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• A story of Murphy&ndash;my technical issues at TechDays Switzerland #chtd

  - by Laurent Bugnion

  I had two sessions at the recent Swiss TechDays. While the first one (Advanced Development for Windows Phone 8) went extremely well (I think), I had a very annoying technical issue in the beginning of my second session. First let me add that I talked to Microsoft about that and I hope they will change a few things in the room assignment for next year. My two sessions were one right after the other, with only 15 minutes break to change room. I don’t mind having two sessions so close from each other, but I would really like them to be in the same room in order to avoid having to move my laptops (plural, that will become important later) and redoing the tech check. That being said, I am guilty of not checking where my talks would be before the day before the conference, and when I did notice, it was too late to change it. After my first session, I quickly moved to the other room and setup my main laptop, a Dell Precision. We tested the video output (VGA) and didn’t notice anything special. The projectors are using a fairly high resolution (kudos to the Basel conference center for not having old school 1024x768 projectors anymore, that makes Blend really hard to demo ;) but since everything went great during the first talk, I was not worried. In fact I even had some time to chat with some early attendees about my Microsoft Surface and the Samsung Slate 7, which I had carried with me in addition to the Precision. I just thought it would be nice to show the hardware that Windows 8 can run on, without thinking any further. When the session started, I immediately noticed that the main screen was not showing anything. I thought I had just forgotten to switch to “duplicate” for the video output, and did that with a quick Win-P. However it didn’t “hold”. After 2 seconds, it reverted back to a black display for my attendees. Then I started to really worry. We tried everything, switching from VGA to HDMI, changing the resolution, setting the projector as primary display, but nothing did the trick. The projector was just refusing to show my screen. Now, to show you how despaired I started to be, I even considered using the “extend” setting (which worked just fine), and to use one of the feedback monitors on the floor but really it was super cumbersome. Eventually, my last resort arrived: I started my Samsung Slate 7, which by chance has Visual Studio 12 and Blend 5 installed, plugged the HDMI projector in the dock (yes, I had the dock with me, which I usually don’t!), connected it to internet (had to enter a long password for that), loaded the source code from my main machine using a USB stick and…. finally started to give my presentation. All in all I think we lost about 10 minutes. Amongst the most horrible minutes of my whole life, truly (yes I am blessed, I didn’t have that many horrible minutes in my life ;) I really want to apologize to my attendees. We joked a bit during the attempts to resolve the issue, the reactions I had after the session were all very nice and sympathetic. Only a handful of people left my session while I was having the issues, and I really don’t blame them (who knew how long the problem would last!!). But still, I probably talked at more than 60 sessions over the years, and this was by far my most painful moment. What did I learn? So what did I learn from this? Well from now on I will always have my slate ready with the latest source code, internet connection and every tool I might need during the presentation. This way, if I detect even a hint that the Precision might not work, I will just switch to the Slate. The experience of presenting on the slate is actually not bad at all, it is just a bit slow for my taste, but it does work. By the way, I will be posting the code and slides for my sessions very soon, I just need to “clean it and zip it”. Stay tuned, and thanks again for your patience in that horrible circumstance. Cheers Laurent   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

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• SQL Authority News – FalafelCON 2014: 2 days with the Best Developers in the World

  - by Pinal Dave

  I love presenting at various forums on various technologies. I am extremely excited that I got invited to speak at Falafel Conference 2014 in San Francisco. I will present two technology sessions on SQL Server. If you are into web development or if you just want to attend a conference with the best of the industry speakers, this may be the right conference for you. What set apart this conference from other conference is technology presented as well as speakers. Usually one has to attend very expensive and high scale event when they have to hear good speakers. At this conference, you will find quite a many industry legends are available to present on the bleeding edge technology. Here are few of the reasons why I believe you should attend this conference: Choose from four tracks covering Web, Mobile development and testing, Sitefinity, and Automated Testing, or attend sessions from all four! Learn from the best developers and testers in the business in an intimate setting. Surround yourself with your peers and the opportunity to network Learn about the latest platforms and technologies including Kendo UI, AngularJS, ASP.NET MVC, WebAPI, and more! Here are the details for the sessions which I am going to present at Falafel Conference. Secrets of SQL Server: Database Worst Practices Abstract: Chances are you have heard, or even uttered, this expression. This demo-oriented session will show many examples where database professionals were dumbfounded by their own mistakes, and could even bring back memories of your own early DBA days. The goal of this session is to expose the small details that can be dangerous to the production environment and SQL Server as a whole, as well as talk about worst practices and how to avoid them. Shedding light on some of these perils and the tricks to avoid them may even save your current job. After attending this session, Developers will only need 60 seconds to improve performance of their database server in their SharePoint implementation. We will have a quiz during the session to keep the conversation alive. Developers will walk out with scripts and knowledge that can be applied to their servers, immediately post the session. Additionally, all attendees of the session will have access to learning material presented in the session. The Unsung Hero Abstract: Slow Running Queries are the most common problem that developers face while working with SQL Server. While it is easy to blame the SQL Server for unsatisfactory performance, however the issue often persists with the way queries have been written, and how Indexes has been set up. The session will focus on the ways of identifying problems that slow down SQL Server, and Indexing tricks to fix them. Developers will walk out with scripts and knowledge that can be applied to their servers, immediately post the session. Register Now! I have learned from the Falafel Team that they are running out of tickets and soon they will close the registration.  For next 10 days the price for the registration is only USD 149. Trust me, you can’t get such a world class training and networking opportunity at such a low price. Click to Register Here! Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority News, T SQL

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• How to solve conflicts with another programmer..

  - by Tio

  Hi all.. I've read this question, but I think it doesn't really applies in my case.. I started to work at new company about 2 months ago with the position of senior web developer, there was already one programmer there, my position is above his, but I'm not his boss.. I don't tell him what to do.. Since the day I started to work at the company, I managed to implement a kind of a test server which he refuses to use, implemented a project management tool which he refuses to use also, and I'm in the process of implementing version control using mercurial ( damn Mercurial that's giving me so much headaches ), which he is going to use.. He is a nice guy, but just the other day we had a big discussion about "best practices", and "coding standards".. for me it's absolutely necessary to have this two things, at the place I'm currently working... otherwise it's not going to work.. This discussion, basically revolved about using short tags and the echo shortcut, and how we shouldn't use it anymore ( because I sometimes use short tags ).. this went for about 15 minutes, until I finally dropped the subject because I had work to do.. and of course he didn't budge even a millimeter, he's continuing to use short tags, and the echo shortcut and he not even cares about what I think.. When I mentioned that we are a team, he told me: "We are not a team, you work on your projects and I work on mine".. Let's just say, that the switch in my brain flipped, I raised my voice, and I told him that he was going nuts.. this was the most improper way to deal it with, I know, but there are certain things that can't be said to me.. The question here, is how do I deal with this? I want, to implement more changes on our work workflow, and I know that it's going to be a pain, with him always complaining and saying things like this.. Our boss is going to intervene in a few days, I talked to him today, the other programmer send him an email the day we had the discussion complaining.. Just to clarify, when I talk about implementing changes, I just don't appear at work, the next day with a sheet of paper, and say: "This is our we are doing things from now on! And there is no discussion.." For example, when I was trying to implement the project management tool, I took the time to talk to everybody that was going to be involved in it, to see what they think about it.. everyone was positive except him, he responded that it was just a mean to control us even more.. Does anyone has any idea on how to deal with this? PS: Truth to be told, I didn't start the best way with him, in the 4º day of work at the company, I found a really bad piece of code on our custom CMS, one of those things that I only expect to find in code produced by a programmer that has only 1 month of training in programming, and I talked to my boss about it... he showed up at the time I saw that piece of code, he saw my face and asked about it, so I told him.. I know the worst thing that can be said to a programmer is saying that their code is awful, but I've already learned that my code isn't the best of the world, so I take criticism in a completely different way now.. maybe he doesn't..

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• Development Quirk From ASP.NET Dynamic Compilation

  - by jkauffman

  The Problem I got a compilation error in my ASP.NET MVC3 project that tested my sanity today. (As always, names are changed to protect the innocent) The type or namespace name 'FishViewModel' does not exist in the namespace 'Company.Product.Application.Models' (are you missing an assembly reference?) Sure looks easy! There must be something in the project referring to a FishViewModel. The Confusing Part The first thing I noticed was the that error was occuring in a folder clearly not in my project and in files that I definitely had not created: %SystemRoot%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\(versionNumber)\Temporary ASP.NET Files\ App_Web_mezpfjae.1.cs I also ascertained these facts, each of which made me more confused than the last: Rebuild and Clean had no effect. No controllers in the project ever returned a ViewResult using FishViewModel. No views in the project defined that they use FishViewModel. Searching across all files included in the project for “FishViewModel” provided no results. The build server did not report a problem. The Solution The problem stemmed from a file that was not included in the project but still present on the file system: (By the way, if you don’t know this trick already, there is a toolbar button in the Solution Explorer window to “Show All Files” which allows you to see files all files in the file system) In my situation, I was working on the mission-critical Fish view before abandoning the feature. Instead of deleting the file, I excluded it from the project. However, this was a bad move. It caused the build failure, and in order to fix the error, this file must be deleted. By the way, this file was not in source control, so the build server did not have it. This explains why my build server did not report a problem for me. The Explanation So, what’s going on? This file isn’t even a part of the project, so why is it failing the build? This is a behavior of the ASP.NET Dynamic Compilation. This is the same process that occurs when deploying a webpage; ASP.NET compiles the web application’s code. When this occurs on a production server, it has to do so without the .csproj file (which isn’t usually deployed, if you’ve taken your time to do a deployment cleanly). This process has merely the file system available to identify what to compile. So, back in the world of developing the webpage in visual studio on my developer box, I run into the situation because the same process is occuring there. This is true even though I have more files on my machine than will actually get deployed. I can’t help but think that this error could be attributed back to the real culprit file (Fish.cshtml, rather than the temporary files) with some work, but at least the error had enough information in it to narrow it down. The Conclusion I had previously been accustomed to the idea that for c# projects, the .csproj file always “defines” the build behavior. This investigation has taught me that I’ll need to shift my thinking a bit to remember that the file system has the final say when it comes to web applications, even on the developer’s machine!

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• Where Twitter Stands Heading Into 2013

  - by Mike Stiles

  As Twitter continued throughout 2012 to be a stage on which global politics and culture played itself out, the company itself underwent some adjustments that give us a good indication of what users and brands can expect from the platform in 2013. The power of the network did anything but fade. Celebrities continued to use it to connect one-on-one. Even the Pope signed on this year. It continued to fuel revolutions. It played an exponentially large factor in this US Presidential election. And around the world, the freedom to speak was challenged as users were fired, sued, sometimes even jailed for their tweets. Expect more of the same in 2013, as Twitter has entrenched itself, for individuals, causes and brands, as the fastest, easiest, most efficient way to message the masses so some measure of impact can come from it. It’s changed everything, and it’s not finished. These fun facts reveal the position of strength with which Twitter enters 2013: It now generates a billion tweets every 2.5 days It has 500 million+ users The average Twitter user has tweeted 307 times 32% of everyone using the Internet uses Twitter It’s expected to bring in $540 million in ad revenue by 2014 11 new accounts are created every second High-level Executive Summary: people love it, people use it, and they’re going to keep loving and using it. Whether or not outside developers love it is a different matter. 2012 marked a shift from welcoming the third party support that played at least some role in Twitter being so warmly embraced, to discouraging anything that replicates what Twitter can do itself…or plans to do itself. It’s not the open playground it once was. Now Twitter must spend 2013 proving it can innovate in-house and keep us just as entranced. Likewise, Twitter is distancing itself from Facebook. Images from the #1 platform’s Instagram don’t work on Twitter anymore, and Twitter’s rolling out their own photo filter product. Where the two have lived in a “plenty of room for everybody” symbiosis up to now, 2013 could see the giants ramping up a full-on rivalry. Twitter is exhibiting a deliberate strategy. Updates have centered on more visually appealing search results, and making finding and sharing content easier. Deals have been cut with some media entities so their content stands out. CEO Dick Costolo has said tweets aren’t the attraction, they’re what leads you to content. Twitter aims to be a key distributor of media and info. Add the addition of former News Corp. President Peter Chernin to the board, and their hashtag landing page experience for events, and their media behemoth ambitions get pretty clear. There are challenges ahead and Costolo has also laid those out; entry into China, figuring out how to have Twitter deliver both comprehensive and relevant, targeted experiences, and the visualization of big data. What does this mean for corporations? They can expect a more media-rich evolution and growing emphases on imagery. They can expect more opportunities to create great media content and leverage Twitter for its distribution. And they can expect new ways to surface in searches. Are brands diving in? 56% of customer tweets to companies get completely and totally ignored. Ugh. A study Twitter recently conducted with Compete shows people who see tweets from retailers are more likely to buy a product. And, the more retailer tweets they see, the more likely they are to purchase on the retail site. As more of those tweets point to engaging media content from the brand, the results should get even better. Twitter appears ready for 2013. Enterprise brands have some work to do. @mikestilesPhoto Stuart Miles, freedigitalphotos.net

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• Build 2012, the first post

  - by Dennis Vroegop

  Yes, I was one of the lucky few who made it to Build. Build, formerly known as the Professional Developers Conference (or PDC) is the place to be if you are a developer on the Microsoft platform. Since I take my job seriously I took out some time on my busy schedule, sighed at the thought of not seeing my family for another week and signed up for it. Now, before I talk about the amazing Surface devices (yes, this posting is written on one of them), the great Lumia 920 we all got, the long deserved love for touch, NUI and other things I have been talking about for years, I need to do some ranting. So if you are anxious to read about the technical goodies you’ll have to wait until the next post. Still here? Good. When I signed up for the Build conference during my holidays this summer it was pretty obvious that demand would be high. Therefor I made sure I was on time. But even though I registered only 7 minutes after the initial opening time the Early Bird discount for the first 500 attendees was already sold out. I later learned that registration actually started 5 minutes before the scheduled time but even though it is still impressive how fast things went. The whole event sold out in 57 minutes Or so they say… A lot of people got put on the waiting list. There was room for about 1500 attendees and I heard that at least 1000 people were on that waiting list, including a lot of people I know. Strangely, all of them got tickets assigned after 2 weeks. Here at the conference I heard from a guy from Nokia that they had shipped 2500 Lumia 920 phones. That number matches the rumors that the organization added 1000 extra tickets. This, of course is no problem. I am not an elitist and I think large crowds have a special atmosphere that I quite like. But…. The Microsoft Campus is not equipped for that sheer volume of visitors. That was painfully obvious during on-site registration where people had to stand in line for over 2 hours. The conference is spread out over 2 buildings, divided by a 15 minute busride (yes, the campus is that big). I have seen queues of over 200 people waiting for the bus and when that arrived it had a capacity of 16. I can assure you: that doesn’t fit. This of course means that travelling from one site to the other might take about 30 minutes. So you arrive at the session room just in time, only to find out it’s full. Since you can’ get into that session you try to find another one but now you’re even more late so you have no chance at all of entering. The doors are closed and you’re told: “Well, you can watch the live stream online”. Mmmm… So I spend thousands of dollars, a week away from home, family and work to be told I can also watch the sessions online? Are you fricking kidding me? I could go on but I won’t. You get the idea. It’s jus badly organized, something I am not really used to in my 20 years of experience at Microsoft events. Yes, I am disappointed. I hope a lot of people here in Redmond will also fill in the evals and that the organization next year will do a better job. Really, Build deserves better. </rantmode>

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• Move on and look elsewhere, or confront the boss?

  - by Meister

  Background: I have my Associates in Applied Science (Comp/Info Tech) with a strong focus in programming, and I'm taking University classes to get my Bachelors. I was recently hired at a local company to be a Software Engineer I on a team of about 8, and I've been told they're looking to hire more. This is my first job, and I was offered what I feel to be an extremely generous starting salary ($30/hr essentially + benefits and yearly bonus). What got me hired was my passion for programming and a strong set of personal projects. Problem: I had no prior experience when I interviewed, so I didn't know exactly what to ask them about the company when I was hired. I've spotted a number of warning signs and annoyances since then, such as: Four developers when I started, with everyone talking about "Ben" or "Ryan" leaving. One engineer hired thirty days before me, one hired two weeks after me. Most of the department has been hiring a large number of people since I started. Extremely limited internet access. I understand the idea from an IT point of view, but not only is Facebook blocked, but so it Youtube, Twitter, and Pandora. I've also figured out that they block all access to non-DNS websites (http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/) and strangely enough Miranda-IM. Low cubicles. Which is fine because I like my immediate coworkers, but they put the developers with the customer service, customer training, and QA department in a huge open room. Noise, noise, noise, and people stop to chitchat all day long. Headphones only go so far. Several emails have been sent out by my boss since I started telling us programmers to not talk about non-work-related-things like Video Games at our cubicles, despite us only spending maybe five minutes every few hours doing so. Further digging tells me that this is because someone keeps complaining that the programmers are "slacking off". People are looking over my shoulder all day. I was in the Freenode webchat to get help with a programming issue, and within minutes I had an email from my boss (to all the developers) telling us that we should NOT be connected to any outside chat servers at work. Version control system from 2005 that we must access with IE and keep the Java 1.4 JRE installed to be able to use. I accidentally updated to Java 6 one day and spent the next two days fighting with my PC to undo this "problem". No source control, no comments on anything, no standards, no code review, no unit testing, no common sense. I literally found a problem in how they handle string resource translations that stems from the simple fact that they don't trim excess white spaces, leading to developers doing: getResource("Date: ") instead of: getResource("Date") + ": ", and I was told to just add the excess white spaces back to the database instead of dealing with the issue directly. Some of these things I'd like to try to understand, but I like having IRC open to talk in a few different rooms during the day and keep in touch with friends/family over IM. They don't break my concentration (not NEARLY as much as the lady from QA stopping by to talk about her son), but because people are looking over my shoulder all day as they walk by they complain when they see something that's not "programmer-looking work". I've been told by my boss and QA that I do good, fast work. I should be judged on my work output and quality, not what I have up on my screen for the five seconds you're walking by So, my question is, even though I'm just barely at my 90 days: How do you decide to move on from a job and looking elsewhere, or when you should start working with your boss to resolve these issues? Is it even possible to get the boss to work with me in many of these things? This is the only place I heard back from even though I sent out several resume's a day for several months, and this place does pay well for putting up with their many flaws, but I'm just starting to get so miserable working here already. Should I just put up with it?

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• Creating a Corporate Data Hub

  - by BuckWoody

  The Windows Azure Marketplace has a rich assortment of data and software offerings for you to use – a type of Software as a Service (SaaS) for IT workers, not necessarily for end-users. Among those offerings is the “Data Hub” – a  codename for a project that ironically actually does what the codename says. In many of our organizations, we have multiple data quality issues. Finding data is one problem, but finding it just once is often a bigger problem. Lots of departments and even individuals have stored the same data more than once, and in some cases, made changes to one of the copies. It’s difficult to know which location or version of the data is authoritative. Then there’s the problem of accessing the data. It’s fairly straightforward to publish a database, share or other location internally to store the data. But then you have to figure out who owns it, how it is controlled, and pass out the various connection strings to those who want to use it. And then you need to figure out how to let folks access the internal data externally – bringing up all kinds of security issues. Finally, in many cases our user community wants us to combine data from the internally sources with external data, bringing up the security, strings, and exploration features up all over again. Enter the Data Hub. This is an online offering, where you assign an administrator and data stewards. You import the data into the service, and it’s available to you - and only you and your organization if you wish. The basic steps for this service are to set up the portal for your company, assign administrators and permissions, and then you assign data areas and import data into them. From there you make them discoverable, and then you have multiple options that you or your users can access that data. You’re then able, if you wish, to combine that data with other data in one location. So how does all that work? What about security? Is it really that easy? And can you really move the data definition off to the Subject Matter Experts (SME’s) that know the particular data stack better than the IT team does? Well, nothing good is easy – but using the Data Hub is actually pretty simple. I’ll give you a link in a moment where you can sign up and try this yourself. Once you sign up, you assign an administrator. From there you’ll create data areas, and then use a simple interface to bring the data in. All of this is done in a portal interface – nothing to install, configure, update or manage. After the data is entered in, and you’ve assigned meta-data to describe it, your users have multiple options to access it. They can simply use the portal – which actually has powerful visualizations you can use on any platform, even mobile phones or tablets.     Your users can also hit the data with Excel – which gives them ultimate flexibility for display, all while using an authoritative, single reference for the data. Since the service is online, they can do this wherever they are – given the proper authentication and permissions. You can also hit the service with simple API calls, like this one from C#: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh921924  You can make HTTP calls instead of code, and the data can even be exposed as an OData Feed. As you can see, there are a lot of options. You can check out the offering here: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sqlazurelabs/labs/data-hub.aspx and you can read the documentation here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh921938

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• Best triple head display setup

  - by dgel

  I'm currently running Ubuntu 12.04 with a darn good triple head display setup. I've got a VisionTek 900530 Radeon HD 5450 512MB DDR3 PCI Express video card that has two DVI outputs and one Mini DisplayPort that I have connected to a HDMI adapter. I'm running three identical Asus 1920x1080 monitors that each have a DVI, VGA, and HDMI input. I'm using the xorg-edgers ppa, so I'm using the open source radeon driver version 6.99.99. I tried using the ATI binary fglrx driver, but I wasn't able to get the three monitors working properly- the monitor connected via HDMI / DisplayPort wouldn't run at full resolution. The setup is almost perfect: Compiz runs fine and is quite snappy. I'm not able to use that great compiz feature where you can drag a window to the side of a display and it will half maximize. I occasionally experience display corruption weirdness with Unity and need to restart it. When I use a dropdown menu in LibreOffice it often pops the menu down in another window. For example, if I'm using the center monitor and click the Insert menu, the menu pulls down on the monitor to my right, forcing me to chase it. If I chase down the menu and choose Manual Break, the dialog appears over on my left monitor. This absurdity is mildly entertaining but has lost its novelty. I've decided to build a new system and have spared no expense- latest i7 processor, SSD, etc. I really like the performance of the Nvidia binary drivers, so I put two ZOTAC ZT-40707-10L GeForce GT 440 in the system, figuring I'd have four DVI outputs and an awesome triple (or even eventually quad) head setup. Unfortunately it appears that I didn't do sufficient research before my purchase. It seems that Nvidia TwinView only supports two monitors on one card (I guess that's why they call it TwinView...). I messed around with running two X servers, but I really don't want that- being able to drag windows to any monitor is critical. It doesn't sound like Xinerama is an option because from what I understand it simply doesn't support Compiz. I've seen a BaseMosaic option that can be used with the Nvidia drivers that appears to support an almost unlimited number of heads- unfortunately me cheap little cards don't support it. I'm also not sure whether you'll still have all nice maximizing and snapping that TwinView provides, or whether Ubuntu will only see it as one massive display. I put my old trusty ATI card into my new system and installed 12.10. I'm using the opensource radeon drivers again because even in 12.10 I can't get the fglrx binary drivers to do triple head. Unfortunately, even with an unbelievably powerful system the experience is extremely sluggish (much more so than my experience in 12.04). The menu scattering problem appears to be fixed, but I get a lot of nasty Unity display corruption. So finally, my question is this: What hardware / drivers should I use? I'm willing to buy (almost) any video card(s). I have two PCI-Express 3.0 slots on my motherboard (which has an integrated Intel HD card). I'm willing to use ATI or Nvidia cards and willing to run Ubuntu 12.04.1 or 12.10. I'm not a gamer, but do want beautiful and snappy Compiz effects. Does anyone out there have the perfect triple head setup in 12.04 or 12.10? What hardware / drivers are you using? I have those two Nvidia cards but will probably be returning them unless someone knows a way to use them together for a triple head setup. Since I'm having pretty good luck with a single ATI card providing three displays, should I just buy a beefier one with the hopes that it will fix the horrible sluggishness I'm experiencing in 12.10?

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• Test your internet connection - Emtel Fixed Broadband

  Already at the begin of April, I had a phone conversation with my representative at Emtel Ltd. about some upcoming issues due to the ongoing construction work in my neighbourhood. Unfortunately, they finally raised the house two levels above ours, and of course this has to have a negative impact on the visibility between the WiMAX outdoor unit on the roof and the aimed access point at Medine. So, today I had a technical team here to do a site survey and to come up with potential solutions. Short version: It doesn't look good after all. The site survey Well, the two technicians did their work properly, even re-arranged the antenna to check the connection with another end point down at La Preneuse. But no improvements. Looks like we are out of luck since the construction next door hasn't finished yet and at the moment, it even looks like they are planning to put at least one more level on top. I really wonder about the sanity of the responsible bodies at the local district council. But that's another story. Anyway, the outdoor unit was once again pointed towards Medine and properly fixed with new cable guides (air from the sea and rust...). Both of them did a good job and fine-tuned the reception signal to a mere 3 over 9; compared to the original 7 over 9 I had before the daily terror started. The site survey has been done, and now it's up to Emtel to come up with (better) solutions. Well, I wouldn't mind to have an unlimited, symmetric 3G/UMTS or even LTE connection. Let's see what they can do... Testing the connection There are several online sites available which offer you to check certain aspects of your internet connection. Personally, I'm used to speedtest.net and it works very well. I think it is good and necessary to check your connection from time to time, and only a couple of days ago, I posted the following on Emtel's wall at Facebook (21.05.2013 - 14:06 hrs): Dear Emtel, could you eventually provide an answer on the miserable results of SpeedTest? I chose Rose Hill (Hosted by Emtel Ltd.) as testing endpoint... Sadly, no response to this. Seems that the marketing department is not willing to deal with customers on Facebook. Okay, over at speedtest.net you can use their Flash-based test suite to check your connection to quite a number of servers of different providers world-wide. It's actually very interesting to see the results for different end points and to compare them to each other. The results Following are the results of Rose Hill (hosted by Emtel) and respectively Frankfurt, Germany (hosted by Vodafone DE): Speedtest.net result of 30.05.2013 between Flic en Flac and Rose Hill, Mauritius (Emtel - Fixed Broadband) Speedtest.net result of 30.05.2013 between Flic en Flac and Frankfurt, Germany (Emtel - Fixed Broadband) Luckily, the results are quite similar in terms of connection speed; which is good. I'm currently on a WiMAX tariff called 'Classic Browsing 2', or Fixed Broadband as they call it now, which provides a symmetric line of 768 Kbps (or roughly 0.75 Mbps). In terms of downloads or uploads this means that I would be able to transfer files in either direction with approximately 96 KB/s. Frankly speaking, thanks to compression, my choice of browser and operating system I usually exceed this value and I have download rates up to 120 KB/s - not too bad after all. Only the ping times are a little bit of concern. Due to the difference in distance, or better said based on the number of hubs between the endpoints, they indicate the amount of time that it takes to send a package from your machine to the remote server and get a response back. A lower value is better, and usually the ping is less than 300 ms between Mauritius and Europe. The alternatives in Mauritius Not sure whether I should note this done because for my requirements there are no alternatives to Emtel WiMAX at the moment. It would be great to have your opinion on the situation of internet connectivity in Mauritius. Are there really alternatives? And if so, what are the conditions?

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• how to keep display tick rate steady when using continuous collision detection?

  - by nas Ns

  (I've just found about this forum). I hope it is ok to repost my question again here. I posted this question at stackoverflow, but it looks like I might get better help here. Here is the question: I've implemented basic particles motion simulation with continuous collision detection. But there is small issue in display. Assume simple case of circles moving inside square. All elastic collisions. no firction. All motion is constant speed. No forces are involved, no gravity. So when a particle is moving, it is always moving at constant speed (in between collisions) What I do now is this: Let the simulation time step be 1 second (for example). This is the time step simulation is advanced before displaying the new state (unless there is a collision sooner than this). At start of each time step, time for the next collision between any particles or a particle with a wall is determined. Call this the TOC time; let’s say TOC was .5 seconds in this case. Since TOC is smaller than the standard time step, then the system is moved by TOC and the new system is displayed so that the new display shows any collisions as just taking place (say 2 circles just touched each other’s, or a circle just touched a wall) Next, the collision(s) are resolved (i.e. speeds updated, changed directions etc..). A new step is started. The same thing happens. Now assume there is no collision detected within the next 1 second (those 2 circles above will not be in collision any more, even though they are still touching, due to their speeds showing they are moving apart now), Hence, simulation time is advanced now by the full one second, the standard time step, and particles are moved on the screen using 1 second simulation time and new display is shown. You see what has just happened: One frame ran for .5 seconds, but the next frame runs for 1 second, may be the 3rd frame is displayed after 2 seconds, may be the 4th frame is displayed after 2.8 seconds (because TOC was .8 seconds then) and so on. What happens is that the motion of a particle on the screen appears to speed up or slow down, even though it is moving at constant speed and was not even involved in a collision. i.e. Looking at one particle on its own, I see it suddenly speeding up or slowing down, becuase another particle had hit a wall. This is because the display tick is not uniform. i.e. the frame rate update is changing, giving the false illusion that a particle is moving at non-constant speed while in fact it is moving at constant speed. The motion on the screen is not smooth, since the screen is not updating at constant rate. I am not able to figure how to fix this. If I want to show 2 particles at the moment of the collision, I must draw the screen at different times. Drawing the screen always at the same tick interval, results in seeing 2 particles before the collision, and then after the collision, and not just when they colliding, which looked bad when I tried it. So, how do real games handle this issue? How to display things in order to show collisions when it happen, yet keep the display tick constant? These 2 requirements seem to contradict each other’s.

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• Incentivizing Work with Development Teams

  - by MarkPearl

  Recently I saw someone on twitter asking about incentives and if anyone had past experience with incentivizing work. I promised to respond with some of the experiences I have had in the past so here goes... **Disclaimer** - these are my experiences with incentives, generally in software development - in some other industries this may not be applicable – this is also my thinking at this point in time, with more experience my opinion may change. Incentivize at the level that you want people to group at If you are wanting to promote a team mentality, incentivize teams. If you want to promote an individual mentality, incentivize individuals. There is nothing worse than mixing this up. Some organizations put a lot of effort in establishing teams and team mentalities but reward individuals. This has a counter effect on the resources they have put towards establishing a team mentality. In the software projects that I work with we want promote cross functional teams that collaborate. Personally, if I was on a team and knew that there was an opportunity to work on a critical component of the system, and that by doing so I would get a bigger bonus, then I would be hesitant to include other people in solving that problem. Thus, I would hinder the teams efforts in being cross functional and reduce collaboration levels. Does that mean everyone in the team should get an even share of an incentive? In most situations I would say yes - even though this may feel counter-intuitive. I have heard arguments put forward that if “person x contributed more than person Y then they should be rewarded more” – This may sound controversial but I would rather treat people how would you like them to perform, not where they currently are at. To add to this approach, if someone is free loading, you bet your bottom dollar that the team is going to make this a lot more transparent if they feel that individual is going to be rewarded at the same level that everyone else is. Bad incentives promote destructive work If you are going to incentivize people, pick you incentives very carefully. I had an experience once with a sales person who was told they would get a bonus provided that they met an ordering target with a particular supplier. What did this person do? They sold everything at cost for the next month or so. They reached the goal, but the company didn't gain anything from it. It was a bad incentive. Expect the same with development teams, if you incentivize zero bug levels, you will get zero code committed to the solution. If you incentivize lines of code, you will get many many lines of bad code. Is there such a thing as a good incentives? Monetary wise, I am not sure there is. I would much rather encourage organizations to pay their people what they are worth upfront. I would also advise against paying money to teams as an incentive or even a bonus or reward for reaching a milestone. Rather have a breakaway for the team that promotes team building as a reward if they reach a milestone than pay them more money. I would also advise against making the incentive the reason for them to reach the milestone. If this becomes the norm it promotes people to begin to only do their job if there is an incentive at the end of the line. This is not a behaviour one wants to encourage. If the team or individual is in the right mind-set, they should not work any harder than they are right now with normal pay.

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• The best computer ever

  - by Jeff

  (This is a repost from my personal blog… wow… I need to write more technical stuff!) About three years and three months ago, I bought a 17" MacBook Pro, and it turned out to be the best computer I've ever owned. You might think that every computer with better specs is automatically better than the last, but that hasn't been my experience. My first one was a Sony, back in the Pentium III days, and it cost an astonishing $2,500. That was even more ridiculous in 1999 dollars. It had a dial-up modem, and a CD-ROM, built-in! It may have even played DVD's. A few years later I bought an HP, and it ended up being a pile of shit. The power connector inside came loose from the board, and on occasion would even short. In 2005, I bought a Dell, and it wasn't bad. It had a really high resolution screen (complete with dead pixels, a problem in those days), and it was the first laptop I felt I could do real work on. When 2006 rolled around, Apple started making computers with Intel CPU's, and I bought the very first one the week it came out. I used Boot Camp to run Windows. I still have it in its box somewhere, and I used it for three years. The current 17" was new in 2009. The goodness was largely rooted in having a big screen with lots of dots. This computer has been the source of hundreds of blog posts, tens of thousands of lines of code, video and photo editing, and of course, a whole lot of Web surfing. It connected to corpnet at Microsoft, WiFi in Hawaii and has presented many a deck. It has traveled with me tens of thousands of miles. Last year, I put a solid state drive in it, and it was like getting a new computer. I can boot up a Windows 7 VM in about 19 seconds. Having 8 gigs of RAM has always been fantastic. Everything about it has been fast and fun. When new, the battery (when not using VM's) could get as much as 10 hours. I can still do 7 without much trouble. After 460 charge cycles, the battery health is still between 85 and 90%. The only real negative has been the size and weight. It's only an inch thick, but naturally it's pretty big with a 17" screen. You don't get battery life like that without a huge battery, either, so it's heavy. It was never a deal breaker, but sometimes a long haul across a large airport, you know you're carrying it. Today, Apple announced a new, thinner and lighter 15" laptop, with twice the RAM and CPU cores, and four times the screen resolution. It basically handles my size and weight issues while retaining the resolution, and it still costs less than my 17" did. So I ordered one. Three years is an excellent run, but I kind of budgeted for a new workhorse this year anyway. So if you're interested in a 17" MacBook Pro with a Core 2 Duo 2.66 GHz CPU, 8 gigs of RAM and a 320 gig hard drive (sorry, I'm keeping the SSD), I have one to sell. They've apparently discontinued the 17", which is going to piss off the video community. It's in excellent condition, with a few minor scratches, but I take care of my stuff.

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• Creating a Corporate Data Hub

  - by BuckWoody

  The Windows Azure Marketplace has a rich assortment of data and software offerings for you to use – a type of Software as a Service (SaaS) for IT workers, not necessarily for end-users. Among those offerings is the “Data Hub” – a  codename for a project that ironically actually does what the codename says. In many of our organizations, we have multiple data quality issues. Finding data is one problem, but finding it just once is often a bigger problem. Lots of departments and even individuals have stored the same data more than once, and in some cases, made changes to one of the copies. It’s difficult to know which location or version of the data is authoritative. Then there’s the problem of accessing the data. It’s fairly straightforward to publish a database, share or other location internally to store the data. But then you have to figure out who owns it, how it is controlled, and pass out the various connection strings to those who want to use it. And then you need to figure out how to let folks access the internal data externally – bringing up all kinds of security issues. Finally, in many cases our user community wants us to combine data from the internally sources with external data, bringing up the security, strings, and exploration features up all over again. Enter the Data Hub. This is an online offering, where you assign an administrator and data stewards. You import the data into the service, and it’s available to you - and only you and your organization if you wish. The basic steps for this service are to set up the portal for your company, assign administrators and permissions, and then you assign data areas and import data into them. From there you make them discoverable, and then you have multiple options that you or your users can access that data. You’re then able, if you wish, to combine that data with other data in one location. So how does all that work? What about security? Is it really that easy? And can you really move the data definition off to the Subject Matter Experts (SME’s) that know the particular data stack better than the IT team does? Well, nothing good is easy – but using the Data Hub is actually pretty simple. I’ll give you a link in a moment where you can sign up and try this yourself. Once you sign up, you assign an administrator. From there you’ll create data areas, and then use a simple interface to bring the data in. All of this is done in a portal interface – nothing to install, configure, update or manage. After the data is entered in, and you’ve assigned meta-data to describe it, your users have multiple options to access it. They can simply use the portal – which actually has powerful visualizations you can use on any platform, even mobile phones or tablets.     Your users can also hit the data with Excel – which gives them ultimate flexibility for display, all while using an authoritative, single reference for the data. Since the service is online, they can do this wherever they are – given the proper authentication and permissions. You can also hit the service with simple API calls, like this one from C#: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh921924  You can make HTTP calls instead of code, and the data can even be exposed as an OData Feed. As you can see, there are a lot of options. You can check out the offering here: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sqlazurelabs/labs/data-hub.aspx and you can read the documentation here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh921938

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• Two Weeks To Go, Still Time to Register

  - by speakjava

  Yes, it's now only two weeks to the start of the 17th JavaOne conference! This will be my ninth JavaOne, I came fairly late to this event, attending for the first time in 2002.  Since then I've missed two conferences, 2006 for the birth of my son (a reasonable excuse I think) and 2010 for reasons we'll not go into here.  I have quite the collection of show devices, I've still got the WoWee robot, the HTC phone for JavaFX, the programmable pen and the Sharp Zaurus.  The only one I didn't keep was the homePod music player (I wonder why?) JavaOne is a special conference for many reasons, some of which I list here: A great opportunity to catch up on the latest changes in the Java world.  This is not just in terms of the platform, but as much about what people are doing with Java to build new and cool applications. A chance to meet people.  We have these things called BoFs, which stands for "Birds of a Feather", as in "Birds of a feather, flock together".  The idea being to have sessions where people who are interested in the same topic don't just get to listen to a presentation, but get to talk about it.  These sessions are great, but I find that JavaOne is as much about the people I meet in the corridors and the discussions I have there as it is about the sessions I get to attend. Think outside the box.  There are a lot of sessions at JavaOne covering the full gamut of Java technologies and applications.  Clearly going to sessions that relate to your area of interest is great, but attending some of the more esoteric sessions can often spark thoughts and stimulate the imagination to go off and do new and exciting things once you get back. Get the lowdown from the Java community.  Java is as much about community as anything else and there are plenty of events where you can get involved.  The GlassFish party is always popular and for Java Champions and JUG leaders there's a couple of special events too. Not just all hard work.  Oracle knows how to throw a party and the appreciation event will be a great opportunity to mingle with peers in a more relaxed environment.  This year Pearl Jam and Kings of Leon will be playing live.  Add free beer and what more could you want? So there you have it.  Just a few reasons for why you want to attend JavaOne this year.  Oh, and of course I'll be presenting three sessions which is even more reason to go.  As usual I've gone for some mainstream ("Custom Charts" for JavaFX) and some more 'out there' ("Java and the Raspberry Pi" and "Gestural Interfaces for JavaFX").  Once again I'll be providing plenty of demos so more than half my luggage this year will consist of a Kinect, robot arm, Raspberry Pis, gamepad and even an EEG sensor. If you're a student there's one even more attractive reason for going to JavaOne: It's Free! Registration is here.  Hope to see you there!

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• Representing Mauritius in the 2013 Bench Games

  Only by chance I came across an interesting option for professionals and enthusiasts in IT, and quite honestly I can't even remember where I caught attention of Brainbench and their 2013 Bench Games event. But having access to 600+ free exams in a friendly international intellectual competition doesn't happen to be available every day. So, it was actually a no-brainer to sign up and browse through the various categories. Most interestingly, Brainbench is not only IT-related. They offer a vast variety of fields in their Test Center, like Languages and Communication, Office Skills, Management, Aptitude, etc., and it can be a little bit messy about how things are organised. Anyway, while browsing through their test offers I added a couple of exams to 'My Plan' which I would give a shot afterwards. Self-assessments Actually, I took the tests based on two major aspects: 'Fun Factor' and 'How good would I be in general'... Usually, you have to pay for any kind of exams and given this unique chance by Brainbench to simply train this kind of tests was already worth the time. Frankly speaking, the tests are very close to the ones you would be asked to do at Prometric or Pearson Vue, ie. Microsoft exams, etc. Go through a set of multiple choice questions in a given time frame. Most of the tests I did during the Bench Games were based on 40 questions, each with a maximum of 3 minutes to answer. Ergo, one test in maximum 2 hours - that sounds feasible, doesn't it? The Measure of Achievement While the 2013 Bench Games are considered a worldwide friendly competition of knowledge I was really eager to get other Mauritians attracted. Using various social media networks and community activities it all looked quite well at the beginning. Mauritius was listed on rank #19 of Most Certified Citizens and rank #10 of Most Master Level Certified Nation - not bad, not bad... Until... the next update of the Bench Games Leaderboard. The downwards trend seemed to be unstoppable and I couldn't understand why my results didn't show up on the Individual Leader Board. First of all, I passed exams that were not even listed and second, I had better results on some exams listed. After some further information from the organiser it turned out that my test transcript wasn't available to the public. Only then results are considered and counted in the competition. During that time, I actually managed to hold 3 test results on the Individuals... Other participants were merciless, eh, more successful than me, produced better test results than I did. But still I managed to stay on the final score board: An 'exotic' combination of exam, test result, country and person itself Representing Mauritius and the Visual FoxPro community in that fun event. And although I mainly develop in Visual FoxPro 9.0 SP2 and C# using .NET Framework from 2.0 to 4.5 since a couple of years I still managed to pass on Master Level. Hm, actually my Microsoft Certified Programmer (MCP) exams are dated back in June 2004 - more than 9 years ago... Look who got lucky... As described above I did a couple of exams as time allowed and without any preparations, but still I received the following mail notification: "Thank you for recently participating in our Bench Games event.  We wanted to inform you that you obtained a top score on our test(s) during this event, and as a result, will receive a free annual Brainbench subscription.  Your annual subscription will give you access to all our tests just like Bench Games, but for an entire year plus additional benefits!" -- Leader Board Notification from Brainbench Even fun activities get rewarded sometimes. Thanks to @Brainbench_com for the free annual subscription based on my passed 2013 Bench Games Master Level exam. It would be interesting to know about the total figures, especially to see how many citizens of Mauritius took part in this year's Bench Games. Anyway, I'm looking forward to be able to participate in other challenges like this in the future.

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• Get More Value From Your Oracle Premier Support Investment

  - by Get Proactive Customer Adoption Team

  Untitled Document The Return on Investment in Support Training I’m a typical software user. I’ve been using spreadsheets almost daily for the past 10 years or so. I know how to enter simple formulas, format cells, import files, and I can sort and filter. Sometimes I even use a pivot table. I never attended training. I learnt everything I know on the fly. Sometimes it was intuitive and easy, other times I had to spend minutes and even hours searching for a solution. Yet when I see what some other people can do with their spreadsheets, I know I’m utilizing maybe 15% of the functionality. Pity, one day I really have to sign up for training. Why haven’t I done it yet? Ah, you know, I’m a busy person, I have work to do. And if I need to use a feature that I am unfamiliar with, I’ll spend time on it only when I really need it. Now wait. When I recall how much time I spent trying to figure how things work compared to time I spent doing the productive work, I realize it was not insignificant. I’m unable to sum up all the time I spent ‘learning’ on the fly, but I’m sure it’s been days or even weeks. And after all this time, I’ve mastered 15% of its features. If only I had attended training years ago. That investment would have paid back 10 times! Working with My Oracle Support is no different. Our customers typically use simple search, create service requests, and download patches. They think they know how to use My Oracle Support. And they’re right. They know something but often they’re utilizing only a fragment of My Oracle Support’s potential. For the investment that has been made, using only a small subset of the capabilities offered in My Oracle Support leaves value on the table. There is much more available in My Oracle Support. Dozens of diagnostic tools and proactive health checks will keep verifying your Oracle environments against best practices that Oracle gathers every day thanks to our comprehensive knowledge management process. Automated patch recommendations will help prevent known issues, and upgrade planning and more is included in My Oracle Support. Why are you not utilizing all of these best practices, capabilities and tools? Is it because you don’t have time to invest 2-3 hours of your time to learn about the features? Simply because you think you can learn on the fly like I thought I could? Does learning on the fly how to properly use the Service Request escalation process when you already have critical issue sound like a good idea? My advice is: Invest your time now to learn how My Oracle Support can help you prevent issues on your systems. Learn how to find answers faster and resolve problems more efficiently. Understand how to properly complete a service request. Invest in Support training, offered at no additional cost to Oracle Premier Support customers. It will pay back quicker than you think. It will bring you more value than you think. Discover your advantage with Oracle Premier Support's Proactive Portfolio.

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• On a BPM Mission with Process Accelerators. Part 1: BPM as an ATV

  - by Cesare Rotundo

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Part 1: BPM as an ATV It’s always exciting to talk to customers that are in the middle of a BPM transformational journey. Their thirst for new processes to improve with BPM makes them explorers in a landscape of opportunities. They have discovered that with BPM the can “go places” they couldn’t reach before. In a way, learning how to generate value with BPM is like adopting a new mean of transportation. Apps are like regular cars: very efficient, but to be used on paved roads: the road/process has been traced, and there are fixed paths to follow to get from “opportunity to quote” or from “quote to cash”. Getting off the road is risky, and laying down new asphalt is slow and expensive. Custom development is like running: you can go virtually anywhere, following any path you like, yet it’s slow, and a lot of sweat. BPM allows you to go “off the beaten path” laid out by packaged apps, yet make fast progress compared to custom development. BPM is therefore more like an All-Terrain Vehicle (ATV): less efficient than a car, but much faster than running, with a powerful enough engine that can get you places. The similarities between BPM and ATVs don’t stop here: you must learn to ride it even if you already know how to drive a car; you can reach places but figuring out the path to your destination is harder. Ultimately, with BPM as with an ATV, you reach places that you thought you could never reach, and you discover new destinations that provide great benefit to you … and that you didn’t even know existed! That’s where the sense of accomplishment that we heard from our BPM customers comes from, as well as the desire to share their experience, or even, as in the case of a County, the willingness to contribute their BPM solutions to help other agencies that face the same challenges. The question we wanted to answer is how can we teach organizations to drive ATV/BPM, thus leading them to deeper success with BPM, while increasing their awareness of the potential for reaching new targets, and finally equip them with the right tools. Like with ATVs, getting from point A to point B is more of a work of art than cruising on the highway by car. There is a lot we can do: after all many sought after destinations are common: someone else has been on the same path before. If only you could learn from their experience …

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• Is the Leptonica implementation of 'Modified Median Cut' not using the median at all?

  - by TheCodeJunkie

  I'm playing around a bit with image processing and decided to read up on how color quantization worked and after a bit of reading I found the Modified Median Cut Quantization algorithm. I've been reading the code of the C implementation in Leptonica library and came across something I thought was a bit odd. Now I want to stress that I am far from an expert in this area, not am I a math-head, so I am predicting that this all comes down to me not understanding all of it and not that the implementation of the algorithm is wrong at all. The algorithm states that the vbox should be split along the lagest axis and that it should be split using the following logic The largest axis is divided by locating the bin with the median pixel (by population), selecting the longer side, and dividing in the center of that side. We could have simply put the bin with the median pixel in the shorter side, but in the early stages of subdivision, this tends to put low density clusters (that are not considered in the subdivision) in the same vbox as part of a high density cluster that will outvote it in median vbox color, even with future median-based subdivisions. The algorithm used here is particularly important in early subdivisions, and 3is useful for giving visible but low population color clusters their own vbox. This has little effect on the subdivision of high density clusters, which ultimately will have roughly equal population in their vboxes. For the sake of the argument, let's assume that we have a vbox that we are in the process of splitting and that the red axis is the largest. In the Leptonica algorithm, on line 01297, the code appears to do the following Iterate over all the possible green and blue variations of the red color For each iteration it adds to the total number of pixels (population) it's found along the red axis For each red color it sum up the population of the current red and the previous ones, thus storing an accumulated value, for each red note: when I say 'red' I mean each point along the axis that is covered by the iteration, the actual color may not be red but contains a certain amount of red So for the sake of illustration, assume we have 9 "bins" along the red axis and that they have the following populations 4 8 20 16 1 9 12 8 8 After the iteration of all red bins, the partialsum array will contain the following count for the bins mentioned above 4 12 32 48 49 58 70 78 86 And total would have a value of 86 Once that's done it's time to perform the actual median cut and for the red axis this is performed on line 01346 It iterates over bins and check they accumulated sum. And here's the part that throws me of from the description of the algorithm. It looks for the first bin that has a value that is greater than total/2 Wouldn't total/2 mean that it is looking for a bin that has a value that is greater than the average value and not the median ? The median for the above bins would be 49 The use of 43 or 49 could potentially have a huge impact on how the boxes are split, even though the algorithm then proceeds by moving to the center of the larger side of where the matched value was.. Another thing that puzzles me a bit is that the paper specified that the bin with the median value should be located, but does not mention how to proceed if there are an even number of bins.. the median would be the result of (a+b)/2 and it's not guaranteed that any of the bins contains that population count. So this is what makes me thing that there are some approximations going on that are negligible because of how the split actually takes part at the center of the larger side of the selected bin. Sorry if it got a bit long winded, but I wanted to be as thoroughas I could because it's been driving me nuts for a couple of days now ;)

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• Jquery mobile and Google maps [on hold]

  - by Jack

  I have been trying to get my google maps to display within a page of a mobile app. The map will display for a second, and then disappear. I have read about a jquery bug, but i can't seem to find a way to get this code to work. any help would be greatly appreciated. <script> var geocoder; var currentLocation; var searchResults; var map; var directionsDisplay; var directionsService; function init(){ geocoder = new google.maps.Geocoder(); if (navigator.geolocation){ navigator.geolocation.watchPosition(showLocation, locationError); } else { alert("Geolocation not supported on this device"); return; } }//init function function showLocation(location){//start showlocation currentLocation = new google.maps.LatLng(location.coords.latitude, location.coords.longitude); $('#lat').attr("value", currentLocation.lat()); $('#lng').attr("value", currentLocation.lng()); geocoder = new google.maps.Geocoder(); geocoder.geocode({'latLng': currentLocation}, function(results, status){ if (status == google.maps.GeocoderStatus.OK){ if (results[0]){ var address = results[0].formatted_address; $('#loc').html(results[0].formatted_address); var info = "Latitude: " + location.coords.latitude + " Longitude: " + location.coords.longitude + "<br />"; info += "Location accurate within " + location.coords.accuracy + " meters <br /> Last Update: " + new Date(location.timestamp).toLocaleString(); $('#acc').html(info); $('#address').attr("value", results[0].formatted_address); }else{ alert('No results found'); }//end else //if(!map) initMap(); }else { $('#loc').html('Geocoder failed due to: ' + status); }//end else });//end of function if (!map) initMap(); }//end showlocation function function locationError(error){ switch(error.code) { case error.PERMISSION_DENIED: alert("Geolocation access denied or disabled. To enable geolocation on your iPhone, go to Settings > General> Location Services"); break; case error.POSITION_UNAVAILABLE: alert("Current location not available"); break; case error.TIMEOUT: alert("Timeout"); break; default: alert("unkown error"); break; }//endswitch }//endlocationerror function initMap(){ var mapOptions = { zoom: 14, mapTypeId: google.maps.MapTypeId.ROADMAP, center: currentLocation };//var mapOptions map = new google.maps.Map(document.getElementById('mapDiv'), mapOptions); google.maps.event.trigger(map, 'resize'); var bounds = new google.maps.LatLngBounds(); bounds.extend(currentLocation); map.fitBounds(bounds); //new code //var center; //function calculateCenter(){ //center = map.getCenter(); //} //google.maps.even.addDomListener(map, 'idle', function(){ //calculateCenter(); //}); //google.maps.even.addListenerOnce(map, 'idle', function(){ //google.maps.even.trigger(map,'resize'); //}); //google.maps.event.addDomListener(window, 'resize', function() { //map.setCenter(center); //});//end new code }//end initMap() //------------------------------------------------------------------------------- $(document).on("pageinit", init);

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• Is there any kind of established architecture for browser based games?

  - by black_puppydog

  I am beginning the development of a broser based game in which players take certain actions at any point in time. Big parts of gameplay will be happening in real life and just have to be entered into the system. I believe a good kind of comparison might be a platform for managing fantasy football, although I have virtually no experience playing that, so please correct me if I am mistaken here. The point is that some events happen in the program (i.e. on the server, out of reach for the players) like pulling new results from some datasource, starting of a new round by a game master and such. Other events happen in real life (two players closing a deal on the transfer of some team member or whatnot - again: have never played fantasy football) and have to be entered into the system. The first part is pretty easy since the game masters will be "staff" and thus can be trusted to a certain degree to not mess with the system. But the second part bothers me quite a lot, especially since the actions may involve multiple steps and interactions with different players, like registering a deal with the system that then has to be approved by the other party or denied and passed on to a game master to decide. I would of course like to separate the game logic as far as possible from the presentation and basic form validation but am unsure how to do this in a clean fashion. Of course I could (and will) put some effort into making my own architectural decisions and prototype different ideas. But I am bound to make some stupid mistakes at some point, so I would like to avoid some of that by getting a little "book smart" beforehand. So the question is: Is there any kind of architectural works that I can read up on? Papers, blogs, maybe design documents or even source code? Writing this down this seems more like a business application with business rules, workflows and such... Any good entry points for that? EDIT: After reading the first answers I am under the impression of having made a mistake when including the "MMO" part into the title. The game will not be all fancy (i.e. 3D or such) on the client side and the logic will completely exist on the server. That is, apart from basic form validation for the user which will also be mirrored on the server side. So the target toolset will be HTML5, JavaScript, probably JQuery(UI). My question is more related to the software architecture/design of a system that enforces certain rules. Separation of ruleset and presentation One problem I am having is that I want to separate the game rules from the presentation. The first step would be to make an own module for the game "engine" that only exposes an interface that allows all actions to be taken in a clean way. If an action fails with regard to some pre/post condition, the engine throws an exception which is then presented to the user like "you cannot sell something you do not own" or "after that you would end up in a situation which is not a valid game state." The problem here is that I would like to be able to not even present invalid action in the first place or grey out the corresponding UI elements. Changing and tweaking the ruleset Another big thing is the ruleset. It will probably evolve over time and most definitely must be tweaked. What's more, it should be possible (to a certain extent) to build a ruleset that fits a specific game round, i.e. choosing different kinds of behaviours in different aspects of the game. This would do something like "we play it with extension A today but we throw out extension B." For me, this screams "Architectural/Design pattern" but I have no idea on who might have published on something like this, not even what to google for.

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• Is changing my job now a wise decision? [closed]

  - by FlaminPhoenix

  First a little background about myself. I am a javascript programmer with 3.8 years of experience. I joined my current company a year and 3 months ago, and I was recruited as a javascript programmer. I was under the impression I was a programmer in a programming team but this was not the case. No one else except me and my manager knows anything about programming in my team. The other two teammates, copy paste stuff from websites into excel sheets. I was told I was being recruited for a new project, and it was true. The only problem was that the server side language they were using was PHP. They were using a popular library with PHP, and I had never worked with PHP before. Nevertheless, I learnt it well enough to get things working, and received high praise from my boss's boss on whichever project I worked on. Words like "wow" , "This looks great, the clients gonna be impressed with this." were sprinkled every now and then on reviewing my work. They even managed to sell my work to a couple of clients and as I understand, both of my projects are going to fetch them a pretty buck. The problem: I was asked to move into a project which my manager was handling. I asked them for training on the project which never came, and sure enough I couldnt complete my first task on the new project without shortcomings. I told my manager there were things I didnt know how to get done in the new project due to lack of training. His project had 0 documentation. I was told he would "take care" of everything relating to those shortcomings. In the meantime, I was asked to switch to another project. My manager made the necessary changes and later told me that the build had "broken" on the production server and that I needed to "test" my changes before saying things were done. I never deployed it on the production server. He did. I never saw / had the opportunity to see the final build before it went to production. He called me for a separate meeting and started pointing fingers at me, but I took full responsibility even if I didnt have to. He later on got on a call with his boss, in my presence, and gave him the impression that it was all my fault. I did not confront him about this so far. I have worked late / done overtime without them asking a lot, but last week, I just got home from work, and I got calls asking me to solve an issue which till then they had kept quiet about even though they were informed about it. I asked my manager why I hadnt been tasked with this when I was in office. He started telling me which statements to put where, as if to mock me, and that this "is hardly an overtime issue" and this pissed me off. Also, during the previous meeting, he was constantly talking highly about his work, at the same time trying to demean mine. In the meantime, I have attended an interview with another MNC, and the interviewers there were fully respectful of my decision to leave my current company. Its a software company, so I can expect my colleagues to know a lot more than me. Im told I can expect their offer anytime this week. My questions: Is my anger towards my manager justified? While leaving, do I tell him that its because of his actions that Im leaving? Do I erupt in anger and tell him that he shouldnt have put the blame on me since he was the one doing the deployment? This is going to be my second resignation to this company. The first time I wanted to resign, I was asked to stay back and my manager promised a lot of changes, a couple of which were made. How do I keep myself from getting into such situations with my employers in the future?

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• Is there a perfect algorithm for chess?

  - by Overflown

  Dear Stack Overflow community, I was recently in a discussion with a non-coder person on the possibilities of chess computers. I'm not well versed in theory, but think I know enough. I argued that there could not exist a deterministic Turing machine that always won or stalemated at chess. I think that, even if you search the entire space of all combinations of player1/2 moves, the single move that the computer decides upon at each step is based on a heuristic. Being based on a heuristic, it does not necessarily beat ALL of the moves that the opponent could do. My friend thought, to the contrary, that a computer would always win or tie if it never made a "mistake" move (however do you define that?). However, being a programmer who has taken CS, I know that even your good choices - given a wise opponent - can force you to make "mistake" moves in the end. Even if you know everything, your next move is greedy in matching a heuristic. Most chess computers try to match a possible end game to the game in progress, which is essentially a dynamic programming traceback. Again, the endgame in question is avoidable though. -- thanks, Allan Edit: Hmm... looks like I ruffled some feathers here. That's good. Thinking about it again, it seems like there is no theoretical problem with solving a finite game like chess. I would argue that chess is a bit more complicated than checkers in that a win is not necessarily by numerical exhaustion of pieces, but by a mate. My original assertion is probably wrong, but then again I think I've pointed out something that is not yet satisfactorily proven (formally). I guess my thought experiment was that whenever a branch in the tree is taken, then the algorithm (or memorized paths) must find a path to a mate (without getting mated) for any possible branch on the opponent moves. After the discussion, I will buy that given more memory than we can possibly dream of, all these paths could be found.

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• Traversing/Manipulating new window from parent window with jquery

  - by Anthony

  I found a question already with a possible solution, but I had already tried the method suggested before reading it, and it even says it's inconsistent. So I guess I'm wondering why this doesn't work: $("img").click(function() { var imgwindow = window.open('imgwin.html','','width=460,height=345'); alert(imgwindow.find("img").attr("src")); }); The goal is to set the new window's img to the same src as the image that the user clicked to open the new window. But in the above scenario, I'm just trying to tap into the new window to get what it's already-set src. I have imgwin.html already written with a default src for the image, so it should alert that url. Instead I just get undefined. I also tried the following (which should be identical on the back end), but with the same results: $("img").click(function() { var imgwindow = window.open('imgwin.html','','width=460,height=345'); alert($("img",imgwindow).attr("src")); }); I even tried variations of wrapping the imgwindow variable in $() in case somehow jquery wasn't picking up on the variable as a DOM element. The only thing I can guess is that since window.open() is a method, jquery doesn't treat it like a DOM element, even though all documentation from basic javascript tutorials treat the variable as both a method to open the window and the pointer to the window's inner DOM.

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• People not respecting good practices at workplace

  - by VexXtreme

  Hi There are some major issues in my company regarding practices, procedures and methodologies. First of all, we're a small firm and there are only 3-4 developers, one of which is our boss who isn't really a programmer, he just chimes in now and then and tries to do code some simple things. The biggest problems are: Major cowboy coding and lack of methodologies. I've tried explaining to everyone the benefits of TDD and unit testing, but I only got weird looks as if I'm talking nonsense. Even the boss gave me the reaction along the lines of "why do we need that? it's just unnecessary overhead and a waste of time". Nobody uses design patterns. I have to tell people not to write business logic in code behind, I have to remind them not to hardcode concrete implementations and dependencies into classes and cetera. I often feel like a nazi because of this and people think I'm enforcing unnecessary policies and use of design patterns. The biggest problem of all is that people don't even respect common sense security policies. I've noticed that college students who work on tech support use our continuous integration and source control server as a dump to store their music, videos, series they download from torrents and so on. You can imagine the horror when I realized that most of the partition reserved for source control backups was used by entire seasons of TV series and movies. Our development server isn't even connected to an UPS and surge protection. It's just plugged straight into the wall outlet. I asked the boss to buy surge protection, but he said it's unnecessary. All in all, I like working here because the atmosphere is very relaxed, money is good and we're all like a family (so don't advise me to quit), but I simply don't know how to explain to people that they need to stick to some standards and good practices in IT industry and that they can't behave so irresponsibly. Thanks for the advice

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