast boot times. Hibernation seems pointless to me [on desktop computers] when modern technology is considered, but perhaps there are applications that I’m not considering. What was the original purpose behind hibernation, and why do people still use it? Quite a few people use hibernate, so what is Moses missing in the big picture? The Answer SuperUser contributor Vignesh4304 writes: Normally hibernate mode saves your computer’s memory, this includes for example open documents and running applications, to your hard disk and shuts down the computer, it uses zero power. Once the computer is powered back on, it will resume everything where you left off. You can use this mode if you won’t be using the laptop/desktop for an extended period of time, and you don’t want to close your documents. Simple Usage And Purpose: Save electric power and resuming of documents. In simple terms this comment serves nice e.g (i.e. you will sleep but your memories are still present). Why it’s used: Let me describe one sample scenario. Imagine your battery is low on power in your laptop, and you are working on important projects on your machine. You can switch to hibernate mode – it will result your documents being saved, and when you power on, the actual state of application gets restored. Its main usage is like an emergency shutdown with an auto-resume of your documents. MagicAndre1981 highlights the reason we use hibernate everyday: Because it saves the status of all running programs. I leave all my programs open and can resume working the next day very easily. Doing a real boot would require to start all programs again, load all the same files into those programs, get to the same place that I was at before, and put all my windows in exactly the same place. Hibernating saves a lot of work pulling these things back up again. It’s not unusual to find computers around the office here that have been hibernated day in and day out for months without an actual full system shutdown and restart. It’s enormously convenient to freeze your work space at the exact moment you stopped working and to turn right around and resume there the next morning. Have something to add to the explanation? Sound off in the the comments. Want to read more answers from other tech-savvy Stack Exchange users? Check out the full discussion thread here.     

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• As a person getting into mobile development, what's the best mobile platform in terms of profitability? [closed]

  - by Kyle Loman

  I realize this question can range very far so would love to hear any and all opinions on this. However, I'll be honest and say that I have been thinking of this in terms of most profitable. I know how this may sound either way but this is one of my main sticking points. I realize that I'm not guaranteed a single cent and success is never guaranteed but I'm going into this with the thought of making something out of it both financially and also for my own interest. I know that iOS gets a lot of attention on this front but Android commands a lot more market share. However, I know there are drawbacks to Android too, whether it's in the actual development process and programming (though I've heard conflicting reports on this, such as how easy/difficult it is for to address screen res in different devices) or the app ecosystem being flooded. But iOS's app ecosystem has been described as too saturated and harder to compete in for that reason. Since Windows Phone has fewer apps than both of those two, that might be the best place to start in order to be closer to the ground floor of the store and be noticed more? Less saturation = better chances of sales or differentiating? Something like the gold rush during the first years of the iOS App Store (not exactly but at least in concept)? Would it be that despite fewer users on the platform, there's more exposure due to less competition so that may translate to better success at sales? Plus, I know MS is in it for the long haul so I'm not too fearful of something like WebOS going away. Obviously RIM isn't very popular nowadays but I read a recent article that says Blackberry actually has the apps that make the most money, any thoughts on that: http://gigaom.com/mobile/which-mobile-oss-apps-make-most-money-surprise-its-blackberry/ Again, this is all I've heard or known about so if there's anything to add or correct here, please do. In addition, this has actually affected my next personal phone upgrade. I'm eligible for a carrier discount now and I've had my eye on the iPhone 5. However, the Lumia 920 is the one I'm holding out for and I'm open to trying an Android but I'm not sure I can wait that long for any new Nexus or even the Razr HD. Even the new Lumia in November is making me antsy, I'm so close to just getting an iPhone 5. But when I say this has affected my phone choice, I'd want to be able to carry the apps I write with me so that I'm able to pull my phone out to show people without having to carry around a second device to do so. So that's why I'd like to make my personal phone match the main platform I'm developing for. Of course, I will likely expand to other platforms if I gain any decent success but the one I target now would serve well as my personal phone I carry around so that I can use it as a marketing tool, in a sense, showing people my apps if the opportunity presents itself. So what's the best mobile platform to choose, and especially in regards to most lucrative? As said previously, this would influence my personal phone choice greatly. Thanks in advance and I hope this isn't taken the wrong way - I understand there are trade-offs and other factors that may balance this out but making some revenue is key among that. For some background, I have done software development and know programming language concepts so I'm not entirely new to it and I do get the notion of being familiar with these things so that I can translate this skill among a variety of languages but I'm currently just having difficulty choosing my first main mobile platform based on the criteria I've outlined above.

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• Java - Tile engine changing number in array not changing texture

  - by Corey

  I draw my map from a txt file. Would I have to write to the text file to notice the changes I made? Right now it changes the number in the array but the tile texture doesn't change. Do I have to do more than just change the number in the array? public class Tiles { public Image[] tiles = new Image[5]; public int[][] map = new int[64][64]; private Image grass, dirt, fence, mound; private SpriteSheet tileSheet; public int tileWidth = 32; public int tileHeight = 32; Player player = new Player(); public void init() throws IOException, SlickException { tileSheet = new SpriteSheet("assets/tiles.png", tileWidth, tileHeight); grass = tileSheet.getSprite(0, 0); dirt = tileSheet.getSprite(7, 7); fence = tileSheet.getSprite(2, 0); mound = tileSheet.getSprite(2, 6); tiles[0] = grass; tiles[1] = dirt; tiles[2] = fence; tiles[3] = mound; int x=0, y=0; BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new FileReader("assets/map.dat")); String line; while ((line = in.readLine()) != null) { String[] values = line.split(","); for (String str : values) { int str_int = Integer.parseInt(str); map[x][y]=str_int; //System.out.print(map[x][y] + " "); y=y+1; } //System.out.println(""); x=x+1; y = 0; } in.close(); } public void update(GameContainer gc) { } public void render(GameContainer gc) { for(int x = 0; x < map.length; x++) { for(int y = 0; y < map.length; y ++) { int textureIndex = map[y][x]; Image texture = tiles[textureIndex]; texture.draw(x*tileWidth,y*tileHeight); } } } Mouse picking public void checkDistance(GameContainer gc) { Input input = gc.getInput(); float mouseX = input.getMouseX(); float mouseY = input.getMouseY(); double mousetileX = Math.floor((double)mouseX/tiles.tileWidth); double mousetileY = Math.floor((double)mouseY/tiles.tileHeight); double playertileX = Math.floor(playerX/tiles.tileWidth); double playertileY = Math.floor(playerY/tiles.tileHeight); double lengthX = Math.abs((float)playertileX - mousetileX); double lengthY = Math.abs((float)playertileY - mousetileY); double distance = Math.sqrt((lengthX*lengthX)+(lengthY*lengthY)); if(input.isMousePressed(Input.MOUSE_LEFT_BUTTON) && distance < 4) { System.out.println("Clicked"); if(tiles.map[(int)mousetileX][(int)mousetileY] == 1) { tiles.map[(int)mousetileX][(int)mousetileY] = 0; } } System.out.println(tiles.map[(int)mousetileX][(int)mousetileY]); }

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• Screen Aspect Ratio

  - by Bill Evjen

  Jeffrey Dean, Pixar Aspect Ratio is very important to home video. What is aspect ratio – the ratio from the height to the width 2.35:1 The image is 2.35 times wide as it is high Pixar uses this for half of our movies This is called a widescreen image When modified to fit your television screen They cut this to fit the box of your screen When a comparison is made huge chunks of picture is missing It is harder to find what is going on when these pieces are missing The whole is greater than the pieces themselves. If you are missing pieces – you are missing the movie The soul and the mood is in the film shots. Cutting it to fit a screen, you are losing 30% of the movie Why different aspect ratios? Film before the 1950s 1.33:1 Academy Standard There were all aspects of images though. There was no standard. Thomas Edison developed projecting images onto a wall/screen He didn’t patent it as he saw no value in it. Then 1.37:1 came about to add a strip of sound This is the same size as a 35mm film Around 1952 – TV comes along NTSC Television followed the Academy Standard (4x3) Once TV came out, movie theater attendance plummets So Film brought forth color to combat this. Also early 3D Also Widescreen was brought forth. Cinema-Scope Studios at the time made movies bigger and bigger There was a Napoleon movie that was actually 4x1 … really wide. 1.85:1 Academy Flat 2.35:1 Anamorphic Scope (aka Panavision/Cinemascope) Almost all movies are made in these two aspect ratios Pixar has done half in one and half in the other Why choose one over the other? Artist choice It is part of the story the director wants to tell Can we preserve the story outside of the theaters? TVs before 1998 – they were very square Now TVs are very wide Historical options Toy Story released as it was and people cut it in a way that wasn’t liked by the studio Pan and Scan is another option Cut and then scan left or right depending on where the action is Frame Height Pixar can go back and animate more picture to account for the bottom/top bars. You end up with more sky and more ground The characters seem to get lost in the picture You lose what the director original intended Re-staging For animated movies, you can move characters around – restage the scene. It is a new completely different version of the film This is the best possible option that Pixar came up with They have stopped doing this really as the demand as pretty much dropped off Why not 1.33 today? There has been an evolution of taste and demands. VHS is a linear item The focus is about portability and not about quality Most was pan and scan and the quality was so bad – but people didn’t notice DVD was introduced in 1996 You could have more content – two versions of the film You could have the widescreen version and the 1.33 version People realized that they are seeing more of the movie with the widescreen High Def Televisions (16x9 monitors) This was introduced in 2005 Blu-ray Disc was introduced in 2006 This is all widescreen You cannot find a square TV anymore TVs are roughly 1.85:1 aspect ratio There is a change in demand Users are used to black bars and are used to widescreen Users are educated now What’s next for in-flight entertainment? High Def IFE Personal Electronic Devices 3D inflight

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