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• Modernizr Rocks HTML5

  - by Laila

  HTML5 is a moving target.  At the moment, we don't know what will be in future versions.  In most circumstances, this really matters to the developer. When you're using Adobe Air, you can be reasonably sure what works, what is there, and what isn't, since you have a version of the browser built-in. With Metro, you can assume that you're going to be using at least IE 10.   If, however,  you are using HTML5 in a web application, then you are going to rely heavily on Feature Detection.  Feature-Detection is a collection of techniques that tell you, via JavaScript, whether the current browser has this feature natively implemented or not Feature Detection isn't just there for the esoteric stuff such as  Geo-location,  progress bars,  <canvas> support,  the new <input> types, Audio, Video, web workers or storage, but is required even for semantic markup, since old browsers make a pigs ear out of rendering this.  Feature detection can't rely just on reading the browser version and inferring from that what works. Instead, you must use JavaScript to check that an HTML5 feature is there before using it.  The problem with relying on the user-agent is that it takes a lot of historical data  to work out what version does what, and, anyway, the user-agent can be, and sometimes is, spoofed. The open-source library Modernizr  is just about the most essential  JavaScript library for anyone using HTML5, because it provides APIs to test for most of the CSS3 and HTML5 features before you use them, and is intelligent enough to alter semantic markup into 'legacy' 'markup  using shims  on page-load  for old browsers. It also allows you to check what video Codecs are installed for playing video. It also provides media queries  and conditional resource-loading (formerly YepNope.js.).  Generally, Modernizr gives you the choice of what you do about browsers that don't support the feature that you want. Often, the best choice is graceful degradation, but the resource-loading feature allows you to dynamically load JavaScript Shims to replace the standard API for missing or defective HTML5 functionality, called 'PolyFills'.  As the Modernizr site says 'Yes, not only can you use HTML5 today, but you can use it in the past, too!' The evolutionary progress of HTML5  requires a more defensive style of JavaScript programming where the programmer adopts a mindset of fearing the worst ( IE 6)  rather than assuming the best, whilst exploiting as many of the new HTML features as possible for the requirements of the site or HTML application.  Why would anyone want the distraction of developing their own techniques to do this when  Modernizr exists to do this for you? Laila

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• Fonts look squashed or stretched in the browser on Ubuntu

  - by Arjun Menon

  Fonts in the browser on Ubuntu look look squashed/stretched compared to Windows/OSX. This image shows exactly what I mean: http://i.stack.imgur.com/suUXX.png I installed msttcorefonts and configured both Chrome & FF to use Microsoft fonts (Arial, Times New Roman) instead of the default ones. While MS fonts made web pages appear a bit different, regardless of what font it was the squashed/stretched look remained. FreeSans looks a little different from Arial, but it too is rendered squashed/stretched like Arial on both FF & Chrome. Opera renders the Wikipedia page differently from FF & Chrome, but the fonts looks squashed/stretched on it as well. I used to run Kubuntu prior to switching to Ubuntu and at some point I managed to get the fonts on Chrome (only Chrome) look exactly like in the image on the left. I have no idea how I did it though. Firefox and Rekonq retained the squashed/stretched look. I had been using Rekonq for a while, then switched to FF. While using both browsers I had done various things to get the fonts to look better on them with no success - like installing MS fonts & configuring both browsers to use them. I then, after some time, installed Chrome and the fonts magically looked perfect on them - just like on right-hand side of the image. In fact, the font smoothing looked better (to my eye) compared to Windows and OSX. All 3 OSes use subtly different font smoothing strategies and the differences stand out. Later, I formatted & installed Ubuntu 12.04. The first thing I did was install msttcorefonts & then install Chrome. To my dismay, the fonts on Chrome looked just as squashed/stretched as it did in Firefox. There's no browser (except Wine Internet Explorer) that renders fonts properly on my Ubuntu setup right now. Fixing this is definitely possible, since I was able to do it on Kubuntu, but apparently it requires some mysterious tweaking. Would anyone be willing to help me out?

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• What Counts For a DBA: Replaceable

  - by Louis Davidson

  Replaceable is what every employee in every company instinctively strives not to be. Yet, if you’re an irreplaceable DBA, meaning that the company couldn’t find someone else who could do what you do, then you’re not doing a great job. A good DBA is replaceable. I imagine some of you are already reaching for the lighter fluid, about to set the comments section ablaze, but before you destroy a perfectly good Commodore 64, read on… Everyone is replaceable, ultimately. Anyone, anywhere, in any job, could be sitting at their desk reading this, blissfully unaware that this is to be their last day at work. Morbidly, you could be about to take your terminal breath. Ideally, it will be because another company suddenly offered you a truck full of money to take a new job, forcing you to bid a regretful farewell to your current employer (with barely a “so long suckers!” left wafting in the air as you zip out of the office like the Wile E Coyote wearing two pairs of rocket skates). I’ve often wondered what it would be like to be present at the meeting where your former work colleagues discuss your potential replacement. It is perhaps only at this point, as they struggle with the question “What kind of person do we need to replace old Wile?” that you would know your true worth in their eyes. Of course, this presupposes you need replacing. I’ve known one or two people whose absence we adequately compensated with a small rock, to keep their old chair from rolling down a slight incline in the floor. On another occasion, we bought a noise-making machine that frequently attracted attention its way, with unpleasant sounds, but never contributed anything worthwhile. These things never actually happened, of course, but you take my point: don’t confuse replaceable with expendable. Likewise, if the term “trained seal” comes up, someone they can teach to follow basic instructions and push buttons in the right order, then the replacement discussion is going to be over quickly. What, however, if your colleagues decide they’ll need a super-specialist to replace you. That’s a good thing, right? Well, usually, in my experience, no it is not. It often indicates that no one really knows what you do, or how. A typical example is the “senior” DBA who built a system just before 16-bit computing became all the rage and then settled into a long career managing it. Such systems are often central to the company’s operations and the DBA very skilled at what they do, but almost impossible to replace, because the system hasn’t evolved, and runs on processes and routines that others no longer understand or recognize. The only thing you really want to hear, at your replacement discussion, is that they need someone skilled at the fundamentals and adaptable. This means that the person they need understands that their goal is to be an excellent DBA, not a specialist in whatever the-heck the company does. Someone who understands the new versions of SQL Server and can adapt the company’s systems to the way things work today, who uses industry standard methods that any other qualified DBA/programmer can understand. More importantly, this person rarely wants to get “pigeon-holed” and so documents and shares the specialized knowledge and responsibilities with their teammates. Being replaceable doesn’t mean being “dime a dozen”. The company might need four people to take your place due to the depth of your skills, but still, they could find those replacements and those replacements could step right in using techniques that any decent DBA should know. It is a tough question to contemplate, but take some time to think about the sort of person that your colleagues would seek to replace you. If you think they would go looking for a “super-specialist” then consider urgently how you can diversify and share your knowledge, and start documenting all the processes you know as if today were your last day, because who knows, it just might be.

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• How to prepare for a programming competition? Graphs, Stacks, Trees, oh my! [closed]

  - by Simucal

  Last semester I attended ACM's (Association for Computing Machinery) bi-annual programming competition at a local University. My University sent 2 teams of 3 people and we competed amongst other schools in the mid-west. We got our butts kicked. You are given a packet with about 11 problems (1 problem per page) and you have 4 hours to solve as many as you can. They'll run your program you submit against a set of data and your output must match theirs exactly. In fact, the judging is automated for the most part. In any case.. I went there fairly confident in my programming skills and I left there feeling drained and weak. It was a terribly humbling experience. In 4 hours my team of 3 people completed only one of the problems. The top team completed 4 of them and took 1st place. The problems they asked were like no problems I have ever had to answer before. I later learned that in order to solve them some of them effectively you have to use graphs/graph algorithms, trees, stacks. Some of them were simply "greedy" algo's. My question is, how can I better prepare for this semesters programming competition so I don't leave there feeling like a complete moron? What tips do you have for me to be able to answer these problems that involve graphs, trees, various "well known" algorithms? How can I easily identify the algorithm we should implement for a given problem? I have yet to take Algorithm Design in school so I just feel a little out of my element. Here are some examples of the questions asked at the competitions: ACM Problem Sets Update: Just wanted to update this since the latest competition is over. My team placed 1st for our small region (about 6-7 universities with between 1-5 teams each school) and ~15th for the midwest! So, it is a marked improvement over last years performance for sure. We also had no graduate students on our team and after reviewing the rules we found out that many teams had several! So, that would be a pretty big advantage in my own opinion. Problems this semester ranged from about 1-2 "easy" problems (ie bit manipulation, string manipulation) to hard (graph problems involving fairly complex math and network flow problems). We were able to solve 4 problems in our 5 hours. Just wanted to thank everyone for the resources they provided here, we used them for our weekly team practices and it definitely helped! Some quick tips that I have that aren't suggested below: When you are seated at your computer before the competition starts, quickly type out various data structures that you might need that you won't have access to in your languages libraries. I typed out a Graph data-structure complete with floyd-warshall and dijkstra's algorithm before the competition began. We ended up using it in our 2nd problem that we solved and this is the main reason why we solved this problem before anyone else in the midwest. We had it ready to go from the beginning. Similarly, type out the code to read in a file since this will be required for every problem. Save this answer "template" someplace so you can quickly copy/paste it to your IDE at the beginning of each problem. There are no rules on programming anything before the competition starts so get any boilerplate code out the way. We found it useful to have one person who is on permanent whiteboard duty. This is usually the person who is best at math and at working out solutions to get a head start on future problems you will be doing. One person is on permanent programming duty. Your fastest/most skilled "programmer" (most familiar with the language). This will save debugging time also. The last person has several roles between assessing the packet of problems for the next "easiest" problem, helping the person on the whiteboard work out solutions and helping the person programming work out bugs/issues. This person needs to be flexible and be able to switch between roles easily.

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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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• Opening cursor files in a graphics editor?

  - by sdaau

  I'm looking at /usr/share/icons/DMZ-White/cursors, and there is: $ tree -s /usr/share/icons/DMZ-White/ /usr/share/icons/DMZ-White/ +-- [ 4096] cursors ¦   +-- [ 14] 00008160000006810000408080010102 -> v_double_arrow ... ¦   +-- [ 5] 9d800788f1b08800ae810202380a0822 -> hand2 ¦   +-- [ 8] arrow -> left_ptr ¦   +-- [ 15776] bd_double_arrow ¦   +-- [ 15776] bottom_left_corner ¦   +-- [ 15776] bottom_right_corner ¦   +-- [ 15776] bottom_side ... ... a bunch of files without extension, that GIMP cannot open. Is there an editor where these files can be opened - or at least a converter to something like .png? I can note that ImageMagick display also failed to open these files... Found also Gursor Maker - Cursor Editor for X11/GTK+; got the CVS code from SourceForge - it still uses Numeric (the old name of numpy), so to run it, you'll have to do: #from Numeric import * from numpy import * ... in xcurio.py, curxp.py, gimp.py, colorfunc.py - and comment the #from xml.dom.ext.reader import Sax2 in lsproj.py. With that, I got it running 11.04: ... but cannot get any files to open? So I thought I should grep for paths, nothing much came up - and when I looked into cursordefs.py, I simply had to paste this: CURSOR_ICON = gtk.gdk.pixbuf_new_from_xpm_data([ "10 16 3 1", " c None", ". c #000000", "+ c #FFFFFF", ".. ", ".+. ", ".++. ", ".+++. ", ".++++. ", ".+++++. ", ".++++++. ", ".+++++++. ", ".++++++++.", ".+++++....", ".++.++. ", ".+. .++. ", ".. .++. ", " .++. ", " .++. ", " .. "]) Heh :) In any case, doesn't look like it will be much usable on newer Ubuntus, unfortunately... Just tested XMC plugin as well - on 11.04, has to be built from source (from the link in the accepted answer); the requirements on my system resolved to: sudo apt-get install libgimp2.0-dev libglib2.0-0-dbg libglib2.0-0-refdbg libglib2.0-cil-dev libgtk2.0-0-dbg libgtk2.0-cil-dev ... after that, the configure/make procedure in the INSTALL file works. Note that this plugin is a bit "sneaky": ... that is, you should use "All files" (as there are no extensions); cursor previews at first will not be rendered. Then open one cursor file; after it has been opened, then there is a preview in the File/Open dialog; but other than that, it works fine...

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• How can I implement collision detection for these tiles?

  - by Fiona

  I am wondering how this would be possible, if at all. In the image below: http://i.stack.imgur.com/d8cO3.png The light brows tiles are ground, while the dark brown is background, so the player can pass over those tiles. Here's the for loops that draws the level: float scale = 1f; for (row = 0; row < currentLevel.Rows; row++) { for (column = 0; column < currentLevel.Columns; column++) { Tile tile = (Tile)currentLevel.GetTile(row, column); if (tile == null) { continue; } Texture2D texture = tile.Texture; spriteBatch.Draw(texture, new Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Rectangle( (int)(column * currentLevel.CellSize.X * scale), (int)(row * currentLevel.CellSize.Y * scale), (int)(currentLevel.CellSize.X * scale), (int)(currentLevel.CellSize.Y * scale)), Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Color.White); } } Here's what I have so far to determine where to create a Rectangle: Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Rectangle[,,,] groundBounds = new Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Rectangle[?, ?, ?, ?]; int tileSize = 20; int screenSizeInTiles = 30; var tilePositions = new System.Drawing.Point[screenSizeInTiles, screenSizeInTiles]; for (int x = 0; x < screenSizeInTiles; x++) { for (int y = 0; y < screenSizeInTiles; y++) { tilePositions[x, y] = new System.Drawing.Point(x * tileSize, y * tileSize); groundBounds[x, y, tileSize, tileSize] = new Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Rectangle(x, y, 20, 20); } } First off, I'm not sure how to initialize the array groundBounds (I don't know how big to make it). Also, I'm not entirely sure how to go about adding information to groundBounds. I want to add a Rectangle for each tile in the level. Preferably I'd only make a Rectangle for those tiles accessible by the player, and not background tiles, but that's for a different day. FYI, the map was made with a freeware program called Realm Factory.

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• Come see us at JavaU at JavaOne!

  - by tmcginn

  In just a little under a month, JavaOne will be in full swing (no pun intended) and thousands of Java developers will gather to hear the latest Java news, immerse themselves in Java technology and learn some new things. This year, I am fortunate enough to be able to attend, along with my Java curriculum development colleagues Matt Heimer and Mike Williams. We start our week at JavaOne teaching a one-day session at JavaU on Sunday morning. If you have never attended a training session through JavaU, you should check it out. There are some terrific sessions this year, and it might help to justify your trip to JavaOne if you can say it was for training! This year I am teaching a one day session on Java SE 7 New Features - a great session for anyone interested in the specific details of what is new in Java SE 7. Matt is teaching a one-day session on Developing Portable Java EE applications with the Enterprise JavaBeans 3.1 API and Java Persistence 2.0 API  EJB, and Mike is doing a one-day session on developing Rich Client applications with Java SE 7 using Java FX 2. I asked Matt and Mike to tell me what developers can expect from their sessions. Matt: "My session will get you up to speed on everything you need to know to create portable Java EE 6 applications using EJB 3.1 and JPA 2. I am going to cover why everyone can benefit from using EJBs (and why developers should relearn them if they haven't looked at them for years). Students who attend my session will see JPA examples showcasing how to use relational databases in an enterprise applications without programming to JDBC and without writing SQL statements. EJB and JPA benefit from being paired together, so I will also show how transaction management is easier in a container. I encourage students to bring a laptop and code as they learn!" Mike: "My session covers how to develop a rich client application using Java FX 2. Starting with the basic concepts of JavaFX, students will see how a JavaFX application is built from its layout, to its controls, to its data structures. In addition, more advanced controls like charts, smart tables, and transitions will be added to the application. Finally, a quick review of JavaFX concurrency and data binding is included. Blended with the core concepts the session will include some of the latest JavaFX technology. This includes using Scene Builder to create a JavaFX UI and connecting your XML UI definition to Java code.  In addition, packaging of the JavaFX application will be covered with some examples of the new native packaging features." As I mentioned, my session covers the changes in the Java for SE 7, including the  language changes that were voted into Java SE 7 from Project Coin. I will also look at how you can take advantage if the the new I/O library (NIO.2) for writing applications that work with files, directories and file systems. We will also look at the changes in Asynchronous I/O that are a part of the changes in NIO/2. We will spend some time looking at the changes to the Java Virtual Machine as well, including support for dynamically typed languages (JSR-292). We will spend some time looking at the Java Concurrency enhancements (JSR-166), including the new Fork/Join framework. And we'll round out the day with a look at changes in Swing, XML and a number of smaller changes in the API's. And, if these topics aren't grabbing your interest, take a look at the other 10 sessions that range from topics on architecture to how to pass the Oracle Certified Programmer I and II exams. See you soon!

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• No sound after clean install 11.10

  - by Jorge

  First of all, sorry to ask this, I'm sure that this was asked so many times before. Second, sorry for the English, it's not my native language. And Third, thank you in advance. So, I hope the follow info will help, here's a log. http://www.alsa-project.org/db/?f=07089caf530494bc4bc23e1d1cd56b3a5fae03c6 I already check 'System - Preferences - Sound'. Here's a screenshot http://i.imgur.com/Ghwnj.png > jorge@jorge-desktop:~$ sudo lshw -class multimedia > *-multimedia > description: Multimedia audio controller > product: VT8233/A/8235/8237 AC97 Audio Controller > vendor: VIA Technologies, Inc. > physical id: 11.5 > bus info: pci@0000:00:11.5 > version: 60 > width: 32 bits > clock: 33MHz > capabilities: pm cap_list > configuration: driver=VIA 82xx Audio latency=0 > resources: irq:22 ioport:e400(size=256) Tried with no results: > sudo apt-get remove --purge alsa-base > sudo apt-get remove --purge pulseaudio > sudo apt-get clean && sudo apt-get autoremove > sudo apt-get install alsa-base > sudo apt-get install pulseaudio > sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop Also > sudo gedit /etc/default/grub > > from: > > GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash" > > to: > > GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash radeon.audio=1" > > sudo update-grub > > And Reboot... without any result. EDIT: I made sure that everything it's fine with aplay -l and lspci -v and lsmod; and checked alsamixer, it's not in mute. Well I'm running out of ideas. Thanks.

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• Need help to install Ubuntu on Win7 Alienware M17xR3, installing not working

  - by Rodrigo

  Please I need help to install linux on my computer to start analyzing Next Generation Sequencing (molecular genetics) for my work. I've tried to install from all different ways and forms and it gave me different errors. First I will describe my system: Alienware M17x R3 Raid Drive 596GB (2x 298 GB) Windows7 primary partition C: The hardrive is divided in 3 primary partitions (can't do 4 don't know why) 1st: Fat16 no name capacity 40mbs almost not used (has files like command.com, dellbio.bin, dellrmk.bin and oobedone.flg) I dont know what this is for but is blocked and non system (Status:none). 2nd: Recovery NTFS 9GB (Status:system) and it seems to have boot files. 3rd: CD: Windos OS (status:boot). And I have 2 Logical drivers F: data for backup and games :D (300gb) G: For trying to install the Linux (Already tried with Fat32, Ext2, ext3 and ext4) Installing with Wubi on F: and G: Instalation looks good on windows ask to restart dos mode appears: try (HD0,0) non-ms:skip try (HD0,1) NTFS5: No Wibildr try (HD0,2) NTFS5: Error: "Prefix" is not set. Installing with Wubi on C: Installation looks good on windows ask to restart dos mode apears: Mount denied becouse NTFS volume is already exclusive opened, the volume may be already mounted or another software may use it which could be identified for example by the help of the 'FUSER' command Mount devdm-4 Could not find installation files /ubuntu/install custom-installation Run 'Chkdsk /r' on windows and restart...blablablalba... that should correct. done this didn't work. Tried installing with USB drive and after burning a CD with the Iso file download from the official website: I've tried the option to install along windows with a G: drive in FAT32, EXT2,3 and 4, I've tried to leave unallocated data, without the driver G at all... appears this everytime: http://i.stack.imgur.com/eo2Ie.png pres ok it ask me to: Not possible to install the boot loader at the location: specify new location: I've tried to select all the drivers non is accepted If I ask to continue without installing the boot loader he ask me to install later by myself which I'm trying to figure it out but I'm not really good to understand how ppl get to the programming part like a DOS to write down couse I'm a newb and I've dont work on dos or linux before... I've read that the boot loader has to be installed on the primary partition, but I'm not sure what I can delete from those 2 partitions that would let me get 1 extra... and it seems that the one that windows use is protected to write down so the software is not touching it... Please if someone have any idea to help me out... I've got a course tomorrow of how to use the software to analyze the data and I wanted to take my computer with me, so I've passed the last 3 days trying to search different ways to solve. My question is also post on the bugs.launchpad.net link here: lounchpad.net bug #882695

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• What are some good questions (and good/bad answers) to ask at an interview to gauge the competency of the company/team?

  - by Wayne M

  I'm already familiar with the Joel Test, but it's been my experience that some of the questions there have the answers "massaged" to make the company seem better than it is. I've had several jobs in the past that, for instance, claimed they had a QA process and did unit testing, and what they really meant is "The programmers test the app, and test with the debugger and via trial-and-error."; they said they used SVN but they just lumped everything into one giant repository and had no concept of branching/merging or anything more complicated than updating and committing; said they can build in one step and what they really mean is it's "one step" to copy dozens of files by hand from the programmer's PC to the live server. How do you go about properly gauging a company's environment to make sure that it's a well-evolved company and not stuck on doing things a certain way because they've done it for years and they're ignorant of change? You can almost never ask to see their source code, so you're stuck trying to figure out if the interviewer's answer is accurate or BS to make the company seem good. Besides the Joel Test what are some other good questions to get the proper feel for a company, and more importantly what are some good and bad answers that could indicate a good or bad company? I mean something like (take at face value, please, it's all I could think of at short notice): Question: How does the software team apply the SOLID principles and Inversion of Control to their code? Good Answer: We adhere to SOLID wherever possible; we use TDD so it kind of forces us to write abstract, testable code. We use Ninject for our IoC container because it's fairly easy to configure - it was that or StructureMap but I find Ninject a bit more intuitive, and who doesn't like ninjas? You're not a pirate, are you? Bad Answer: Our code is pretty secure, yeah. And what's this Inversion of Control thing? I've never heard of it before. You see what I did there. The "good" answer uses facts to back it up and has a bit of "in crowd" humor; the bad answer shows complete ignorance of the question - not necessarily a bad thing if you are interviewing for a manger/director position, but a terrible answer and a huge red flag if you're interviewing as a developer and talking to a senior developer or manager! My biggest problem at the moment is being able to take a generic response and gauge whether it's the good or bad answer; more often than not it's the bad kind and I find myself frustrated almost from day one at the new job. I suppose I could name drop if I ask about specific things (e.g. "Do you write unit tests?" and if the answer is yes, ask if they use NUnit, MbUnit or something else; if they mention data access ask if they use a clean ORM like NHibernate or something more coupled like EF or Linq) but is there another way short of being resolute to actually call the interview on things (which will almost certainly result in not getting the job, but if they are skirting the question it's probably not a job I want).

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• Squid: caching *.swf with variables

  - by stfn

  I'd recently upgraded my Ubuntu 11.10 x64 server to 12.04. In this process Squid was updated from 2.7 to 3.1. Squid 3.1 has many different options witch broke my setup. So I completely removed squid 2.7 and 3.1 and started from scratch. Everything is now working as before except for 1 thing: caching of .swf files with ?/variables. Squid 3 sees a ? as dynamic content and does not cache it. For example, Squid 2.7 was caching the .swf file at http://ninjakiwi.com/Games/Tower-Defense/Play/Bloons-Tower-Defense-5.html and 3.1 is not. <object id="mov" name="movn" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" width="800" height="620"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.ninjakiwifiles.com/Games/gameswfs/btd5.swf?v=160512-2"> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"> <param name="bgcolor" value="#000000"> <param name="flashvars" value="file=http://www.ninjakiwifiles.com/Games/gameswfs/btd5-dat.swf?v=280512"> <p>Get Flash play Ninja Kiwi games.</p> </object> It is because of the "?v=160512-2" and "?v=280512" part. This line should be responsible for that: refresh_pattern -i (/cgi-bin/|\?) 0 0% 0 But disabling it still doesn't cache the .swf files. How do I configure Squid 3.1 to cache those files? My current config is: acl manager proto cache_object acl localhost src 127.0.0.1/32 ::1 acl to_localhost dst 127.0.0.0/8 0.0.0.0/32 ::1 acl SSL_ports port 443 acl Safe_ports port 80 # http acl Safe_ports port 21 # ftp acl Safe_ports port 443 # https acl Safe_ports port 70 # gopher acl Safe_ports port 210 # wais acl Safe_ports port 1025-65535 # unregistered ports acl Safe_ports port 280 # http-mgmt acl Safe_ports port 488 # gss-http acl Safe_ports port 591 # filemaker acl Safe_ports port 777 # multiling http acl CONNECT method CONNECT acl localnet src 192.168.2.0-192.168.2.255 acl localnet src 192.168.3.0-192.168.3.255 http_access allow manager localhost http_access deny manager http_access deny !Safe_ports http_access deny CONNECT !SSL_ports http_access allow localhost http_access allow localnet http_access deny all http_port 3128 cache_dir ufs /var/spool/squid 10240 16 256 maximum_object_size 100 MB coredump_dir /var/spool/squid3 refresh_pattern ^ftp: 1440 20% 10080 refresh_pattern ^gopher: 1440 0% 1440 refresh_pattern -i \.(gif|png|jpg|jpeg|ico)$ 10080 90% 43200 override-expire ignore-no-cache ignore-no-store ignore-private refresh_pattern -i \.(iso|avi|wav|mp3|mp4|mpeg|swf|flv|x-flv)$ 43200 90% 432000 override-expire ignore-no-cache ignore-no-store ignore-private refresh_pattern -i \.(deb|rpm|exe|zip|tar|tgz|ram|rar|bin|ppt|doc|tiff)$ 10080 90% 43200 override-expire ignore-no-cache ignore-no-store ignore-private refresh_pattern -i \.index.(html|htm)$ 0 40% 10080 refresh_pattern -i \.(html|htm|css|js)$ 1440 40% 40320 refresh_pattern Packages\.bz2$ 0 20% 4320 refresh-ims refresh_pattern Sources\.bz2$ 0 20% 4320 refresh-ims refresh_pattern Release\.gpg$ 0 20% 4320 refresh-ims refresh_pattern Release$ 0 20% 4320 refresh-ims refresh_pattern . 0 40% 40320 cache_effective_user proxy cache_effective_group proxy

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• How to build a 4x game?

  - by Marco

  I'm trying to study how succefully implement a 4x game. Area of interest: 1) map data: how to store stellars systems (graphs?), how to generate them and so on.. 2) multiplayer: how to organize code in a non graphical server and a client to display it 3) command system: what are patters to catch user and ai decisions and handle them, adding at first "explore" and "colonize" then "combat", "research", "spy" and so on (commands can affect ships, planets, research, etc..) 4) ai system: ai can use commands to expand, upgrade planets and ship I know is a big questions, so help is appreciated :D 1) Map data Best choice is have a graph to model a galaxy. A node is a stellar system and every system have a list of planets. Ship cannot travel outside of predefined paths, like in Ascendancy: http://www.abandonia.com/files/games/221/Ascendancy_2.png Every connection between two stellar systems have a cost, in turns. Generate a galaxy is only a matter of: - dimension: number of stellar systems, - variety: randomize number of planets and types (desertic, earth, etc..), - positions of each stellar system on game space - connections: assure that exist a path between every node, so graph is "connected" (not sure if this a matematically correct term) 2) Multiplayer Game is organized in turns: player 1, player 2, ai1, ai2. Server take care of all data and clients just diplay it and collect data change. Because is a turn game, latency is not a problem :D 3) Command system I would like to design a hierarchy of commands to take care of this aspect: abstract Genericcommand (target) ExploreCommand (Ship) extends genericcommand colonizeCommand (Ship) buildcommand(planet, object) and so on. In my head all this commands are stored in a queue for every planets, ships or reasearch center or spy, and each turn a command is sent to a server to apply command and change data state 4) ai system I don't have any idea about this. Is a big topic and what I want is a simple ai. Something like "expand and fight against everyone". I think about a behaviour tree to control ai moves, so I can develop an ai that try to build ships to expand and then colonize planets, upgrade them throught science and combat enemies. Could be done with a finite state machine too ? any ideas, resources, article are welcome!

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• how do I get dual monitors to work properly in Ubuntu 11.10 on a Dell Latitude D630?

  - by wes cook

  I have spent a lot of time trying to get dual monitors to work on Ubuntu 11.10 on my Dell Latitude D630 (nVidia NVS 135m video card). - For starters, the System Displays settings app always only showed one unknown monitor, even though I had the external Acer monitor connected. - So I downloaded and installed the nVidia drivers. According to what I read I would need to only use the nVidia driver app (nVidia X Server Settings), so that's what I've done. (System Displays settings continued to only show a single monitor anyway). - nVidia settings app only showed on monitor until I changed the BIOS setting to use the onboard video for external monitor (not the dock video, which it was set to, even though I don't have a docking station). - The nVidia setting app now recognized both monitors. So, I setup the X Server display config as Separate X screen for both monitors. My laptop screen shows up as AUO 1440x900 and my external monitor as Acer E211H 1920x1080. - Everything seemed like it would work, but the external monitor was just a complete white screen. The external monitor was non-functional, even though sometimes it would show the background image - still nothing would show up over there. - So, I checked the Enable Xinerama box. - Now, after logging out and back in, the wallpaper extends to both screens but I get no taskbar at the bottom or top, no system menus, and I have to press the power button to restart or log off. - After experimenting with all the shells, the only one that shows the menus and taskbars when I log in is Gnome Classic. - This is pretty much the same symptoms as found here: How do I fix 11.10 GUI?. - So, I resign myself to the older shell. - Everything works fine until ... I unplug the external monitor ... this is a laptop after all. - Anyway, after doing some work on the road, I plug back in and I still see both screens and it's functional except, ... - Now, the laptop screen (with the taskbar and menu bar) has 4 black bars at the top that windows cannot cover. The top bar is the menu bar (with Applications, Places, the date and time and the system menu on the right). But the next 3 bars (the same height as the top menu bar) are empty and are just reducing the max size of windows on that screen. - See screenshot here: http://i39.tinypic.com/35d2kh1.png - So ... 1. How do I get rid of those extra 3 black bars? They're taking valuable screen space. 2. (less critical) How do I successfully use both screens in the Ubuntu or Ubuntu 2D shell?

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama Top 10 for August 19-26, 2012

  - by Bob Rhubart

  The Top 10 most popular items shared via the OTN ArchBeat Facebook page for the week of August 19-26, 2012. Now Available: Oracle SQL Developer 3.2 (3.2.09.23) The latest release of Oracle SQl Developer includes UI enhancements, 12c database support, and bug fixes. ADF Tutorial Chapter 3: Creating a Master-Detail taskflow | Yannick Ongena Oracle ACE Yannick Ongena continues his ADF tutorial with a chapter devoted to view layer and using the data control to build pages that allow user to update reference data. GlassFish Community Event at JavaOne 2012 Don't miss out on this exclusive GlassFish Community Event on Sunday, September 30th from 11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. in Moscone South. Register Now! Part of JavaOne 2012. Oracle BI 11g Book Authors – Podcast #9 | Art of Business Intelligence In this home-grown podcast, authors Christian Screen, Haroun Khan, and Adrian Ward talk about their new book, "Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g: A Hands-On Tutorial," about their sessions at Oracle OpenWorld, and about their ORACLENERD t-shirts. Oracle Service Bus duplicate message check using Coherence | Jan van Zoggel "Giving the fact that every message on our ESB has an unique messageID element in the SOAP header we could store this on disk, database or in memory,"says Jan van Zoggel. "With the help of Oracle Coherence this last option, in memory, is relatively simple." Even simpler with Jan's detailed instructions. Oracle Technology Network Architect Day - Boston - Sept 12 There are easier ways to increase your IT brainpower. Skip the electrodes and register for Oracle Technology Network Architect Day in Boston, September 12, 2012. This free event includes 8 technical sessions, panel Q&A, roundtable discussions—and a free lunch. 8:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. at the Boston Marriott Burlington, One Burlington Mall Road, Burlington, MA 01803. Oracle BPM enable BAM | Peter Paul van de Beek "BAM enables you to make decisions based on real-time information gathered from your running processes," says Peter Paul van de Beek. "With BPMN processes you can use the standard Business Indicators that the BPM Suite offers you and use them to with BAM without much extra effort." Sample Application for Switching Application Module Data Sources | Andrejus Baranovskis A sample application and how-to guide from Oracle ACE Director and ADF expert Andrejus Baranovskis. ORCLville: Some Basic BI Thoughts "If we'd stop to consider what business intelligence really is, many of us might grow a different perspective about how we implement enterprise apps," says Oracle ACE Director Floyd Teter. "What if we implemented with an eye to what kind of information we'd like to get from our enterprise apps?" Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.1.20 released |Oracle's Virtualization Blog Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.1.20 was just released at the community and Oracle download sites, reports the Fat Bloke. This is a maintenance release containing bug fixes and stability improvements. Thought for the Day "The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. He builds his castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the imagination. Few media of creation are so flexible, so easy to polish and rework, so readily capable of realizing grand conceptual structures." — Frederick P. Brooks Source: SoftwareQuotes

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• Ti Launchpad

  - by raysmithequip

  Just thought I would get a couple of notes up here for reference to anyone that is interested...it is now Feb 2011 and I have not been posting here enough to remember this blog. Back in Nov 2010 I ordered the Ti launchpad msp430, it is a little target board kit replete with a mini USB cable, two very inexpensive programmable mcu's and a couple of pin headers with a couple of led's on board, a spi connector some on board jumpers and two programmable micro switches....all for less than $5.00...INCLUDING SHIPPING!!....not bad when the ardruino's are running around 20.00 for the target board, atmega328 and cable off of eBay...I wont even mention the microchip pic right now.  Naw, for $5.00 the Ti launchpad kit is about the cheapest fun around...if-uns your a geek that is... Well, the launchpad was backordered for almost two months, came like Xmas eve in fact...I had almost forgotten it!! And really, it was way late and not my idea of an Xmas present for myself.  That would of been the web expressions 4 I bought a few weeks back.  With all the holidays, I did not even look at it till last week, in fact I passed the wrapped board around at my local ham club meeting during points of personal privilege....some oh's and ahhs but mostly duhs...I actually ordered it to avoid downloading the huge code compressor studio 4 (CCS) that was supposed to be included on the cd.  No cd.  I had already downloaded IAR  another programming IDE for these little micro bugs. In my spare time I toyed with IAR and the launchpad board but after about two days of playing delete the driver with windows I decided to just download CCS 4, the code limited version, and give that a shot......CCS 4, is a good rewrite from the earlier versions, it is based on Eclipse as an IDE and includes the drivers for the msp430 target board I received in the kit.  Once installed I quickly configured the debugger for the target chip which was already plugged into the dip socket at the factory, msp430G2131 from he drop down list and clicked ok...I was in!! The CCS4 is full of bells and whistles compared to the IAR, which I would of preferred for the simplicity.  But the code compressor studio really does have it all!!..the code limited version is free, and of all things will give you java script editor box.  The whole layout in debugger mode reminds me of any modern programmer IDE...I mean sure give me Tex anytime but you simply must admire all the boxes and options included in the GUI.  It was a simple matter to check the assembly code in the flash and ram memory that came preloaded for the launchpad kit.  Assembly.  I am right now looking for my old assembly textbooks...sure I remember how to use mov and add etc but a couple of the commands are a little more than vague anymore.  Still, these little mcu's are about 50 cents each and might just work in a couple of projects I have lined up for the near future.  I may document the code here.  Luckily, I plan to write the code in c++ for the main project but if it has to be assembly, no prob.  For reference, the program that came already on the 2131 in the kit was a temperature indicator that alternately flashed red and green leds and changed the intensity of either depending on whether the temp was rising or falling...neat.  Neat enough that it might be worthwhile banging out a little GUI in windows 7 to test the new user device system calls, maybe put a temp gauge widget up on the desktop...just to keep from getting bored.  If you see some assembly code on this blog, you know I was doing something with one of the many mcu's out there.....thats all for now, more to follow...a bit later, of course.

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• The inevitable Hello World post!

  - by brendonpage

  Greetings to anyone reading this! This is my first of hopefully many posts. I would like to use this post to introduce myself and to let you know what to expect from this blog in future. Okay so a bit about myself. In case you missed the name of this blog, my name is Brendon Page! I am a Software Developer from South Africa and work for a small company who’s main focus is producing software for the kitchen cupboard industry, although from time to time we do produce custom solutions for other industries. I work in a small team of 3, including myself, and am fortunate enough to work from home! I have been involved in IT since 1996, which is when I got my first PC, and started working as a junior programmer in 2003. Outside of work I enjoy playing squash, PC Games and of course LANing with my friends. If I get any free time between all of that I will usually dedicate some of it to a personal project, these are mainly prototypes for an idea I have had or for something that could be useful at work. I was in 2 minds on whether to include a photo of myself. The reason for this was because while I was looking for a suitable photo to use, it dawned on me how much time I dedicate to pulling funny faces in photos! I also realized how little I shave, which I blame completely on working form home. So after much debate here I am, funny face, beard and all!   Now that you know a bit about me lets move onto what expect from this blog. I work predominantly with Microsoft technologies so most if not all of my posts will be related to something Microsoft. Since most of my job entails Software Development you can expect a lot of posts which will deal with the .NET Framework. I am currently working on a large Silverlight project, so my first few posts will be targeted at in that direction. I will be striving to make the content of my posts as useful as possible from both an explanation and code perspective, I aim to include a working solution for every post, which I will put up on my skydrive for download. Here is what I have planned for my next few posts: Where did my session variables go?  Here I will take you through the lessons I learnt the hard way about the ASP.NET session. I am not going to go into to much depth in this post, as there is already a lot of information available on it. I mainly want to cover it in an effort to keep the scope creep of my posts to a minimum, some the solutions I upload will use it and I would like to have a post that I can reference to explain why I am doing something a certain way. Uploading files through SIlverlight Again there is a lot of existing information on this topic, so I wont be going into to much depth, but I will be using the solution from this as a base for my next post. Generating and Displaying DeepZoom images dynamically in Silverlight Well the title pretty much speaks for it’s self on this one. As I mentioned I will be building off the solution that I create in my ‘Uploading files through Silverlight’ post. Securing DeepZoom images using a custom implementation of the MultiScaleTileSource In this post I will look at the privacy issue surrounding the default usage of DeepZoom images in Silverlight and how to overcome it. This makes the use of DeepZoom in privacy conscious applications more viable. Thanks to anyone who actually read this post! I look forward to producing more which will hopefully be helpful to you.

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• Efficiently separating Read/Compute/Write steps for concurrent processing of entities in Entity/Component systems

  - by TravisG

  Setup I have an entity-component architecture where Entities can have a set of attributes (which are pure data with no behavior) and there exist systems that run the entity logic which act on that data. Essentially, in somewhat pseudo-code: Entity { id; map<id_type, Attribute> attributes; } System { update(); vector<Entity> entities; } A system that just moves along all entities at a constant rate might be MovementSystem extends System { update() { for each entity in entities position = entity.attributes["position"]; position += vec3(1,1,1); } } Essentially, I'm trying to parallelise update() as efficiently as possible. This can be done by running entire systems in parallel, or by giving each update() of one system a couple of components so different threads can execute the update of the same system, but for a different subset of entities registered with that system. Problem In reality, these systems sometimes require that entities interact(/read/write data from/to) each other, sometimes within the same system (e.g. an AI system that reads state from other entities surrounding the current processed entity), but sometimes between different systems that depend on each other (i.e. a movement system that requires data from a system that processes user input). Now, when trying to parallelize the update phases of entity/component systems, the phases in which data (components/attributes) from Entities are read and used to compute something, and the phase where the modified data is written back to entities need to be separated in order to avoid data races. Otherwise the only way (not taking into account just "critical section"ing everything) to avoid them is to serialize parts of the update process that depend on other parts. This seems ugly. To me it would seem more elegant to be able to (ideally) have all processing running in parallel, where a system may read data from all entities as it wishes, but doesn't write modifications to that data back until some later point. The fact that this is even possible is based on the assumption that modification write-backs are usually very small in complexity, and don't require much performance, whereas computations are very expensive (relatively). So the overhead added by a delayed-write phase might be evened out by more efficient updating of entities (by having threads work more % of the time instead of waiting). A concrete example of this might be a system that updates physics. The system needs to both read and write a lot of data to and from entities. Optimally, there would be a system in place where all available threads update a subset of all entities registered with the physics system. In the case of the physics system this isn't trivially possible because of race conditions. So without a workaround, we would have to find other systems to run in parallel (which don't modify the same data as the physics system), other wise the remaining threads are waiting and wasting time. However, that has disadvantages Practically, the L3 cache is pretty much always better utilized when updating a large system with multiple threads, as opposed to multiple systems at once, which all act on different sets of data. Finding and assembling other systems to run in parallel can be extremely time consuming to design well enough to optimize performance. Sometimes, it might even not be possible at all because a system just depends on data that is touched by all other systems. Solution? In my thinking, a possible solution would be a system where reading/updating and writing of data is separated, so that in one expensive phase, systems only read data and compute what they need to compute, and then in a separate, performance-wise cheap, write phase, attributes of entities that needed to be modified are finally written back to the entities. The Question How might such a system be implemented to achieve optimal performance, as well as making programmer life easier? What are the implementation details of such a system and what might have to be changed in the existing EC-architecture to accommodate this solution?

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• What should filenames and URLs of images contain for SEO benefit?

  - by Baumr

  We know that good site architecture usually looks like this: example-company.com/ example-company.com/about/ example-company.com/contact/ example-company.com/products/ example-company.com/products/category/ example-company.com/products/category/productname/ Now, when it comes to Google Image search, it is clear that the img alt tag, filename/URL, and surrounding text (captions, headings, paragraphs) have an effect on ranking. I want to ask about the filename of the images that we should use (e.g. product-photo.jpg). ...but first about the URL: Often web developers stick all images in a single folder in the root: example-company.com/img/ — and I have stopped doing that. (I don't want to get into it, but basically, it seems more semantic for images which make up part of the content at each sub-directory) However, when all images appear in a folder, I feel that their filename needs to reflect what they are a bit more than usual, for example: example-company.com/img/example-company-productname-category.jpg It's a longer filename than just product.png, but as long as it's relevant, I see no problem with regards to SEO (unless you're keyword stuffing), and it could even help rank for keywords: "example company" "productname" "category" So no questions there. But what about when we have places images in the site architecture we outlined at the beginning? In other words, what if image URL paths look like this: example-company.com/products/category/productname/productname.jpg My question is, should the URL be kept short like above and only have the "productname" (and some descriptive keywords) as part of it's filename? Or, should it also include the "example-company" and "category"? Like so: example-company.com/products/category/productname/example-company-category-productname.jpg That seems much longer, and redundant when we look at the URL, but here are a few considerations. Images are often downloaded onto computers, and, to the average user, they lose their original URL and thus — it isn't clear where they came from. Also, some social networks, forums, and other platforms leave the filename intact when uploaded. (Many others rewrite it, for example, Pinterest and Facebook.) Another consideration, will this really help (even if ever so slightly) rank in Google Image Search, or at least inform Google that the product is something specific to the "example-company"? For example, what if this product can only be bought at this store and is the flagship product? In addition to an abundance of internal links to this product page, would having the "example company" name and "category" help it appear in "example company" searches? In other words, is less more?

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• Simple collision detection in Unity 2D

  - by N1ghtshade3

  I realise other posts exist with this topic yet none have gone into enough detail for me. I am attempting to create a 2D game in Unity using C# as my scripting language. Basically I have two objects, player and bomb. Both were created simply by dragging the respective PNG to the stage. I have set up touch controls to move player left and right; gravity of any kind is not needed as I only require it to move x units when I tap either the left or right side of the screen. This movement is stored in a script called playerController.cs and works just fine. I also have a variable health = 3 for player, which is stored in healthScript.cs. I am now at a point where I am stuck. I would like it so that when player collides with bomb, health decreases by one and the bomb object is destroyed. So what I tried doing is using a new script called playerPhysics.cs, I added the following: void OnCollisionEnter2D(Collision2D coll){ if(coll.gameObject.name=="bomb") GameObject.Destroy("bomb"); healthScript.health -= 1; } While I'm fairly sure I don't know the proper way to reference a variable in another script and that's why the health didn't decrease when I collided, bomb never disappeared from the stage so I'm thinking there's also a problem with my collision. Initially, I had simply attached playerPhysics.cs to player. After searching around though, it appeared as though player also needed a rigidBody attached to it, so I did that. Still no luck. I tried using a circleCollider (player is a circle), using a rigidBody2D, and using all manner of colliders on one and/or both of the objects. If you could please explain what colliders (if any) should be attached to which objects and whether I need to change my script(s), that would be much more helpful than pointing me to one of the generic documentation examples I've already read. Also, if it would be simple to fix the health thing not working that would be an added bonus but not exactly the focus of this question. Bear in mind that this game is 2D; I'm not sure if that changes anything. Thanks!

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• Where should you put constants and why?

  - by Tim Meyer

  In our mostly large applications, we usually have a only few locations for constants: One class for GUI and internal contstants (Tab Page titles, Group Box titles, calculation factors, enumerations) One class for database tables and columns (this part is generated code) plus readable names for them (manually assigned) One class for application messages (logging, message boxes etc) The constants are usually separated into different structs in those classes. In our C++ applications, the constants are only defined in the .h file and the values are assigned in the .cpp file. One of the advantages is that all strings etc are in one central place and everybody knows where to find them when something must be changed. This is especially something project managers seem to like as people come and go and this way everybody can change such trivial things without having to dig into the application's structure. Also, you can easily change the title of similar Group Boxes / Tab Pages etc at once. Another aspect is that you can just print that class and give it to a non-programmer who can check if the captions are intuitive, and if messages to the user are too detailed or too confusing etc. However, I see certain disadvantages: Every single class is tightly coupled to the constants classes Adding/Removing/Renaming/Moving a constant requires recompilation of at least 90% of the application (Note: Changing the value doesn't, at least for C++). In one of our C++ projects with 1500 classes, this means around 7 minutes of compilation time (using precompiled headers; without them it's around 50 minutes) plus around 10 minutes of linking against certain static libraries. Building a speed optimized release through the Visual Studio Compiler takes up to 3 hours. I don't know if the huge amount of class relations is the source but it might as well be. You get driven into temporarily hard-coding strings straight into code because you want to test something very quickly and don't want to wait 15 minutes just for that test (and probably every subsequent one). Everybody knows what happens to the "I will fix that later"-thoughts. Reusing a class in another project isn't always that easy (mainly due to other tight couplings, but the constants handling doesn't make it easier.) Where would you store constants like that? Also what arguments would you bring in order to convince your project manager that there are better concepts which also comply with the advantages listed above? Feel free to give a C++-specific or independent answer. PS: I know this question is kind of subjective but I honestly don't know of any better place than this site for this kind of question. Update on this project I have news on the compile time thing: Following Caleb's and gbjbaanb's posts, I split my constants file into several other files when I had time. I also eventually split my project into several libraries which was now possible much easier. Compiling this in release mode showed that the auto-generated file which contains the database definitions (table, column names and more - more than 8000 symbols) and builds up certain hashes caused the huge compile times in release mode. Deactivating MSVC's optimizer for the library which contains the DB constants now allowed us to reduce the total compile time of your Project (several applications) in release mode from up to 8 hours to less than one hour! We have yet to find out why MSVC has such a hard time optimizing these files, but for now this change relieves a lot of pressure as we no longer have to rely on nightly builds only. That fact - and other benefits, such as less tight coupling, better reuseability etc - also showed that spending time splitting up the "constants" wasn't such a bad idea after all ;-)

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• Google Fetch issue

  - by Karen

  When I do a Google fetch on any of my webpages the results are all the same (below). I'm not a programmer but I'm pretty sure this is not correct. Out of all the fetches I have done only one was different and the content length was 6x below and showed meta tags etc. Maybe this explains other issues I've been having with the site: a drop in indexed pages. Meta tag analyzer says I have no title tag, meta tags or description even though I do it on all pages. I had an SEO team working on the site and they were stumped by why pages were not getting indexed. So they figure it was some type of code error. Are they right? HTTP/1.1 200 OK Cache-Control: private Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8 Content-Encoding: gzip Vary: Accept-Encoding Server: Microsoft-IIS/7.5 X-AspNet-Version: 4.0.30319 X-Powered-By: ASP.NET Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2012 11:45:41 GMT Content-Length: 1054 <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <title></title> <script type="text/javascript"> function getCookie(cookieName) { if (document.cookie.length > 0) { cookieStart = document.cookie.indexOf(cookieName + "="); if (cookieStart != -1) { cookieStart = cookieStart + cookieName.length + 1; cookieEnd = document.cookie.indexOf(";", cookieStart); if (cookieEnd == -1) cookieEnd = document.cookie.length; return unescape(document.cookie.substring(cookieStart, cookieEnd)); } } return ""; } function setTimezone() { var rightNow = new Date(); var jan1 = new Date(rightNow.getFullYear(), 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0); // jan 1st var june1 = new Date(rightNow.getFullYear(), 6, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0); // june 1st var temp = jan1.toGMTString(); var jan2 = new Date(temp.substring(0, temp.lastIndexOf(" ") - 1)); temp = june1.toGMTString(); var june2 = new Date(temp.substring(0, temp.lastIndexOf(" ") - 1)); var std_time_offset = (jan1 - jan2) / (1000 * 60 * 60); var daylight_time_offset = (june1 - june2) / (1000 * 60 * 60); var dst; if (std_time_offset == daylight_time_offset) { dst = "0"; // daylight savings time is NOT observed } else { // positive is southern, negative is northern hemisphere var hemisphere = std_time_offset - daylight_time_offset; if (hemisphere >= 0) std_time_offset = daylight_time_offset; dst = "1"; // daylight savings time is observed } var exdate = new Date(); var expiredays = 1; exdate.setDate(exdate.getDate() + expiredays); document.cookie = "TimeZoneOffset=" + std_time_offset + ";"; document.cookie = "Dst=" + dst + ";expires=" + exdate.toUTCString(); } function checkCookie() { var timeOffset = getCookie("TimeZoneOffset"); var dst = getCookie("Dst"); if (!timeOffset || !dst) { setTimezone(); window.location.reload(); } } </script> </head> <body onload="checkCookie()"> </body> </html>

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• Creating a frozen bubble clone

  - by Vaughan Hilts

  This photo illustrates the environment: http://i.imgur.com/V4wbp.png I'll shoot the cannon, it'll bounce off the wall and it's SUPPOSED to stick to the bubble. It does at pretty much every other angle. The problem is always reproduced here, when hit off the wall into those bubbles. It also exists in other cases, but I'm not sure what triggers it. What actually happens: The ball will sometimes set to the wrong cell, and my "dropping" code will detect it as a loner and drop it off the stage. *There are many implementations of "Frozen Bubble" on the web, but I can't for the life of me find a good explanation as to how the algorithm for the "Bubble Sticking" works. * I see this: http://www.wikiflashed.com/wiki/BubbleBobble https://frozenbubblexna.svn.codeplex.com/svn/FrozenBubble/ But I can't figure out the algorithims... could anyone explain possibly the general idea behind getting the balls to stick? Code in question: //Counstruct our bounding rectangle for use var nX = currentBall.x + ballvX * gameTime; var nY = currentBall.y - ballvY * gameTime; var movingRect = new BoundingRectangle(nX, nY, 32, 32); var able = false; //Iterate over the cells and draw our bubbles for (var x = 0; x < 8; x++) { for (var y = 0; y < 12; y++) { //Get the bubble at this layout var bubble = bubbleLayout[x][y]; var rowHeight = 27; //If this slot isn't empty, draw if (bubble != null) { var bx = 0, by = 0; if (y % 2 == 0) { bx = x * 32 + 270; by = y * 32 + 45; } else { bx = x * 32 + 270 + 16; by = y * 32 + 45; } //Check var targetBox = new BoundingRectangle(bx, by, 32, 32); if (targetBox.intersects(movingRect)) { able = true; } } } } cellY = Math.round((currentBall.y - 45) / 32); if (cellY % 2 == 0) cellX = Math.round((currentBall.x - 270) / 32); else cellX = Math.round((currentBall.x - 270 - 16) / 32); Any ideas are very much welcome. Things I've tried: Flooring and Ceiling values Changing the wall bounce to a lower value Slowing down the ball None of these seem to affect it. Is there something in my math I'm not getting?

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• Any tips on getting hired as a software project manager straight out of college?

  - by MHarrison

  I graduated with a BS in compsci last September, and I've been trying (unsuccessfully) to find a job as a project manager ever since. I fell in love with software engineering (the formal practice behind it all, not just coding) in school, and I've dedicated the last 3-4 years of my life to learning everything I can about project management and gaining experience. I've managed several projects (with teams around 12 people) while in school, and I worked with my university's software engineering research lab. My résumé is also decent - I worked as a programmer before I went to school (I'm 27 now), and I did Google Summer of Code for 3 summers. I also have general "people management" experience via working as the photo editor for my university's newspaper for 2 years. My first problem with the job hunt is not getting enough interviews. I use careers.stackoverflow.com, which is awesome because I usually get contacted by non-HR people who know what they're talking about, but there's just not enough companies using it for me to get interviews on a regular basis. I've also tried sites like monster.com, and in a fit of desperation, I sent out no less than 60 applications to project management positions. I've gotten 3 automated rejection letters and that's it. At least careers.stackoverflow gets me a phone interview with 8/10 places I apply to. But the main (and extremely frustrating) problem is the matter of experience. I've successfully managed projects from start to finish (in my software engineering classes we had real customers come in with a real software need and we built it for them), but I've never had to deal with budgets and money (I know this is why HR people immediately turn me away). Most of these positions require 5+ years PM experience, and I've seen absurd things like 12+ years required. Interviews are also maddening. I've had so many places who absolutely loved me and I made it to the final round of interviews, and I left thinking things went extremely well and they'd consider me. However, when I check in with them a week later, they tell me "We really liked you and your qualifications are excellent, but we're hoping to find someone with more experience." The bad interviews I can understand - like the PM position that would have had me managing developers both locally and overseas - I had 3 interviews with them and the ENTIRE interview process was them asking me CS brainteasers and having me waste time on things like writing quicksort on paper or writing binary search trees. Even when I tried steering the discussion towards more relevant PM stuff, they gave me some vague generic replies and went back to the "We want to be Google/MS" crap. But when I have a GOOD interview, they say my "qualifications are excellent" but they want "more experience"...that makes me want to tear my hair out. What else can I DO? While I'm aiming for technically-involved PM positions (not just crunching budget numbers), I really don't want a straight development job because I like creating software from the very high-level vs. spending a lot of time debugging memory leaks. In fact, I can't even GET development positions that I'm qualified for because I make the mistake of telling them that my future career goals are as PM (which usually results in them saying something like "Well we already have PMs and this position isn't really set up to get you there." - which I take to mean "No, that's my job, stay away.") My apologies on the long rant, but I'm seriously hellbent on getting hired as a PM since it's both my career goal and the passion that keeps me awake at night. Any suggestions on what the heck else I can do? I'm currently writing a blog where I talk about my philosophies about software engineering, and I'm writing up specs for an iOS app which I will design, code, and show employers, but this takes an awful lot of time that I don't have.

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• Creating smooth lighting transitions using tiles in HTML5/JavaScript game

  - by user12098

  I am trying to implement a lighting effect in an HTML5/JavaScript game using tile replacement. What I have now is kind of working, but the transitions do not look smooth/natural enough as the light source moves around. Here's where I am now: Right now I have a background map that has a light/shadow spectrum PNG tilesheet applied to it - going from darkest tile to completely transparent. By default the darkest tile is drawn across the entire level on launch, covering all other layers etc. I am using my predetermined tile sizes (40 x 40px) to calculate the position of each tile and store its x and y coordinates in an array. I am then spawning a transparent 40 x 40px "grid block" entity at each position in the array The engine I'm using (ImpactJS) then allows me to calculate the distance from my light source entity to every instance of this grid block entity. I can then replace the tile underneath each of those grid block tiles with a tile of the appropriate transparency. Currently I'm doing the calculation like this in each instance of the grid block entity that is spawned on the map: var dist = this.distanceTo( ig.game.player ); var percentage = 100 * dist / 960; if (percentage < 2) { // Spawns tile 64 of the shadow spectrum tilesheet at the specified position ig.game.backgroundMaps[2].setTile( this.pos.x, this.pos.y, 64 ); } else if (percentage < 4) { ig.game.backgroundMaps[2].setTile( this.pos.x, this.pos.y, 63 ); } else if (percentage < 6) { ig.game.backgroundMaps[2].setTile( this.pos.x, this.pos.y, 62 ); } // etc... (sorry about the weird spacing, I still haven't gotten the hang of pasting code in here properly) The problem is that like I said, this type of calculation does not make the light source look very natural. Tile switching looks too sharp whereas ideally they would fade in and out smoothly using the spectrum tilesheet (I copied the tilesheet from another game that manages to do this, so I know it's not a problem with the tile shades. I'm just not sure how the other game is doing it). I'm thinking that perhaps my method of using percentages to switch out tiles could be replaced with a better/more dynamic proximity forumla of some sort that would allow for smoother transitions? Might anyone have any ideas for what I can do to improve the visuals here, or a better way of calculating proximity with the information I'm collecting about each tile? (PS: I'm reposting this from Stack Overflow at someone's suggestion, sorry about the duplicate!)

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