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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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• Can't connect to VPN on Ubuntu 12.04

  - by 12rad

  I'm having a lot of trouble connecting to VPN. This used to work on my machine, but i recently did an update and it's stopped working. I'm not sure what the problem is. My question is how do i debug this? I'm not able to narrow it down to a specific problem. This is what i get when i tail the syslogs. Would appreciate any help! Nov 6 23:42:52 meera NetworkManager[1137]: <info> Starting VPN service 'pptp'... Nov 6 23:42:52 meera NetworkManager[1137]: <info> VPN service 'pptp' started (org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.pptp), PID 6132 Nov 6 23:42:52 meera NetworkManager[1137]: <info> VPN service 'pptp' appeared; activating connections Nov 6 23:42:52 meera NetworkManager[1137]: <info> VPN plugin state changed: starting (3) Nov 6 23:42:52 meera NetworkManager[1137]: <info> VPN connection 'NAME VPN' (Connect) reply received. Nov 6 23:42:52 meera pppd[6136]: Plugin /usr/lib/pppd/2.4.5/nm-pptp-pppd-plugin.so loaded. Nov 6 23:42:52 meera pppd[6136]: pppd 2.4.5 started by root, uid 0 Nov 6 23:42:52 meera chat[6139]: timeout set to 15 seconds Nov 6 23:42:52 meera chat[6139]: abort on (NO CARRIER) Nov 6 23:42:52 meera chat[6139]: abort on (NO DIALTONE) Nov 6 23:42:52 meera chat[6139]: abort on (ERROR) Nov 6 23:42:52 meera chat[6139]: abort on (NO ANSWER) Nov 6 23:42:52 meera chat[6139]: abort on (BUSY) Nov 6 23:42:52 meera chat[6139]: abort on (Username/Password Incorrect) Nov 6 23:42:52 meera chat[6139]: send (AT^M) Nov 6 23:42:52 meera pptp[6138]: nm-pptp-service-6132 log[main:pptp.c:314]: The synchronous pptp option is NOT activated Nov 6 23:42:52 meera chat[6139]: expect (OK) Nov 6 23:42:52 meera pptp[6143]: nm-pptp-service-6132 log[ctrlp_rep:pptp_ctrl.c:251]: Sent control packet type is 1 'Start-Control-Connection-Request' Nov 6 23:42:53 meera pptp[6143]: nm-pptp-service-6132 log[ctrlp_disp:pptp_ctrl.c:739]: Received Start Control Connection Reply Nov 6 23:42:53 meera pptp[6143]: nm-pptp-service-6132 log[ctrlp_disp:pptp_ctrl.c:773]: Client connection established. Nov 6 23:42:53 meera pptp[6143]: nm-pptp-service-6132 log[ctrlp_rep:pptp_ctrl.c:251]: Sent control packet type is 7 'Outgoing-Call-Request' Nov 6 23:42:54 meera pptp[6143]: nm-pptp-service-6132 log[ctrlp_disp:pptp_ctrl.c:858]: Received Outgoing Call Reply. Nov 6 23:42:54 meera pptp[6143]: nm-pptp-service-6132 log[ctrlp_disp:pptp_ctrl.c:897]: Outgoing call established (call ID 0, peer's call ID 13077). Nov 6 23:42:54 meera pptp[6138]: nm-pptp-service-6132 warn[decaps_hdlc:pptp_gre.c:231]: The ppp mode is synchronous, yet no pptp --sync option is specified! Nov 6 23:43:07 meera chat[6139]: alarm Nov 6 23:43:07 meera chat[6139]: Failed Nov 6 23:43:07 meera pppd[6136]: Script chat -v -f /etc/ppp/chat-ztisp finished (pid 6139), status = 0x3 Nov 6 23:43:07 meera pppd[6136]: Connect script failed Nov 6 23:43:07 meera pppd[6136]: Waiting for 1 child processes... Nov 6 23:43:07 meera pppd[6136]: script /usr/sbin/pptp 204.197.218.90 --nolaunchpppd --loglevel 0 --logstring nm-pptp-service-6132, pid 6138 Nov 6 23:43:07 meera pptp[6138]: nm-pptp-service-6132 warn[decaps_hdlc:pptp_gre.c:204]: short read (-1): Input/output error Nov 6 23:43:07 meera pptp[6138]: nm-pptp-service-6132 warn[decaps_hdlc:pptp_gre.c:216]: pppd may have shutdown, see pppd log Nov 6 23:43:07 meera pptp[6143]: nm-pptp-service-6132 log[callmgr_main:pptp_callmgr.c:234]: Closing connection (unhandled) Nov 6 23:43:07 meera pppd[6136]: Script /usr/sbin/pptp 204.197.218.90 --nolaunchpppd --loglevel 0 --logstring nm-pptp-service-6132 finished (pid 6138), status = 0x0 Nov 6 23:43:07 meera pptp[6143]: nm-pptp-service-6132 log[ctrlp_rep:pptp_ctrl.c:251]: Sent control packet type is 12 'Call-Clear-Request' Nov 6 23:43:07 meera pptp[6143]: nm-pptp-service-6132 log[call_callback:pptp_callmgr.c:79]: Closing connection (call state) Nov 6 23:43:07 meera pppd[6136]: Exit. Nov 6 23:43:07 meera NetworkManager[1137]: <warn> VPN plugin failed: 1 Nov 6 23:43:07 meera NetworkManager[1137]: <info> VPN plugin state changed: stopped (6) Nov 6 23:43:07 meera NetworkManager[1137]: <info> VPN plugin state change reason: 0 Nov 6 23:43:07 meera NetworkManager[1137]: <warn> error disconnecting VPN: Could not process the request because no VPN connection was active.

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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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• Tweaking Remote Control (In-Kernel LIRC)

  - by Geoff

  I've recently rebuilt my MythTV box using Mythbuntu 12.04, to take advantage of newer hardware (Ivy Bridge). On my previous build I used lirc to manage the remote, i.e. the mapping of key codes - keypresses - application keys; it was quite a journey to learn it all, and I ended up fairly comfortable with how it all worked. What I have: I have a cheap Chinavasion remote and USB dongle, which I've found several articles on; these largely revolve around working with XBMC (interesting, but I don't think directly applicable) and also around getting a Harmony remote to work (it's a Chinavasion CVSB-983 - very useful, since I needed this to get my Harmony 900 working). Mythbuntu 12.04 64-bit MythTV 0.25 (likely irrelevant) How it is right now When I plug this in, it 'just works'. Which is great, except that Ubuntu uses it natively, and prevents some of the button presses from getting through to Myth. For example, I can send a button from the remote that equates to Ctrl-Alt-A (which I assume Ubuntu isn't interested in), and then trap that in Mythfrontend, but the remote's Play button is caught by Ubuntu (which displays a large circle with a line though it, as there's no media player loaded). I understand that this is because lirc is merged into the kernel now, and I like that. What I've done so far: Found the device using lsusb: $ lsusb Bus 001 Device 004: ID 073a:2230 Chaplet Systems, Inc. infrared dongle for remote Found the event device number: $ cat /proc/bus/input/devices I: Bus=0003 Vendor=073a Product=2230 Version=0110 N: Name="HID 073a:2230" P: Phys=usb-0000:00:1a.0-1.2/input0 S: Sysfs=/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1a.0/usb1/1-1/1-1.2/1-1.2:1.0/input/input5 U: Uniq= H: Handlers=sysrq kbd mouse1 event5 js0 B: PROP=0 B: EV=10001f B: KEY=4c37fff072ff32d bf54445600000000 ffffffffff 30c100b17c007 ffa67bfad951dfff febeffdfffefffff fffffffffffffffe B: REL=343 B: ABS=100030000 B: MSC=10 Tested the input with evtest (I pressed Play): $ sudo evtest /dev/input/event5 Input driver version is 1.0.1 Input device ID: bus 0x3 vendor 0x73a product 0x2230 version 0x110 Input device name: "HID 073a:2230" Supported events: Event type 0 (EV_SYN) Event type 1 (EV_KEY) Event code 1 (KEY_ESC) Event code 2 (KEY_1) Event code 3 (KEY_2) Event code 4 (KEY_3) Event code 5 (KEY_4) Event code 6 (KEY_5) Event code 7 (KEY_6) <------------snipped lots of 'Event code' lines------------> Testing ... (interrupt to exit) Event: time 1336435683.230656, -------------- SYN_REPORT ------------ Event: time 1336435683.246648, type 4 (EV_MSC), code 4 (MSC_SCAN), value c00cd Event: time 1336435683.246652, type 1 (EV_KEY), code 164 (KEY_PLAYPAUSE), value 0 Event: time 1336435683.246655, -------------- SYN_REPORT ------------ Tested showkey, again for the Play key: $ sudo showkey -s kb mode was RAW [ if you are trying this under X, it might not work since the X server is also reading /dev/console ] press any key (program terminates 10s after last keypress)... 0xe0 0x22 0xe0 0xa2 What I want: I'd like a way to scan the incoming button presses, if the above method isn't correct. I'd like to either remap each button press to something that Ubuntu/Unity will ignore, or even better pass the keypress directly to Myth (I suspect this later is only possible with lirc, but I could be wrong). I would really like to do this with the in-kernel drivers, i.e. without explicitly loading lirc; if that's the way the world is going, I'd rather find a way to map the current behaviour to what I want, rather than forcing the 'old' arrangement of loading lirc outside the kernel. Learning something new is also worthwhile! My guess: I'm assuming that this will require using setkeycodes, but have had trouble finding enough information to configure this. Any help greatly appreciated!

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• Adding a Role to a Responsibility for Use with the Oracle E-Business Suite SDK for Java JAAS Implementation

  - by Juan Camilo Ruiz

  This new post on the series of ADF integration with Oracle E-Business Suite, was written by Sara Woodhull, Principal Product Manager on the Oracle E-Business Suite Applications Technology team. Based on a previous post of the series, a reader asked what to do if you have an existing responsibility assigned to lots of users, instead of the UMX role that the Oracle E-Business Suite SDK for Java JAAS Implementation requires.  It would be tedious to assign a new role directly to hundreds or thousands of users, so naturally we’d like to avoid that if possible. Most people don’t know this, but it’s possible to assign a UMX role to a responsibility in Oracle User Management. Once you do that, users with your responsibility will all inherit your UMX role automatically. You can then proceed with using your UMX role with JAAS for ADF. Here is how to assign a UMX role to a responsibility in Oracle E-Business Suite: In the User Management responsibility, go to the Roles & Role Inheritance page. Search for the responsibility you want. In the search results table, click the “View In Hierarchy” icon for your responsibility. Note that the codes for responsibilities start with FND_RESP, while the codes for roles start with UMX. In the Role Inheritance Hierarchy, click on the Add Node icon (green plus + ) for your responsibility. Now you will see what appears to be the same page again but it is a little different (note the text at the top telling you the role you select will be inherited…).  This time, either search or expand nodes until you find your custom UMX role.  Use the Quick Select to choose that role. You will be sent back to the first screen, where you should see a confirmation message at the top. On the same page you can verify that the custom UMX role is underneath the responsibility.  You may need to expand one or more nodes to see the UMX role under the responsibility. You might see some other roles that have been inherited as well. Now that your users have the UMX role, you can test that the UMX role is being passed through to your ADF application through the Oracle E-Business Suite SDK for Java JAAS feature. Happy coding!

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• Impulsioned jumping

  - by Mutoh

  There's one thing that has been puzzling me, and that is how to implement a 'faux-impulsed' jump in a platformer. If you don't know what I'm talking about, then think of the jumps of Mario, Kirby, and Quote from Cave Story. What do they have in common? Well, the height of your jump is determined by how long you keep the jump button pressed. Knowing that these character's 'impulses' are built not before their jump, as in actual physics, but rather while in mid-air - that is, you can very well lift your finger midway of the max height and it will stop, even if with desacceleration between it and the full stop; which is why you can simply tap for a hop and hold it for a long jump -, I am mesmerized by how they keep their trajetories as arcs. My current implementation works as following: While the jump button is pressed, gravity is turned off and the avatar's Y coordenate is decremented by the constant value of the gravity. For example, if things fall at Z units per tick, it will rise Z units per tick. Once the button is released or the limit is reached, the avatar desaccelerates in an amount that would make it cover X units until its speed reaches 0; once it does, it accelerates up until its speed matches gravity - sticking to the example, I could say it accelerates from 0 to Z units/tick while still covering X units. This implementation, however, makes jumps too diagonal, and unless the avatar's speed is faster than the gravity, which would make it way too fast in my current project (it moves at about 4 pixels per tick and gravity is 10 pixels per tick, at a framerate of 40FPS), it also makes it more vertical than horizontal. Those familiar with platformers would notice that the character's arc'd jump almost always allows them to jump further even if they aren't as fast as the game's gravity, and when it doesn't, if not played right, would prove itself to be very counter-intuitive. I know this because I could attest that my implementation is very annoying. Has anyone ever attempted at similar mechanics, and maybe even succeeded? I'd like to know what's behind this kind of platformer jumping. If you haven't ever had any experience with this beforehand and want to give it a go, then please, don't try to correct or enhance my explained implementation, unless I was on the right way - try to make up your solution from scratch. I don't care if you use gravity, physics or whatnot, as long as it shows how these pseudo-impulses work, it does the job. Also, I'd like its presentation to avoid a language-specific coding; like, sharing us a C++ example, or Delphi... As much as I'm using the XNA framework for my project and wouldn't mind C# stuff, I don't have much patience to read other's code, and I'm certain game developers of other languages would be interested in what we achieve here, so don't mind sticking to pseudo-code. Thank you beforehand.

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• An update on using Rosetta Stone: Studio now isn't very useful and is not great value as an add-on option

  - by Greg Low

  I had a surprisingly large number of responses from my previous posting about learning Chinese. An update for those considering Rosetta Stone (www.rosettastone.com) for Chinese, Spanish or any other language that they offer:I had to renew my "Studio" subscription today and it's now a much worse deal than it was.It's now $75 for 6 months for Studio sessions. Online classes used to be 45 mins. Recently they reduced them to 20 mins. Given how often people have connection issues, etc. that 20 mins can disappear very quickly.They've also reduced the number you can attend. You used to be able to have 2 scheduled at any point in time. Now they limit you to 2 "group sessions" per month during the period. (You can pay for additional private sessions). The combination of these two changes now makes it much less useful. Two x 20 min sessions per month is an almost meaningless amount of practice. They also now automatically change you to auto-renew when you subscribe. They tell you where to remove this auto-renewal but the first 4 or 5 times that I went into that screen, no such option appeared. Later, an option did appear and I used it.Overall, things just aren't what they used to be at Rosetta Stone. It's now pretty hard to recommend the Studio option where it was a no-brainer before.FURTHER UPDATE: <sigh>Even after I renewed, I could not even connect to their "new" service. Although the system processed the renewal, it still tells me it's expired. My online chat person "Siva S" tells me that the problem is that I've purchased all 5 levels of the program. I can't wait till they explain to me how making an extra purchase from them stops me from logging on. Siva told me that they had "renewed" the program. I'd have to speak to Customer Care; they aren't available and then disconnected himself. Impressive (not).Their website is now full of issues too. It insists that my billing address is in the USA, even though it pretends to accept changes to it.Overall, it's gone from something that could be recommended (with some limitations) to now being an app to avoid. That's a pity as I liked much of it before.

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• Where would my different development rhythm be suitable for the work?

  - by DarenW

  Over the years I have worked on many projects, with some successful and a great benefit to the company, and some total failures with me getting fired or otherwise leaving. What is the difference? Naturally I prefer the former and wish to avoid the latter, so I'm pondering this issue. The key seems to be that my personal approach differs from the norm. I write code first, letting it be all spaghetti and chaos, using whatever tools "fit my hand" that I'm fluent in. I try to organize it, then give up and start over with a better design. I go through cycles, from thinking-design to coding-testing. This may seem to be the same as any other development process, Agile or whatever, cycling between design and coding, but there does seem to be a subtle difference: The methods (ideally) followed by most teams goes design, code; design, code; ... while I'm going code, design; code, design; (if that makes any sense.) Music analogy: some types of music have a strong downbeat while others have prominent syncopation. In practice, I just can't think in terms of UML, specifications and so on, but grok things only by attempting to code and debug and refactor ad-hoc. I need the grounding provided by coding in order to think constructively, then to offer any opinions, advice or solutions to the team and get real work done. In positions where I can initially hack up cowboy code without constraints of tool or language choices, I easily gain a "feel" for the data, requirements etc and eventually do good work. In formalized positions where paperwork and pure "design" comes first and only later any coding (even for small proof-of-concept projects), I am lost at sea and drown. Therefore, I'd like to know how to either 1) change my rhythm to match the more formalized methodology-oriented team ways of doing things, or 2) find positions at organizations where my sense of development rhythm is perfect for the work. It's probably unrealistic for a person to change their fundamental approach to things. So option 2) is preferred. So where I can I find such positions? How common is my approach and where is it seen as viable but different, and not dismissed as undisciplined or cowboy coder ways?

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• What Am I doing for my 5 months 1 week old baby for his first cold?

  - by Rekha

  With my limited friends circle with babies, I heard that babies in their fifth month usually gets affected by cold all of a sudden. This is unavoidable and I feel it is good for the babies as they start developing their immune system right on. We usually take our son for a small walk so that he is able to explore the world out there. We have been taking him for a stroll almost everyday since we was 3 months old. But only now he is getting his first cold. So things happen only now I think. Till that day I had somehow brought some routine for him for his feed and naps during day time. Night time is still sleepless ones anyway. So when he first got his cold, that night it went on as usual getting up every few hours. From the next day on, he stopped feeding at the usual time. In the night he goes for 8-10 hours between feeds but still wakes up every two hours and cries for about 10 minutes and when we lift him for sometime, he goes back to sleep. Now to the point what all to expect: * Babies starts feeding frequently * Babies spit up increases * They dislike the food they liked before (we have just started solid foods as per our pediatricians advice) * Since they cannot breathe properly, they cannot sleep for a long time *Pees and poops less frequently. What all we did for our baby to make him comfortable during this time: * Feed the baby less quantity and more frequently whenever they expect to feed (Do not follow the schedule) * When the quantity is less, spit ups is also less * If the baby does not like the food (vegetable or fruit), avoid them till they get back to normal * Try to elevate their head while sleeping ( we used the cradle – sitting position, bouncer, car seat and finally all four sides we placed firm pillows so that he does not roll and kept a pillow for his head till his hip – this one is recommended usually but we have an eye on him always) * No need for any medicines – it will take a week for them to get back to normal whether or not we gives medicines * We applied home made Cold Reliever (heat 2 teaspoons of coconut oil with a small camphor piece till the camphor disappears – then cool the mixture) on his chest, back, neck and feet and covered the feet with socks in the nights * Bathe him everyday – hot (that your baby can withstand) *  Whenever possible give him a steam bath (open the hot showers for sometime in the bathroom and close the doors. When the steam is bearable, close the shower and take the baby inside the bathroom for sometime) * Also use a bulb syringe provided in the hospital to clear the nose (use some saline water drops for ease) * Cuddle him when he cries But please do take him to his doctor if he has fever and other symptoms other than cold or the cold persists for more than 5 – 7 days. Image Credit : MiriamBJDolls

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• Overload Avoidance

  - by mikef

  A little under a year ago, Matt Simmons wrote a rather reflective article about his terrifying brush with stress-induced ill health. SysAdmins and DBAs have always been prime victims of work-related stress, but I wonder if that predilection is perhaps getting worse, despite the best efforts of Matt and his trusty side-kick, HR. The constant pressure from share-holders and CFOs to 'streamline' the workforce is partially to blame, but the more recent culprit is technology itself. I can't deny that the rise of technologies like virtualization, PowerCLI, PowerShell, and a host of others has been a tremendous boon. As a result, individual IT professionals are now able to handle more and more tasks and manage increasingly large and complex environments. But, without a doubt, this is a two-edged sword; The reward for competence is invariably more work. Unfortunately, SysAdmins play such a pivotal role in modern business that it's easy to see how they can very quickly become swamped in conflicting demands coming from different directions. However, that doesn't justify the ridiculous hours many are asked (or volunteer) to devote to their work. Admirably though their commitment is, it isn't healthy for them, it sets a dangerous expectation, and eventually something will snap. There are times when everyone needs to step up to the plate outside of 'normal' work hours, but that time isn't all the time. Naturally, with all that lovely technology, you can automate more and more of those tricky tasks to keep on top of the workload, but you are still only human. Clever though you may be, there is a very real limit to how far technology can take you. I'm not suggesting that you avoid these technologies, or deliberately aim for mediocrity; I'm just saying that you need to be more than just technically skilled (and Wesley Nonapeptide riffs on and around this topic in his excellent 'Telepathic Robot Drones' blog post). You need to be able to manage expectations, not just Exchange. Specifically, that means your own expectations of what you are capable of, because those come before everyone else's. After all, how can you keep your work-life balance under control, if you're the one setting the bar way too high? Talking to your manager, or discussing issues with your users, is only going to be productive if you have some facts to work with. "Know Thyself" is the first law of managing work overload, and this is obviously a skill which people develop over time; the fact that veteran Sysadmins exist at all is testament to this. I'd just love to know how you get to that point. Personally, I'm using RescueTime to keep myself honest, but I'm open to recommendations for better methods. Do you track your own time, do you have an intuitive sense of what is possible, or do you just rely on someone else to handle that all for you? Cheers, Michael

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• A big flat text file or a HTML site for language documentation?

  - by Bad Sector

  A project of mine is a small embeddable Tcl-like scripting language, LIL. While i'm mostly making it for my own use, i think it is interesting enough for others to use, so i want it to have a nice (but not very "wordy") documentation. So far i'm using a single flat readme.txt file. It explains the language's syntax, features, standard functions, how to use the C API, etc. Also it is easy to scan and read in almost every environment out there, from basic text-only terminals to full-fledged high-end graphical desktop environments. However, while i tried to keep things nicely formatted (as much as this is possible in plain text), i still think that being a big (and growing) wall of text, it isn't as easy on the eyes as it could be. Also i feel that sometimes i'm not writing as much as i want in order to avoid expanding the text too much. So i thought i could use another project of mine, QuHelp, which is basically a help site generator for sites like this one with a sidebar that provides a tree of topics/subtopics and offline full text search. With this i can use HTML to format the documentation and if i use QuHelp for some other project that uses LIL, i can import LIL's documentation as part of the other project's documentation. However converting the existing documentation to QuHelp/HTML isn't a small task, especially when it comes to functions (i'll need to put more detail on them than what currently exists in the readme.txt file). Also it loses the wide range of availability that it currently has (even if QuHelp's generated code degrades gracefully down to console-only web browsers, plain text is readable from everywhere, including from popular editors such as Vim and Emacs - i had someone once telling me that he likes LIL's documentation because it is readable without leaving his editor). So, my question is simply this: should i keep the documentation as it is now in the form of a single readme.txt file or should i convert it to something like the site i mentioned above? There is also the option to do both, but i'm not sure if i'll be able to always keep them in sync or if it is worth the effort. After asking around in IRC i've got mixed answers: some liked the wide availability of the single text file, others said that it is looks as bad as a man page (personally i don't mind that - i can read man pages just fine - but other people might have issues reading them). What do you think?

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• Version control and data provenance in charts, slides, and marketing materials that derive from code ouput

  - by EMS

  I develop as part of a small team that mostly does research and statistics stuff. But from the output of our code, other teams often create promotional materials, slides, presentations, etc. We run into a big problem because the marketing team (non-programmers) tend to use Excel, Adobe products, or other tools to carry out their work, and just want easy-to-use data formats from us. This leads to data provenance problems. We see email chains with attachments from 6 months ago and someone is saying "Hey, who generated this data. Can you generate more of it with the recent 6 months of results added in?" I want to help the other teams effectively use version control (my team uses it reasonably well for the code, but every other team classically comes up with many excuses to avoid it). For version controlling a software project where the participants are coders, I have some reasonable understanding of best practices and what to do. But for getting a team of marketing professionals to version control marketing materials and associate metadata about the software used to generate the data for the charts, I'm a bit at a loss. Some of the goals I'd like to achieve: Data that supported a material should never be associated with a person. As in, it should never be the case that someone says "Hey Person XYZ, I see you sent me this data as an attachment 6 months ago, can you update it for me?" Rather, data should be associated with the code and code-version of any code that was used to get it, and perhaps a team of many people who may maintain that code. Then references for data updates are about executing a specific piece of code, with a known version number. I'd like this to be a process that works easily with the tech that the marketing team already uses (e.g. Excel files, Adobe file, whatever). I don't want to burden them with needing to learn a bunch of new stuff just to use version control. They are capable folks, so learning something is fine. Ideally they could use our existing version control framework, but there are some issues around that. I think knowing some general best practices will be enough though, and I can handle patching that into the way our stuff works now. Are there any goals I am failing to think about? What are the time-tested ways to do something like this?

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• Tips on ensuring Model Quality

  - by [email protected]

  Given enough data that represents well the domain and models that reflect exactly the decision being optimized, models usually provide good predictions that ensure lift. Nevertheless, sometimes the modeling situation is less than ideal. In this blog entry we explore the problems found in a few such situations and how to avoid them.1 - The Model does not reflect the problem you are trying to solveFor example, you may be trying to solve the problem: "What product should I recommend to this customer" but your model learns on the problem: "Given that a customer has acquired our products, what is the likelihood for each product". In this case the model you built may be too far of a proxy for the problem you are really trying to solve. What you could do in this case is try to build a model based on the result from recommendations of products to customers. If there is not enough data from actual recommendations, you could use a hybrid approach in which you would use the [bad] proxy model until the recommendation model converges.2 - Data is not predictive enoughIf the inputs are not correlated with the output then the models may be unable to provide good predictions. For example, if the input is the phase of the moon and the weather and the output is what car did the customer buy, there may be no correlations found. In this case you should see a low quality model.The solution in this case is to include more relevant inputs.3 - Not enough cases seenIf the data learned does not include enough cases, at least 200 positive examples for each output, then the quality of recommendations may be low. The obvious solution is to include more data records. If this is not possible, then it may be possible to build a model based on the characteristics of the output choices rather than the choices themselves. For example, instead of using products as output, use the product category, price and brand name, and then combine these models.4 - Output leaking into input giving the false impression of good quality modelsIf the input data in the training includes values that have changed or are available only because the output happened, then you will find some strong correlations between the input and the output, but these strong correlations do not reflect the data that you will have available at decision (prediction) time. For example, if you are building a model to predict whether a web site visitor will succeed in registering, and the input includes the variable DaysSinceRegistration, and you learn when this variable has already been set, you will probably see a big correlation between having a Zero (or one) in this variable and the fact that registration was successful.The solution is to remove these variables from the input or make sure they reflect the value as of the time of decision and not after the result is known. 

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• PC to USB transfer slow

  - by Vipin Ms

  I'm having trouble with USB transfer,not with external hard disk. Transfer starts with like, for the transfer of 700MB file it starts with 30mb/s and towards the end it stops at 0s and stays put for like 3-4 mins to transfer the last bit. I have tried different USB devices, but no luck. Is it a bug? Another important point is, in Kubuntu there is no such issue. So is it something related to Gnome? I'm using Ubuntu 11.10 64bit. Somebody please help, it's really annoying. Here are the details. PC all of my drives are in ext4. USB I tried ext3,ntfs and fat32. All having the same problem. Here are my USB controllers details: root@LAB:~# lspci|grep USB 00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 03) 00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 03) 00:1a.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #6 (rev 03) 00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 03) 00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 03) 00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 03) 00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 03) 00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 03) Here is an example of one transfer. I connected one of my 4GB usb device. Nov 24 12:01:25 LAB kernel: [ 1175.082175] userif-2: sent link up event. Nov 24 12:01:25 LAB kernel: [ 1695.684158] usb 2-2: new high speed USB device number 3 using ehci_hcd Nov 24 12:01:25 LAB mtp-probe: checking bus 2, device 3: "/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.7/usb2/2-2" Nov 24 12:01:26 LAB mtp-probe: bus: 2, device: 3 was not an MTP device Nov 24 12:01:26 LAB kernel: [ 1696.132680] usbcore: registered new interface driver uas Nov 24 12:01:26 LAB kernel: [ 1696.142528] Initializing USB Mass Storage driver... Nov 24 12:01:26 LAB kernel: [ 1696.142919] scsi4 : usb-storage 2-2:1.0 Nov 24 12:01:26 LAB kernel: [ 1696.143146] usbcore: registered new interface driver usb-storage Nov 24 12:01:26 LAB kernel: [ 1696.143150] USB Mass Storage support registered. Nov 24 12:01:27 LAB kernel: [ 1697.141657] scsi 4:0:0:0: Direct-Access SanDisk U3 Cruzer Micro 8.02 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0 CCS Nov 24 12:01:27 LAB kernel: [ 1697.168827] sd 4:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0 Nov 24 12:01:27 LAB kernel: [ 1697.169262] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] 7856127 512-byte logical blocks: (4.02 GB/3.74 GiB) Nov 24 12:01:27 LAB kernel: [ 1697.169762] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off Nov 24 12:01:27 LAB kernel: [ 1697.169767] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 45 00 00 08 Nov 24 12:01:27 LAB kernel: [ 1697.171386] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] No Caching mode page present Nov 24 12:01:27 LAB kernel: [ 1697.171391] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through Nov 24 12:01:27 LAB kernel: [ 1697.173503] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] No Caching mode page present Nov 24 12:01:27 LAB kernel: [ 1697.173510] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through Nov 24 12:01:27 LAB kernel: [ 1697.175337] sdb: sdb1 After that I initiated one transfer. lsof -p 3575|tail -2 mv 3575 root 3r REG 8,8 1719599104 4325379 /media/Misc/The Tree of Life (2011) DVDRip XviD-MAXSPEED/The Tree of Life (2011) DVDRip XviD-MAXSPEED www.torentz.3xforum.ro.avi mv 3575 root 4w REG 8,17 1046347776 15 /media/SREE/The Tree of Life (2011) DVDRip XviD-MAXSPEED/The Tree of Life (2011) DVDRip XviD-MAXSPEED www.torentz.3xforum.ro.avi Here are the total time spent on that transfer. root@LAB:/media/SREE# time mv /media/Misc/The\ Tree\ of\ Life\ \(2011\)\ DVDRip\ XviD-MAXSPEED/ /media/SREE/ real 11m49.334s user 0m0.008s sys 0m5.260s root@LAB:/media/SREE# df -T|tail -2 /dev/sdb1 vfat 3918344 1679308 2239036 43% /media/SREE /dev/sda8 ext4 110110576 60096904 50013672 55% /media/Misc Do you think this is normal?? Approximately 12 minutes for 1.6Gb transfer? Thanks.

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• Easy Profiling Point Insertion

  - by Geertjan

  One really excellent feature of NetBeans IDE is its Profiler. What's especially cool is that you can analyze code fragments, that is, you can right-click in a Java file and then choose Profiling | Insert Profiling Point. When you do that, you're able to analyze code fragments, i.e., from one statement to another statement, e.g., how long a particular piece of code takes to execute: https://netbeans.org/kb/docs/java/profiler-profilingpoints.html However, right-clicking a Java file and then going all the way down a longish list of menu items, to find "Profiling", and then "Insert Profiling Point" is a lot less easy than right-clicking in the sidebar (known as the glyphgutter) and then setting a profiling point in exactly the same way as a breakpoint: That's much easier and more intuitive and makes it far more likely that I'll use the Profiler at all. Once profiling points have been set then, as always, another menu item is added for managing the profiling point: To achieve this, I added the following to the "layer.xml" file: <folder name="Editors"> <folder name="AnnotationTypes"> <file name="profiler.xml" url="profiler.xml"/> <folder name="ProfilerActions"> <file name="org-netbeans-modules-profiler-ppoints-ui-InsertProfilingPointAction.shadow"> <attr name="originalFile" stringvalue="Actions/Profile/org-netbeans-modules-profiler-ppoints-ui-InsertProfilingPointAction.instance"/> <attr name="position" intvalue="300"/> </file> </folder> </folder> </folder> Notice that a "profiler.xml" file is referred to in the above, in the same location as where the "layer.xml" file is found. Here is the content: <!DOCTYPE type PUBLIC '-//NetBeans//DTD annotation type 1.1//EN' 'http://www.netbeans.org/dtds/annotation-type-1_1.dtd'> <type name='editor-profiler' description_key='HINT_PROFILER' localizing_bundle='org.netbeans.eppi.Bundle' visible='true' type='line' actions='ProfilerActions' severity='ok' browseable='false'/> Only disadvantage is that this registers the profiling point insertion in the glyphgutter for all file types. But that's true for the debugger too, i.e., there's no MIME type specific glyphgutter, instead, it is shared by all MIME types. Little bit confusing that the profiler point insertion can now, in theory, be set for all MIME types, but that's also true for the debugger, even though it doesn't apply to all MIME types. That probably explains why the profiling point insertion can only be done, officially, from the right-click popup menu of Java files, i.e., the developers wanted to avoid confusion and make it available to Java files only. However, I think that, since I'm already aware that I can't set the Java debugger in an HTML file, I'm also aware that the Java profiler can't be set that way as well. If you find this useful too, you can download and install the NBM from here: http://plugins.netbeans.org/plugin/55002

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• Strengthening code with possibly useless exception handling

  - by rdurand

  Is it a good practice to implement useless exception handling, just in case another part of the code is not coded correctly? Basic example A simple one, so I don't loose everybody :). Let's say I'm writing an app that will display a person's information (name, address, etc.), the data being extracted from a database. Let's say I'm the one coding the UI part, and someone else is writing the DB query code. Now imagine that the specifications of your app say that if the person's information is incomplete (let's say, the name is missing in the database), the person coding the query should handle this by returning "NA" for the missing field. What if the query is poorly coded and doesn't handle this case? What if the guy who wrote the query handles you an incomplete result, and when you try to display the informations, everything crashes, because your code isn't prepared to display empty stuff? This example is very basic. I believe most of you will say "it's not your problem, you're not responsible for this crash". But, it's still your part of the code which is crashing. Another example Let's say now I'm the one writing the query. The specifications don't say the same as above, but that the guy writing the "insert" query should make sure all the fields are complete when adding a person to the database to avoid inserting incomplete information. Should I protect my "select" query to make sure I give the UI guy complete informations? The questions What if the specifications don't explicitly say "this guy is the one in charge of handling this situation"? What if a third person implements another query (similar to the first one, but on another DB) and uses your UI code to display it, but doesn't handle this case in his code? Should I do what's necessary to prevent a possible crash, even if I'm not the one supposed to handle the bad case? I'm not looking for an answer like "(s)he's the one responsible for the crash", as I'm not solving a conflict here, I'd like to know, should I protect my code against situations it's not my responsibility to handle? Here, a simple "if empty do something" would suffice. In general, this question tackles redundant exception handling. I'm asking it because when I work alone on a project, I may code 2-3 times a similar exception handling in successive functions, "just in case" I did something wrong and let a bad case come through.

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• Computing a normal matrix in conjunction with gluLookAt

  - by Chris Smith

  I have a hand-rolled camera class that converts yaw, pitch, and roll angles into a forward, side, and up vector suitable for calling gluLookAt. Using this camera class I can modify the model-view matrix to move about the 3D world just fine. However, I am having trouble when using this camera class (and associated model-view matrix) when trying to perform directional lighting in my vertex shader. The problem is that the light direction, (0, 1, 0) for example, is relative to where the 'camera is looking' and not the actual world coordinates. (Or is this eye coordinates vs. model coordinates?) I would like the light direction to be unaffected by the camera's viewing direction. For example, when the camera is looking down the Z axis the ground is lit correctly. However, if I point the camera straight at the ground, then it goes dark. This is (I think) because the light direction is parallel with the camera's 'up' vector which is perpendicular with the ground's normal vector. I tried computing the normal matrix without taking the camera's model view into account, but then none of my objects were rotated correctly. Sorry if this sounds vague. I suspect there is a straight forward answer, but I'm not 100% clear on how the normal matrix should be used for transforming vertex normals in my vertex shader. For reference, here is pseudo code for my rendering loop: pMatrix = new Matrix(); pMatrix = makePerspective(...) mvMatrix = new Matrix() camera.apply(mvMatrix); // Calls gluLookAt // Move the object into position. mvMatrix.translatev(position); mvMatrix.rotatef(rotation.x, 1, 0, 0); mvMatrix.rotatef(rotation.y, 0, 1, 0); mvMatrix.rotatef(rotation.z, 0, 0, 1); var nMatrix = new Matrix(); nMatrix.set(mvMatrix.get().getInverse().getTranspose()); // Set vertex shader uniforms. gl.uniformMatrix4fv(shaderProgram.pMatrixUniform, false, new Float32Array(pMatrix.getFlattened())); gl.uniformMatrix4fv(shaderProgram.mvMatrixUniform, false, new Float32Array(mvMatrix.getFlattened())); gl.uniformMatrix4fv(shaderProgram.nMatrixUniform, false, new Float32Array(nMatrix.getFlattened())); // ... gl.drawElements(gl.TRIANGLES, this.vertexIndexBuffer.numItems, gl.UNSIGNED_SHORT, 0); And the corresponding vertex shader: // Attributes attribute vec3 aVertexPosition; attribute vec4 aVertexColor; attribute vec3 aVertexNormal; // Uniforms uniform mat4 uMVMatrix; uniform mat4 uNMatrix; uniform mat4 uPMatrix; // Varyings varying vec4 vColor; // Constants const vec3 LIGHT_DIRECTION = vec3(0, 1, 0); // Opposite direction of photons. const vec4 AMBIENT_COLOR = vec4 (0.2, 0.2, 0.2, 1.0); float ComputeLighting() { vec4 transformedNormal = vec4(aVertexNormal.xyz, 1.0); transformedNormal = uNMatrix * transformedNormal; float base = dot(normalize(transformedNormal.xyz), normalize(LIGHT_DIRECTION)); return max(base, 0.0); } void main(void) { gl_Position = uPMatrix * uMVMatrix * vec4(aVertexPosition, 1.0); float lightWeight = ComputeLighting(); vColor = vec4(aVertexColor.xyz * lightWeight, 1.0) + AMBIENT_COLOR; } Note that I am using WebGL, so if the anser is use glFixThisProblem(...) any pointers on how to re-implement that on WebGL if missing would be appreciated.

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• Using the latest (stable release) of Oracle Developer Tools for Visual Studio 11.1.0.7.20.

  - by mbcrump

  +  = Simple and safe Data connections.   This guide is for someone wanting to use the latest ODP.NET quickly without reading the official documentation. This guide will get you up and running in about 15 minutes. I have reviewed my referral link to my simple Setting up ODP.net with Win7 x64 and noticed most people were searching for one of the following terms: “how to use odp.net with vs” “setup connection odp.net” “query db using odp and vs” While my article provided links and a sample tnsnames.ora file, it really didn’t tell you how to use it. I’m hoping that this brief tutorial will help. So before we get started, you will need the following: Download the following: www.oracle.com/technology/software/tech/dotnet/utilsoft.html from oracle and install it. It is the first one on the page. Visual Studio 2008 or 2010. It should be noted that The System.Data.OracleClient namespace is the OLD .NET Framework Data Provider for Oracle. It should not be used anymore as it has been depreciated. The latest version which is what we are using is Oracle.DataAccess.Client. First things first, Add a reference to the Oracle.DataAccess.Client after you install ODP.NET   Copy and paste the following C# code into your project and replace the relevant info including the query string and you should be able to return data. I have commented several lines of code to assist in understanding what it is doing.   Lambda Expression. using System; using System.Data; using Oracle.DataAccess.Client;   namespace ConsoleApplication1 {     class Program     {         static void Main(string[] args)         {           try         {             //Setup DataSource             string oradb = "Data Source=(DESCRIPTION ="                                    + "(ADDRESS_LIST = (ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = hostname)(PORT = 1521)))"                                    + "(CONNECT_DATA = (SERVICE_NAME = SERVICENAME))) ;"                                    + "Persist Security Info=True;User ID=USER;Password=PASSWORD;";                        //Open Connection to Oracle - this could be moved outside the try.             OracleConnection conn = new OracleConnection(oradb);             conn.Open();               //Create cmd and use parameters to prevent SQL injection attacks.             OracleCommand cmd = new OracleCommand();             cmd.Connection = conn;               cmd.CommandText = "select username from table where username = :username";               OracleParameter p1 = new OracleParameter("username", OracleDbType.Varchar2);             p1.Value = username;             cmd.Parameters.Add(p1);               cmd.CommandType = CommandType.Text;               OracleDataReader dr = cmd.ExecuteReader();             dr.Read();               //Contains the value of the datarow             Console.WriteLine(dr["username"].ToString());               //Disposes of objects.             dr.Dispose();             cmd.Dispose();             conn.Dispose();         }           catch (OracleException ex) // Catches only Oracle errors         {             switch (ex.Number)             {                 case 1:                     Console.WriteLine("Error attempting to insert duplicate data.");                     break;                 case 12545:                     Console.WriteLine("The database is unavailable.");                     break;                 default:                     Console.WriteLine(ex.Message.ToString());                     break;             }         }           catch (Exception ex) // Catches any error not previously caught         {                   Console.WriteLine("Unidentified Error: " + ex.Message.ToString());              }         }       }           } At this point, you should have a working Program that returns data from an oracle database. If you are still having trouble then drop me a line and I will be happy to assist. As of this writing, oracle has announced the latest beta release of ODP.NET 11.2.0.1.1 Beta.  This release includes .NET Framework 4 and .NET Framework 4 Client Profile support. You may want to hold off on this version for a while as its BETA, and I wouldn’t want any production code using any BETA software.

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• How do I prevent having to log in on 3 separate prompts every time I start my machine?

  - by JC

  Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal, Ubuntu Classic desktop Each time I start my machine, I have to log in 3 times. I spent a week in IRCFreenode#ubuntu and got nothing but condescension. I've searched on the official Ubuntu fora for similar problems, tried every recommendation, and still get 3 login screens. As a workaround, I have reset login such that I get a login screen at startup, which I'd prefer not to get since this machine is accessible by no one but me, physically. I have gone into System Preferences Passwords and Encryption Keys, set first 'Passwords: default' to 'Default' and unlocked it, and unlocked the 'Passwords: login' key, too. Next, since that changed nothing, I set 'Passwords: login' to 'Default', and checked to make sure it was still unlocked. Again, no change, still get 3 login prompts at startup. I've checked twice to insure that I am the owner of the files; I am. At the suggestion of several people in #ubuntu, I've deleted first one, then the other password key in 'Passwords and Encryption Keys'. Still get 3 login prompts. I changed from the Unity desktop to Ubuntu Classic. While that didn't fix the above problem, it is a much more elegant desktop than Unity, and I'll keep it. From what I've read, this seems to be a Seahorse issue, but beyond that, no one seems to have a solution that works. I'm lost. This shouldn't be this difficult or annoying. I'm trying to help our local Old Time music collective get their machines switched over to Ubuntu in order to save them some money which they can use to promote their DRM-free music. But from what I've seen of Ubuntu so far on my own machine, I can't really recommend that they make this switch. I hope to be proved wrong on that point. But as it stands, if I was out of town or out of country and they ran into a problem, they'd have no way of fixing it as they're all less experienced than even I am. I'm not trying to cast aspersions on Ubuntu or Linux, but it seems pretty clear that KNOWLEDGEABLE, HELPFUL support for Ubuntu is lacking barring any desire on the problem-experiencing-user's part to avoid condescension. Having worked with, and run, several non-profits over the past 20 years, I know that getting volunteers to act professionally can be like herding cats. But an organization's reputation can be denigrated by sarcastic behaviors on the part of those who serve, effectively, as its public face. Thank you all for your help and support. Now...does anyone have a solution to my problem?

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• ray collision with rectangle and floating point accuracy

  - by phq

  I'm trying to solve a problem with a ray bouncing on a box. Actually it is a sphere but for simplicity the box dimensions are expanded by the sphere radius when doing the collision test making the sphere a single ray. It is done by projecting the ray onto all faces of the box and pick the one that is closest. However because I'm using floating point variables I fear that the projected point onto the surface might be interpreted as being below in the next iteration, also I will later allow the sphere to move which might make that scenario more likely. Also the bounce coefficient might be as low as zero, making the sphere continue along the surface. So my naive solution is to project not only forwards but backwards to catch those cases. That is where I got into problems shown in the figure: In the first iteration the first black arrow is calculated and we end up at a point on the surface of the box. In the second iteration the "back projection" hits the other surface making the second black arrow bounce on the wrong surface. If there are several boxes close to each other this has further consequences making the sphere fall through them all. So my main question is how to handle possible floating point accuracy when placing the sphere on the box surface so it does not fall through. In writing this question I got the idea to have a threshold to only accept back projections a certain amount much smaller than the box but larger than the possible accuracy limitation, this would only cause the "false" back projection when the sphere hit the box on an edge which would appear naturally. To clarify my original approach, the arrows shown in the image is not only the path the sphere travels but is also representing a single time step in the simulation. In reality the time step is much smaller about 0.05 of the box size. The path traveled is projected onto possible sides to avoid traveling past a thinner object at higher speeds. In normal situations the floating point accuracy is not an issue but there are two situations where I have the concern. When the new position at the end of the time step is located very close to the surface, very unlikely though. When using a bounce factor of 0, here it happens every time the sphere hit a box. To add some loss of accuracy, the motivation for my concern, is that the sphere and box are in different coordinate systems and thus the sphere location is transformed for every test. This last one is why I'm not willing to stand on luck that one floating point value lying on top of the box always will be interpreted the same. I did not know voronoi regions by name, but looking at it I'm not sure how it would be used in a projection scenario that I'm using here.

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• Development-led security vs administration-led security in a software product?

  - 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 that 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 ingeniosity 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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• Design pattern for logging changes in parent/child objects saved to database

  - by andrew

  I’ve got a 2 database tables in parent/child relationship as one-many. I’ve got three classes representing the data in these two tables: Parent Class { Public int ID {get; set;} .. other properties } Child Class { Public int ID {get;set;} Public int ParentID {get; set;} .. other properties } TogetherClass { Public Parent Parent; Public List<Child> ChildList; } Lastly I’ve got a client and server application – I’m in control of both ends so can make changes to both programs as I need to. Client makes a request for ParentID and receives a Together Class for the matching parent, and all of the child records. The client app may make changes to the children – add new children, remove or modify existing ones. Client app then sends the Together Class back to the server app. Server app needs to update the parent and child records in the database. In addition I would like to be able to log the changes – I’m doing this by having 2 separate tables one for Parent, one for child; each containing the same columns as the original plus date time modified, by whom and a list of the changes. I’m unsure as to the best approach to detect the changes in records – new records, records to be deleted, records with no fields changed, records with some fields changed. I figure I need to read the parent & children records and compare those to the ones in the Together Class. Strategy A: If Together class’s child record has an ID of say 0, that indicates a new record; insert. Any deleted child records are no longer in the Together Class; see if any of the comparison child records are not found in the Together class and delete if not found (Compare using ID). Check each child record for changes and if changed log. Strategy B: Make a new Updated TogetherClass UpdatedClass { Public Parent Parent {get; set} Public List<Child> ListNewChild {get;set;} Public List<Child> DeletedChild {get;set;} Public List<Child> ExistingChild {get;set;} // used for no changes and modified rows } And then process as per the list. The reason why I’m asking for ideas is that both of these solutions don’t seem optimal to me and I suspect this problem has been solved already – some kind of design pattern ? I am aware of one potential problem in this general approach – that where Client App A requests a record; App B requests same record; A then saves changes; B then saves changes which may overwrite changes A made. This is a separate locking issue which I’ll raise a separate question for if I’ve got trouble implementing. The actual implementation is c#, SQL Server and WCF between client and server - sharing a library containing the class implementations. Apologies if this is a duplicate post – I tried searching various terms without finding a match though.

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• Strategy for clients to retrieve real-time log from HTTP server

  - by Jerry Dodge

  I have an HTTP Server Service application which has its own logging mechanism. It's written in Delphi. I would like to provide a way for multiple clients to connect to this service and get a real-time update of the log. The log in the service moves rather fast, there's a lot of things to log. There may be up to 50 messages within 1 second at times. The existing log which is already implemented is not saved, it's only kept in the memory of the server service - where I will need to distribute it to any client which needs it. Once all clients have a log message, it should be deleted. I intend to use HTTP to "ask" the server for the log, and respond with an XML packet. The connections are not keep-alive. The only problem is, the server should only send the client those log records which it needs, not everything. I have no way of the server pushing the log to the clients in real-time, so each client needs to repeatedly ask the server for the latest log records. This HTTP Server is very lightweight, and there is no session management. There isn't even any type of authentication. The only way I see is for a client to register its self on the server, and whenever a log is issued on the server, it creates a copy of the log for each client, where each client has a log queue (string list). However, suppose there are 100 clients connected and expecting to receive this log. That means the server must create 100 copies of each log, add this log to the end of each client log queue, and wait for the client to request it. At that point, when the server replies with the XML log, it should flush (delete) whatever's in the queue. I'm worried however that this could cause memory issues. Each client log queue might get 100 log messages before the client requests the latest logs. How should I go about doing this in the fastest way possible without hindering the performance of the server? I'm trying to avoid having to create a copy of each log for each client.

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• Grid pathfinding with a lot of entities

  - by Vee

  I'd like to explain this problem with a screenshot from a released game, DROD: Gunthro's Epic Blunder, by Caravel Games. The game is turn-based and tile-based. I'm trying to create something very similar (a clone of the game), and I've got most of the fundamentals done, but I'm having trouble implementing pathfinding. Look at the screenshot. The guys in yellow are friendly, and want to kill the roaches. Every turn, every guy in yellow pathfinds to the closest roach, and every roach pathfinds to the closest guy in yellow. By closest I mean the target with the shortest path, not a simple distance calculation. All of this without any kind of slowdown when loading the level or when passing turns. And all of the entities change position every turn. Also (not shown in screenshot), there can be doors that open and close and change the level's layout. Impressive. I've tried implementing pathfinding in my clone. First attempt was making every roach find a path to a yellow guy every turn, using a breadth-first search algorithm. Obviously incredibly slow with more than a single roach, and would get exponentially slower with more than a single yellow guy. Second attempt was mas making every yellow guy generate a pathmap (still breadth-first search) every time he moved. Worked perfectly with multiple roaches and a single yellow guy, but adding more yellow guys made the game slow and unplayable. Last attempt was implementing JPS (jump point search). Every entity would individually calculate a path to its target. Fast, but with a limited number of entities. Having less than half the entities in the screenshot would make the game slow. And also, I had to get the "closest" enemy by calculating distance, not shortest path. I've asked on the DROD forums how they did it, and a user replied that it was breadth-first search. The game is open source, and I took a look at the source code, but it's C++ (I'm using C#) and I found it confusing. I don't know how to do it. Every approach I tried isn't good enough. And I believe that DROD generates global pathmaps, somehow, but I can't understand how every entity find the best individual path to other entities that move every turn. What's the trick? This is a reply I just got on the DROD forums: Without having looked at the code I'd wager it's two (or so) pathmaps for the whole room: One to the nearest enemy, and one to the nearest friendly for every tile. There's no need to make a separate pathmap for every entity when the overall goal is "move towards nearest enemy/friendly"... just mark every tile with the number of moves it takes to the nearest target and have the entity chose the move that takes it to the tile with the lowest number. To be honest, I don't understand it that well.

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• App_Offline.htm, taking site down for maintenance

  - by Vipin

  There is much simpler and graceful way to shut down a site while doing upgrade to avoid the problem of people accessing site in the middle of a content update.   Basically, if you place file with name 'app_offline.htm' with below contents in the root of a web application directory, ASP.NET will shut-down the application,  and stop processing any new incoming requests for that application.  ASP.NET will also then respond to all requests for dynamic pages in the application by sending back the content of the app_offline.htm file (for example: you might want to have a “site under construction” or “down for maintenance” message).   Then after upgrade, just rename/delete app_offline.htm file…and the site would be back to normal. Just remember that the size of the file should be greater than 512 bytes, doesn't matter even if you add some comments to it to push the byte size as long as it's of the size greater than 512 - it'll work fine.     <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"><html http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" ><head>    <title>Maintenance Mode - Outage Message</title></head><body>    <h1>Maintenance Mode</h1>     <p>We're currently undergoing scheduled maintenance. We will come back very shortly.</p>     <p>Sorry for the inconvenience!</p>     <!--            Adding additional hidden content so that IE Friendly Errors don't prevent    this message from displaying (note: it will show a "friendly" 404    error if the content isn't of a certain size).        <h2>Site under maintenance...</h2>      <h2>Site under maintenance...</h2>      <h2>Site under maintenance...</h2>      <h2>Site under maintenance...</h2>      <h2>Site under maintenance...</h2>      <h2>Site under maintenance...</h2>      <h2>Site under maintenance...</h2>      <h2>Site under maintenance...</h2>         --></body></html>

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