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• Installing Canon LBP6000 in Ubuntu 12.04

  - by MMA

  This is really frustrating. I am trying to install LBP6000 in Ubuntu 12.04 without any success. (Well, I had success about a week back when I first bought the printer and finally printed pages after a struggle of several hours. Then today it suddenly stopped working and I uninstalled everything and started from scratch. Now, I seem to have lost the way.) My steps Downloaded the latest Canon driver from Canon site. File Linux_CAPT_PrinterDriver_V240_uk_EN.tar.gz Got the radu script (I am allowed only two hyperlinks, so can not put the link here. You can Google radu Canon) Changed the /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-cups-usblp.conf file as instructed in, Official Documentation. (See the section Ubuntu 12.04 Install). Now this file looks like, # cups talks to the raw USB devices, so we need to blacklist usblp to avoid # grabbing them # blacklist usblp Rebooted my machine Changed the port in radu script to 59787 as instructed in the link at step 3. (Again see the section Ubuntu 12.04 Install, or see the comment at How to Install Canon LBP Printers in Ubuntu. Also put the latest deb files from step 1 in the appropriate directory of this script. Ran the radu script. A printer, LBP6000 got added. Not two printers, one to be disabled, as appeared in the message on the terminal after running the script. sudo /etc/init.d/ccpd status shows, Canon Printer Daemon for CUPS: ccpd: 3142 3139 Results The printer does not print. Printer state (from System Setting-Printing, or at cups http interface localhost:631/printers/LBP6000) goes from Idle to Processing, a job appears in print queue, and then the job disappears and the printer state goes back to Idle. The actual printer does not even blink. Diagnostics (got help from the link in step 3, Troubleshooting) captstatusui -P LBP6000 shows communication error lsmod | grep usblp did not show anything. After running, sudo modprobe usblp, shows usblp 17885 0 However, ls -l /dev/usb/lp0 gives, ls: cannot access /dev/usb/lp0: No such file or directory /var/ccpd did not exist, created, sudo mkdir /var/ccpd sudo mkfifo /var/ccpd/fifo0 sudo chown -R lp:lp /var/ccpd Any suggestion will be appreciated. Do not know what to do.

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• PASS 13 Dispatches: moving to the cloud

  - by Tony Davis

  PASS Summit 13, Day 1 keynote by Quentin Clarke and we're hearing about “redefiniing mission critical in the cloud”. With a move to the Windows Azure cloud comes the promise of capacity on demand, automatic HA, backups, patching and so on, as well as passing responsibility to MS for managing hardware, upgrades and so on. However, for many databases and applications the best route to the cloud is not necessarily obvious. For most, the path of least resistance is IaaS – SQL Server in a Azure VM. It removes the hardware burden but you still have to manage your databases and implementing HA for SQL Server is your responsibility. Also, scaling up comes at quite a cost – the biggest VM (8 CPU cores, 56 GB RAM, 16 1TB drives with 500 IOPS each) weighs in at over over $4500 per month. With PaaS, in the form of Windows SQL Database, you get a “3-copies replica set” so HA comes out-of the box, and removes the majority of the administration burden, but you are moving your database into a very different environment. For a start, it's a shared environment, with other customers using the same compute nodes in the cluster, and potentially even sharing the same database (multi-tenancy). Unless you pay for SQL DB Premium edition, the resources available for your workload will depends on how nicely others “play” in the shared environment. You'll potentially need to do a lot of tuning, and application rewriting to avoid throttling issues, optimising application-database communication to deal with increased latency between the two, and so on. You'll need aggressive application caching. You'll also need retry logic and to deal with (expected) node failure and the need to reconnect. In Tuesday's PASS Summit pre-con from the SQLCAT team, they spent a lot of time covering some of the telemetric techniques (collect into Azure storage the necessary monitoring data) to perform capacity planning, work out the hotspots and bottlenecks in your cloud applications. Tools like WAD (Windows Azure Diagnostics), performance counters SQL Database DMVs, and others, will be essential. Of course, to truly exploit the vast horizontal scaling that is available from the existence of thousands of compute nodes, you'll also need to need to consider how to “shard” your data so Azure can move it between nodes at will. Finding the right path to the Cloud isn't easy, but it's coming. I spoke to people one year ago who saw no real benefit in trying to move their infrastructure and databases to the cloud, but now at their company, it's the conversation that won't go away. Tony.  

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• Where to draw the line between development-led security and administration-led security?

  - by haylem

  There are cases where you have the opportunity, as a developer, to enforce stricter security features and protections on a software, though they could very well be managed at an environmental level (ie, the operating system would take care of it). Where would you say you draw the line, and what elements do you factor in your decision? Concrete Examples User Management is the OS's responsibility Not exactly meant as a security feature, but in a similar case Google Chrome used to not allow separate profiles. The invoked reason (though it now supports multiple profiles for a same OS user) used to be that user management was the operating system's responsibility. Disabling Web-Form Fields A recurrent request I see addressed online is to have auto-completion be disabled on form fields. Auto-completion didn't exist in old browsers, and was a welcome feature at the time it was introduced for people who needed to fill in forms often. But it also brought in some security concerns, and so some browsers started to implement, on top of the (obviously needed) setting in their own preference/customization panel, an autocomplete attribute for form or input fields. And this has now been introduced into the upcoming HTML5 standard. For browsers who do not listen to this attribute, strange hacks *\ are offered, like generating unique IDs and names for fields to avoid them from being suggested in future forms (which comes with another herd of issues, like polluting your local auto-fill cache and not preventing a password from being stored in it, but instead probably duplicating its occurences). In this particular case, and others, I'd argue that this is a user setting and that it's the user's desire and the user's responsibility to enable or disable auto-fill (by disabling the feature altogether). And if it is based on an internal policy and security requirement in a corporate environment, then substitute the user for the administrator in the above. I assume it could be counter-argued that the user may want to access non-critical applications (or sites) with this handy feature enabled, and critical applications with this feature disabled. But then I'd think that's what security zones are for (in some browsers), or the sign that you need a more secure (and dedicated) environment / account to use these applications. * I obviously don't deny the ingenuity of the people who were forced to find workarounds, just the necessity of said workarounds. Questions That was a tad long-winded, so I guess my questions are: Would you in general consider it to be the application's (hence, the developer's) responsiblity? Where do you draw the line, if not in the "general" case?

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• ArchBeat Facebook Friday: Top 10 Posts - August 8-14, 2014

  - by Bob Rhubart-Oracle

  5,307 people pay attention to the OTN ArchBeat Facebook Page. Here are the Top 10 posts from that page for the last seven days, August 8-14, 2014. Podcast: ODTUG Kscope 2014: Anatomy of a User Conference - Part 3 There is more to a great user conference than a shared interest in Oracle products. In the final segment of this 3-part OTN ArchBeat Podcast panelists Danny Bryant , Chet "ORACLENERD" Justice, Cameron Lackpour, Debra Lilley, and Mike Riley discuss the nature and importance of community Oracle SOA Suite 12c: The LDAP Adapter quick and easy | Maarten Smeets Maarten Smeets' how-to post describes the installation and configuration of an LDAP server and browser (ApacheDS and Apache Directory Studio). Process level Exception Handling in BPM12c | Abhishek Mittal When an exception occurs while running a process flow you have two choices: 1) retry running the flow object that caused that process flow or 2) move the process instance to the next flow object in the main process flow. Abhishek Mittal shows you how to do both. Building a Responsive WebCenter Portal Application | JayJay Zheng Oracle ACE JayJay Zheng's article addresses the essentials of responsive web design, shows you how to design and develop a responsive WebCenter Portal application, and reviews key development considerations. Cloud Control authorization with Active Directory | Jeroen Gouma Jeroen Gouma takes you step-by-step through the user authortization process in Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c. Video: CIOs Guide to Oracle Products and Solutions | Jessica Keyes The CIO's Guide to Oracle Products and Solutions author Jessica Keyes talks about why input from users and developers is essential to CIOs who want to avoid being escorted out of the building by security guards. Read A CIO's Guide to Oracle Cloud Computing, a sample chapter from the book. Twitter Tuesday - Top 10 @ArchBeat Tweets - August 5-11, 2014 @OTNArchBeat followers from across the galaxy have spoken! Here are the Top 10 tweets for the past seven days. Topics include: Hyperion, OBIEE, ODI, Oracle MAF, and SOA Suite. Recap: Fusion Middleware Summer Camps - Lisbon 2014 | Simon Haslam Oracle ACE Director Simon Haslam's recap of his experience at the Oracle Fusion Middleware Summer Camp in Lisbon, Portugal will make you wish you had been there. WebLogic Data Source Connection Labeling | Steve Felts The connection labeling feature was added in WLS release 10.3.6, and enhanced in release WLS 12.1.3. This post by Steve Felts describes two new connection properties that can be configured on the data source descriptor. Why Mobile Apps <3 REST/JSON | Martin Jarvis Martin Jarvis explores the preference for REST and JSON over SOAP and XML for mobile web services.

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• How to Name Linked Servers

  - by Bill Graziano

  I did another SQL Server migration over the weekend that dealt with linked servers.  I’ve seen all kinds of odd naming schemes and there are a few I like and a few I suggest you avoid. Don’t name your linked server for its IP address.  At some point whatever is on the other end of that IP address will move.  You’ll probably need to point your linked server to a new IP address but not change the name of the linked server.  And then you’ve completely lost any context around this.  Bonus points if a new SQL Server eventually ends up at the old IP address further adding confusion when you’re trying to troubleshoot. Don’t name your linked server based on its instance name.  This one is less obvious.  It sounds nice to have a linked server named [VSRV1\SQLTRAN01].  You know what it is and it’s easy to use.  It’s less nice when you’ve got 200 stored procedures that all reference this linked server but the database they reference has moved to a new instance.  Now when you query this you’re actually querying a different instance. (Please note: I’m not saying it’s a good idea to have 200 stored procedures that all reference a linked server.  I’m just saying it’s not all that uncommon.) Consider naming your linked server something that you can easily search on.  See my note above.  You can also get around this by always enclosing the name in brackets.  That is harder to enforce unless you use some odd characters in it. Consider naming your linked server based on the function.  For example, I’ve had some luck having a linked server named [DW] that points to our data warehouse server.  That server can change names or physically move and all I need to do is update the linked server to point to the new destination.  The descriptive name of the linked server is still accurate.  No code needs to change and people still know what it is just by looking at it. Consider naming your linked server for the database.  I’m still thinking through this one.  It may mean you have multiple linked servers that point to the same instance.  I’ve found that database names rarely change.  It also makes it easier to move individual databases to new servers. Consider pointing your linked servers to DNS entries and not IP addresses.  I’ve done this for reporting databases and had some success.  Especially for read-only snapshots that can get created on the main database or on the mirror.  What issues have you had with linked server names?  What has worked for you?  Where are the holes in my approach?

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• Free eBook with SQL Server performance tips and nuggets

  - by Claire Brooking

  I’ve often found that the kind of tips that turn out to be helpful are the ones that encourage me to make a small step outside of a routine. No dramatic changes – just a quick suggestion that changes an approach. As a languages student at university, one of the best I spotted came from outside the lecture halls and ended up saving me time (and lots of huffing and puffing) – the use of a rainbow of sticky notes for well-used pages and letter categories in my dictionary. Simple, but armed with a heavy dictionary that could double up as a step stool, those markers were surprisingly handy. When the Simple-Talk editors told me about a book they were planning that would give a series of tips for developers on how to improve database performance, we all agreed it needed to contain a good range of pointers for big-hitter performance topics. But we wanted to include some of the smaller, time-saving nuggets too. We hope we’ve struck a good balance. The 45 Database Performance Tips eBook covers different tips to help you avoid code that saps performance, whether that’s the ‘gotchas’ to be aware of when using Object to Relational Mapping (ORM) tools, or what to be aware of for indexes, database design, and T-SQL. The eBook is also available to download with SQL Prompt from Red Gate. We often hear that it’s the productivity-boosting side of SQL Prompt that makes it useful for everyday coding. So when a member of the SQL Prompt team mentioned an idea to make the most of tab history, a new feature in SQL Prompt 6 for SQL Server Management Studio, we were intrigued. Now SQL Prompt can save tabs we have been working on in SSMS as a way to maintain an active template for queries we often recycle. When we need to reuse the same code again, we search for our saved tab (and we can also customize its name to speed up the search) to get started. We hope you find the eBook helpful, and as always on Simple-Talk, we’d love to hear from you too. If you have a performance tip for SQL Server you’d like to share, email Melanie on the Simple-Talk team ([email protected]) and we’ll publish a collection in a follow-up post.

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• Combining template method with strategy

  - by Mekswoll

  An assignment in my software engineering class is to design an application which can play different forms a particular game. The game in question is Mancala, some of these games are called Wari or Kalah. These games differ in some aspects but for my question it's only important to know that the games could differ in the following: The way in which the result of a move is handled The way in which the end of the game is determined The way in which the winner is determined The first thing that came to my mind to design this was to use the strategy pattern, I have a variation in algorithms (the actual rules of the game). The design could look like this: I then thought to myself that in the game of Mancala and Wari the way the winner is determined is exactly the same and the code would be duplicated. I don't think this is by definition a violation of the 'one rule, one place' or DRY principle seeing as a change in rules for Mancala wouldn't automatically mean that rule should be changed in Wari as well. Nevertheless from the feedback I got from my professor I got the impression to find a different design. I then came up with this: Each game (Mancala, Wari, Kalah, ...) would just have attribute of the type of each rule's interface, i.e. WinnerDeterminer and if there's a Mancala 2.0 version which is the same as Mancala 1.0 except for how the winner is determined it can just use the Mancala versions. I think the implementation of these rules as a strategy pattern is certainly valid. But the real problem comes when I want to design it further. In reading about the template method pattern I immediately thought it could be applied to this problem. The actions that are done when a user makes a move are always the same, and in the same order, namely: deposit stones in holes (this is the same for all games, so would be implemented in the template method itself) determine the result of the move determine if the game has finished because of the previous move if the game has finished, determine who has won Those three last steps are all in my strategy pattern described above. I'm having a lot of trouble combining these two. One possible solution I found would be to abandon the strategy pattern and do the following: I don't really see the design difference between the strategy pattern and this? But I am certain I need to use a template method (although I was just as sure about having to use a strategy pattern). I also can't determine who would be responsible for creating the TurnTemplate object, whereas with the strategy pattern I feel I have families of objects (the three rules) which I could easily create using an abstract factory pattern. I would then have a MancalaRuleFactory, WariRuleFactory, etc. and they would create the correct instances of the rules and hand me back a RuleSet object. Let's say that I use the strategy + abstract factory pattern and I have a RuleSet object which has algorithms for the three rules in it. The only way I feel I can still use the template method pattern with this is to pass this RuleSet object to my TurnTemplate. The 'problem' that then surfaces is that I would never need my concrete implementations of the TurnTemplate, these classes would become obsolete. In my protected methods in the TurnTemplate I could just call ruleSet.determineWinner(). As a consequence, the TurnTemplate class would no longer be abstract but would have to become concrete, is it then still a template method pattern? To summarize, am I thinking in the right way or am I missing something easy? If I'm on the right track, how do I combine a strategy pattern and a template method pattern? This is part of a homework assignment but I'm not looking to be gifted the answer, I have deliberately been very verbose in my question to show that I have thought about it before coming here to ask a question

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• Technology vs. Antiquated Methods

  - by AreYouSerious

  So Here I am talking with my Program lead, about technology, and how while my father is the VP of a major company, he still doesn't have a blackberry, or a smart phone. and I think it's funny. Most people would say it's a generational thing. That because he's older, he dosen't accept technology, and that's why. I have trouble swallowing that because this is the same man, who bought a satellite radio for his car, and made sure that the printer for the house was networked so that his and my mom's laptop could print wirelessly from the living room through their wireless network. I think it has to do with more with necessity, and partially with finical responsibility. My father is very financially conciencious. Think about it yourself. you pay for internet at your home. You have internet access at your office. But if you get a smart phone you're going to pay almost the same amount just for that access. A lot of people take it as just another fixed cost... I'm one of those. I don't even think about it, as I check my facebook from the bus, train, or even while sitting in traffic... The convience of having connection everywhere outweigh the financial responsible person screaming at in the back of my mind. However This conversation lead us to another venue of discussion.... what happens when the power dies. if you left your charger at home, or you phone or navi just stops working... are you going to be able to continue on as you did when it was working... let take the navi as an example... if your navi stops working, how many of you know how to use a map, and navigate? can you even find where you are on a map using the cross streets that your stopped at? This is a skill that unfortunatelly is overlooked these days in the child rearing process. Most people don't see the value, while some others can't do it themselves, so how can they teach their offspring? Take another example.... what if your phone gets lost... or stolen, or you drive over it? do you have the numbers in their memorized? are they recorded somewhere? I know that if it weren't for google sync I wouldn't have them backed up... not sufficiently. And what good does that do if you're in timbuckto and your phone dies, think you can get on the internet to look up those numbers? Don't get me wrong. I'm the first to see the value in technology, and am willing to pay the price to not have to wait for prices to come down. I will pay extra to have that newest thing right now. but let me tell you what.... I know that should I ever procreate it will be a requirement for my offspring (children) to learn how to do something manually before I'll let them use technology. Food for thought?? Let everyone else know what you think.... just sayin'

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• Big Data – Basics of Big Data Analytics – Day 18 of 21

  - by Pinal Dave

  In yesterday’s blog post we learned the importance of the various components in Big Data Story. In this article we will understand what are the various analytics tasks we try to achieve with the Big Data and the list of the important tools in Big Data Story. When you have plenty of the data around you what is the first thing which comes to your mind? “What do all these data means?” Exactly – the same thought comes to my mind as well. I always wanted to know what all the data means and what meaningful information I can receive out of it. Most of the Big Data projects are built to retrieve various intelligence all this data contains within it. Let us take example of Facebook. When I look at my friends list of Facebook, I always want to ask many questions such as - On which date my maximum friends have a birthday? What is the most favorite film of my most of the friends so I can talk about it and engage them? What is the most liked placed to travel my friends? Which is the most disliked cousin for my friends in India and USA so when they travel, I do not take them there. There are many more questions I can think of. This illustrates that how important it is to have analysis of Big Data. Here are few of the kind of analysis listed which you can use with Big Data. Slicing and Dicing: This means breaking down your data into smaller set and understanding them one set at a time. This also helps to present various information in a variety of different user digestible ways. For example if you have data related to movies, you can use different slide and dice data in various formats like actors, movie length etc. Real Time Monitoring: This is very crucial in social media when there are any events happening and you wanted to measure the impact at the time when the event is happening. For example, if you are using twitter when there is a football match, you can watch what fans are talking about football match on twitter when the event is happening. Anomaly Predication and Modeling: If the business is running normal it is alright but if there are signs of trouble, everyone wants to know them early on the hand. Big Data analysis of various patterns can be very much helpful to predict future. Though it may not be always accurate but certain hints and signals can be very helpful. For example, lots of data can help conclude that if there is lots of rain it can increase the sell of umbrella. Text and Unstructured Data Analysis: unstructured data are now getting norm in the new world and they are a big part of the Big Data revolution. It is very important that we Extract, Transform and Load the unstructured data and make meaningful data out of it. For example, analysis of lots of images, one can predict that people like to use certain colors in certain months in their cloths. Big Data Analytics Solutions There are many different Big Data Analystics Solutions out in the market. It is impossible to list all of them so I will list a few of them over here. Tableau – This has to be one of the most popular visualization tools out in the big data market. SAS – A high performance analytics and infrastructure company IBM and Oracle – They have a range of tools for Big Data Analysis Tomorrow In tomorrow’s blog post we will discuss about very important components of the Big Data Ecosystem – Data Scientist. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Big Data, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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• Best pathfinding for a 2D world made by CPU Perlin Noise, with random start- and destinationpoints?

  - by Mathias Lykkegaard Lorenzen

  I have a world made by Perlin Noise. It's created on the CPU for consistency between several devices (yes, I know it takes time - I have my techniques that make it fast enough). Now, in my game you play as a fighter-ship-thingy-blob or whatever it's going to be. What matters is that this "thing" that you play as, is placed in the middle of the screen, and moves along with the camera. The white stuff in my world are walls. The black stuff is freely movable. Now, as the player moves around he will constantly see "monsters" spawning around him in a circle (a circle that's larger than the screen though). These monsters move inwards and try to collide with the player. This is the part that's tricky. I want these monsters to constantly spawn, moving towards the player, but avoid walls entirely. I've added a screenshot below that kind of makes it easier to understand (excuse me for my bad drawing - I was using Paint for this). In the image above, the following rules apply. The red dot in the middle is the player itself. The light-green rectangle is the boundaries of the screen (in other words, what the player sees). These boundaries move with the player. The blue circle is the spawning circle. At the circumference of this circle, monsters will spawn constantly. This spawncircle moves with the player and the boundaries of the screen. Each monster spawned (shown as yellow triangles) wants to collide with the player. The pink lines shows the path that I want the monsters to move along (or something similar). What matters is that they reach the player without colliding with the walls. The map itself (the one that is Perlin Noise generated on the CPU) is saved in memory as two-dimensional bit-arrays. A 1 means a wall, and a 0 means an open walkable space. The current tile size is pretty small. I could easily make it a lot larger for increased performance. I've done some path algorithms before such as A*. I don't think that's entirely optimal here though.

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• Oracle Solaris at the OpenStack Summit in Atlanta

  - by Glynn Foster

  I had the fortune of attending my 2nd OpenStack summit in Atlanta a few weeks ago and it turned out to be a really excellent event. Oracle had many folks there this time around across a variety of different engineering teams - Oracle Solaris, Oracle ZFSSA, Oracle Linux, Oracle VM and more. Really great to see continuing momentum behind the project and we're very happy to be involved. Here's a list of the highlights that I had during the summit: The operators track was a really excellent addition, with a chance for users/administrators to voice their opinions based on experiences. Really good to hear how OpenStack is making businesses more agile, but also equally good to hear about some of the continuing frustrations they have (fortunately many of them are new and being addressed). Seeing this discussion morph into a "Win the enterprise" working group is also very pleasing. Enjoyed Troy Toman's keynote (Rackspace) about designing a planet scale cloud OS and the interoperability challenges ahead of us. I've been following some of the discussion around DefCore for a bit and while I have some concerns, I think it's mostly heading in the right direction. Certainly seems like there's a balance to strike to ensure that this effects the OpenStack vendors in such a way as to avoid negatively impacting our end users. Also enjoyed Toby Ford's keynote (AT&T) about his desire for a NVF (Network Function Virtualization) architecture. What really resonated was also his desire for OpenStack to start addressing the typical enterprise workload, being less like cattle and more like pets. The design summit was, as per usual, pretty intense for - definitely would get more value from these if I knew the code base a little better. Nevertheless, attended some really great sessions and got a better feeling of the roadmap for Juno. Markus Flierl gave a great presentation (see below) at the demo theatre for what we're doing with OpenStack on Oracle Solaris (and more widely at Oracle across different products). Based on the discussions that we had at the Oracle booth, there's a huge amount of interest there and we talked to some great customers during the week about their thoughts and directions in this respect. Undoubtedly Atlanta had some really good food. Highlights were the smoked ribs and brisket and the SweetWater brewing company. That said, I also loved the fried chicken, fried green tomatoes and collared greens, and wonderful hosting of "big momma" at Pitty Pat's Porch. Couldn't quite bring myself to eat biscuits and gravy in the morning though. Visiting the World of Coca-Cola just before flying out. A total brain washing exercise, but very enjoyable. And very much liked Beverly (contrary to many other opinions on the internet) - but then again, I'd happily drink tonic water every day of the year... Looking forward to Paris in November!

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• How one decision can turn web services to hell

  - by DigiMortal

  In this posting I will show you how one stupid decision may turn developers life to hell. There is a project where bunch of complex applications exchange data frequently and it is very hard to change something without additional expenses. Well, one analyst thought that string is silver bullet of web services. Read what happened. Bad bad mistake In the early stages of integration project there was analyst who also established architecture and technical design for web services. There was one very bad mistake this analyst made: All data must be converted to strings before exchange! Yes, that’s correct, this was the requirement. All integers, decimals and dates are coming in and going out as strings. There was also explanation for this requirement: This way we can avoid data type conversion errors! Well, this guy works somewhere else already and I hope he works in some burger restaurant – far away from computers. Consequences If you first look at this requirement it may seem like little annoying piece of crap you can easily survive. But let’s see the real consequences one stupid decision can cause: hell load of data conversions are done by receiving applications and SSIS packages, SSIS packages are not error prone and they depend heavily on strings they get from different services, there are more than one format per type that is used in different services, for larger amounts of data all these conversion tasks slow down the work of integration packages, practically all developers have been in hurry with some SSIS import tasks and some fields that are not used in different calculations in SSAS cube are imported without data conversions (by example, some prices are strings in format “1.021 $”). The most painful problem for developers is the part of data conversions because they don’t expect that there is such a stupid requirement stated and therefore they are not able to estimate the time their tasks take on these web services. Also developers must be prepared for cases when suddenly some service sends data that is not in acceptable format and they must solve the problems ASAP. This puts unexpected load on developers and they are not very happy with it because they can’t understand why they have to live with this horror if it is possible to fix. What to do if you see something like this? Well, explain the problem to customer and demand special tasks to project schedule to get this mess solved before going on with new developments. It is cheaper to solve the problems now that later.

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• Camera frustum calculation coming out wrong

  - by Telanor

  I'm trying to calculate a view/projection/bounding frustum for the 6 directions of a point light and I'm having trouble with the views pointing along the Y axis. Our game uses a right-handed, Y-up system. For the other 4 directions I create the LookAt matrix using (0, 1, 0) as the up vector. Obviously that doesn't work when looking along the Y axis so for those I use an up vector of (-1, 0, 0) for -Y and (1, 0, 0) for +Y. The view matrix seems to come out correctly (and the projection matrix always stays the same), but the bounding frustum is definitely wrong. Can anyone see what I'm doing wrong? This is the code I'm using: camera.Projection = Matrix.PerspectiveFovRH((float)Math.PI / 2, ShadowMapSize / (float)ShadowMapSize, 1, 5); for(var i = 0; i < 6; i++) { var renderTargetView = shadowMap.GetRenderTargetView((TextureCubeFace)i); var up = DetermineLightUp((TextureCubeFace) i); var forward = DirectionToVector((TextureCubeFace) i); camera.View = Matrix.LookAtRH(this.Position, this.Position + forward, up); camera.BoundingFrustum = new BoundingFrustum(camera.View * camera.Projection); } private static Vector3 DirectionToVector(TextureCubeFace direction) { switch (direction) { case TextureCubeFace.NegativeX: return -Vector3.UnitX; case TextureCubeFace.NegativeY: return -Vector3.UnitY; case TextureCubeFace.NegativeZ: return -Vector3.UnitZ; case TextureCubeFace.PositiveX: return Vector3.UnitX; case TextureCubeFace.PositiveY: return Vector3.UnitY; case TextureCubeFace.PositiveZ: return Vector3.UnitZ; default: throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException("direction"); } } private static Vector3 DetermineLightUp(TextureCubeFace direction) { switch (direction) { case TextureCubeFace.NegativeY: return -Vector3.UnitX; case TextureCubeFace.PositiveY: return Vector3.UnitX; default: return Vector3.UnitY; } } Edit: Here's what the values are coming out to for the PositiveX and PositiveY directions: Constants: Position = {X:0 Y:360 Z:0} camera.Projection = [M11:0.9999999 M12:0 M13:0 M14:0] [M21:0 M22:0.9999999 M23:0 M24:0] [M31:0 M32:0 M33:-1.25 M34:-1] [M41:0 M42:0 M43:-1.25 M44:0] PositiveX: up = {X:0 Y:1 Z:0} target = {X:1 Y:360 Z:0} camera.View = [M11:0 M12:0 M13:-1 M14:0] [M21:0 M22:1 M23:0 M24:0] [M31:1 M32:0 M33:0 M34:0] [M41:0 M42:-360 M43:0 M44:1] camera.BoundingFrustum: Matrix = [M11:0 M12:0 M13:1.25 M14:1] [M21:0 M22:0.9999999 M23:0 M24:0] [M31:0.9999999 M32:0 M33:0 M34:0] [M41:0 M42:-360 M43:-1.25 M44:0] Top = {A:0.7071068 B:-0.7071068 C:0 D:254.5584} Bottom = {A:0.7071068 B:0.7071068 C:0 D:-254.5584} Left = {A:0.7071068 B:0 C:0.7071068 D:0} Right = {A:0.7071068 B:0 C:-0.7071068 D:0} Near = {A:1 B:0 C:0 D:-1} Far = {A:-1 B:0 C:0 D:5} PositiveY: up = {X:0 Y:0 Z:-1} target = {X:0 Y:361 Z:0} camera.View = [M11:-1 M12:0 M13:0 M14:0] [M21:0 M22:0 M23:-1 M24:0] [M31:0 M32:-1 M33:0 M34:0] [M41:0 M42:0 M43:360 M44:1] camera.BoundingFrustum: Matrix = [M11:-0.9999999 M12:0 M13:0 M14:0] [M21:0 M22:0 M23:1.25 M24:1] [M31:0 M32:-0.9999999 M33:0 M34:0] [M41:0 M42:0 M43:-451.25 M44:-360] Top = {A:0 B:0.7071068 C:0.7071068 D:-254.5585} Bottom = {A:0 B:0.7071068 C:-0.7071068 D:-254.5585} Left = {A:-0.7071068 B:0.7071068 C:0 D:-254.5585} Right = {A:0.7071068 B:0.7071068 C:0 D:-254.5585} Near = {A:0 B:1 C:0 D:-361} Far = {A:0 B:-1 C:0 D:365} When I use the resulting BoundingFrustum to cull regions outside of it, this is the result: Pass PositiveX: Drew 3 regions Pass NegativeX: Drew 6 regions Pass PositiveY: Drew 400 regions Pass NegativeY: Drew 36 regions Pass PositiveZ: Drew 3 regions Pass NegativeZ: Drew 6 regions There are only 400 regions to draw and the light is in the center of them. As you can see, the PositiveY direction is drawing every single region. With the near/far planes of the perspective matrix set as small as they are, there's no way a single frustum could contain every single region.

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• The Red Gate Guide to SQL Server Team based Development Free e-book

  - by Mladen Prajdic

  After about 6 months of work, the new book I've coauthored with Grant Fritchey (Blog|Twitter), Phil Factor (Blog|Twitter) and Alex Kuznetsov (Blog|Twitter) is out. They're all smart folks I talk to online and this book is packed with good ideas backed by years of experience. The book contains a good deal of information about things you need to think of when doing any kind of multi person database development. Although it's meant for SQL Server, the principles can be applied to any database platform out there. In the book you will find information on: writing readable code, documenting code, source control and change management, deploying code between environments, unit testing, reusing code, searching and refactoring your code base. I've written chapter 5 about Database testing and chapter 11 about SQL Refactoring. In the database testing chapter (chapter 5) I cover why you should test your database, why it is a good idea to have a database access interface composed of stored procedures, views and user defined functions, what and how to test. I talk about how there are many testing methods like black and white box testing, unit and integration testing, error and stress testing and why and how you should do all those. Sometimes you have to convince management to go for testing in the development lifecycle so I give some pointers and tips how to do that. Testing databases is a bit different from testing object oriented code in a way that to have independent unit tests you need to rollback your code after each test. The chapter shows you ways to do this and also how to avoid it. At the end I show how to test various database objects and how to test access to them. In the SQL Refactoring chapter (chapter 11) I cover why refactor and where to even begin refactoring. I also who you a way to achieve a set based mindset to solve SQL problems which is crucial to good SQL set based programming and a few commonly seen problems to refactor. These problems include: using functions on columns in the where clause, SELECT * problems, long stored procedure with many input parameters, one subquery per condition in the select statement, cursors are good for anything problem, using too large data types everywhere and using your data in code for business logic anti-pattern. You can read more about it and download it here: The Red Gate Guide to SQL Server Team-based Development Hope you like it and send me feedback if you wish too.

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• How do you educate your teammates without seeming condescending or superior?

  - by Dan Tao

  I work with three other guys; I'll call them Adam, Brian, and Chris. Adam and Brian are bright guys. Give them a problem; they will figure out a way to solve it. When it comes to OOP, though, they know very little about it and aren't particularly interested in learning. Pure procedural code is their MO. Chris, on the other hand, is an OOP guy all the way -- and a cocky, condescending one at that. He is constantly criticizing the work Adam and Brian do and talking to me as if I must share his disdain for the two of them. When I say that Adam and Brian aren't interested in learning about OOP, I suspect Chris is the primary reason. This hasn't bothered me too much for the most part, but there have been times when, looking at some code Adam or Brian wrote, it has pained me to think about how a problem could have been solved so simply using inheritance or some other OOP concept instead of the unmaintainable mess of 1,000 lines of code that ended up being written instead. And now that the company is starting a rather ambitious new project, with Adam assigned to the task of getting the core functionality in place, I fear the result. Really, I just want to help these guys out. But I know that if I come across as just another holier-than-thou developer like Chris, it's going to be massively counterproductive. I've considered: Team code reviews -- everybody reviews everybody's code. This way no one person is really in a position to look down on anyone else; besides, I know I could learn plenty from the other members on the team as well. But this would be time-consuming, and with such a small team, I have trouble picturing it gaining much traction as a team practice. Periodic e-mails to the team -- this would entail me sending out an e-mail every now and then discussing some concept that, based on my observation, at least one team member would benefit from learning about. The downside to this approach is I do think it could easily make me come across as a self-appointed expert. Keeping a blog -- I already do this, actually; but so far my blog has been more about esoteric little programming tidbits than straightforward practical advice. And anyway, I suspect it would get old pretty fast if I were constantly telling my coworkers, "Hey guys, remember to check out my new blog post!" This question doesn't need to be specifically about OOP or any particular programming paradigm or technology. I just want to know: how have you found success in teaching new concepts to your coworkers without seeming like a condescending know-it-all? It's pretty clear to me there isn't going to be a sure-fire answer, but any helpful advice (including methods that have worked as well as those that have proved ineffective or even backfired) would be greatly appreciated. UPDATE: I am not the Team Lead on this team. Chris is. UPDATE 2: Made community wiki to accord with the general sentiment of the community (fancy that).

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• UEFI Dual-Boot - Ubuntu 12.04.3 + Windows 8.1 (One GPT HDD)

  - by swafbrother

  UEFI Dual-Boot - Ubuntu 12.04.3 + Windows 8.1 (One GPT HDD) Hello, I'm having trouble setting up a dual-boot (Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and Windows 8.1) in my ASUS K55VM laptop's hard drive disk (500 GB). I was mostly following tutorials for doing this, but at some point something has gone wrong. Up to now, I have followed these steps: I formatted my HDD into GPT. I clean-installed Windows 8.1. I didn't prevent Windows from choosing the partitions to use and it created these partitions: A Recovery partition (sda1). An EFI System Partition (sda2). A Microsoft Reserved Partition (sda3). A Windows Data Partition or C drive (sda4). I reduced the Windows Data Partition via Windows' Disk Management. I made a bootable USB Stick with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS from ISO, using Universal USB Installer. I created these partitions for Ubuntu: A Boot partition, mounted at /boot (sda5). A Root partition, mounted at / (sda6). A Swap partition (sda7). In Device for boot loader installation I chose: /dev/sda. Then, when I rebooted, it went straight into Ubuntu. So I installed Boot-Repair, and clicked on Recommended Repair. It automatically did its job without asking for anything. I rebooted and Grub showed up, with a lot of options. At this point I had a decent dual-boot setup; Ubuntu and both Windows entries worked fine: Ubuntu. Windows Boot UEFI Loader. Windows UEFI bkpbootmgfw.efi. I executed this command: sudo grub-install --force /dev/sda5. Then I tried to make Windows 8.1's Boot Manager the main boot manager, so that I could choose which OS to boot into from a menu. I downloaded EasyBCD on Windows. It showed 2 Ubuntu entries and 1 Windows entry. I went into BCD Deployment tab and clicked on Write MBR. At this point, I went into BIOS and made Windows Boot Manager the first boot option. When I rebooted, I got a black screen with the message efidisk read error, and then (I guess) it switched to the next boot option, which is Ubuntu, resulting in Grub showing up. From Grub, Ubuntu entry is working and so are both Windows entries. If I choose Ubuntu, it normally boots into Ubuntu. But if I choose Windows, it goes into Windows' boot manager. In Windows' boot manager, a menu shows up: Ubuntu. Ubuntu. Windows 8.1. If I choose Windows, it boots into Windows without any problem. If I choose Ubuntu, it boots into Grub (back to step 14). Here's my BootInfo Summary: http://paste.ubuntu.com/6698171/ Windows Boot Manager is clearly not working as expected; I can't directly boot into it and I can't boot into it from BIOS either (efidisk read error again). If I want to boot into Windows I need to boot into Grub first, which is the opposite of what I wanted. I need help at this point. What is the best thing I can do? Is there a more reliable and/or simpler way of acomplishing a satisfying dual-boot for this situation? Can someone provide a way for going back to step 8, where I had a more efficient dual-boot setup? If only I could undo what I did with Easy BCD and skip Windows' Boot Menu... Can someone provide a way to fix this mess? Thanks in advance and sorry for the length of this, I wanted to be exhaustive.

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• Am I experienced enough to learn and develop immediately using Ruby on Rails?

  - by acheong87

  General Question I understand that discussions revolving around questions of this form run the risk of becoming too specific to help others. So, perhaps a better, general question would be: What kind of experience, if any, translates easily to Ruby on Rails; and if none, then what's the learning curve like, in comparison to other popular languages? Background I have the opportunity to build a website using whatever technologies I wish to use. It's a fairly simple website, for listing products, taking payments, managing customer data, providing a back-end portal for employees to manage data, possibly hooking in flight information (the products are travel related), possibly integrating a blog and all the social-networking goodies. Specific Problem I have to let the client know by tonight whether I'm interested in taking up this project, before he talks to other potential developers, but I'm on the fence. I already work a full-time C++ development job, so the money doesn't do it for me. It's the opportunity to (be paid to) learn some new technologies and to have a real, running product in the end. I've heard and read great things about Ruby, and am really intrigued. I zipped through some introductory Ruby tutorials, no sweat. However I found the Rails tutorials a little overwhelming, especially not being able to try it out anywhere. And researching Rails hosts like Heroku and EngineYard makes me think that maybe I don't know what I'm getting myself into. The ship's leaving port! I wish I had more time to learn, better yet play with the language, but I have to decide soon! Should I venture or pass? Additional Details My experiences are in C/C++/Tcl/Perl/PHP/jQuery, and basic knowledge of Java/C#. I didn't study C.S. formally so I wasn't exposed to design principles, programming paradigms, etc., which is my greatest concern. Will my lack of understanding in this realm make RoR frustrating to learn? Will it be so incompatible with a C++ "way" of thinking that I'll wish I never started? Am I putting my client at risk by attempting this? If it helps, I'm quick to learn new things (self-taught so far) and care a great deal about correctness, using things for their intended purposes, and so on. I've read numerous recommendations of Agile Development with Rails and would love to read it (though perhaps, while developing in parallel, for shortness of time). Worse comes to worst, I'd give up and do the standard LAMP gig, of course, not charging the client for wasted time. But I'm hoping to avoid the project altogether if it's gonna come down to that! Thanks in advance for any tips, insights, votes of confidence, votes of discouragement (for the better), and such.

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• Tech Ed/BI Conference 2010: A Recovering Industry in a Recovering City

  - by andrewbrust

  I tried writing a post for this blog last night, while at the this year’s Microsoft Tech Ed and Business Intelligence conferences, in New Orleans. But I literally fell asleep while writing it.  That’s probably a sign that my readers might have done the same while reading it. Why the writer’s block? This was a very good show for me, but I think I was having trouble figuring out exactly why.  Now that I’m on the flight home, I’m starting to piece it together. One reason, for sure, was that I’ve spent years in both the developer and the BI worlds, and a show that combined the two was really enjoyable for me.  Typically, the subject matter, the attendees, the Microsoft execs and managers, and even the social circles have been separate.  This year’s Tech Ed facilitated a fusion of each of these previously segregated groups.  That was good for me as a speaker; for example, I facilitated a Birds of a Feather session on PowerPivot (Microsoft’s new self-service BI offering) which was well-attended, and by a large number of non-BI pros.  The fusion was good for me as an attendee too, as Microsoft BI, in the form of a new Pivot Viewer control, made it into the Day 1 keynote, demoed by Microsoft’s key BI champion, Amir Netz.  And it was good for me socially, as I was able to meet with peers in both camps, and at one location. Speaking of meeting with industry colleagues, I did a lot of that at this show.  Probably for the first time ever, I carefully scheduled and conducted a series of meetings with friends and business acquaintances in the developer tools, data visualization, utilities, publishing and training areas of the Microsoft ecosystem.  Beside the time efficiencies in conducting so many meetings, I discovered another benefit. I got a real handle on the tech industry’s economic health. The news here is good.  First of all, 2010 has been a great year for just about everyone I spoke to.  The mood is positive, energy is high, and people are working really hard.  This is, of course, refreshing to see, and it’s a huge relief.  Add to that the fact that this year’s Tech Ed was about 2.5 times larger in headcount than last year’s (based on numbers from unofficial, but reliable, sources), and the economic prognosis seems excellent.  But there’s more to it than that. Here’s the thing: everyone I talked to seems to be working, and succeeding, at changing their business models to adapt to changes in the industry.  Whether it’s the Internet’s impact on publishing and training, the increased importance of the developer audience in South Asia, the shift of affordable developer and business talent to unfamiliar locales abroad, or even lapses in Microsoft’s performance in the market, partner companies aren’t just rolling with the punches; they’re welcoming the changes and working them to their advantage.  No one seemed downtrodden, or even fatigued.  Even for businesses who have seen core revenue streams become commoditized, everyone seems to be changing their market strategy and winning.  Even Microsoft, of whom I have been critical recently, showed signs of successful hard work and playbook change, in the maturing of their cloud strategy, their commitment to it and their excitement around it.  And the embedded, managed, self-service BI strategy that Microsoft has been touting looks like it’s already being embraced by customers, even though PowerPivot, and other new Microsoft BI products, were released only recently. The collective optimism I have witnessed, and that I have felt, tells me good things about this industry and the economy.  The stock market had huge mood swings during my stay, and that may yet subdue the industry recovery I have seen this week.  Nonetheless, I am convinced that a strong foundation of hard work, innovative thinking and, if I may,  true renaissance is underlying this industry’s success. That kind of strength will generate a strong recovery, I am certain, whether now or once we’re past another round of choppy weather in the broader economy.  The fundamentals are good.

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• Convert .3GP and .3G2 Files to AVI / MPEG for Free

  - by DigitalGeekery

  3GP and .3G2 are common video capture formats used on many mobile phones, but they may not be supported by your favorite media player. Today we’ll show you a quick and easy way to convert those files to AVI or MPG format with the free Windows application, Pazera Free 3GP to AVI Converter. Download the Pazera Free 3GP to AVI Converter. You’ll have to unzip the download folder, but there is no need to install the application. Just double-click the 3gptoavi.exe file to run the application. To add your 3GP or 3G2 files to the queue to be converted, click on the Add files  button at the top left. Browse for your file, and click Open.   Your video will be added to the Queue. You can add multiple files to the queue and convert them all at one time.   Most users will find it preferable to use one of the pre-configured profiles for their conversion settings. To load a profile, choose one from the Profile drop down list and then click the Load button. You will see the profile update the settings in the panels at the bottom of the application. We tested Pazera Free 3GP to AVI Converter with 3GP files recorded on a Motorola Droid, and found the AVI H.264 Very High Q. profile to return the best results for AVI output, and the MPG – DVD NTSC: MPEG-2 the best results for MPG output. Other profiles produced smaller file sizes, but at a cost of reduced quality video output.   More advanced users may tweak video and audio settings to their liking in the lower panels. Click on the AVI button under Output file format / Video settings to adjust settings AVI… Or the MPG button to adjust the settings for MPG output. By default, the converted file will be output to the same location as the input directory. You can change it by clicking the text box input radio button and browsing for a different folder. When you’ve chosen your settings, click Convert to begin the conversion process.   A conversion output box will open and display the progress. When finished, click Close. Now you’re ready to enjoy your video in your favorite media player. Pazera Free 3GP to AVI Converter isn’t the most robust media conversion tool, but it does what it is intended to do. It handles the task of 3GP to AVI / MPG conversion very well. It’s easy enough for the beginner to manage without much trouble, but also has enough options to please more experienced users. Download Pazera Free 3GP to AVI Converter Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips How To Convert Video Files to MP3 with VLCEasily Change Audio File Formats with XRECODEConvert PDF Files to Word Documents and Other FormatsConvert Video and Remove Commercials in Windows 7 Media Center with MCEBuddy 1.1Compress Large Video Files with DivX / Xvid and AutoGK TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Install, Remove and HIDE Fonts in Windows 7 Need Help with Your Home Network? Awesome Lyrics Finder for Winamp & Windows Media Player Download Videos from Hulu Pixels invade Manhattan Convert PDF files to ePub to read on your iPad

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• Encode two integers into colour values and compare them in a HLSL shader

  - by Ben Slinger

  I am writing a 2D point and click adventure game in Monogame, and I'd like to be able to create an image mask for every room which defines which parts of the background a character can walk behind, and at which Y value a character needs to be at for the background to be drawn above the character. I haven't done any shader work before but after doing some reading I thought the following solution should work: Create a mask for the room with different walk behind areas painted in a colour that defines the baseline Y value (Walk Behind Mask) Render all objects to a RenderTarget2D (Base Texture) Render all objects to a different RenderTarget2D, but changing every pixel of each object to a colour that defines its Y value (Position Mask) Pass these two textures plus the image mask into the shader, and for each pixel compare the colour of the image mask to the colour of the Position Mask to the Walk Behind Mask - if the Position Mask pixel is larger (thus lower on the screen and closer to the camera) than the Walk Behind Mask, draw the pixel from the Base Texture, otherwise draw a transparent pixel (allowing the background to show through). I've got it mostly working, but I'm having trouble packing and unpacking the Y values into colours and retrieving them correctly in the shader. Here are some code examples of how I'm doing it so far: (When drawing to the Position Mask RenderTarget2D) Color posColor = new Color(((int)Position.Y >> 16) & 255, ((int)Position.Y >> 8) & 255, (int)Position.Y & 255); So as far as I can tell, this should be taking the first 3 bytes of the position integer and encoding them into a 4 byte colour (ignoring the alpha as the 4th byte). This seems to work fine, as when my character is at Y = 600, the resulting Color from this is: {[Color: R=0, G=2, B=88, A=255, PackedValue=4283957760]}. I then have an area in my Walk Behind Mask that I only want the character to be displayed behind if his Y value is lower than 655, so I've painted it with R=0, G=2, B=143, A=255. Now, I think I have the shader OK as well, here's what I have: sampler BaseTexture : register(s0); sampler MaskTexture : register(s1); sampler PositionTexture : register(s2); float4 mask( float2 coords : TEXCOORD0 ) : COLOR0 { float4 color = tex2D(BaseTexture, coords); float4 maskColor = tex2D(MaskTexture, coords); float4 positionColor = tex2D(PositionTexture, coords); float maskCompare = (maskColor.r * pow(2,24)) + (maskColor.g * pow(2,16)) + (maskColor.b * pow(2,8)); float positionCompare = (positionColor.r * pow(2,24)) + (positionColor.g * pow(2,16)) + (positionColor.b * pow(2,8)); return positionCompare < maskCompare ? float4(0,0,0,0) : color; } technique Technique1 { pass NoEffect { PixelShader = compile ps_3_0 mask(); } } This isn't working, however - currently all characters are displayed behind the walk behind area, regardless of their Y value. I tried printing out some debug info by grabbing the pixel from both the Position Mask and the Walk Under Mask under the current mouse position, and it seems like maybe the colours aren't being rendered to the Position Mask correctly? When calculating the colour in that code above I'm getting R=0, G=2, B=88, A=255, but when I mouseover my character I get R=0, G=0, B=30, A=255. Any ideas what I'm doing wrong? It seems like maybe I'm losing some information when rendering to the RenderTarget2D, but I'm now knowledgeable enough to figure out what's happening. Also, I should probably ask, is this an efficient way to do this? Will there be a performance impact? Edit: Whoops, turns out there was a bug that I'd introduced myself, I was drawing out the Position Mask with the position Color, left over from some early testing I was doing. So this solution is working perfectly, though I'm still interested in whether this is an efficient solution performance wise.

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• Python Coding standards vs. productivity

  - by Shroatmeister

  I work for a large humanitarian organisation, on a project building software that could help save lives in emergencies by speeding up the distribution of food. Many NGOs desperately need our software and we are weeks behind schedule. One thing that worries me in this project is what I think is an excessive focus on coding standards. We write in python/django and use a version of PEP0008, with various modifications e.g. line lengths can go up to 160 chars and all lines should go that long if possible, no blank lines between imports, line wrapping rules that apply only to certain kinds of classes, lots of templates that we must use, even if they aren't the best way to solve a problem etc. etc. One core dev spent a week rewriting a major part of the system to meet the then new coding standards, throwing away several suites of tests in the process, as the rewrite meant they were 'invalid'. We spent two weeks rewriting all the functionality that was lost, and fixing bugs. He is the lead dev and his word carries weight, so he has convinced the project manager that these standards are necessary. The junior devs do as they are told. I sense that the project manager has a strong feeling of cognitive dissonance about all this but nevertheless agrees with it vehemently as he feels unsure what else to do. Today I got in serious trouble because I had forgotten to put some spaces after commas in a keyword argument. I was literally shouted at by two other devs and the project manager during a Skype call. Personally I think coding standards are important but also think that we are wasting a lot of time obsessing with them, and when I verbalized this it provoked rage. I'm seen as a troublemaker in the team, a team that is looking for scapegoats for its failings. Since the introduction of the coding standards, the team's productivity has measurably plummeted, however this only reinforces the obsession, i.e. the lead dev simply blames our non-adherence to standards for the lack of progress. He believes that we can't read each other's code if we don't adhere to the conventions. This is starting to turn sticky. Now I am trying to modify various scripts, autopep8, pep8ify and PythonTidy to try to match the conventions. We also run pep8 against source code but there are so many implicit amendments to our standard that it's hard to track them all. The lead dev simple picks faults that the pep8 script doesn't pick up and shouts at us in the next stand-up meeting. Every week there are new additions to the coding standards that force us to rewrite existing, working, tested code. Thank heavens we still have tests, (I reverted some commits and fixed a bunch of the ones he removed). All the while there is increasing pressure to meet the deadline. I believe a fundamental issue is that the lead dev and another core dev refuse to trust other developers to do their job. But how to deal with that? We can't do our job because we are too busy rewriting everything. I've never encountered this dynamic in a software engineering team. Am I wrong to question their adherence to coding standards? Has anyone else experienced a similar situation and how have they dealt with it successfully? (I'm not looking for a discussion just actual solutions people have found)

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• Flash Actionscript 3.0 Game Projectile Creation

  - by Christian Basar

  I have been creating a side-scrolling Actionscript 3.0 game. In this game I want the Player to be able to shoot blow darts as weapons. I had some trouble getting the darts to be created in the right place (in front of the player), but eventually got it working with some help from this page (please look at it for background information on this problem): http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8031553/flash-actionscript-3-0-game-projectile-creation I got the darts to be created in the right place (near the player) and a 'movePlayerDarts()' function moves them. But I actually have a new problem. When the player moves after firing a dart, the dart tries to follow him! If the player jumps, the dart rises up. If the player moves to the left, the dart moves slightly to the left. Obviously, there is some code somewhere which is telling the darts to follow the player. I do not see how, unless the 'playerDartContainer' has something to do with that. But the container is always at position (0,0) and it does not move. Also, as a test I traced a dart's 'y' coordinate within the constantly-running 'movePlayerDarts()' function. As you can see, that function constantly moves the dart down the y axis by increasing its y-coordinate value. But when I jump, the 'y' coordinate being traced is never reduced, even though the dart clearly looks like it's rising! If anybody has any suggestions, I'd appreciate them! Here is the code I use to create the darts: // This function creates a dart public function createDart():void { if (playerDartContainer.numChildren <= 4) { // Play dart shooting sound sndDartShootIns.play(); // Create a new 'PlayerDart' object playerDart = new PlayerDart(); // Set the new dart's initial position and direction depending on the player's direction // Player's facing right if (player.scaleX == 1) { // Create dart in front of player's dart gun playerDart.x = player.x + 12; playerDart.y = player.y - 85; // Dart faces right, too playerDart.scaleX = 1; } // Player's facing left else if (player.scaleX == -1) { // Create dart in front of player's dart gun playerDart.x = player.x - 12; playerDart.y = player.y - 85; // Dart faces left, too playerDart.scaleX = -1; } playerDartContainer.addChild(playerDart); } } // End of 'createDart()' function This code is the EnterFrameHandler for the player darts: // In every frame, call 'movePlayerDarts()' to move the darts within the 'playerDartContainer' public function playerDartEnterFrameHandler(event:Event):void { // Only move the Player's darts if their container has at least one dart within if (playerDartContainer.numChildren > 0) { movePlayerDarts(); } } And finally, this is the code that actually moves all of the player's darts: // Move all of the Player's darts public function movePlayerDarts():void { for (var pdIns:int = 0; pdIns < playerDartContainer.numChildren; pdIns++) { // Set the Player Dart 'instance' variable to equal the current PlayerDart playerDartIns = PlayerDart(playerDartContainer.getChildAt(pdIns)); // Move the current dart in the direction it was shot. The dart's 'x-scale' // factor is multiplied by its speed (5) to move the dart in its correct // direction. If the 'x-scale' factor is -1, the dart is pointing left (as // seen in the 'createDart()' function. (-1 * 5 = -5), so the dart will go // to left at a rate of 5. The opposite is true for the right-ward facing // darts playerDartIns.x += playerDartIns.scaleX * 1; // Make gravity work on the dart playerDartIns.y += 0.7; //playerDartIns.y += 1; // What if the dart hits the ground? if (HitTest.intersects(playerDartIns, floor, this)) { playerDartContainer.removeChild(playerDartIns); } //trace("Dart x: " + playerDartIns.x); trace("Dart y: " + playerDartIns.y); } }

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• Do I need to contact a lawyer to report a GPL violation in software distributed on Apple's App Store?

  - by Rinzwind

  Some company is selling software through Apple's App Store which uses portions of code that I released publicly under the GPL. The company is violating the licensing terms in two ways, by (1) not preserving my copyright statement, and not releasing their code under the GPL license and (2) by distributing my GPL-licensed code through Apple's App Store. (The Free Software Foundation has made clear that the terms of the GPL and those of the App Store are incompatible.) I want to report this to Apple, and ask that they take appropriate action. I have tried mailing them to ask for more information about the reporting process, and have received the automated reply quoted below. The last point in the list of things one needs to provide, the “a statement by you, made under penalty of perjury,” sounds as if they mean some kind of specific legal document. I'm not sure. Does this mean I need to contact a lawyer just to file the report? I'd like to avoid going through that hassle if at all possible. (Besides an answer to this specific question, I'd welcome comments and experience reports from anyone who has already had to deal with a GPL violation on Apple's App Store.) Thank you for contacting Apple's Copyright Agent. If you believe that your work has been copied in a way that constitutes infringement on Apple’s Web site, please provide the following information: an electronic or physical signature of the person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of the copyright interest; a description of the copyrighted work that you claim has been infringed; a description of where the material that you claim is infringing is located on the site; your address, telephone number, and email address; a statement by you that you have a good faith belief that the disputed use is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law; a statement by you, made under penalty of perjury, that the above information in your Notice is accurate and that you are the copyright owner or authorized to act on the copyright owner’s behalf. For further information, please review Apple's Legal Information & Notices/Claims of Copyright Infringement at: http://www.apple.com/legal/trademark/claimsofcopyright.html To expedite the processing of your claim regarding any alleged intellectual property issues related to iTunes (music/music videos, podcasts, TV, Movies), please send a copy of your notice to [email protected] For claims concerning a software application, please send a copy of your notice to [email protected]. Due to the high volume of e-mails we receive, this may be the only reply you receive from [email protected]. Please be assured, however, that Apple's Copyright Agent and/or the iTunes Legal Team will promptly investigate and take appropriate action concerning your report.

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• How to Use Your Android Phone as a Modem; No Rooting Required

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  If your cellular provider’s mobile hotspot/tethering plans are too pricey, skip them and tether your phone to your computer without inflating your monthly bill. Read on to see how you can score free mobile internet. We recently received a letter from a How-To Geek reader, requesting help linking their Android phone to their laptop to avoid the highway robbery their cellular provider was insisting upon: Dear How-To Geek, I recently found out that my cellphone company charges $30 a month to use your smartphone as a data modem. That’s an outrageous price when I already pay an extra $15 a month charge just because they insist that because I have a smartphone I need a data plan because I’ll be using so much more data than other users. They expect me to pay what amounts to a $45 a month premium just to do some occasional surfing and email checking from the comfort of my laptop instead of the much smaller smartphone screen! Surely there is a work around? I’m running Windows 7 on my laptop and I have an Android phone running Android OS 2.2. Help! Sincerely, No Double Dipping! Well Double Dipping, this is a sentiment we can strongly related to as many of us on staff are in a similar situation. It’s absurd that so many companies charge you to use the data connection on the phone you’re already paying for. There is no difference in bandwidth usage if you stream Pandora to your phone or to your laptop, for example. Fortunately we have a solution for you. It’s not free-as-in-beer but it only costs $16 which, over the first year of use alone, will save you $344. Let’s get started! Latest Features How-To Geek ETC What Can Super Mario Teach Us About Graphics Technology? Windows 7 Service Pack 1 is Released: But Should You Install It? How To Make Hundreds of Complex Photo Edits in Seconds With Photoshop Actions How to Enable User-Specific Wireless Networks in Windows 7 How to Use Google Chrome as Your Default PDF Reader (the Easy Way) How To Remove People and Objects From Photographs In Photoshop Make Efficient Use of Tab Bar Space by Customizing Tab Width in Firefox See the Geeky Work Done Behind the Scenes to Add Sounds to Movies [Video] Use a Crayon to Enhance Engraved Lettering on Electronics Adult Swim Brings Their Programming Lineup to iOS Devices Feel the Chill of the South Atlantic with the Antarctica Theme for Windows 7 Seas0nPass Now Offers Untethered Apple TV Jailbreaking

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• XML DB Content Connector unable to accept binary content due to Invalid argument(s) in call oracle.sql.BLOB.setBinaryStream(0L)

  - by sthieme

  Dear Readers, I am working on implementing a custom Document Management System using the Oracle XML DB Content Connector. See the following documentation link for details Oracle XML DB Developer's Guide 11g Release 2 (11.2)Chapter 31 Using Oracle XML DB Content Connectorhttp://docs.oracle.com/cd/E11882_01/appdev.112/e23094/xdb_jcr.htm especially the following example gave me some trouble to run it successfully Sample Code to Upload Filehttp://docs.oracle.com/cd/E11882_01/appdev.112/e23094/xdb_jcr.htm#ADXDB5627 I had already succeeded to set some of the properties successfully, i.e. jcr:encoding, jcr:mimeType, ojcr:displayName and ojcr:language. However setting the jcr:data property as described in the example failed consistently, both with the documented input FileStream or with a fixed string. contentNode.setProperty("jcr:data", "mystringvalue"); After some research I found the following Support Note which describes the cause for the issue in the JDBC driver version 11.2.0.1. Error "ORA-17068: Invalid argument(s) in call" Using Method setBinaryStream(0L) in JDBC 11.2.0.1 (Doc ID 1234235.1)https://support.oracle.com/epmos/faces/DocContentDisplay?id=1234235.1It can easily be solved by upgrading to JDBC 11.2.0.2 or worked around using the following property setting: java -Doracle.jdbc.LobStreamPosStandardCompliant=false ... Kind regards,Stefan C:\Oracle\Database\product\11.2.0\dbhome_1>java -Doracle.jdbc.LobStreamPosStandardCompliant=false UploadFile jdbc:oracle:oci:@localhost:1522:orcl XDB welcome1 /public MyFile.txt text/plain 19.08.2014 11:50:26 oracle.jcr.impl.OracleRepositoryImpl login INFO: JCR repository descriptors: query.xpath.pos.index = true option.versioning.supported = false jcr.repository.version = 11.1.0.0.0 option.observation.supported = false option.locking.supported = false oracle.jcr.framework.version = 11.1.0.0.0 query.xpath.doc.order = false jcr.specification.version = 1.0 jcr.repository.vendor = Oracle option.query.sql.supported = false jcr.specification.name = Content Repository for Java Technology API level.2.supported = true level.1.supported = true jcr.repository.name = XML DB Content Connector jcr.repository.vendor.url = http://www.oracle.com oracle.jcr.persistenceManagerFactory = oracle.jcr.impl.xdb.XDBPersistenceManagerFactory option.transactions.supported = false 19.08.2014 11:50:26 oracle.jcr.impl.OracleRepositoryImpl login INFO: Session Session-1 connected for user id XDB 19.08.2014 11:50:27 oracle.jcr.impl.OracleSessionImpl logout INFO: Session-1: logout instead of C:\Oracle\Database\product\11.2.0\dbhome_1>java UploadFile jdbc:oracle:oci:@localhost:1522:orcl XDB welcome1 /public MyFile.txt text/plain 19.08.2014 10:56:39 oracle.jcr.impl.OracleRepositoryImpl login INFO: JCR repository descriptors: query.xpath.pos.index = true option.versioning.supported = false jcr.repository.version = 11.1.0.0.0 option.observation.supported = false option.locking.supported = false oracle.jcr.framework.version = 11.1.0.0.0 query.xpath.doc.order = false jcr.specification.version = 1.0 jcr.repository.vendor = Oracle option.query.sql.supported = false jcr.specification.name = Content Repository for Java Technology API level.2.supported = true level.1.supported = true jcr.repository.name = XML DB Content Connector jcr.repository.vendor.url = http://www.oracle.com oracle.jcr.persistenceManagerFactory = oracle.jcr.impl.xdb.XDBPersistenceManagerFactory option.transactions.supported = false 19.08.2014 10:56:39 oracle.jcr.impl.OracleRepositoryImpl login INFO: Session Session-1 connected for user id XDB Exception in thread "main" javax.jcr.RepositoryException: Unable to accept binary content at oracle.jcr.impl.ExceptionFactory.repository(ExceptionFactory.java:142) at oracle.jcr.impl.ExceptionFactory.otherwiseFailed(ExceptionFactory.java:98) at oracle.jcr.impl.xdb.XDBPersistenceManager.acceptBinaryStream(XDBPersistenceManager.java:1421) at oracle.jcr.impl.xdb.XDBResource.setContent(XDBResource.java:898) at oracle.jcr.impl.ContentNode.setProperty(ContentNode.java:472) at oracle.jcr.impl.OracleNode.setProperty(OracleNode.java:1439) at oracle.jcr.impl.OracleNode.setProperty(OracleNode.java:460) at UploadFile.main(UploadFile.java:54) Caused by: java.sql.SQLException: Invalid argument(s) in call at oracle.jdbc.driver.T2CConnection.newOutputStream(T2CConnection.java:2392) at oracle.sql.BLOB.setBinaryStream(BLOB.java:893) at oracle.jcr.impl.xdb.XDBPersistenceManager.acceptBinaryStream(XDBPersistenceManager.java:1393) ... 5 more

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