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  • Do all mods simply alter game files? [on hold]

    - by Starkers
    When you install some mods you drag certain files into your game directory and replace the files. Other mods, though, come with an installer where you can set parameters first. Does the installer then go and automatically replace the certain files? At the end of the day, is that all the installation of any mod is? Is the installation of a mod simply the replacement of certain files inside the game's root directory? Do mods exist which don't fit the above statement? That install outside the game's root? Why do they do this? All the mods I can think of do just replace certain files inside the game's root. However, I know Team Fortress was spawned from a multiplayer halflife 1 mod. Do you reckon that mod installed files outside the root to enable multiplayer via a network for a single player game? How rare are these mods? Or do they not even exist? Do even extensive mods make all their changes inside the root?

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  • Algorithm for rating books: Relative perception

    - by suneet
    So I am developing this application for rating books (think like IMDB for books) using relational database. Problem statement : Let's say book "A" deserves 8.5 in absolute sense. In case if A is the best book I have ever seen, I'll most probably rate it 9.5 whereas for someone else, it might be just an average book, so he/they will rate it less (say around 8). Let's assume 4 such guys rate it 8. If there are 10 guys who are like me (who haven't ever read great literature) and they all rate it 9.5-10. This will effectively make it's cumulative rating greater than 9 (9.5*10 + 8*4) / 14 = 9.1 whereas we needed the result to be 8.5 ... How can I take care of(normalize) this bias due to incorrect perception of individuals. MyProposedSolution : Here's one of the ways how I think it could be solved. We can have a variable Lit_coefficient which tells us how much knowledge a user has about literature. If I rate "A"(the book) 9.5 and person "X" rates it 8, then he must have read books much better than "A" and thus his Lit_coefficient should be higher. And then we can normalize the ratings according to the Lit_coefficient of user. Could there be a better algorithm/solution for the same?

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  • Cloud Adoption Challenges

    - by Herve Roggero
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/hroggero/archive/2013/11/07/cloud-adoption-challenges.aspxWhile cloud computing makes sense for most organizations and countless projects, I have seen customers significantly struggle with cloud adoption challenges. This blog post is not an attempt to provide a generic assessment of cloud adoption; rather it is an account of personal experiences in the field, some of which may or may not apply to your organization. Cloud First, Burst? In the rush to cloud adoption some companies have made the decision to redesign their core system with a cloud first approach. However a cloud first approach means that the system may not work anymore on-premises after it has been redesigned, specifically if the system depends on Platform as a Service (PaaS) components (such as Azure Tables). While PaaS makes sense when your company is in a position to adopt the cloud exclusively, it can be difficult to leverage with systems that need to work in different clouds or on-premises. As a result, some companies are starting to rethink their cloud strategy by designing for on-premises first, and modify only the necessary components to burst when needed in the cloud. This generally means that the components need to work equally well in any environment, which requires leveraging Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) or additional investments for PaaS applications, or both.  What’s the Problem? Although most companies can benefit from cloud computing, not all of them can clearly identify a business reason for doing so other than in very generic terms. I heard many companies claim “it’s cheaper”, or “it allows us to scale”, without any specific metric or clear strategy behind the adoption decision. Other companies have a very clear strategy behind cloud adoption and can precisely articulate business benefits, such as “we have a 500% increase in traffic twice a year, so we need to burst in the cloud to avoid doubling our network and server capacity”. Understanding the problem being solved through by adopting cloud computing can significantly help organizations determine the optimum path and timeline to adoption. Performance or Scalability? I stopped counting the number of times I heard “the cloud doesn’t scale; our database runs faster on a laptop”.  While performance and scalability are related concepts, they are nonetheless different in nature. Performance is a measure of response time under a given load (meaning with a specific number of users), while scalability is the performance curve over various loads. For example one system could see great performance with 100 users, but timeout with 1,000 users, in which case the system wouldn’t scale. However another system could have average performance with 100 users, but display the exact same performance with 1,000,000 users, in which case the system would scale. Understanding that cloud computing does not usually provide high performance, but instead provides the tools necessary to build a scalable system (usually using PaaS services such as queuing and data federation), is fundamental to proper cloud adoption. Uptime? Last but not least, you may want to read the Service Level Agreement of your cloud provider in detail if you haven’t done so. If you are expecting 99.99% uptime annually you may be in for a surprise. Depending on the component being used, there may be no associated SLA at all! Other components may be restarted at any time, or services may experience failover conditions weekly ( or more) based on current overall conditions of the cloud service provider, most of which are outside of your control. As a result, for PaaS cloud environments (and to a certain extent some IaaS systems), applications need to assume failure and gracefully retry to be successful in the cloud in order to provide service continuity to end users. About Herve Roggero Herve Roggero, Windows Azure MVP, is the founder of Blue Syntax Consulting (http://www.bluesyntax.net). Herve's experience includes software development, architecture, database administration and senior management with both global corporations and startup companies. Herve holds multiple certifications, including an MCDBA, MCSE, MCSD. He also holds a Master's degree in Business Administration from Indiana University. Herve is the co-author of "PRO SQL Azure" and “PRO SQL Server 2012 Practices” from Apress, a PluralSight author, and runs the Azure Florida Association.

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  • What am I missing about PHP?

    - by Aerovistae
    It's like this mythical thing that a dominating portion of developers say is just the best option for back-end development, a part of development about which I know virtually nothing beyond the absolute basics. So I've looked up PHP tutorials a bunch of times, trying to figure out why it's so powerful and common, but it's annoying as hell-- all the tutorials treat you like a new programmer. You know, this is how you make an If Else statement, here's a for loop, etc. The "Advanced Topics" show you how to make POST and GET statements and whatnot. But there must be more to it! I don't get it! That's practically no different from JavaScript. What am I missing about this language? What else can it do? Where's the power and versatility? I've heard it called a function soup; where are all the functions? Please chide me. I'm clearly missing something.

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  • Mapping Your Customer Experience Journey

    - by Michael Hylton
    For those who attended today’s Oracle Customer Experience Summit keynote you heard from Brian Curran talk about the strategies and best practices to implement customer experience (CX) in your organization.  He spoke about how this evolving journey begins by understanding six steps to transform your business and put your customers front and center.  Here are those key six steps: What are the strategic business objectives in your company? What are your operational objectives and KPIs necessary to measure a CX project? Build an income statement and create “what if” scenarios and see how changes impact your business’ bottom line.  Explore what keeps you from getting to your own goals for your business. Define the business objectives and opportunities you want to meet? Understand the trends and accelerators in the market?  What factors are going on in the market affect that impact your business?  Social?  Mobile?  Cloud?  Just to name a few.  Many of these trends may signal a change in the way people think about your business. What approach will you take to solve these issues?  Understand who your customer is.  How do you need to adapt your business to build relevant, personalized customer experiences. What technologies can you implement to address CX?  Does technology help you solve your problem? A great way to begin your customer experience journey is a concept called journey mapping, one of the most powerful and deceptively simple tools for unlocking CX innovation at your organization. Here is where you can learn more about how you can bring this concept into your business to drive great customer experiences.

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  • Google Analytics Visitors drop-off for certain region of site only

    - by crmpicco
    I have an issue with the tracking on my site where I have seen a dramatic drop off of visitors to the site from a certain region. I have four regions on my site at the moment, these are UK, EU, US and RoW (Rest of the World). The UK, EU and US regions are unaffected, only the RoW region suffers this drop-off. I have included a screen shot below from my GA account, which shows this effect. My GA code, which is included on every page on the site is below. I have changed the UA account number intentionally for this example. There have been no changes made to the GA account or the tracking code in a live environment for some considerable time, but for some reason I am seeing the drop-off for this region only. In the code below I am not tracking page views on certain pages as I have event tracking setup for these pages. <script type="text/javascript"> var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-18721873-5']); _gaq.push(['_setCookiePath', '/row/']); if ( typeof(p_page) != 'undefined') { // do nothing if user is on above pages // N.B. there are a series of conditions in this if statement checking that we are not on a particular page } else { _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); } </script>

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  • Adding delay between damage

    - by iQue
    I have a bunch of enemies chasing my main-character, and if they intersect I want them to damage him and that's all good. The problem is that right now they damage him as long as they stand around him, every frame! and since it gets called every frame my character's HP reaches 0 almost instantly. I've tried adding delay and I've tried a timertask, but can't get it to work. This is the code I use to check for intersection: private void checkCollision(Canvas canvas) { synchronized (getHolder()) { Rect h1 = happy.getBounds(); for (int i = 0; i < enemies.size(); i++) { for (int j = 0; j < bullets.size(); j++) { Rect b1 = bullets.get(j).getBounds(); Rect e1 = enemies.get(i).getBounds(); if (b1.intersect(e1)) { enemies.get(i).damageHP(5); bullets.remove(j); } if(e1.intersect(h1)){ happy.damageHP(5); // this is the statement that needs some sort of delay, I want them to damage him every 2 seconds they intersect him. } if(enemies.get(i).getHP() <= 0){ enemies.get(i).death(canvas, enemies); score.incScore(5); break; } if(happy.getHP() <= 0){ score.incScore(-50); //end-screen } } } } } If anyone knows the logic to do this please do tell.

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  • The long road to bug-free software

    - by Tony Davis
    The past decade has seen a burgeoning interest in functional programming languages such as Haskell or, in the Microsoft world, F#. Though still on the periphery of mainstream programming, functional programming concepts are gradually seeping into the imperative C# language (for example, Lambda expressions have their root in functional programming). One of the more interesting concepts from functional programming languages is the use of formal methods, the lofty ideal behind which is bug-free software. The idea is that we write a specification that describes exactly how our function (say) should behave. We then prove that our function conforms to it, and in doing so have proved beyond any doubt that it is free from bugs. All programmers already use one form of specification, specifically their programming language's type system. If a value has a specific type then, in a type-safe language, the compiler guarantees that value cannot be an instance of a different type. Many extensions to existing type systems, such as generics in Java and .NET, extend the range of programs that can be type-checked. Unfortunately, type systems can only prevent some bugs. To take a classic problem of retrieving an index value from an array, since the type system doesn't specify the length of the array, the compiler has no way of knowing that a request for the "value of index 4" from an array of only two elements is "unsafe". We restore safety via exception handling, but the ideal type system will prevent us from doing anything that is unsafe in the first place and this is where we start to borrow ideas from a language such as Haskell, with its concept of "dependent types". If the type of an array includes its length, we can ensure that any index accesses into the array are valid. The problem is that we now need to carry around the length of arrays and the values of indices throughout our code so that it can be type-checked. In general, writing the specification to prove a positive property, even for a problem very amenable to specification, such as a simple sorting algorithm, turns out to be very hard and the specification will be different for every program. Extend this to writing a specification for, say, Microsoft Word and we can see that the specification would end up being no simpler, and therefore no less buggy, than the implementation. Fortunately, it is easier to write a specification that proves that a program doesn't have certain, specific and undesirable properties, such as infinite loops or accesses to the wrong bit of memory. If we can write the specifications to prove that a program is immune to such problems, we could reuse them in many places. The problem is the lack of specification "provers" that can do this without a lot of manual intervention (i.e. hints from the programmer). All this might feel a very long way off, but computing power and our understanding of the theory of "provers" advances quickly, and Microsoft is doing some of it already. Via their Terminator research project they have started to prove that their device drivers will always terminate, and in so doing have suddenly eliminated a vast range of possible bugs. This is a huge step forward from saying, "we've tested it lots and it seems fine". What do you think? What might be good targets for specification and verification? SQL could be one: the cost of a bug in SQL Server is quite high given how many important systems rely on it, so there's a good incentive to eliminate bugs, even at high initial cost. [Many thanks to Mike Williamson for guidance and useful conversations during the writing of this piece] Cheers, Tony.

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  • Where did the notion of "one return only" come from?

    - by FredOverflow
    I often talk to Java programmers who say "Don't put multiple return statements in the same method." When I ask them to tell me the reasons why, all I get is "The coding standard says so." or "It's confusing." When they show me solutions with a single return statement, the code looks uglier to me. For example: if (blablabla) return 42; else return 97; "This is ugly, you have to use a local variable!" int result; if (blablabla) result = 42; else result = 97; return result; How does this 50% code bloat make the program any easier to understand? Personally, I find it harder, because the state space has just increased by another variable that could easily have been prevented. Of course, normally I would just write: return (blablabla) ? 42 : 97; But the conditional operator gets even less love among Java programmers. "It's incomprehensible!" Where did this notion of "one return only" come from, and why do people adhere to it rigidly?

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  • C# find a value from an object column using a string from another column

    - by Graham
    I have 2 list in foreach loops.. I currently use a 'switch' statement on the m.columnname and then assign the value of that column to another var map as per below.. If m.columnname = 'DocHeading' then v.docheading is assigned to map.value.. There will always be a match on m.columnname to a column in the var v. is there a way to get the value from the var v using the string from m.columnname? The reason is that the users will want to add and change column names and I dont want to have to change this code all the time.. Hope this makes sense List spreadMapping = new List(); foreach (var m in mappings) { foreach (var v in hvalues) { SpreadMappings map = new SpreadMappings(); switch (m.ColumnName) { case “DocHeading”: map.ColumnX = m.ColumnX; map.ColumnY = m.ColumnY; map.ColumnValue = v.DocHeading; map.ColumnName = m.ColumnName; map.ColumnId = v.Id; map.ColumnSheetName = sheetName; spreadMapping.Add(map); break;

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  • Assigning a script to a keystroke to toggle touchpad

    - by sodiumnitrate
    Since my default sony vaio shortcuts don't completely work in Ubuntu 12.04, I'd like to assign a script to Fn + F1, which toggles the touchpad on and off, so that the cursor would stop moving while I'm typing. Since I use a mouse and rarely need to use the touchpad, I don't want to use "disable touchpad while writing", which doesn't really seem to work anyway. I figured that using a script with the following command (this works, but I have to open up a terminal each time): xinput set-prop 12 "Device Enabled" 0 I have two problems at this point. One is that I don't know how to write this script so that it will toggle it off if it is on, and on if it is off. I know I should use an if statement but I don't know what value I should be checking to see if it is on or off. The second one is that I am having problems creating a new shortcut. I use System Settings - Keyboard - Shortcuts. I tried to add, to custom shortcuts, a new one by clicking the '+' sign. I named it Toggle Touchpad, and added the path to the executable script with the line above, by typing /home/irem/.toggletouchpad I have made it an executable with chmod. The problem is that when I click apply, and then click back on it to define the keystroke, it re-opens the dialogue. I cannot define new keys. (It says disabled on the right column of the entry). I have also tried xbindkeys, which almost constantly crashes. I'd prefer the system settings, if I can set the shortcut. I'd appreciate if anyone can help. Thanks.

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  • Question on methods in Object Oriented Programming

    - by mal
    I’m learning Java at the minute (first language), and as a project I’m looking at developing a simple puzzle game. My question relates to the methods within a class. I have my Block type class; it has its many attributes, set methods, get methods and just plain methods. There are quite a few. Then I have my main board class. At the moment it does most of the logic, positioning of sprites collision detection and then draws the sprites etc... As I am learning to program as much as I’m learning to program games I’m curious to know how much code is typically acceptable within a given method. Is there such thing as having too many methods? All my draw functionality happens in one method, should I break this into a few ‘sub’ methods? My thinking is if I find at a later stage that the for loop I’m using to cycle through the array of sprites searching for collisions in the spriteCollision() method is inefficient I code a new method and just replace the old method calls with the new one, leaving the old code intact. Is it bad practice to have a method that contains one if statement, and place the call for that method in the for loop? I’m very much in the early stages of coding/designing and I need all the help I can get! I find it a little intimidating when people are talking about throwing together a prototype in a day too! Can’t wait until I’m that good!

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  • Moving StarterSTS to the (Azure) Cloud

    - by Your DisplayName here!
    Quite some people asked me about an Azure version of StarterSTS. While I kinda knew what I had to do to make the move, I couldn’t find the time. Until recently. This blog post briefly documents the necessary changes and design decisions for the next version of StarterSTS which will work both on-premise and on Azure. Provider Fortunately StarterSTS is already based on the idea of “providers”. Authentication, roles and claims generation is based on the standard ASP.NET provider infrastructure. This makes the migration to different data stores less painful. In my case I simply moved the ASP.NET provider database to SQL Azure and still use the standard SQL Server based membership, roles and profile provider. In addition StarterSTS has its own providers to abstract resource access for certificates, relying party registration, client certificate registration and delegation. So I only had to provide new implementations. Signing and SSL keys now go in the Azure certificate store and user mappings (client certificates and delegation settings) have been moved to Azure table storage. The one thing I didn’t anticipate when I originally wrote StarterSTS was the need to also encapsulate configuration. Currently configuration is “locked” to the standard .NET configuration system. The new version will have a pluggable SettingsProvider with versions for .NET configuration as well as Azure service configuration. If you want to externalize these settings into e.g. a database, it is now just a matter of supplying a corresponding provider. Moving between the on-premise and Azure version will be just a matter of using different providers. URL Handling Another thing that’s substantially different on Azure (and load balanced scenarios in general) is the handling of URLs. In farm scenarios, the standard APIs like ASP.NET’s Request.Url return the current (internal) machine name, but you typically need the address of the external facing load balancer. There’s a hotfix for WCF 3.5 (included in v4) that fixes this for WCF metadata. This was accomplished by using the HTTP Host header to generate URLs instead of the local machine name. I now use the same approach for generating WS-Federation metadata as well as information card files. New Features I introduced a cache provider. Since we now have slightly more expensive lookups (e.g. relying party data from table storage), it makes sense to cache certain data in the front end. The default implementation uses the ASP.NET web cache and can be easily extended to use products like memcached or AppFabric Caching. Starting with the relying party provider, I now also provide a read/write interface. This allows building management interfaces on top of this provider. I also include a (very) simple web page that allows working with the relying party provider data. I guess I will use the same approach for other providers in the future as well. I am also doing some work on the tracing and health monitoring area. Especially important for the Azure version. Stay tuned.

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  • the requested resource is not available [closed]

    - by James Pj
    I have written a Java servlet program and run it through local Tomcat 7, But it was showing following error : HTTP Status 404 - /skypark/registration type Status report message /skypark/registration description The requested resource is not available. Apache Tomcat/7.0.33 I don't know what was the reason for it my Html page is <html> <head> <title> User registration </title> </head> <body> <form action="registration" method="post"> <center> <h2><b>Skypark User Registration</b></h2> <table border="0"> <tr><td> First Name </td><td> <input type="text" name="fname"/></br> </td></tr><tr><td> Last Name </td><td> <input type="text" name="lname"/></br> </td></tr><tr><td> UserName </td><td> <input type="text" name="uname"></br> </td></tr><tr><td> Enter Password </td><td> <input type="password" name="pass"></br> </td></tr><tr><td> Re-Type Password </td><td> <input type="password" name="pass1"></br> </td></tr><tr><td> Enter Email ID </td><td> <input type="email" name="email1"></br> </td></tr><tr><td> Phone Number </td><td> <input type="number" name="phone"> </td></tr><tr><td> Gender<br> </td></tr><tr><td> <input type="radio" name="gender" value="Male">Male</input></br> </td></tr><tr><td> <input type="radio" name="gender" value="Female">Female</input></br> </td></tr><tr><td> Enter Your Date of Birth<br> </td><td> <Table Border=0> <tr> <td> Date </td> <td>Month</td> <td>Year</td> </tr><tr> <td> <select name="date"> <option value="1">1</option> <option value="2">2</option> <option value="3">3</option> <option value="4">4</option> <option value="5">5</option> . . . have some code . . . </table> <input type="submit" value="Submit"></br> </center> </form> </body> </html> My servlet is : package skypark; import skypark.*; import java.io.*; import javax.servlet.*; import javax.servlet.http.*; import java.sql.*; public class Registration extends HttpServlet { public static Connection prepareConnection()throws ClassNotFoundException,SQLException { String dcn="oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver"; String url="jdbc:oracle:thin:@JamesPJ-PC:1521:skypark"; String usname="system"; String pass="tiger"; Class.forName(dcn); return DriverManager.getConnection(url,usname,pass); } public void doPost(HttpServletRequest req,HttpServletResponse resp)throws ServletException,IOException { resp.setContentType("text/html"); PrintWriter out=resp.getWriter(); try { String phone1,uname,fname,lname,dob,address,city,state,country,pin,email,password,gender,lang,qual,relegion,privacy,hobbies,fav; uname=req.getParameter("uname"); fname=req.getParameter("fname"); lname=req.getParameter("lname"); dob=req.getParameter("date"); address=req.getParameter("address"); city=req.getParameter("city"); state=req.getParameter("state"); country=req.getParameter("country"); pin=req.getParameter("pin"); email=req.getParameter("email1"); password=req.getParameter("password"); gender=req.getParameter("gender"); phone1=req.getParameter("phone"); lang=""; qual=""; relegion=""; privacy=""; hobbies=""; fav=""; int phone=Integer.parseInt(phone1); Connection con=prepareConnection(); String Query="Insert into regdetails values(?,?,?,?,?,?,?,?,?,?,?,?,?,?,?,?)"; PreparedStatement ps=con.prepareStatement(Query); ps.setString(1,uname); ps.setString(2,fname); ps.setString(3,lname); ps.setString(4,dob); ps.setString(5,address); ps.setString(6,city); ps.setString(7,state); ps.setString(8,country); ps.setString(9,pin); ps.setString(10,lang); ps.setString(11,qual); ps.setString(12,relegion); ps.setString(13,privacy); ps.setString(14,hobbies); ps.setString(15,fav); ps.setString(16,gender); int c=ps.executeUpdate(); String query="insert into passmanager values(?,?,?,?)"; PreparedStatement ps1=con.prepareStatement(query); ps1.setString(1,uname); ps1.setString(2,password); ps1.setString(3,email); ps1.setInt(4,phone); int i=ps1.executeUpdate(); if(c==1||c==Statement.SUCCESS_NO_INFO && i==1||i==Statement.SUCCESS_NO_INFO) { out.println("<html><head><title>Login</title></head><body>"); out.println("<center><h2>Skypark.com</h2>"); out.println("<table border=0><tr>"); out.println("<td>UserName/E-Mail</td>"); out.println("<form action=login method=post"); out.println("<td><input type=text name=uname></td>"); out.println("</tr><tr><td>Password</td>"); out.println("<td><input type=password name=pass></td></tr></table>"); out.println("<input type=submit value=Login>"); out.println("</form></body></html>"); } else { out.println("<html><head><title>Error!</title></head><body>"); out.println("<center><b>Given details are incorrect</b>"); out.println(" Please try again</center></body></html>"); RequestDispatcher rd=req.getRequestDispatcher("registration.html"); rd.include(req,resp); return; } } catch(Exception e) { out.println("<html><head><title>Error!</title><body>"); out.println("<b><i>Unable to process try after some time</i></b>"); out.println("</body></html>"); RequestDispatcher rd=req.getRequestDispatcher("registration.html"); rd.include(req,resp); return; } out.flush(); out.close(); } } And the web.xml file is <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <web-app xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_3_0.xsd" version="3.0" metadata-complete="true"> <servlet> <servlet-name>reg</servlet-name> <servlet-class>skypark.Registration</servlet-class> </servlet> <servlet-mapping> <servlet-name>reg</servlet-name> <url-pattern>/registration</url-pattern> </servlet-mapping> This i kept in C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Tomcat 7.0\webapps\skypark\WEB_INF\web.xml and servlet class in C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Tomcat 7.0\webapps\skypark\WEB_INF\classes\skypark and registration.html in C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Tomcat 7.0\webapps\skypark\ if any mistake in this makes above error means please help me.Thanks in advance....

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  • Is it worth replacing mouse by standalone trackpad for heavy code-editing? [on hold]

    - by heltonbiker
    I recently got more interested in improving my tools, workspace and worflow. The first sting came with a sore finger due to a crappy keyboard, and then after some research I fell in love with the "mechanical keyboard is what you need" doctrine, bought one (cherry MX Brown if you're curious), and am very happy with the results. Currently I am replacing my previous text editor (Geany) with Sublime Text 3, and am also very happy and feeling much more powerful and professional :) Well, but while I re-read all the ancient debates about VIM vs whatever-else, the following excerpt from a blog post got me thinking again about the mouse vs keyboard, and the "moving around from the very home row" (in VIM) versus gesturing away with the tiny and unstable mouse cursor: Reaching for a mouse may indeed slow you down, but developers are commonly on machines where the trackpad is a micro-hand movement away. Most novice programmers can click on a character on screen faster than an expert Vimmer can type 20jFp; or LkEEE or /word or any other nasty way Vimmers have to use. The point of a mouse is to make arbitrary on screen jumps efficient, and it’s very good at doing that. Don’t you ever think you can beat a mouse. Well, although there is some bitterness in this statement, it makes a lot of sense, and EVEN MORE if you consider your direct input to be a TRACKPAD conveniently placed in front of your spacebar (which oddly is where I like to put my mouse, rotated 90° ccw, due to a serious tendonitis in my right shoulder, already healed, but you knod...). So, the question is: Has anyone replaced mouse by a standalone trackpad, to work in code editing in a desktop machine (that is, with a sandalone keyboard)? Was it worth the change?

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  • C++ program...overshoots? [migrated]

    - by Zdrok
    I'm decent at C++, but I may have missed some nuance that applies here. Or maybe I completely missed a giant concept, I have no idea. My program was instantly crashing ("blah.exe is not responding") about 1/5 times it was run (other times it ran completely fine) and I tracked the problem down to a constructor for a world class that was called once in the beginning of the main function. Here is the code (in the constructor) that causes the problem: int ii; for(ii=0;ii<=255;ii++) { cout<<"ent "<<ii<<endl; entity_list[ii]=NULL; } for(ii=0;ii<=255;ii++) { cout<<"sec "<<ii<<endl; sector_list[ii]=NULL; } entity_list[0] = new Entity(0,0); entity_list[0]->_world = this; Specifically the second for loop. The cout references are new for the sake of telling where it is having trouble. It would print the entire "ent 1" to "ent 255" and then "sec 1" to "sec 255" and then crash right after, as if it was going for a 257th run through of the second for loop. I set the second for loop to go until "ii<=254" which stopped all crashes. Does C++ code tend to "overshoot" for loops or something? What is causing it to crash at this specific loop seemingly at random? By the way, entity_list and sector_list point to classes called Entity and Sector, respectively, but they are not constructing anything so I didn't think it would be relevant. I also have a forward declaration for the Entity class in a header for this, but since none were being constructed I didn't think it was relevant either. EDIT: It was due to the new Entity line, I assumed wrongly that the fact that altering the for statement to 254 fixed the crashes meant that it had to be there. I still don't understand why the for loop is related, though.

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  • Quoted on MVA Voices

    A couple of weeks ago, I received an email from the Dean of Microsoft Virtual Academy (MVA) asking for permission to quote a statement I made during a jump start. Following is an excerpt from that request: "Dear Jochen, I would like to thank you for providing insight as to how the Advanced HTML5 Jump Start helped you improve your skills.  I mentioned this to the leadership team at MVA, and they were pleased to hear this so much that they would like your permission to use a quote from your email to me on the MVA website." Of course! I really enjoy those free MVA jump starts - live and later the recordings. Actually, I prefer the live ones because you really have a chance to communicate with the MVA studio team and the experts in the chat. Luckily, the live stream is provided in two quality levels and with the remote situation of Mauritius, I always have to switch to 'Standard Quality' to avoid too much buffering and to enjoy a smooth experience. Later on, the recordings are great for rehearsal and repetition of the material. You can download and watch them offline while commuting, or what I'm going to do in the future - to use them as material for a study group within the Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community (MSCC). For sure, this is going to be a lot of fun, and I'm looking forward to work with other Windows-oriented software craftsmen in order to 'push' them towards Microsoft certifications. By chance, I discovered today that my quote has been published in the MVA Voices section: Click to enlarge: Screenshot of Microsoft Virtual Academy web site taken on 04.07.2013 Thank you very much, MVA - this made my day and I'm very happy to be quoted.

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  • Connecting two monitors at the corners

    - by fastmultiplication
    I am using two separate X screens on two monitors and I would like them to be connected at the lower right corner. That is, if you move to the lower right corner of screen0 the mouse should appear at the upper left of screen1. I do not want an entire edge of each monitor to be permeable to the mouse. I modified the xorg.conf file like so: Section "ServerLayout" Identifier "Layout0" Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0 Screen 1 "Screen1" Relative "Screen0" 1200 1000 InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard" InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer" EndSection (screen 0's resolution is 1280x1024) so there is a bit of overlap. However whenever I move the mouse to the bottom of screen0, the pointer appears at the upper left of screen1. And, the entire top of screen1 is permeable to the mouse and brings it to the lower left corner of screen0. I have tried various numbers in following the "relative" statement - if I put 1280 1024 the mouse does not cross over at all. If I use 1280 1023 the entire right side of screen0 is permeable. I haven't been able to find any documentation about how to explicitly tell the mouse where to crossover - is there some? It seems that xorg is being really aggressive in guessing where the mouse crossover should take place. Does anyone know how to do this? Thanks!

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  • Throwing and catching exceptions in the same function/method

    - by usr
    I've written a function that asks a user for input until user enters a positive integer (a natural number). Somebody said I shouldn't throw and catch exceptions in my function and should let the caller of my function handle them. I wonder what other developers think about this. I'm also probably misusing exceptions in the function. Here's the code in Java: private static int sideInput() { int side = 0; String input; Scanner scanner = new Scanner(System.in); do { System.out.print("Side length: "); input = scanner.nextLine(); try { side = Integer.parseInt(input); if (side <= 0) { // probably a misuse of exceptions throw new NumberFormatException(); } } catch (NumberFormatException numFormExc) { System.out.println("Invalid input. Enter a natural number."); } } while (side <= 0); return side; } I'm interested in two things: Should I let the caller worry about exceptions? The point of the function is that it nags the user until the user enters a natural number. Is the point of the function bad? I'm not talking about UI (user not being able to get out of the loop without proper input), but about looped input with exceptions handled. Would you say the throw statement (in this case) is a misuse of exceptions? I could easily create a flag for checking validity of the number and output the warning message based on that flag. But that would add more lines to the code and I think it's perfectly readable as it is. The thing is I often write a separate input function. If user has to input a number multiple times, I create a separate function for input that handles all formatting exceptions and limitations.

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  • is wisdom of what happens 'behind scenes' (in compiler, external DLLs etc.) important?

    - by I_Question_Things_Deeply
    I have been a computer-fanatic for almost a decade now. I've always loved and wondered how computers work, even from the purest, lowest hardware level to the very smallest pixel on the screen, and all the software around that. That seems to be my problem though ... as I try to write code (I'm pretty fluent at C++) I always sit there enormous amounts of time in front of a text-editor wondering how every line, statement, datum, function, etc. will correspond to every Assembly and machine instruction performed to do absolutely everything necessary for the kernel to allocate memory to run my compiled program, and all of the other hardware being used as well. For example ... I would write cout << "Before memory changed" << endl; and run the debugger to get the Assembly for this, and then try and reverse disassemble the Assembly to machine code based on my ISA, and then research every .dll, library file, linked library, linking process, linker source code of the program, the make file, the kernel I'm using's steps of processing this compilation, the hardware's part aside from the processor (e.g. video card, sound card, chipset, cache latency, byte-sized registers, calling convention use, DDR3 RAM and disk drive, filesystem functioning and so many other things). Am I going about programming wrong? I mean I feel I should know everything that goes on underneath English syntax on a computer program. But the problem is that the more I research every little thing the less I actually accomplish at all. I can never finish anything because of this mentality, yet I feel compelled to know everything... what should I do?

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  • Fail to boot after installation onto ASUS PC 1015PX

    - by strugglingbadly
    My new ASUS 1015PX has the usual Windows on the SDA1 partition - 100Gb, followed by SDA2 - 15Gb - as the recovery partition for Windows, and SDA3 with 183Gb for drive D:\ for windows. ASUS uses SDA4 - 19Mb for it's own use. 11.10 on an USB will load Ubuntu on a try basis and it seems OK, but every time I attempt an install, Ubuntu quickly shuts down and the restart process begins. This repeats endlessly. I've tried 10.04 Netbook Remix but that will not boot at all with the machine reporting - unknown keyword in config file gfxboot vesamenu.c32: not a COM32R image. I've gone through the above about 6 times each with the same results. I have also tried the above with the partitioning unchanged, and using gparted, with SDA3 formatted to ext4, windows D:\ reduced to 8Gb providing a 175Gb unallocated space - all to no avail. Further information: During my attempt to load 11.10, I notice that on the page which offers 3 options of loading, the first in the list includes the statement 'install INSIDE windows...' whereas the on line help shows 'install ALONGSIDE windows...'. (my caps for emphasis) I have double checked that I am using the correct download - not the install within windows option.

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  • Finite Numbers and ExplorerCanvas

    - by PhubarBaz
    I was working on my online mathematical graphing application, CloudGraph, and trying to make it work in IE. The app uses the HTML5 canvas element to draw graphs. Since IE doesn't support canvas yet I use ExplorerCanvas to provide that support for IE. However, it seems that when using excanvas, if you try to moveTo or drawTo a point that is not finite it loses it's mind and stops drawing anything else after that. I had no such problems in Firefox or Chrome so it took me awhile to figure out what was going on. Next I discovered that I needed a way to check if a variable was NaN or Inifinity or any other non-finite value so I could avoid calling moveTo() in that case. I started writing a long if statement, then I thought there has to be a better way. Sure enough there was. There just happens to be an isFinite() function built into Javascript just for this purpose. Who knew! It works great. Another difference I discovered with excanvas is that you must specify a starting point using a moveTo() when beginning a drawing path. Again, Chrome and Firefox are a lot more forgiving in this area so it took me a while to figure out why my lines weren't drawing. But, all is happy now and I'm a little wiser to the ways of the canvas.

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  • The long road to bug-free software

    - by Tony Davis
    The past decade has seen a burgeoning interest in functional programming languages such as Haskell or, in the Microsoft world, F#. Though still on the periphery of mainstream programming, functional programming concepts are gradually seeping into the imperative C# language (for example, Lambda expressions have their root in functional programming). One of the more interesting concepts from functional programming languages is the use of formal methods, the lofty ideal behind which is bug-free software. The idea is that we write a specification that describes exactly how our function (say) should behave. We then prove that our function conforms to it, and in doing so have proved beyond any doubt that it is free from bugs. All programmers already use one form of specification, specifically their programming language's type system. If a value has a specific type then, in a type-safe language, the compiler guarantees that value cannot be an instance of a different type. Many extensions to existing type systems, such as generics in Java and .NET, extend the range of programs that can be type-checked. Unfortunately, type systems can only prevent some bugs. To take a classic problem of retrieving an index value from an array, since the type system doesn't specify the length of the array, the compiler has no way of knowing that a request for the "value of index 4" from an array of only two elements is "unsafe". We restore safety via exception handling, but the ideal type system will prevent us from doing anything that is unsafe in the first place and this is where we start to borrow ideas from a language such as Haskell, with its concept of "dependent types". If the type of an array includes its length, we can ensure that any index accesses into the array are valid. The problem is that we now need to carry around the length of arrays and the values of indices throughout our code so that it can be type-checked. In general, writing the specification to prove a positive property, even for a problem very amenable to specification, such as a simple sorting algorithm, turns out to be very hard and the specification will be different for every program. Extend this to writing a specification for, say, Microsoft Word and we can see that the specification would end up being no simpler, and therefore no less buggy, than the implementation. Fortunately, it is easier to write a specification that proves that a program doesn't have certain, specific and undesirable properties, such as infinite loops or accesses to the wrong bit of memory. If we can write the specifications to prove that a program is immune to such problems, we could reuse them in many places. The problem is the lack of specification "provers" that can do this without a lot of manual intervention (i.e. hints from the programmer). All this might feel a very long way off, but computing power and our understanding of the theory of "provers" advances quickly, and Microsoft is doing some of it already. Via their Terminator research project they have started to prove that their device drivers will always terminate, and in so doing have suddenly eliminated a vast range of possible bugs. This is a huge step forward from saying, "we've tested it lots and it seems fine". What do you think? What might be good targets for specification and verification? SQL could be one: the cost of a bug in SQL Server is quite high given how many important systems rely on it, so there's a good incentive to eliminate bugs, even at high initial cost. [Many thanks to Mike Williamson for guidance and useful conversations during the writing of this piece] Cheers, Tony.

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  • In a specification, should I describe what a product does (ideally) or what it should/must do?

    - by Arlaud Pierre
    I'm writting a German specification (I'm not German). Differences may appear for this process in different cultures, especially in the terminology, but usually here's the idea: The client writes his needs and wishes in a document, called a scope statement or requirements document. The supplier tries to understand the actual need of the client (which might be different to what was written and to what the client meant to say and to what the client thinks he needs, etc.) The supplier writes a specification for the product, which should fill the client's need. The specification needs to be precise enough for the product to be made (ambiguity problems occur). The client and the supplier can check whether they have understood each other, and discuss details of the product. The client agrees with the specification (or at least its current iteration) and the supplier is ready to start the work. (it may of course be expected of you to disagree with this process, but this is irrelevant to my problem): I'm now somewhere around the last two steps and I've been criticized because I wrote what the product must do, and not what it will do ideally. Usually along the lines of The product must be able to perform task A And I was expected to write The product performs task A This is a simple word play, but I feel saying what the product does, while the product isn't even on the way to be made yet, is wrong. I would tend to consider a specification as a contract of what the product is expected to do (what it must do and how it should do it), and not what it does. Said differently, I feel this is the specification and not the manual of the end product…… Should I say what the product must do or what it does?

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  • Hosted Monitoring

    - by Grant Fritchey
    The concept of using services to take the place of writing a lot of your own code goes way, way back in computing history. The fundamentals of the concept go back to the dawn of computing with places like IBM hosting time-shares for computing power that you could rent for short periods of time. But things really took off with the building of the Web. Now, all the growth with virtual machines, hosted machines, hosted services from vendors like Amazon and Microsoft, the need to keep all of your software locally on physical boxes is just going the way of the dodo. There will likely always be some pieces of software that you keep on machines on your property or on your person, but the concept of keeping fundamental services locally is going away. As someone put it to me once, if you were starting a business right now, would you bother setting up an Exchange server to manage your email or would you just go to one of the external mail services for everything? For most of us (who are not Exchange admins) the answer is pretty easy. With all this momentum to having external services manage more and more of the infrastructure that’s not business unique, why would you burn up a server and license instance setting up monitoring for your SQL Servers? Of course, some of you are dealing with hyper-sensitive data that might require, through law or treaty, that you lock it down and never expose it to the intertubes, but most of us are not. So, what if someone else took on the basic hassle of setting up monitoring on your systems? That’s what we’re working on here at Red Gate. Right now it’s a private test, but we’re growing it and developing it and it’ll be going to a public beta, probably (hopefully) this year. I’m running it on my machines right now. The concept is pretty simple. You put a relay on your server, poke a hole in your firewall for it, and we start monitoring your server using SQL Monitor. It’s actually shocking how easy it is to get going. You still have to adjust your alerting thresholds, but that’s a standard part of alerting. Your pain threshold and my pain threshold for any given alert may be different. But from there, we do all the heavy lifting, keeping your data online and available, providing you with access to the information about how your servers are behaving, everything. Maybe it’s just me, but I’m really excited by this. I think we’re getting to a place where we can really help the small and medium sized businesses get a monitoring solution in place, quickly and easily. All you crazy busy, and possibly accidental, DBAs and system admins finally can set up monitoring without taking all the time to configure systems, run installs, and all the rest. You just have to tweak your alerts and you’re ready to run. If you are interested in checking it out, you can apply for the closed beta through the Monitor web page.

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