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• Who should write the test plan?

  - by Cheng Kiang

  Hi, I am in the in-house development team of my company, and we develop our company's web sites according to the requirements of the marketing team. Before releasing the site to them for acceptance testing, we were requested to give them a test plan to follow. However, the development team feels that since the requirements came from the requestors, they would have the best knowledge of what to test, what to lookout for, how things should behave etc and a test plan is thus not required. We are always in an argument over this, and developers find it a waste of time to write down things like:- Click on button A. Key in XYZ in the form field and click button B. You should see behaviour C. which we have to repeat for each requirement/feature requested. This is basically rephrasing what's already in the requirements document. We are moving towards using an Agile approach for managing our projects and this is also requested at the end of each iteration. Unit and integration testing aside, who should be the one to come up with the end user acceptance test plan? Should it be the reqestors or the developers? Many thanks in advance. Regards CK

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• Drupal 7 Advice Needed: "Portal" Creation

  - by WernerCD

  Question: What is the best game plan for building what I want. I'm rebuilding the company intranet and am trying to get our "Portals" system re-created in Drupal. I'm trying to learn Panels, because thats what I think would do this, but I just can't seem to get it working. Menu at top, drop down lists for various webpages, tools, internal applications... and Department Portals. When you click on a department portal, you get the same menu at top... and on the main part of the page you have a menu on the left, with content on the right. Menu stays on the left, content loads next to it. Each Portal has its own menu and content (least of which is "Home"). Ultimately, I'd like to be able to say - users with role "Foo" can add/edit/delete Portal Bar. - Each Portal starts with a "Home" - Each Portal has its own Menu tree's. (Picture 2 above has a < ul for video tutorials that would be a second level menu. So more than one deep.) - Content on the right side of the portal should be flexible (Video, PDF via fileviewer, etc) - Portal Bar should have its own Folder to contain it's content. I'm trying to do this in Panels, but I can't seem to put the pieces together in my mind and in practice. I hope I'm making sense, because the dizzying array of stuff is killing me lol.

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• Self Service Reporting With PowerPivot

  - by blakmk

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

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• Handling extremely large numbers in a language which can't?

  - by Mallow

  I'm trying to think about how I would go about doing calculations on extremely large numbers (to infinitum - intergers no floats) if the language construct is incapable of handling numbers larger than a certain value. I am sure I am not the first nor the last to ask this question but the search terms I am using aren't giving me an algorithm to handle those situations. Rather most suggestions offer a language change or variable change, or talk about things that seem irrelevant to my search. So I need a little guideance. I would sketch out an algorithm like this: Determine the max length of the integer variable for the language. If a number is more than half the length of the max length of the variable split it in an array. (give a little play room) Array order [0] = the numbers most to the right [n-max] = numbers most to the left Ex. Num: 29392023 Array[0]:23, Array[1]: 20, array[2]: 39, array[3]:29 Since I established half the length of the variable as the mark off point I can then calculate the ones, tenths, hundredths, etc. Place via the halfway mark so that if a variable max length was 10 digits from 0 to 9999999999 then I know that by halfing that to five digits give me some play room. So if I add or multiply I can have a variable checker function that see that the sixth digit (from the right) of array[0] is the same place as the first digit (from the right) of array[1]. Dividing and subtracting have their own issues which I haven't thought about yet. I would like to know about the best implementations of supporting larger numbers than the program can.

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• Is there a stable Linux distro using btrfs?

  - by chrish

  I'm a big fan of ZFS on FreeBSD (I've been using it on my home server since before it got stable; bleeding edge, baby!) and I'd like to try out btrfs to see how that's evolving. Since it's still largely in development, none of the usual mainstream distros have btrfs as an option. I haven't used Linux in a bunch of years, so I don't really know what my best options are for giving btrfs a try. Requirements: easy to install btrfs supported without requiring me to rebuild the kernel Thanks!

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• Java Applet or Unity3D for Cross-Platform 3D Surveying App

  - by Jake M

  Do you think a Java Applet or Unity3D Application is the best option to make a cross-browser 3d web-app? I intend to make a web application that displays 3d environments that can be navigated by dragging(with a finger or mouse depending on the platform). The web app will render 3d environments of development sites including contours, water pipeline locations, buildings etc. The application must work on Windows Desktop, Android, iOS and Windows Phone. So this is why I am tending towards a web-app as opposed to cross-platform smart phone library(like Mosync or Marmalade). The 3d environments will be navigable(by dragging around) and contain simple(not detailed) 3d objects like buildings, mountains, pipelines, etc. One thing I know is that WebGL is out because it doesn't work on IE and has limited support on Smart Phones(am I correct to completely disregard WebGL?). Will future Smart Phone browsers continue to support Java Applets? Also is it really true I can write ONE Application/Game in Unity3D and simply compile it to run on Windows Windows, Mac, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii, iPad, iPhone and Android? Would you suggest the Unity3D application path or the Unity3D Web Player path? Concerning Unity3D, there's one thing I am unsure about: do all Unity3D features work on iOS and Android?

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• Identifying the Latest Family Packs for Oracle E-Business Suite

  - by Oracle_EBS

  Identifying the Latest Family Packs for Oracle E-Business Suite (Reprinted from blogs.oracle.com/stevenchan from Mar 15, 2012) It's important to ensure that your E-Business Suite environment is kept current, but it can be tricky to identify the latest product-level Family Packs that have been released.  You might need to identify the latest Family Pack updates available for an Oracle E-Business Suite R12 or R11i environment when performing one of the following tasks: Researching the latest functionality available Implementing a new module Planning an upgrade to your Oracle E-Business Suite environment Two useful links are available on My Oracle Support that provide a listing of packs  for an Oracle E-Business Suite R12 or R11i environment.  To navigate to a listing of packs, first login to My Oracle Support.  Once logged in, navigate to the Patches & Updates tab: Once on the Patches & Updates section, navigate to the Patching Quick Links region.  This region contains links toLatest R12 Packs and Latest R11i Packs: After clicking one of the links for either R12 or R11i packs, you will be directed to a new screen that displays all available packs for the selected version.  Here's an example of the screen displayed upon clicking the Latest R12 Packs link (naturally, the actual Family Pack references may change over time): Note that for R12, the listing displayed is the latest packs available for the most current release of R12.  Currently, this is Release 12.1.3.  For Release 11i, the listing displayed is for the most current release of R11i., 11.5.10.   Related Articles Quarterly E-Business Suite Upgrade Recommendations: January 2012 Edition Identifying Recommended Patches for E-Business Suite Environments EBS Support Information Center + Patching & Maintenance Advisor Available on My Oracle Support What's the Best Way to Patch an E-Business Suite Environment?

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• Sharing swap space between Windows and Ubuntu

  - by Leftium

  This Linux Swap Space Mini-HOWTO describes how to share swap space between Windows and Linux. Do these instructions still apply to Ubuntu in 2011? How should I modify the steps for Ubuntu? Is there a better approach to sharing swap space? Based on the HOWTO, it seems best to create a dedicated NTFS swap partition: Dedicated so the swap file will be contiguous and remain unfragmented. NTFS so both Windows and Ubuntu can read/write to it. (Or is FAT32 better for this purpose?) Then, configure Ubuntu to prepare the swap space for use by Linux on start up; by Windows on shut down. I want to dual boot Ubuntu and Windows 7 on my X301 laptop. However, my laptop only has a 64 GB SDD, so I would like to conserve as much disk space as possible. update: There is an alternate method using a special driver for Windows that let you use a Linux swap partition for temporary storage like a RAM-disk, but it doesn't seem to be as good...

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• Automatically updating routing table on server

  - by bramp

  I have a LAN with three routers on it, one connected to the Internet, one VPN router connected to a few remote sites, and a final route connected to a private network (using BGP to get prefix advertisements). On the same LAN I have multiple Linux servers which needs access to the networks behind each router. I have achieved this by configuring static routes on the server, pointing the different network prefixes to the correct router. This has worked well, but every time we connect to a new remote VPN, we have to change all the servers to be aware that the network is now accessible via the VPN, and not via the default Internet route. What I want is a way to automatically update the routes on all of the servers, when the route is added to a routers. Now, I could install Quagga or something similar on all the servers to receive router advertisements, but that seems like overkill. So my question is what is the easiest/simpliest way to update the routing tables on the server automatically, and what protocol is best suited for this purpose. thanks

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• How to run an Application as another user?

  - by takpar

  I use krusader for file management stuff. the problem is that apache's DocumentRoot should be under chown www-data:www-data /path/to/www. so using krusader (which is run under my account) I've not write access to /path/to/www while I really need. I don't know how other developers can continue doing things with such a restriction! I wondered if I could run krusader as www-data then I will be able to easily play with files. but using su - www-data asked me for www-data's password!! So, how can I run an application (like krusader) as another user (like www-data) in Gnome? or is there any other solution for my case? (tough I'm really curious to know the answer!) keep in mind that I know I can run it as root! but this will cause some permission problems when using cp and mkdir, you know. PS: sudo and gksudo did not help: $ gksudo -u -www-data krusader No protocol specified krusader: cannot connect to X server :0.0 Final Note: according the best answer, i did chmod u+w /path/to/www and my problem solved. but i still has not been succeeded in opening krusader as another user!

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• How do I find a programming internship / practice?

  - by user828584

  I'm taking the SAT soon, and quickly heading toward the chaos of figuring out which college's I will be able to attend, and how on Earth I'll be able to afford it. I would like to be able to gain some experience in programming or web development, but I don't know where to look. I've been trying my best to learn over the past year, and have been doing alright in C# and the web languages (HTML, PHP, CSS, javascript). I have no idea where to look though. I've asked similar questions and rummaged through old questions on here, and they all say nothing specifically. The main two points are always "Contribute to open source projects" and "Find a company and ask to be a part of it." I don't know how to find either of the two. I've looked online at github and source forge, and the like, but all the projects are already so progressed and I just don't have the experience needed to bring myself up to speed with their code. I don't have much experience in code management, and I don't know how to get it. I would be ecstatic to be able to start a project with a group of more experienced members, but, like I said, I have no clue how to find these people.

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• EBS Customer Relationship Manager (CRM) Product Family Webcasts

  - by user793044

  Oracle's Advisor Webcasts are live presentations given by subject matter experts who deliver knowledge and information about services, products, technologies, best practices and more. Delivered through WebEx the Oracle Advisor Webcast Program brings interactive expertise straight to your desktop, at no cost. Each session is usually followed by a live Q&A where you can have your questions answered. If you miss any of the live webcasts then you can replay the recording or download the PDF of the presentation. Doc Id 740966.1 gives you access to all the scheduled webcasts as well as the archived recordings and presentations. Just select the product family you are interested in to access the latest webcasts in that area. Below is a listing of the currently scheduled archived webcasts for the EBS CRM and Industries product family. Webcast Topic and Description Webcast Link Date and Time Upcoming: Oracle E-Business Suite - Service Oracle Service Charges - Introduction/Overview Register Dec 6, 2012 EBS CRM - Service R12: How to debug Email Center Auto Service Request Creation Failures Recording | .pdf Archived XCALC: Failed Calculations when Using OIC Recording | .pdf Archived XPOP: Failed Population When Using Oracle Incentive August 30, 2012 Recording | .pdf Archived XROLL: Failed Roll Up When Using Oracle Incentive Compensation August 16, 2012 Recording | .pdf Archived Common Problems Associated with Product Catalog in Sales Recording | .pdf Archived Oracle Incentive Compensation - Troubleshooting Payment Issues Recording | .pdf Archived R12 Renewing Service Contracts - Overview Recording | .pdf Archived 11i and R12 Oracle CRM Service Basics and Troubleshooting - an Overview Recording | .pdf Archived 11i and R12 Transaction Error Troubleshooting Overview Recording | .pdf Archived

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• Collision with half semi-circle

  - by heitortsergent

  I am trying to port a game I made using Flash/AS3, to the Windows Phone using C#/XNA 4.0. You can see it here: http://goo.gl/gzFiE In the flash version I used a pixel-perfect collision between meteors (it's a rectangle, and usually rotated) that spawn outside the screen, and move towards the center, and a shield in the center of the screen(which is half of a semi-circle, also rotated by the player), which made the meteor bounce back in the opposite direction it came from, when they collided. My goal now is to make the meteors bounce in different angles, depending on the position it collides with the shield (much like Pong, hitting the borders causes a change in the ball's angle). So, these are the 3 options I thought of: -Pixel-perfect collision (microsoft has a sample(http://create.msdn.com/en-US/education/catalog/tutorial/collision_2d_perpixel_transformed)) , but then I wouldn't know how to change the meteor angle after the collision -3 BoundingCircle's to represent the half semi-circle shield, but then I would have to somehow move them as I rotate the shield. -Farseer Physics. I could make a shape composed of 3 lines, and use that as the collision object for the shield. Is there any other way besides those? Which would be the best way to do it(it's aimed towards mobile devices, so pixel-perfect is probably not a good choice)? Most of the time there's always a easier/better way than what we think of...

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• Career opportunities for mid-20 .Net developer

  - by Valera Kolupaev

  Recently, I have moved to Toronto and started exploring career opportunities here. My first impressions about .net developer/architect career are really controversial. Here options that comes to my mind right now: Grow as a developer, lead and solution architect in large and well-known company, like Logitech or IBM. Doing .net development medium size (10-30) software shops Joining some start-up guys First one, seems very bureaucratic with kills all programming fun, that is such valuable to me. And there is not a lot of start ups, that are based on MS technology stack. Good mid-size company seems like a best fit to me, since I can have a lot of fun, doing new projects. Previously I have been working at large (5000+) outsourcing provider as a .Net developer. I was kind of a 'vanilla' time, because our team were always doing massive scale projects from scratch, on latest .Net stack. I would really appreciate if you share pros and cons of path, that you have chosen and what you value most in your current project. I'll start: Pros for Mid-size You are really close to business and application consumers, without all bureaucratic papers Cons It seems, that career oportunities of vertical growth is rather limited, once I have to switch to my own company or join development team of some big players.

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• How to backup a remote VPS machine?

  - by morpheous

  I am considering opting for a VPS solution, with the server running Ubuntu server. I am pretty new to this, and I need to come up with a backup policy for my server data. Initial data is likely to be about 80Mb, and I expect the data to grow at approximately 5Mb to 10 Mb a day. Can anyone recommend: A backup/restore policy (best practises for a small startup) Which tools to use for backup? Another thing that is not clear to me is - where are the files backed up to normally (in the case of remote servers). If the files are backed up to the same machine (or even to another machine but with the same host), there is potentially, a single point of failure). How do people normally backup their server data, and is the probability of machine meltdown or the host company server farm "catching fire" so remote as not to be worth worrying about - especially for a small (read one man) startup like me?

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• Should a sysadmin contractor charge overtime for off-peak hours?

  - by Jakobud

  This is not necessarily a server-related question, but more of a system admin question that I think would related to many on SF. I'm doing Sysadmin/IT consulting for a small company. I only work about 3 days a week for them on average. If a server goes down or something like that during off hours (nights, weekends, 3am, etc) and they need it fixed during those time periods, should I be charging overtime for that? I would I not be justified in charging overtime until I've logged 40 hours for the week? Perhaps calling it overtime isn't the best name. I guess maybe its better to call it an off-peak hourly rate. Anyways I just was curious what other consultants did in these circumstances.

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• Prevent EC2 machine from halt, poweroff, shutdown

  - by Adam Matan

  Hi, EC2 Ubuntu servers erase all disk contents when being shut down. Following an unfortunate accident, I have decided to prevent the command-live halt, poweroff and shutdown. What's the best way to do it? I thought about renaming these commands (at /sbin) to something like HALT_RENAMED___ERASES_ALL_DISK_CONTENTS. Are there any files, other than the three listed above, that needs to be handled? I've noticed that halt and poweroff are merely links to reboot. Should reboot be renamed, too? Adam

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• Lossless cutting of MPEG TS files in Windows

  - by Sebastian P.R. Gingter

  I have several HD video files in transport stream (.ts) format, recorded with my satellite receiver. I want to cut them, as in simply remove a few minutes from the beginning, the end and sometimes a few minutes in the middle of it (remove early start of recordings, late ends and, for some seldom files, the ads). What is a good, ideally but not necessarily free, software with a GUI to do this? Best would be something where you could select points on a timeline and simply cut the elements out. As a resulting file, just the same .ts format would be great, but I could also live with putting the video contents into another container, as long as the video is NOT re-encoded / transcoded. The files have additional audio streams and subtitles. These should be retained in the process. My OS is Windows.

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• Web Development Environment: How to distribute edited hosts files over bunch of mac machines?

  - by Alex Reds

  I am doing some research to prepare some web development environment for our small(10ppl and growing) new office. User Case: For each new web project usually we create new alias on an Apache server someproject.companywebsite From my understanding in order to see this website locally for all the rest of our team(including mangers and directors) they will need to edit hosts file (e.g. "192.168.1.10 someproject.companywebsite"), and like that each time for a new project(can be 2-5 each week) Solution: And I looking for a solution how to edit this hosts file only once and distribute it over all mac machines in our network at once or much more flawlessly than poking around with each machine every time over and over again. Is that possible? Or that a very wrong way of doing that? Perhaps we better set up own local dns server and point to it our router? Though own dns server a bit concerns me because of might be some network interruption and others lags, if you know what I mean. Or perhaps there are another workflows for that? What's the best way for such things? So I'll be so grateful to hear some advices from experienced admins. I couldn't find that info on internet, so if you know where to read about it, point me in a right direction. Thank you in advance Alex

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• How do I disable aalert beeps

  - by wheresrhys

  My HP pavilion laptop is getting pretty old and the speakers no longer work properly. So I've disabled all audio devices, including disabling the light-touch volume controls at boot-up. The one sound still here that I can't get rid of is teh alert beep whenever there's an error. It's annoying at the best of times, but when your laptop has no other sounds at all it's intensly irritating! Nothing I chaneg in the windows settings or in the BIOS seems to have any effect. Any ideas how to switch them off?

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• Parallelize incremental processing in Tabular #ssas #tabular

  - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)

  I recently came in a problem trying to improve the parallelism of Tabular processing. As you know, multiple tables can be processed in parallel, whereas the processing of several partitions within the same table cannot be parallelized. When you perform an incremental update by adding only new rows to existing table, what you really do is adding rows to a partition, so adding rows to many tables means adding rows to several partitions. The particular condition you have in this case is that every partition in which you add rows belongs to a different table. Adding rows implies using the ProcessAdd command; its QueryBinding parameter specifies a SQL syntax to read new rows, otherwise the original query specified for the partition will be used, and it could generate duplicated data if you don’t have a dynamic behavior on the SQL side. If you create the required XMLA code manually, you will find that the QueryBinding node that should be part of the ProcessAdd command has to be moved out from ProcessAdd in case you are using a Batch command with more than one Process command (which is the reason why you want to use a single batch: run multiple process operations in parallel!). If you use AMO (Analysis Management Objects) you will find that this combination is not supported, even if you don’t have a syntax error compiling the code, but you might obtain this error at execution time: The syntax for the 'Process' command is incorrect. The 'Bindings' keyword cannot appear under a 'Process' command if the 'Process' command is a part of a 'Batch' command and there are more than one 'Process' commands in the 'Batch' or the 'Batch' command contains any out of line related information. In this case, the 'Bindings' keyword should be a part of the 'Batch' command only. If this is happening to you, the best solution I’ve found is manipulating the XMLA code generated by AMO moving the Binding nodes in the right place. A more detailed description of the issue and the code required to send a correct XMLA batch to Analysis Services is available in my article Parallelize ProcessAdd with AMO. By the way, the same technique (and code) can be used also if you have the same problem in a Multidimensional model.

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• How different is WPF from ASP.NET [closed]

  - by Tom

  I have been quickly moved over to a different project at work because the project needs more help. I was chosen because they are confident in my abilities and they thought I would be best fit for the next couple weeks to help finish the application out. I am a little nervous. I do tend to pick things up quickly. I was moved to a different project at the beginning of this year and now I know it like the back of my hand. Previously I was on another project. Both of these projects were an ASP.NET web application, which I believe is considered a winforms web application? The project I am moving to is a desktop WPF application. I have read that many people enjoy developing their applications with WPF. I just have never dealt/worked with WPF before. I like to consider myself pretty good at ASP.NET/C# and I do a solid job. We deal with a lot of data processing from the database and report generation. So I do get to experience C# more so than some web applications where the C# end of it is mostly just event driven and simple instructions. How different are the two? Will it be completely foreign to me? Or is it just a different way of looking at a problem and I can familiarize myself quickly? Thanks for the input.

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• Ways to dynamically render a real world 3d environment in Unity3D

  - by Jake M

  Using Unity3D and C# I am attempting to display a 3d version of a real world location. Inside my Unity3D app, the user will specify the GPS coordinates of a location, then my app will have to generate a 3d plane(anything doesn't have to be a plane) of that location. The plane will show a 500 metre by 500 metre 3d snapshot of that location. How would you suggest I achieve this in Unity3D? What methodology would you use to achieve this? NOTE: I understand that this is a very difficult endevour(to render real world locations dynamically in Unity3d) so I expect to perform many actions to achieve this. I just don't know of all the technologies out there and which would be best for my needs For example: Suggested methodology 1: Prompt user to specify GPS coords Use Google earth API and HTTP to programmatically obtain a .khm file describing that location(Not sure if google earth provides that capability does it?) Unzip the .khm so I have the .dae file Convert that file to a .3ds file using ??? third party converter(is there a converter that exists?) Import .3ds into Unity3D at runtime as a plane(is this possible)? Suggested methodology 2: Prompt user to specify GPS coords Use Google earth API and HTTP to programmatically obtain a .khm file describing that location(Not sure if google earth provides that capability does it?) Unzip the .khm so I have the .dae file Parse .dae file using my own C# parser I will write(do you think its possible to write a .dae parser that can parse the .dae into an array of Vector3 that describe the height map of that location?) Dynamically create a plane in Unity3D and populate it with my array/list of Vector3 points(is it possible to create a plane this way?) Maybe I am meant to create a mesh instead of a plane? Can you think of any other ways I could render a real world 3d environment in Unity3D?

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• Personalisation of the Ubuntu interface

  - by Ben

  It's quite hard to phrase this question as the answer is very subjective and I don't know the right terminology to ask for what I want, but I will try my best. I love linux and would love to use it full-time as my main OS but the one think I have a problem with is the look of it. In my opinion it looks like it was designed for a child and I like my computer to look stylish rather than dated (this is opinion obviously). I like the look of OSX but there are certain things that I don't like, so no, I am not asking the age old question of "how do I make ubunutu look like OSX"...most of the attempts I have seen of this have been pretty poor when put up against the real thing so I just want to take certain things from it. Things I'd like to take from OSX: Spotlight (I don't like the Unity dashboard-esque thingy) Expose Spaces Dock (at the bottom) Icons (apart from the apple one) Look of file manager - its more pleasant to navigate around the file system. Closing an application window doesn't actually quit the program, so when you next launch it - it is instantaneous. Global menu (at the top) What are the latest Ubuntu alternatives to these? When it comes to actually changing the look of Ubuntu what should I be looking at? I know the following exists: Shell theme Icons Fonts ...but is there anything else I need to look into to actually change the look? I hear the term "Window Manager" thrown around, but I don't actually know what that is. What are good sources for reviews/links to the latest and greatest customisation techniques? Ubuntu now comes with Unity which I don't like very much. What are my alternatives? Should I look into Gnome3 or switch to classic desktop which is Gnome2 if I recall correctly? I hope I haven't put too much in one question and that it makes sense. Thanks.

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• Fixed-Function vs Shaders: Which for beginner?

  - by Rob Hays

  I'm currently going to college for computer science. Although I do plan on utilizing an existing engine at some point to create a small game, my aim right now is towards learning the fundamentals: namely, 3D programming. I've already done some research regarding the choice between DirectX and OpenGL, and the general sentiment that came out of that was that whether you choose OpenGL or DirectX as your training-wheels platform, a lot of the knowledge is transferrable to the other platform. Therefore, since OpenGL is supported by more systems (probably a silly reason to choose what to learn), I decided that I'm going to learn OpenGL first. After I made this decision to learn OpenGL, I did some more research and found out about a dichotomy that I was somewhere unaware of all this time: fixed-function OpenGL vs. modern programmable shader-based OpenGL. At first, I thought it was an obvious choice that I should choose to learn shader-based OpenGL since that's what's most commonly used in the industry today. However, I then stumbled upon the very popular Learning Modern 3D Graphics Programming by Jason L. McKesson, located here: http://www.arcsynthesis.org/gltut/ I read through the introductory bits, and in the "About This Book" section, the author states: "First, much of what is learned with this approach must be inevitably abandoned when the user encounters a graphics problem that must be solved with programmability. Programmability wipes out almost all of the fixed function pipeline, so the knowledge does not easily transfer." yet at the same time also makes the case that fixed-functionality provides an easier, more immediate learning curve for beginners by stating: "It is generally considered easiest to teach neophyte graphics programmers using the fixed function pipeline." Naturally, you can see why I might be conflicted about which paradigm to learn: Do I spend a lot of time learning (and then later unlearning) the ways of fixed-functionality, or do I choose to start out with shaders? My primary concern is that modern programmable shaders somehow require the programmer to already understand the fixed-function pipeline, but I doubt that's the case. TL;DR == As an aspiring game graphics programmer, is it in my best interest to learn 3D programming through fixed-functionality or modern shader-based programming?

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