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  • How to mix textures in DirectX?

    - by tobsen
    I am new to DirectX development and I am wondering if I am taking the wrong route to achieve the following: I would like to mix three textures which contain transparent areas and some solid areas (Red, Blue, Green). The three textures should blend like shown in this example: How can I achieve that in DirectX (preferably in directx9)? A link or example code would be nice. Update: My rendering method looks like this and I still think I am doing it wrong, because the sprite only shows the last texture (nothing is rendered transparent or blended): void D3DTester::render() { d3ddevice->Clear(0, NULL, D3DCLEAR_TARGET, D3DCOLOR_XRGB(0,0,0), 1.0f, 0); d3ddevice->BeginScene(); d3ddevice->SetRenderState(D3DRS_ALPHABLENDENABLE, TRUE); d3ddevice->SetRenderState(D3DRS_SRCBLEND, D3DBLEND_ONE); d3ddevice->SetRenderState(D3DRS_DESTBLEND, D3DBLEND_ONE); LPD3DXSPRITE sprite=NULL; HRESULT hres = D3DXCreateSprite(d3ddevice, &sprite); if(hres != S_OK) { throw std::exception(); } sprite->Begin(D3DXSPRITE_ALPHABLEND); std::vector<LPDIRECT3DTEXTURE9>::iterator it; for ( it=textures.begin() ; it < textures.end(); it++ ) { sprite->Draw(*it, NULL, NULL, NULL, 0xFFFFFFFF); } sprite->End(); d3ddevice->EndScene(); d3ddevice->Present(NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL); } The resulting image looks like this: But I need it to look like this instead: Update2: I figured out that I have to SetRenderState after I use sprite->Begin(D3DXSPRITE_ALPHABLEND); thanks to the hint by Josh Petrie. However, by using this: sprite->Begin(D3DXSPRITE_ALPHABLEND); d3ddevice->SetRenderState(D3DRS_ALPHABLENDENABLE, TRUE); d3ddevice->SetRenderState(D3DRS_SRCBLEND, D3DBLEND_ONE); d3ddevice->SetRenderState(D3DRS_DESTBLEND, D3DBLEND_ONE); std::vector<LPDIRECT3DTEXTURE9>::iterator it; for ( it=textures.begin() ; it < textures.end(); it++ ) { sprite->Draw(*it, NULL, NULL, NULL, 0xFFFFFFFF); } sprite->End(); The sprites colors are becoming transparent towards the background scene e.g.: if I use d3ddevice->Clear(0, NULL, D3DCLEAR_TARGET, D3DCOLOR_XRGB(0,100,21), 1.0f, 0); the result looks like: Is there any way to avoid that? I would like the sprites be transparent to each other but to be still solid to the background. Update3: After having sombody explained to me, how to do what @LaurentCouvidou and @JoshPetrie suggested, I have a working solution and therfore accept the answer: d3ddevice->BeginScene(); D3DCOLOR white = D3DCOLOR_RGBA((UINT)255, (UINT)255, (UINT)255, 255); D3DCOLOR black = D3DCOLOR_RGBA((UINT)0, (UINT)0, (UINT)0, 255); sprite->Begin(D3DXSPRITE_ALPHABLEND); sprite->Draw(pTextureRed, NULL, NULL, NULL, black); sprite->Draw(pTextureGreen, NULL, NULL, NULL, black); sprite->Draw(pTextureBlue, NULL, NULL, NULL, black); sprite->End(); sprite->Begin(D3DXSPRITE_ALPHABLEND); d3ddevice->SetRenderState(D3DRS_ALPHATESTENABLE, TRUE); d3ddevice->SetRenderState(D3DRS_BLENDOP, D3DBLENDOP_ADD); d3ddevice->SetRenderState(D3DRS_SRCBLEND, D3DBLEND_ONE); d3ddevice->SetRenderState(D3DRS_DESTBLEND, D3DBLEND_ONE); sprite->Draw(pTextureRed, NULL, NULL, NULL, white); sprite->Draw(pTextureGreen, NULL, NULL, NULL, white); sprite->Draw(pTextureBlue, NULL, NULL, NULL, white); sprite->End(); d3ddevice->EndScene(); d3ddevice->Present(NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL);

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  • Is the science of Computer Science dead?

    - by Veaviticus
    Question : Is the science and art of CS dead? By that I mean, the real requirements to think, plan and efficiently solve problems seems to be falling away from CS these days. The field seems to be lowering the entry-barrier so more people can 'program' without having to learn how to truly program. Background : I'm a recent graduate with a BS in Computer Science. I'm working a starting position at a decent sized company in the IT department. I mostly do .NET and other Microsoft technologies at my job, but before this I've done Java stuff through internships and the like. I personally am a C++ programmer for my own for-fun projects. In Depth : Through the work I've been doing, it seems to me that the intense disciplines of a real science don't exist in CS anymore. In the past, programmers had to solve problems efficiently in order for systems to be robust and quick. But now, with the prevailing technologies like .NET, Java and scripting languages, it seems like efficiency and robustness have been traded for ease of development. Most of the colleagues that I work with don't even have degrees in Computer Science. Most graduated with Electrical Engineering degrees, a few with Software Engineering, even some who came from tech schools without a 4 year program. Yet they get by just fine without having the technical background of CS, without having studied theories and algorithms, without having any regard for making an elegant solution (they just go for the easiest, cheapest solution). The company pushes us to use Microsoft technologies, which take all the real thought out of the matter and replace it with libraries and tools that can auto-build your project for you half the time. I'm not trying to hate on the languages, I understand that they serve a purpose and do it well, but when your employees don't know how a hash-table works, and use the wrong sorting methods, or run SQL commands that are horribly inefficient (but get the job done in an acceptable time), it feels like more effort is being put into developing technologies that coddle new 'programmers' rather than actually teaching people how to do things right. I am interested in making efficient and, in my opinion, beautiful programs. If there is a better way to do it, I'd rather go back and refactor it than let it slide. But in the corporate world, they push me to complete tasks quickly rather than elegantly. And that really bugs me. Is this what I'm going to be looking forward to the rest of my life? Are there still positions out there for people who love the science and art of CS rather than just the paycheck? And on the same note, here's a good read if you haven't seen it before The Perils Of Java Schools

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  • What does your Python development workbench look like?

    - by Fabian Fagerholm
    First, a scene-setter to this question: Several questions on this site have to do with selection and comparison of Python IDEs. (The top one currently is What IDE to use for Python). In the answers you can see that many Python programmers use simple text editors, many use sophisticated text editors, and many use a variety of what I would call "actual" integrated development environments – a single program in which all development is done: managing project files, interfacing with a version control system, writing code, refactoring code, making build configurations, writing and executing tests, "drawing" GUIs, and so on. Through its GUI, an IDE supports different kinds of workflows to accomplish different tasks during the journey of writing a program or making changes to an existing one. The exact features vary, but a good IDE has sensible workflows and automates things to let the programmer concentrate on the creative parts of writing software. The non-IDE way of writing large programs relies on a collection of tools that are typically single-purpose; they do "one thing well" as per the Unix philosophy. This "non-integrated development environment" can be thought of as a workbench, supported by the OS and generic interaction through a text or graphical shell. The programmer creates workflows in their mind (or in a wiki?), automates parts and builds a personal workbench, often gradually and as experience accumulates. The learning curve is often steeper than with an IDE, but those who have taken the time to do this can often claim deeper understanding of their tools. (Whether they are better programmers is not part of this question.) With advanced editor-platforms like Emacs, the pieces can be integrated into a whole, while with simpler editors like gedit or TextMate, the shell/terminal is typically the "command center" to drive the workbench. Sometimes people extend an existing IDE to suit their needs. What does your Python development workbench look like? What workflows have you developed and how do they work? For the first question, please give the main "driving" program – the one that you use to control the rest (Emacs, shell, etc.) the "small tools" -- the programs you reach for when doing different tasks For the second question, please describe what the goal of the workflow is (eg. "set up a new project" or "doing initial code design" or "adding a feature" or "executing tests") what steps are in the workflow and what commands you run for each step (eg. in the shell or in Emacs) Also, please describe the context of your work: do you write small one-off scripts, do you do web development (with what framework?), do you write data-munching applications (what kind of data and for what purpose), do you do scientific computing, desktop apps, or something else? Note: A good answer addresses the perspectives above – it doesn't just list a bunch of tools. It will typically be a long answer, not a short one, and will take some thinking to produce; maybe even observing yourself working.

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  • O the Agony - Merging Scrum and Waterfall

    - by John K. Hines
    If there's nothing else to know about Scrum (and Agile in general), it's this: You can't force a team to adopt Agile methods.  In all cases, the team must want to change. Well, sure, you could force a team.  But it's going to be a horrible, painful process with a huge learning curve made even steeper by the lack of training and motivation on behalf of the team.  On a completely unrelated note, I've spent the past three months working on a team that was formed by merging three separate teams.  One of these teams has been adopting and using Agile practices like Scrum since 2007, the other was in continuous bug fix mode, releasing on average one new piece of software per year using semi-Waterfall methods.  In particular, one senior developer on the Waterfall team didn't see anything in Agile but overhead. Fast forward through three months of tension, passive resistance, process pushback, and you have seven people who want to change and one who explicitly doesn't.  It took two things to make Scrum happen: The team manager took a class called "Agile Software Development using Scrum". The team lead explained the point of Agile was to reduce the workload of the senior developer, with another senior developer and the manager present. It's incredible to me how a single person can strongly influence the direction of an entire team.  Let alone if Scrum comes down as some managerial decree onto a functioning team who have no idea what it is.  Pity the fool. On the bright side, I am now an expert at drawing Visio process flows.  And I have some gentle advice for any first-level managers: If you preside over a team process change, it's beneficial to start the discussion on how the team will work as early as possible.  You should have a vision for this and guide the discussion, even if decisions are weeks away.  Don't always root for the underdog.  It's been my experience that managers who see themselves as compassionate and caring spend a great deal of time understanding and advocating for the one person on the team who feels left out.  Remember that by focusing on this one person you risk alienating the rest of the team, allow tension to build, and delay the resolution of the problem. My way would have been to decree Scrum, force all of my processes on everyone else, and use the past three months ironing out the kinks.  Which takes us all the way back to point number one. Technorati tags: Scrum Scrum Process Scrum and Waterfall

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  • Customer Support Spotlight: Clemson University

    - by cwarticki
    I've begun a Customer Support Spotlight series that highlights our wonderful customers and Oracle loyalists.  A week ago I visited Clemson University.  As I travel to visit and educate our customers, I provide many useful tips/tricks and support best practices (as found on my blog and twitter). Most of all, I always discover an Oracle gem who deserves recognition for their hard work and advocacy. Meet George Manley.  George is a Storage Engineer who has worked in Clemson's Data Center all through college, partially in the Hardware Architecture group and partially in the Storage group. George and the rest of the Storage Team work with most all of the storage technologies that they have here at Clemson. This includes a wide array of different vendors' disk arrays, with the most of them being Oracle/Sun 2540's.  He also works with SAM/QFS, ACSLS, and our SL8500 Tape Libraries (all three Oracle/Sun products). (pictured L to R, Matt Schoger (Oracle), Mark Flores (Oracle) and George Manley) George was kind enough to take us for a data center tour.  It was amazing.  I rarely get to see the inside of data centers, and this one was massive. Clemson Computing and Information Technology’s physical resources include the main data center located in the Information Technology Center at the Innovation Campus and Technology Park. The core of Clemson’s computing infrastructure, the data center has 21,000 sq ft of raised floor and is powered by a 14MW substation. The ITC power capacity is 4.5MW.  The data center is the home of both enterprise and HPC systems, and is staffed by CCIT staff on a 24 hour basis from a state of the art network operations center within the ITC. A smaller business continuance data center is located on the main campus.  The data center serves a wide variety of purposes including HPC (supercomputing) resources which are shared with other Universities throughout the state, the state's medicaid processing system, and nearly all other needs for Clemson University. Yes, that's no typo (14,256 cores and 37TB of memory!!! Thanks for the tour George and thank you very much for your time.  The tour was fantastic. I enjoyed getting to know your team and I look forward to many successes from Clemson using Oracle products. -Chris WartickiGlobal Customer Management

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  • Craftsmanship Tour: Day 2 Obtiva

    - by Liam McLennan
    I like Chicago. It is a great city for travellers. From the moment I got off the plane at O’Hare everything was easy. I took the train to ‘the Loop’ and walked around the corner to my hotel, Hotel Blake on Dearborn St. Sadly, the elevated train lines in downtown Chicago remind me of ‘Shall We Dance’. Hotel Blake is excellent (except for the breakfast) and the concierge directed me to a pizza place called Lou Malnati's for Chicago style deep-dish pizza. Lou Malnati’s would be a great place to go with a group of friends. I felt strange dining there by myself, but the food and service were excellent. As usual in the United States the portion was so large that I could not finish it, but oh how I tried. Dave Hoover, who invited me to Obtiva for the day, had asked me to arrive at 9:45am. I was up early and had some time to kill so I stopped at the Willis Tower, since it was on my way to the office. Willis Tower is 1,451 feet (442 m) tall and has an observation deck at the top. Around the observation deck are a set of acrylic boxes, protruding from the side of the building. Brave soles can walk out on the perspex and look between their feet all the way down to the street. It is unnerving. Obtiva is a progressive, craftsmanship-focused software development company in downtown Chicago. Dave even wrote a book, Apprenticeship Patterns, that provides a catalogue of patterns to assist aspiring software craftsmen to achieve their goals. I spent the morning working in Obtiva’s software studio, an open xp-style office that houses Obtiva’s in-house development team. For lunch Dave Hoover, Corey Haines, Cory Foy and I went to a local Greek restaurant (not Dancing Zorbas). Dave, Corey and Cory are three smart and motivated guys and I found their ideas enlightening. It was especially great to chat with Corey Haines since he was the inspiration for my craftsmanship tour in the first place. After lunch I recorded a brief interview with Dave. Unfortunately, the battery in my camera went flat so I missed recording some interesting stuff. Interview with Dave Hoover In the evening Obtiva hosted an rspec hackfest with David Chelimsky and others. This was an excellent opportunity to be around some of the very best ruby programmers. At 10pm I went back to my hotel to get some rest before my train north the next morning.

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  • 30 Steps to Master ASP.NET MVC Application development

    - by Rajesh Pillai
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} Welcome Readers!,   I am starting out a new series on ASP.NET  MVC skill building which will be posted over the next couple of weeks.  Let me know your thoughts on the content, which I have planned and a couple of them has been taken from ASP.NET MVC2 Cookbook. (NOTE: Only the heading has been taken, the content will be not :)).   Do let me know what you would like to see, or any additional inputs or ideas to cover in this topics.  The 30 steps are oultined below for quick reference.  Will start filling this out quickly.   Outlined is the ‘30’ step to master ASP.NET MVC.   A Peek Into Model What is a model? Different types of model Presentation/ViewModel Model Mapping (AutoMapper)   A Peak into View How view works in ASP.NET MVC? View Engine Design Custom View Engine View Best Practices Templated Helpers Partial Views   A Peak into Controller Introduction Controller Design Controller Best Practices Asynchronous Controller Custom Action Result Action Filters Controller Factory to use with IOC   Routes Explanation Routes from the database Routes from XML More complex routing   Master Pages Basics Setting Master Page Dynamically   Working with data in the view Repeating Views Array of check boxes Array of radio buttons Paged data CRUD Client side action Confirmation Dialog (modal window) jqGrid   Working with Forms   Validation Model Validation with DataAnnotations Using the xVal validation framework Client side validation with jQuery Validation Fluent Validation Model Binders   Templating Create strongly typed helper using T4 Custom View Templates with T4 Create custom MVC project template using T4   IOC AutoFac Ninject Unity Application   Areas   jQuery, Ajax and jQuery Plugins   State Maintenance Application State User state Cookies Webfarm   Error Handling View error handling Controller error handling ELMAH (Error Logging Modules and Handlers)   Authentication and Authorization User Registration form SignOn Process Password Reminder Membership and Roles Windows authentication Restricting access to all pages Restricting access to selected pages Restricting access to pages by role Restricting access to a controller Restricting access to selected area   Profiles and Themes Using Profiles Inheriting a Profile Migrating an anonymous profile Creating custom themes Using themes User personalized themes   Configuration Adding custom application settings in web.config Displaying custom error messages Accessing other web.config configuration elements Adding custom configuration elements to web.config Encrypting web.config sections   Tracing, Debugging and Logging   Caching Caching a whole page Caching pages based on route details Caching pages based on browser type and version Caching pages based custom strings Caching partial pages Caching application data Object Caching Using Microsoft Velocity Using MemCache Using AppFabric cache   Localization   HTTP Handlers and Modules   Security XSS/CSRF AnitForgery Encoding   HtmlHelpers Strongly typed helpers Writing custom helpers   Repository Pattern (Data access)   WF/WCF   Unit Testing   Mocking Framework   Integration Testing   Load / Performance Testing   Deployment    Once again let me know your thoughts on this.   Till then, Enjoy MVC'ing!!!

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  • Vitality of Product Information Management Showcased at OpenWorld 2012

    - by Mala Narasimharajan
     By Sachin Patel Can you hear the countdown clock ticking!! OpenWorld 2012 is almost here and as I write this Oracle is buzzing with fresh new ideas and solutions that will be showcased this year. What an exciting time for all of us to be in midst of a digital revolution. Whether it is Apple fans clamoring to find every new feature that has been added to the iPhone 5 or a startup launching a new digital thermostat (has anyone looked at the new one from Nest ), product information is a vital for companies to grow and compete in this cut-throat market. Customer today struggle to aggregate and enrich this product data from the myriad of systems they have in place to run their businesses and operations. Having a product information strategy is paramount to align your sales channels and operations with the most accurate and upto date product data. We have a number of sessions this year at OpenWorld where you can gain more insight into how Oracle’s next generation of Fusion Applications, in this case Fusion Product Hub can provide you with a solution to streamline and get control of your Product Master Data. Enabling Trusted Enterprise Product Data with Oracle Fusion Product HubTuesday, October 2nd 11:45 am, Moscone West 2022 Join me Sachin Patel, Director of Product Strategy and Milan Bhatia, VP of Development as we discuss how you can enable trusted product master data in your enterprise. In this session we plan to cover the challenges companies face today in mastering product data. The discussion will also include how Fusion Product Hub brings new and innovative features to empower your product data owners to create a holistic and rich product definition that can be leveraged across your enterprise. We will also be joined by Pawel Fidelus from Fideltronik an Early Adopter for Fusion Product Hub who will showcase their plans to implement Fusion Product Hub and the value it will bring to Fideltronik Multichannel Fulfillment Excellence in Direct-to-Consumer Market Thursday, October 4th, 12:45 am, Moscone West 2024 Do you have multiple order capture systems? Do you have difficulty in fulfilling orders for your customers across various channels and suppliers? Mark Carson, Director, Fusion DOO and Brad Kerr, Director, AGSS will be showcasing the Fusion Distributed Order Orchestration solution and how companies can orchestrate orders from multiple order capture systems and route them to the appropriate fulfillment system. Sachin Patel, Director Product Strategy for Product MDM will highlight the business pain points in consolidating and commercializing data from a Multi Channel Commerce point of view and how Fusion Product Hub helps in allowing you to provide a single source of truth to drive a singular and rich customer experience. Oracle Fusion Supply Chain Management: Customer Adoption and Experiences                                                Wednesday, October 3rd 10:15 am, Moscone West 2003 This is a great session to attend to learn about how Fusion Supply Chain Management and Fusion Product Hub Early Adopters, including Boeing and Fideltronik are leveraging Fusion Applications to improve their Supply Chain operations. Have a great OpenWorld and see you soon!!

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  • SQL SERVER – OLEDB – Link Server – Wait Type – Day 23 of 28

    - by pinaldave
    When I decided to start writing about this wait type, the very first question that came to my mind was, “What does ‘OLEDB’ stand for?” A quick search on Wikipedia tells me that OLEDB means Object Linking and Embedding Database. (How many of you knew this?) Anyway, I found it very interesting that this wait type was in one of the top 10 wait types in many of the systems I have come across in my performance tuning experience. Books On-Line: ????OLEDB occurs when SQL Server calls the SQL Server Native Client OLE DB Provider. This wait type is not used for synchronization. Instead, it indicates the duration of calls to the OLE DB provider. OLEDB Explanation: This wait type primarily happens when Link Server or Remove Query has been executed. The most common case wherein this wait type is visible is during the execution of Linked Server. When SQL Server is retrieving data from the remote server, it uses OLEDB API to retrieve the data. It is possible that the remote system is not quick enough or the connection between them is not fast enough, leading SQL Server to wait for the result’s return from the remote (or external) server. This is the time OLEDB wait type occurs. Reducing OLEDB wait: Check the Link Server configuration. Checking Disk-Related Perfmon Counters Average Disk sec/Read (Consistent higher value than 4-8 millisecond is not good) Average Disk sec/Write (Consistent higher value than 4-8 millisecond is not good) Average Disk Read/Write Queue Length (Consistent higher value than benchmark is not good) At this point in time, I am not able to think of any more ways on reducing this wait type. Do you have any opinion about this subject? Please share it here and I will share your comment with the rest of the Community, and of course, with due credit unto you. Please read all the post in the Wait Types and Queue series. Note: The information presented here is from my experience and there is no way that I claim it to be accurate. I suggest reading Book OnLine for further clarification. All the discussion of Wait Stats in this blog is generic and varies from system to system. It is recommended that you test this on a development server before implementing it to a production server. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Wait Stats, SQL Wait Types, T SQL, Technology

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  • Work at Oracle as a Fresh Student by Ang Sun

    - by Nadiya
    The past months have flown by since I started working at Oracle; but at the same time it feels like I’ve been here forever. I came to Beijing to find a job after I graduated from The University of Southampton with a MSc in Software Engineering. I got an offer the next day after I had an interview with my manager. This new style of working life hasn’t been a problem with me. The atmosphere here is fantastic and everyone is so friendly and easy to talk to. I am the first member in our AIE China Team. We do appreciate those colleagues from Core I/O team who helped us a lot to familiarize ourselves with the new environment. After hire orientation training I got to know many new people from various teams including Middleware, People Soft and Solaris. Also Oracle provides weekly system online training as additional training for those people who need it. The best thing about working at Oracle is that there is a balance between work and rest. It’s good to have a really nice park and green space near the Oracle buildings. Most of us like to walk around the riverside after lunch before we get back to work. I like to grab a cup of latte before discussing issues and the schedule of our projects in a weekly conference call with my US colleagues. It has been great experience; I am working alongside talented colleagues from different countries and nationalities. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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  • Playing NSF music in FMOD.net

    - by Tesserex
    So, as the title says, I want to be able to play NSF files using FMOD, because my project already uses FMOD and I'd rather not replace it. This will involve figuring out how existing players and emulators work and porting it. I haven't yet found an existing player that uses FMOD. My starting point is the MyNes source from http://sourceforge.net/projects/mynes/. There are two big steps between here and what I'm looking for. MyNes plays from a ROM, not NSF. So, I have to rip out the APU and get it to play NSF files. The MyNes APU uses SlimDX, so I have to convert that to FMOD.NET. I am really stuck about how to go about either of these, because I'm not that familiar with audio formats and it's hard finding resources online. So here are a few questions: From what I can tell from the NSF spec at http://kevtris.org/nes/nsfspec.txt, it's just contains the relevant memory section of the ROM, plus the header. If anyone can verify or correct this that would be great. The emulator APU uses data from the rest of the emulator to play, including things like cycle counts. I'm not sure what replaces this in a standalone player. Can't I just load all the music data at once into a stream and play it? Joining #1 and #2, does the header data from the NSF substitute for some of the ROM data in the emulator code? Using FMOD, will I be following the usercreatedsound example for loading a stream? And does this format count as PCM? Specifically MyNes says PCM8. Any tips on loading / playing the stream in FMOD are appreciated. As an aside, I don't really understand the loading / playing sections of the spec I linked at all. It seems to apply to 6502 systems / emulators only and not to my situation. I know it's a long shot for anyone here to have enough experience in this area to help, but anything you can provide is definitely appreciated. A link to an existing .NET library that does this would be even better, but I don't believe one exists.

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  • Rendering another screen on top of main game screen in fullscreen mode

    - by wolf
    my game runs in fullscreen mode and uses active rendering. The graphics are drawn on the fullscreen window in each game loop: public void render() { Window w = screen.getFullScreenWindow(); Graphics2D g = screen.getGraphics(); renderer.render(g, level, w.getWidth(), w.getHeight()); g.dispose(); screen.update(); } This is the screen.update() method: public void update(){ Window w = device.getFullScreenWindow(); if(w != null){ BufferStrategy s = w.getBufferStrategy(); if(!s.contentsLost()){ s.show(); } } } I want to display another screen on my main game screen (menu, inventory etc). Lets say I have a JPanel inventory, which has a grid of inventory cells (manually drawn) and some Swing components like JPopupMenu. So i tried adding that to my window and repainting it in the game loop, which worked okay most of the time... but sometimes the panel wouldn't get displayed. Blindly moving things around in the inventory worked, but it just didn't display. When i alt-tabbed out and back again, it displayed properly. I also tried drawing the rest of the inventory on my full screen window and using a JPanel to display only the buttons and popupmenus. The inventory displayed properly, but the Swing components keep flickering. I'm guessing this is because I don't know how to combine active and passive rendering. public void render() { Graphics2D g = screen.getGraphics(); invManager.render(g); g.dispose(); screen.update(); invPanel.repaint(); } Should i use something else instead of a JPanel? I don't really need active rendering for these screens, but I don't understand why they sometimes just don't display. Or maybe I should just make my own custom components instead of using Swing? I also read somewhere that using multiple panels/frames in a game is bad practice so should I draw everything on one window/frame/panel? If I CAN use JPanels for this, should I add and remove them every time the inventory is toggled? Or just change their visibility?

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  • European e-government Action Plan all about interoperability

    - by trond-arne.undheim
    Yesterday, the European Commission released its European eGovernment Action Plan for 2011-2015. The plan includes measures on providing deeper user empowerment, enhancing the Internal Market, more efficiency and effectiveness of public administrations, and putting in place pre-conditions for developing e-government. The Good - Defines interoperability very clearly. Calls interoperability "a pre-condition for cross-border eGovernment services" (a very strong formulation) and says interoperability "is supported by open specifications". - Uses the terminology "open specifications" which, let's face it, is pretty close to "open standards" which is the term the rest of the world would use. - Confirms that Member States are fully committed to the political priorities of the Malmö Declaration (which was all about open standards) including the very strong action: by 2013: All Member States will have incorporated the political priorities of the Malmö Declaration in their national strategies. Such tight Action Plan integration between Commission and Member State priorities has seldom been attempted before, particularly not in a field where European legal competence is virtually non-existent. What we see now, is the subtle force of soft power rather than the rough force of regulation. In this case, it is the Member States who want Europe to take the lead. Very refreshing! Some quotes that show the commitment to interoperability and open specifications: "The emergence of innovative technologies such as "service-oriented architectures" (SOA), or "clouds" of services,  together with more open specifications which allow for greater sharing, re-use and interoperability reinforce the ability of ICT to play a key role in this quest for effficiency in the public sector." (p.4) "Interoperability is supported through open specifications" (p.13) 2.4.1. Open Specifications and Interoperability (p.13 has a whole section dedicated to this important topic. Open specifications and interoperability are nearly 100% interrelated): "Interoperability is the ability of systems and machines to exchange, process and correctly interpret information. It is more than just a technical challenge, as it also involves legal, organisational and semantic aspects of handling  data" (p.13) "standards and  open platforms offer opportunities for more cost-effective use of resources and delivery of services" (p.13). The Bad Shies away from defining open standards, or even open specifications, the EU's preferred term for the key enabler of interoperability. Verdict 90/100, a very respectable score.

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  • SSIS Reporting Pack update

    - by jamiet
    Its been a while since I last posted anything in regard to SSIS Reporting Pack, the most recent release being on 27th May 2012, so here is a short update. There is still lots of work to do on SSIS Reporting Pack; lots more features to add, lots of performance work to be done, and a few bug fixes too. I have also been (fairly) hard at work on a framework to be used in conjunction with SSIS 2012 that I refer to as the Restart Framework (currently residing at http://ssisrestartframework.codeplex.com/). There is still much work to be done on the Restart Framework (not least some useful documentation on how to use it) which is why I haven’t mentioned it publicly before now although I am actively checking in changes. One thing I am considering is amalgamating the two projects into one; this would mean I could build a suite of reports that both work against the SSIS Catalog (what you currently know as “SSIS Reporting Pack”) and also against this Restart Framework thing. No decision has been made as yet though. There have been a number of bug reports and feature suggestions for SSIS Reporting Pack added to the Issue Tracker. Thank you to everyone that has submitted something, rest assured I am not going to ignore them forever; my time is at a premium right now unfortunately due to … well … life… so working on these items isn’t near the top of my priority list. Lastly, I am actively using SSIS Reporting Pack in a production environment right now and I’m happy to report that it is proving to be very useful. One of the reports that I have put a lot of time into is execution executable duration.rdl and its proving very adept at easily identifying bottlenecks in our SSIS 2012 executions: The report allows you to browse through the hierarchy of executables in each execution and each bar represents the duration of each executable in relation to all the other executables; longer bars being a good indication of where problems might lie. The colour of the bar indicates whether it was successful or not (green=success). Hovering over a bar brings up a tooltip showing more information about that executable. Clicking on a bar allows you to compare this particular instance of the executable against other executions. Please do let me know if you are using SSIS Reporting Pack. I would like to hear any anecdotes you might have, good or bad. @Jamiet

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  • SQL SERVER – CSVExpress and Quick Data Load

    - by pinaldave
    One of the newest ETL tools is CSVexpress.com.  This is a program that can quickly load any CSV file into ODBC compliant databases uses data integration.  For those of you familiar with databases and how they operate, the question that comes to mind might be what use this program will have in your life. I have written earlier article on this subject over here SQL SERVER – Import CSV into Database – Transferring File Content into a Database Table using CSVexpress. You might know that RDBMS have automatic support for loading CSV files into tables – but it is not quite as easy as one click of a button.  First of all, most databases have a command line interface and you need the file and configuration script in order to load up.  You also need to know enough to write the script – which for novices can be extremely daunting.  On top of all this, if you work with more than one type of RDBMS, you need to know the ins and outs of uploading and writing script for more than one program. So you might begin to see how useful CSVexpress.com might be!  There are many other tools that enable uploading files to a database.  They can be very fancy – some can generate configuration files automatically, others load the data directly.  Again, novices will be able to tell you why these aren’t the most useful programs in the world.  You see, these programs were created with SQL in mind, not for uploading data.  If you don’t have large amounts of data to upload, getting the configurations right can be a long process and you will have to check the code that is generated yourself.  Not exactly “easy to use” for novices. That makes CSVexpress.com one of the best new tools available for everyone – but especially people who don’t want to learn a lot of new material all at once.  CSVexpress has an easy to navigate graphical user interface and no scripting or coding is required.  There are built-in constraints and data validations, and you can configure transforms and reject records right there on the screen.  But the best thing of all – it’s free! That’s right, you can download CSVexpress for free from www.csvexpress.com and start easily uploading and configuring riles almost immediately.  If you’re currently happy with your method of data configuration, keep up with the good work.  For the rest of us, there’s CSVexpress.com. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Utility, T SQL, Technology

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  • Ubuntu 12.04 Bootloader failed to install

    - by Chris
    Sorry about the excessively long question, but I figured giving more information would be better. I recently bought a new desktop for myself, running Windows 7. It has two hard drives, and I wanted to install Ubuntu on a small partition on the second hard drive. I created 25GB "free space" in Windows and ran a LiveCD install. I wanted to select the install options myself but accidentally selected "Install alongside Windows 7," but it seemed to pick up the free space and installed itself there as I wanted it to. However, I was told that the bootloader installation had failed. I chose to "Cancel installation," leaving my computer unable to boot. I wiped my computer and reinstalled Windows. After that, I tried installing Ubuntu through Windows using WUBI, once using files from my LiveCD and once downloading everything again. Both times the install succeeded, but both times when I restarted and tried to load Ubuntu, it gave me an error - wubildr.mbr was corrupt or missing. I checked in Windows - it was indeed present on the C:\ drive. I went back to the LiveCD installation, this time going the custom options route. I assigned 16GB to an Ext4 journaling file system and 10GB to a swap file. I got the same bootloader error as before. Being prompted to select a different partition to install the bootloader to, I first tried the partition Ubuntu was installed on. A window came up saying that the install had succeeded, but a second window gave me the same error and choices as before. I went through every single option it gave me, including the Windows partition and the hard drives themselves (dev/sda, dev/sdb). Same result. I then chose to not install a bootloader. Windows still works fine, and I assume Ubuntu has installed but is unbootable. Knowing that my computer could potentially brick itself again - and, this time around, with a lot of data to lose and hassle to go through if I mess it up - I really don't want to do anything without some advice. So I'll ask this: a) Why did the bootloader fail to install? Can I fix the error and install Ubuntu fresh? b) Is there any way to get around the error, install the bootloader, and point it towards an existing installation of Ubuntu? c) Is there a quicker and easier solution I might have missed? EDIT: Thanks for the tip, AthloX. After testing the liveCD in Virtualbox with no installation problems, I looked around for some alternate bootloaders but had no success. I attempted another install, which installed the bootloader and Ubuntu just fine but bricked Windows 7. I wiped both hard disks clean, including some "System Reserved" partitions I hadn't noticed before, before re-installing Windows 7 on one hard drive and immediately afterwards installing Ubuntu on the other. Now the computer boots into Windows, but I can pop into the BIOS at startup to boot into Ubunbtu via it's bootloader, and I'm guessing it'll only take a bit of poking at the BIOS to swap the load order. Many thanks!

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  • Voxel Face Crawling (Mesh simplification, possibly using greedy)

    - by Tim Winter
    This is in regards to a Minecraft-like terrain engine. I store blocks in chunks (16x256x16 blocks in a chunk). When I generate a chunk, I use multiple procedural techniques to set the terrain and to place objects. While generating, I keep one 1D array for the full chunk (solid or not) and a separate 1D array of solid blocks. After generation, I iterate through the solid blocks checking their neighbors so I only generate block faces that don't have solid neighbors. I store which faces to generate in their own list (that's 6 lists, one per possible face). When rendering a chunk, I render all lists in the camera's current chunk and only the lists facing the camera in all other chunks. Using a 2D atlas with this little shader trick Andrew Russell suggested, I want to merge similar faces together completely. That is, if they are in the same list (same normal), are adjacent to each other, have the same light level, etc. My assumption would be to have each of the 6 lists sorted by the axis they rest on, then by the other two axes (the list for the top of a block would be sorted by it's Y value, then X, then Z). With this alone, I could quite easily merge strips of faces, but I'm looking to merge more than just strips together when possible. I've read up on this greedy meshing algorithm, but I am having a lot of trouble understanding it. To even use it, I would think I'd need to perform a type of flood-fill per sorted list to get the groups of merge-able faces. Then, per group, perform the greedy algorithm. It all sounds awfully expensive if I would ever want dynamic terrain/lighting after initial generation. So, my question: To perform merging of faces as described (ignoring whether it's a bad idea for dynamic terrain/lighting), is there perhaps an algorithm that is simpler to implement? I would also quite happily accept an answer that walks me through the greedy algorithm in a much simpler way (a link or explanation). I don't mind a slight performance decrease if it's easier to implement or even if it's only a little better than just doing strips. I worry that most algorithms focus on triangles rather than quads and using a 2D atlas the way I am, I don't know that I could implement something triangle based with my current skills. PS: I already frustum cull per chunk and as described, I also cull faces between solid blocks. I don't occlusion cull yet and may never.

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  • GRUB 2 problem after Mac OS X update

    - by vallllll
    I have a MacBook Pro in dual boot Mac OS X / Ubuntu 12.04 (Precise Pangolin). When I boot it I have a rEFIt menu, and I can chose between Mac OS X and Linux. A few days ago I have updated Mac OS X from 10.7 (Lion) to 10.8 (Mountain Lion) using a .dmg image provided by my company. Since then when I select Linux in rEFIt it says: No bootable device --insert boot disk and press any key I have tried going to rEFIt partitioning tool. This is what I got: As suggested in Mac OSX Mavericks update rEFIT broken I wanted to fix the issue the same way as AndrewM, but I don't have the option "MBR table must be updated". Then I booted on Ubuntu 12.04 CD, chose repair broken system, chose root patition /dev/sda6 as this is where my Ubuntu file system is. I got a shell, but I don't really know how to repair the poblem since if it was just Windows dual boot. A GRUB update would solve the issue, but here I don't know where the GRUB 2 is installed. Here are results from Parted, and it is a bit confusing for me as the Mac partition is the one with boot: As you can see the entry 1 is an EFI system partition and is the boot partition, so I wonder if I should install GRUB there or in sda6, which is the Ubuntu filesystem. I am not sure should I work on rEFIt shell or Ubuntu. Unfortunately, I don't remember where GRUB was before update. UPDATE: using same link above I have tried RoundSparrow hilltx answer and installed rEFInd, but the result is same.... still no bootable device when I select Linux. UPDATE 2: just used alternate CD again, mounted on /dev/sda6 and the ran update-grub. It seemed to wok and started listing all my kernels. But after rebooting several times still no bootable device when I select Linux in rEFInd. UDATE 3: Have tried to boot from Ubuntu cd and select "boot from first available filesystem. I got error and dropped to grub rescue shell. I even followed the indications on this link but was unable to boot as I tried to use sdb6 but no luck UPDATE 4 as per Rob Smith request here is out put from ls -l $(find /EFI -iname "*.efi") *MACOSX -rw-r--r--@ 1 root admin 55048 29 oct 17:44 /EFI/refind/drivers_x64/btrfs_x64.efi -rw-r--r--@ 1 root admin 38888 29 oct 17:44 /EFI/refind/drivers_x64/ext2_x64.efi -rw-r--r--@ 1 root admin 39304 29 oct 17:44 /EFI/refind/drivers_x64/ext4_x64.efi -rw-r--r--@ 1 root admin 43432 29 oct 17:44 /EFI/refind/drivers_x64/hfs_x64.efi -rw-r--r--@ 1 root admin 38984 29 oct 17:44 /EFI/refind/drivers_x64/iso9660_x64.efi -rw-r--r--@ 1 root admin 43656 29 oct 17:44 /EFI/refind/drivers_x64/reiserfs_x64.efi -rw-r--r--@ 1 root admin 175016 29 oct 17:44 /EFI/refind/refind_x64.efi -rw-rw-r-- 1 root admin 73232 7 mar 2010 /EFI/tools/dbounce.efi -rw-rw-r-- 1 root admin 763248 7 mar 2010 /EFI/tools/dhclient.efi -rw-rw-r-- 1 root admin 67024 7 mar 2010 /EFI/tools/drawbox.efi -rw-rw-r-- 1 root admin 71312 7 mar 2010 /EFI/tools/dumpfv.efi -rw-rw-r-- 1 root admin 84848 7 mar 2010 /EFI/tools/dumpprot.efi -rw-rw-r-- 1 root admin 472912 7 mar 2010 /EFI/tools/ed.efi -rw-rw-r-- 1 root admin 143856 7 mar 2010 /EFI/tools/edit.efi -rw-rw-r-- 1 root admin 1801008 7 mar 2010 /EFI/tools/ftp.efi -rw-r--r--@ 1 root admin 47848 29 oct 17:44 /EFI/tools/gptsync_x64.efi -rw-rw-r-- 1 root admin 320560 7 mar 2010 /EFI/tools/hexdump.efi -rw-rw-r-- 1 root admin 286384 7 mar 2010 /EFI/tools/hostname.efi -rw-rw-r-- 1 root admin 534416 7 mar 2010 /EFI/tools/ifconfig.efi -rw-rw-r-- 1 root admin 395344 7 mar 2010 /EFI/tools/loadarg.efi -rw-rw-r-- 1 root admin 587408 7 mar 2010 /EFI/tools/ping.efi -rw-rw-r-- 1 root admin 730416 7 mar 2010 /EFI/tools/pppd.efi -rw-rw-r-- 1 root admin 561360 7 mar 2010 /EFI/tools/route.efi -rw-rw-r-- 1 root admin 1961712 7 mar 2010 /EFI/tools/shell.efi -rw-rw-r-- 1 root admin 750224 7 mar 2010 /EFI/tools/tcpipv4.efi -rw-rw-r-- 1 root admin 4048 7 mar 2010 /EFI/tools/textmode.efi -rw-rw-r-- 1 root admin 320656 7 mar 2010 /EFI/tools/which.efi *LINUX

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  • SharePoint 2010 Data Retrival Techinques

    - by Jayant Sharma
    In SharePoint, we have two options to perform CRUD operation.1. using server side code2. using client side codeusing server side code, we have 1. CAML2. LINQusing client side code, we have 1. Client Object Model    1.1.      Managed Client Object Model     1.2.     Silverlight Client Object Model    1.3.     ECMA Client Object Model2. SharePoint Web Services3. ADO Data Service (based on REST Web Services)4. Using RPC Call (owssvr.dll)Which and when these options are used depend upon requirements. Every options are certain advantages and disadvantages. So, before start development of any new sharepoint project, it is important to understand the limitations of different methods.Server Object Model is used when our application is host on the same server on which sharepoint is installed. while Client Side code is used to access sharepoint from client system. In SharePoint 2010 specially Client Object Model (COM) are introduced to perform the sharepoint operations from client system. Advantage of CAML:    -  It is fast.    -  Can be use it from all kind of technology like Silverlight, or Jquery    -  You can use U2U CAML Query builder to generate CAML Query.Disadvantage Of CAML:    - Error Prone, as we can detect the error only at runtimeAdvantage of LINQ:    -  Object Oriented technique (Object Relation Model)    -  LINQ  to SharePoint provider are working with Strongly Type List Item Objects, So intellisence are present at runtime    -  No need of knowledge of CAML    -  Less Error Prone as it as it uses C# syntex.    -  You can compare two Fields of SharePoint ListDisadvantage Of LINQ:    -  List Attachment is not supported in SPMetal Tool    -  Created By, Created, Modified and Modified By Fields are not created by SPMetal Tool.    -  Custom fields are not created by SPMetal Tools    -  External Lists are not supported    -  Though at backend LINQ genenates CAML Query so it is slower than directly using CAML in Code.  Advantage of Client Object Model    -  Used to access sharepoint from client system    -  No WebServer is required at Client End    - Can use Silverlight and JavaScripts to make better and fast User experienceDisadvantage of Client Object Model    -  You cannot use RunwithEleveatedPrivilege    - Cross Site Collection query are not possible    - Lesser API's are availableADO.Net Data Services:    -  Only List based operations are possible, other type of operations are not possible.SharePoint Web Services and RPC Call:    - Previously it was used in SharePoint 2007 but after the introduction  of Client Object Model,  Microsoft recommends not to use Web Services to fetch data from SharePoint. In SharePoint 2010 it is avaliable only for backward compatibility.Ref: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee539764Jayant Sharma

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  • Atheros AR9285 / Lenovo G560 wireless not working after installing 13.04

    - by teyi
    I had Ubuntu 12.04 initially installed on my laptop. I upgraded to 12.10 then 13.04. Everything worked fine, including wireless. After adding a new memory card ( I only had 2 gb and one memory slot free) my wireess stopped working. I backed up all my data and reinstallled Ubuntu 13.04. Everything works fine except wireess. I bought this laptop in 2010 from Japan. It has Intel Core i5 CPU M 450 @2.40 Ghz * 4 3,7 Gb RAM os type 64 bit The output of iwconfig: eth0 no wireless extensions. lo no wireless extensions. wlan0 IEEE 802.11bgn ESSID:off/any Mode:Managed Access Point: Not-Associated Tx-Power=15 dBm Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off Power Management:off The output of rfkill list all: 0: ideapad_wlan: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no 1: phy0: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no The output of lshw -C network: *-network description: Wireless interface product: AR9285 Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) vendor: Atheros Communications Inc. physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:05:00.0 logical name: wlan0 version: 01 serial: 78:e4:00:7d:fe:fa width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless configuration: broadcast=yes driver=ath9k driverversion=3.8.0-19-generic firmware=N/A latency=0 link=no multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11bgn resources: irq:17 memory:d6400000-d640ffff *-network description: Ethernet interface product: RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller vendor: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:06:00.0 logical name: eth0 version: 02 serial: 88:ae:1d:2b:36:ac size: 100Mbit/s capacity: 100Mbit/s width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress msix vpd bus_master cap_list rom ethernet physical tp mii 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd autonegotiation configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=r8169 driverversion=2.3LK-NAPI duplex=full ip=192.168.2.2 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes port=MII speed=100Mbit/s resources: irq:41 ioport:2000(size=256) memory:d2410000-d2410fff memory:d2400000-d240ffff memory:d2420000-d243ffff The wi-fi network appears as disconnected ( it's greyed out) Strangely enough I see a wifi network ( not mine) but not mine or the rest. That network doesn't require a password . I click on it, try to connect and i get an error message: failed to connect to xxxxx ... 32) The access point/org/freedesktop/NetworkManager/AccessPoint/0 was not in the scan list. Someone help please

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  • How do you stop OgreBullet Capsule from falling over?

    - by Nathan Baggs
    I've just started implementing bullet into my Ogre project. I followed the install instructions here: http://www.ogre3d.org/tikiwiki/OgreBullet+Tutorial+1 And the rest if the tutorial here: http://www.ogre3d.org/tikiwiki/OgreBullet+Tutorial+2 I got that to work fine however now I wanted to extend it to a handle a first person camera. I created a CapsuleShape and a Rigid Body (like the tutorial did for the boxes) however when I run the game the capsule falls over and rolls around on the floor, causing the camera swing wildly around. I need a way to fix the capsule to always stay upright, but I have no idea how Below is the code I'm using. (part of) Header File OgreBulletDynamics::DynamicsWorld *mWorld; // OgreBullet World OgreBulletCollisions::DebugDrawer *debugDrawer; std::deque<OgreBulletDynamics::RigidBody *> mBodies; std::deque<OgreBulletCollisions::CollisionShape *> mShapes; OgreBulletCollisions::CollisionShape *character; OgreBulletDynamics::RigidBody *characterBody; Ogre::SceneNode *charNode; Ogre::Camera* mCamera; Ogre::SceneManager* mSceneMgr; Ogre::RenderWindow* mWindow; main file bool MinimalOgre::go(void) { ... mCamera = mSceneMgr->createCamera("PlayerCam"); mCamera->setPosition(Vector3(0,0,0)); mCamera->lookAt(Vector3(0,0,300)); mCamera->setNearClipDistance(5); mCameraMan = new OgreBites::SdkCameraMan(mCamera); OgreBulletCollisions::CollisionShape *Shape; Shape = new OgreBulletCollisions::StaticPlaneCollisionShape(Vector3(0,1,0), 0); // (normal vector, distance) OgreBulletDynamics::RigidBody *defaultPlaneBody = new OgreBulletDynamics::RigidBody( "BasePlane", mWorld); defaultPlaneBody->setStaticShape(Shape, 0.1, 0.8); // (shape, restitution, friction) // push the created objects to the deques mShapes.push_back(Shape); mBodies.push_back(defaultPlaneBody); character = new OgreBulletCollisions::CapsuleCollisionShape(1.0f, 1.0f, Vector3(0, 1, 0)); charNode = mSceneMgr->getRootSceneNode()->createChildSceneNode(); charNode->attachObject(mCamera); charNode->setPosition(mCamera->getPosition()); characterBody = new OgreBulletDynamics::RigidBody("character", mWorld); characterBody->setShape( charNode, character, 0.0f, // dynamic body restitution 10.0f, // dynamic body friction 10.0f, // dynamic bodymass Vector3(0,0,0), Quaternion(0, 0, 1, 0)); mShapes.push_back(character); mBodies.push_back(characterBody); ... }

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  • SQL SERVER – Shard No More – An Innovative Look at Distributed Peer-to-peer SQL Database

    - by pinaldave
    There is no doubt that SQL databases play an important role in modern applications. In an ideal world, a single database can handle hundreds of incoming connections from multiple clients and scale to accommodate the related transactions. However the world is not ideal and databases are often a cause of major headaches when applications need to scale to accommodate more connections, transactions, or both. In order to overcome scaling issues, application developers often resort to administrative acrobatics, also known as database sharding. Sharding helps to improve application performance and throughput by splitting the database into two or more shards. Unfortunately, this practice also requires application developers to code transactional consistency into their applications. Getting transactional consistency across multiple SQL database shards can prove to be very difficult. Sharding requires developers to think about things like rollbacks, constraints, and referential integrity across tables within their applications when these types of concerns are best handled by the database. It also makes other common operations such as joins, searches, and memory management very difficult. In short, the very solution implemented to overcome throughput issues becomes a bottleneck in and of itself. What if database sharding was no longer required to scale your application? Let me explain. For the past several months I have been following and writing about NuoDB, a hot new SQL database technology out of Cambridge, MA. NuoDB is officially out of beta and they have recently released their first release candidate so I decided to dig into the database in a little more detail. Their architecture is very interesting and exciting because it completely eliminates the need to shard a database to achieve higher throughput. Each NuoDB database consists of at least three or more processes that enable a single database to run across multiple hosts. These processes include a Broker, a Transaction Engine and a Storage Manager.  Brokers are responsible for connecting client applications to Transaction Engines and maintain a global view of the network to keep track of the multiple Transaction Engines available at any time. Transaction Engines are in-memory processes that client applications connect to for processing SQL transactions. Storage Managers are responsible for persisting data to disk and serving up records to the Transaction Managers if they don’t exist in memory. The secret to NuoDB’s approach to solving the sharding problem is that it is a truly distributed, peer-to-peer, SQL database. Each of its processes can be deployed across multiple hosts. When client applications need to connect to a Transaction Engine, the Broker will automatically route the request to the most available process. Since multiple Transaction Engines and Storage Managers running across multiple host machines represent a single logical database, you never have to resort to sharding to get the throughput your application requires. NuoDB is a new pioneer in the SQL database world. They are making database scalability simple by eliminating the need for acrobatics such as sharding, and they are also making general administration of the database simpler as well.  Their distributed database appears to you as a user like a single SQL Server database.  With their RC1 release they have also provided a web based administrative console that they call NuoConsole. This tool makes it extremely easy to deploy and manage NuoDB processes across one or multiple hosts with the click of a mouse button. See for yourself by downloading NuoDB here. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: CodeProject, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology Tagged: NuoDB

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  • Exposed: Fake Social Marketing

    - by Mike Stiles
    Brands and marketers who want to build their social popularity on a foundation of lies are starting to face more of an uphill climb. Fake social is starting to get exposed, and there are a lot of emperors getting caught without any clothes. Facebook is getting ready to do a purge of “Likes” on Pages that were a result of bots, fake accounts, and even real users who were duped or accidentally Liked a Page. Most of those accidental Likes occur on mobile, where it’s easy for large fingers to hit the wrong space. Depending on the degree to which your Page has been the subject of such activity, you may see your number of Likes go down. But don’t sweat it, that’s a good thing. The social world has turned the corner and assessed the value of a Like. And the verdict is that a Like is valuable as an opportunity to build a real relationship with a real customer. Its value pales immensely compared to a user who’s actually engaged with the brand. Those fake Likes aren’t doing you any good. Huge numbers may once have impressed, but it’s not fooling anybody anymore. Facebook’s selling point to marketers is the ability to use a brand’s fans to reach friends of those fans. Consequently, there has to be validity and legitimacy to a fan count. Speaking of mobile, Trademob recently reported 40% of clicks are essentially worthless, because 22% of them are accidental (again with the fat fingers), while 18% are trickery. Publishers will but huge banner ads next to tiny app buttons to increase the odds of an accident. Others even hide a banner behind another to score 2 clicks instead of 1. Pontiflex and Harris Interactive last year found 47% of users were more likely to click a mobile ad accidentally than deliberately. Beyond that, hijacked devices are out there manipulating click data. But to what end for a marketer? What’s the value of a click on something a user never even saw? What’s the value of a seen but accidentally clicked ad if there’s no resulting transaction? Back to fake Likes, followers and views; they’re definitely for sale on numerous sites, none of which I’ll promote. $5 can get you 1,000 Twitter followers. You can even get followers targeted by interests. One site was set up by an unemployed accountant out of his house in England. He gets them from a wholesaler in Brooklyn, who gets them from a 19-year-old supplier in India. The unemployed accountant is making $10,000 a day. That means a lot of brands, celebrities and organizations are playing the fake social game, apparently not coming to grips with the slim value of the numbers they’re buying. But now, in addition to having paid good money for non-ROI numbers, there’s the embarrassment factor. At least a couple of sites have popped up allowing anyone to see just how many fake and inactive followers you have. Britain’s Fake Follower Check and StatusPeople are the two getting the most attention. Enter any Twitter handle and the results are there for all to see. Fake isn’t good, period. “Inactive” could be real followers, but if they’re real, they’re just watching, not engaging. If someone runs a check on your Twitter handle and turns up fake followers, does that mean you’re suspect or have purchased followers? No. Anyone can follow anyone, so most accounts will have some fakes. Even account results like Barack Obama’s (70% fake according to StatusPeople) and Lady Gaga’s (71% fake) don’t mean these people knew about all those fakes or initiated them. Regardless, brands should realize they’re now being watched, and users are judging the legitimacy of their social channels. Use one of any number of tools available to assess and clean out fake Likes and followers so that your numbers are as genuine as possible. And obviously, skip the “buying popularity” route of social marketing strategy. It doesn’t work and it gets you busted…a losing combination.

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  • Where are my sub templates?

    - by Tim Dexter
    This one is for standalone/BIEE uses of Publisher. All the ERP/CRM/HCM folks are already catered for and can tuck into a nut cutlet and arugala salad. Sorry, I have just watched Food Inc and even if only half of it is true; Im still on a crusade in my house against mass produced food. Wake up World! If you have ventured into the world of sub templating, you'll be reaping some development benefit. In terms of shared report components and calculations they are very useful. Just exporting all of your report headers and footers to a single sub template can potentially save you hours and hours of work and make you look like a star. If someone in management gets it into their head that they would like Comic San Serif font rather than Arial in their report headers, its a 10 min job rather than 100 hours! What about the rest of the report content? I hear you cry. Its coming in 11g, full master template support. Your management wants bright blue borders with yellow backgrounds for all the tables in your reports, 5 minute job! Getting back to sub templates and my comment about all the ERP/CRM/HCM folks be catered for. In the standalone release there is no out of the box directory for you to drop your sub templates. Dropping them into the main report directory would make sense but they are not accessible there via a URL. An oversight on our part and something that will be addressed in 11g. Sub templates are now a first class citizen in the world of BIP, you can upload them and BIP will know what to do with them. But what do you do right now? The easiest place to put them where BIP can 'see' them is to create a directory under the xmlpserver install directory in the J2EE container e.g. $J2EE_HOME/xmlpserver/xmlpserver/subtemplates You can call it whatever you want but when the server is started up, that directory is accessible via a URL i.e. http://tdexter:9704/xmlpserver/subtemplates/mysub.rtf. You can therefore put it into the top of your main templates and call the sub template. <?import: http://tdexter:9704/xmlpserver/subtemplates/mysub.rtf?> Of course, you can drop them anywhere you want, they just need to be in a web server mountable directory. Enjoy the arugala!

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  • Upgrading from MVC 1.0 to MVC2 in Visual Studio 2010 and VS2008.

    - by Sam Abraham
    With MVC2 officially released, I was involved in a few conversations regarding the feasibility of upgrading existing MVC 1.0 projects to quickly leverage the newly introduced MVC features. Luckily, Microsoft has proactively addressed this question for both Visual Studio 2008 and 2010 and many online resources discussing the upgrade process are a "Bing/Google Search" away. As I will happen to be speaking about MVC2 and Visual Studio 2010 at the Ft Lauderdale ArcSig .Net User Group Meeting on April 20th 2010 (Check http://www.fladotnet.com for more info.), I decided to include a quick demo on upgrading the NerdDinner project (which I consider the "Hello MVC World" project) from MVC 1.0 to MVC2 using Visual studio 2010 to demonstrate how simple the upgrade process is. In the next few lines, I will be briefly touching on upgrading to MVC2 for Visual Studio 2008 then discussing, in more detail, the upgrade process using Visual Studio 2010 while highlighting the advantage of its multi-targeting support. Using Visual Studio 2008 SP1 For upgrading to MVC2 Using VS2008 SP1, a Microsoft White Paper [1] presents two approaches:  1- Using a provided automated upgrade tool, 2-Manually upgrading the project. I personally prefer using the automated tool although it comes with an "AS IS" disclaimer. For those brave souls, or those who end up with no luck using the tool, detailed manual upgrade steps are also provided as a second option. Backing up the project in question is a must regardless of which route one would take to upgrade. Using Visual Studio 2010 Life is much easier for developers who already adopted Visual Studio 2010. Simply opening the MVC 1.0 solution file brings up the upgrade wizard as shown in figures 1, 2, 3 and 4. As we proceed with the upgrade process, the wizard requests confirmation on whether we choose to upgrade our target framework version to .Net 4.0 or keep the existing .Net 3.5 (Figure 5). VS2010 does a good job with multi-targeting where we can still develop .Net 3.5 applications while leveraging all the new bells and whistles that VS2010 brings to the table (Multi-targeting enables us to develop with as early as .Net 2.0 in VS2010) Figure 1 - Open Solution File Using VS2010   Figure 2 - VS2010 Conversion Wizard Figure 3- Ready To Convert To VS2010 Confirmation Screen Figure 4 - VS2010 Solution Conversion Progress Figure 5 - Confirm Target Framework Upgrade In an attempt to make my demonstration realistic, I decided to opt to keep the project targeted to the .Net 3.5 Framework.  After the successful completion of the conversion process,  a quick sanity check revealed that the NerdDinner project is still targeted to the .Net 3.5 framework as shown in figure 6. Inspecting the Web.Config revealed that the MVC DLL version our code compiles against has been successfully upgraded to 2.0 (Figure 7) and hence we should now be able to leverage the newly introduced features in MVC2 and VS2010 with no effort or time invested on modifying existing code. Figure 6- Confirm Target Framework Remained .Net 3.5  Figure 7 - Confirm MVC DLL Version Has Been Upgraded In Conclusion, Microsoft has empowered developers with the tools necessary to quickly and seamlessly upgrade their MVC solutions to the newly released MVC2. The multi-targeting feature in Visual Studio 2010 enables us to adopt this latest and greatest development tool while supporting development in as early as .Net 2.0. References 1. "Upgrading an ASP.NET MVC 1.0 Application to ASP.NET MVC 2" http://www.asp.net/learn/whitepapers/aspnet-mvc2-upgrade-notes

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