Search Results

Search found 5435 results on 218 pages for 'ones and zeroes'.

Page 100/218 | < Previous Page | 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107  | Next Page >

• Partial upgrade on 12.04, how to stop nagging after locking to a working NVIDIA & xorg

  - by alsk

  How to stop the upgrade manager from offering updates and upgrades that potentially would harm my working 2D and 3D graphics? Finally, I got 12.04 working as it should: with nvidia-173 drivers by downgrading xorg and locking the version: On my 32-bit system on Athlon64, with (Albatron) NVIDIA GeForce FX5700XT, locked (/pinned) to xorg 1:7.6-7ubuntu7, xserver-xorg-core 2:11.1-0obuntu10.07, nvidia-173 173.14.35-0ubuntu0.2? An annoying thing left is that every time the updates are checked, I get warning of partial updates, and ambiguous options of "partial update" and "close". Ambiguous in that sense that if I click close, I will get option to update a few packages, which has been OK, while "partial update" would like to update my kernel to 3.2, alter xorg, remove nvidia-173 etc., and update mesa etc. This is not what I call appropriate, after locking XORG and NVIDIA drivers to working ones. One may say according to package management logic it may be correct, but to me as an user it makes little sense. Last Ubuntu that worked without big mess for me was 10.10, hence I will not put 12.10 to my "production" system, until I can be sure it will not trash the system again. P.S. Is there a recommended way to keep NVIDIA GeForce FX working with 3D on Ubuntu... in future?

  Read the article

• Addicted to the MIX Buzz

  - by Dave Campbell

  Well it's the Friday before MIX10, and I'm officially of no use to anybody. I'll be driving up to 'Vegas Sunday ... hopefully rolling in mid-late afternoon, checking in at my $31.50/night (including WiFi) Motel, and getting registered then hanging out around registration to see who is there. First organized thing to do is 9PM, so I'm open to suggestions Sunday evening... maybe we can get a gang together for dinner ?? Monday is the Keynote ... I'm addicted to the buzz in the ballroom the first day, hope to be close to the front, trying to live blog. Then straight to Ballroom A and stake out the spot I'll be in for all 3 days, and you all know why :) I've tagged 40 sessions that I 'want' to see, and there's only 12 slots... damn... if I could, I'd try the Multiplicity thing, but I'm afraid I'd get the idiot first try -- or maybe got that one already :) ... but at least I tagged them to make it easy to find after the videos are up. Stuff going on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday night. I'm staying over for an event on Thursday, and driving back on Friday. I'm not sure how much blogging I'll be doing, but I'll try to hit some 'Cream high spots. I'm sure everyone #NotAtMIX is going to be tuned into the sessions online. I'll be wearing TShirts with WynApse.com and SilverlightCream.com printed on the back... so if you see some old curmudgeon with such a shirt, IT'S ME! I look forward to seeing all the people I only see once or twice a year, and meeting ones I haven't met yet What a week... Bring It On and Stay in the 'Light! Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 4    MIX10

  Read the article

• Where can I find video and audio drivers for my netbook?

  - by Ari

  I got a little netbook yesterday (an Acer Aspire One) for schoolwork and read in numerous reviews Ubuntu was a must. I dove into it blindly and downloaded 12.04 LTS and though I admit it's faster than before, I have no idea how it works yet and was stupid enough to get rid of the Windows 7 Starter that was on there before completely. I can see myself getting used to the rest of Ubuntu, but the main issue is that it seems to have eaten all of my drivers and I don't know where to get any Ubuntu compatible ones. Any video at all is jilty and kind of creepy and any audio is very distorted and REALLY creepy. I understand that this is a tiny $150 typing and light web use school device I'm talking about, but I feel really stupid making the poor thing worse than it was before and not knowing what to do about it. Does anyone know how to install graphics/sound drivers? Or, alternatively, does anyone know where I can get a copy of Windows 7 Starter. I can see myself liking this if the problems are fixable, but if not I still have the product key and would be able to tackle the problem by myself with that.

  Read the article

• Removing specific part of filename (what's after the second dash) for all files in a folder

  - by Bodo

  I use the command line utility youtube-dl to download videos from YouTube and make mp3s from them with avconv. I'm doing this under Ubuntu 14.04 and very happy with it. The utility downloads the files and saves them with the following name scheme: TITLE(artist-track)-ID.mp3 So an actual filename looks like: EPIC RAP BATTLE of MANLINESS-_EzDRpkfaO4.mp3 Some other file names in the folder look like: EPIC RAP BATTLE of MANLINESS-_EzDRpkfaO4.mp3 Martin Garrix - Animals (Official Video)-gCYcHz2k5x0.mp3 Stromae - Papaoutai-oiKj0Z_Xnjc.mp3 At first, this was no problem. It didn't bother me while listening to my music in Rhytmbox. But when moving to phone or other devices it is pretty confusing to see a so long name, and some players, like the Samsung ones, treat that last part (id after second dash) of the name as Album or something. I'd like to create a bash script that removes what's after the second dash in the name for all files, so it'll make them like this: From: Martin Garrix - Animals (Official Video)-gCYcHz2k5x0.mp3 To: Martin Garrix - Animals (Official Video).mp3 Is it also possible to instruct youtube-dl to exclude the ID from now on? I am currently downloading with the command: youtube-dl --extract-audio --audio-quality 0 --audio-format mp3 URL

  Read the article

• What's the relationship between meta-circular interpreters, virtual machines and increased performance?

  - by Gomi

  I've read about meta-circular interpreters on the web (including SICP) and I've looked into the code of some implementations (such as PyPy and Narcissus). I've read quite a bit about two languages which made great use of metacircular evaluation, Lisp and Smalltalk. As far as I understood Lisp was the first self-hosting compiler and Smalltalk had the first "true" JIT implementation. One thing I've not fully understood is how can those interpreters/compilers achieve so good performance or, in other words, why is PyPy faster than CPython? Is it because of reflection? And also, my Smalltalk research led me to believe that there's a relationship between JIT, virtual machines and reflection. Virtual Machines such as the JVM and CLR allow a great deal of type introspection and I believe they make great use it in Just-in-Time (and AOT, I suppose?) compilation. But as far as I know, Virtual Machines are kind of like CPUs, in that they have a basic instruction set. Are Virtual Machines efficient because they include type and reference information, which would allow language-agnostic reflection? I ask this because many both interpreted and compiled languages are now using bytecode as a target (LLVM, Parrot, YARV, CPython) and traditional VMs like JVM and CLR have gained incredible boosts in performance. I've been told that it's about JIT, but as far as I know JIT is nothing new since Smalltalk and Sun's own Self have been doing it before Java. I don't remember VMs performing particularly well in the past, there weren't many non-academic ones outside of JVM and .NET and their performance was definitely not as good as it is now (I wish I could source this claim but I speak from personal experience). Then all of a sudden, in the late 2000s something changed and a lot of VMs started to pop up even for established languages, and with very good performance. Was something discovered about the JIT implementation that allowed pretty much every modern VM to skyrocket in performance? A paper or a book maybe?

  Read the article

• Plastic Clamshell Packaging Voted Worse Design Ever

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  We’ve all been there: frustrated and trying free a new purchase from it’s plastic clamshell jail. You’re not alone, the packaging design has been voted the worst in history. In a poll at Quora, users voted on the absolute worst piece of design work they’d encountered. Overwhelmingly, they voted the annoying-to-open clamshell design to the top. The author of the top comment/entry, Anita Shillhorn writes: “Design should help solve problems” — clamshells are supposed to make it harder to steal small products and easier for employees to arrange on display — but this packaging, she says, makes new ones, such as time wasted, frustration, and the little nicks and scrapes people incur as they just try to get their damn lightbulb out. This is a product designed for the manufacturers and the retailers, not the end users. There is even a Wikipedia page devoted to “wrap rage,” “the common name for heightened levels of anger and frustration resulting from the inability to open hard-to-remove packaging.” Hit up the link below for more entries in their worst-design poll. Before you go, if you’ve got a great tip for getting goods out of the plastic shell they ship in, make sure to share it in the comments. What Is The Worst Piece of Design Ever Done? [via The Atlantic] HTG Explains: What Is RSS and How Can I Benefit From Using It? HTG Explains: Why You Only Have to Wipe a Disk Once to Erase It HTG Explains: Learn How Websites Are Tracking You Online

  Read the article

• How can I justify software testing to management?

  - by Nate

  I work for a small company (less than 200 employees) whose software group only makes up a small part of our staff (4 employees, occasionally with a few contractors). The four of us have been making strides in transitioning to better practices, and one of the next logical steps is to improve our testing. As anyone who has done any meaningful tests knows, testing takes a lot of time - and at my company, it takes too much time to justify to management, so we generally do what little we do on the sly. I don't think this is serving us well, as we keep coming up against otherwise avoidable problems when we ship under-tested software. I would like to be able to come to management with a justification for hiring a dedicated software test engineer (someone who can both write automated tests and perform manual ones). Are there any good published studies that show the benefits of adding such a position to a small company? Where can I find information about costs associated with the position? I plan on doing a little number crunching on our own history, but having some external sources to point to would help bolster my case.

  Read the article

• What are some good examples of exuberant in-game instructions for telling the player to repeatedly smash a button?

  - by Michael

  What are some good examples of exuberant in-game instructions for telling the player to repeatedly and quickly press a button or perform an action? I'm especially interested in examples in retro games (e.g., from the NES, SNES, and 1980-90s arcade eras), and I would love to see examples with text, graphics, or both. To illustrate, here are a few examples of the type of instructions that I'm thinking of: Smash the A button to lift something heavy! Toggle the joystick back and forth to break free! Quickly press the button to build power in a meter! I'm working on a 2D iOS game with retro-style pixel art, and there's a point where I want the player to quickly tap on a sprite to complete an action. I have a serviceable starting point -- the word "TAP" flashing with an arrow repeatedly moving downward beneath it: But it still doesn't feel quite right. I would love to see some actual examples from the golden days of 2D gaming to use as reference material. I know examples abound, but I'm just struggling to think of any concrete ones at the moment. Can you think of any examples of this type of thing in old games?

  Read the article

• Setting up VPS: How to configure name servers

  - by MeltingDog

  So I got a VPS set up (LAMP) and have transfered a couple of sites over. Now I want to point my domain names from the old host to the new VPS host, which does not have any name servers yet. On my registrars console I have set the domain name 'www.mydomain.com' domain host settings to point to my VPS's ip address, eg: ns1.mydomain.com = 111.222.3.4 and ns2.mydomain.com = 111.222.3.4 I then lowered the TTL to one hour. I then switched the Nameservers on that domain to these new ones. (ns1/2.mydomain.com) In WHM I then set the servers name servers to ns1.mydomain.com and ns2.mydomain.com. I waited an hour to test...but nothing changed - the domain name still directed to the old host. Have I missed something? Is the some other record I need to change on the DNS? I find this very confusing, does anyone know a resource or can provide a step by step guide on how to configure a new servers nameservers? Thanks EDIT: added image (sorry bout the censoring. Client insists) On my regisrars console: And on my VPS' WHM:

  Read the article

• GLSL, is it possible to offsetting vertices based on height map colour?

  - by Rob

  I am attempting to generate some terrain based upon a heightmap. I have generated a 32 x 32 grid and a corresponding height map - In my vertex shader I am trying to offset the position of the Y axis based upon the colour of the heightmap, white vertices being higher than black ones. //Vertex Shader Code #version 330 uniform mat4 modelMatrix; uniform mat4 viewMatrix; uniform mat4 projectionMatrix; uniform sampler2D heightmap; layout (location=0) in vec4 vertexPos; layout (location=1) in vec4 vertexColour; layout (location=3) in vec2 vertexTextureCoord; layout (location=4) in float offset; out vec4 fragCol; out vec4 fragPos; out vec2 fragTex; void main() { // Retreive the current pixel's colour vec4 hmColour = texture(heightmap,vertexTextureCoord); // Offset the y position by the value of current texel's colour value ? vec4 offset = vec4(vertexPos.x , vertexPos.y + hmColour.r, vertexPos.z , 1.0); // Final Position gl_Position = projectionMatrix * viewMatrix * modelMatrix * offset; // Data sent to Fragment Shader. fragCol = vertexColour; fragPos = vertexPos; fragTex = vertexTextureCoord; } However the code I have produced only creates a grid with none of the y vertices higher than any others.

  Read the article

• JavaOne 2012 Day 1

  - by Geertjan

  Day 1, Sunday, started the night before for those attending the NetBeans Party at Johnny Foley's: Invitations had been sent out prior to the party to all speakers for NetBeans Day, as well as speakers in JavaOne sessions where NetBeans is going to be used. That turns out to be around 40 people, who hung out until quite late, with snacks and drinks. Next day, NetBeans Day had most sessions with completely packed rooms, which means there were around 300 people! Panel discussions around central themes in the NetBeans ecosystem (Java EE, JavaFX, and NetBeans Platform) were held, which resulted in a whole bunch of people up on stage throughout the day, such as this group of speakers in the Java EE session: From left to right above you see Sean Comerford from ESPN.com, John Yeary the Java EE panel moderator and JUG lead from Greenville, Cagatay Civici the PrimeFaces lead developer, Glenn Holmer long time NetBeans enthusiast (more on him below) from the Weyco Group, and NetBeans/Java EE book author David Heffelfinger. There were panels just like the above for JavaFX and the NetBeans Platform too, with very interesting and dynamic talks, such as one by JavaFX book authors Gail and Paul Anderson, who showed off this brilliant JavaFX/NetBeans Platform mashup: NetBeans Day ended with a good discussion about how to get involved in the NetBeans community, wrapping up with an award ceremony with two very special NetBeans community awards: Then everyone caught buses to the Masonic Auditorium, where 4 hours of keynotes took place. This is what the room looked like: The 4 hours ended with a very well received HTML5/NetBeans demo, showing of NetBeans IDE 7.3 features, by NetBeans director John Ceccarelli. And I liked this slide during an earlier keynote session by Oracle VP Hasan Rizvi: There was really a lot of love for NetBeans during the JavaOne keynote sessions and I don't remember hearing any other IDE being mentioned, in any way at all. Next there was the Duke's Choice Award ceremony, outside the Hilton in a cool lounge area, where, among others, Timon and Angelo from the NetBeans Platform community received their awards for AgroSense and MICE. In between all of the above, I met very many friends from previous conferences, as well as several new ones. It was clearly a great start to the conference. Looking forward to what the rest of the week will bring!

  Read the article

• Ugly/Inconsistent Theming in Ubuntu Gnome 12.10

  - by Erland

  Some applications are displaying really ugly widgets and menus. I think it's a GTK issue and perhaps more particularly, only applies to GTK2 apps but I'm not sure. The numerous questions on here that deal with GTK2 v GTK3 themes do not answer my problem. Here is my situation: I'm using Ubuntu Gnome with Gnome Shell (installed using the "upgrade" instructions, rather than fresh install) with the default Adwaita theme The reason I did an upgrade instead of fresh install is because I'm on a Macbook Air and there is no mac image/iso for Ubuntu Gnome Previously, I did a fresh install of Ubuntu Gnome 12.10 and had no theming problems Now, apps like nautilus, rhythmbox, brasero, even third-party ones like Lightread look exactly as expected but other apps, including Firefox, Inkscape, GIMP, Libreoffice look awful. Some examples: Firefox with ugly location bar: http://ubuntuone.com/3e2X0JTa4CT4afC4303U9c vs nautilus location bar: http://ubuntuone.com/3TbHWWuNMcJnlpI4IpjiUO GIMP file dialogue (like Windows 95!): http://ubuntuone.com/4ioCcqq3flgO7zAWgAhfWy vs the rhythmbox file dialogue (correct): http://ubuntuone.com/2xLplCOBvQnyeqdsTGdgXq Menus in Libreoffice (very bad for usability): http://ubuntuone.com/26WTaEz4PMGmiItGeSmBjZ vs menus in rhythmbox: http://ubuntuone.com/4Ib4thMLqohsle6J5KEvuI I've been searching for a solution to this problem for some time. The logical explanation is that all the GTK3 apps are working and anything that is still using GTK2 is not. If that's the case though, why did the same installation (Ubuntu Gnome 12.10) and the same theme (Adwaita) previously work with all those GTK2 apps? Desperate for help!

  Read the article

• Is this possible?

  - by PythonNewbie2

  Hello, I'm exploring some technologies and JSP with JSF 2.0 and Primefaces seems really cool. I'm new to all of these, but I'm a fast learner. I wondering if I can create the web app I want withh JSP/JSF/Primefaces or should I be looking to different technologies? If I should, which ones do you recommend? Here's a basic description of the app: Users log in with their username and password (maybe I can somehow incorporate google OPENID)? With a really nice UI, they will be presented a large list of questions specific to a certain category, for example, JSP. When they click on any of these questions, a little input opens up below it to allow the user to put in a link. If the link they enter has the same question on that webpage the URL points to, they will be awarded one point. This question then disappears and gets added to a different page that has a list of all correctly linked questions. On the right side of the screen, there will be a leaderboard with the usernames of the people with the top ten points. Is this possible with JSP/JSF/Primefaces, or should I be looking elsewhere for a different web technology? The idea is relatively simple - to be able to compile links to external websites for specific questions. I know I can build the UI easily with Primefaces. What I'm not sure is if JSP/JSF gives the ability to parse HTML at a certain URL to see if it contains words. I can do this with python easily by using urllib. Any help would be appreciated!!! What would be more helpful than a "Yes" or "No" answer would be links to where I can see sample code of external HTML parsing. Your input is truly appreciated! Thanks!

  Read the article

• How to indicate reliability when reporting availability of competencies

  - by Jan Doggen

  We have employees with competencies: Pete Welder Carpenter Melissa Carpenter Assume they both work 40 hours/week, and have not yet been assigned work. We need to report the availability of these competencies, expressed in hours. As far as I can see now, we can report this in two ways: Method A. When someone has multiple competencies, count them both. Welder 40 hours Carpenter 80 hours Method B. When someone has multiple competencies, count an equal division of hours for each Welder 20 hours Carpenter 60 hours Method A has our preference: - A good planner will know to plan the least available competency first. If 30 hours of welding is planned, we will be left with 10 welder, 50 carpenter. - Method B has the disadvantage that the planner thinks he cannot plan the job when 30 hours of welding is required. However, if we report this we would like to give an estimate of the reliability of the numbers for each competency, i.e. how much are these over-reported? In my example A, would I say that carpenter is 100% over-reported, or 50%, or maybe another number? How would I calculate this for large numbers of competencies? I'm sure we are not the first ones dealing with this, is there a 'usual' way of doing this in planning? Additionally: - Would there be an even better method than A or B? - Optionally, we also have an preference order of competencies (like: use him/her in this order), Pete could be 1. welder 2. carpenter. Does this introduce new options?

  Read the article

• Unavailable packages repository

  - by bitmask

  I'm running ubuntu 11.10 (oneiric) on this machine, and suddenly, apt is unable to update properly. If I ask it to update its package information, by running apt-get update (or alternatively telling the update manager to "check"), it succeeds for about 120 packages (more precisely, I get about 120 Ign/Hit notes) and then says it cannot find universe Sources and restricted amd64: Hit http://de.archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-backports/multiverse Translation-en Hit http://de.archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-backports/restricted Translation-en Hit http://de.archive.ubuntu.com oneiric-backports/universe Translation-en Err http://de.archive.ubuntu.com oneiric/universe Sources 404 Not Found [IP: 141.30.13.20 80] Err http://de.archive.ubuntu.com oneiric/restricted amd64 Packages 404 Not Found [IP: 141.30.13.20 80] W: Failed to fetch http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/oneiric/universe/source/Sources 404 Not Found [IP: 141.30.13.20 80] W: Failed to fetch http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/oneiric/restricted/binary-amd64/Packages 404 Not Found [IP: 141.30.13.20 80] E: Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored, or old ones used instead. I manually checked the de server and cannot find anything wrong with the stuff it's complaining about. Also it looks pretty much like, say, the us mirror. But oddly enough, the IP it lists, seems to point to a debian package server, which obviously does not contain ubuntu packages. So, is this a local problem that I can fix somehow (and if so, how?) or is there actually some server down right now?

  Read the article

• Moving from Silverlight 4 Beta to RC - Part 2

  In my previous post I talked about updating my development environment from Silverlight 4 Beta to Silverlight 4 RC (release candidate). After updating, I opened the solution for my Task-It project and found that several things were broken. I would've been surprised if it just worked as is! What disappointed me is that after spending a decent amount of time searching the web, I could not find information telling me what I needed to update/change...and wouldn't it be nice if there was a wizard to update it for you? What changed? I wish I had made notes along the line of each of the things I found, but here are a few that I can recall: In the Web project, the following dll's no longer exist: System.Web.DomainServices.dll System.Web.DomainServices.LinqToSql.dll (if you are using the Entity Framework I believe that one is System.Web.DomainServices.EntityFramework.dll) System.Web.Ria.dll In the Silverlight project: System.Windows.Ria.dll I'm not positive which new assemblies need to be referenced for your project, but I'm going to list the ones I think you need. One way to verify is to create a new Silverlight application with support for WCF RIA Services and see which dlls are included. In the Web project: System.Data.Entity.dll System.ServiceModel.DomainServices.EntityFramework.dll (I've moved from LinqToSql to EntityFramework, so I'm not sure which one the LinqToSql stuff comes from) System.ServiceModel.DomainServices.Hosting.dll System.ServiceModel.DomainServices.Server.dll In the Silverlight project: System.ServiceModel.DomainServices.Client.dll System.ServiceModel.DomainServices.Client.Web.dll System.ServiceModel.Web.Extensions.dll Where are these dll's? These all live in either the Silverlight or RIA Services subdirectories under:         C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs Of if you are on a 64-bit machine like me:         C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs Wrap up Good luck, and I hope this helps to get you back in business! If anyone finds anything that I've missed, please enter a comment and I'll update the post accordingly.Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

  Read the article

• software architecture (OO design) refresher course

  - by PeterT

  I am lead developer and team lead in a small RAD team. Deadlines are tight and we have to release often, which we do, and this is what keep the business happy. While we (the development team) are trying to maintain the quality of the code (clean and short methods), I can't help but notice that the overall quality of the OO design&architecture is getting worse over the time - the library we are working on is gradually reducing itself to a "bag of functions". Well, we try to use the design patterns, but since we don't really have much time for a design as such we are mostly using the creational ones. I have read Code Complete / Design Patterns (GOF & enterprise) / Progmatic Programmer / and many books from Effective XXX series. Should I re-read them again as I have read them a long time ago and forgotten quite a lot, or there are other / better OO design / software architeture books been published since then which I should definitely read? Any ideas, recommendations on how can I get the situation under control and start improving the architecture. The way I see it - I will start improving the architectural / design quality of software components I am working on and then will start helping other team members once I find what is working for me.

  Read the article

• Data binding in web UI frameworks, what's the deal?

  - by c-smile

  I believe that most of modern Web frameworks that pretend to be MVC ones also has a notion of data binding in one form or another. Examples: AngularJS, EmberJS, KnockoutJS, etc. I am assuming that "data binding" is a declarative definition (oxymoron, no?) of live link between data (a.k.a. model) and its representation (a.k.a. view). With some transformers in between (a.k.a. controllers). I understand why declarativeness is kind of appealing but also understand that as usual it comes with the price. In particular: 1. Live binding is quite heavy, either with dirty watch (high CPU consumption) or with Object.observe() (high memory consumption with high CPU load in some scenarios). 2. There is a "frame" part in the framework word, means there are some boundaries/limits that can be hard to overcome if you need slightly more than it was designed for. Quite usual time split: 90% of features are made in 10% of project time. But 10% rest take 90% of project time. I suspect (a.k.a. educated guess) that those MVC things are not helping to implement more functionality in less time... If so their usage motivation is not quite clear. As an example: last week wanted to find virtual list idea/solution. Found one in vanilla JavaScript that is 120 LOC. Implementation of the same but in AngualrJS is about 420 LOC. Most of the code there seems like a fight with the framework itself... So is my question: what benefits that MVC stuff or data binding give us? Is it just a buzzword popular among project managers or they give us something useful. If later one then what exactly?

  Read the article

• I don't know C. And why should I learn it?

  - by Stephen

  My first programming language was PHP (gasp). After that I started working with JavaScript. I've recently done work in C#. I've never once looked at low or mid level languages like C. The general consensus in the programming-community-at-large is that "a programmer who hasn't learned something like C, frankly, just can't handle programming concepts like pointers, data types, passing values by reference, etc." I do not agree. I argue that: Because high level languages are easily accessible, more "non-programmers" dive in and make a mess In order to really get anything done in a high level language, one needs to understand the same similar concepts that most proponents of "learn-low-level-first" evangelize about. Some people need to know C; those people have jobs that require them to write low to mid-level code. I'm sure C is awesome, and I'm sure there are a few bad programmers who know C. Why the bias? As a good, honest, hungry programmer, if I had to learn C (for some unforeseen reason), I would learn C. Considering the multitude of languages out there, shouldn't good programmers focus on learning what advances us? Shouldn't we learn what interests us? Should we not utilize our finite time moving forward? Why do some programmers disagree with this? I believe that striving for excellence in what you do is the fundamental deterministic trait between good programmers and bad ones. Does anyone have any real world examples of how something written in a high level language—say Java, Pascal, PHP, or Javascript—truely benefitted from a prior knowledge of C? Examples would be most appreciated.

  Read the article

• Fail to upgrade from 10.10 to 11.04

  - by Ana Solís

  I was using Natty for a while, but while updating to the new release there was a blackout and it wasn't able to finish and Ubuntu failed to load after that. I thought, no worries I got my files backed up and I still got my 10.10 CD I used to put Ubuntu in my computer in the first place. So I installed it again, with the plan of using the update manager to get myself with the current release... Except I get this error: W:Failed to fetch http://extras.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/natty/main/source/Sources.gz 404 Not Found , W:Failed to fetch http://extras.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/natty/main/binary-amd64/Packages.gz 404 Not Found , E:Some index files failed to download, they have been ignored, or old ones used instead. My internet connection is just fine, seeing as I'm able to post this, but I don't know what else to do. Tried to download Quantal in another computer and putting it on a DVD (since it won't fit in a CD...) and the stupid thing fails to load it, it skips it over and goes right back to Maverick... (not a faulty disk, it installed Ubuntu just fine in a friends computer...)

  Read the article

• What is the correlation between programming language and experience/skills of their users?

  - by Petr Pudlák

  I'm sure there is such a correlation, because experience and skill leads good programmers to picking languages that are better for them, in which they're more productive, and working in a language forms how programmers think and influences their methods and skills. Is there any research or some statistical data of this phenomenon? Perhaps this is not a purely academic question. For example, if someone is starting a new project, it could be worth considering a language (among other criteria of course) for which there is a higher chance of finding or attracting experienced programmers. Update: Please don't fixate on the last paragraph. It's not my intention to choose a language based on this criterion, and I know there are other far more important ones. My interested is mostly academic. It comes from the (subjective) observation and I wonder if someone has researched it a bit. Also, I'm talking about a correlation, not about a rule. Sure there are both great and terrible programmers in every language. Just that in general it seems to me there is a correlation.

  Read the article

• Enigmail - how to encrypt only part of the message?

  - by Lukasz Zaroda

  When I confirmed my OpenPGP key on launchpad I got a mail from them, that was only partially encrypted with my key (only few paragraphs inside the message). Is it possible to encrypt only chosen part of the message with Enigmail? Or what would be the easiest way to accomplish it? Added #1: I found a pretty convenient way for producing ASCII armoured encrypted messages by using Nautilus interface (useful for ones that for some reason doesn't like to work with terminal). You need to install Nautilus-Actions Configuration Tool, and add there a script with a name eg. "Encrypt in ASCII" and parameters: path: gpg parameters: --batch -sear %x %f The trick is that now you can create file, with extension that would be name of your recipient, you can then fill it with your message, right click it in Nautilus, choose "Encrypt in ASCII", and you will have encrypted ascii file which content you can (probably) just copy to your message. But if anybody knows more convenient solution please share it. Added #1B: In the above case if you care more about security of your messages, It's worth to turning off invisible backup files that gedit creates every time, you create new document, or just remember to delete them.

  Read the article

• Exadata X3 In-Memory Database Machine: To be or not to be

  - by Luis Moreno Campos

  Since Larry Ellison announced Oracle Exadata X3 as the new generation of the Database Machine, he established the product in the In-Memory Database arena. And that annoyed some people. We all know that In-Memory Databases are the ones that *only* execute in memory and use the other layers of storage for persistency (mainly disk). Oracle database has always been a technology that uses memory as a caching mechanism and that hasn't change nor it will change with Oracle Database 12c. So this is the central point of fuss when it comes to announcing an Engineered Systems as In-Memory Database, when in fact it still runs Oracle Database, not vanilla but still the same product. Let me tell you purist people out there: when you find no new ground breaking point to get all excited about you decide to bash it, and go against its claims. It's not like a car manufacturer that launches a mini-van in the market and calls it a Sports Car, we are talking about a fundamental change in the ILM stack: level 2 of caching is now self sufficient. It's not DRAM? Who cares, still let's you put in flash amounts of data not done up until now, so I guess Oracle can name it whatever Larry wants because in the end it's something never done before. Now let's imagine that you hop on the pure In-Memory Database bandwagon. You would be stuck with a database technology that lags behind the Oracle Database hundreds of light years in man/hours innovations and features. Do you really want to travel back in time? Remember, the first rule about time travelling is that "Security is not Guaranteed". Your choice. LMC

  Read the article

• Animating DOM elements vs refreshing a single Canvas

  - by mgibsonbr

  A few years ago, when the HTML Canvas element was still kinda fresh, I wrote a small game in a rather "unusual" way: each game element had its own canvas, and frequently animated elements even had multiple canvases, one for each animation sprite. This way, the translation would be done by manipulating the DOM position of the canvases, while the sprite animation would consist of altering the visibility of the already drawn canvases. (z-indexes, of course, were the tricky part) It worked like a charm: even in IE6 with excanvas it showed a decent performance, and everything was rather consistent between browsers, including some smartphones. Now I'm thinking in writing a larger game engine in the same fashion, so I'm wondering whether it would be a good idea to do so in the current context (with all the advances in browsers and so on). I know I'm trading memory for time, so this needs to be customizable (even at runtime) for each machine the game will be running. But I believe using separate canvases would also help to avoid the game "freezing" on CPU spikes, since the translation would still happen even if the redraws lag for a while. Besides, the browsers' rendering engines are already optimized in may ways, so I'm guessing this scheme would also reduce the load on the CPU (in contrast to doing everything in JavaScript - specially the less optimized ones). It looks good in my head, but I'd like to hear the opinion of more experienced people before proceeding further. Is there any known drawback of doing this? I'm particulartly unexperienced in dealing with the GPU, so I wonder whether this "trick" would nullify any benefit of using a single, big canvas. Or maybe on modern devices it's overkill (though I'm skeptic about the claims that canvas+js - especially WebGL - will ever be a good alternative to native code). Any thoughts?

  Read the article

• FULL LIST Difference Edubuntu over Ubuntu

  - by Richard Kemp

  I have always used Edubuntu rather than Ubuntu because I have many children including home educated ones who casually use the education offerings. I appreciate many but not all of the extra offerings. I never got beyond 8.04.4 LTS, so am considering updating. I note now with Edubuntu 12.04 it is 2GB i.e.4 times bigger, even apparently using squashfs. I do now have to consider whether the extra resources are worth it in each computer in my household. I am sick of reading over and over again 'Edubuntu is Unbuntu with extras such as blah blah', and in a different place the same thing but with a different blah blah. I downloaded Edubuntu 12.04 and ran it 'live'. Can't say I got on at all with the Unity Interface (this can be changed when installed), but the apparent education stuff seemed quite small and pathetic, I am obviously not finding it. Is there anywhere a FULL LIST of what Edubuntu has pre-installed has over Ubuntu, so a sensible decision can be made whether to go for it, or just add packages that look relevant to me to Ubuntu. Is there truly no other difference between Unbuntu/Edubuntu but the extra educational packages? (I for example have no school server, but if I understood exactly what is involved, with the number of computers in the house, it may be worth creating one!) Please advise. Thank You.

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107  | Next Page >