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  • How do I implement movement in a WPF Adventure game?

    - by ZeroPhase
    I'm working on making a short WPF adventure game. The only major hurdle I have right now is how to animate objects on the screen correctly. I've experimented with DoubleAnimation and ThicknessAnimation both enable movement of the character, but the speed is a bit erratic. The objects I'm trying to move around are labels in a grid, I'm checking the mouse's position in terms of the canvas I have the grid in. Does anyone have any suggestions for coding the movement, while still allowing mouse clicks to pick up items when needed? It would be nice if I could continue using the Visual Studio GUI Editor. By the way, I'm fine with scrapping labels in a grid for a more ideal object to manipulate. Here's my movement code: ThicknessAnimation ta = new ThicknessAnimation(); The event handling movement: private void Hansel_MouseLeftButtonDown(object sender, MouseButtonEventArgs e) { ta.FillBehavior = FillBehavior.HoldEnd; ta.From = Hansel.Margin; double newX = Mouse.GetPosition(PlayArea).X; double newY = Mouse.GetPosition(PlayArea).Y; if (newX < Convert.ToDouble(Hansel.Margin.Left)) { //newX = -1 * newX; ta.To = new Thickness(0, newY, newX, 0); } else if (newY < Convert.ToDouble(Hansel.Margin.Top)) { newY = -1 * newY; } else { ta.To = new Thickness(newX, newY, 0, 0); } ta.Duration = new Duration(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(2)); Hansel.BeginAnimation(Grid.MarginProperty, ta); } ScreenShot with annotations: http://i1118.photobucket.com/albums/k608/sealclubberr/clickToMove_zps9d4a33cc.png ScreenShot with example movement: http://i1118.photobucket.com/albums/k608/sealclubberr/clickToMove_zps51f2359f.jpg

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  • Using AdSense to show ads to logged-in users

    - by John
    I know that you can grant authorization permissions to Google AdSense so that it can 'log in' and see what other logged in users can see (e.g. in a private forum), so that the ads it displays are better targetted. Extending this principle further: I am making a site which will show completely different content for each individual user (i.e. not 'common' content like a forum in which everybody sees essentially the same thing). You could think of this content as similar to the way each Facebook user has a different news feed, but it is the 'same' page. Complicating things further, the URLs for this site will be simple, e.g. '/home' and '/somepage', and will not usually include unique identifiers to differentiate between users (e.g. '/home?user=32i42'). My questions are: Is creating an account purely for AdSense to log in to the site with worth it in this case, seeing as it will be seeing it's own 'personalized' version and not any other user's? More importantly: is that against the Google AdSense Terms of Service? (I can't seem to figure that one out) How would you go about this problem?

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  • Deferred Rendering With Diffuse,Specular, and Normal maps

    - by John
    I have been reading up on deferred rendering and I am trying to implement a renderer using the Sponza atrium model, which can be found here, as my sandbox.Note I am also using OpenGL 3.3 and GLSL. I am loading the model from a Wavefront OBJ file using Assimp. I extract all geometry information including tangents and bitangents. For all the aiMaterials,I extract the following information which essentially comes from the sponza.mtl file. Ambient/Diffuse/Specular/Emissive Reflectivity Coefficients(Ka,Kd,Ks,Ke) Shininess Diffuse Map Specular Map Normal Map I understand that I must render vertex attributes such as position ,normals,texture coordinates to textures as well as depth for the second render pass. A lot of resources mention putting colour information into a g-buffer in the initial render pass but do you not require the diffuse,specular and normal maps and therefore lights to determine the fragment colour? I know that doesnt make since sense because lighting should be done in the second render pass. In terms of normal mapping, do you essentially just pass the tangent,bitangents, and normals into g-buffers and then construct the tangent matrix and apply it to the sampled normal from the normal map. Ultimately, I would like to know how to incorporate this material information into my deferred renderer.

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  • Opportunities in Development in our Swedish office

    - by anca.rosu
    Hi everyone, my name is Henrik and I joined the JRockit group in 2004. Before that my background was Microsoft, as both a Test Competence lead and as a Program Manager. As an Engineering Manager at Oracle I lead a team of 11 developers. I focus on people management and the daily operations of the department with a heavy focus on interaction and dependencies between the groups and departments here at the Stockholm development site. I also make sure my team deliver on our commitments. I would like to give you a brief summary of the Oracle JRockit team: -The development group in Stockholm delivers several products for the Oracle Fusion Middleware stack. Our main products are JRockitVE which allows you to run a Java Virtual Machine without an operating system, the JRockit Java Virtual Machine which is the default jvm for all Oracle middleware products, and the JRockit MissionControl, a set of tools that allows developers to monitor their applications at runtime and perform advanced latency analysis as well as in-production memory leak detection etc. -The office has several departments focusing on different aspects of the product development process, not only to build features and test them but everything from building the infrastructure needed to automatically build and test the products to sustaining engineering that tracks down bugs in customer systems and provide them with patches. Some inspirational lines around what the Oracle JRockit group can offer you in terms of progress, development and learning: - It is a unique chance to get insight and experience building enterprise class software for one of the worlds largest software companies. Here there are almost unlimited possibilities for the right candidate to learn about silicon features and how to implement support for this in software, and to compile optimizations. The position will also give insight into the processes needed to produce software at this level in the industry. If you have any questions related to this article feel free to contact  [email protected].  You can find our job opportunities via http://campus.oracle.com. Technorati Tags: Development,Sweden,Jrockit,Java,Virtual Machine,Oracle Fusion Middleware,software

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  • Little mysterious RowMatch

    - by kishore.kondepudi(at)oracle.com
    Incidentally this was the first piece of code i ever wrote in ADF.The requirement was we have tax rates which are read from a table.And there can be different type of tax rates called certificates or exceptions based on the rate_type column in the tax rates table.The simplest design i chose was to create an EO on the tax rates table and create two VO's called CertificateVO and ExceptionVO based on the same EO.So far so good.I wrote all the business logic in the EO and completed the model project.The CertificateVO has the query as select * from tax_rates TaxRateEO where rate_type='CERTIFICATE' and similary the ExceptionVO is also built.The UI is pretty simple and it has two tabs called Certificates and Exceptions and each table has a button to create a tax rate.The certificate tab is driven by CertificateVO and exception tab is driven by ExceptionVO.The CertificateVO has default value of rate_type set to 'CERTIFICATE' and ExceptionVO has default value of rate_type to 'EXCEPTION' to default values for new records.So far so good.But on running the UI i noticed a strange thing,When i create a new row in Certificate i see the same row in Exception too and vice-versa.i.e; what ever row i create in one VO it also appears in the second one although it shouldn't be.I couldn't understand the reason for behavior even though an explicit where clause is present.Digging through documentation i found that ADF doesnt apply the where clause to new rows instead it applies something called as RowMatch to them.RowMatch in simple terms is a where condition applied to the VO rows at runtime.Since we had both VO's based on the same EO we have the same entity cache.The filter factor for new rows to be shown in VO at runtime is actually RowMatch than the where clause defined in the VO.The default RowMatch is empty as a result any new row appears in both the VO's since its from same entity cache.The solution to this problem is to use polymorphic view objects which can do the row filter based on configuration or override the getRowMatch() method in the VOImpl and pass the custom where filter instead of default RowMatch.Eg:@Overridepublic RowMatch getRowMatch(){    return new RowMatch("rate_type='CERTIFICATE'");}similarly for ExceptionVO too.With proper RowMatch in place new rows will route themselves to appropriate VO.PS: The behavior(Same row pushed to both VO's from entity cache) is also called as ViewLink Consistency.Try it out!

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  • Shared to Dedicated or Amazon CloudFront to improve performances and keep secured?

    - by user978548
    I have a Wordpress which currently takes about 1.8s to 2.5s for the home page to completely load in my country. The page weight is about 700Ko (static content included). In order to increase performances, I'm considering two solutions: Switching to a dedicated host. Using amazon s3 cloudfront to serve static contents. My current shared hosting have servers in a neighboring country but not exactly in mine, and both amazon and the dedicated hosting have some, so that's already an advantage. So considering all that, I still have three questions remaining: Currently having a low traffic (100 unique visitors/days, but growing) will it make a huge difference between my shared hosting and a dedicated server ? Knowing that I already use a cookie-less domain to deliver static contents (but using a redirection to the same server), would using amazon s3 make a real difference ? Talking about the cons of dedicated vs amazon s3, if I choose for the dedicated server something like Ubuntu server and do daily package updates and have only port 80 open, would it be sufficient in terms of security (in comparison with my current shared hosting which manage everything for me) ?

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  • Perfomance of 8 bit operations on 64 bit architechture

    - by wobbily_col
    I am usually a Python / Database programmer, and I am considering using C for a problem. I have a set of sequences, 8 characters long with 4 possible characters. My problem involves combining sets of these sequences and filtering which sets match a criteria. The combinations of 5 run into billions of rows and takes around an hour to run. So I can represent each sequence as 2 bytes. If I am working on a 64 bit architechture will I gain any advantage by keeping these data structures as 2 bytes when I generate the combinations, or will I be as well storing them as 8 bytes / double ? (64 bit = 8 x 8) If I am on a 64 bit architecture, all registers will be 64 bit, so in terms of operations that shouldn´t be any faster (please correct me if I am wrong). Will I gain anything from the smaller storage requirements - can I fit more combinations in memory, or will they all take up 64 bits anyway? And finally, am I likley to gain anything coding in C. I have a first version, which stores the sequence as a small int in a MySQL database. It then self joins the tabe to itself a number of times in order to generate all the possible combinations. The performance is acceptable, depending on how many combinations are generated. I assume the database must involve some overhead.

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  • Implicit OAuth2 endpoint vs. cookies

    - by Jamie
    I currently have an app which basically runs two halves of an API - a restful API for the web app, and a synchronisation API for the native clients (all over SSL). The web app is completely javascript based and is quite similar to the native clients anyway - except it currently does not work offline. What I'm hoping to do is merge the fragmented APIs into a single restful API. The web app currently authenticates by issuing a cookie to the client whereas the native clients work using a custom HMAC access token implementation. Obviously a public/private key scenario for a javascript app is a little pointless. I think the best solution would be to create an OAuth2 endpoint on the API (like Instagram, for example http://instagram.com/developer/authentication/) which is used by both the native apps and the web app. My question is, in terms of security how does an implicit OAuth2 flow compare (storing the access token in local storage) to "secure" cookies? Presumably although SSL solves man in the middle attacks, the user could theoretically grab the access token from local storage and copy it to another machine?

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  • What is the advantage to using a factor of 1024 instead of 1000 for disk size units?

    - by Joe Z.
    When considering the disk space of a storage medium, normally the computer or operating system will represent it in terms of powers of 1024 - a kilobyte is 1,024 bytes, a megabyte is 1,048,576 bytes, a gigabyte is 1,073,741,824 bytes, and so on. But I don't see any practical reason why this convention was adopted. Usually when disk size is represented in kilo-, mega-, or giga-bytes, it has to be converted into decimal first. In places where a power-of-two byte count actually matters (like the block size on a file system), the size is given in bytes anyway (e.g. 4096 bytes). Was it just a little aesthetic novelty that computer makers decided to adopt, but storage medium vendors decided to disregard? Whenever you buy a hard drive, there's always a disclaimer nowadays that says "One gigabyte means one billion bytes". It would feel like using the binary definition of "gigabyte" would artificially inflate the byte count of a device, making drive-makers have to pack 1.1 terabytes into a drive in order to have it show up as "1 TB", or to simply pack 1 terabyte in and have it show up as "931 GB" (and most of them do the latter). Some people have decided to use units like "KiB" or "MiB" in favour of "KB" and "MB" in order to distinguish the two. But is there any merit to the binary prefixes in the first place? There's probably a bit of old history I'm not aware of on this topic, and if there is, I'm looking for somebody to explain it. (Apologies if this is in the wrong place. I felt that a question on best practice might belong here, but I have faith that it will be migrated to the right place if it's incorrect.)

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  • Fake links cause crawl error in Google Webmaster Tools

    - by Itai
    Google reported Crawl Errors last week on my largest site though Webmaster Tools. Here is the message: Google detected a significant increase in the number of URLs that return a 404 (Page Not Found) error. Investigating these errors and fixing them where appropriate ensures that Google can successfully crawl your site's pages. The Crawl Errors list is now full of hundreds of fake links like these causing 16,519 errors so far: Note that my site does not even have a search.html and is not related to any of the terms shown in the above image. Inspecting sources for one of those links, I can see this is not simply an isolated source but a concerted effort: Each of the links has a few to a dozen sources all from different, seemingly unrelated sites. It is completely baffling as to why would someone to spending effort doing this. What are they hoping to achieve? Is this an attack? Most importantly: Does this have a negative effect on my side? Could it negatively impact my ranking? If so, what to do about it? The few linking pages I looked at are full of thousands of links to tons of sites and have no contact information and do not seem like the kind of people who would simply stop if asked nicely! According to Google Webmaster Tools, these errors have appeared in a span of 11 days. No crawl errors were being reported previously.

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  • Is a Mission Oriented Architecture (MOA) a better way to describe things than SOA?

    - by Brian Langbecker
    I might sound like a troll, but I would like to seriously understand this deeper. The place I work at has started to use the term MOA, versus SOA as we believe it drives more clarity and want to compare it to the true goals of SOA. A Mission Oriented Architecture is an approach whereby an application is broken down into various business mission elements, with the database, file assets, batch and real time functionality all tightly coupled in terms of delivering that piece of the functionality. The mission allows the developers to focus on a specific piece of functionality to get it right, and to build it with the ability for that piece to scale as an independent entity within the overall application. By tightly coupling the data, file assets and business logic you achieve the goals of working on a very large problem in bite size pieces. Some definitions of SOA mix it up with what is essentially a method call on a web service versus a true "service". As an architect, I have always found it fun getting everyone on the same page regarding SOA. Is it better to call it a "mission" versus a "service"?

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  • c++ How to use angular velocity that derived from inertia and force(torque) in 3d

    - by user1217203
    I am relatively new to game development. May my terminology and description are not appropriate. Please excuse my poor phrasing and help me by giving advice on how to question better if this question seems less fitting. I really appreciate your efforts. Hi. I am having hard time interpreting the set of values I have. I have inertia and force(torque) in terms of x y z. FYI I used x and y coordinates as my ground, flat coordinates and z as my up/down. I am assuming that since f = ma, that angular acceleration must be a = f / m. So I divide my torque by inertia. Then I add those x y z values to my angular velocity variable's x y z. However these x y z values confuse me. Don't I need angle/sec or radian/sec sort of values in order to apply rotation? The x y z values I have seemed to not say anything about radians or angular movement. Question : If I have ( 1, 2, 3 ) or any ( x, y, z ) as my angular velocity, how do I actually apply it as angular movement? FYI Here I am pasting my code : float mass = 100; float devidedMass = 1.0/12 * mass; Vec3 innertia( devidedMass* (_box._size.z*_box._size.z + _box._size.x*_box._size.x), devidedMass* (_box._size.y*_box._size.y + _box._size.x*_box._size.x), devidedMass* (_box._size.y*_box._size.y + _box._size.z*_box._size.z )); box._angAccel += forceAng/innertia; box._angVelo += box._angAccel; box._angAccel.allZero(); source of my inertia calculation http://www.health.uottawa.ca/biomech/courses/apa4311/solids.pdf

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  • ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for 101/10/2011

    - by Bob Rhubart
    All day, all architecture. Oracle Technology Network Architect Day - Phoenix, AZ - Dec 14. Free registration. Spend the day with your peers learning from Oracle experts in Cloud Computing, Engineered Systems, Oracle WebLogic, Oracle Coherence, Application-Driven Virtualization, and more. Registration is free, but seating is limited. Register now! Data Integration - Bad data is really the monster | Bikram Sinha "Bad data can cause huge operational failure and cost millions of dollars in terms of time and resources to clean up and validate data across multiple participating systems," says Bikram Sinha. Changing a navigation model on a page in WebCenter | Edwin Biemond Another illustrated how-to from Oracle ACE Edwin Biemond. Why do I need an Authenticator when I have an Identity Asserter? | Chris Johnson Chris Johnson responds to a user question. OOW: The Most Important Thing | Floyd Teter Oracle ACE Director Floyd Teter explains why he sees "the inclusion of Fusion Applications CRM and HCM in the Oracle Public Cloud" as the most important news to come out of Oracle OpenWorld 2011. Oracle Releases Oracle Solaris 11 | Gokhan Atil Atil offers an overview of some of the "key points" of the new Solaris 11 release. SOA Development Virtual Developer Day (On Demand) You won't get the hands-on experience available in the live event, but if you will learn learn how a SOA approach can be implemented, whether starting afresh with new services or reusing existing services. Webcast: Maximum Availability on Private Clouds - Nov 10 - 10am PT/ 1pm ET Featuring Margaret Hamburger (Director, Product Marketing, Oracle) and Joe Meeks (Director, Product Management, Oracle). Should Enterprise Architecture Teams Be More Focused on Innovation? | Richard Seroter Richard Seroter looks answers among opinions offered by Forrester analyst Brian Hopkins and Jude Umeh of CapGemini.

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  • Speed up ADF Mobile Deployment to Android with Keystore

    - by Shay Shmeltzer
    As you might have noticed from my latest ADF Mobile entries, I'm doing most of my ADF Mobile development on a windows machine and testing on an Android device. Unfortunately the Android/windows experience is not as fast as the iOS/Mac one. However, there is one thing I learned today that can make this a bit less painful in terms of the speed to deploy and test your application - and this is to use the "Release" mode when deploying your application instead of the "Debug" mode. To do this you'll first need to define a keystore, but as Joe from our Mobile team showed me today, this is quite easy. Here are the steps: Open a command line in your JDK bin directory (I just used the JDK that comes with the JDeveloper install). Issue the following command: keytool –genkey –v –keystore <Keystore Name>.keystore –alias <Alias Name> -keyalg RSA –keysize 2048 –validity 10000 Both keystore name and alias names are strings that you decide on. The keytool utility will then prompt you with various questions that you'll need to answer. Once this is done, the next step is to configure your JDeveloper preferences->ADF Mobile to add this keystore there under the release tab:  Then for your application specific deployment profile - switch the build mode from debug to release. The end result is a much smaller mobile application (for example from 60 to 21mb) and a much faster deployment cycle (for me it is about twice as fast as before).

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  • Profit : August, 2012

    - by user462779
    August 2012 issue of Profit is now available online. Way back in 2003, I wrote my first feature for Profit. It was titled “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Application Servers (But Were Afraid To Ask),” and it discussed “cutting-edge” technologies like portals and XML and the brand-new Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE; we’re now on Java EE 7). But despite the dated terms I used in my Profit debut, I noticed something in rereading that old story that has stayed constant: mid-tier technology is where innovative enterprise IT projects happen. It may have been XML in 2003, but it’s SOA in 2012. While preparing the August issue of Profit was more than just a stroll down memory lane for me, it has provided a nice bit of perspective about what changes and what doesn’t in this dynamic IT industry. Technologies continuously evolve—some become standard practice, some are revived or reinvented, and some are left by the wayside. But the drive to innovate and the desire to succeed are business principles that never go out of fashion. Also, be sure to check out the Profit JD Edwards Special Issue 2012 (PDF), featuring partner profiles, customer successes, and Oracle executive interviews. The Middleware Advantage Three ways a flexible, integrate software layer can deliver a competitive edge Playing to Win Electronic Arts’ superefficient hub processes millions of online gaming transactions every day. Adjustable Loans With Oracle Exadata, Reliance Commercial Finance keeps pace with India’s commercial loan market. Future Proof To keep pace with mobile, social, and location-based services, smart technologists are using middleware to innovate. Spring Training Knowledge and communication help Jackson Hewitt’s Tim Bechtold get seasonal workers in top shape. Keeping Online Customers Happy Customers worldwide are comfortable with online service—but are companies meeting customers’ needs?

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  • When creating an library published on CodePlex, how "bad" would it be for the unit-test projects to rely on commercial products?

    - by Lasse V. Karlsen
    I have started a project on CodePlex for a WebDAV server implementation for .NET, so that I can host a WebDAV server in my own programs. This is both a learning/research project (WebDAV + server portion) as well as a project I think I can have much fun with, both in terms of making it and using it. However, I see a need to do mocking of types here in order to unit-testing properly. For instance, I will be relying on HttpListener for the web server portion of the WebDAV server, and since this type has no interface, and is sealed, I cannot easily make mocks or stubs out of it. Unless I use something like TypeMock. So if I used TypeMock in the unit-test projects on this library, how bad would this be for potential users? The projects are made in C# 3.5 for .NET 3.5 and 4.0, and the project files was created with Visual Studio 2010 Professional. The actual class libraries you would end up referencing in your software would of course not be encumbered with anything remotely like this, only the unit-test libraries. What's your thoughts on this? As an example, I have in my old code-base, which is private, the ability to just initiate a WebDAV server with just this: var server = new WebDAVServer(); This constructs, and owns, a HttpListener instance internally, and I would like to verify through unit-tests that if I dispose of this server object, the internal listener is disposed of. If, on the other hand, I use the overload where I hand it a listener object, this object should not be disposed of. Short of exposing the internal listener object to the outside world, something I'm a bit loath to do, how can I in a good way ensure that the object was disposed of? With TypeMock I can mock away parts of this object even though it isn't accessed through interfaces. The alternative would be for me to wrap everything in wrapper classes, where I have complete control.

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  • Lightning fast forum based around metadata / tags? [closed]

    - by Dan W
    Possible Duplicate: What Forum Software should I use? I wonder if anything like this exists. I'd like to add a forum to my site, but instead of the usual forum/subforum/sub-subforum structure, I'd like to use a metadata/tag approach where everything exists as a single directory, and where there's a search field at the top which instantly (<0.5 sec) filters the threads to a particular keyword or keywords. Also, as the admin, I would be able to add highly visible buttons at the top, which can be clicked on for the main categories I choose for the forum (nevertheless, users can also add tags to their own threads outside of these default main tags I supply if they wish). This approach, if done properly, is more powerful, efficient, maintenance free, scalable and friendly than a standard forum, so I was hoping someone had the same idea and made something out of it. It couldn't be that hard. I'd want the speed to be up to (or near) the standard of this: http://forum.dlang.org/ Other forums (e.g.: phpBB) are orders of magnitude worse than that in terms of latency (posting or browsing), and I think that is wrong, even in principle ;)

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  • Dealing with institutionalized programmers.

    - by Singleton
    Some times programmers who work in a project for long time tend to get institutionalized. It is difficult to convince them with reasoning. Even if we manage to convince them they will be adamant to take suggestion on board. How do we handle the situation without developing friction in team? Institutionalized in terms of practices. I recently joined in a project where build &release process was made so complicated with unnecessary roadblocks. My suggestion was we can get rid of some of the development overheads(like filling few spreadsheets) just by integrating defect management and version controlling tools (both are IBM-Rational tools integration can be very easy and one-off effort). Also by using tools like Maven & Ant (project involves java and some COTS products) build & release can be simplified and reduce manual errors& intervention. I managed to convince and ready to put efforts for developing proof of concept. But the ‘Senior’ developer is not willing to take it on board. One reason could be the current process makes him valuable in team.

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  • Application Scope v's Static - Not Quite the same

    - by Duncan Mills
    An interesting question came up today which, innocent as it sounded, needed a second or two to consider. What's the difference between storing say a Map of reference information as a Static as opposed to storing the same map as an application scoped variable in JSF?  From the perspective of the web application itself there seems to be no functional difference, in both cases, the information is confined to the current JVM and potentially visible to your app code (note that Application Scope is not magically propagated across a cluster, you would need a separate instance on each VM). To my mind the primary consideration here is a matter of leakage. A static will be (potentially) visible to everything running within the same VM (OK this depends on which class-loader was used but let's keep this simple), and this includes your model code and indeed other web applications running in the same container. An Application Scoped object, in JSF terms, is much more ring-fenced and is only visible to the Web app itself, not other web apps running on the same server and not directly to the business model layer if that is running in the same VM. So given that I'm a big fan of coding applications to say what I mean, then using Application Scope appeals because it explicitly states how I expect the data to be used and a provides a more explicit statement about visibility and indeed dependency as I'd generally explicitly inject it where it is needed.  Alternative viewpoints / thoughts are, as ever, welcomed...

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  • An experiment: unlimited free trial

    - by Alex.Davies
    The .NET Demon team have just implemented an experiment that is quite a break from Red Gate's normal business model. Instead of the tool expiring after the trial period, it now continues to work, but with a new message that appears after the tool has saved you a certain amount of time. The rationale is that a user that stops using .NET Demon because the trial expired isn't doing anyone any good. We'd much rather people continue using it forever, as long as everyone that finds it useful and can afford it still pays for it. Hopefully the message appearing is annoying enough to achieve that, but not for people to uninstall it. It's true that many companies have tried it before with mixed results, but we have a secret weapon. The perfect nag message? The neat thing for .NET Demon is that we can easily measure exactly how much time .NET Demon has saved you, in terms of unnecessary project builds that Visual Studio would have done. When you press F5, the message shows you the time saved, and then makes you wait a shorter time before starting your application. Confronted with the truth about how amazing .NET Demon is, who can do anything but buy it? The real secret though, is that while you wait, .NET Demon gives you entertainment, in the form of a picture of a cute kitten. I've only had time to embed one kitten so far, but the eventual aim is for a random different kitten to appear each time. The psychological health benefits of a dose of kittens in the daily life of the developer are obvious. My only concern is that people will complain after paying for .NET Demon that the kittens are gone.

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  • Self Service Reporting With PowerPivot

    - by blakmk
    There are so many cool new features in Sql 2008 release 2 it was difficult for me to pick a topic for T-SQL Tuesday . But the one that I am now a secret fan of, I once resented for its creation. Let me explain, for years I have encountered reporting systems cobbled together in tools like Access and Excel built by "database hobbyists" who had no formal training in database design or best practices. They would take their monstrosities as far as they could go before ultimatley it stopped working or the person that wrote it left the company. At that point it would become the resident DBA's problem to support it as a Live application. So when I first heard of Power Pivot, a sense of Deja Vu overtook me and I felt like the guy in the Ausin Powers movie , knowing the inevitable is coming but somehow unsure how to get out of the way. But when I eventually saw it in action, I quickly realised that it is a very powerful tool. It has a much smaller "time to market" than traditional BI architectures. Combined with the new features of Excel, some pretty impressive dashboards can be produced.Of course PowerPivot is not a magic bullet and along with potential scalability issues there are the usual issues such as master data management and data quality that cannot be overcome easily with power pivot. As a tool though, it has potential. Traditional BI is expensive, both in terms of time and the amount of resources it takes to deliver the system. The time lag between an analyst or a commercial accountant requesting reports and the report being delivered can make a huge commercial difference. I have observed companies where empowered end users become extremely productive when allowed to plough in to various disperate datasets. It may not be the correct way or the most sustainable but its cheap and quick. In these times when budgets are being slashed and we are forced to deliver more with less, why not empower the end user in a tool that is designed for exactly this task.... @blakmk  

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  • How to represent an agile project to people focused on waterfall [closed]

    - by ahsteele
    Our team has been asked to represent our development efforts in a project plan. No one is unhappy with our work or questioning our ability to deliver, we are just participating in an IT cattle call for project plans. Trouble is we are an agile team and haven't thought about our work in terms of a formal project plan. While we have a general idea of what we are working on next we aren't 100% sure until we plan an iteration. Until now our team has largely operated in a vacuum and has not been required to present our methodology or metrics to outside parties. We follow most of the practices espoused in Extreme Programming. We hold quarterly planning meetings to have a general idea of the stories we are going to work on for a quarter. That said, our stories are documented on 3x5 cards and are only estimated at the beginning of the iteration in which they are going to be worked. After estimation we document the story in Team Foundation Sever. During an iteration, we attach code to stories and mark stories as completed once finished. From this data we are able to generate burn down and velocity charts. Most importantly we know our average velocity for an iteration keeping us from biting off more than we can chew. I am not looking to modify the way we do development but want to present our development activities in a report that someone only familiar with waterfall will understand. In What Does an Agile Project Plan Look Like, Kent McDonald does a good job laying out the differences between agile and waterfall project plans. He specifies the differences in consumable bullets: An agile project plan is feature based An Agile Project Plan is organized into iterations An Agile Project Plan has different levels of detail depending on the time frame An Agile Project Plan is owned by the Team Being able to explain the differences is great, but how best to present the data?

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  • Get Started with JavaFX 2 and Scene Builder

    - by Janice J. Heiss
    Up on otn/java is a very useful article by Oracle Java/Middleware/Core Tech Engineer Mark Heckler, titled, “How to Get Started (FAST!) with JavaFX 2 and Scene Builder.”  Heckler, who has development experience in numerous environments, shows developers how to develop a JavaFX application using Scene Builder “in less time than it takes to drink a cup of coffee, while learning your way around in the process”. He begins with a warning and a reassurance: “JavaFX is a new paradigm and can seem a bit imposing when you first take a look at it. But remember, JavaFX is easy and fun. Let's give it a try.” Next, after showing readers how to download and install JDK/JavaFX and Scene Builder, he informs the reader that they will “create a simple JavaFX application, create and modify a window using Scene Builder, and successfully test it in under 15 minutes.” Then readers download some NetBeans files:“EasyJavaFX.java contains the main application class. We won't do anything with this class for our example, as its primary purpose in life is to load the window definition code contained in the FXML file and then show the main stage/scene. You'll keep the JavaFX terms straight with ease if you relate them to the theater: a platform holds a stage, which contains scenes. SampleController.java is our controller class that provides the ‘brains’ behind the graphical interface. If you open the SampleController, you'll see that it includes a property and a method tagged with @FXML. This tag enables the integration of the visual controls and elements you define using Scene Builder, which are stored in an FXML (FX Markup Language) file. Sample.fxml is the definition file for our sample window. You can right-click and Edit the filename in the tree to view the underlying FXML -- and you may need to do that if you change filenames or properties by hand - or you can double-click on it to open it (visually) in Scene Builder.” Then Scene Builder enters the picture and the task is soon done. Check out the article here.

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  • Difference between bug, defect and flaw

    - by Hossein
    I was reading "Software Security: Building Security In" and in the first chapter I faced with 3 terms: bug, defect and flaw. The author gave a definition for each of them but I couldn't completely understand these. Can someone give me some examples for each term? What is a defect and what is a flaw? I think I know what bug is, a bug is a malfunction of a part of system which produces undesirable result, be it crashing on a wrong input or miscalculating a series of computations. Can someone elaborate more and correct me if I am wrong in this? UPDATE To be more precise in the book I mentioned above, they (the words) are presented in a way to make a distinction, that's why I am asking to know more. In that book there are some examples denoting which sample belongs to what and which category. For example: Buffer overflow is said to be a bug and issues in method overriding (subclassing issues) is being related to flaw category. Again race condition handling issues are considered bugs and Error-handling problems (fails open) are told to be flaws! I want more elaboration on these regards.

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  • System in low-graphics mode

    - by Artem Moskalev
    I am totally new to Linux, and Ubuntu. I bought ASUS X53E Notebook, erased Windows and installed Ubuntu. First it worked ok. Then when I started working with it, i opened the terminal, entered sudo chmod 666 usr and then all the icons from the main panel disappeared + the whole system stopped responding. I decided to restart the system. When restarted, a message appears: the system is running in low graphics mode and below it: Your screen, graphics card and input device setting could not be detected correctly. You will need to configure it yourself. But the "OK" button is disabled and if I press any buttons nothing happens. If I enter Ctrl-Alt-F2 it opens the bash terminal. But there commands sudo or apt-get are not found and it says that permission denied if i try to enter any folder like cd /usr If I enter the su command it asks for the password I don't know. When encountering this problem first, I reinstalled the whole Ubuntu. but today it happened again just the same. What shall I do? maybe there is something wrong with the hardware? If I need to install another distribution of Linux could you recommend one? but I'd rather stick to Debian releases like Ubuntu. so how do I fix the problem? PS: Please give answers in simple terms because am a newbie so i don't know what goes where yet.

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