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• What is your strategy for converting RC builds into retail?

  - by Matthew PK

  We're trying to implement a strategy for how we transition our builds from RC to released retail code. When we label a build as a release candidate, we send it to QA for regression. If they approve it, that RC then becomes our released retail code. I liked the idea of "obvious" labeling of versions so that a user knows whether they have a beta or an RC or retail code... where you would have some obvious watermark in non-retail code (think Windows 7 where the RC or non-genuine builds watermark in the bottom right). ... but it seemed strange to us to manipulate the project (to remove the watermark) once it passed regression. If QA certified version a.b.c.d then our retail code should be that same version, not a.b.c.d+1 what strategies have you employed to clearly label non-release software versions without incrementing your build to disable the watermarks in your retail code? One idea I've considered is writing your build to look for a signed file in the installer archive... non-release code wouldn't include this file and so the app would know to display a watermark. But even this seems like QA is then working with non-release code. Ideas?

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• How to Detect Sprites in a SpriteSheet?

  - by IAE

  I'm currently writing a Sprite Sheet Unpacker such as Alferds Spritesheet Unpacker. Now, before this is sent to gamedev, this isn't necessarily about games. I would like to know how to detect a sprite within a spriitesheet, or more abstactly, a shape inside of an image. Given this sprite sheet: I want to detect and extract all individual sprites. I've followed the algorithm detailed in Alferd's Blog Post which goes like: Determine predominant color and dub it the BackgroundColor Iterate over each pixel and check ColorAtXY == BackgroundColor If false, we've found a sprite. Keep going right until we find a BackgroundColor again, backtrack one, go down and repeat until a BackgroundColor is reached. Create a box from location to ending location. Repeat this until all sprites are boxed up. Combined overlapping boxes (or within a very short distance) The resulting non-overlapping boxes should contain the sprite. This implementation is fine, especially for small sprite sheets. However, I find the performance too poor for larger sprite sheets and I would like to know what algorithms or techniques can be leveraged to increase the finding of sprites. A second implementation I considered, but have not tested yet, is to find the first pixel, then use a backtracking algorithm to find every connected pixel. This should find a contiguous sprite (breaks down if the sprite is something like an explosion where particles are no longer part of the main sprite). The cool thing is that I can immediately remove a detected sprite from the sprite sheet. Any other suggestions?

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• How to advertise (free) software?

  - by nebukadnezzar

  I'm not sure if this fits on SO, but other SE sites don't seem to fit either, so I understand when this question gets moved, Although I'd like to avoid getting it closed due to being offtopics, since I think that this question might fit, considering this part of the FAQ: Stack Overflow is for professional and enthusiast programmers, ... covers … a specific programming problem ... matters that are unique to the programming profession Sorry for the lengthy Introduction, though. When Software is advertised, it is usually Software for one (or more) specific purpose, such as: Mozilla Firefox - A Web Browser Ubuntu - An Operating System Python - A Programming Language Visual Studio - A Development Studio ... And so on. But when writing Libraries, that is, Software that doesn't necessarily serve one specific purpose, but instead multiple purposes, which are usually supposed to be used inside an application, such as: Irrlicht - A 3D Engine Qt - An Application Framework ... The process of advertisement gets a little more difficult. I'm a developer of the latter kind of Software, and I naturally want to advertise my Software. It's not commercial Software; It's not GPL either. It's completely free (Licensed under the MIT License :-)). I naturally host my stuff at github, which technically makes it very easy to access the software, and I thought that these might be possible options, although I have no experience with them: Submit the Software to Freshmeat, and hope for the best Submit the Software to Sourceforge, and hope someone accidently stumbles over it Write spammails, and get death threats via Mail ... But something tells me that these methods are probably not the best Methods. So, my final question would be, How does the Average Joe Hobby Programmer advertise his/her Software Library?

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• Help in (re)designing my Swing application

  - by Harihar Das

  I have developed a Swing application that controls execution of several script like jobs. I need to display the interim output of the jobs concurrently. I have followed MVC while writing the application. The application is working as expected. But off late I have the following requirements in hand: A few of the script jobs need special user privileges to execute so as to access specialized resources. There seems to be now way in Java to impersonate as a different user while running an application.[examined in this question]. Also trying to run the Swing application as a scheduled task in windows is not helping. Once started the jobs should be running even if the user logs off after starting the jobs. I am thinking of separating the execution logic from the UI and run that as a service; and introduce JMS in between the two layers so as to store/retrieve the interim the output. Note: I need to run this application on windows Any ideas on meeting my requirements will be highly appreciated.

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• Is Linq having a mind-numbing effect on .NET programmers?

  - by Aaronaught

  A lot of us started seeing this phenomenon with jQuery about a year ago when people started asking how to do absolutely insane things like retrieve the query string with jQuery. The difference between the library (jQuery) and the language (JavaScript) is apparently lost on many programmers, and results in a lot of inappropriate, convoluted code being written where it is not necessary. Maybe it's just my imagination, but I swear I'm starting to see an uptick in the number of questions where people are asking to do similarly insane things with Linq, like find ranges in a sorted array. I can't get over how thoroughly inappropriate the Linq extensions are for solving that problem, but more importantly the fact that the author just assumed that the ideal solution would involve Linq without actually thinking about it (as far as I can tell). It seems that we are repeating history, breeding a new generation of .NET programmers who can't tell the difference between the language (C#/VB.NET) and the library (Linq). What is responsible for this phenomenon? Is it just hype? Magpie tendencies? Has Linq picked up a reputation as a form of magic, where instead of actually writing code you just have to utter the right incantation? I'm hardly satisfied with those explanations but I can't really think of anything else. More importantly, is it really a problem, and if so, what's the best way to help enlighten these people?

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• What is the Best way to learn c# programming and capability to do anything with C#?

  - by MSU

  I browsed all the answers given in Stackoverflow,i couldn't find my answer that's why i am writing this, so please don't mark this a duplicate. My case i want to get the capability of doing anything in C# from building applications to solving problems. I searched for and tried to read books. Then one of the experts said, reading books will not make any good for you, for learning you have to solve problems i.e. real world problems in C#, he gave me some sample problems, which i previously did in C++, i started doing, but the thing is that i know the internal logic of solving the problem or the algorithm to solve. But i don't know how to imepelement them using C# efficiently. so, the gap is, i can't think in C#, I know the message to passed but don't the exact way to pass it. I did a program to solve a problem, then find out there are much easier ways of doing it wherever i was doing it in tougher way. So, can you guys(C# experts) please enlighten me, what i need to get hold of the language and get the ability to code in C# proficiently?

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• Creating a newspaper that effects the game's economy?

  - by zardon

  I am writing a game in Objective C/cocos2d where a newspaper is a central part of what controls or rather effects the game's world economy as well as what a city might do (such as increase X, reduce Y) The newspaper is a bit like a "Chance card" in Monopoly, it has an effect on something. My question is, what is the best way to do write a newspaper that has both a random and specific effect within the game. Would the best strategy be to write out all the things a newspaper can affect, a PLIST of headlines (with placeholders). I think Tiny Tower uses a PLIST of events and it randomly picks an event, but I'm not sure how it actually parses it because certain events do different things. But then how do I parse all the scenarios that a newspaper can deliver? A big switch statement seems very long and complicated to do. I am wondering if there is a simpler way to handle this kind of thing. Related to this is that there might be no news that day and I'm not sure what the newspaper should display, should it just display the last headline? So, in summary. 1) A newspaper generates a headline, it affects different things, such as the world economy, prices, how city reacts 2) I need the newspaper to generate headlines (although there may be days when there are no headlines at all), but I am not sure how to parse it without using a big-ass switch statement. Thanks in advance.

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• Google Programmers

  - by seth

  As a soon-to-be software engineer, I have studied some languages during my time in college. I can name C, C++, Java, Scheme, Ruby, PHP, for example. However, one of the main principles in my college (recognized by many as the best in my country) is to teach us how to learn for ourselves and how to search the web when we have a doubt. This leads to a proactive attitude, when I need something, I go get it and this has worked so far for me. Recently, I started wondering though, how much development would I be able to do without internet access. The answer bugged me quite a bit. I know the concept of the languages, mostly I know what to do, but I was amazed by how "slow" things were without having the google to help in the development. The problem was mostly related to specific syntax but it was not without some effort that i solved some of the SPOJ problems in C++. Is this normal? Should I be worried and try to change something in my programming behaviour? UPDATE: I'll give a concrete example. Reading and writing to a file in java. I have done this about a dozen times in my life, yet every time I need to do it, I end up googling "read file java" and refreshing my memory. I completely understand the code, i fully understand what it does. But I am sure, that without google, it would take me a few tries to read and write correctly (if I had to sit in front of the screen with a blank page and write this without consulting any source whatsoever).

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• Animating DOM elements vs refreshing a single Canvas

  - by mgibsonbr

  A few years ago, when the HTML Canvas element was still kinda fresh, I wrote a small game in a rather "unusual" way: each game element had its own canvas, and frequently animated elements even had multiple canvases, one for each animation sprite. This way, the translation would be done by manipulating the DOM position of the canvases, while the sprite animation would consist of altering the visibility of the already drawn canvases. (z-indexes, of course, were the tricky part) It worked like a charm: even in IE6 with excanvas it showed a decent performance, and everything was rather consistent between browsers, including some smartphones. Now I'm thinking in writing a larger game engine in the same fashion, so I'm wondering whether it would be a good idea to do so in the current context (with all the advances in browsers and so on). I know I'm trading memory for time, so this needs to be customizable (even at runtime) for each machine the game will be running. But I believe using separate canvases would also help to avoid the game "freezing" on CPU spikes, since the translation would still happen even if the redraws lag for a while. Besides, the browsers' rendering engines are already optimized in may ways, so I'm guessing this scheme would also reduce the load on the CPU (in contrast to doing everything in JavaScript - specially the less optimized ones). It looks good in my head, but I'd like to hear the opinion of more experienced people before proceeding further. Is there any known drawback of doing this? I'm particulartly unexperienced in dealing with the GPU, so I wonder whether this "trick" would nullify any benefit of using a single, big canvas. Or maybe on modern devices it's overkill (though I'm skeptic about the claims that canvas+js - especially WebGL - will ever be a good alternative to native code). Any thoughts?

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• ASP.NET MVC Cookbook &ndash; public review

  - by Andrew Siemer - www.andrewsiemer.com

  I have recently started writing another book.  The topic of this book is ASP.NET MVC.  This book differs from my previous book in that rather than working towards building one project from end to end – this book will demonstrate specific topics from end to end.  It is a recipe book (hence the cookbook name) and will be part of the Packt Publishing cookbook series.  An example recipe in this book might be how to consume JSON, creating a master /details page, jquery modal popups, custom ActionResults, etc.  Basically anything recipe oriented around the topic of ASP.NET MVC might be acceptable.  If you are interested in helping out with the review process you can join the “ASP.NET MVC 2 Cookbook-review” group on Google here: http://groups.google.com/group/aspnet-mvc-2-cookbook-review Currently the suggested TOC for the project is listed.  Also, chapters 1, 2, and most of 8 are posted.  Chapter 5 should be available tonight or tomorrow. In addition to reporting any errors that you might find (much appreciated), I am very interested in hearing about recipes that you want included, expanded, or removed (as being redundant or overly simple).  Any input is appreciated!  Hearing user feedback after the book is complete is a little late in my opinion (unless it is positive feedback of course). Thank you!

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• Is "as long as it works" the norm?

  - by q303

  Hi, My last shop did not have a process. Agile essentially meant they did not have a plan at all about how to develop or manage their projects. It meant "hey, here's a ton of work. Go do it in two weeks. We're fast paced and agile." They released stuff that they knew had problems. They didn't care how things were written. There were no code reviews--despite there being several developers. They released software they knew to be buggy. At my previous job, people had the attitude as long as it works, it's fine. When I asked for a rewrite of some code I had written while we were essentially exploring the spec, they denied it. I wanted to rewrite the code because code was repeated in multiple places, there was no encapsulation and it took people a long time to make changes to it. So essentially, my impression is this: programming boils down to the following: Reading some book about the latest tool/technology Throwing code together based on this, avoiding writing any individual code because the company doesn't want to "maintain custom code" Showing it and moving on to the next thing, "as long as it works." I've always told myself that next job I'm going to get a better shop. It never happens. If this is it, then I feel stuck. The technologies always change; if the only professional development here is reading the latest MS Press technology book, then what have you built in 10 years but a superficial knowledge of various technologies? I'm concerned about: Best way to have professional standards How to develop meaningful knowledge and experience in this situation

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• What is a good support knowledge base tool?

  - by Guillaume

  I have been searching for a tool to help my team organize its knowledge for resolving recurring support cases. I know this question will probably be closed, but I'll try my change anyway because I know that I can have some good answers about that. Context: our team is developing and supporting an huge applications (lots of different screens and workflow processes. We already have a good tool for managing our documentation, but we are struggling with support cases. Support action involve often quite a lot of manual steps to fix stuff and the knowledge for these actions is more 'oral transmission' than modern tools. We need an efficient way to store them in a knowledge base to be able to retrieve similar cases based on patterns (a stacktrace, an error message, a component name, a workflow step, ...) and ranked by similarity. Our wiki search is not very powerful when it come to this kind of search and the team members don't want to 'waste' time writing a report that will never be found... Do you know efficient knowledge base tool for this kind of use case ?

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• How to achieve a loosely coupled REST API but with a defined and well understood contract?

  - by BestPractices

  I am new to REST and am struggling to understand how one would properly design a REST system to both allow for loose coupling but at the same time allow a consumer of a REST API to understand the API. If, in my client code, I issue a GET request for a resource and get back XML, how do I know what to do with that xml? e.g. if it contains <fname>John</fname><lname>Smith</lname> how do I know that these refer to the concept of "first name", "last name"? Is it up to the person writing the REST API to define in documentation some place what each of the XML fields mean? What if producer of the API wants to change the implementation to be <firstname> instead of <fname>? How do they do this and notify their consumers that this change occurred? Or do the consumers just encounter the error and then look at the payload and figure out on their own that it changed? I've read in REST in Practice that using a WADL tool to create a client implementation based on the WADL (and hide the fact that you're doing a distributed call) is an "anti-pattern". But I was planning to do this-- at least then I would have a statically typed API call that, if it changed, I would know at compile time and not at run time. Why is this a bad thing to generate client code based on a WADL? And how do I know what to do with the links that returned in the response of a POST to a REST API? What defines this contract and gives true meaning to what each link will do? Please help! I dont understand how to go from statically-typed or even SOAP/RPC to REST!

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• Be careful when installing the Blend Windows Phone 7 Add-In

  - by Laurent Bugnion

  There was a small issue today with the release of the Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP (April 2010 Refresh) refresh. The issue is that the Expression Blend Add-in Preview for Windows Phone (April Refresh) is not compatible with Blend 4.0.20408.0, which was the public RC (release candidate). A few days ago, the Blend team released a fix for an issue that was sometimes causing a crash when Blend was starting up. This new release (V4.0.20421.0) was not very well announced however, and many people (including me) did not install it. After all, Blend did not crash at startup of either of my machines, so I didn’t deem necessary to install yet a new RC. However, it is now clear that the Windows Phone 7 Add-In needs this latest-and-greatest version to work. If you have Blend 4.0.20408.0, you won’t be able to work with Windows Phone 7 in Blend. To add to the confusion, the page where you can download V4.0.20421.0 from has an error, and the wrong version number is wrong (at least at the time of writing). Do not let this confuse you. You must download this version and install it. Hopefully this helps clarify some of the confusion… Happy WinPhone7 coding :) Laurent

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• Designing Content-Based ETL Process with .NET and SFDC

  - by Patrick

  As my firm makes the transition to using SFDC as our main operational system, we've spun together a couple of SFDC portals where we can post customer-specific documents to be viewed at will. As such, we've had the need for pseudo-ETL applications to be implemented that are able to extract metadata from the documents our analysts generate internally (most are industry-standard PDFs, XML, or MS Office formats) and place in networked "queue" folders. From there, our applications scoop of the queued documents and upload them to the appropriate SFDC CRM Content Library along with some select pieces of metadata. I've mostly used DbAmp to broker communication with SFDC (DbAmp is a Linked Server provider that allows you to use SQL conventions to interact with your SFDC Org data). I've been able to create [console] applications in C# that work pretty well, and they're usually structured something like this: static void Main() { // Load parameters from app.config. // Get documents from queue. var files = someInterface.GetFiles(someFilterOrRegexPattern); foreach (var file in files) { // Extract metadata from the file. // Validate some attributes of the file; add any validation errors to an in-memory // structure (e.g. List<ValidationErrors>). if (isValid) { // Upload using some wrapper for an ORM an someInterface.Upload(meta.Param1, meta.Param2, ...); } else { // Bounce the file } } // Report any validation errors (via message bus or SMTP or some such). } And that's pretty much it. Most of the time I wrap all these operations in a "Worker" class that takes the needed interfaces as constructor parameters. This approach has worked reasonably well, but I just get this feeling in my gut that there's something awful about it and would love some feedback. Is writing an ETL process as a C# Console app a bad idea? I'm also wondering if there are some design patterns that would be useful in this scenario that I'm clearly overlooking. Thanks in advance!

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• Windows 7+ desktop apps - what's the best UI toolkit for a new project?

  - by Chris Adams

  I'm trying to make a decision for a new Windows desktop app: what to use for the UI. (This is a desktop app that needs to have compatibility with Windows 7. It won't be distributed on the Windows Store.) This application is going to be cross-platform. I intend on writing the core in C++, and using each platform's native UI toolkit. I feel this is preferable to using a cross-platform toolkit like Qt, as it allows me to keep the native look and feel of each platform. On the Windows side, the UI situation isn't exactly clear. I'm getting the feeling that Microsoft is slowly abandoning .NET, particularly as their preferred toolkit for desktop apps. Indeed, the Getting Started chapter for Windows 7, as well as the rest of Microsoft's documentation, seems to be more suited for C++. I have a few options here: C# with WPF - This sesms like this might be the best Microsoft has to offer for Windows 7 desktop apps, even if it isn't their "preferred" toolkit. I'd need to use P/Invoke to call my C++ code. C++ with Direct2D - This is what Microsoft used in one of their examples. This feels like it's too low-level. Part of the appeal of a higher-level UI toolkit is the consistency with the native look and feel of the platform, so doing this would just feel strange. C++ with a third-party UI toolkit, like Qt There might be some other options I'm missing, which I'd love to hear about. So, if you were starting a new Windows 7+ desktop app today, what would you use?

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• Write DAX queries in Report Builder #ssrs #dax #ssas #tabular

  - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)

  If you use Report Builder with Reporting Services, you can use DAX queries even if the editor for Analysis Services provider does not support DAX syntax. In fact, the DMX editor that you can use in Visual Studio editor of Reporting Services (see a previous post on that), is not available in Report Builder. However, as Sagar Salvi commented in this Microsoft Connect entry, you can use the DAX query text in the query of a Dataset by using the OLE DB provider instead of the Analysis Services one. I think it’s a good idea to show the steps required. First, create a DataSet using the OLE DB connection type, and provide the connection string the provider (Provider), the server name (Data Source) and the database name (Initial Catalog), such as: Provider=MSOLAP;Data Source=SERVERNAME\\TABULAR;Initial Catalog=AdventureWorks Tabular Model SQL 2012 Then, create a Dataset using the data source previously defined, select the Text query type, and write the DAX code in the Query pane: You can also use the Query Designer window, that doesn’t provide any particular help in writing the DAX query, but at least can show a preview of the result of the query execution. I hope DAX will get better editors in the future… in the meantime, remember you can use DAX Studio to write and test your DAX queries, and DAX Formatter to improve their readability!If you want to learn the DAX Query Language, I suggest you watching my video Data Analysis Expressions as a Query Language on Project Botticelli!

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• Unity throws SynchronizationLockException while debugging

  - by pjohnson

  I've found Unity to be a great resource for writing unit-testable code, and tests targeting it. Sadly, not all those unit tests work perfectly the first time (TDD notwithstanding), and sometimes it's not even immediately apparent why they're failing. So I use Visual Studio's debugger. I then see SynchronizationLockExceptions thrown by Unity calls, when I never did while running the code without debugging. I hit F5 to continue past these distractions, the line that had the exception appears to have completed normally, and I continue on to what I was trying to debug in the first place.In settings where Unity isn't used extensively, this is just one amongst a handful of annoyances in a tool (Visual Studio) that overall makes my work life much, much easier and more enjoyable. But in larger projects, it can be maddening. Finally it bugged me enough where it was worth researching it.Amongst the first and most helpful Google results was, of course, at Stack Overflow. The first couple answers were extensive but seemed a bit more involved than I could pull off at this stage in the product's lifecycle. A bit more digging showed that the Microsoft team knows about this bug but hasn't prioritized it into any released build yet. SO users jaster and alex-g proposed workarounds that relieved my pain--just go to Debug|Exceptions..., find the SynchronizationLockException, and uncheck it. As others warned, this will skip over SynchronizationLockExceptions in your code that you want to catch, but that wasn't a concern for me in this case. Thanks, guys; I've used that dialog before, but it's been so long I'd forgotten about it.Now if I could just do the same for Microsoft.CSharp.RuntimeBinder.RuntimeBinderException... Until then, F5 it is.

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• How to expose game data in the game without a singelton?

  - by zardon

  I'm quite new to cocos2d and games programming, and am currently I am writing a game that is currently in Prototype stage. Everything is going okay, but I've realized a potentially big problem and I am not sure how to solve it. I am using a singelton to store a bunch of arrays for everything, a global list of planets, a global list of troops, a global list of products, etc. And only now I'm realizing that all of this will be in memory and this is the wrong way to do it. I am not storing files or anything on the disk just yet, with exception to a save/load state, which is a capture of everything. My game makes use of a map which allows you to select a planet, then it will give you a breakdown of that planets troops and resources, Lets use this scenario: My game has 20 planets. On which you can have 20 troops. Straight away that's an array of 400! This does not add the NPC, which is another 10. So, 20x10 = 200 So, now we have 600 all in arrays inside a Singelton. This is obviously very bad, and very wrong. Especially as the game scales in the amount of data. But I need to expose pretty much everything, especially on the map page, and I am not sure how else to do it. I've been told that I can use a controller for the map page which has the information I need for each planet, and other controllers for other items I require global display for. I've also thought about storing each planet's data in a save file, using initWithCoder however there could be a boatload of files on the user's device? I really don't want to use a database, mainly because I would need to translate NSObjects and non-NSObjects like CGRects and CGPoints and Colors into/from SQL. I am open to other ideas on how to store and read game data to prevent using a singelton to store everything, everywhere. Thanks for your time.

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• Should I have seperate business and personal websites?

  - by Thomas Clowes

  I have my business website - I am a web designer and developer, and also buy/sell websites/domain names. As such my website links to 'Our sites' = the websites which we design and run as well as a variety of tools such as a domain whois tool. These are obviously relevant to the business. As an individual, I like to travel and do white water kayaking as a hobby. I also have a degree in economics. I have thus created a blog on my business website where I write about domain names, web design, kayaking, travelling and economics. I've just begun researching SEO and am looking into optimizing my business website. I don't actually directly offer any services to clients at the moment, my main aim is to have a business website which supports my websites. If for example a potential advertise on one of my sites checks out the business website, I want them to think professional, down to earth, quirky. Given this is having my business/personal interests intertwined a problem? For SEO.. on my homepage for example when I'm writing a headline and a paragraph about what we do.. what do I put? and how do I optimize for SEO with keywords and the like? Further to the above, my company sponsors me and a group of accquantances as a kayaking team.. as such my personal interests do sort of overlap (just to add a complexity :))

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• How can I unit test rendering output?

  - by stephelton

  I've been embracing Test-Driven Development (TDD) recently and it's had wonderful impacts on my development output and the resiliency of my codebase. I would like to extend this approach to some of the rendering work that I do in OpenGL, but I've been unable to find any good approaches to this. I'll start with a concrete example so we know what kinds of things I want to test; lets say I want to create a unit cube that rotates about some axis, and that I want to ensure that, for some number of frames, each frame is rendered correctly. How can I create an automated test case for this? Preferably, I'd even be able to write a test case before writing any code to render the cube (per usual TDD practices.) Among many other things, I'd want to make sure that the cube's size, location, and orientation are correct in each rendered frame. I may even want to make sure that the lighting equations in my shaders are correct in each frame. The only remotely useful approach to this that I've come across involves comparing rendered output to a reference output, which generally precludes TDD practice, and is very cumbersome. I could go on about other desired requirements, but I'm afraid the ones I've listed already are out of reach.

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• Performance of concurrent software on multicore processors

  - by Giorgio

  Recently I have often read that, since the trend is to build processors with multiple cores, it will be increasingly important to have programming languages that support concurrent programming in order to better exploit the parallelism offered by these processors. In this respect, certain programming paradigms or models are considered well-suited for writing robust concurrent software: Functional programming languages, e.g. Haskell, Scala, etc. The actor model: Erlang, but also available for Scala / Java (Akka), C++ (Theron, Casablanca, ...), and other programming languages. My questions: What is the state of the art regarding the development of concurrent applications (e.g. using multi-threading) using the above languages / models? Is this area still being explored or are there well-established practices already? Will it be more complex to program applications with a higher level of concurrency, or is it just a matter of learning new paradigms and practices? How does the performance of highly concurrent software compare to the performance of more traditional software when executed on multiple core processors? For example, has anyone implemented a desktop application using C++ / Theron, or Java / Akka? Was there a boost in performance on a multiple core processor due to higher parallelism?

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• An alternative to a video codec for storing motion changes [on hold]

  - by Andrew Simpson

  I have a 3 dimensional byte array. The 3-d array represents a jpeg image. Each channel/array represents part of the RGB spectrum. I am not interested in retaining black pixels. A black pixel is represented by this atypical arrangement: myarray[0,0,0] =0; myarray[0,0,1] =0; myarray[0,0,2] =0; So, I have flattened this 3d array out to a 1d array by doing this byte[] AFlatArray = new byte[width x height x 3] and then assigning values respective to the coordinate. But like I said I do not want black pixels. So this array has to only contain color pixels with the x,y coordinate. The result I want is to re-represent the image from the i dimension byte array that only contains non-black pixels. How do I do that? It looks like I have to store black pixels as well because of the xy coordinate system. I have tried writing to a binary file but the size of that file is greater than the jpeg file as the jpeg file is compressed. I am using c#.

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• Architecture- Tracking lead origin when data is submitted by a server

  - by Kevin

  I'm looking for some assistance in determining the least complex strategy for tracking leads on an affiliate's website. The idea is to make the affiliate's integration with my application as easy as possible. I've run into theoretical barriers, so i'm here to explore other options. Application Overview: This is a lead aggregation / distribution platform. We will be focusing on the affiliate portion of this website. Essentially affiliates sign up, enter in marketing campaigns and sell us their conversions. Problem to be solved: We want to track a lead's origin and other events on the affiliate site. We want to know what pages, ads, and forms they viewed before they converted. This can easily be solved with pixel tracking. Very straightforward. Theoretical Issues: I thought I would ask affiliates to place the pixel where I could log impressions and set a third party cookie when the pixel is first called. Then I could associate future impressions with this cookie. The problem is that when the visitor converts on the affiliate's site and I receive their information via HTTP POST from the Affiliate's server I wouldn't be able to access the cookie and associate it with the lead record unless the lead lands on my processor via a redirect and is then redirected back to the affiliate's landing page. I don't want to force the affiliates to submit their forms directly to my tracking site, so allowing them to make an HTTP POST from their server side form processor would be ideal. I've considered writing JavaScript to set a First Party cookie but this seems to make things more complicated for the affiliate. I also considered having the affiliate submit the lead's data via a conversion pixel. This seems to be the most ideal scenario so far as almost all pixels are as easy as copy/paste. The only complication comes from the conversion pixel- which would submit all of the lead information and the request would come from the visitor's machine so I could access my third party cookie.

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• sp_help

  - by David-Betteridge

  One of the nice things about SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) is that you can highlight a table name in a script and press Alt + F1 to perform sp_help on it. Unfortunately I've never been able to use that feature as the majority of the tables in our product belong to a schema other than dbo.    On a long train journey back to York I wondered if I could solve this problem by writing my own replacement for sp_help (which I’ve called sp_help_table_schemas).  My version works by first checking the system tables to find out which schemas the table belongs to SELECT s.Name   --Find the schema FROM sys.schemas s  JOIN sys.tables t on t.schema_id = s.schema_id  WHERE t.name = 'Orders'It then dynamically calls the standard sp_help method but this time supplying the table owner as well.SET @cmd = 'EXEC sp_help ''' + QUOTENAME(@SchemaName) + '.' + QUOTENAME(@ObjectName) + ''' ;' ;           EXEC ( @cmd )Once I had proved the basics worked I wrapped it up into a stored procedure and deployed it to the master database on my laptop.  It was then just a question of going into Tools à Options within SSMS and defining the keyboard short cutA couple of notes You can’t amend the existing Alt+F1 entry to I went with Ctrl+F1.  You need to open new query window for the change to be picked upSo I can now highlight a table name and press Ctrl+F1 The completed script is attached.   Thanks go to Martin Bell who reviewed my stored procedure and give some valuable advice.

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