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• Easter eggs as IP protection in software

  - by Simon

  I work in embedded software, and for some reason, management wants to hide an Easter egg as means of IP protection. They call it a watermark, and since our software interact with the video preview feed (the image displayed on a screen before you take a photo), they want me to implement a trigger which will react to some unusual video input (a video konami code like dark - bright - dark - bright - whatever). When this trigger fires, something strange happens (which is outside of the normal behavior of the software). The goal is to check whether our software is included in a device. Does it sound like a good idea? I have many argument against this move: What if the konami code is too sensitive and user triggers it? Does this kind of watermark have any legal value? What if this "feature" is discovered by the client? The performance penalty should be very small, since the soft run on small devices. I am the one developping this trigger. If things go wrong, what is my responsibility? What is your opinion about this method? I can't find a link, but I remember seeing an answer on this site suggesting that putting Easter eggs for protection purpose was a good idea. Has anyone tried it with good results?

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• HCM: North America: Year End Knowledge Content References

  - by CaroleB

  As we all know, the next couple of months will be busy ones for the Payroll and IT department in relation to preparing for Year End,as a means of assisting you to find documented knowledge in reference to North American (NA) Year End, the following reference guide has been put together: General Knowledge: Doc ID 404478.1 Americas (US, CA, MX) HCM High Priority Alert Doc ID 1577601.1 North American Year End 2013 / 2014 Year Begin Patch Information and Useful Links. Monitor this note as it will be updated as new information becomes available NA Year End Processing: Document 255466.1 - End of Year Processing Using Oracle HRMS (US)  Document 260344.1 - End Of Year Processing Using Oracle HRMS (Canada) Document 395622.1 - End Of Year Processing Using Oracle HRMS (Mexican) Patching : Document 216109.1 - Oracle Human Resources (HRMS) Payroll North America Annual Patching Schedule Document 1160507.1 - Oracle E-Business Suite - Consolidated HRMS Mandatory Patch List Document 1144633.1 - US Year End Patch Flow Advisor: E-Business Suite (EBS) Human Capital Management (HCM) for US Legislation patching 2013 YE Phase I Readme's US Document 1584795.1 Release 11i   - 2013 US Payroll Year End Phase 1 Readme Document 1584796.1 Release 12.0 - 2013 US Payroll Year End Phase 1 Readme Document 1584797.1 Release 12.1 - 2013 US Payroll Year End Phase 1 Readme CA Document 1585365.1 2013 Canadian Payroll Year End Phase 1 Readme Release 11i Document 1585366.1 2013 Canadian Payroll Year End Phase 1 Readme Release 12.0 Document 1585367.1 2013 Canadian Payroll Year End Phase 1 Readme Release 12.1 Known Issues / How To: Document 1527958.2 - Information Center: Oracle HRMS (US) (All Application Versions) Look specifically at the US- Year End Tab for information on: Year End Pre-Processor 1099R Federal, State, and Local Magnetic Media W-2 Paper Reports W-2 PDF W-2 Register Additional Resources: Webcast: Document 1455851.1 - Advisor Webcasts for Oracle E-Business Suite- Human Capital Management (HCM) Document 1592483.1 - Webcast: EBS North American Payroll Year End Process Flow November 20, 2013 at 3:30 pm ET, 2:30 pm CT, 1:30 pm MT, 12:30 pm PT Communities: Payroll – EBS HCM - EBS Community E-Business Patching Community

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• Need advice for approach for a web-based app that loads excel worksheet but exposes only the charts

  - by John

  I'm looking for suggestions on the Visual Studio approach to take for a web application that is in the conceptual stage. My environment has a lot of tools: Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard 64bit Visual Studio 2010 Professional Edition Sharepoint 2010 Server Enterprise Edition SQL Server 2008 R2 Office 2010 Professional I know I will need this app to retrieve data from a database (or a web service - not sure exactly at this point). The data needs to be placed in an Excel workbook dynamically. The app will need to have a nice user interface (standard web controls - perhaps with some Javascript effects). The Excel ribbon and worksheet grid will need to be hidden. Some web control(s) will cause the Excel chart(s) to be rendered. I am thinking this sounds like Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) so as to leverage .Net and hide Excel. Can you offer suggestions regarding: One ASP.Net Web App Project One Class Library Project for Excel or perhaps which one of the several different Excel 2010 project types (addin, template, document) Would Excel Services for Sharepoint be useful (or required) ? I am feeling a little overwhelmed with so many choices at this early stage of conceptualizing the app. Can you suggest some ideas for this sort of thing? Also, I am a bit more experienced with C# but I've read VB.Net is better for work with the Excel object model. What are general advises with regard to tool choice and overall approach tradeoffs?

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• How to avoid game objects accidentally deleting themselves in C++

  - by Tom Dalling

  Let's say my game has a monster that can kamikaze explode on the player. Let's pick a name for this monster at random: a Creeper. So, the Creeper class has a method that looks something like this: void Creeper::kamikaze() { EventSystem::postEvent(ENTITY_DEATH, this); Explosion* e = new Explosion; e->setLocation(this->location()); this->world->addEntity(e); } The events are not queued, they get dispatched immediately. This causes the Creeper object to get deleted somewhere inside the call to postEvent. Something like this: void World::handleEvent(int type, void* context) { if(type == ENTITY_DEATH){ Entity* ent = dynamic_cast<Entity*>(context); removeEntity(ent); delete ent; } } Because the Creeper object gets deleted while the kamikaze method is still running, it will crash when it tries to access this->location(). One solution is to queue the events into a buffer and dispatch them later. Is that the common solution in C++ games? It feels like a bit of a hack, but that might just be because of my experience with other languages with different memory management practices. In C++, is there a better general solution to this problem where an object accidentally deletes itself from inside one of its methods?

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• Customer Experience in the Year Ahead

  - by Christina McKeon

  With 2012 coming to an end soon, we find ourselves reflecting on the year behind us and the year ahead. Now is a good time for reflection on your customer experience initiatives to see how far you have come and where you need to go. Looking back on your customer experience efforts this year, were you able to accomplish the following? Customer journey mapping Align processes across the entire customer lifecyle (buying and owning) Connect all functional areas to the same customer data Deliver consistent and personal experiences across all customer touchpoints Make it easy and rewarding to be your customer Hire and develop talent that drives better customer experiences Tie key performance indicators (KPIs) to each of your customer experience objectives This is by no means a complete checklist for your customer experience strategy, but it does help you determine if you have moved in the right direction for delivering great customer experiences. If you are just getting started with customer experience planning or were not able to get to everything on your list this year, consider focusing on customer journey mapping in 2013. This exercise really helps your organization put your customer in the center and understand how everything you do affects that customer. At Oracle, we see organizations in various stages of customer experience maturity all learn a lot when they go through journey mapping. Companies just starting out with customer experience get a complete understanding of what it is like to be a customer and how everything they do affects that customer. And, organizations that are further along with customer experience often find journey mapping helps provide perspective when re-visiting their customer experience strategy. Happy holidays and best wishes for delivering great customer journeys in 2013!

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, August 26, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, August 26, 2012Popular ReleasesPhysics Helper XAML: Physics Helper XAML 1.1.0.0: This release supports creation of 2D Physics apps for Windows 8 RTM, Windows Phone 7.1 development, and Silverlight 5. It includes source code and samples in three separate solutions.TouchInjector: TouchInjector 1.0: Version 1.0BlackJumboDog: Ver5.7.1: 2012.08.25 Ver5.7.1 (1)?????·?????LING?????????????? (2)SMTP???（????）????、?????\?????????????????????Peulot Heshbon: Peulot Heshbon version 3.0.0: Available quizzes:Plus for Natural, Real and fragments Minus for Natural, Real and fragments Multiplication for Natural, Real and fragments Divide for Natural, Real and fragments Random for Natural, Real and fragments Compare 2 percentages Compare 2 fragments (Just for easy difficulty) Check if a number can be divided with another number exactly. Available Languages:Hebrew English Russian What's NewAdded new quiz: Compare 2 fragments. It is available only if you are in Eas...Visual Studio Team Foundation Server Branching and Merging Guide: v2 - Visual Studio 2012: Welcome to the Branching and Merging Guide Quality-Bar Details Documentation has been reviewed by Visual Studio ALM Rangers Documentation has been through an independent technical review Documentation has been reviewed by the quality and recording team All critical bugs have been resolved Known Issues / Bugs Spelling, grammar and content revisions are in progress. Hotfix will be published.Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.62: Fix for issue #18525 - escaped characters in CSS identifiers get double-escaped if the character immediately after the backslash is not normally allowed in an identifier. fixed symbol problem with nuget package. 4.62 should have nuget symbols available again.nopCommerce. Open source shopping cart (ASP.NET MVC): nopcommerce 2.65: As some of you may know we were planning to release version 2.70 much later (the end of September). But today we have to release this intermediate version (2.65). It fixes a critical issue caused by a third-party assembly when running nopCommerce on a server with .NET 4.5 installed. No major features have been introduced with this release as our development efforts were focused on further enhancements and fixing bugs. To see the full list of fixes and changes please visit the release notes p...MyRouter (Virtual WiFi Router): MyRouter 1.2.9: . Fix: Some missing changes for fixing the window subclassing crash. · Fix: fixed bug when Run MyRouter at the first Time. · Fix: Log File · Fix: improve performance speed application · fix: solve some Exception.eel Browser: eel 1.1.0.41 beta: Improved UI New features Bug fixesDynamics CRM 2011 Dummy Entity: First Release: This has been tested on CRM 2011 RU8 On-Premise IFD. Known Issue: The Test Dummy CRM page load event may throw an exception loading the first time as the iframe may not have finished loading. I have not been able to get the iframe OnReadyStateChange event to fire. But it is only a sample anyway. The zip file contains: Dummy Entity Visual studio solution. Test Dummy Visual Studio solution. Dummy Entity CRM Solution Test Dummy CRM Solution Installation: Unzip and import the CRM Solutions...Private cloud DMS: Essential server-client full package: Requirements: - SQL server >= 2008 (minimal Express - for Essential recommended) - .NET 4.0 (Server) - .NET 4.0 Client profile (Client) This version allow: - full file system functionality Restrictions: - Maximum 2 parallel users - No share spaces - No hosted business groups - No digital sign functionality - No ActiveDirectory connector - No Performance cache - No workflow - No messagingJavaScript Prototype Extensions: Release 1.1.0.0: Release 1.1.0.0 Add prototype extension for object. Add prototype extension for array.Glyphx: Version 1.2: This release includes the SdlDotNet.dll dependency in the setup, which you will need.TFS Project Test Migrator: TestPlanMigration v1.0.0: Release 1.0.0 This first version do not create the test cases in the target project because the goal was to restore a Test Plan + Test Suite hierarchy after a manual user deletion without restoring all the Project Collection Database. As I discovered, deleting a Test Plan will do the following : - Delete all TestSuiteEntry (the link between a Test Suite node and a Test Case) - Delete all TestSuite (the nodes in the test hierarchy), including root TestSuite - Delete the TestPlan Test c...ERPStore eCommerce FrontOffice: ERPStore.Core V4.0.0.2 MVC4 RTM: ERPStore.Core V4.0.0.2 MVC4 RTM (Code Source)ZXing.Net: ZXing.Net 0.8.0.0: sync with rev. 2393 of the java version improved API, direct support for multiple barcode decoding, wrapper for barcode generating many other improvements and fixes encoder and decoder command line clients demo client for emguCV dev documentation startedScintillaNET: ScintillaNET 2.5.1: This release has been built from the 2.5 branch. Issues closed: Issue # Title 32524 32524 32550 32550 32552 32552 25148 25148 32449 32449 32551 32551 32711 32711 MFCMAPI: August 2012 Release: Build: 15.0.0.1035 Full release notes at SGriffin's blog. If you just want to run the MFCMAPI or MrMAPI, get the executables. If you want to debug them, get the symbol files and the source. The 64 bit builds will only work on a machine with Outlook 2010 64 bit installed. All other machines should use the 32 bit builds, regardless of the operating system. Facebook BadgeDocument.Editor: 2013.2: Whats new for Document.Editor 2013.2: New save as Html document Improved Traslate support Minor Bug Fix's, improvements and speed upsPulse: Pulse Beta 5: Whats new in this release? Well to start with we now have Wallbase.cc Authentication! so you can access favorites or NSFW. This version requires .NET 4.0, you probably already have it, but if you don't it's a free and easy download from Microsoft. Pulse can bet set to start on Windows startup now too. The Wallpaper setter has settings now, so you can change the background color of the desktop and the Picture Position (Tile/Center/Fill/etc...) I've switched to Windows Forms instead of WPF...New Projects508 Compliance Validator: This tool checks aspx and ascx pages against 508 Accessibilty guidelines and also allows you to add your own rules.BF for WP: BF for WP is a visual Brainfuck interpter for Windows Phone.Climate Control: App lets you vote on whether you're too hot or too cold so the dummy next to the air con controls can adjust the thermostat.Custom Captcha Plugin for Kooboo CMS for adding content or sending feedback: Custom Captcha Plugin for Kooboo CMS for adding content or sending feedbackGalleryDownloader: This project takes aim on downloading free photogalleries through the Internet. Highly Maintainable Web Services: The Highly Maintainable Web Services project is a reference architecture application for .NET that demonstrates how to build highly maintainable web services.Its.Validation: A C# DSL for writing rules in a composable, functional style.Kaku by wifi: The projects purpose: Make your phone a part of your house hold by being able to control certail elektric devices with your phone such as, light, electric curtaLogin with Google in ASP.Net MVC3 & Get data from Google User: ASP.Net developer can use this code: asp.net mvc3 web project which contains login with google and pull data from user's google accountMabiCommerce: MabiCommerce is an advanced Commerce Calculator for the MMORPG Mabinogi.Mapture the FLAG: A location based game for wp7mn: sumSharePoint 2010: SharePoint 2010 utilitiesSHIORI.NET: ???SHIORI????????????????????Temp and Stress: Tieni sotto controllo le temperature della tua CPU e effettua Stress Test e Benchmark!VisiblityControl – An Alternative to Converters: A templated content control hosting to remove the pain of using the BooleanToVisibilityConverter. The property IsTrue determines what is shown.Whatsnexx Integration for Orchard CMS: Orchard Whatsnexx makes it easier for Orchard users to send an event to the Whatsnexx Ticket Bus service API, of the Whatsnexx GatewayWINRT \ Metro Store \ open marketing solution: This project is aimed at creating a public shopping cart, that is available to all windows 8 users free. products are screened added by administrators

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• This is something new

  - by shmoolca

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} I have created GUI with lots of my own controls. This control has style as a resource inside control resources. My performance profiler shows that InitializeComponent of this control is 7.5 times longer than control that has defined style in resources of application. It occurs because constructor is loading whole BAML each time constructor is called. Sounds logical for me :)

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• What if you've been asked to develop a site and the client later introduces Ts&Cs that you'll breach whilst doing your job?

  - by Matt Lacey

  Disclaimer : this is all made up. Honest. And it represents no clients or employers living or dead, blah blah blah, etc. [Allegedly] As part of a website I've built, I've now been provided the Terms and Conditions of site usage to display on the site. These terms--which must be agreed to to access the site--include my (or any visitor to the sites) compliance with a number of clauses. Many of these clauses refer to general computer use and are not tied specifically to use of the site. Some of these clauses refer to things I have had to previously do as a legitimate part of my job and would expect to have to do again. When I've raised similar issues previously my line manager has said just to ignore it but that doesn't seem to be the professional thing to do. So, what do I do? Abiding by the terms would mean that I could no longer work on the project and would cause issues with my employer and the owner of the business the site is being created for. Ignoring them could lead to possible future issues with the business owner and is not something I'm necessarily happy with (the deliberate breaking of a legal contract). Neither option is one I'd choose and could have major consequences. Any thoughts?

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• LOD in modern games

  - by Firas Assaad

  I'm currently working on my master's thesis about LOD and mesh simplification, and I've been reading many academic papers and articles about the subject. However, I can't find enough information about how LOD is being used in modern games. I know many games use some sort of dynamic LOD for terrain, but what about elsewhere? Level of Detail for 3D Graphics for example points out that discrete LOD (where artists prepare several models in advance) is widely used because of the performance overhead of continuous LOD. That book was published in 2002 however, and I'm wondering if things are different now. There has been some research in performing dynamic LOD using the geometry shader (this paper for example, with its implementation in ShaderX6), would that be used in a modern game? To summarize, my question is about the state of LOD in modern video games, what algorithms are used and why? In particular, is view dependent continuous simplification used or does the runtime overhead make using discrete models with proper blending and impostors a more attractive solution? If discrete models are used, is an algorithm used (e.g. vertex clustering) to generate them offline, do artists manually create the models, or perhaps a combination of both methods is used?

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• For those of you who are senior developers what do you look for in a new company and development team?

  - by Amy P

  As I move forward in my career new jobs become more difficult to choose between. When I was starting out and for the first 8 years of my career I took the jobs that I could get that would keep me programming on the general technological path that I was on. I am a job hopper, I only stay with a company for between 2 - 3 years. I think that I do this because after 2 years I get bored and unless there are new projects to keep my busy I no longer find work interesting. Now that I am becoming more experienced it is more important for me to only apply for jobs that are interesting and will move my career and my skill set forward. My problem now is that I keep finding jobs where the projects appear to be interesting during the interview but once I get in the company I find the development environment is sub-par and the development team is disjointed. I feel like I am asking the wrong questions during the interview process and don't know what to look for to make sure that the environment I will be working in will be a good one. Now my question: For those of you who are senior developers what do you look for in a new company and development team? I am looking for the key qualities in a company and development team that you look for when interviewing with a company. These qualities are the ones that would give you hints that the company will be a good one to work for.

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• Should you always pass the bare minimum data needed into a function

  - by Anders Holmström

  Let's say I have a function IsAdmin that checks whether a user is an admin. Let's also say that the admin checking is done by matching user id, name and password against some sort of rule (not important). In my head there are then two possible function signatures for this: public bool IsAdmin(User user); public bool IsAdmin(int id, string name, string password); I most often go for the second type of signature, thinking that: The function signature gives the reader a lot more info The logic contained inside the function doesn't have to know about the User class It usually results in slightly less code inside the function However I sometimes question this approach, and also realize that at some point it would become unwieldy. If for example a function would map between ten different object fields into a resulting bool I would obviously send in the entire object. But apart from a stark example like that I can't see a reason to pass in the actual object. I would appreciate any arguments for either style, as well as any general observations you might offer. I program in both object oriented and functional styles, so the question should be seen as regarding any and all idioms.

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• What are some efficient ways to set up my environment when working on a remote site?

  - by Prefix

  Hello fellow Programmers, I am still a relatively new programmer and have recently gotten my first on-campus programming position. I am the sole dev responsible for 8 domains as well as 3 small sized PHP web apps. The campus has its web environment divided into staging and live servers -- we develop on the staging via SFTP and then push the updates to the live server through a web GUI. I use Sublime Text 2 and the Sublime SFTP plugin currently for all my dev work (its my preferred editor). If I am just making an edit to a page I'll open that individual file via the ftp browser. If I am working on the PHP web app projects, I have the app directory mapped to a local folder so that when I save locally the file is auto-uploaded through Sublime SFTP. I feel like this workflow is slow and sub-optimal. How can I improve my workflow for working with remote content? I'd love to set up a local environment on my machine as that would eliminate the constant SFTP upload/download, but as I said there are many sites and the space required for a local copy of the entire domain would be quite large and complex; not to mention keeping it updated with whatever the latest on the staging server is would be a nightmare. Anyone know how I can improve my general web dev workflow from what I've described? I'd really like to cut out constantly editing over FTP but I'm not sure where to start other than ripping the entire directory and dumping it into XAMP.

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• Perl script rendered in browser as code through symlink - fine when accessed directly

  - by John Dittmar

  I have a Rails 4 app that has some views that post to Perl cgi scripts. The perl scripts are accessed via a symbolic link to a folder called "cgi-bin". When I navigate to a perl script through the symbolic link they are rendered as text instead of executed (ie: localhost:3000/cgi-bin/test.cgi), however when I access them directly they execute without issue (ie. localhost/path/to/cgi-bin/test.cgi). I am using apache2 on os x. In the directory localhost/path/to/ I have an .htaccess file that contains the following: # General Apache options AddHandler fastcgi-script .fcgi AddHandler cgi-script .cgi Options +FollowSymLinks +ExecCGI I have the exact same lines in the .htaccess file that I have in localhost:3000/ I have also uncommented the AllowOverride all in httpd.conf. The are no errors in apache's error log. When I access the direct link to test.cgi a new line is appended to apache's access log, when I access the script through the symbolic link (and it is rendered as text), there is no line appended to the access log. Any idea why this error occurs? This setup worked fine in a previous version of rails of OS X, but recently I upgraded to Mavericks and figured I should update the Rails application to v4.0 as well.

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• How do you support your code post employment end?

  - by James

  What is the process for leaving a company (or even a group/division) in terms of code support? Is it best to handle all questions? Do you give the remaining developers access to yourself as a future resource? If so, is there a way to not give full access? I've experienced first hand where answers about the general software arthitecture from the initial developer would be invaluable. I understand that if serious assistance is needed, than it becomes a typical case of employment negotiation as a support contract. However, should serious assistance be required, what steps can you make to ease that process of contacting you? I was thinking of doing something like making a (YOUR_NAME)_codesupport @ (YOUR_FAVORITE_EMAIL_CLIENT).com address. My Situation Specifics: I'm a co-op student, and as such bounce around companies on 4-month stints. This means introducing myself to a lot of new code bases, as well as leaving a fair share of orphaned code behind when I leave a company. I feel bad if I leave junk code around.

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• Hobbyist programmer releasing software with a donate button

  - by espais

  I'd like to start this with a disclaimer that I realize that a full, clear-cut answer should be sought out by a lawyer. I am more so curious about what other users of this community have done Say that I had a small program that I had developed for fun, that I wished to release to the public. I'll drop it out there with one of the various open-source licenses, and probably put it up on SourceForge or Git in case if anybody should ever want to fork/maintain/check out code. Also say that I wanted to accept donations for the project, with absolutely 0 expectation that people will send any money. However, if somebody donated in order to buy me a beer or a pizza for the work that they liked, I would accept gladly. The question, then, is what are the general requirements of accepting donations? Can it go into a personal account with no questions asked as a "gift," or do I need to setup an LLC to avoid any taxation issues? (US citizen here). Again, yes this should be lawyer discussed, but I also know that many projects that I see have the ability to donate, and assume that the community probably has a decent amount of experience in this regard.

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• Bejeweled-like game, managing different gem/powerup behaviors?

  - by Wissam

  I thought I'd ask a question and look forward to some insight from this very compelling community. In a Bejeweled-like (Match 3) game, the standard behavior once a valid swap of two adjacent tiles is made is that the resulting matching tiles are destroyed, any tiles now sitting over empty spaces fall to the position above the next present-tile, and any void created above is filled with new tiles. In richer Match-3 games like Bejeweled, 4 in a row (as opposed to just 3) modifies this behavior such that the tile that was swapped is retained, turned into a "flaming" gem, it falls, and then the empty space above is filled. The next time that "flaming gem" is played it explodes and destroys the 8 perimeter tiles, triggers a different animation sequence (neighbors of those 8 tiles being destroyed look like they've been hit by a shockwave then they fall to their respective positions). Scoring is different, the triggered sounds are different, etc. There are even more elaborate behaviors for Match5, Match-cross-pattern, and many powerups that can be purchased, each which produces a more elaborate sequence of events, sounds, animations, scoring, etc... What is the best approach to developing all these different behaviors that respond to players' "move" and her current "performance" and that deviate from the standard sequence of events, scoring, animation, sounds etc, in such a way that we can always flexibly introduce a new "powerup" ? What we are doing now is hard-coding the events of each one, but the task is long and arduous and seems like the wrong approach especially since the game-designers and testers often offer (later) valuable insight on what works better in-game, which means that the code itself may have to be re-written even for minor changes in behavior (say, destroy only 7 neighboring tiles, instead of all 8 in an explosion). ANY pointers for good practices here would be highly appreciated.

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• LiveMeeting VC PowerShell PASS – Troubleshooting SQL Server with PowerShell

  - by Laerte Junior

  Guys, join me on Wednesday July 18th 12 noon EDT (GMT -4) for a presentation called Troubleshooting SQL Server With PowerShell. It will be in English, so please make allowances for this. I’m sure that you’re aware that my English is not perfect, but it is not so bad. I will do my best, you can be sure. The registration link will be available soon from PowerShell.sqlpass.org, so I hope to see you there. It will be a session without slides. Just code; pure PowerShell code. Trust me, We will see a lot of COOL stuff.Big thanks to Aaron Nelson (@sqlvariant) for the opportunity! Here are some more details about the presentation: “Troubleshooting SQL Server with PowerShell – The Next Level’ It is normal for us to have to face poorly performing queries or even complete failure in our SQL server environments. This can happen for a variety of reasons including poor Database Designs, hardware failure, improperly-configured systems and OS Updates applied without testing. As Database Administrators, we need to take precaution to minimize the impact of these problems when they occur, and so we need the tools and methodology required to identify and solve issues quickly. In this Session we will use PowerShell to explore some common troubleshooting techniques used in our day-to-day work as s DBA. This will include a variety of such activities including Gathering Performance Counters in several servers at the same time using background jobs, identifying Blocked Sessions and Reading & filtering the SQL Error Log even if the Instance is offline The approach will be using some advanced PowerShell techniques that allow us to scale the code for multiple servers and run the data collection in asynchronous mode.

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• Should components have sub-components in a component-based system like Artemis?

  - by Daniel Ingraham

  I am designing a game using Artemis, although this is more of philosophical question about component-based design in general. Let's say I have non-primitive data which applies to a given component (a Component "animal" may have qualities such as "teeth" or "diet"). There are three ways to approach this in data-driven design, as I see it: 1) Generate classes for these qualities using "traditional" OOP. I imagine this has negative implications for performance, as systems then must be made aware of these qualities in order to process them. It also seems counter to the overall philosophy of data-driven design. 2) Include these qualities as sub-components. This seems off, in that we are now confusing the role of components with that of entities. Moreover out of the box Artemis isn't capable of mapping these subcomponents onto their parent components. 3) Add "teeth", "diet", etc. as components to the overall entity alongside "animal". While this feels odd hierarchically, it may simply be a peculiarity of component-based systems. I suspect 3 is the correct way to think about things, but I was curious about other ideas.

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• Using a Vertex Buffer and DrawUserIndexedPrimitives?

  - by MattMcg

  Let's say I have a large but static world and only a single moving object on said world. To increase performance I wish to use a vertex and index buffer for the static part of the world. I set them up and they work fine however if I throw in another draw call to DrawUserIndexedPrimitives (to draw my one single moving object) after the call to DrawIndexedPrimitives, it will error out saying a valid vertex buffer must be set. I can only assume the DrawUserIndexedPrimitive call destroyed/replaced the vertex buffer I set. In order to get around this I must call device.SetVertexBuffer(vertexBuffer) every frame. Something tells me that isn't correct as that kind of defeats the point of a buffer? To shed some light, the large vertex buffer is the final merged mesh of many repeated cubes (think Minecraft) which I manually create to reduce the amount of vertices/indexes needed (for example two connected cubes become one cuboid, the connecting faces are cut out), and also the amount of matrix translations (as it would suck to do one per cube). The moving objects would be other items in the world which are dynamic and not fixed to the block grid, so things like the NPCs who move constantly. How do I go about handling the large static world but also allowing objects to freely move about?

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• A Quarter Century of SPARC

  - by kemer

  You might have missed an interesting milestone: the 25th anniversary of SPARC. Twenty-five years! Almost 40% of my life: humbling, maybe a little scary. When I joined Sun Microsystems in 1988, SPARC was just starting to shake things up. The next year we introduced the SPARCstation 1, which had basically triple the performance of our Motrolla-based Sun–3 systems. Not too long after that, our competition began a campaign of “SPARC is dead.” We really distressed them with our success, in spite of our small size. “It won’t last.” “It can’t last!” So they told themselves. For a stroll down memory lane take a look at this page. I remember the sales meeting we had in Atlanta to internally announce the SPARCstation 1. Sun hadn’t really hit the big times, yet. Our much bigger competitors viewed us as an ill-mannered pest, certain of our demise. And, why wouldn’t they be certain: other startups more our size, such as Apollo (remember them?), Silicon Graphics (they fought the good fight!), and the incredibly cool Symbolics are memories. Wait! There was also a BIG company, DEC, who scoffed at us: they are history, too. In fact, we really upset them with what was supposed to be an internal-only video production that was a take-off on Bruce Lee movies, in which we battled the evil Doctor DEC – complete with computer mice (or is that “mouses”?) wielded like nun chucks with the new SPARCstation 1 somehow in the middle of everything. The memory is vivid, but the details hazy. After all, that was almost a quarter century ago. So, here’s to Oracle’s SPARC: still going strong after all these years. – Kemer

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• What is the best type of c# timer to use with a Unity game that uses many timers simultaneously?

  - by Kyle Seidlitz

  I am developing a stand-alone 3d game in Unity that will have anywhere from 1 to 200 timers running simultaneously. There will be a GameObject containing 1 timer. For this game timer durations will range from 5 minutes to 4 days. There will not be any countdown displays or any UI for the timers. Each object is a prefab, with all the necessary materials included. An attached script will handle the timer and all the necessary code to change the materials and make any sound effects. Once the timer is expired, the user will then click on the object again, and the object will be destroyed, and the user's inventory will be adjusted. If the user wants to save or end the game before all the timers are done, the start value of the still running timers is to be saved to an XML file such that when the game is started again, any still running timers will be checked to see if they have expired, where the object's materials will be changed appropriately. I am still trying to figure out what type of timer to use, and see also if there are any suggestions for saving and calculating times over several days. What class(es) of timers should I use? Are there any special issues I should look out for in terms of performance?

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• Java EE @ Devoxx UK

  - by delabassee

  Devoxx UK is taking place next week (12th and 13th June) in London. As with any Devoxx conference, this UK edition will have a nice mix of content, an impressive list of speakers and obviously Java EE will be well will covered too:  Apache TomEE, Java EE Web Profile and more on Tomcat (David Blevins) Myths, Tales and Voodoo - About Java EE and Testing (Adam Bien) 50 new features of Java EE 7 (Antonio Goncalves & Arun Gupta) Java EE 7 Hands-on Lab (Arun Gupta) In addition, there will be 2 BoF related to Java EE on Thursday evening, the first BoF will be about the Java EE platform and the second one will be about the Java EE Reference Implementation, i.e. GlassFish. I will participate in the Java EE Community BoF where will discuss Java EE general but with all recent activities, I suspect that a large portion of the BoF will spent on discussing the current plans for Java EE 8.  Right after and in the same room, I will join Steve Millidge of C2B2 for the GlassFish is here to stay! BoF. The goal is to discuss on GlassFish, the current status, the plans for the next release, how the community can contributes, etc. It should be mentioned that attending those BoFs is completely free, just make sure to register here.  So if you are in London next week, mind the Geek and see you at Devoxx UK!

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• Modular Database Structures

  - by John D

  I have been examining the code base we use in work and I am worried about the size the packages have grown to. The actual code is modular, procedures have been broken down into small functional (and testable) parts. The issue I see is that we have 100 procedures in a single package - almost an entire domain model. I had thought of breaking these packages down - to create sub domains that are centered around the procedure relationships to other objects. Group a bunch of procedures that have 80% of their relationships to three tables etc. The end result would be a lot more packages, but the packages would be smaller and I feel the entire code base would be more readable - when procedures cross between two domain models it is less of a struggle to figure which package it belongs to. The problem I now have is what the actual benefit of all this would really be. I looked at the general advantages of modularity: 1. Re-usability 2. Asynchronous Development 3. Maintainability Yet when I consider our latest development, the procedures within the packages are already reusable. At this advanced stage we rarely require asynchronous development - and when it is required we simply ladder the stories across iterations. So I guess my question is if people know of reasons why you would break down classes rather than just the methods inside of classes? Right now I do believe there is an issue with these mega packages forming but the only benefit I can really pin down to break them down is readability - something that experience gained from working with them would solve.

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• When to use each user research method

  - by user12277104

  There are a lot of user research methods out there, but sometimes we get stuck in a rut, conducting all formative usability testing before coding, or running surveys to gather satisfaction data. I'll be the first to admit that it happens to me, but to get out of a rut, it just takes a minute to look at where I am in the design & development cycle, what kind(s) of data I need, and what methods are available to me. We need reminders, or refreshers, every once in a while. One tool I've found useful is a graphic organizer that I created many years ago. It's been through several revisions, as I've adapted it to the product cycles of the places I've worked, changed my mind about how to categorize it, and added methods that I've used or created over time. I shared a version of this table at the 2012 International UPA conference, and I was contacted by someone yesterday who wanted to use it in a university course on user-center design. I was flattered at the the thought, but embarrassed, because I was sure it needed updating -- that was a year ago, after all. But I opened it today, and really, there's not much I'd change -- sure, I could add some nuance regarding what types of formative testing, such as modality (remote, unmoderated remote, or in-person) or flavor of testing (RITE, RITE-Krug, comparative, performance), but I think it's pretty much ok as is. Click on the image below, to get the full-size PDF. And whether it's entirely "right" or "wrong" isn't the whole value of looking at these methods across the product lifecycle. The real value lies in the reminder that I have options. And what those options are change as the field changes, so while I don't expect this graphic to have an eternal shelf life, it's still ok a year after I last updated it. That said, if you find something missing or out of place, let me know :) 

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• More than one way to skin an Audit

  - by BuckWoody

  I get asked quite a bit about auditing in SQL Server. By "audit", people mean everything from tracking logins to finding out exactly who ran a particular SELECT statement. In the really early versions of SQL Server, we didn't have a great story for very granular audits, so lots of workarounds were suggested. As time progressed, more and more audit capabilities were added to the product, and in typical database platform fashion, as we added a feature we didn't often take the others away. So now, instead of not having an option to audit actions by users, you might face the opposite problem - too many ways to audit! You can read more about the options you have for tracking users here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc280526(v=SQL.100).aspx  In SQL Server 2008, we introduced SQL Server Audit, which uses Extended Events to really get a simple way to implement high-level or granular auditing. You can read more about that here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd392015.aspx  As with any feature, you should understand what your needs are first. Auditing isn't "free" in the performance sense, so you need to make sure you're only auditing what you need to. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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