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• Why All The Hype Around Live Help?

  - by ruth.donohue

  I am pleased to introduce guest blogger, Damien Acheson today. Based in Cambridge, MA, Damien is the Product Marketing Manager for ATG’s Live Help products. Welcome, Damien!! BY DAMIEN ACHESON Why all the hype around live help? An eCommerce professional recently asked me: “Why all the hype around live chat and click to call?” I already have a customer service phone number that’s available to my online visitors. Why would I want to add live help? If anything, I want my website to reduce the number of calls to my contact center, not increase it!” The effect of adding live help to a website is counter-intuitive. Done right, live help doesn’t increase your call volume; it optimizes it by replacing traditional telephone calls with smarter, more productive, live voice and live chat interactions. This generates instant cost savings, and a measurable lift in sales and customer retention. A live help interaction differs from a traditional telephone call in six radical ways: Targeting. With live help you can target specific visitors at just the exact right time with a live call or live chat invitation based on hundreds of different parameters. For example, visitors who appear to hesitate before making a large purchase may receive a live help invitation, while others may not. Productivity. By reserving live voice to visitors with complex questions, and offering self-service and live chat for more simple interactions, agents with the right domain expertise can handle simultaneous queries and achieve substantial productivity gains. Routing. Live help interactions take into account visitors’ web context to intelligently route queries to the best available agent, thereby lifting first contact resolution. Context. Traditional telephone numbers force online customers to “change channels” and “start over” with a phone agent. With Live help, agents get the context of the web session and can instantly access the customer’s transaction details and account information, substantially reducing handle times. Interaction. Agents can solve a customer’s problem more effectively co-browsing and collaborating with the visitor in real-time to complete online forms and transactions. Analytics. Unlike traditional telephone numbers, live help allows you to tie Web analytics to customer satisfaction and agent performance indicators. To better understand these differences and advantages over traditional customer service, watch this demo on optimizing customer interactions with Live Help. Technorati Tags: ATG,Live Help,Commerce

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• Automated build platform for .NET portfolio - best choice?

  - by jkohlhepp

  I am involved with maintaining a fairly large portfolio of .NET applications. Also in the portfolio are legacy applications built on top of other platforms - native C++, ECLIPS Forms, etc. I have a complex build framework on top of NAnt right now that manages the builds for all of these applications. The build framework uses NAnt to do a number of different things: Pull code out of Subversion, as well as create tags in Subversion Build the code, using MSBuild for .NET or other compilers for other platforms Peek inside AssemblyInfo files to increment version numbers Do deletes of certain files that shouldn't be included in builds / releases Releases code to deployment folders Zips code up for backup purposes Deploy Windows services; start and stop them Etc. Most of those things can be done with just NAnt by itself, but we did build a couple of extension tasks for NAnt to do some things that were specific to our environment. Also, most of those processes above are genericized and reused across a lot of our different application build scripts, so that we don't repeat logic. So it is not simple NAnt code, and not simple build scripts. There are dozens of NAnt files that come together to execute a build. Lately I've been dissatisfied with NAnt for a couple reasons: (1) it's syntax is just awful - programming languages on top of XML are really horrific to maintain, (2) the project seems to have died on the vine; there haven't been a ton of updates lately and it seems like no one is really at the helm. Trying to get it working with .NET 4 has cause some pain points due to this lack of activity. So, with all of that background out of the way, here's my question. Given some of the things that I want to accomplish based on that list above, and given that I am primarily in a .NET shop, but I also need to build non-.NET projects, is there an alternative to NAnt that I should consider switching to? Things on my radar include Powershell (with or without psake), MSBuild by itself, and rake. These all have pros and cons. For example, is MSBuild powerful enough? I remember using it years ago and it didn't seem to have as much power as NAnt. Do I really want to have my team learn Ruby just to do builds using rake? Is psake really mature enough of a project to pin my portfolio to? Is Powershell "too close to the metal" and I'll end up having to write my own build library akin to psake to use it on its own? Are there other tools that I should consider? If you were involved with maintaining a .NET portfolio of significant complexity, what build tool would you be looking at? What does your team currently use?

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• SQL Server 2008 Compression

  - by Peter Larsson

  Hi! Today I am going to talk about compression in SQL Server 2008. The data warehouse I currently design and develop holds historical data back to 1973. The data warehouse will have an other blog post laster due to it's complexity. However, the server has 60GB of memory (of which 48 is dedicated to SQL Server service), so all data didn't fit in memory and the SAN is not the fastest one around. So I decided to give compression a go, since we use Enterprise Edition anyway. This is the code I use to compress all tables with PAGE compression. DECLARE @SQL VARCHAR(MAX)   DECLARE curTables CURSOR FOR             SELECT 'ALTER TABLE ' + QUOTENAME(OBJECT_SCHEMA_NAME(object_id))                     + '.' + QUOTENAME(OBJECT_NAME(object_id))                     + ' REBUILD PARTITION = ALL WITH (DATA_COMPRESSION = PAGE)'             FROM    sys.tables   OPEN    curTables   FETCH   NEXT FROM    curTables INTO    @SQL   WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0     BEGIN         IF @SQL IS NOT NULL             RAISERROR(@SQL, 10, 1) WITH NOWAIT           FETCH   NEXT         FROM    curTables         INTO    @SQL     END   CLOSE       curTables DEALLOCATE  curTables Copy and paste the result to a new code window and execute the statements. One thing I noticed when doing this, is that the database grows with the same size as the table. If the database cannot grow this size, the operation fails. For me, I first ended up with orphaned connection. Not good. And this is the code I use to create the index compression statements DECLARE @SQL VARCHAR(MAX)   DECLARE curIndexes CURSOR FOR             SELECT      'ALTER INDEX ' + QUOTENAME(name)                         + ' ON '                         + QUOTENAME(OBJECT_SCHEMA_NAME(object_id))                         + '.'                         + QUOTENAME(OBJECT_NAME(object_id))                         + ' REBUILD PARTITION = ALL WITH (FILLFACTOR = 100, DATA_COMPRESSION = PAGE)'             FROM        sys.indexes             WHERE       OBJECTPROPERTY(object_id, 'IsMSShipped') = 0                         AND OBJECTPROPERTY(object_id, 'IsTable') = 1             ORDER BY    CASE type_desc                             WHEN 'CLUSTERED' THEN 1                             ELSE 2                         END   OPEN    curIndexes   FETCH   NEXT FROM    curIndexes INTO    @SQL   WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0     BEGIN         IF @SQL IS NOT NULL             RAISERROR(@SQL, 10, 1) WITH NOWAIT           FETCH   NEXT         FROM    curIndexes         INTO    @SQL     END   CLOSE       curIndexes DEALLOCATE  curIndexes When this was done, I noticed that the 90GB database now only was 17GB. And most important, complete database now could reside in memory! After this I took care of the administrative tasks, backups. Here I copied the code from Management Studio because I didn't want to give too much time for this. The code looks like (notice the compression option). BACKUP DATABASE [Yoda] TO              DISK = N'D:\Fileshare\Backup\Yoda.bak' WITH            NOFORMAT,                 INIT,                 NAME = N'Yoda - Full Database Backup',                 SKIP,                 NOREWIND,                 NOUNLOAD,                 COMPRESSION,                 STATS = 10,                 CHECKSUM GO   DECLARE @BackupSetID INT   SELECT  @BackupSetID = Position FROM    msdb..backupset WHERE   database_name = N'Yoda'         AND backup_set_id =(SELECT MAX(backup_set_id) FROM msdb..backupset WHERE database_name = N'Yoda')   IF @BackupSetID IS NULL     RAISERROR(N'Verify failed. Backup information for database ''Yoda'' not found.', 16, 1)   RESTORE VERIFYONLY FROM    DISK = N'D:\Fileshare\Backup\Yoda.bak' WITH    FILE = @BackupSetID,         NOUNLOAD,         NOREWIND GO After running the backup, the file size was even more reduced due to the zip-like compression algorithm used in SQL Server 2008. The file size? Only 9 GB. //Peso

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• What do you do when a client requires Rich Text Editing on their website?

  - by George Stocker

  As we all know by now, XSS attacks are dangerous and really easy to pull off. Various frameworks make it easy to encode HTML, like ASP.NET MVC does: <%= Html.Encode("string"); %> But what happens when your client requires that they be able to upload their content directly from a Microsoft Word document? Here's the scenario: People can copy and paste content from Microsoft word into a WYSIWYG editor (in this case tinyMCE), and then that information is posted to a web page. The website is public, but only members of that organization will have access to post information to a webpage. What is the best way to handle this requirement? Currently there is no checking done on what the client posts (since only 'trusted' users can post), but I'm not particularly happy with that and would like to lock it down further in case an account is hacked. The platform in question is ASP.NET MVC. The only conceptual method that I'm aware of that meets these requirements is to whitelist HTML tags and let those pass through. Is there another way? If not, is the best way to let them store it in the Database in any form, but only display it properly encoded and stripped of bad tags? NB: The questions differ in that he only assumes there's one way. I'm also asking the following questions: 1. Is there a better way that doesn't rely on HTML Whitelists? 2. Is there a better way that relies on a different view engine? 3. Is there a WYSIWYG editor that includes the ability to whitelist on the fly? 4. Should I even worry about this since it will only be for 'private posting' (Much in the same way that a private blog allows HTML From the author, but since only he can post, it's not an issue)? Edit #2: If suggesting a WYSIWYG editor, it must be free (as in speech, or as in beer). Update: All of the suggestions thus far revolve around a specific Rich Text Editor to use: Only provide an editor as a suggestion if it allows for sanitization of HTML tags; and it fulfills the requirement of accepting pasted documents from a WYSIWYG Editor like Microsoft Word. There are three methods that I know of: 1. Not allow HTML. 2. Allow HTML, but sanitize it 3. Find a Rich Text Editor that sanitizes and allows HTML. The previous questions remain (1-4 above). Related Question Preventing Cross Site Scripting (XSS)

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• How to Name Linked Servers

  - by Bill Graziano

  I did another SQL Server migration over the weekend that dealt with linked servers.  I’ve seen all kinds of odd naming schemes and there are a few I like and a few I suggest you avoid. Don’t name your linked server for its IP address.  At some point whatever is on the other end of that IP address will move.  You’ll probably need to point your linked server to a new IP address but not change the name of the linked server.  And then you’ve completely lost any context around this.  Bonus points if a new SQL Server eventually ends up at the old IP address further adding confusion when you’re trying to troubleshoot. Don’t name your linked server based on its instance name.  This one is less obvious.  It sounds nice to have a linked server named [VSRV1\SQLTRAN01].  You know what it is and it’s easy to use.  It’s less nice when you’ve got 200 stored procedures that all reference this linked server but the database they reference has moved to a new instance.  Now when you query this you’re actually querying a different instance. (Please note: I’m not saying it’s a good idea to have 200 stored procedures that all reference a linked server.  I’m just saying it’s not all that uncommon.) Consider naming your linked server something that you can easily search on.  See my note above.  You can also get around this by always enclosing the name in brackets.  That is harder to enforce unless you use some odd characters in it. Consider naming your linked server based on the function.  For example, I’ve had some luck having a linked server named [DW] that points to our data warehouse server.  That server can change names or physically move and all I need to do is update the linked server to point to the new destination.  The descriptive name of the linked server is still accurate.  No code needs to change and people still know what it is just by looking at it. Consider naming your linked server for the database.  I’m still thinking through this one.  It may mean you have multiple linked servers that point to the same instance.  I’ve found that database names rarely change.  It also makes it easier to move individual databases to new servers. Consider pointing your linked servers to DNS entries and not IP addresses.  I’ve done this for reporting databases and had some success.  Especially for read-only snapshots that can get created on the main database or on the mirror.  What issues have you had with linked server names?  What has worked for you?  Where are the holes in my approach?

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• Should I choose Doctrine 2 or Propel 1.5/1.6, and why?

  - by Billy ONeal

  I'd like to hear from those who have used Doctrine 2 (or later) and Propel 1.5 (or later). Most comparisons between these two object relational mappers are based on old versions -- Doctrine 1 versus Propel 1.3/1.4, and both ORMs went through significant redesigns in their recent revisions. For example, most of the criticism of Propel seems to center around the "ModelName Peer" classes, which are deprecated in 1.5 in any case. Here's what I've accumulated so far (And I've tried to make this list as balanced as possible...): Propel Pros Extremely IDE friendly, because actual code is generated, instead of relying on PHP magic methods. This means IDE features like code completion are actually helpful. Fast (In terms of database usage -- no runtime introspection is done on the database) Clean migration between schema versions (at least in the 1.6 beta) Can generate PHP 5.3 models (i.e. namespaces) Easy to chain a lot of things into a single database query with things like useXxx methods. (See the "code completion" video above) Cons Requires an extra build step, namely building the model classes. Generated code needs rebuilt whenever Propel version is changed, a setting is changed, or the schema changes. This might be unintuitive to some and custom methods applied to the model are lost. (I think?) Some useful features (i.e. version behavior, schema migrations) are in beta status. Doctrine Pros More popular Doctrine Query Language can express potentially more complicated relationships between data than easily possible with Propel's ActiveRecord strategy. Easier to add reusable behaviors when compared with Propel. DocBlock based commenting for building the schema is embedded in the actual PHP instead of a separate XML file. Uses PHP 5.3 Namespaces everywhere Cons Requires learning an entirely new programming language (Doctrine Query Language) Implemented in terms of "magic methods" in several places, making IDE autocomplete worthless. Requires database introspection and thus is slightly slower than Propel by default; caching can remove this but the caching adds considerable complexity. Fewer behaviors are included in the core codebase. Several features Propel provides out of the box (such as Nested Set) are available only through extensions. Freakin' HUGE :) This I have gleaned though only through reading the documentation available for both tools -- I've not actually built anything yet. I'd like to hear from those who have used both tools though, to share their experience on pros/cons of each library, and what their recommendation is at this point :)

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• Workaround: XNA 4 importing only part of 3d model from FBX

  - by Vitus

  Recently I found a problem with importing 3D models from FBX files: it sometimes imported partly. That is when you draw a 3D model, loaded from FBX file, processed by content pipeline, you got only part of meshes. “Sometimes” means that you got this error only for some files. Results of my research below. For example, I have 10Mb binary FBX file with a model, looks like: And when I load it, result Model instance contains only part of meshes and looks like: Because models from other files imported normally, I think that it’s a “bad format” file. When you add FBX file to your XNA Content project and build it, imported file processing by XNA Fbx Importer & Processor. On MSDN I found that FbxImporter designed to work with 2006.11 version of FBX format. My file is FBX 2012 format. Ok, I need to convert it to 2006 format. It can be done by using Autodesk FBX Converter 2012.1. I tried to convert it to other versions of FBX formats, but without success. And I also tried to import my FBX file to 3D MAX, and it imported correctly. Then I export model using 3D MAX, and it generate me other FBX, which I add to my XNA project. After that I got full model, that rendered well! So, internal data structure of FBX file is more important for right XNA import, than it version! Unfortunately, Autodesk FBX is not an open file format. If you want to work with FBX, you should use Autodesk FBX SDK. This way you can manually read content of FBX file, and use it everyway. Then I tried to convert my source FBX file to DAE Collada, and result DAE file back to FBX, using FBX Converter (FBX –> DAE –> FBX). The result FBX file can be imported normally.   Conclusion: XNA FbxImporter correct work doesn't depend on version (2006, 2011, etc) and form (binary, ascii) of FBX file. Internal FBX data structure much more important. To make FBX "readable" for XNA Importer you can use double conversion like FBX -> Collada -> FBX You also can use FBX SDK to manually load data from FBX P.S. Autodesk FBX Converter 2012 is more, than simple converter. It provide you tools like: FBX Explorer, which show you structure of FBX file; FBX Viewer, which render content of FBX and provide basic intercation like model move and zoom; FBX Take Manager, which allow to work with embedded animations

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• How to Disable the New Geolocation Feature in Google Chrome

  - by Asian Angel

  The latest release of Google Chrome has geolocation enabled by default, and if you are worried about privacy or just don’t want websites to prompt you for your location, we’ve got the quick details on how to turn it off. Readers should note that the new Geolocation feature doesn’t give out your details by default, so don’t panic. It’s also only active, at the time of this writing, in the Dev channel builds of Chrome—so if you are using the regular stable build this feature won’t arrive for a while anyway. Note: If you’re a Firefox user, be sure to check out our guide to disabling geolocation in Firefox 3.x. What’s this Geolocation Feature About? Geolocation is a way for your browser to tell a website about your physical location, so you can get results tailored to where you actually are—for example, if you visited Google Maps it can ask you for your location to give you an accurate picture of where you are. To use this feature in Google Maps, you would click on the small white icon to activate the feature. As soon as you have clicked on the small white icon, a thin green toolbar will appear at the top of the webpage, asking to Allow or Deny.   How to Turn Chrome’s Geolocation Off If you want to turn geolocation off you will need to open the “Chrome Options Window”, navigate to the third tab, and click on the “Content settings… ” button. When the “Content Settings Window” opens go to the “Location Tab” and select “Do not allow any site to track my physical location”. Once that is done close out the “Content Settings & Chrome Options Windows”. When you go back to Google Maps and try using the small white icon again this is the message that you will see at the top of the page. Now that is much better! If you are unhappy with geolocation being enabled by default in the latest Dev Channel release then this will help get the problem sorted out nicely. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Stupid Geek Tricks: Compare Your Browser’s Memory Usage with Google ChromeHow To Disable Individual Plug-ins in Google ChromeStop YouTube Videos from Automatically Playing in ChromeDisable YouTube Comments while using ChromeHow to Make Google Chrome Your Default Browser TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Microsoft’s “How Do I ?” Videos Home Networks – How do they look like & the problems they cause Check Your IMAP Mail Offline In Thunderbird Follow Finder Finds You Twitter Users To Follow Combine MP3 Files Easily QuicklyCode Provides Cheatsheets & Other Programming Stuff

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• Bash arrays and case statements - review my script

  - by Felipe Alvarez

  #!/bin/bash # Change the environment in which you are currently working. # Actually, it calls the relevant 'lettus.sh' script if [ "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}" == "$0" ]; then echo "Try running this as \". chenv $1\"" exit 0 fi usage(){ echo "Usage: . ${PROG} -- Shows a list of user-selectable environments." echo " . ${PROG} [env] -- Select environment." echo " . ${PROG} -h -- Shows this usage screen." return } showEnv(){ # check if index0 exists, assume we have at least the first (zeroth) element #if [ -z "${envList}" ]; then if [ -z "${envList[0]}" ]; then echo "array \$envList is empty! " >&2 return 1 fi # Show all elements in array (0 -> n-1) for i in $(seq 0 $((${#envList[@]} - 1))); do echo ${envList[$i]} done return } setEnv(){ if [ -z "$1" ]; then usage; return fi case $1 in cold) FILE_TO_SOURCE=/u2/tip/conf/ctrl/lettus_cold.sh;; coles) FILE_TO_SOURCE=/u2/tip/conf/ctrl/lettus_coles.sh;; fc) FILE_TO_SOURCE=/u2/tip/conf/ctrl/lettus_fc.sh;; fcrm) FILE_TO_SOURCE=/u2/tip/conf/ctrl/lettus_fcrm.sh;; stable) FILE_TO_SOURCE=/u2/tip/conf/ctrl/lettus_stable.sh;; tip) FILE_TO_SOURCE=/u2/tip/conf/ctrl/lettus_tip.sh;; uat) FILE_TO_SOURCE=/u2/tip/conf/ctrl/lettus_uat.sh;; wellmdc) FILE_TO_SOURCE=/u2/tip/conf/ctrl/lettus_wellmdc.sh;; *) usage; return;; esac if $IS_SOURCED; then echo "Environment \"$1\" selected." echo "Now sourcing file \"$FILE_TO_SOURCE\"..." . ${FILE_TO_SOURCE} return else return 1 fi } main(){ if [ -z "$1" ]; then showEnv; return fi case $1 in -h) usage;; *) setEnv $1;; esac return } PROG="chenv" # create array of user-selectable environments envList=( cold coles fc fcrm stable tip uat wellmdc ) main "$@" return If I could, I'd like to get some feedback on a better way to accomplish any of the following: run through the case statement make script trivally simple to maintain/upgrade/update

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• java+netbeans+mysql+ubuntu 64 bits LTS VS C#+MS SQL for fast develop trading system

  - by crunchor

  I am going to build a trading system and use with the broker "Interactive Broker" API. The API supports C++ Socket, Java Socket, DDE, Active X APIs in Windows. The API supports Java Socket API, Posix C++ Socket API in Unix kind like Ubuntu. My trading system has some real time long calculations to do and a lot of maths for backtest. I am using a retail trading program Amibroker which is written in C++ and I run it in windows xp 32 bits, it will take me days to do one serious backtest with my G620 Sandy Bridge CPU and 3GB of ram. So for my trading system, I need to have 1. speed, 2. stability, 3. fast development I have done some research, C++ is fastest but I am not good at it and it takes much longer time to develop. Other than C++, Java in linux has the best speed. I also did some research for database and look like mysql has the best speed. Mysql and PostgreSQL both are very popular open source sql db, which one should I choose? I see MySQL has Workbench now which looks like similar to MS SQL management studio so look like a good start. Netbeans should be the most popular Java IDE now and seem like its GUI design can be as easy as Virtual Studio now. I am not sure if made by Netbeans would affect the speed and if its GUI design is really that good and easy to use. Ubuntu 64 bits LTS has good long term support, good community support, and stable. I will buy a new computer if I can create a good trading system for live trading and backtest. Very likely I will buy a I7 or I5 depends on if I7 can really have better speed for my case. Actually I mainly deal with C# in my jobs and I just knew java but not good at java. What would you guys recommend? Any better solution? This will be a big project and very likely life long project for me so I seriously do research including asking you guys before I start and focus on what I should, thanks!

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• Dart and NetBeans IDE 7.4

  - by Geertjan

  Here's the start of Dart in NetBeans IDE. Basic Dart editing support is done and on saving a Dart file the related JavaScript files are automatically generated. In the context of an HTML5 application in NetBeans IDE, that gives you deep integration with the embedded browser and, even better, Chrome, as well as Chrome Developer Tools. Below, notice that the "Sunflower Spectacular" H1 element is selected (click the image to enlarge it to get a better view), which is therefore highlighted in the live DOM view in the bottom left, as well as in the CSS Styles window in the top right, from where the CSS styles can be edited and from where the related files can be opened in the IDE. Identical features are available for Chrome, as well as on Android and iOS. And if you like that, watch this YouTube movie showing how Chrome Developer Tools integration can fit directly into the workflow below. Anyone want to help get this plugin further? What's needed: Much deeper Dart editing support, i.e., right now only very basic syntax coloring is provided, i.e., an ANTLR lexer is integrated into the NetBeans syntax coloring infrastructure. Parsing, error checking, code completion, and some small code templates are needed. A new panel is needed in the Project Properties dialog on NetBeans HTML5 projects for enabling Dart (i.e., similar to enabling Cordova), at which point the "dart.js" file and other Dart artifacts should be added to the project, so that a Dart project is immediately generated and the application should be immediately deployable. Whenever changes are made to a Dart file, Dart should run in the background to create the Dart artifacts in some hidden way, so that the user doesn't see all the Dart artifacts as is currently the case. Some way of recognizing Dart projects (there's a YAML file as an identifier) and creating NetBeans HTML5 projects from that, i.e., from Dart projects outside the IDE. I think that's all... The official Dart Editor is based on Eclipse and requires a massive download of heaps of Eclipse bundles. Compare that to the NetBeans equivalent, which is a very small "HTML5 and PHP" bundle (60 MB), available here, together with the above small Dart plugin. Plus, when you look at how NetBeans IDE integrates with a bunch of Google-oriented projects, i.e., Chrome, Chrome Developer Tools, and Android (via Cordova), that's a pretty interesting toolbox for anyone using Dart. And bear in mind that ANTLRWorks, Microchip, and heaps of other organizations have built and are building their tools on top of NetBeans!

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• Cross-platform independent development

  - by Joe Wreschnig

  Some years ago, if you wrote in C and some subset of C++ and used a sufficient number of platform abstractions (via SDL or whatever), you could run on every platform an indie could get on - Linux, Windows, Mac OS of various versions, obscure stuff like BeOS, and the open consoles like the GP2X and post-death Dreamcast. If you got a contract for a closed platform at some point, you could port your game to that platform with "minimal" code changes as well. Today, indie developers must use XNA to get on the Xbox 360 (and upcoming Windows phone); must not use XNA to work anywhere else but Windows; until recently had to use Java on Android; Flash doesn't run on phones, HTML5 doesn't work on IE. Unlike e.g. DirectX vs. OpenGL or Windows vs. Unix, these are changes to the core language you write your code in and can't be papered over without, basically, writing a compiler. You can move some game logic into scripts and include an interpreter - except when you can't, because the iPhone SDK doesn't allow it, and performance suffers because no one allows JIT. So what can you do if you want a really cross-platform portable game, or even just a significant body of engine and logic code? Is this not a problem because the platforms have fundamentally diverged - it's just plain not worthwhile to try to target both an iPhone and the Xbox 360 with any shared code because such a game would be bad? (I find this very unlikely. I can easily see wanting to share a game between a Windows Mobile phone and an Android, or an Xbox 360 and an iPad.) Are interfaces so high-level now that porting time is negligible? (I might believe this for business applications, but not for games with strict performance requirements.) Is this going to become more pronounced in the future? Is the split going to be, somewhat scarily, still down vendor lines? Will we all rely on high-level middleware like Flash or Unity to get anything cross-platform done? tl;dr - Is porting a problem, is it going to be a bigger problem in the future, and if so how do we solve it?

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• How one decision can turn web services to hell

  - by DigiMortal

  In this posting I will show you how one stupid decision may turn developers life to hell. There is a project where bunch of complex applications exchange data frequently and it is very hard to change something without additional expenses. Well, one analyst thought that string is silver bullet of web services. Read what happened. Bad bad mistake In the early stages of integration project there was analyst who also established architecture and technical design for web services. There was one very bad mistake this analyst made: All data must be converted to strings before exchange! Yes, that’s correct, this was the requirement. All integers, decimals and dates are coming in and going out as strings. There was also explanation for this requirement: This way we can avoid data type conversion errors! Well, this guy works somewhere else already and I hope he works in some burger restaurant – far away from computers. Consequences If you first look at this requirement it may seem like little annoying piece of crap you can easily survive. But let’s see the real consequences one stupid decision can cause: hell load of data conversions are done by receiving applications and SSIS packages, SSIS packages are not error prone and they depend heavily on strings they get from different services, there are more than one format per type that is used in different services, for larger amounts of data all these conversion tasks slow down the work of integration packages, practically all developers have been in hurry with some SSIS import tasks and some fields that are not used in different calculations in SSAS cube are imported without data conversions (by example, some prices are strings in format “1.021 $”). The most painful problem for developers is the part of data conversions because they don’t expect that there is such a stupid requirement stated and therefore they are not able to estimate the time their tasks take on these web services. Also developers must be prepared for cases when suddenly some service sends data that is not in acceptable format and they must solve the problems ASAP. This puts unexpected load on developers and they are not very happy with it because they can’t understand why they have to live with this horror if it is possible to fix. What to do if you see something like this? Well, explain the problem to customer and demand special tasks to project schedule to get this mess solved before going on with new developments. It is cheaper to solve the problems now that later.

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• Stop Office 2010 Upload Center Icon from Displaying in the Taskbar

  - by Mysticgeek

  One of the new features in Office 2010 is the ability to upload your files to Office Web Apps. When you do, an Upload Center icon appears in the Taskbar and helps manage documents. Here’s how to stop it from showing up. If you’re running Office 2010 and upload files to the web, you’ll notice the Microsoft Office Upload Center Icon appears on the Taskbar in the Notification Area. It will stay there even after you’re done uploading the document and closed out of all Office apps. You can use this to monitor and control the documents you’re uploading to the web. Getting rid of it is fairly simple. Right-click the icon and select Settings. When the Microsoft Office Upload Center Settings window appears, under Display Options, uncheck Display icon in notification area and click OK. That is all there is to it…now it will no longer appear in the Taskbar.   After you upload your first document, it will also want to startup with Windows. You can go into msconfig and disable it from automatically starting up. If you need to access it again, it’s part of  Office 2010 Tools which you can access from the Start Menu. Or you can type upload center into the Search box in the Start Menu and hit Enter. If you upload a lot of work to Microsoft Web Apps you might find this tool useful, but if you only occasionally upload docs, you might be annoyed by it always being in the Taskbar. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Manage Sending 2010 Documents to the Web with Office Upload CenterHow To Manage Action Center in Windows 7What is Mobsync.exe and Why Is It Running?Taskbar Eliminator Does What the Name Implies: Hides Your Windows TaskbarDisable Office 2010 Beta Send-a-Smile from Startup TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips HippoRemote Pro 2.2 Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Convert BMP, TIFF, PCX to Vector files with RasterVect Free Identify Fonts using WhatFontis.com Windows 7’s WordPad is Actually Good Greate Image Viewing and Management with Zoner Photo Studio Free Windows Media Player Plus! – Cool WMP Enhancer Get Your Team’s World Cup Schedule In Google Calendar

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• &ldquo;Our Users are Doing Something Surprising&rdquo;&hellip; but what?

  - by antonio romero

  I’ve just started a discussion on the OWB Linkedin Group based on a blog post from Laura Klein’s “Users Know” blog, entitled “Your Users are Doing Something Surprising”… As a PM I found the post thought-provoking and a good reminder to learn from our customers: ...You may have written user stories and work flows... But you know who didn’t read your user stories? That’s right: your users. The result? Somewhere out there, a whole lot of your users are doing something totally unexpected with your product.... Your customers want to do something with your product so badly that they’re going out of their way to come up with clever ways to do it on their own. There are three excellent reasons for you to know what your customers are actually doing with your product: So you know if you are missing an opportunity to pivot your product or marketing So you know if you are missing an important feature So you don’t accidentally destroy a commonly used workaround or "unplanned feature" Truer words were rarely blogged. In fact just in the last few weeks I have had several "users" (some customers, and some internal to Oracle, in fact) turn up having built unexpected but powerful things around OWB, because it has such extensibility mechanisms built into it: OMB*Plus, the old Java APIs back before 10.2, and now the code template/knowledge module framework OWB shares with ODI. Some of our external users show astounding knowledge of how to make OWB really sing. (We hope to feature case studies from several of them over the course of the year on the OWB blog.) My question to all of you: can you identify things you have done or are doing with OWB or that you depend on in it that you think would come as a surprise to us? This could be either some development so advanced as to leave us all gob-smacked, or just some common (to you) thing that you use it for that you find enormously valuable but that you think is a bit off the theoretical "main line" use case of loading data warehouses. I invite the readers of this blog to come visit the OWB and ODI LinkedIn group and share their unusual applications of OWB or the very ordinary-looking features that you don’t want us to forget or would like us to extend. Your anecdotes will impress the crowd and will also help shape future data integration products from Oracle... Come on, surprise us. :)

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• Entity Framework 4.0: Optimal and horrible SQL

  - by DigiMortal

  Lately I had Entity Framework 4.0 session where I introduced new features of Entity Framework. During session I found out with audience how Entity Framework 4.0 can generate optimized SQL. After session I also showed guys one horrible example about how awful SQL can be generated by Entity Framework. In this posting I will cover both examples. Optimal SQL Before going to code take a look at following model. There is class called Event and I will use this class in my query. Here is the LINQ To Entities query that uses small anonymous type. var query = from e in _context.Events             select new { Id = e.Id, Title = e.Title }; Debug.WriteLine(((ObjectQuery)query).ToTraceString()); Running this code gives us the following SQL. SELECT      [Extent1].[event_id] AS [event_id],      [Extent1].[title] AS [title]  FROM [dbo].[events] AS [Extent1] This is really small – no additional fields in SELECT clause. Nice, isn’t it? Horrible SQL Ayende Rahien blog shows us darker side of Entiry Framework 4.0 queries. You can find comparison betwenn NHibernate, LINQ To SQL and LINQ To Entities from posting What happens behind the scenes: NHibernate, Linq to SQL, Entity Framework scenario analysis. In this posting I will show you the resulting query and let you think how much better it can be done. Well, it is not something we want to see running in our servers. I hope that EF team improves generated SQL to acceptable level before Visual Studio 2010 is released. There is also morale of this example: you should always check out the queries that O/R-mapper generates. Behind the curtains it may silently generate queries that perform badly and in this case you need to optimize you data querying strategy. Conclusion Entity Framework 4.0 is new product with a lot of new features and it is clear that not everything is 100% super in its first release. But it still great step forward and I hope that on 12.04.2010 we have new promising O/R-mapper available to use in our projects. If you want to read more about Entity Framework 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010 then please feel free to follow this link to list of my Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 postings.

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• Best pathfinding for a 2D world made by CPU Perlin Noise, with random start- and destinationpoints?

  - by Mathias Lykkegaard Lorenzen

  I have a world made by Perlin Noise. It's created on the CPU for consistency between several devices (yes, I know it takes time - I have my techniques that make it fast enough). Now, in my game you play as a fighter-ship-thingy-blob or whatever it's going to be. What matters is that this "thing" that you play as, is placed in the middle of the screen, and moves along with the camera. The white stuff in my world are walls. The black stuff is freely movable. Now, as the player moves around he will constantly see "monsters" spawning around him in a circle (a circle that's larger than the screen though). These monsters move inwards and try to collide with the player. This is the part that's tricky. I want these monsters to constantly spawn, moving towards the player, but avoid walls entirely. I've added a screenshot below that kind of makes it easier to understand (excuse me for my bad drawing - I was using Paint for this). In the image above, the following rules apply. The red dot in the middle is the player itself. The light-green rectangle is the boundaries of the screen (in other words, what the player sees). These boundaries move with the player. The blue circle is the spawning circle. At the circumference of this circle, monsters will spawn constantly. This spawncircle moves with the player and the boundaries of the screen. Each monster spawned (shown as yellow triangles) wants to collide with the player. The pink lines shows the path that I want the monsters to move along (or something similar). What matters is that they reach the player without colliding with the walls. The map itself (the one that is Perlin Noise generated on the CPU) is saved in memory as two-dimensional bit-arrays. A 1 means a wall, and a 0 means an open walkable space. The current tile size is pretty small. I could easily make it a lot larger for increased performance. I've done some path algorithms before such as A*. I don't think that's entirely optimal here though.

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• Adding nodes to MAAS server

  - by Yasith Tharindu

  I was able to install MAAS server using ubuntu 12.04. Then boot up nodes from he PXE. Then installed maas-precise-x86-64-commissioning through pxe. Now the installation is done. but im unable to commission with the MAAS server. It does not show it as a node and neither im unable to add it manually and end up with following error. Also what is the default username password for maas-precise-x86-64-commissioning. Im unable to login. This error when adding node manually. ERROR 2012-11-20 08:32:54,500 maas.maasserver ################################ Exception: timed out ################################ ERROR 2012-11-20 08:32:54,501 maas.maasserver Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/core/handlers/base.py", line 111, in get_response response = callback(request, *callback_args, **callback_kwargs) File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/views/decorators/vary.py", line 22, in inner_func response = func(*args, **kwargs) File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/piston/resource.py", line 166, in call result = self.error_handler(e, request, meth, em_format) File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/piston/resource.py", line 164, in call result = meth(request, *args, **kwargs) File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/maasserver/api.py", line 251, in dispatcher self, request, request.method, *args, **kwargs) File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/maasserver/api.py", line 193, in perform_api_operation return method(handler, request, *args, **kwargs) File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/maasserver/api.py", line 493, in new node = create_node(request) File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/maasserver/api.py", line 418, in create_node return form.save() File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/maasserver/forms.py", line 234, in save node = super(NodeWithMACAddressesForm, self).save() File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/forms/models.py", line 363, in save fail_message, commit, construct=False) File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/forms/models.py", line 85, in save_instance instance.save() File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/maasserver/models.py", line 114, in save return super(CommonInfo, self).save(*args, **kwargs) File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/db/models/base.py", line 460, in save self.save_base(using=using, force_insert=force_insert, force_update=force_update) File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/db/models/base.py", line 570, in save_base created=(not record_exists), raw=raw, using=using) File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/dispatch/dispatcher.py", line 172, in send response = receiver(signal=self, sender=sender, **named) File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/maasserver/provisioning.py", line 485, in provision_post_save_Node profile, power_type, preseed_data) File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/maasserver/provisioning.py", line 245, in call result = self.method(*args) 259,1 93% result = self.method(*args) File "/usr/lib/python2.7/xmlrpclib.py", line 1224, in call return self._send(self._name, args) File "/usr/lib/python2.7/xmlrpclib.py", line 1578, in _request verbose=self._verbose File "/usr/lib/python2.7/xmlrpclib.py", line 1264, in request return self.single_request(host, handler, request_body, verbose) File "/usr/lib/python2.7/xmlrpclib.py", line 1294, in single_request response = h.getresponse(buffering=True) File "/usr/lib/python2.7/httplib.py", line 1030, in getresponse response.begin() File "/usr/lib/python2.7/httplib.py", line 407, in begin version, status, reason = self._read_status() File "/usr/lib/python2.7/httplib.py", line 365, in _read_status line = self.fp.readline() File "/usr/lib/python2.7/socket.py", line 447, in readline data = self._sock.recv(self._rbufsize) timeout: timed out

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• Monitoring Your Servers

  - by Grant Fritchey

  If you are the DBA in a large scale enterprise, you’re probably already monitoring your servers for up-time and performance. But if you work for a medium-sized business, a small shop, or even a one-man operation, chances are pretty good that you’re not doing that sort of monitoring. You know that you’re supposed to be doing it, but other things, more important at-the-moment things, keep getting in the way. After all, which is more important, some monitoring or backup testing?  Backup testing, of course. Monitoring is frequently one of those things that you do when can get around to it.  Well, as you can see at the right, I have your round tuit ready to go. What if I told you that you could get monitoring on your servers for up-time, job completion, performance, all the standard stuff? And what if I told you that you wouldn’t need to install and configure another server in your environment to get it done? And what if I told you that you’d be able to set up and customize your alerts so you could know if your server was offline or a drive was full? Almost nothing for you to do, and you’ll have a full-blown monitoring process. Sounds to good to be true doesn’t it? Well, it’s coming. We’re creating an online, remote, monitoring system here at Red Gate. You’ll be able to use our SQL Monitor tool (which you can see here, monitoring SQL Server Central in real time) to keep track of your systems, but without having to set up a server and a database for storing the information collected. Instead, we’re taking advantage of services available through the internet to enable collection and storage of this information remotely, off your systems. All you have to do is install a piece of software that will communicate between our service and your servers and you’ll be off and running. It’s that easy. Before you get too excited, let me break the news that this is the near future I’m talking about. We’re setting up the program and there’s a sign-up you can use to get in on the initial tests.

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• Say goodbye to System.Reflection.Emit (any dynamic proxy generation) in WinRT

  - by mbrit

  tl;dr - Forget any form of dynamic code emitting in Metro-style. It's not going to happen.Over the past week or so I've been trying to get Moq (the popular open source TDD mocking framework) to work on WinRT. Irritatingly, the day before Release Preview was released it was actually working on Consumer Preview. However in Release Preview (RP) the System.Reflection.Emit namespace is gone. Forget any form of dynamic code generation and/or MSIL injection.This kills off any project based on the popular Castle Project Dynamic Proxy component, of which Moq is one example. You can at this point in time not perform any form of mocking using dynamic injection in your Metro-style unit testing endeavours.So let me take you through my journey on this, so that other's don't have to...The headline fact is that you cannot load any assembly that you create at runtime. WinRT supports one Assembly.Load method, and that takes the name of an assembly. That has to be placed within the deployment folder of your app. You cannot give it a filename, or stream. The methods are there, but private. Try to invoke them using Reflection and you'll be met with a caspol exception.You can, in theory, use Rotor to replace SRE. It's all there, but again, you can't load anything you create.You can't write to your deployment folder from within your Metro-style app. But, can you use another service on the machine to move a file that you create into the deployment folder and load it? Not really.The networking stack in Metro-style is intentionally "damaged" to prevent socket communication from Metro-style to any end-point on the local machine. (It just times out.) This militates against an approach where your Metro-style app can signal a properly installed service on the machine to create proxies on its behalf. If you wanted to do this, you'd have to route the calls through a C&C server somewhere. The reason why Microsoft has done this is obvious - taking out SRE know means they don't have to do it in an emergency later. The collateral damage in removing SRE is that you can't do mocking in test mode, but you also can't do any form of injection in production mode. There are plenty of reasons why enterprise apps might want to do this last point particularly. At CP, the assumption was that their inspection tools would prevent SRE being used as a malware vector - it now seems they are less confident about that. (For clarity, the risk here is in allowing a nefarious program to download instructions from a C&C server and make up executable code on the fly to run, getting around the marketplace restrictions.)So, two things:- System.Reflection.Emit is gone in Metro-style/WinRT. Get over it - dynamic, on-the-fly code generation is not going to to happen.- I've more or less got a version of Moq working in Metro-style. This is based on the idea of "baking" the dynamic proxies before you use them. You can find more information here: https://github.com/mbrit/moqrt

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• Convert DVDs and ISO Files to MKV with MakeMKV

  - by DigitalGeekery

  Looking for a quick and easy way to convert your DVDs or ISOs to MKV files? Today we take a look at the MakeMKV Beta which gets the job done very well. Installing and Using MakeMKV Download and install MakeMKV (See download link below) If converting a DVD, place it into your optical drive. When you open MakeMKV you will be greeted by it’s minimalistic interface. Click on the DVD to hard drive button to open the DVD, or the folder icon on the top menu to browse for an ISO file.   MakeMKV will open the disc or file. Once the disc or file is opened, you’ll see the titles listed in the window on the left. Double-click on the titles to expand the tree structure.   Remove any title or tracks you don’t want to convert by unselecting the check box to the left. On the right side of the window, click the folder icon to select browse for your file output directory. When ready, click the MakeMkv button to begin the conversion process.   Conversion will proceed.   When the conversion is finished. Click OK. That’s all there is to it! Your MKV file is ready to play. Conclusion MakeMKV is currently still in beta and during the beta phase it will rip both DVD and Blu-ray for free. However, the DVD ripping functionality will always remain free. After 30 days if you want to continue ripping Blu-ray discs, you’ll need to purchase a license. DVD rips are very quick…typically around 15-20 minutes depending on the length of the movie. MakeMKV is available for Windows, Mac, Linux and will rip and convert DVDs to MKV files. Not all media players natively support MKV playback, so if you’re having trouble playing MKV files, try downloading VLC Media player, or the latest version of the DivX codec. Download MakeMKV Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips How To Rip DVDs with VLCEasily Change Audio File Formats with XRECODEHow To Convert Video Files to MP3 with VLCConvert PDF Files to Word Documents and Other FormatsConvert DVD to MP4 / H.264 with HD Decrypter and Handbrake TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Office 2010 Product Guides Google Maps Place marks – Pizza, Guns or Strip Clubs Monitor Applications With Kiwi LocPDF is a Visual PDF Search Tool Download Free iPad Wallpapers at iPad Decor Get Your Delicious Bookmarks In Firefox’s Awesome Bar

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• Framework 4 Features: User Propogation to the Database

  - by Anthony Shorten

  Once of the features I mentioned in a previous entry was the ability for Oracle Utilities Application Framework V4 to automatically propogate the end user to the database connection. This bears more explanation. In the past releases of the Oracle Utilities Application Framework, all database connections are pooled and shared within a channel of access. So for example, the online connections on the Business Application Server share a common pool of connections and the batch in a thread pool shares a seperate pool of connections. The connections are pooled for performance reasons (the most expensive part of a typical transaction is opening and closing connections so we save time by having them ready beforehand). The idea is that when a business function needs some SQL to be execute it takes a spare connection from the pool, executes the SQL and then returns the connection back to the pool for reuse. Unfortunelty to support the pool being started and ready before the transactions arrives means that you need to have a shared userid (as you dont know the users who need them beforehand). Therefore each connection uses the same database user to execute the SQL it needs. This is acceptable for executing transactions, generally but does not allow the DBA or other tools to ascertain which end user is actually running the transaction. In Oracle Utilities Application Framework V4, we now set the CLIENT_IDENTIFIER to the end userid (not the Login Id) when the connection is taken from the pool and used and reset it back to blank when returned to the pool. The CLIENT_IDENTIFIER is a feature that is present in the Oracle Database connection information. From a monitoring perspective, when a connection to the database is actively running SQL, the end user is now able to be determined by querying the CLIENT_IDENTIFIER on the session object within the database. This can be done in the DBA's favorite monitoring tool (even just some SQL on the v$session table is enough). This has other implications as well. Oracle sells a lot of other security addons to the database and so do third parties. If a site wants to have additional levels of security or auditing in the database then the CLIENT_IDENTIFIER, if supported, is now available to be recorded or used by those products to provide additional levels of security. This facility was one of the highly "nice to haves" that customers would ask us about so we now allow it to be used to allow finer grained monitoring and additional security facilities. Note: This facility is only available for customers using the Oracle Database versions of our products.

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• Space partitioning when everything is moving

  - by Roy T.

  Background Together with a friend I'm working on a 2D game that is set in space. To make it as immersive and interactive as possible we want there to be thousands of objects freely floating around, some clustered together, others adrift in empty space. Challenge To unburden the rendering and physics engine we need to implement some sort of spatial partitioning. There are two challenges we have to overcome. The first challenge is that everything is moving so reconstructing/updating the data structure has to be extremely cheap since it will have to be done every frame. The second challenge is the distribution of objects, as said before there might be clusters of objects together and vast bits of empty space and to make it even worse there is no boundary to space. Existing technologies I've looked at existing techniques like BSP-Trees, QuadTrees, kd-Trees and even R-Trees but as far as I can tell these data structures aren't a perfect fit since updating a lot of objects that have moved to other cells is relatively expensive. What I've tried I made the decision that I need a data structure that is more geared toward rapid insertion/update than on giving back the least amount of possible hits given a query. For that purpose I made the cells implicit so each object, given it's position, can calculate in which cell(s) it should be. Then I use a HashMap that maps cell-coordinates to an ArrayList (the contents of the cell). This works fairly well since there is no memory lost on 'empty' cells and its easy to calculate which cells to inspect. However creating all those ArrayLists (worst case N) is expensive and so is growing the HashMap a lot of times (although that is slightly mitigated by giving it a large initial capacity). Problem OK so this works but still isn't very fast. Now I can try to micro-optimize the JAVA code. However I'm not expecting too much of that since the profiler tells me that most time is spent in creating all those objects that I use to store the cells. I'm hoping that there are some other tricks/algorithms out there that make this a lot faster so here is what my ideal data structure looks like: The number one priority is fast updating/reconstructing of the entire data structure Its less important to finely divide the objects into equally sized bins, we can draw a few extra objects and do a few extra collision checks if that means that updating is a little bit faster Memory is not really important (PC game)

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• Character Stats and Power

  - by Stephen Furlani

  I'm making an RPG game system and I'm having a hard time deciding on doing detailed or abstract character statistics. These statistics define the character's natural - not learned - abilities. For example: Mass Effect: 0 (None that I can see) X20 (Xtreme Dungeon Mastery): 1 "STAT" Diablo: 4 "Strength, Magic, Dexterity, Vitality" Pendragon: 5 "SIZ, STR, DEX, CON, APP" Dungeons & Dragons (3.x, 4e): 6 "Str, Dex, Con, Wis, Int, Cha" Fallout 3: 7 "S.P.E.C.I.A.L." RIFTS: 8 "IQ, ME, MA, PS, PP, PE, PB, Spd" Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (1st ed?): 12-ish "WS, BS, S, T, Ag, Int, WP, Fel, A, Mag, IP, FP" HERO (5th ed): 14 "Str, Dex, Con, Body, Int, Ego, Pre, Com, PD, ED, Spd, Rec, END, STUN" The more stats, the more complex and detailed your character becomes. This comes with a trade-off however, because you usually only have limited resources to describe your character. D&D made this infamous with the whole min/max-ing thing where strong characters were typically not also smart. But also, a character with a high Str typically also has high Con, Defenses, Hit Points/Health. Without high numbers in all those other stats, they might as well not be strong since they wouldn't hold up well in hand-to-hand combat. So things like that force trade-offs within the category of strength. So my original (now rejected) idea was to force players into deciding between offensive and defensive stats: Might / Body Dexterity / Speed Wit / Wisdom Heart Soul But this left some stat's without "opposites" (or opposites that were easily defined). I'm leaning more towards the following: Body (Physical Prowess) Mind (Mental Prowess) Heart (Social Prowess) Soul (Spiritual Prowess) This will define a character with just 4 numbers. Everything else gets based off of these numbers, which means they're pretty important. There won't, however, be ways of describing characters who are fast, but not strong or smart, but absent minded. Instead of defining the character with these numbers, they'll be detailing their character by buying skills and powers like these: Quickness Add a +2 Bonus to Body Rolls when Dodging. for a character that wants to be faster, or the following for a big, tough character Body Building Add a +2 Bonus to Body Rolls when Lifting, Pushing, or Throwing objects. [EDIT - removed subjectiveness] So my actual questions is what are some pitfalls with a small stat list and a large amount of descriptive powers? Is this more difficult to port cross-platform (pen&paper, PC) for example? Are there examples of this being done well/poorly? Thanks,

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• Away3D & Directional Light w/ Rotating Meshes

  - by seethru

  This is likely a stupid error but I can't seem to find what I've done wrong. I've got a simple scene with 10 cylinders rotating at a default speed. If I grab one of these cylinders I can rotate it in the opposite direction or at a greater speed. I have a single directional light in the scene. It would appear that the directional light is only calculated at initialization and not on further frames. The shadow created by the light rotates with the cylinder giving the impression that the light is rotating when it isn't. Camera & Light Initialization _view = new View3D(); addChild(_view); _view.antiAlias = 4; _view.backgroundColor = 0xFFFFFF; _view.camera.z = -850; _view.camera.y = 0; _view.camera.x = 0; _view.camera.lookAt(new Vector3D()); _view.camera.lens = new PerspectiveLens(15); _view.mousePicker = PickingType.RAYCAST_BEST_HIT; _light = new DirectionalLight(); _light.z = -850; _light.direction = new Vector3D(1, 1, 1); _light.color = 0xFFFFFF; _light.ambient = 0.1; _light.diffuse = 0.7; _view.scene.addChild(_light); Mesh and Material creation var material:TextureMaterial = new TextureMaterial(createPow2Texture(sprite, _colors[i]) , true, false, true); material.animateUVs = true; material.lightPicker = _lightPicker; cylinder = new Mesh(new CylinderGeometry(radius, radius, 13, 70, 1, true, true), material); cylinder.subMeshes[0].scaleU = spriteWidth / sprite.width; cylinder.y = y; cylinder.mouseEnabled = true; cylinder.pickingCollider = PickingColliderType.AS3_BEST_HIT; cylinder.addEventListener(MouseEvent3D.MOUSE_OVER, onMouseOverMesh); cylinder.addEventListener(MouseEvent3D.MOUSE_MOVE, onMouseOverMesh); cylinder.addEventListener(MouseEvent3D.MOUSE_OUT, onMouseOutMesh); _cylinders.push(cylinder); Frame private function onEnterFrame(event:Event):void { for each (var mesh:Mesh in _cylinders) { if (mesh == _mouseOverMesh) continue; mesh.rotationY += 0.25; } _view.render(); }

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