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  • 2D/Isometric map algorithm

    - by Icarus Cocksson
    First of all, I don't have much experience on game development but I do have experience on development. I do know how to make a map, but I don't know if my solution is a normal or a hacky solution. I don't want to waste my time coding things, and realise they're utterly crap and lose my motivation. Let's imagine the following map. (2D - top view - A square) X: 0 to 500 Y: 0 to 500 My character currently stands at X:250,Y:400, somewhere near center of 100px above bottom and I can control him with my keyboard buttons. LEFT button does X--, UP button does Y-- etc. This one is kid's play. I'm asking this because I know there are some engines that automate this task. For example, games like Diablo 3 uses an engine. You can pretty much drag drop a rock to map, and it is automatically being placed here - making player unable to pass through/detect the collision. But what the engine exactly does in the background? Generates a map like mine, places a rock at the center, and checks it like: unmovableObjects = array('50,50'); //we placed a rock at 50,50 location if(Map.hasUnmovableObject(CurrentPlayerX, CurrentPlayerY)) { //unable to move } else { //able to move } My question is: Is this how 2D/Isometric maps are being generated or there is a different and more complex logic behind them?

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  • excel vba to CRUD drupal nodes

    - by Kirk Hings
    We need to periodically migrate Excel reports data into Drupal nodes. We looked at replicating some Excel functionality in Drupal with slickgrid, but it wasn't up to snuff. The Excel reports people don't want to double-enter their data, but their data is important to be in this Drupal site. They have hundreds of Excel reports, and update a row in each weekly. We want a button at the row end to fire a VBA macro that submits the data to Drupal, where a new node is created from the info submitted. (Yes, we are experienced with both Drupal and VBA; all users and the site are behind our firewall.) We need the new node's nid or URL returned so we can then create a link in Excel directly to that node Site is D6, using Services 3.x module. I tried the REST server module, but we can't get it to retrieve data without session authentication on, which we can't do from Excel. (unless you can?) I also noticed the 'data' it was returning via browser url was 14 or 20 nodes' info, not the one nid requested (Example: http://mysite.com/services/rest/report/node/30161) When I attempt to create a simple node like this from VBA: Dim MyURL as String MyURL = "http://mysite.com/services/rest/report/node?node[type]=test&node[title]=testing123&node[field_test_one][0][value]=123" Set objHTTP = CreateObject("MSXML2.ServerXMLHTTP") With objHTTP .Open "POST", MyURL, False .setRequestHeader "Content-Type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded" .send (MyURL) End With I get HTTP Status: Unauthorized: Access denied for user 0 "anonymous" and HTTP Response: null Everything I search for has examples in php or java, nothing in VBA. Also tried switching to using an XMLRPC server but that's even more confusing. We would like json (used application/json, set formatter accordingly in REST server settings), but will use anything that works. Ideas? Thanks in advance!

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  • Why, in WPF, do we set an object to Stretch via its Alignment properties instead of Width/Height?

    - by Jonathan Hobbs
    In WPF's XAML, we can tell an element to fill its container like this: <Button HorizontalAlignment="Stretch" VerticalAlignment="Stretch" /> Why is it that when we set an element to Stretch, we do it via the HorizontalAlignment and VerticalAlignment properties? Why did the WPF design team decide to take this approach over having Width="Stretch" and Height="Stretch"? I presume it was a calculated decision, and I'm curious about the reasoning. CSS, among other technologies, follows the convention that stretching is done via the width and height properties, and that alignment affects positioning exclusively. This seems intuitive enough: stretching the element is manipulating its width and height, after all! Using the corresponding alignment property to stretch an element seems counter-intuitive and unusual in comparison. This makes me think they didn't just pick this option for no reason: they made a calculated decision and had reasons behind it. Width and Height use the double data type, which would ordinarily mean assigning it a string would be silly. However, WPF's Window objects can take Width="Auto", which gets treated as double.NaN. Couldn't Width="Stretch" be stored as double.PositiveInfinity or some other value?

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  • Doing powerups in a component-based system

    - by deft_code
    I'm just starting really getting my head around component based design. I don't know what the "right" way to do this is. Here's the scenario. The player can equip a shield. The the shield is drawn as bubble around the player, it has a separate collision shape, and reduces the damage the player receives from area effects. How is such a shield architected in a component based game? Where I get confused is that the shield obviously has three components associated with it. Damage reduction / filtering A sprite A collider. To make it worse different shield variations could have even more behaviors, all of which could be components: boost player maximum health health regen projectile deflection etc Am I overthinking this? Should the shield just be a super component? I really think this is wrong answer. So if you think this is the way to go please explain. Should the shield be its own entity that tracks the location of the player? That might make it hard to implement the damage filtering. It also kinda blurs the lines between attached components and entities. Should the shield be a component that houses other components? I've never seen or heard of anything like this, but maybe it's common and I'm just not deep enough yet. Should the shield just be a set of components that get added to the player? Possibly with an extra component to manage the others, e.g. so they can all be removed as a group. (accidentally leave behind the damage reduction component, now that would be fun). Something else that's obvious to someone with more component experience?

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  • Doing powerups in a component-based system

    - by deft_code
    I'm just starting really getting my head around component based design. I don't know what the "right" way to do this is. Here's the scenario. The player can equip a shield. The the shield is drawn as bubble around the player, it has a separate collision shape, and reduces the damage the player receives from area effects. How is such a shield architected in a component based game? Where I get confused is that the shield obviously has three components associated with it. Damage reduction / filtering A sprite A collider. To make it worse different shield variations could have even more behaviors, all of which could be components: boost player maximum health health regen projectile deflection etc Am I overthinking this? Should the shield just be a super component? I really think this is wrong answer. So if you think this is the way to go please explain. Should the shield be its own entity that tracks the location of the player? That might make it hard to implement the damage filtering. It also kinda blurs the lines between attached components and entities. Should the shield be a component that houses other components? I've never seen or heard of anything like this, but maybe it's common and I'm just not deep enough yet. Should the shield just be a set of components that get added to the player? Possibly with an extra component to manage the others, e.g. so they can all be removed as a group. (accidentally leave behind the damage reduction component, now that would be fun). Something else that's obvious to someone with more component experience?

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  • What the Hekaton?

    - by Tony Davis
    Hekaton, the power behind SQL Server 2014′s In-Memory OLTP technology, is intended to make data operations run orders of magnitude faster on SQL Server. This works its magic partly by serving database workloads entirely from main memory, using memory-optimized table structures. It replaces the relational engine’s standard locking model with an optimistic concurrency model based on time-stamped row versions. Deeper down the Hekaton engine uses new, ‘latch free’ data structures. So far, so good, but performance improvements on this scale require a compromise, and the compromise is that these aren’t tables as we understand them. For the database developer, these differences are painful because they involve sacrificing some very important bits of the relational model. Most importantly, Hekaton tables don’t currently support FOREIGN KEY constraints or CHECK constraints, and you can’t put the checks in triggers because there aren’t any DML triggers either. Constraints allow a relational designer to enforce relational integrity and data integrity. Without them, of course, ‘bad data’ can get into our Hekaton tables. There is no easy way of preventing it. For several classes of database and data, this is a show-stopper. One may regard all these restrictions regretfully, seeing limited opportunity to try out Hekaton with current databases, but perhaps there is also a sudden glow of recognition. Isn’t this how we all originally imagined table variables were going to be, back in SQL 2005? And they have much the same restrictions. Maybe, instead of pretending that a currently-designed database can be ‘Hekatonized’ with a few mouse clicks, we should redesign databases for SQL 2014 to replace table variables with Hekaton tables, exploiting this technology for fast intermediate processing, and for the most part forget, for now, the idea of trying to convert our base relational tables into Hekaton tables. Few database developers would be averse to having their working tables running an order of magnitude faster, as long as it didn’t compromise the integrity of the data in the base tables.

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  • Is Oracle Policy Automation a Fit for My Agency? I'll bet it is.

    - by jeffrey.waterman
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* 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;} Recently, I stumbled upon a new(-ish) whitepaper now posted on the Oracle Technology Network around Oracle Policy Automation (OPA). This paper is certain to become a must read for any customer interested in rules automation. What is OPA?  If you are not sitting in your favorite Greek restaurant waiting for that order of Saganaki to appear, OPA is Oracle’s solution for automated streamlining, standardizing, and the maintenance of policy. It is a specialized rules platform that simplifies the automation of rules and policies, putting the analysis in the hands of the analysts, not the IT organization. In other words, OPA allows the organization to be more efficient by eliminating (or at a minimum, reducing the engagement of) the middle man from the process. The whitepaper I mention above is titled, “Is Oracle Policy Automation a Good Fit for My Business?”. This short document walks the reader through use cases and advice for the reader to consider when deciding if OPA is right for their agency. The paper outlines many different scenarios, different uses of OPA in production today and, where OPA may not be a good fit. Many of the use case examples revolve around end user questionnaires or analyst research. What is often overlooked is OPA’s ability to act as a rules engine behind the scenes. That is, take inputs from one source (e.g., personnel data), process that data in OPA and send the output (e.g., pay data with benefits deductions) to a second source. The rules have been automated, no necessary human intervention to perform analysis. A few of my customers have used the embedded OPA solution to improve transaction processing and reduce the time spent analyzing exceptions. I suggest any reader whose organization is reliant on or deals with high complexity, volume or volatility in rules that are based on documentation – or which need to be documented – take a look at Oracle Policy Automation. You can find the white paper on Oracle Technology Network. You can find the white paper in the Oracle Policy Automation of the OTN. You can find more information around OPA on oracle.com. Finally, you can send me a question any time at [email protected] Thank you for reading. If you have any topics around Oracle Applications in the Federal or Public Sector industries you would like to see addressed in this blog, please leave suggestions in the comments section and I will do my best to address in a future post.

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  • How can I make an MMORPG appeal to casual players?

    - by Philipp
    I believe that there is a significant market of players who would enjoy the exploration and interaction aspects of MMORPGs, but simply don't have the time for the endless grinding marathons which are part of the average MMORPG. MMORPGs are all about interaction between players. But when different players have different amounts of time to invest into a game, those with less time to spend will soon lack behind their power-leveling friends and won't be able to interact with them anymore. One way to solve this would be to limit the progress a player can achieve per day, so that it simply doesn't make sense to play more than one or two hours a day. But even the busiest casual players sometimes like to spend a whole sunday afternoon playing a video game. Just stopping them after two hours would be really frustrating. It also creates a pressure to use the daily progress limit every day, because otherwise the player would feel like wasting something. This pressure would be detrimental for casual gamers. What else could be done to level the playing field between those players who play 40+ hours a week and those who can't play more than 10?

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  • Unhelpful Help

    - by Geoff N. Hiten
    Up until SQL 2012, I recommended installing Books On-Line (BOL) anywhere you installed SQL Server.  It made looking up reference information simpler, especially when you were on a server that didn’t have direct Internet access.  That all changed today.  I started the new Help Viewer with a local copy of BOL.  I actually found what I was looking for and closed the app.  Or so I thought.  Then I noticed something.  A little parasite had attached itself to my system.      Yep, the “Help” system left an “agent” behind.  Now I shouldn’t have to tell you that running application helper agents on server platforms is a bad idea.  And it gets worse.  There is no way to configure the app so that it does NOT start the parasite agent each time you restart help.  So the solution becomes do not install help on production server platforms.  Which is pretty unhelpful.

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  • Podcast Show Notes: The Fusion Middleware A-Team and the Chronicles of Architecture

    - by Bob Rhubart
    If you pay any attention at all to the Oracle blogosphere you’ve probably seen one of several blogs published by members of a group known as the Oracle Fusion Middleware A-Team. A new blog, The Oracle A-Team Chronicles, was recently launched that combines all of those separate A-Team blogs in one. In this program you’ll meet some of the people behind the A-team and the creation of that new blog. The Conversation Listen to Part 1: Background on the A-Team - When was it formed? What is it’s mission? 54) What are some of the most common challenges A-Team architects encounter in the field? Listen to Part 2 (July 3): The panel discusses the trends - big data, mobile, social, etc - that are having the biggest impact in the field. Listen to Part 3 (July 10): The panelists discuss the analysts, journalists, and other resources they rely on to stay ahead of the curve as the technology evolves, and reveal the last article or blog post they shared with other A-team members. The Panelists Jennifer Briscoe: Senior Director, Oracle Fusion Middleware A-Team Clifford Musante: Lead Architect, Application Integration Architecture A-Team, webmaster of the A-Team Chronicles Mikael Ottosson: Vice President, Oracle Fusion Apps and Fusion Middleware A-Team and Cloud Applications Group Pardha Reddy: Senior director of Oracle Identity Management and a member of the Oracle Fusion Middleware A-team Coming Soon Data Warehousing and Oracle Data Integrator: Guest producer and Oracle ACE Director Gurcan Orhan selected the topic and panelists for this program, which also features Uli Bethke, Michael Rainey, and Oracle ACE Cameron Lackpour. Java and Oracle ADF Mobile: An impromptu roundtable discussion featuring QCon New York 2013 session speakers Doug Clarke, Frederic Desbiens, Stephen Chin, and Reza Rahman. Stay tuned:

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  • Silverlight Cream for May 25, 2010 -- #869

    - by Dave Campbell
    In this Issue: Miroslav Miroslavov, Victor Gaudioso, Phil Middlemiss, Jonathan van de Veen, Lee, and Domagoj Pavlešic. From SilverlightCream.com: Book Folding effect using Pixel Shader On the new CompleteIT site, did you know the page-folding was done using PixelShaders? I hadn't put much thought into it, but that's pretty cool, and Miroslav Miroslavov has a blog post up discussing it, and the code behind it. New Silverlight Video Tutorial: How to create a Slider with a ToolTip that shows the Value of the Slider This is pretty cool... Victor Gaudioso's latest video tutorial shows how to put the slider position in the slider tooltip... code and video tutorial included. Backlighting a ListBox Put this in the cool category as well... Phil Middlemiss worked out a ListBox styling that makes the selected item be 'backlit' ... check out the screenshot on the post... and then grab the code :) Adventures while building a Silverlight Enterprise application part #33 Jonathan van de Veen is discussing changes to his project/team and how that has affected development. Read about what they did right and some of their struggles. RIA Services and Storedprocedures Lee's discussing Stored Procs and RIA Services ... he begins with one that just works, then moves on to demonstrate the kernel of the problem he's attacking and the solution of it. DoubleClick in Silverlight Domagoj Pavlešic got inspiration from one of Mike Snow's Tips of the Day and took off on the double-click idea... project source included. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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  • A Cautionary Tale About Multi-Source JNDI Configuration

    - by scott.s.nelson(at)oracle.com
    Here's a bit of fun with WebLogic JDBC configurations.  I ran into this issue after reading that p13nDataSource and cgDataSource-NonXA should not be configured as multi-source. There were some issues changing them to use the basic JDBC connection string and when rolling back to the bad configuration the server went "Boom".  Since one purpose behind this blog is to share lessons learned, I just had to post this. If you write your descriptors manually (as opposed to generating them using the WLS console) and put a comma-separated list of JNDI addresses like this: <jdbc-data-source-params> <jndi-name>weblogic.jdbc.jts.commercePool,contentDataSource, contentVersioningDataSource,portalFrameworkPool</jndi-name> <algorithm-type>Load-Balancing</algorithm-type> <data-source-list>portalDataSource-rac0,portalDataSource-rac1</data-source-list> <failover-request-if-busy>false</failover-request-if-busy> </jdbc-data-source-params> so long as the first address resolves, it will still work. Sort of.  If you call this connection to do an update, only one node of the RAC instance is updated. Other wonderful side-effects include the server refusing to start sometimes. The proper way to list the JNDI sources is one per node, like this: <jdbc-data-source-params> <jndi-name>weblogic.jdbc.jts.commercePool</jndi-name> <jndi-name>contentDataSource</jndi-name> <jndi-name>contentVersioningDataSource</jndi-name> <jndi-name>portalFrameworkPool</jndi-name> <algorithm-type>Load-Balancing</algorithm-type> <data-source-list>portalDataSource-rac0, portalDataSource-rac1, portalDataSource-rac2 </data-source-list> <failover-request-if-busy>false</failover-request-if-busy> </jdbc-data-source-params>(Props to Sandeep Seshan for locating the root cause)

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  • What is the proper way to maintain the angle of a gun mounted on a car?

    - by Blair
    So I am making a simple game. I want to put a gun on top of a car. I want to be able to control the angle of the gun. Basically it can go forward all the way so that it is parallel to the ground facing the direction the car is moving or it can point behind the car and any of the angles in between these positions. I have something like the following right now but its not really working. Is there an better way to do this that I am not seeing? #This will place the car glPushMatrix() glTranslatef(self.position.x,1.5,self.position.z) glRotated(self.rotation, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0) glScaled(0.5, 0.5, 0.5) glCallList(self.model.gl_list) glPopMatrix() #This will place the gun on top glPushMatrix() glTranslatef(self.position.x,2.5,self.position.z) glRotated(self.tube_angle, self.direction.z, 0.0, self.direction.x) print self.direction.z glRotated(45, self.position.z, 0.0, self.position.x) glScaled(1.0, 0.5, 1.0) glCallList(self.tube.gl_list) glPopMatrix() This almost works. It moves the gun up and down. But when the car moves around, the angle of the gun changes. Not what I want.

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  • Koans, now available in Python flavor

    - by Greg Malcolm
    Recently a Python developer friend with whom I was pair programming with suggested that I show him how to write a little Ruby. I responded by telling him to check out Ruby Koans as a starting point. However I wanted to try that in reverse at the same time with me learning some Python. I did a bit of googling, and sure enough someone had started writing some Python Koans. It just needed finishing... So, a few weeks later Python Koans is now complete and ready for action! It is available through Mercurial on Bitbucket: http://bitbucket.org/gregmalcolm/python_koans/wiki/Home It is also mirrored on Github: http://wiki.github.com/gregmalcolm/python_koans/ Converting it was fairly easy. Aside from the differing philosophical approaches behind the two languages, Ruby and Python are fairly similar. We had to come up with completely new material for a few subjects like multiple inheritance and decorators, but for most features in Ruby there is something roughly comparable in Python. I highly recommend writing tests (or koans) as a means to lean a new language or framework. I've learned a lot from doing this.

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  • Experience the Oracle Support Stars Bar

    - by Oracle OpenWorld Blog Team
    By Gina WolfDon't miss the opportunity to meet with the stars of Oracle Support, live and in person at the Moscone West Level 2 lobby. Ask our experts your toughest questions about the Oracle hardware, software, and engineered systems you use to run your business. Explore new Oracle Support innovations including Oracle Platinum Services, My Oracle Support Mobile, and the Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center Everywhere program. Learn the latest best practices for problem prevention, rapid resolution, and product upgrades. In addition, discover how Oracle Advanced Customer Support Services can help you maximize the performance of all mission-critical Oracle systems. Come meet the stars behind your support: our trusted experts are ready to assist! The Oracle Support Stars Bar at the Moscone West Level 2 lobby is open all conference week at the following times: Sunday, September 30, 12:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. Monday, October 1, 10:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m. Tuesday, October 2, 10:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m. Wednesday, October 3, 9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. Thursday, October 4, 9:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. Attend one or more of the 27 Oracle Customer Support Services sessions during Oracle OpenWorld to learn how Oracle Support enables you to gain maximum value from your Oracle hardware and software investments.

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  • Mouse click events are delayed when moving the cursor in xubuntu 12.04

    - by bobbaluba
    I am trying out live xubuntu on my samsung n150 (netbook, similar to eeepc). So far everything seems perfect, except for this one thing. When I am clicking the mouse while moving the cursour, the click event is delayed. This is extremely annoying when i try to to move windows, because i end up clicking the window behind the window i am trying to move and thereby changing focus. This goes for all applications. I.e selecting text is difficult. There is no lag in the cursor movement, just the click event. The click event is registered with the new mouse position, not the one when the mouse was clicked. I tried searching for the problem, but all the other cases where either kind of different, or had no solution. EDIT: After testing some more, here are some more information. The click doesn't occur until i stop moving the cursor. If I move the cursor smoothly around, the click never gets through. I have ubuntu netbook remix 10.04 installed, and have no problems with the mouse there. EDIT2: Once I connected a usb-mouse, the problem dissappeared. Dragging now works perfectly with both the track pad and the usb mouse. I will update once I have installed xubuntu and figured out if this is a persistant problem. EDIT3: I have installed, and the problem is still there. It dissappears when I have a second mouse connected however, and after I resume from suspend. My solution for now, is just to keep the dongle connected all the time.

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  • How do I stop ubuntu from detaching minimize/maximuze/close buttons?

    - by Shahbaz
    Some time ago I managed to get ubuntu to keep the window menubars in the menu rather than the bar above (I'm not sure if this part is unity or compiz, or what's the difference). That was by removing indicator-appmenu Anyway, so now everything is fine except one thing: If I have a window that is full screen, the minimize/maximize/close buttons are still grabbed by the bar on the top. Usually this doesn't cause a problem because the upper-left corner of the full screen window and the whole screen are not too far apart. However, one thing happens to me a lot, and that is I am working on something (programming), then I need to check some things from other places so I open some windows, see what I want and switch back to my work. Those windows however are temporary so at some point I want to close them. Now here's what happens: I have the focus on some window and I can't close the maximized window behind it unless I click on the window first, so that the buttons appear and then close it. I couldn't find anything on the internet about this. Is this something that's hardcoded in unity/compiz/whatever or is there actually a way to configure this?

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  • HTG Explains: What Is Bitcoin, the Virtual Digital Currency?

    - by YatriTrivedi
    Bitcoin is a virtual currency that employs some very interesting principles. Here’s the skinny on what exactly it is and how the fascinating technology behind it works. Disclaimer: This is NOT financial or legal advice. This. Is. NOT. Financial. Or. Legal. Advice. This is not, in any way, shape, or form, financial or legal advice. We’re covering this topic because of the technological implementations it uses and the innovations it attempts to make. If you do anything because of this post, we are not responsible because this is NOT financial or legal advice. ^_^ Latest Features How-To Geek ETC Have You Ever Wondered How Your Operating System Got Its Name? Should You Delete Windows 7 Service Pack Backup Files to Save Space? What Can Super Mario Teach Us About Graphics Technology? Windows 7 Service Pack 1 is Released: But Should You Install It? How To Make Hundreds of Complex Photo Edits in Seconds With Photoshop Actions How to Enable User-Specific Wireless Networks in Windows 7 The History Of Operating Systems [Infographic] DriveSafe.ly Reads Your Text Messages Aloud The Likability of Angry Birds [Infographic] Dim an Overly Bright Alarm Clock with a Binder Divider Preliminary List of Keyboard Shortcuts for Unity Now Available Bring a Touch of the Wild West to Your Desktop with the Rango Theme for Windows 7

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  • SQL Azure Roadmap gets a little clearer &ndash; announcements from Tech Ed

    - by Eric Nelson
    On Monday at Tech?Ed 2010 we announced new stuff (I like new stuff) that “showcases our continued commitment to deliver value, flexibility and control of data through data cloud services to our customers”. Ok, that does sound like marketing speak (and it is) but the good news is there is some meat behind it. We have some decent new features coming and we also have some clarity on when we will be able to get our hands on those features. SQL Azure Business Edition Extends to 50 GB – June 28th SQL Azure Business Edition database is now extending from 10GB to 50GB The new 50GB database size will be available worldwide starting June 28th SQL Azure Business Edition Subscription Offer – August 1st Starting August 1st, we will have a new discounted SQL Azure promotional offer (SQL Azure Development Accelerator Core) More information is available at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/offers/. Public Preview of the Data Sync Service  - CTP now Data Sync Service for SQL Azure allows for more flexible control over data by deciding which data components should be distributed across multiple datacenters in different geographic locations, based on your internal policies and business needs.  Available as a community technology preview after registering at http://www.sqlazurelabs.com SQL Server Web Manager for SQL Azure - CTP this Summer SQL Server Web Manager (SSWM) is a lightweight and easy to use database management tool for SQL Azure databases, to be offered this summer. Access 10 Support for SQL Azure – available now Yey – at last! Microsoft Office 2010 will natively support data connectivity to SQL Azure – we can now start developing those “departmental apps” with the confidence of a highly available SQL store provisioned in seconds. NB: I don’t believe we will support any previous versions of Access talking to SQL Azure. The Pre-announced Spatial Data Support to Become Live – Live now* At MIX in March we announced spatial was coming and apparently it is now here - although I need to check. Related Links UK based? Sign up at http://ukazure.ning.com SQL Azure Team Blog http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sqlazure/

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  • How should I host our scalable worker processes?

    - by Pieter Breed
    We are designing a new architecture for an enterprise business. The principles we've followed so far is not to develop what you can (possible buy and) deploy, ie, don't reinvent any wheels. In this way we've decided on CQRS, RabbitMQ, Riak and a bunch of other things. We still need to write /some/ business code though and these will be in the form of worker processes, which will consume commands from a message queue and after any side-effects, produce events onto another message queue. The idea behind this is that via the competing-consumers design we will have a scalable design right out of the box. One option is of writing a management infrastructure that will know how to: deploy code instantiate processes kill processes update configuration etc IE provide fault tolerance and scalability. Also, this is exactly what something like GAE and Heroku does for you, but in a public setting and in our organization, public is bad. My question is, is there an out-of-the-box solution that we can use to host our consumers in? Like a private cloud or private platform-as-a-service. Private Heroku or GAE. Is there some kind of software or software product with which we can do all of these things and thereby get scalability and fault tolerance over our consumers?

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  • Z-order with Alpha blending in a 3D world

    - by user41765
    I'm working on a game in a 3D world with 2D sprites only (like Don't Starve game). (OpenGL ES2 with C++) Currently, I'm ordering elements back to front before drawing them without batch (so 1 element = 1 drawcall). I would like to implement batching in my framework to decrease draw calls. Here is what I've got for the moment: Order all elements of my scene back to front. Send order list of elements to the Renderer. Renderer look in his batch manager if a batch exist for the given element with his Material. Batch didn't exist: create a new one. Batch exist for element with this Material: Add sprite to the batch. Compute big mesh with all sprite for each batch (1 material type = 1 batch). When all batches are ok, the batch manager compute draw commands for the renderer. Renderer process draw commands (bind shader, bind textures, bind buffers, draw element) Image with my problem here: Explication here But I've got some problems because objects can be behind another objects inside another batch. How can I do something like that? Thanks!

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  • Where to look for a programming partner?

    - by David
    Say that you want to start a new project (I'm talking about a serious project — e.g if you had an idea that seems good and profitable — not about something you start just to learn a new technology or just for your enjoyment) but you don't feel like you can do it alone since, for example, you lack the experience or the technical skills to go through all the phases needed to go from the idea to the final product. Say also that you don't simply want to hire someone. You want someone who can be as passionate as you in the job, that is “proficient” in and enthusiast of the same technologies as you are and that possibly has a background similar to yours (e.g. you both are students, you both come from a prestigious univerity or just you're both Star Trek nerds). So, basically you don't want a person to tell what to do (e.g. “implement this and that, slave!”) but someone who can be inspiring and bring something new and important to your project. Someone to go with you from the earliest stage — from clearly shaping the project's philosophy to drawing mockups etc. Someone who agrees to share the outcome of the project, that strongly believes in the idea behind it and is completely 50-50 with you. Now the question is: how to improve your chances of finding this person (or persons)? Where would you look at first? For example, if you had a lot of funds and were looking for someone to hire, you'd maybe post an ad in SO careers or jobs.73signals; if you already had a team and were looking for funding, you'd start a project on kickstarter or indiegogo, or you'd go to some startup event. But if you had to find a good partner (and programmer, of course) for you're project, where would you start looking? Which strategies would you use?

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  • Interfaces and Virtuals Everywhere????

    - by David V. Corbin
    First a disclaimer; this post is about micro-optimization of C# programs and does not apply to most common scenarios - but when it does, it is important to know. Many developers are in the habit of declaring member virtual to allow for future expansion or using interface based designs1. Few of these developers think about what the runtime performance impact of this decision is. A simple test will show that this decision can have a serious impact. For our purposes, we used a simple loop to time the execution of 1 billion calls to both non-virtual and virtual implementations of a method that took no parameters and had a void return type: Direct Call:     1.5uS Virtual Call:   13.0uS The overhead of the call increased by nearly an order of magnitude! Once again, it is important to realize that if the method does anything of significance then this ratio drops quite quickly. If the method does just 1mS of work, then the differential only accounts for a 1% decrease in performance. Additionally the method in question must be called thousands of times in order to produce a meaqsurable impact at the application level. Yet let us consider a situation such as the per-pixel processing of a graphics processing application. Here we may have a method which is called millions of times and even the slightest increase in overhead can have significant ramification. In this case using either explicit virtuals or interface based constructs is likely to be a mistake. In conclusion, good design principles should always be the driving force behind descisions such as these; but remember that these decisions do not come for free.   1) When a concrete class member implements an interface it does not need to be explicitly marked as virtual (unless, of course, it is to be overriden in a derived concerete class). Nevertheless, when accessed via the interface it behaves exactly as if it had been marked as virtual.

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  • MAAS/JuJu Clarifications

    - by ectoskeleton
    I really love the concept of MAAS underlying an OpenStack implementation, but there are a few questions about MAAS that I am not entirely clear on. Should all hosts be set to network boot at all times or after they have been registered and allocated as a service, should they boot to disk? After juju bootstrap is executed, I turn on the machine that has been allocated (note WoL isn't working, I suspect it's being blocked on the network), the machine boot's up and then juju status executes correct, agent running and all that good stuff. If I 'reboot' the machine (testing power failure/problem whatever), juju status comes back but the agent-state is no longer in running state, and so far I have to destroy the environment and restart. In all cases I have never been able to deploy any services to any of the other nodes. I deploy the service with juju, note which node it was assigned, and then start the system. The system just boots up into a basic node. If I SSH to it I have to enter password, so it's not setting up the ssh key or anything. This is on Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS systems and HP GL360G7 hosts. The MAAS management server is running as a VM but all on the same network. At this point I am not sure if I am doing something wrong or if there is a problem somewhere else. Is the idea that anytime a host is rebooted it should be rebuilt from the ground up, or is something else going on behind the scene to tell it to boot the local image. If the latter, why doesn't the agent start on a system that has been successfully setup before (juju bootstrapped system)?

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  • Obstacle Avoidance steering behavior: how can an entity avoid an obstacle while other forces are acting on the entity?

    - by Prog
    I'm trying to implement the Obstacle Avoidance steering behavior in my 2D game. Currently my approach is to apply a force on the entity, in the direction of the normal of the heading, scaled by a number that gets bigger the closer we are to the obstacle. This is supposed to push the entity to the side and avoid the obstacle that blocks it's way. However, in the same time that my entity tries to avoid an obstacle, it Seeks to a point more or less behind the obstacle (which is the reason it needs to avoid the obstacle in the first place). The Seek algorithm constantly applies a force on the entity that pushes it (more or less) in the direction of the obstacle, while the Obstacle Avoidance algorithm constantly applies a force that pushes the entity away (more accurately, to the side) of the obstacle. The result is that sometimes the entity succesfully avoids the obstacle, and sometimes it collides with it, depending on the strength of the avoidance force I'm applying. How can I make sure that a force will succeed in steering the entity in some direction, while other forces are currently acting on the entity? (And while still looking natural). I can't allow entities to collide with obstacles when realistically they should be able to easily avoid them, doesn't matter what they're currently doing. Also, the Obstacle Avoidance algorithm is made exactly for the case where another force is acting on the entity. Otherwise it wouldn't be moving and there would be no need to avoid anything. So maybe I'm missing something. Thanks

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