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• The most dangerous SQL Script in the world!

  - by DrJohn

  In my last blog entry, I outlined how to automate SQL Server database builds from concatenated SQL Scripts. However, I did not mention how I ensure the database is clean before I rebuild it. Clearly a simple DROP/CREATE DATABASE command would suffice; but you may not have permission to execute such commands, especially in a corporate environment controlled by a centralised DBA team. However, you should at least have database owner permissions on the development database so you can actually do your job! Then you can employ my universal "drop all" script which will clear down your database before you run your SQL Scripts to rebuild all the database objects. Why start with a clean database? During the development process, it is all too easy to leave old objects hanging around in the database which can have unforeseen consequences. For example, when you rename a table you may forget to delete the old table and change all the related views to use the new table. Clearly this will mean an end-user querying the views will get the wrong data and your reputation will take a nose dive as a result! Starting with a clean, empty database and then building all your database objects using SQL Scripts using the technique outlined in my previous blog means you know exactly what you have in your database. The database can then be repopulated using SSIS and bingo; you have a data mart "to go". My universal "drop all" SQL Script To ensure you start with a clean database run my universal "drop all" script which you can download from here: 100_drop_all.zip By using the database catalog views, the script finds and drops all of the following database objects: Foreign key relationships Stored procedures Triggers Database triggers Views Tables Functions Partition schemes Partition functions XML Schema Collections Schemas Types Service broker services Service broker queues Service broker contracts Service broker message types SQLCLR assemblies There are two optional sections to the script: drop users and drop roles. You may use these at your peril, particularly as you may well remove your own permissions! Note that the script has a verbose mode which displays the SQL commands it is executing. This can be switched on by setting @debug=1. Running this script against one of the system databases is certainly not recommended! So I advise you to keep a USE database statement at the top of the file. Good luck and be careful!!

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• ASP.NET Web Forms is bad, or what am I missing?

  - by iveqy

  Being a PHP guy myself I recently had to write a spider to an asp.net site. I was really surprised by the different approach to ajax and form-handling. For example, in the PHP sites I've worked with, a deletion of a database entry would be something like: GET delete.php?id=&confirm=yes and get a "success" back in some form (in the ajax case, probably a json reply). In this asp.net application you would instead post a form, including all inputs on the page, with a huge __VIEWSTATE and __EVENTVALIDATION. This would be more than 10 times as big as above. The reply would be the complete side again, with a footer containing some structured data for javascript to parse and display the result. Again, the whole page is sent, and then throwed away(?) since it's already displayed. Why not just send the footer with the data to parse (it's not json nor xml but a | separated list). I really can't see why you would design a system that way. Usually you've a fast client, and a somewhat fast server but a really slow connection. Why not keep the datatransfer to a minimum? Why those huge __VIEWSTATE and __EVENTVALIDATION? It seems that everything is done way to chatty and way to complicated. I really can't see the point and that usually means that I'm missing something. So please tell me, what are the reasons for this design and what benefits (and weaknesses) does it have? (Yes I know that __VIEWSTATE is used to tell what type of form-konfiguration should be sent back to the server. But WHY is this needed?) Please keep this discussion strictly technical and avoid flamewars. Update: Please excuse the somewhat rantish question. I tried to explain my view to be able to get a better answer. I am not saying that asp.net is bad, I am saying that I don't understand the meaning of those concepts. Usually that means that I've things to learn instead of the concepts beeing wrong. I appreciate the explanations about that "you don't have to do this way in asp.net", I'll read up on MVC and other .net technologies. However, there most be a reason for this site (the one I referred to) to be written the way it is. It's written by professionals for a big organisation with far more experience than what I've. Any explanation about their (possible) design choice would be welcome.

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• Is There a Real Advantage to Generic Repository?

  - by Sam

  Was reading through some articles on the advantages of creating Generic Repositories for a new app (example). The idea seems nice because it lets me use the same repository to do several things for several different entity types at once: IRepository repo = new EfRepository(); // Would normally pass through IOC into constructor var c1 = new Country() { Name = "United States", CountryCode = "US" }; var c2 = new Country() { Name = "Canada", CountryCode = "CA" }; var c3 = new Country() { Name = "Mexico", CountryCode = "MX" }; var p1 = new Province() { Country = c1, Name = "Alabama", Abbreviation = "AL" }; var p2 = new Province() { Country = c1, Name = "Alaska", Abbreviation = "AK" }; var p3 = new Province() { Country = c2, Name = "Alberta", Abbreviation = "AB" }; repo.Add<Country>(c1); repo.Add<Country>(c2); repo.Add<Country>(c3); repo.Add<Province>(p1); repo.Add<Province>(p2); repo.Add<Province>(p3); repo.Save(); However, the rest of the implementation of the Repository has a heavy reliance on Linq: IQueryable<T> Query(); IList<T> Find(Expression<Func<T,bool>> predicate); T Get(Expression<Func<T,bool>> predicate); T First(Expression<Func<T,bool>> predicate); //... and so on This repository pattern worked fantastic for Entity Framework, and pretty much offered a 1 to 1 mapping of the methods available on DbContext/DbSet. But given the slow uptake of Linq on other data access technologies outside of Entity Framework, what advantage does this provide over working directly with the DbContext? I attempted to write a PetaPoco version of the Repository, but PetaPoco doesn't support Linq Expressions, which makes creating a generic IRepository interface pretty much useless unless you only use it for the basic GetAll, GetById, Add, Update, Delete, and Save methods and utilize it as a base class. Then you have to create specific repositories with specialized methods to handle all the "where" clauses that I could previously pass in as a predicate. Is the Generic Repository pattern useful for anything outside of Entity Framework? If not, why would someone use it at all instead of working directly with Entity Framework? Edit: Original link doesn't reflect the pattern I was using in my sample code. Here is an (updated link).

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• Quick run through of the WP7 Developer Tools January 2011

  - by mbcrump

  In case you haven’t heard the latest WP7 Developers Tool update was released yesterday and contains a few goodies. First you need to go and grab the bits here. You can install them in any order, but I installed the WindowsPhoneDeveloperResources_en-US_Patch1.msp first. Then the VS10-KB2486994-x86.exe. They install silently. In other words, you would need to check Programs and Features and look in Installed Updates to see if they installed successfully. Like the screenshot below: Once you get them installed you can try out a few new features. Like Copy and Paste. Just fire up your application and put a TextBox on it and Select the Text and you will have the option highlighted in red above the text. Once you select it you will have the option to paste it. (see red rectangle below). Another feature is the Windows Phone Capability Detection Tool – This tool detects the phone capabilities used by your application. This will prevent you from submitting an app to the marketplace that says it uses x feature but really does not. How do you use it? Well navigate out to either directory: %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Phone\v7.0\Tools\CapDetect %ProgramFiles (x86)%\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Phone\v7.0\Tools\CapDetect and run the following command: CapabilityDetection.exe Rules.xml YOURWP7XAPFILEOUTPUTDIRECTORY So, in my example you will see my app only requires the ID_CAP_MICROPHONE. Let’s see what the WmAppManifest.xml says in our WP7 Project: Whoa! That’s a lot of extra stuff we don’t need. We can delete unused capabilities safely now. Some of the other fixes are: (Copied straight from Microsoft) Fixes a text selection bug in pivot and panorama controls. In applications that have pivot or panorama controls that contain text boxes, users can unintentionally change panes when trying to copy text. To prevent this problem, open your application, recompile it, and then resubmit it to the Windows Phone Marketplace. Windows Phone Connect Tool – Allows you to connect your phone to a PC when Zune® software is not running and debug applications that use media APIs. For more information, see How to: Use the Connect Tool. Updated Bing Maps Silverlight Control – Includes improvements to gesture performance when using Bing™ Maps Silverlight® Control. Windows Phone Developer Tools Fix allowing deployment of XAP files over 64 MB in size to physical phone devices for testing and debugging. That’s pretty much it. Thanks again for reading my blog!  Subscribe to my feed CodeProject

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• Dealing with coworkers when developing, need advice [closed]

  - by Yippie-Kai-Yay

  I developed our current project architecture and started developing it on my own (reaching something like, revision 40). We're developing a simple subway routing framework and my design seemed to be done extremely well - several main models, corresponding views, main logic and data structures were modeled "as they should be" and fully separated from rendering, algorithmic part was also implemented apart from the main models and had a minor number of intersection points. I would call that design scalable, customizable, easy-to-implement, interacting mostly based on the "black box interaction" and, well, very nice. Now, what was done: I started some implementations of the corresponding interfaces, ported some convenient libraries and wrote implementation stubs for some application parts. I had the document describing coding style and examples of that coding style usage (my own written code). I forced the usage of more or less modern C++ development techniques, including no-delete code (wrapped via smart pointers) and etc. I documented the purpose of concrete interface implementations and how they should be used. Unit tests (mostly, integration tests, because there wasn't a lot of "actual" code) and a set of mocks for all the core abstractions. I was absent for 12 days. What do we have now (the project was developed by 4 other members of the team): 3 different coding styles all over the project (I guess, two of them agreed to use the same style :), same applies to the naming of our abstractions (e.g CommonPathData.h, SubwaySchemeStructures.h), which are basically headers declaring some data structures. Absolute lack of documentation for the recently implemented parts. What I could recently call a single-purpose-abstraction now handles at least 2 different types of events, has tight coupling with other parts and so on. Half of the used interfaces now contain member variables (sic!). Raw pointer usage almost everywhere. Unit tests disabled, because "(Rev.57) They are unnecessary for this project". ... (that's probably not everything). Commit history shows that my design was interpreted as an overkill and people started combining it with personal bicycles and reimplemented wheels and then had problems integrating code chunks. Now - the project still does only a small amount of what it has to do, we have severe integration problems, I assume some memory leaks. Is there anything possible to do in this case? I do realize that all my efforts didn't have any benefit, but the deadline is pretty soon and we have to do something. Did someone have a similar situation? Basically I thought that a good (well, I did everything that I could) start for the project would probably lead to something nice, however, I understand that I'm wrong. Any advice would be appreciated, sorry for my bad english.

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• Wrong statistics in AUX_STATS$ might puzzle the optimizer

  - by Mike Dietrich

  We do recommend the creation of System Statistics for quite a long time. Since Oracle 9i the optimizer works with a CPU and IO cost based model. And in order to give the optimizer some knowledge about the IO subsystem's performance and throughput - once System Statistics are collected - they'll get stored in AUX_STATS$. For this purpose in the old Oracle 9i days some default values had been defined - and you'll still find those defaults in Oracle Database 11g Release 2 in AUX_STATS$. But these old values don't reflect the performance of modern IO systems. So it might be a good best practice post upgrade to create fresh System Statistics if you haven't done this before.  You can collect System Statistics with: exec DBMS_STATS.GATHER_SYSTEM_STATS('start'); and end it later by executing: exec DBMS_STATS.GATHER_SYSTEM_STATS('stop'); You could also run DBMS_STATS.GATHER_SYSTEM_STATS('interval', interval=>N) instead where N is the number of minutes when statistics gathering is stopped automatically. Please make sure you'll do this on a real workload period. It won't make sense to gather these values while the database is in an idle state. You should do this ideally for several hours. It doesn't affect performance in a negative way as the values are anyway collected in V$SYSSTAT and V$SESSTAT. And in case you'd like to delete the stats and revert to the old default values you'd simply execute:exec DBMS_STATS.DELETE_SYSTEM_STATS; The tricky thing in Oracle Database 11.2 - and that's why I'm actually writing this blog post today - is bug9842771. This leads to wrong values in AUX_STATS$ for SREADTIM and MREADTIM by factor 1000 guiding the optimizer sometimes into the totally wrong directon. The workaround is to overwrite these values manually and divide them by 1000. Use the DBMS_STATS.SET_SYSTEM_STATS procedure. See this MOS Note:9842771.8 for the above bug for some further information. This issue is fixed in Oracle Database 11.2.0.3 and above. To get some background information about the statistics collected in please read this section in the Oracle Database 11.2 Performance Tuning Guide. And gathering System Statistics might have some implication if you have mixed workloads - and interacts with DB_FILE_MULTIBLOCK_READ_COUNT. For more information please read section 13.4.1.2.

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• No GRUB Screen or recovery mode on Boot after 12.04 Upgrade

  - by Nick

  I tried the live boot CD and boot-repair, also loaded the Desktop install CD, and it looks like all partitions check out OK. However, when I try to boot Linux (the only bootable partition on the computer) I get a blank screen. Every so often the screen give me something akin to: Assuming write through cache Asking for cache data failed it appears to start booting, then hangs. Ctrl+Alt+Delete shuts down the machine The last message during boot is "STarting TiMidity++ ALSA midi emulation... [OK]" I used boot-repair to generate a boot info report. One thing looks odd to me- it reports a missing core.img on /dev/sda1. Here is the full info: Boot Info Script 0.61.full + Boot-Repair extra info [Boot-Info August 2nd 2012] ============================= Boot Info Summary: =============================== = Grub2 (v1.99) is installed in the MBR of /dev/sda and looks at sector 1 of the same hard drive for core.img. core.img is at this location and looks for (,msdos1)/boot/grub on this drive. = Windows is installed in the MBR of /dev/sdb. sda1: __________________________________________ File system: ext4 Boot sector type: Grub2 (v1.99) Boot sector info: Grub2 (v1.99) is installed in the boot sector of sda1 and looks at sector 18406911 of the same hard drive for core.img, but core.img can not be found at this location. Operating System: Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS Boot files: /boot/grub/grub.cfg /etc/fstab /boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf /boot/grub/core.img sda2: __________________________________________ File system: Extended Partition Boot sector type: - Boot sector info: sda5: __________________________________________ File system: swap Boot sector type: - Boot sector info: sdb1: __________________________________________ File system: ntfs Boot sector type: Windows XP: NTFS Boot sector info: No errors found in the Boot Parameter Block. Operating System: Boot files: ============================ Drive/Partition Info: ============================= Drive: sda _______________________________________ Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders, total 312581808 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Partition Boot Start Sector End Sector # of Sectors Id System /dev/sda1 * 63 307,339,514 307,339,452 83 Linux /dev/sda2 307,339,515 312,576,704 5,237,190 5 Extended /dev/sda5 307,339,578 312,576,704 5,237,127 82 Linux swap / Solaris Drive: sdb _______________________________________ Disk /dev/sdb: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders, total 625142448 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Partition Boot Start Sector End Sector # of Sectors Id System /dev/sdb1 2,048 625,142,447 625,140,400 7 NTFS / exFAT / HPFS "blkid" output: ____________________________________ Device UUID TYPE LABEL /dev/loop0 squashfs /dev/sda1 11b4d633-7863-40b2-a6ca-da5f82c3ad0b ext4 /dev/sda5 cb8d65f4-8cf9-4088-b804-e3dea2151033 swap /dev/sdb1 349E7C109E7BC8BE ntfs Personal1 ================================ Mount points: ================================= Device Mount_Point Type Options /dev/sdb1 /media/Personal1 fuseblk (rw,nosuid,nodev,allow_other,blksize=4096,default_permissions) /dev/sr0 /live/image iso9660 (ro,noatime) ...(a bunch of config file info- let me know if anyone wants to see it!) But usually I just get "Cannot Display This Video Mode", which I know means the video output is not usable by the monitor. I'm looking for a way to get into a recovery mode.I'd really like to avoid wiping the drive. Any thoughts?

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• What algorithms can I use to detect if articles or posts are duplicates?

  - by michael

  I'm trying to detect if an article or forum post is a duplicate entry within the database. I've given this some thought, coming to the conclusion that someone who duplicate content will do so using one of the three (in descending difficult to detect): simple copy paste the whole text copy and paste parts of text merging it with their own copy an article from an external site and masquerade as their own Prepping Text For Analysis Basically any anomalies; the goal is to make the text as "pure" as possible. For more accurate results, the text is "standardized" by: Stripping duplicate white spaces and trimming leading and trailing. Newlines are standardized to \n. HTML tags are removed. Using a RegEx called Daring Fireball URLs are stripped. I use BB code in my application so that goes to. (ä)ccented and foreign (besides Enlgish) are converted to their non foreign form. I store information about each article in (1) statistics table and in (2) keywords table. (1) Statistics Table The following statistics are stored about the textual content (much like this post) text length letter count word count sentence count average words per sentence automated readability index gunning fog score For European languages Coleman-Liau and Automated Readability Index should be used as they do not use syllable counting, so should produce a reasonably accurate score. (2) Keywords Table The keywords are generated by excluding a huge list of stop words (common words), e.g., 'the', 'a', 'of', 'to', etc, etc. Sample Data text_length, 3963 letter_count, 3052 word_count, 684 sentence_count, 33 word_per_sentence, 21 gunning_fog, 11.5 auto_read_index, 9.9 keyword 1, killed keyword 2, officers keyword 3, police It should be noted that once an article gets updated all of the above statistics are regenerated and could be completely different values. How could I use the above information to detect if an article that's being published for the first time, is already existing within the database? I'm aware anything I'll design will not be perfect, the biggest risk being (1) Content that is not a duplicate will be flagged as duplicate (2) The system allows the duplicate content through. So the algorithm should generate a risk assessment number from 0 being no duplicate risk 5 being possible duplicate and 10 being duplicate. Anything above 5 then there's a good possibility that the content is duplicate. In this case the content could be flagged and linked to the article's that are possible duplicates and a human could decide whether to delete or allow. As I said before I'm storing keywords for the whole article, however I wonder if I could do the same on paragraph basis; this would also mean further separating my data in the DB but it would also make it easier for detecting (2) in my initial post. I'm thinking weighted average between the statistics, but in what order and what would be the consequences...

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• Is 2 lines of push/pop code for each pre-draw-state too many?

  - by Griffin

  I'm trying to simplify vector graphics management in XNA; currently by incorporating state preservation. 2X lines of push/pop code for X states feels like too many, and it just feels wrong to have 2 lines of code that look identical except for one being push() and the other being pop(). The goal is to eradicate this repetitiveness,and I hoped to do so by creating an interface in which a client can give class/struct refs in which he wants restored after the rendering calls. Also note that many beginner-programmers will be using this, so forcing lambda expressions or other advanced C# features to be used in client code is not a good idea. I attempted to accomplish my goal by using Daniel Earwicker's Ptr class: public class Ptr<T> { Func<T> getter; Action<T> setter; public Ptr(Func<T> g, Action<T> s) { getter = g; setter = s; } public T Deref { get { return getter(); } set { setter(value); } } } an extension method: //doesn't work for structs since this is just syntatic sugar public static Ptr<T> GetPtr <T> (this T obj) { return new Ptr<T>( ()=> obj, v=> obj=v ); } and a Push Function: //returns a Pop Action for later calling public static Action Push <T> (ref T structure) where T: struct { T pushedValue = structure; //copies the struct data Ptr<T> p = structure.GetPtr(); return new Action( ()=> {p.Deref = pushedValue;} ); } However this doesn't work as stated in the code. How might I accomplish my goal? Example of code to be refactored: protected override void RenderLocally (GraphicsDevice device) { if (!(bool)isCompiled) {Compile();} //TODO: make sure state settings don't implicitly delete any buffers/resources RasterizerState oldRasterState = device.RasterizerState; DepthFormat oldFormat = device.PresentationParameters.DepthStencilFormat; DepthStencilState oldBufferState = device.DepthStencilState; { //Rendering code } device.RasterizerState = oldRasterState; device.DepthStencilState = oldBufferState; device.PresentationParameters.DepthStencilFormat = oldFormat; }

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• Updating an Entity through a Service

  - by GeorgeK

  I'm separating my software into three main layers (maybe tiers would be a better term): Presentation ('Views') Business logic ('Services' and 'Repositories') Data access ('Entities' (e.g. ActiveRecords)) What do I have now? In Presentation, I use read-only access to Entities, returned from Repositories or Services, to display data. $banks = $banksRegistryService->getBanksRepository()->getBanksByCity( $city ); $banksViewModel = new PaginatedList( $banks ); // some way to display banks; // example, not real code I find this approach quite efficient in terms of performance and code maintanability and still safe as long as all write operations (create, update, delete) are preformed through a Service: namespace Service\BankRegistry; use Service\AbstractDatabaseService; use Service\IBankRegistryService; use Model\BankRegistry\Bank; class Service extends AbstractDatabaseService implements IBankRegistryService { /** * Registers a new Bank * * @param string $name Bank's name * @param string $bik Bank's Identification Code * @param string $correspondent_account Bank's correspondent account * * @return Bank */ public function registerBank( $name, $bik, $correspondent_account ) { $bank = new Bank(); $bank -> setName( $name ) -> setBik( $bik ) -> setCorrespondentAccount( $correspondent_account ); if( null === $this->getBanksRepository()->getDefaultBank() ) $this->setDefaultBank( $bank ); $this->getEntityManager()->persist( $bank ); return $bank; } /** * Makes the $bank system's default bank * * @param Bank $bank * @return IBankRegistryService */ public function setDefaultBank( Bank $bank ) { $default_bank = $this->getBanksRepository()->getDefaultBank(); if( null !== $default_bank ) $default_bank->setDefault( false ); $bank->setDefault( true ); return $this; } } Where am I stuck? I'm struggling about how to update certain fields in Bank Entity. Bad solution #1: Making a series of setters in Service for each setter in Bank; - seems to be quite reduntant, increases Service interface complexity and proportionally decreases it's simplicity - something to avoid if you care about code maitainability. I try to follow KISS and DRY principles. Bad solution #2: Modifying Bank directly through it's native setters; - really bad. If you'll ever need to move modification into the Service, it will be pain. Business logic should remain in Business logic layer. Plus, there are plans on logging all of the actions and maybe even involve user permissions (perhaps, through decorators) in future, so all modifications should be made only through the Service. Possible good solution: Creating an updateBank( Bank $bank, $array_of_fields_to_update) method; - makes the interface as simple as possible, but there is a problem: one should not try to manually set isDefault flag on a Bank, this operation should be performed through setDefaultBank method. It gets even worse when you have relations that you don't want to be directly modified. Of course, you can just limit the fields that can be modified by this method, but how do you tell method's user what they can and cannot modify? Exceptions?

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• What is a good strategy for binding view objects to model objects in C++?

  - by B.J.

  Imagine I have a rich data model that is represented by a hierarchy of objects. I also have a view hierarchy with views that can extract required data from model objects and display the data (and allow the user to manipulate the data). Actually, there could be multiple view hierarchies that can represent and manipulate the model (e.g. an overview-detail view and a direct manipulation view). My current approach for this is for the controller layer to store a reference to the underlying model object in the View object. The view object can then get the current data from the model for display, and can send the model object messages to update the data. View objects are effectively observers of the model objects and the model objects broadcast notifications when properties change. This approach allows all the views to update simultaneously when any view changes the model. Implemented carefully, this all works. However, it does require a lot of work to ensure that no view or model objects hold any stale references to model objects. The user can delete model objects or sub-hierarchies of the model at any time. Ensuring that all the view objects that hold references to the model objects that have been deleted is time-consuming and difficult. It feels like the approach I have been taking is not especially clean; while I don't want to have to have explicit code in the controller layer for mediating the communication between the views and the model, it seems like there must be a better (implicit) approach for establishing bindings between the view and the model and between related model objects. In particular, I am looking for an approach (in C++) that understands two key points: There is a many to one relationship between view and model objects If the underlying model object is destroyed, all the dependent view objects must be cleaned up so that no stale references exist While shared_ptr and weak_ptr can be used to manage the lifetimes of the underlying model objects and allows for weak references from the view to the model, they don't provide for notification of the destruction of the underlying object (they do in the sense that the use of a stale weak_ptr allows for notification), but I need an approach that notifies the dependent objects that their weak reference is going away. Can anyone suggest a good strategy to manage this?

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• Writing or extending existing emacs packages: is it worth or should I move to Netbeans/Eclipse?

  - by Andrea

  I'm finishing my master degree course in CS and I've almost become addicted to Emacs. I've used it to write in C, Latex, Java, JSP,XML, CommonLisp, Ada and other languages no other editor supported, like AMPL. I'd like to improve the packages I've been using the most or create new ones, but, in practice, I find that the implementation of Emacs leaves a lot to be desired. There are a lot of poorly-featured/poorly-maintained packages with either overlapping functionalities or obscure incompatibilities, and Elisp just seems to foster the situation by lacking the common features modern lisps have. In contrast Eclipse and Netbeans are actively improved and it does seem they can be effective for non-mainstream languages. I tried Hibachi for Ada in Eclipse and it worked well, there's CUPS for Lisp in Eclipse and LambdaBeans built using NetBeans components. On the other hand those plugins seem to be less active than their Emacs' counterparts, for example Hibachi was archived last year. What's your opinion on this? Which editor should I write extension for? EDIT: To answer Larry Coleman (see comment below): I like Emacs as a user because it is efficient both for me and the computer I'm using. It's fast and the textual interface (i.e. minibuffer) allows for quick interaction. It's solid and packages are usually small and easy to manage. If I need to correct or remove something I usually just have to change a row in my .emacs or an elisp file, or delete a directory. Eclipse plugins rely on a more complicated process that screwed my Eclipse configuration a couple of times, forcing me to do a clean reinstall. Emacs works as long as I use the basic packages. If I need something more complicated the situation gets pretty hairy. As a "power user" I think that the best I can hope for is to write a severely crippled version of the extensions I'd actually like to have; in other words, that it's not worth the trouble. I'd like to write extensions for the things I'd like to have automated in Emacs, for example project support with automated tag-table update on file writing. There are a few projects on this that lack integration, documentation, extensibility and so forth. The best one is probably CEDET, for which I believe the Greenspun's 10th rule can be applied. EDIT: To comment Larry Coleman's answer I'm pretty sure I can pick elisp programming but the extensions I have in mind don't exist yet despite their relative simplicity and the effort more knowledgeable people poured into related projects.This makes me wonder whether it is so because of the way emacs is developed, i.e. people tend to write their own little extensions without coordination, or its implementation, its extension language not being able to keep up with the growing complexity.

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• Alfa AWUS036H USB wireless adapter not recognized

  - by GFiasco

  The Alfa AWUS036H USB wireless adapter will not be recognized by my netbook (Ubuntu 14.04, Asus X201E). As I understand it, the drivers should already be built in to this version of Linux, but I tried a make/make install of the latest Realtek drivers (as mentioned on How do I install drivers for the Alfa AWUS036H USB wireless adapter?) and it didn't work. I then followed the advice of this thread (ALFA AWUS036NH driver) and did a make/make install of the most up-to-date backport of the drivers, but that didn't work. At this point I tried a series of commands from this thread (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2187780) in an attempt to identify the problem, but at no point could I get the laptop to ever recognize the USB adapter. I have also troubleshot the USB cable itself, tried both the USB 2.0 and 3.0 ports on the laptop, have never received an error message regarding a need to update the firmware, and have seemingly successfully installed all manner of variation of Realtek drivers which were supposed to make the adapter work. (I also tried to delete/clean up after each install, in the hope I wasn't making things worse.) Not sure what I should do next. Please let me know if I need to post any more information. Thanks very much for your help. EDIT: Before inserting Alpha USB adapter: :~$ lsusb Bus 002 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0bda:570c Realtek Semiconductor Corp. Bus 001 Device 026: ID 13d3:3393 IMC Networks Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub Bus 003 Device 002: ID 03f0:3112 Hewlett-Packard Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub After inserting Alpha USB adapter (USB 3.0 port, no change): :~$ lsusb Bus 002 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0bda:570c Realtek Semiconductor Corp. Bus 001 Device 026: ID 13d3:3393 IMC Networks Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub Bus 003 Device 002: ID 03f0:3112 Hewlett-Packard Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Ran tail -f /var/log/syslog, inserted device, no recognition (last entry is dated 16:17:01, so an hour ago). Going to check on an Ubuntu 14.04 laptop and Windows XP desktop. I'll update after. Thanks for your help to this point.

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• Can't install alternate CD from USB?

  - by mattias

  Hi im trying to install ubuntu 12.04 with full hard disk encryption. After downloading and installing the Ubuntu live CD, I learned that truecrypt doesnt support full disk encryption on linux. I also learned that the best way to get "nearly full disk encryption" on ubuntu is by installing it from the alternate install CD. I tried that, but something is wrong with my CD reader/burner so it doesnt boot up when i insert the cd. My thought here was to take the .iso that I downloaded on my unencrypted Ubuntu system, use Unetbootin to make the usb drive. The usb drive used for this is exactly the same brand as one that I know has worked with a previous ubuntu live system on the same computer. I also used unetbootin for that usb, but I created it from windows that time. The usb stick boots up fine and i get through the first couple of steps in the installation process. However, After a while I get a "box" with the following error message "Load Installer components from CD" There was a problem reading data from the CD-ROM. Please make sure it is in the drive. If retrying does not work, you should check the integrity of your CD-ROM. "Failed to copy file from CD-ROM. Retry? " Then I cant get any further. I googled a lot and found this page which seems to tackle this very problem: http://www.dotkam.com/2010/11/29/ins...mage-from-usb/ I tried to do what it said. After pressing TAB, I wrote : cdrom-detect/try-usb=true without quotes because that's what i think is right. When I press TAB, there already is a text saying : /ubnkern initrd=/ubninit vga=788 -- quiet which can be removed. I have tried to both delete the text before the "--" and just inserting cdrom-detect/try-usb=true before it. Any idea of what can be wrong? I would like to do a full system encryption, or as full as it is possible. I dont want to just encrypt my /home folder. Maybe this isn't the easiest way. I use SanDisk usb sticks. I know there is a problem with U3 launcher on some SanDisks, but I never had to remove U3 before from similar disks, and the alternate install does boot up, so I dont think using U3 removal would help me. Any help or indication to an easier way to do this would be appreciated

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• Behaviour Trees with irregular updates

  - by Robominister

  I'm interested in behaviour trees that aren't iterated every game tick, but every so often. (Edit: the tree could specify how many frames within the main game loop to wait before running its tick function again). Every theoretical implementation I have seen of behaviour trees talks of the tree search being carried out every game update - which seems necessary, because a leaf node (eg a behaviour, like 'return to base') needs to be constantly checked to see if is still running, failed or completed. Can anyone suggest how I might start implementing a tree that isnt run every tick, or point me in the direction of good material specific to this case (I am struggling to find anything)? My thoughts so far: action leaf nodes (when they start) must only push some kind of action object onto a list for an entity, rather than directly calling any code that makes the entity do something. The list of actions for the entity would be run every frame (update any that need to run, pop any that have completed from the list). the return state from a given action must be fed back into the tree, so that when we run the tree iteration again (and reach the same action leaf node - so the tree has so far determined that we ought to still be trying this action) - that the action has completed, or is still running etc. If my actual action code is running from an action list on an entity, then I possibly need to cancel previously running actions in the list - i am thinking that I can just delete the entire stack of queued up actions. I've seen the idea of ActionLists which block lower priority actions when a higher priority one is added, but this seems like very close logic to behaviour trees, and I dont want to be duplicating behaviour. This leaves me with some questions 1) How would I feed the action return state back into the tree? Its obvious I need to store some information relating to 'currently executing actions' on the entity, and check that in the tree tick, but I can't imagine how. 2) Does having a seperate behaviour tree (for deciding behaviour) and action list (for carrying out actual queued up actions) sound like a reasonable approach? 3) Is the approach of updating a behaviour tree irregularly actually used by anyone? It seems like a nice idea for budgeting ai search time when you have a lot of ai entities to process. (Edit) - I am also thinking about storing a single instance of a given behaviour tree in memory, and providing it by reference to any entity that uses it. So any information about what action was last selected for execution on an entity must be stored in a data context relative to the entity (which the tree can check). (I am probably answering my own questions as i go!) I hope I have expressed my questions adequately! Thanks in advance for any help :)

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• Combining Shared Secret and Certificates

  - by Michael Stephenson

  As discussed in the introduction article this walkthrough will explain how you can implement WCF security with the Windows Azure Service Bus to ensure that you can protect your endpoint in the cloud with a shared secret but also combine this with certificates so that you can identify the sender of the message.   Prerequisites As in the previous article before going into the walk through I want to explain a few assumptions about the scenario we are implementing but to keep the article shorter I am not going to walk through all of the steps in how to setup some of this. In the solution we have a simple console application which will represent the client application. There is also the services WCF application which contains the WCF service we will expose via the Windows Azure Service Bus. The WCF Service application in this example was hosted in IIS 7 on Windows 2008 R2 with AppFabric Server installed and configured to auto-start the WCF listening services. I am not going to go through significant detail around the IIS setup because it should not matter in relation to this article however if you want to understand more about how to configure WCF and IIS for such a scenario please refer to the following paper which goes into a lot of detail about how to configure this. The link is: http://tinyurl.com/8s5nwrz   Setting up the Certificates To keep the post and sample simple I am going to use the local computer store for all certificates but this bit is really just the same as setting up certificates for an example where you are using WCF without using Windows Azure Service Bus. In the sample I have included two batch files which you can use to create the sample certificates or remove them. Basically you will end up with: A certificate called PocServerCert in the personal store for the local computer which will be used by the WCF Service component A certificate called PocClientCert in the personal store for the local computer which will be used by the client application A root certificate in the Root store called PocRootCA with its associated revocation list which is the root from which the client and server certificates were created   For the sample Im just using development certificates like you would normally, and you can see exactly how these are configured and placed in the stores from the batch files in the solution using makecert and certmgr.   The Service Component To begin with let's look at the service component and how it can be configured to listen to the service bus using a shared secret but to also accept a username token from the client. In the sample the service component is called Acme.Azure.ServiceBus.Poc.Cert.Services. It has a single service which is the Visual Studio template for a WCF service when you add a new WCF Service Application so we have a service called Service1 with its Echo method. Nothing special so far!.... The next step is to look at the web.config file to see how we have configured the WCF service. In the services section of the WCF configuration you can see I have created my service and I have created a local endpoint which I simply used to do a little bit of diagnostics and to check it was working, but more importantly there is the Windows Azure endpoint which is using the ws2007HttpRelayBinding (note that this should also work just the same if your using netTcpRelayBinding). The key points to note on the above picture are the service behavior called MyServiceBehaviour and the service bus endpoints behavior called MyEndpointBehaviour. We will go into these in more detail later.   The Relay Binding The relay binding for the service has been configured to use the TransportWithMessageCredential security mode. This is the important bit where the transport security really relates to the interaction between the service and listening to the Azure Service Bus and the message credential is where we will use our certificate like we have specified in the message/clientCrentialType attribute. Note also that we have left the relayClientAuthenticationType set to RelayAccessToken. This means that authentication will be made against ACS for accessing the service bus and messages will not be accepted from any sender who has not been authenticated by ACS.   The Endpoint Behaviour In the below picture you can see the endpoint behavior which is configured to use the shared secret client credential for accessing the service bus and also for diagnostic purposes I have included the service registry element.     Hopefully if you are familiar with using Windows Azure Service Bus relay feature the above is very familiar to you and this is a very common setup for this section. There is nothing specific to the username token implementation here. The Service Behaviour Now we come to the bit with most of the certificate stuff in it. When you configure the service behavior I have included the serviceCredentials element and then setup to use the clientCertificate check and also specifying the serviceCertificate with information on how to find the servers certificate in the store.     I have also added a serviceAuthorization section where I will implement my own authorization component to perform additional security checks after the service has validated that the message was signed with a good certificate. I also have the same serviceSecurityAudit configuration to log access to my service. My Authorization Manager The below picture shows you implementation of my authorization manager. WCF will eventually hand off the message to my authorization component before it calls the service code. This is where I can perform some logic to check if the identity is allowed to access resources. In this case I am simple rejecting messages from anyone except the PocClientCertificate.     The Client Now let's take a look at the client side of this solution and how we can configure the client to authenticate against ACS but also send a certificate over to the service component so it can implement additional security checks on-premise. I have a console application and in the program class I want to use the proxy generated with Add Service Reference to send a message via the Azure Service Bus. You can see in my WCF client configuration below I have setup my details for the azure service bus url and am using the ws2007HttpRelayBinding.   Next is my configuration for the relay binding. You can see below I have configured security to use TransportWithMessageCredential so we will flow the token from a certificate with the message and also the RelayAccessToken relayClientAuthenticationType which means the component will validate against ACS before being allowed to access the relay endpoint to send a message.     After the binding we need to configure the endpoint behavior like in the below picture. This contains the normal transportClientEndpointBehaviour to setup the ACS shared secret configuration but we have also configured the clientCertificate to look for the PocClientCert.     Finally below we have the code of the client in the console application which will call the service bus. You can see that we have created our proxy and then made a normal call to a WCF in exactly the normal way but the configuration will jump in and ensure that a token is passed representing the client certificate.     Conclusion As you can see from the above walkthrough it is not too difficult to configure a service to use both a shared secret and certificate based token at the same time. This gives you the power and protection offered by the access control service in the cloud but also the ability to flow additional tokens to the on-premise component for additional security features to be implemented. Sample The sample used in this post is available at the following location: https://s3.amazonaws.com/CSCBlogSamples/Acme.Azure.ServiceBus.Poc.Cert.zip

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• SQL 2014 does data the way developers want

  - by Rob Farley

  A post I’ve been meaning to write for a while, good that it fits with this month’s T-SQL Tuesday, hosted by Joey D’Antoni (@jdanton) Ever since I got into databases, I’ve been a fan. I studied Pure Maths at university (as well as Computer Science), and am very comfortable with Set Theory, which undergirds relational database concepts. But I’ve also spent a long time as a developer, and appreciate that that databases don’t exactly fit within the stuff I learned in my first year of uni, particularly the “Algorithms and Data Structures” subject, in which we studied concepts like linked lists. Writing in languages like C, we used pointers to quickly move around data, without a database in sight. Of course, if we had a power failure all this data was lost, as it was only persisted in RAM. Perhaps it’s why I’m a fan of database internals, of indexes, latches, execution plans, and so on – the developer in me wants to be reassured that we’re getting to the data as efficiently as possible. Back when SQL Server 2005 was approaching, one of the big stories was around CLR. Many were saying that T-SQL stored procedures would be a thing of the past because we now had CLR, and that obviously going to be much faster than using the abstracted T-SQL. Around the same time, we were seeing technologies like Linq-to-SQL produce poor T-SQL equivalents, and developers had had a gutful. They wanted to move away from T-SQL, having lost trust in it. I was never one of those developers, because I’d looked under the covers and knew that despite being abstracted, T-SQL was still a good way of getting to data. It worked for me, appealing to both my Set Theory side and my Developer side. CLR hasn’t exactly become the default option for stored procedures, although there are plenty of situations where it can be useful for getting faster performance. SQL Server 2014 is different though, through Hekaton – its In-Memory OLTP environment. When you create a table using Hekaton (that is, a memory-optimized one), the table you create is the kind of thing you’d’ve made as a developer. It creates code in C leveraging structs and pointers and arrays, which it compiles into fast code. When you insert data into it, it creates a new instance of a struct in memory, and adds it to an array. When the insert is committed, a small write is made to the transaction to make sure it’s durable, but none of the locking and latching behaviour that typifies transactional systems is needed. Indexes are done using hashes and using bw-trees (which avoid locking through the use of pointers) and by handling each updates as a delete-and-insert. This is data the way that developers do it when they’re coding for performance – the way I was taught at university before I learned about databases. Being done in C, it compiles to very quick code, and although these tables don’t support every feature that regular SQL tables do, this is still an excellent direction that has been taken. @rob_farley

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• How to Add a Taskbar to the Desktop in Ubuntu 14.04

  - by Lori Kaufman

  If you’ve switched to Ubuntu from Windows, it may take some time to get used to the new and different interface. However, you can easily incorporate a familiar Windows feature, the Taskbar, into Ubuntu to make the transition easier. A tool called Tint2 provides a bar at the bottom of the Ubuntu Desktop that resembles the Windows Taskbar. We will show you how to install it and make it start every time you log into Ubuntu. NOTE: When we say to type something in this article and there are quotes around the text, DO NOT type the quotes, unless we specify otherwise. Press Ctrl + Alt + T to open a Terminal window. To install Tint2, type the following line at the prompt and press Enter. sudo apt-get install tint2 Type your password at the prompt and press Enter. The progress of the installation displays and then a message displays saying how much disk space will be used. When asked if you want to continue, type a “y” and press Enter. When the installation has finished, close the Terminal window by typing “exit” at the prompt and pressing Enter. Click the Search button at the top of the Unity bar. Start typing “startup applications” in the Search box. Items that match what you type start displaying below the Search box. When the Startup Applications tool displays, click the icon to open it. On the Startup Applications Preferences window, click Add. On the Add Startup Program dialog box, enter a name for the startup application. This name displays in the list on the Startup Applications Preferences window. Type “tint2” in the Command edit box, enter a description in the Comment edit box, if desired, and click Add. Tint2 is added as a startup program and will start every time you log into Ubuntu. Click Close to close the Startup Applications Preferences window. Log out and log back in to make the Taskbar available on the desktop. You do not need to reboot the computer for this change to take effect. Now, when you minimize a program, an icon for it displays on the Taskbar at the bottom of the screen, just like the Taskbar in Windows. If you decide that you don’t want the Taskbar to display every time you log into Ubuntu, you can uncheck the Tint2 startup program on the Startup Applications Preferences window. You don’t need to delete it from the list.

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• Why would I learn C++11, having known C and C++?

  - by Shahbaz

  I am a programmer in C and C++, although I don't stick to either language and write a mixture of the two. Sometimes having code in classes, possibly with operator overloading, or templates and the oh so great STL is obviously a better way. Sometimes use of a simple C function pointer is much much more readable and clear. So I find beauty and practicality in both languages. I don't want to get into the discussion of "If you mix them and compile with a C++ compiler, it's not a mix anymore, it's all C++" I think we all understand what I mean by mixing them. Also, I don't want to talk about C vs C++, this question is all about C++11. C++11 introduces what I think are significant changes to how C++ works, but it has introduced many special cases that change how different features behave in different circumstances, placing restrictions on multiple inheritance, adding lambda functions, etc. I know that at some point in the future, when you say C++ everyone would assume C++11. Much like when you say C nowadays, you most probably mean C99. That makes me consider learning C++11. After all, if I want to continue writing code in C++, I may at some point need to start using those features simply because my colleagues have. Take C for example. After so many years, there are still many people learning and writing code in C. Why? Because the language is good. What good means is that, it follows many of the rules to create a good programming language. So besides being powerful (which easy or hard, almost all programming languages are), C is regular and has few exceptions, if any. C++11 however, I don't think so. I'm not sure that the changes introduced in C++11 are making the language better. So the question is: Why would I learn C++11? Update: My original question in short was: "I like C++, but the new C++11 doesn't look good because of this and this and this. However, deep down something tells me I need to learn it. So, I asked this question here so that someone would help convince me to learn it." However, the zealous people here can't tolerate pointing out a flaw in their language and were not at all constructive in this manner. After the moderator edited the question, it became more like a "So, how about this new C++11?" which was not at all my question. Therefore, in a day or too I am going to delete this question if no one comes up with an actual convincing argument. P.S. If you are interested in knowing what flaws I was talking about, you can edit my question and see the previous edits.

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• Generate MERGE statements from a table

  - by Bill Graziano

  We have a requirement to build a test environment where certain tables get reset from production every night.  These are mainly lookup tables.  I played around with all kinds of fancy solutions and finally settled on a series of MERGE statements.  And being lazy I didn’t want to write them myself.  The stored procedure below will generate a MERGE statement for the table you pass it.  If you have identity values it populates those properly.  You need to have primary keys on the table for the joins to be generated properly.  The only thing hard coded is the source database.  You’ll need to update that for your environment.  We actually used a linked server in our situation. CREATE PROC dba_GenerateMergeStatement (@table NVARCHAR(128) )ASset nocount on; declare @return int;PRINT '-- ' + @table + ' -------------------------------------------------------------'--PRINT 'SET NOCOUNT ON;--'-- Set the identity insert on for tables with identitiesselect @return = objectproperty(object_id(@table), 'TableHasIdentity')if @return = 1 PRINT 'SET IDENTITY_INSERT [dbo].[' + @table + '] ON; 'declare @sql varchar(max) = ''declare @list varchar(max) = '';SELECT @list = @list + [name] +', 'from sys.columnswhere object_id = object_id(@table)SELECT @list = @list + [name] +', 'from sys.columnswhere object_id = object_id(@table)SELECT @list = @list + 's.' + [name] +', 'from sys.columnswhere object_id = object_id(@table)-- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------PRINT 'MERGE [dbo].[' + @table + '] AS t'PRINT 'USING (SELECT * FROM [source_database].[dbo].[' + @table + ']) as s'-- Get the join columns ----------------------------------------------------------SET @list = ''select @list = @list + 't.[' + c.COLUMN_NAME + '] = s.[' + c.COLUMN_NAME + '] AND 'from INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLE_CONSTRAINTS pk , INFORMATION_SCHEMA.KEY_COLUMN_USAGE cwhere pk.TABLE_NAME = @tableand CONSTRAINT_TYPE = 'PRIMARY KEY'and c.TABLE_NAME = pk.TABLE_NAMEand c.CONSTRAINT_NAME = pk.CONSTRAINT_NAMESELECT @list = LEFT(@list, LEN(@list) -3)PRINT 'ON ( ' + @list + ')'-- WHEN MATCHED ------------------------------------------------------------------PRINT 'WHEN MATCHED THEN UPDATE SET'SELECT @list = '';SELECT @list = @list + ' [' + [name] + '] = s.[' + [name] +'],'from sys.columnswhere object_id = object_id(@table)-- don't update primary keysand [name] NOT IN (SELECT [column_name] from INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLE_CONSTRAINTS pk , INFORMATION_SCHEMA.KEY_COLUMN_USAGE c where pk.TABLE_NAME = @table and CONSTRAINT_TYPE = 'PRIMARY KEY' and c.TABLE_NAME = pk.TABLE_NAME and c.CONSTRAINT_NAME = pk.CONSTRAINT_NAME)-- and don't update identity columnsand columnproperty(object_id(@table), [name], 'IsIdentity ') = 0 --print @list PRINT left(@list, len(@list) -3 )-- WHEN NOT MATCHED BY TARGET ------------------------------------------------PRINT ' WHEN NOT MATCHED BY TARGET THEN';-- Get the insert listSET @list = ''SELECT @list = @list + '[' + [name] +'], 'from sys.columnswhere object_id = object_id(@table)SELECT @list = LEFT(@list, LEN(@list) - 1)PRINT ' INSERT(' + @list + ')'-- get the values listSET @list = ''SELECT @list = @list + 's.[' +[name] +'], 'from sys.columnswhere object_id = object_id(@table)SELECT @list = LEFT(@list, LEN(@list) - 1)PRINT ' VALUES(' + @list + ')'-- WHEN NOT MATCHED BY SOURCEprint 'WHEN NOT MATCHED BY SOURCE THEN DELETE; 'PRINT ''PRINT 'PRINT ''' + @table + ': '' + CAST(@@ROWCOUNT AS VARCHAR(100));';PRINT ''-- Set the identity insert OFF for tables with identitiesselect @return = objectproperty(object_id(@table), 'TableHasIdentity')if @return = 1 PRINT 'SET IDENTITY_INSERT [dbo].[' + @table + '] OFF; 'PRINT ''PRINT 'GO'PRINT '';

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• Does it make the game more fun when the user is forced to progress thru the levels sequentially rather than letting them pick and play?

  - by BeachRunnerJoe

  Hello. For the first time in my game, I'm stuck with a real design dilemma. I guess that's a good thing ;) I'm building a word puzzle game that has five levels, each with 30 puzzles. Currently, the user has to solve one puzzle at a time before moving to the next. However, I'm finding the user occasionally gets stuck on a puzzle, at which point they can no longer play until they solve it. This is obviously bad because many people will just quit playing the game and delete the app since they get frustrated and can't play any other puzzles until the current puzzle is solved. The only elegant solution I can find to helping the player get unstuck is changing the design of the game to allow the users to pick any puzzle to play at any time. This way, if they get stuck, they can come back to it later and at least they have other puzzles to play in the meantime. It's my opinion, however, that this new flow design doesn't make the game as fun as the original flow design where the player has to complete a puzzle before moving to the next. To me, it's like anything else, when you only have one of something, it's more enjoyable, but when you have 30 of something, it's far less enjoyable. In fact, when I present the user with 30 puzzles to choose from that they need to solve before unlocking the next level, it almost seems as tho I'm making them feel like it's work they have to do. I even had a tester voluntarily tell me that being forced to complete a puzzle before moving to the next is more motivating. My questions are... Do you agree/disagree? Do you have any suggestions for how I can help the player get unstuck? Thanks so much in advance for your thoughts! EDIT: I should mention that I've already considered a few other solutions to helping the user get unstuck, but none of them seem like good ideas. They are... Add more hints: Currently, the user gets two hints per puzzle. If I increase the hint count, it only makes the game more easy and still leaves the possibility of the user getting stuck. Add a "Show Solution" button: This seems like a bad idea because it's my opinion this takes the fun out of the game for many people who would probably otherwise solve the puzzle if they didn't have the quick option to see the solution.

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• Create a kind of Interface c++ [migrated]

  - by Liuka

  I'm writing a little 2d rendering framework with managers for input and resources like textures and meshes (for 2d geometry models, like quads) and they are all contained in a class "engine" that interacts with them and with a directX class. So each class have some public methods like init or update. They are called by the engine class to render the resources, create them, but a lot of them should not be called by the user: //in pseudo c++ //the textures manager class class TManager { private: vector textures; .... public: init(); update(); renderTexture(); //called by the "engine class" loadtexture(); gettexture(); //called by the user } class Engine { private: Tmanager texManager; public: Init() { //initialize all the managers } Render(){...} Update(){...} Tmanager* GetTManager(){return &texManager;} //to get a pointer to the manager //if i want to create or get textures } In this way the user, calling Engine::GetTmanager will have access to all the public methods of Tmanager, including init update and rendertexture, that must be called only by Engine inside its init, render and update functions. So, is it a good idea to implement a user interface in the following way? //in pseudo c++ //the textures manager class class TManager { private: vector textures; .... public: init(); update(); renderTexture(); //called by the "engine class" friend class Tmanager_UserInterface; operator Tmanager_UserInterface*(){return reinterpret_cast<Tmanager_UserInterface*>(this)} } class Tmanager_UserInterface : private Tmanager { //delete constructor //in this class there will be only methods like: loadtexture(); gettexture(); } class Engine { private: Tmanager texManager; public: Init() Render() Update() Tmanager_UserInterface* GetTManager(){return texManager;} } //in main function //i need to load a texture //i always have access to Engine class engine-GetTmanger()-LoadTexture(...) //i can just access load and get texture; In this way i can implement several interface for each object, keeping visible only the functions i (and the user) will need. There are better ways to do the same?? Or is it just useless(i dont hide the "framework private functions" and the user will learn to dont call them)? Before i have used this method: class manager { public: //engine functions userfunction(); } class engine { private: manager m; public: init(){//call manager init function} manageruserfunciton() { //call manager::userfunction() } } in this way i have no access to the manager class but it's a bad way because if i add a new feature to the manager i need to add a new method in the engine class and it takes a lot of time. sorry for the bad english.

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• Nautilus ignores / misinterprets view size

  - by BlueZero4

  I noticed that a lot of my folders had suddenly switched to higher view sizes than I had specificied. I was assuming that somehow nautilus had suddenly decided to create per-folder entries for said folders with incorrect view sizes. So I found this question: How to reset all per-folder view settings in nautilus? I found the folder specified in the answer (~/.local/share/gvfs-metadata) and found that it was actually important to delete the files INSIDE the folder, because for some reason deleting the folder itself didn't work for some reason. After doing that, I discovered that the odd setting was for the default view settings, not for a handful of files. Nautilus actually handles the per-folder settings like it should, but it ignores the global folder settings. I want Nautilus to, by default, display all non-specified folders as compact view, 50%. My folders are using the compact setting like I want, but they are not down to 50%. At a guess, they are at 100%. Altering the view size of the icon view can set the compact view to 33%, but I'm not sure by what mechanism this functions. I haven't extensively tested the other view sizes because I don't plan on using them much at all. Next I looked up questions like How do I reset nautilus to the default configuration? I'm expecting the problem to be a corrupted config file or something of the sort, so I hunted down directories like ~/.nautilus, ~/.gconf/apps/nautilus, and ~/.gnome2/nautilus. (I don't have a ~/.nautilus directory, so I'm assuming that's only for older versions.) I attempted to remove the contents of each, but I can't seem to force Nautilus back to default configuration settings. Actually viewing Nautilus's preferences in GConf made the settings look like they were what I wanted them to be, which is odd. I'd like to force Nautilus to default settings, basically. Though if something else will fix it, I'll take it too. I'm not interested in doing a full uninstall, reinstall of Nautilus if I don't have to. ==EDIT1== Turns out that Nautilus just writes the settings in GConf for the heck of it. Nautilus only really uses the settings that it stores in DConf. I did gsettings reset-recursively org.gnome.nautilus, which actually did reset Nautilus to default, but it still doesn't like my view size settings.

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• Block-level deduplicating filesystem

  - by James Haigh

  I'm looking for a deduplicating copy-on-write filesystem solution for general user data such as /home and backups of it. It should use online/inline/synchronous deduplication at the block-level using secure hashing (for negligible chance of collisions) such as SHA256 or TTH. Duplicate blocks need not even touch the disk. The idea is that I should be able to just copy /home/<user> to an external HDD with the same such filesystem to do a backup. Simple. No messing around with incremental backups where corruption to any of the snapshots will nearly always break all later snapshots, and no need to use a specific tool to delete or 'checkout' a snapshot. Everything should simply be done from the file browser without worry. Can you imagine how easy this would be? I'd never have to think twice about backing-up again! I don't mind a performance hit, reliability is the main concern. Although, with specific implementations of cp, mv and scp, and a file browser plugin, these operations would be very fast, especially when there is a lot of duplication as they would only need to transfer the absent blocks. Accidentally using conventional copy tools that do not integrate with the FS would merely take longer, waste some bandwidth when copying remotely and waste some CPU, as the duplicate data would be re-read, re-transferred and re-hashed (although nothing would be re-written), but would absolutely not corrupt anything. (Some filesharing software may also be able to benefit by integrating with the FS.) So what's the best way of doing this? I've looked at some options: lessfs - Looks unmaintained. Any good? [Opendedup/SDFS][3] - Java? Could I use this on Android?! What does [SDFS][4] stand for? [Btrfs][5] - Some patches floating around on mailing list archives, but no real support. [ZFS][6] - Hopefully they'll one day relicense under a true Free/Opensource GPL-compatible licence. Also, 2 years ago I had a go at an attempt in Python using Fuse at the file-level to be used over the top of a typical solid FS such as EXT4, but I found Fuse for Python underdocumented and didn't manage to implement all of the system calls. My first post here, so I can't post more than 2 links until I get over 10 rep: [3]: http://www.opendedup.org/ [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=SDFS&action=edit&redlink=1 [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Btrfs#Features [6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS#Linux

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• How to Update Remote Diagnostic Agent (RDA) to Latest Version?

  - by Daniel Mortimer

  Remote Diagnostic Agent (RDA) 4.28 was released on 12th June. Full details can be found in this My Oracle Support documentRDA 4 Release Notes [ID 414970.1]From a Fusion Middleware Core Component, Install and Administration perspective this latest release does not offer any significant new features or changes. However, despite the lack of Fusion Middleware specific new features in version 4.28, Remote Diagnostic Agent still comes as highly recommended. It is incredibly useful problem solving / troubleshooting aid. Support engineers dealing with Service Requests often request RDA output as it collects just about everything you might need to get a view of the state and configuration of the host operating system, network setup and Fusion Middleware components. To find out more take a look at Running RDA Against Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g [ID 853437.1] Getting Started With Remote Diagnostic Agent: Case Study - Oracle WebLogic Server (Video) [ID 1262157.1] Note: While the latter document looks at RDA from the perspective of WebLogic Server, much of the advice given in the videos can be applied to other Fusion Middleware products.Ok, let's get back on track with the topic suggested by the title. If you are already familiar with Remote Diagnostic Agent you may ask the question - 'How do I keep my RDA at the latest version?' The answer is in "Running RDA Against Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g [ID 853437.1]". To quote: There are two methods: 1. Upgrade RDA via OCM (Oracle Configuration Manager) Refer to the advice given in: Remote Diagnostic Agent (RDA) Upgrade README [ID 1309034.1] OR 2. Manually download and upgrade to the latest version. To quote from Remote Diagnostic Agent (RDA) 4 - FAQ [ID 330363.1] +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ How do I upgrade my RDA 4.x installation from the prior release? The most simplest and reliable way to upgrade your RDA installation is delete or move your old installation to a new location. Then install the new release into the location you had the prior release installed. If you want to reuse you old setup.cfg file, you can place the older version into the new <rda> directory and it will try to upgrade your setup.cfg to the new features. A second approach is to install the latest RDA into another directory, then if needed copy the old setup.cfg file to the new RDA directory. When the new RDA is run for the first time, it will try to upgrade your setup.cfg to the new features. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The upgrade method via Oracle Configuration Manager is nice because it allows RDA to be auto updated whenever a new release of RDA is made available (which roughly speaking is every 3 months). However, it does require you to install and configure Oracle Configuration Manager in addition to RDA. A quick guide to Fusion Middleware 11g and OCM can be found in this support document.Configuring OCM in Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g? A Quick and Easy Guide [ID 1096871.1]

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