Search Results

Search found 28563 results on 1143 pages for 'strange but true'.

Page 441/1143 | < Previous Page | 437 438 439 440 441 442 443 444 445 446 447 448  | Next Page >

• The only constant is change

  Isaac Asimov was once quoted as saying The only constant is change. That has certainly been true of my time with the DotNetNuke project. Over the last seven years of working on the DotNetNuke project and working at DotNetNuke Corporation I have held a number of different roles within the organization. I have defined and coded major product features, built and managed the DotNetNuke Marketplace, managed the release process, managed both OpenForce Conferences, oversaw the QA function, and created...Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

  Read the article

• How to remove permanently those error prompts while using openbox gnome?

  - by YumYumYum

  How to remove permanently those error prompts while using openbox gnome? Such as: update ubuntu latest release, this kind of errors etc, how to permanently disable them so that it does not show in front of my presentation. Follow up: a) How do i kill that screen shot error box? $ cat /etc/default/whoopsie [General] report_crashes=false $ apport-cli *** Send problem report to the developers? After the problem report has been sent, please fill out the form in the automatically opened web browser. What would you like to do? Your options are: S: Send report (69.7 KB) V: View report K: Keep report file for sending later or copying to somewhere else I: Cancel and ignore future crashes of this program version C: Cancel Please choose (S/V/K/I/C): I b) How do i kill that update notification dialog box? $/etc/xdg/autostart# vim update-notifier.desktop #NoDisplay=true NoDisplay=false :wq $ cat update-notifier.desktop | grep NoDisplay NoDisplay=false No more disturbing popup's now.

  Read the article

• How was collision detection handled in The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past?

  - by Restart

  I would like to know how the collision detection was done in The Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past. The game is 16x16 tile based, so how did they do the tiles where only a quarter or half of the tile is occupied? Did they use a smaller grid for collision detection like 8x8 tiles, so four of them make one 16x16 tile of the texture grid? But then, they also have true half tiles which are diagonally cut and the corners of the tiles seem to be round or something. If Link walks into tiles corner he can keep on walking and automatically moves around it's corner. How is that done? I hope someone can help me out here.

  Read the article

• #OOW 2012 : IaaS, Private Cloud, Multitenant Database, and X3H2M2

  - by Eric Bezille

  The title of this post is a summary of the 4 announcements made by Larry Ellison today, during the opening session of Oracle Open World 2012... To know what's behind X3H2M2, you will have to wait a little, as I will go in order, beginning with the IaaS - Infrastructure as a Service - announcement. Oracle IaaS goes Public... and Private... Starting in 2004 with Fusion development, Oracle Cloud was launch last year to provide not only SaaS Application, based on standard development, but also the underlying PaaS, required to build the specifics, and required interconnections between applications, in and outside of the Cloud. Still, to cover the end-to-end Cloud  Services spectrum, we had to provide an Infrastructure as a Service, leveraging our Servers, Storage, OS, and Virtualization Technologies, all "Engineered Together". This Cloud Infrastructure, was already available for our customers to build rapidly their own Private Cloud either on SPARC/Solaris or x86/Linux... The second announcement made today bring that proposition a big step further : for cautious customers (like Banks, or sensible industries) who would like to benefits from the Cloud value of "as a Service", but don't want their Data out in the Cloud... We propose to them to operate the same systems, Exadata, Exalogic & SuperCluster, that are providing our Public Cloud Infrastructure, behind their firewall, in a Private Cloud model. Oracle 12c Multitenant Database This is also a major announcement made today, on what's coming with Oracle Database 12c : the ability to consolidate multiple databases with no extra additional  cost especially in terms of memory needed on the server node, which is often THE consolidation limiting factor. The principle could be compare to Solaris Zones, where, you will have a Database Container, who is "owning" the memory and Database background processes, and "Pluggable" Database in this Database Container. This particular feature is a strong compelling event to evaluate rapidly Oracle Database 12c once it will be available, as this is major step forward into true Database consolidation with Multitenancy on a shared (optimized) infrastructure. X3H2M2, enabling the new Exadata X3 in-Memory Database Here we are :  X3H2M2 stands for X3 (the new version of Exadata announced also today) Heuristic Hierarchical Mass Memory, providing the capability to keep most if not all the Data in the memory cache hierarchy. Of course, this is the major software enhancement of the new X3 Exadata machine, but as this is a software, our current customers would be able to benefit from it on their existing systems by upgrading to the new release. But that' not the only thing that we did with X3, at the same time we have upgraded everything : the CPUs, adding more cores per server node (16 vs. 12, with the arrival of Intel E5 / Sandy Bridge), the memory with 512GB memory as well per node,  and the new Flash Fire card, bringing now up to 22 TB of Flash cache. All of this 4TB of RAM + 22TB of Flash being use cleverly not only for read but also for write by the X3H2M2 algorithm... making a very big difference compare to traditional storage flash extension. But what does those extra performances brings to you on an already very efficient system: double your performances compare to the fastest storage array on the market today (including flash) and divide you storage price x10 at the same time... Something to consider closely this days... Especially that we also announced the availability of a new Exadata X3-2 8th rack : a good starting point. As you have seen a major opening for this year again with true innovation. But that was not the only thing that we saw today, as before Larry's talk, Fujitsu did introduce more in deep the up coming new SPARC processor, that they are co-developing with us. And as such Andrew Mendelsohn - Senior Vice President Database Server Technologies came on stage to explain that the next step after I/O optimization for Database with Exadata, was to accelerate the Database at execution level by bringing functions in the SPARC processor silicium. All in all, to process more and more Data... The big theme of the day... and of the Oracle User Groups Conferences that were also happening today and where I had the opportunity to attend some interesting sessions on practical use cases of Big Data one in Finances and Fraud profiling and the other one on practical deployment of Oracle Exalytics for Data Analytics. In conclusion, one picture to try to size Oracle Open World ... and you can understand why, with such a rich content... and this only the first day !

  Read the article

• Applications: The Mathematics of Movement, Part 3

  - by TechTwaddle

  Previously: Part 1, Part 2 As promised in the previous post, this post will cover two variations of the marble move program. The first one, Infinite Move, keeps the marble moving towards the click point, rebounding it off the screen edges and changing its direction when the user clicks again. The second version, Finite Move, is the same as first except that the marble does not move forever. It moves towards the click point, rebounds off the screen edges and slowly comes to rest. The amount of time that it moves depends on the distance between the click point and marble. Infinite Move This case is simple (actually both cases are simple). In this case all we need is the direction information which is exactly what the unit vector stores. So when the user clicks, you calculate the unit vector towards the click point and then keep updating the marbles position like crazy. And, of course, there is no stop condition. There’s a little more additional code in the bounds checking conditions. Whenever the marble goes off the screen boundaries, we need to reverse its direction.  Here is the code for mouse up event and UpdatePosition() method, //stores the unit vector double unitX = 0, unitY = 0; double speed = 6; //speed times the unit vector double incrX = 0, incrY = 0; private void Form1_MouseUp(object sender, MouseEventArgs e) {     double x = e.X - marble1.x;     double y = e.Y - marble1.y;     //calculate distance between click point and current marble position     double lenSqrd = x * x + y * y;     double len = Math.Sqrt(lenSqrd);     //unit vector along the same direction (from marble towards click point)     unitX = x / len;     unitY = y / len;     timer1.Enabled = true; } private void UpdatePosition() {     //amount by which to increment marble position     incrX = speed * unitX;     incrY = speed * unitY;     marble1.x += incrX;     marble1.y += incrY;     //check for bounds     if ((int)marble1.x < MinX + marbleWidth / 2)     {         marble1.x = MinX + marbleWidth / 2;         unitX *= -1;     }     else if ((int)marble1.x > (MaxX - marbleWidth / 2))     {         marble1.x = MaxX - marbleWidth / 2;         unitX *= -1;     }     if ((int)marble1.y < MinY + marbleHeight / 2)     {         marble1.y = MinY + marbleHeight / 2;         unitY *= -1;     }     else if ((int)marble1.y > (MaxY - marbleHeight / 2))     {         marble1.y = MaxY - marbleHeight / 2;         unitY *= -1;     } } So whenever the user clicks we calculate the unit vector along that direction and also the amount by which the marble position needs to be incremented. The speed in this case is fixed at 6. You can experiment with different values. And under bounds checking, whenever the marble position goes out of bounds along the x or y direction we reverse the direction of the unit vector along that direction. Here’s a video of it running;   Finite Move The code for finite move is almost exactly same as that of Infinite Move, except for the difference that the speed is not fixed and there is an end condition, so the marble comes to rest after a while. Code follows, //unit vector along the direction of click point double unitX = 0, unitY = 0; //speed of the marble double speed = 0; private void Form1_MouseUp(object sender, MouseEventArgs e) {     double x = 0, y = 0;     double lengthSqrd = 0, length = 0;     x = e.X - marble1.x;     y = e.Y - marble1.y;     lengthSqrd = x * x + y * y;     //length in pixels (between click point and current marble pos)     length = Math.Sqrt(lengthSqrd);     //unit vector along the same direction as vector(x, y)     unitX = x / length;     unitY = y / length;     speed = length / 12;     timer1.Enabled = true; } private void UpdatePosition() {     marble1.x += speed * unitX;     marble1.y += speed * unitY;     //check for bounds     if ((int)marble1.x < MinX + marbleWidth / 2)     {         marble1.x = MinX + marbleWidth / 2;         unitX *= -1;     }     else if ((int)marble1.x > (MaxX - marbleWidth / 2))     {         marble1.x = MaxX - marbleWidth / 2;         unitX *= -1;     }     if ((int)marble1.y < MinY + marbleHeight / 2)     {         marble1.y = MinY + marbleHeight / 2;         unitY *= -1;     }     else if ((int)marble1.y > (MaxY - marbleHeight / 2))     {         marble1.y = MaxY - marbleHeight / 2;         unitY *= -1;     }     //reduce speed by 3% in every loop     speed = speed * 0.97f;     if ((int)speed <= 0)     {         timer1.Enabled = false;     } } So the only difference is that the speed is calculated as a function of length when the mouse up event occurs. Again, this can be experimented with. Bounds checking is same as before. In the update and draw cycle, we reduce the speed by 3% in every cycle. Since speed is calculated as a function of length, speed = length/12, the amount of time it takes speed to reach zero is directly proportional to length. Note that the speed is in ‘pixels per 40ms’ because the timeout value of the timer is 40ms.  The readability can be improved by representing speed in ‘pixels per second’. This would require you to add some more calculations to the code, which I leave out as an exercise. Here’s a video of this second version,

  Read the article

• Is type safety worth the trade-offs?

  - by Prof Plum

  I began coding in in Python primarily where there is no type safety, then moved to C# and Java where there is. I found that I could work a bit more quickly and with less headaches in Python, but then again, my C# and Java apps are at much higher level of complexity so I have never given Python a true stress test I suppose. The Java and C# camps make it sound like without the type safety in place, most people would be running into all sorts of horrible bugs left an right and it would be more trouble than its worth. This is not a language comparison, so please do not address issues like compiled vs interpreted. Is type safety worth the hit to speed of development and flexibilty? WHY? to the people who wanted an example of the opinion that dynamic typing is faster: "Use a dynamically typed language during development. It gives you faster feedback, turn-around time, and development speed." - http://blog.jayway.com/2010/04/14/static-typing-is-the-root-of-all-evil/

  Read the article

• Doubts regarding the behaviour of 'autoremove' command and '--auto-remove' flag

  - by Jasper Loy

  After reading several man pages and forums, I thought that running 'apt-get autoremove' without any following argument removes all unused dependencies left on the system, while running 'apt-get autoremove xxx' removes xxx together with its unused dependencies. However I found this to be not true. Running 'apt-get autoremove xxx' not only removes xxx together with its unused dependencies, it also removes all other unused dependencies. So I tried to run 'apt-get remove --auto-remove xxx', thinking that this would remove only xxx and its unused dependencies. To my surprise, this also removed xxx, its unused dependencies and all other unused dependencies. Is this the intended behaviour of the commands or a bug? Is there any quick way to remove xxx and its unused dependencies without removing other unused dependencies?

  Read the article

• Undeclared Scope in Rock Paper Scissors Simple Game

  - by Rianelle

  #include <iostream> #include <string> #include <cstdlib> #include <ctime> using namespace std; bool win; int winnings; int draws; int loses; string comChoice; string playerChoice; void winGame () { cout << "You won! Play again?" <<endl; cout << "Type y/n" <<endl; char x; cin >> x; if (x == 'y') { beginGame(); } else if ('n'){ cout << "Game Stopped." <<endl; cout << "Number of Draws: " <<draws << endl; cout << "Number of Loses: " <<loses << endl; cout << "Number of Wins: " << winnings << endl; win = true; } } void drawGame (){ ++draws; cout << "Draw! Try again" << endl; return; } void lose () { cout << "You lose! Try again?" <<endl; cout << "Type y/n" <<endl; char feedback; cin >> feedback; if (feedback == 'y') { beginGame(); } else if ('n'){ cout << "Game Stopped." <<endl; cout << "Number of Draws: " <<draws << endl; cout << "Number of Loses: " <<loses << endl; cout << "Number of Wins: " << winnings << endl; } } void beginGame() { cout << "Welcome to the Rock, Paper and Scissors Game!" <<endl; cout << "Let's begin. Type <rock, paper, scissors> for your choice!" <<endl; cin >> playerChoice; srand(time(0)); int randomizer = 1+(rand()%3); if (randomizer == 1) comChoice = "rock"; if (randomizer == 2) comChoice = "paper"; if (randomizer == 3) comChoice = "scissors"; do { if (playerChoice == comChoice) { drawGame(); } if (playerChoice == "rock" && comChoice == "paper") ++loses; lose(); if (playerChoice == "rock" && comChoice == "scissors") ++winnings; winGame(); if (playerChoice == "paper" && comChoice == "rock") ++winnings; winGame(); if (playerChoice == "paper" && comChoice == "scissors") ++loses; lose(); if (playerChoice == "scissors" && comChoice == "rock") ++loses; lose(); if (playerChoice == "scissors" && comChoice == "paper") ++winnings; winGame(); }while (win != true); } int main () { beginGame(); return 0; }

  Read the article

• 2D Particle Explosion

  - by TheBroodian

  I'm developing a 2D action game, and in said game I've given my primary character an ability he can use to throw a fireball. I'm trying to design an effect so that when said fireball collides (be it with terrain or with an enemy) that the fireball will explode. For the explosion effect I've created a particle that once placed into game space will follow random, yet autonomic behavior based on random variables. Here is my question: When I generate my explosion (essentially 90 of these particles) I get one of two behaviors, 1) They are all generated with the same random variables, and don't resemble an explosion at all, more like a large mass of clumped sprites that all follow the same randomly generated path. 2) If I assign each particle a unique seed to its random number generator, they are a little bit -more- spread out, yet clumping is still visible (they seem to fork out into 3 different directions) Does anybody have any tips for producing particle-based 2D explosions? I'll include the code for my particle and the event I'm generating them in. Fire particle class: public FireParticle(xTile.Dimensions.Location StartLocation, ContentManager content) { worldLocation = StartLocation; fireParticleAnimation = new FireParticleAnimation(content); random = new Random(); int rightorleft = random.Next(0, 3); int upordown = random.Next(1, 3); int xVelocity = random.Next(0, 101); int yVelocity = random.Next(0, 101); Vector2 tempVector2 = new Vector2(0,0); if (rightorleft == 1) { tempVector2 = new Vector2(xVelocity, tempVector2.Y); } else if (rightorleft == 2) { tempVector2 = new Vector2(-xVelocity, tempVector2.Y); } if (upordown == 1) { tempVector2 = new Vector2(tempVector2.X, -yVelocity); } else if (upordown == 2) { tempVector2 = new Vector2(tempVector2.X, yVelocity); } velocity = tempVector2; scale = random.Next(1, 11); upwardForce = -10; dead = false; } public FireParticle(xTile.Dimensions.Location StartLocation, ContentManager content, int seed) { worldLocation = StartLocation; fireParticleAnimation = new FireParticleAnimation(content); random = new Random(seed); int rightorleft = random.Next(0, 3); int upordown = random.Next(1, 3); int xVelocity = random.Next(0, 101); int yVelocity = random.Next(0, 101); Vector2 tempVector2 = new Vector2(0, 0); if (rightorleft == 1) { tempVector2 = new Vector2(xVelocity, tempVector2.Y); } else if (rightorleft == 2) { tempVector2 = new Vector2(-xVelocity, tempVector2.Y); } if (upordown == 1) { tempVector2 = new Vector2(tempVector2.X, -yVelocity); } else if (upordown == 2) { tempVector2 = new Vector2(tempVector2.X, yVelocity); } velocity = tempVector2; scale = random.Next(1, 11); upwardForce = -10; dead = false; } #endregion #region Update and Draw public void Update(GameTime gameTime) { elapsed = (float)gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalSeconds; fireParticleAnimation.Update(gameTime); Vector2 moveAmount = velocity * elapsed; xTile.Dimensions.Location newPosition = new xTile.Dimensions.Location(worldLocation.X + (int)moveAmount.X, worldLocation.Y + (int)moveAmount.Y); worldLocation = newPosition; velocity.Y += upwardForce; if (fireParticleAnimation.finishedPlaying) { dead = true; } } public void Draw(SpriteBatch spriteBatch) { spriteBatch.Draw( fireParticleAnimation.image.Image, new Rectangle((int)drawLocation.X, (int)drawLocation.Y, scale, scale), fireParticleAnimation.image.SizeAndsource, Color.White * fireParticleAnimation.image.Alpha); } Fireball explosion event: public override void Update(GameTime gameTime) { if (enabled) { float elapsed = (float)gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalSeconds; foreach (Heart_of_Fire.World_Objects.Particles.FireParticle particle in explosionParticles.ToList()) { particle.Update(gameTime); if (particle.Dead) { explosionParticles.Remove(particle); } } collisionRectangle = new Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Rectangle((int)wrldPstn.X, (int)wrldPstn.Y, 5, 5); explosionCheck = exploded; if (!exploded) { coreGraphic.Update(gameTime); tailGraphic.Update(gameTime); Vector2 moveAmount = velocity * elapsed; moveAmount = horizontalCollision(moveAmount, layer); moveAmount = verticalCollision(moveAmount, layer); Vector2 newPosition = new Vector2(wrldPstn.X + moveAmount.X, wrldPstn.Y + moveAmount.Y); if (hasCollidedHorizontally || hasCollidedVertically) { exploded = true; } wrldPstn = newPosition; worldLocation = new xTile.Dimensions.Location((int)wrldPstn.X, (int)wrldPstn.Y); } if (explosionCheck != exploded) { for (int i = 0; i < 90; i++) { explosionParticles.Add(new World_Objects.Particles.FireParticle( new Location( collisionRectangle.X + random.Next(0, 6), collisionRectangle.Y + random.Next(0, 6)), contentMgr)); } } if (exploded && explosionParticles.Count() == 0) { //enabled = false; } } }

  Read the article

• Switching to WIF SessionMode in ASP.NET

  - by Your DisplayName here!

  To make it short: to switch to SessionMode (cache to server) in ASP.NET, you need to handle an event and set a property. Sounds easy – but you need to set it in the right place. The most popular blog post about this topic is from Vittorio. He advises to set IsSessionMode in WSFederationAuthenticationModule_SessionSecurityTokenCreated. Now there were some open questions on forum, like this one. So I decided to try it myself – and indeed it didn’t work for me as well. So I digged a little deeper, and after some trial and error I found the right place (in global.asax): void WSFederationAuthenticationModule_SecurityTokenValidated( object sender, SecurityTokenValidatedEventArgs e) {     FederatedAuthentication.SessionAuthenticationModule.IsSessionMode = true; } Not sure if anything has changed since Vittorio’s post – but this worked for me. While playing around, I also wrote a little diagnostics tool that allows you to look into the session cookie (for educational purposes). Will post that soon. HTH

  Read the article

• How much code should I be responsible for?

  - by Mick

  Through colleagues and exit interviews, I have heard that at my small company I am "responsible" for anywhere from 3-10 times more code than I would be at another job. I'm trying to look for some sort of fuzzy metric that I can use to compare my workload with others in my field. By "code responsibility", I don't mean "I'm the only one who knows area X of the code base" (though sadly, it's often true in a startup environment), but rather am referring to a number like "code_base_size/number_of_developers". Are there any resources I can use to help me more accurately measure my work load than just counting lines of code?

  Read the article

• How do you show the desktop in a blink in Ubuntu?

  - by e-satis

  We know you can either click on the show desktop icon or use CTRL+ALT+D to ask Ubuntu to show the desktop. Unfortunately, this does not always show the desktop in one action. Sometime, and this is true for at least the last 4 version of the OS, it brings up first to the front all the windows, THEN, with a second click, show you the desktop. This is very annoying, as when you show the desktop it generally to quickly click on a shortcut. To understand what I'm talking about, open 7 windows, minimize some, bring some to the front, maximize one, then show the desktop. Then do that on Windows. You'll see the difference.

  Read the article

• Movement of body after applying weld joint

  - by ved

  I have two rectangular bodies. I've applied Weldjoint successfully on these bodies. I want to move that joined body by applying linear impulse. After weld joint, these two bodies becomes single body right? How do I apply force/impulse on the joined body? I am using Box2D with LibGDX. I've tried this: polygon1.applyLinearImpulse(new Vector2(-5, 0), polygon1.getWorldCenter(), true); I thought that if I move polygon1 then polygon2 will also move due to my weld joint but it is not working properly. Why don't they move together after being welded?

  Read the article

• What's the difference between my nameserver and CName settings?

  - by Josh Mcquiston

  I have purchased a domain name(mxsoup.net) through GoDaddy, and it is just parked. In order to set up my custom URL for my SourceAudio site, they give me the following instructions: In order to host your site at a your own URL, we need you to set up some DNS records to point your URL to us. Specifically, we need two CNAME references, one for 'www.mxsoup.net' and one for 'secure.mxsoup.net', both of which should point to 'web2.sourceaudio.com'. But the rep on the phone at GoDaddy said that my site is hosted at HostMonster.com, and therefore I need to talk to them to accomplish this(which is possibly true, but my business owner says he hasn't purchased hosting for this particular domain, yet he does have some other sites in his hostmonster hosting acct.) My GoDaddy account shows that my nameservers are pointing at NS1.HOSTMONSTER.COM, and NS2.HOSTMONSTER.COM, and I can edit those. But is this the same as setting up the CNAME as described above? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

  Read the article

• Checking whether the user input is a str in Python [migrated]

  - by Sahil Babbar

  I checked various questions on Stack Overflow but one thing every logic lacks. Let me demonstrate using Python: while True: user_input = raw_input() if type(user_input) == str: print 'ERROR' else: print 'BINGO' Also, we cannot use input() in place of raw_input() as it gives the error:Traceback (most recent call last): File ".\test.py", line 3, in <module> user_input = int(input()) File "<string>", line 1, in <module> NameError: name 'asdf' is not defined The problem here is that raw_input converts the user input into string so it always prints 'ERROR' and if I change the second line to user_input = int(raw_input) then, it gives an error: Traceback (most recent call last): File ".\test.py", line 3, in <module> user_input = int(raw_input()) ValueError: invalid literal for int() with base 10: 'asdf' I tried this with try and except but it shall work fine to check integer but not a string. I feel that this question may be marked as a duplicate but I think that this query is important, if logically taken.

  Read the article

• Page for Page Redirect in Google App Engine

  - by clifgray

  I have recently changed domain name for a webapp I run on Google App Engine and I am wondering if there is a simple way to do a page for page redirect from my old website to the new domain. Everything code wise is staying exactly the same but I just want it to go to the new domain. I am using python and the webapp2 framework for the webapp. I know I could go through and for every single handler do: webapp2.redirect('the specific url', permanent=True) But I am hoping for a simpler solution.

  Read the article

• Access Control Service v2: Registering Web Identities in your Applications [concepts]

  - by Your DisplayName here!

  ACS v2 support two fundamental types of client identities– I like to call them “enterprise identities” (WS-*) and “web identities” (Google, LiveID, OpenId in general…). I also see two different “mind sets” when it comes to application design using the above identity types: Enterprise identities – often the fact that a client can present a token from a trusted identity provider means he is a legitimate user of the application. Trust relationships and authorization details have been negotiated out of band (often on paper). Web identities – the fact that a user can authenticate with Google et al does not necessarily mean he is a legitimate (or registered) user of an application. Typically additional steps are necessary (like filling out a form, email confirmation etc). Sometimes also a mixture of both approaches exist, for the sake of this post, I will focus on the web identity case. I got a number of questions how to implement the web identity scenario and after some conversations it turns out it is the old authentication vs. authorization problem that gets in the way. Many people use the IsAuthenticated property on IIdentity to make security decisions in their applications (or deny user=”?” in ASP.NET terms). That’s a very natural thing to do, because authentication was done inside the application and we knew exactly when the IsAuthenticated condition is true. Been there, done that. Guilty ;) The fundamental difference between these “old style” apps and federation is, that authentication is not done by the application anymore. It is done by a third party service, and in the case of web identity providers, in services that are not under our control (nor do we have a formal business relationship with these providers). Now the issue is, when you switch to ACS, and someone with a Google account authenticates, indeed IsAuthenticated is true – because that’s what he is! This does not mean, that he is also authorized to use the application. It just proves he was able to authenticate with Google. Now this obviously leads to confusion. How can we solve that? Easy answer: We have to deal with authentication and authorization separately. Job done ;) For many application types I see this general approach: Application uses ACS for authentication (maybe both enterprise and web identities, we focus on web identities but you could easily have a dual approach here) Application offers to authenticate (or sign in) via web identity accounts like LiveID, Google, Facebook etc. Application also maintains a database of its “own” users. Typically you want to store additional information about the user In such an application type it is important to have a unique identifier for your users (think the primary key of your user database). What would that be? Most web identity provider (and all the standard ACS v2 supported ones) emit a NameIdentifier claim. This is a stable ID for the client (scoped to the relying party – more on that later). Furthermore ACS emits a claims identifying the identity provider (like the original issuer concept in WIF). When you combine these two values together, you can be sure to have a unique identifier for the user, e.g.: Facebook-134952459903700\799880347 You can now check on incoming calls, if the user is already registered and if yes, swap the ACS claims with claims coming from your user database. One claims would maybe be a role like “Registered User” which can then be easily used to do authorization checks in the application. The WIF claims authentication manager is a perfect place to do the claims transformation. If the user is not registered, show a register form. Maybe you can use some claims from the identity provider to pre-fill form fields. (see here where I show how to use the Facebook API to fetch additional user properties). After successful registration (which may include other mechanisms like a confirmation email), flip the bit in your database to make the web identity a registered user. This is all very theoretical. In the next post I will show some code and provide a download link for the complete sample. More on NameIdentifier Identity providers “guarantee” that the name identifier for a given user in your application will always be the same. But different applications (in the case of ACS – different ACS namespaces) will see different name identifiers. This is by design to protect the privacy of users because identical name identifiers could be used to create “profiles” of some sort for that user. In technical terms they create the name identifier approximately like this: name identifier = Hash((Provider Internal User ID) + (Relying Party Address)) Why is this important to know? Well – when you change the name of your ACS namespace, the name identifiers will change as well and you will will lose your “connection” to your existing users. Oh an btw – never use any other claims (like email address or name) to form a unique ID – these can often be changed by users.

  Read the article

• Switching songs - MediaPlayer lags the game

  - by Fibericon

  When the player encounters a boss in the game I'm working on, I want to have the music change. It seems simple enough with the MediaPlayer class to fade out the current song, switch to another, and then fade the new song in. However, at the point where the second song starts, the game freezes for a split second. The songs in question aren't particularly large either - the first song is 1.7mb and the second song is 3.1mb, both mp3 format. This is the code I'm using to do it: protected void switchSong(GameTime gameTime) { if (!bossSongPlaying) { MediaPlayer.Volume -= ((float)gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalSeconds/10); if (MediaPlayer.Volume < 0.05f) { MediaPlayer.Play(bossSong); MediaPlayer.Volume = 1.0f; bossSongPlaying = true; } } } What can I do to eliminate that momentary hang?

  Read the article

• What could be a reason for cross-platform server applications developer to make his app work in multiple processes?

  - by Kabumbus

  So we consider a server app development - heavily loaded with messing with big data streams.An app will be running on one powerful server. a server app shall be developed in form of crossplatform application - so to work on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. So same code many platforms for standing alone server architecture. We wonder what benefits does distributing applications not only over threads but over processes as wall would bring to programmers and to server end users and why? Some people sad to me that even having 48 cores, 4 process threads would be shared via OS throe all cores... is it true BTW?

  Read the article

• Recommended Reading for Polishing JavaScript coding style?

  - by wml653

  I've been coding in JavaScript for a while now and am fairly familiar with some of the more advanced coding features of the language (closures, self-executing functions, etc). So my question is, what advanced books/blogs/or anything else would be recommended to help tighten up my coding style? For example, recently I was coding something similar to: var x = ['a', 'b', 'c']; var exists = false; for(var i = 0; i < x.length; i++){ exists = x[i] === 'b' ? true : exists; } But found that the following condensed code would work better: var y = {'a':'', 'b':'', 'c':''}; var exists = 'b' in y; Both store the same value in 'exists', but the second is less common, but much cleaner. Any suggestions for where I should go to learn more tricks like this?

  Read the article

• WMemoryProfiler is Released

  - by Alois Kraus

  What is it? WMemoryProfiler is a managed profiling Api to aid integration testing. This free library can get managed heap statistics and memory usage for your own process (remember testing) and other processes as well. The best thing is that it does work from .NET 2.0 up to .NET 4.5 in x86 and x64. To make it more interesting it can attach to any running .NET process. The reason why I do mention this is that commercial profilers do support this functionality only for their professional editions. An normally only since .NET 4.0 since the profiling API only since then does support attaching to a running process. This thing does differ in many aspects from “normal” profilers because while profiling yourself you can get all objects from all managed heaps back as an object array. If you ever wanted to change the state of an object which does only exist a method local in another thread you can get your hands on it now … Enough theory. Show me some code /// <summary> /// Show feature to not only get statisics out of a process but also the newly allocated /// instances since the last call to MarkCurrentObjects. /// GetNewObjects does return the newly allocated objects as object array /// </summary> static void InstanceTracking() { using (var dumper = new MemoryDumper()) // if you have problems use to see the debugger windows true,true)) { dumper.MarkCurrentObjects(); Allocate(); ILookup<Type, object> newObjects = dumper.GetNewObjects() .ToLookup( x => x.GetType() ); Console.WriteLine("New Strings:"); foreach (var newStr in newObjects[typeof(string)] ) { Console.WriteLine("Str: {0}", newStr); } } } … New Strings: Str: qqd Str: String data: Str: String data: 0 Str: String data: 1 … This is really hot stuff. Not only you can get heap statistics but you can directly examine the new objects and make queries upon them. When I do find more time I can reconstruct the object root graph from it from my own process. It this cool or what? You can also peek into the Finalization Queue to check if you did accidentally forget to dispose a whole bunch of objects … /// <summary> /// .NET 4.0 or above only. Get all finalizable objects which are ready for finalization and have no other object roots anymore. /// </summary> static void NotYetFinalizedObjects() { using (var dumper = new MemoryDumper()) { object[] finalizable = dumper.GetObjectsReadyForFinalization(); Console.WriteLine("Currently {0} objects of types {1} are ready for finalization. Consider disposing them before.", finalizable.Length, String.Join(",", finalizable.ToLookup( x=> x.GetType() ) .Select( x=> x.Key.Name)) ); } } How does it work? The W of WMemoryProfiler is a good hint. It does employ Windbg and SOS dll to do the heavy lifting and concentrates on an easy to use Api which does hide completely Windbg. If you do not want to see Windbg you will never see it. In my experience the most complex thing is actually to download Windbg from the Windows 8 Stanalone SDK. This is described in the Readme and the exception you are greeted with if it is missing in much greater detail. So I will not go into this here.   What Next? Depending on the feedback I do get I can imagine some features which might be useful as well Calculate first order GC Roots from the actual object graph Identify global statics in Types in object graph Support read out of finalization queue of .NET 2.0 as well. Support Memory Dump analysis (again a feature only supported by commercial profilers in their professional editions if it is supported at all) Deserialize objects from a memory dump into a live process back (this would need some more investigation but it is doable) The last item needs some explanation. Why on earth would you want to do that? The basic idea is to store in your live process some logging/tracing data which can become quite big but since it is never written to it is very fast to generate. When your process crashes with a memory dump you could transfer this data structure back into a live viewer which can then nicely display your program state at the point it did crash. This is an advanced trouble shooting technique I have not seen anywhere yet but it could be quite useful. You can have here a look at the current feature list of WMemoryProfiler with some examples.   How To Get Started? First I would download the released source package (it is tiny). And compile the complete project. Then you can compile the Example project (it has this name) and uncomment in the main method the scenario you want to check out. If you are greeted with an exception it is time to install the Windows 8 Standalone SDK which is described in great detail in the exception text. Thats it for the first round. I have seen something more limited in the Java world some years ago (now I cannot find the link anymore) but anyway. Now we have something much better.

  Read the article

• Are unit tests really used as documentation?

  - by stijn

  I cannot count the number of times I read statements in the vein of 'unit tests are a very important source of documentation of the code under test'. I do not deny they are true. But personally I haven't found myself using them as documentation, ever. For the typical frameworks I use, the method declarations document their behaviour and that's all I need. And I assume the unit tests backup everything stated in that documentation, plus likely some more internal stuff, so on one side it duplicates the ducumentation while on the other it might add some more that is irrelevant. So the question is: when are unit tests used as documentation? When the comments do not cover everything? By developpers extending the source? And what do they expose that can be useful and relevant that the documentation itself cannot expose?

  Read the article

• Isometric smooth fog

  - by marcg11

  I'm working on a simple 2d game with direct3d 9. It's a isometric game with diamond tiles and a staggered map. This is what I have: As you se I have some king of fog which is acomplished by having a fog matrix which is true (clear terrain) or false (obscure terran). But the result is very chunky. The fog moves as the player moves by tiles but not by pixels. Basically I check for every tile if there is fog, if so I just change the color of that tile: if(scene->fog[i+mapx][j+mapy] == FOG_NONE) { tile_color = 0x666666FF; } I also would like the fog to be smoother, for that I followed this "tutorial" but I haven't managed to work it it out. http://www.appsizematters.com/2010/07/how-to-implement-a-fog-of-war-part-2-smooth/

  Read the article

• How to perform simple collision detection?

  - by Rob

  Imagine two squares sitting side by side, both level with the ground like so: A simple way to detect if one is hitting the other is to compare the location of each side. They are touching if all of the following are false: The right square's left side is to the right of the left square's right side. The right square's right side is to the left of the left square's left side. The right square's bottom side is above the left square's top side. The right square's top side is below the left square's bottom side. If any of those are true, the squares are not touching. But consider a case like this, where one square is at a 45 degree angle: Is there an equally simple way to determine if those squares are touching?

  Read the article

• Keyboard Navigation For ASP.NET GridView And TreeList Controls v2010 vol 1

  Great new keyboard navigation feature! With the DXperience v2010.1 release, you can enable keyboard navigation by changing a single property, set KeyboardSupport to true. Once KeyboardSupport is enabled, your users can: Focus On Grid Using Control Activation Key Specify an access key for your grid controls and allow your end-users to press CTRL+SHIFT+AccessKey to change focus to the corresponding grid control. Focused Row Press the UP and DOWN arrow keys to move row focus....Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 437 438 439 440 441 442 443 444 445 446 447 448  | Next Page >