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• An experiment: unlimited free trial

  - by Alex.Davies

  The .NET Demon team have just implemented an experiment that is quite a break from Red Gate's normal business model. Instead of the tool expiring after the trial period, it now continues to work, but with a new message that appears after the tool has saved you a certain amount of time. The rationale is that a user that stops using .NET Demon because the trial expired isn't doing anyone any good. We'd much rather people continue using it forever, as long as everyone that finds it useful and can afford it still pays for it. Hopefully the message appearing is annoying enough to achieve that, but not for people to uninstall it. It's true that many companies have tried it before with mixed results, but we have a secret weapon. The perfect nag message? The neat thing for .NET Demon is that we can easily measure exactly how much time .NET Demon has saved you, in terms of unnecessary project builds that Visual Studio would have done. When you press F5, the message shows you the time saved, and then makes you wait a shorter time before starting your application. Confronted with the truth about how amazing .NET Demon is, who can do anything but buy it? The real secret though, is that while you wait, .NET Demon gives you entertainment, in the form of a picture of a cute kitten. I've only had time to embed one kitten so far, but the eventual aim is for a random different kitten to appear each time. The psychological health benefits of a dose of kittens in the daily life of the developer are obvious. My only concern is that people will complain after paying for .NET Demon that the kittens are gone.

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• Ubuntu 12.04 and Nvidia GTX 550 Ti

  - by Jim

  OK I'm currently trying to install Ubuntu x64 Server 12.04 onto the following machine: Intel Core i5-2320 3.0GHz LGA1155 6MB 8 GB DDR3 RAM, Gigabyte Z68P-DS3 S1155 Intel Z68 DDR3 ATX M/B, OCZ 60 GB SSD, 3x Samsung 2TB drives in a RAID 5 array (via M/B) Now what I think is causing the issue is the following: EVGA GeForce GTX 550 Ti 951MHz 1GB PCI-Express HDMI FPB As the server CD works in text mode I haven't had a problem with actually installing Ubuntu. Partioned with: 1GB /boot SSD, 59GB / SSD, 10GB swap RAID5, ~4TB /home RAID5 On a straight boot, you briefly see the GRUB menu, followed by a blank screen. The keyboard and mouse blink as they are initialised but no sign of life from the screen. Followed by a bit of research (otherwise known as google) ... Booted in quiet splash nomodeset Now I have a fully working linux distro at the command prompt. I then proceed to try and update the nvidia drivers with apt-get (after updating repositories etc) and rebooting. Still the same problem. I also tried reinstalling from the CD and installing said drivers in the install process before GRUB was installed, still the same symptoms. Does anybody have any solutions? I'm at my wits end here, I bought this machine to be a linux server / tinkering machine and have just spent 4-5 hours trying to just get a basic install working.

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• Installation causing broken packages

  - by AWE

  Here I come I am so determined to use Ubuntu that I paid a professional to install it for me (dualboot). When I got it I got a lot of things from the software center. Skype did not have a download button so I googled it and Ubuntu help told me to do this: sudo add-apt-repository "deb http://archive.canonical.com/ $(lsb_release -sc) partner" and then this: sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install skype The terminal told me "that this is potentially harmful..." but I thought it was Ubuntu language meaning "are you sure?" Now items cannot be installed or removed until the package catalog is repaired, so I want to repair it but the package operation fails. "sudo aptitude -f install" - command not found Synaptic package manager tells me that I have two broken packages, libc6 and libc6-dev but doesn't help, only makes life complicated. What the *#$%&!!! I don't want to be forced to become a computer scientist just to be able to use a free source os. P.s. the sound stopped working

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• How to get started in the development industry? [closed]

  - by Peter Fren

  My life is coding. I was born in 1982 and my first computer was an amiga. I started learning Amiga BASIC. To cut a long story short, I know many things about several programming languages. Being unemployed(I achieved the german abitur, should be similar to a high school degree and I studied a few semesters of mechanical engineering in 2002(I learned JAVA back then)) I have no idea how to use this ability. I have never done commissional work, every task I solved was based on my own wishes and desires. I do not know how to write a FSD or PRD or put it into code. So the question is, why should anyone hire me? I specialized in kinect development but all jobs I applied for on odesk and similar were awarded to others without me knowing why. I don't know what I should do with my skills professionally. What do you suggest? As this board has weird rules, tell me where to find answers if this is the wrong place.

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• You've been working on a platform for as long as you remember. Not anymore. How does it feel?

  - by Shinnok

  How does it feel to work on a platform for as long as you remember, you've been encouraged to innovate, to improve and give all in day and night for that platform, be it either an operating system, a hardware architecture or a software framework/library and then be forced to switch bases because that platform has been abandoned over the night? It has happened before, many times, for eg. to SGI/IRIX and more recently to SUN/Open Solaris and now Nokia/Symbian. Have you been part of such a shift? If so then please share the story and describe your feelings at that time and if it is the case, how did you manage the situation? Reorientation? Giving up on the field and turned to other things you've been constantly putting aside like family? Many did so(for eg. people at Netscape). You may not think of it being such a big deal, but it is, after you've been working 10 to 20+ years on a platform/technology and then be faced to switch your expertise and mindset, the feeling tends to become really strong and some people really give up this crazy field and start enojoying a normal life. Would love to hear your stories.

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• Costs/profit of/when starting an indie company

  - by Jack

  In short, I want to start a game company. I do not have much coding experience (just basic understanding and ability to write basic programs), any graphics design experience, any audio mixing experience, or whatever else technical. However, I do have a lot of ideas, great analytical skills and a very logical approach to life. I do not have any friends who are even remotely technical (or creative in regards to games for that matter). So now that we've cleared that up, my question is this: how much, minimally, would it cost me to start such a company? I know that a game could be developed in under half a year, which means it would have to operate for half a year prior, and that's assuming that the people working on the first project do their jobs good, don't leave game breaking bugs, a bunch of minor bugs, etc.. So how much would it cost me, and what would be the likely profit in half a year? I'm looking at minimal costs here, as to do it, I would have to sell my current apartment and buy a new, smaller one, pay taxes, and likely move to US/CA/UK to be closer to technologically advanced people (and be able to speak the language of course). EDIT: I'm looking at a small project for starters, not a huge AAA title.

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• Relationship between SOA and OOA

  - by TheSilverBullet

  Thomas Erl defines SOA as follows in his site: Service-oriented computing represents a new generation distributed computing platform. As such, it encompasses many things, including its own design paradigm and design principles, design pattern catalogs, pattern languages, a distinct architectural model, and related concepts, technologies, and frameworks. This definitely sounds like a whole new category which is parallel to object orientation. Almost one in which you would expect an entirely new language to exist for. Like procedural C and object oriented C#. Here is my understanding: In real life, we don't have entirely new language for SOA. And most application which have SOA architecture have an object oriented design underneath it. SOA is a "strategy" to make the entire application/service distributed and reliable. SOA needs OOPS working underneath it. Is this correct? Where does SOA (if at all it does) fit in with object oriented programming practices? Edit: I have learnt through answers that OOA and SOA work with each other and cannot be compared (in a "which is better" way). I have changed the title to "Relationship between SOA and OOA" rather than "comparison".

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• Cron prepending filename to script output

  - by Caitifty

  I'm having an issue with unwanted lines being added to files output by a cron job. I have a script in /etc/cron.hourly which selects some data from a mysql database and saves it in a text file in /var/www. When I run the script as root, it does exactly what I expect it to do. When the script is executed by cron, it creates the same file, but prepends the following three lines at the top of the output file: :::::::::::::: /var/www/outputfilename :::::::::::::: I can't for the life of me work out how to stop this unwanted behavior. The line in /etc/crontab for cron.hourly is the default "44 * * * * root cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly". If I use su to change to being root and do "cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly" the script runs as expected and the output doesn't have the mysterious additional 3 lines. I've also tried removing the --report flag from the run-parts command in case that was somehow connected, but no joy. Finally, perusing the cron log output in /var/log/syslog just says cron.hourly ran without giving any additional information. Any suggestions on solving this weird problem most welcome..

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• SQL Source Control Contest

  - by Ajarn Mark Caldwell

  If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know that I have written several posts about how important I think it is to protect your source code, to version it, and in particular, all the aspects I like about Red Gate’s SQL Source Control product.  But for a moment, let’s take a break from my writing and I want to hear your stories.  What nightmare situation are you in, or can you imagine, where source control for your database would save the world.  Or maybe your life is not so dramatic, but you do see a challenge that, if you just had a good tool like SQL Source Control, it would go much smoother.  What’s your pain?  You have read my writings, now tell me your story, and be in the running for a free copy of SQL Source Control from Red Gate. Yes, that’s right.  Although I am just a fan of Red Gate, they have authorized me to give out a handful of licenses to blog readers who are willing to share their story by posting a comment to this blog entry.  Simply add your comment below (be sure to include a valid email address in the box that asks for that) to be entered.  The contest starts immediately and over the next few days, the best stories will win.

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• Attributes of an Ethical Programmer?

  - by ahmed

  Software that we write has ramifications in the real world. If not, it wouldn't be very useful. Thus, it has the potential to sweep across the world faster than a deadly manmade virus or to affect society every bit as much as genetic manipulation. Maybe we can't see how right now, but in the future our code will have ever-greater potential for harm or good. Of course, there's the issue of hacking. That's clearly a crime. Or is it that clear? Isn't hacking acceptable for our government in the event of national security? What about for other governments? Cases of life-and-death emergency? Tracking down deadbeat parents? Screening the genetic profile of job candidates? Where is the line drawn? Who decides? Do programmers have responsibility for how their code is used? What if a programmer writes code to pry into confidential information or copy-protected material? Does he bear responsibility along with the person who used the program? What about a programmer who knowingly or unknowingly writes code to "fix the books?" Should he be liable?

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• Geekswithblogs.net | Screen Resolutions of our Readers

  - by Jeff Julian

  Yesterday I talked about the Browsers we see being used by our readers driven off of our Google Analytics traffic and today I want to share with you the Screen Resolutions we see.  As a web developer most of my life, it is hard to decide how large you should build your application because typically you have a couple huge high resolution monitors on your desk, but you typical end user is thought to have 1024x768.  With HTML5/CSS3 out, it is a little better coming up with a design that will scale to all resolutions, but it is still nice to know the numbers when it comes to how much real estate do I have on my clients. If you look at these numbers for Geekswithblogs.net, we have a lot of high resolution monitors from users that visit the site.  After a little more investigation of the number you will notice we do not have as much height available as we do width.  If the primary goal of a site is to deliver as much data in the viewable area without scrolling, this becomes a challenge when most of our pages have long pieces of formatted data.  So our challenge is to build skins that use up more of the sides of the content toward the top on larger resolution browsers and then entice the reader to scroll to get the goodies embedded in the content of the posts.  Going to be an interesting battle for sure, but we really need more skin offerings on the site. Technorati Tags: Resolution Statistics,Geekswithblogs.net

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• A Big Congrats to Hitachi- Now a Diamond Level Partner!

  - by Kristin Rose

  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:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; 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;} We’ve said this before and we’ll say it again, nothing sparkles quite like a diamond. Being named Diamond level partner is the highest ranking available in the Oracle PartnerNetwork Specialized program, and we could not be more excited to congratulate Hitachi, Ltd on their new glistening title! Hitachi has helped clients maximize the business benefits of their Oracle Applications for more than two decades, while also helping them bring their business visions to life through industry led services and solutions. Not only has Hitachi achieved Diamond level status, they also have 29 additional Oracle Specializations! Here at OPN we know that it all starts with equipping our partners with the proper tools to help their end customers succeed, and we truly believe that diamonds partners are forever! So here’s to you Hitachi, our diamond in the ruff! Shine On, The OPN Communications Team

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• Beginners guide to developing optimization software

  - by Florenc

  I am novice in "serious" programming i.e. applications that deal with real-life applications and software projects that go beyond school assignments. My interests include optimization, operations research, algorithms and lately i discovered how much I do like software design/development/engineering. I have already developed some simple desktop applications for some "famous" problems like TSP using heuristc approaches, a VRP solver (in progress) and so on. While developing this kind of software I actually used basic concepts taught at school such as object-orientation analysis and design. But, I found these courses rather elementary and quite boring (for my expectations). So I decided to go a little further and start developing "real" software (and this is where I realized how important and interesting software engineering/design is.) Now, here's my issue: I can not find a "study guide" for developing software of this kind. Currently, there are numerous resources out there (books, websites, tutorials) in designing and developing complex IS, web applications, smartphone apps but I can't find a book for example entitled "optimization software development". Definetly, someone could claim that "design patterns apply to software in general" but that's not my point. My point is that I could simply use my imagination for "simple" implementations, but what happens, when my imagination can not go further? In other words I'm looking for a guide/path to bridge the gap between: Mathematics-Algorithm Design-Software Engineering-Optimization-Software development

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• Still Alive&hellip;

  - by MOSSLover

  As Glados would say at the end of Portal “I’m still alive…”.  I am around, but I’m just not posting as frequently as I should.  I am trying to get acclimated to my new job, planning SharePoint Saturday New York City and Women in SharePoint plus trying to lead a normal life doing normal chores and hang out with my boyfriend.  What does this mean?  Well I’m trying to cut back to one or two events a month, which will include Heartland Developer Conference, Best Practices Conference, SPS Ozarks, SPS NYC (not speaking, running), and maybe SPS Denver and/or SPS East Bay.  So with the new job acclimation the blog suffers and twitter is getting less loven.  I’m only posting on twitter at night.  I will try to blog when I can as I see more 2010 and 2007 things that I find interesting to share.  I guess when you are a new employee you try to figure out what’s going on the first few months.  It’s really hard to post on SharePoint issue while that happens.  I’m really sorry guys and I will try harder to post at least a couple times a month (and maybe moderate comments  slightly better).  I hope that you all have a good weekend.

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• BLOG Resurrection

  - by Maryanne Sweat

  Dear Netizens, I apologize for my long absense...its amazing how time just slips through your fingers when you don't have anything to say...and are so busy personally and professionally that all of a sudden its over a year and you've not touched your blog...   Plus the immediacy of that 140 character twitter feed makes it so that my blog stuff becomes tid bits of life..instead of a narrative. When did that happen? When did we become a society of 140 character tid bits instead of emails or narative blocks. Are we so keyed into micro-commentary these days that we don't have conversations anymore?  When did posts on Twitter become news on CNN? But anyway, Netizens I'd like to come back to this narrative..I have some interesting professional developments to share with the world too. So--I hope this continues, and I post more along the way.  I can't promise that though, I'm a terrible procrastinator...so who knows. But I'll try..so stick around..maybe I'll have some more profound things to say then complaints about traffic on my commute etc.

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• Second Monitor Detected, but not receiving a signal after upgrading to 12.04

  - by user62458

  After I upgraded to 12.04, my second monitor is detected (in display settings), but will not power on. I have scoured the Internet and forums for a solution and I can't find anything. I have found a couple people with the same problem, but never a solution for it. I am no expert, but I'm certainly not a noob. My computer uses AMD Radeon 6250 graphics, but I do NOT want to use the proprietary graphics drivers. They refuse to work properly with my second monitor (they ATI drivers will only mirror screens, and I've done everything to try to fix it, and I DON't want mirrored screens) Not to mention that the default open-source video drivers seem to work much better than the proprietary anyway! Again, Ubuntu's default video drivers work fine, and they even DETECT the second monitor (Dell 19'). I can drag stuff off the screen and put it on the 'space' of the second monitor and even a screen-shot shows that there are two monitors active; but the monitor is OFF. It will not power on. It goes into 'power-save' mode because it is not receiving a signal. For some reason it is not getting the signal to power on, even though Ubuntu thinks the monitor is working properly. I had this working fine on my Sony VAIO yesterday (with Radeon graphics/default Ubuntu video drivers). I upgraded to a Samsung Series 3 and now I have this issue. I can't for the life of me figure out why the monitor is connected, detected and I have screen space for the monitor, but the screen won't turn on! XRANDR Output: Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1366 x 768, maximum 8192 x 8192 VGA-0 connected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 1440x900 59.9 + 75.0 1280x1024 75.0 60.0 1152x864 75.0 1024x768 75.1 70.1 60.0 832x624 74.6 800x600 72.2 75.0 60.3 56.2 640x480 72.8 75.0 66.7 60.0 720x400 70.1 LVDS connected 1366x768+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 344mm x 194mm 1366x768 60.1*+ 1280x720 59.9 1152x768 59.8 1024x768 59.9 800x600 59.9 848x480 59.7 720x480 59.7 640x480 59.4 HDMI-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)

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• When can I publish a software tool written at work?

  - by AlexMA

  I'm working on a software problem at work that is fairly generic, but I can't find a library I like to solve it, so I'm considering writing one myself (at least a bare-bones version). I'll be writing some if not all of the 1.0 version at work, since I need it for the project. If turns out well I might want to bring the work home and polish it up just for fun, and maybe release it as an open-source project. However, I'm concerned that if I wrote the 1.0 version at work I may not be allowed to do this from a legal sense. Obviously I could ask my boss (who probably won't care), but I'm curious how other programmers have dealt with this issue and where the law stands here. My one sentence question is, When is it okay (legally/ethically) to open-source a software tool originally written by you for work at work? What if you have expanded the original source significantly during off-hours? Follow-up: Suppose I write the whole thing at home on my time then simply use it at work, does that change things drastically? Follow-up 2: Note that I'm not trying to rip off my employer (I understand that they're paying me to build products that they own)--I'm just wondering if there's a fair way of doing this for all involved... It would be nice if some nonprofit down the road could use my code and save them some time. Also, there's another issue at stake. If I write the library for a very simple, generic thing (like HTML tables in Javascript), does that mean I can never again do so on my own time without putting myself at legal risk (even if it was a whole new fresh rewrite or a segment of a larger project). Am I surrendering my right to write code for this sort of project for the rest of my life (without this company's permission), since the code at work might still be somewhere in my brain influencing me? This seems related to software patents, as a side-note.

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• Developing my momentum on open source projects

  - by sashang

  Hi I've been struggling to develop momentum contributing to open source projects. I have in the past tried with gcc and contributed a fix to libstdc++ but it was a once off and even though I spent months in my spare time on the dev mailing list and reading through things I just never seemed to develop any momentum with the code. Eventually I unsubscribed and got my free time back and uncluttered my mailbox. Like a lot of people I have some little open source defunct projects lying around on the net, but they're not large and I'm the only contributor. At the moment I'm more interested in contributing to a large open source project and want to know how people got started because I find it difficult while working full time to develop any momentum with the code base. Other more regular contributors, who are on the project full-time, are able to make changes at will and as result enter that positive feedback cycle where they understand the code and also know where it's heading. It makes the barrier to entry higher for those that come along later. My questions are to people who actively contribute to large opensource projects, like the Linux kernel, or gcc or clang/llvm or anything else with say a developer head count of more than 10. How did you get started? Was there a large chunk of time in your life that you just could dedicate to working on the project? I know in Linus's case he had a chunk of time (6 months) to get it started. What barriers to entry did you encounter? Can you describe the initial stages of the time spent with the project, from when you had little understanding of the code to when you understood enough to commit regularly. Thanks

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• BizTalk 2009 - How do I do t"HAT"?

  - by StuartBrierley

  In my previous life working with BizTalk Server 2004, I came to view HAT (the Health and Activity Tracking tool) as one of my first ports of call in the case of problems with any of our BizTalk solutions.  When you move to BizTalk Server 2009 it is quickly apparent that HAT is no longer with us. HAT was useful in BizTalk 2004 mainly as it provided developers and administrators with a number of useful queries and views of what was going on inside BizTalk at runtime; when and what type of messages were received and sent, what messages had been suspended, what orchestration were running or suspended, you could even follow the process flow of a message or orchestration to see what was going on. With BizTalk Server 2009 much of the functionality of HAT can now be found in the BizTalk Administration console.  Select a BizTalk Group and you will be shown the Group Hub Overview page.  This provides a number of default queries that replicate some of those found in the old HAT. You can also use the Group Hub page to create new queries.  These can then be saved and loaded in other Group Hub instances - useful for creating queries in development for later use in Test, Psuedo-Live and Live environments. In the next few posts I am going to look at some of the common queries that we might miss from HAT and recreate them (or something close) using the new query option. Messages - last 100 received Messages - last 100 sent Messages - last 50 suspended Service instances - last 100 I have yet to try the updated Admin-HAT-Console in anger, and after using old-HAT for so long it may take some getting uesd to, but so far I would say that moving the HAT functionality into the BizTalk Administration console was probably the correct way to go.  Having one tool as the place to look for the combined functionality on offer certainly seems to be the sensible option.

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• How to plan/manage multi-platform (mobile) products?

  - by PhD

  Say I've to develop an app that runs on iOS, Android and Windows 8 Mobile. Now all three platforms are technically in different program languages. The only 'reuse' that I can see is that of the boxes-and-lines drawings (UML :) charts and nothing else. So how do companies/programmers manage the variation of the same product across different platforms especially since the implementation languages differ? It's 'easier' in the desktop world IMO given the plethora of languages and cross-platform libraries to make your life easier. Not so in the mobile world. More so, product line management principles don't seem to be all that applicable - what is same and variant doesn't really matter - the application is the same (conceptually) and the implementation is variant. Some difficulties that come to mind: Bug Fixing: Applications maybe designed in a similar manner but the bug identification and fixing would be radically different. A bug on iOS may/may-not be existent for that on Android. Or a bug fix approach on one platform may not be the same on another (unless it's a semantic bug like a!=b instead of a==b which would require the same 'approach' to fixing in essence Enhancements: Making a change on one platform would be radically different than on another Code-Design Divergence: They way the code is written/organized, the class structures etc., could be very different given the different implementation environments - leading to further reuse of the (above) UML models. There are of course many others - just keeping the development in sync and making sure all applications are up to the same version with the same set of features etc. Seems the effort is 3x that of a single application. So how exactly does one manage this nightmarish situation? Some thoughts: Split application to client/server to minimize the effect to client side only (not always doable) Use frameworks like Unity-3D that could take care of the cross-platform problem (mostly applicable to games and probably not to other applications etc.) Any other ways of managing a platform line? What are some proven approaches to managing/taming the effects?

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• Need efficient way to keep enemy from getting hit multiple times by same source

  - by TenFour04

  My game's a simple 2D one, but this probably applies to many types of scenarios. Suppose my player has a sword, or a gun that shoots a projectile that can pass through and hit multiple enemies. While the sword is swinging, there is a duration where I am checking for the sword making contact with any enemy on every frame. But once an enemy is hit by that sword, I don't want him to continue getting hit over and over as the sword follows through. (I do want the sword to continue checking whether it is hitting other enemies.) I've thought of a couple different approaches (below), but they don't seem like good ones to me. I'm looking for a way that doesn't force cross-referencing (I don't want the enemy to have to send a message back to the sword/projectile). And I'd like to avoid generating/resetting multiple array lists with every attack. Each time the sword swings it generates a unique id (maybe by just incrementing a global static long). Every enemy keeps a list of id's of swipes or projectiles that have already hit them, so the enemy knows not to get hurt by something multiple times. Downside is that every enemy may have a big list to compare to. So projectiles and sword swipes would have to broadcast their end-of-life to all enemies and cause a search and remove on every enemy's array list. Seems kind of slow. Each sword swipe or projectile keeps its own list of enemies that it has already hit so it knows not to apply damage. Downsides: Have to generate a new list (probably pull from a pool and clear one) every time a sword is swung or a projectile shot. Also, this breaks down modularity, because now the sword has to send a message to the enemy, and the enemy has to send a message back to the sword. Seems to me that two-way streets like this are a great way to create very difficult-to-find bugs.

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• Oracle Customer Experience (CX) Solutions Make Retailers Merry

  - by Tuula Fai

  Tis the season to be jolly. If you’re a retailer, your level of jolliness depends on sales. So you watch trends like U.S. store traffic increasing 3.5% to 308 million on Black Friday but sales actually falling 1.8% to $11.2 billion. Fortunately, by the end of November, retail sales were up 3.7% over the previous year, thanks to life recovering after Hurricane Sandy. And online sales topped $1 billion for the first time ever! Who are the companies improving their sales online? They are big names like Walgreen’s Drugstore.com, Nordstrom’s HauteLook, and Intuit. More importantly, how are they doing it? They use cutting-edge business practices enabled by Oracle’s CX Cloud Service & Support solutions to: Increase conversions rates and order sizes (Customer Acquisition) Enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty (Customer Retention) Reduce contact center costs and improve agent productivity (Operational Efficiency). Acquisition + Retention + Operational Efficiency = Sustainable Growth and Profits. That’s the magic formula for retail customer service success. Don’t take our word for it. Look at the results of these Oracle customers: Walgreen’s Drugstore—30% sales conversion rate on chat sessions with 20% increase in shopping cart size Nordstrom’s HauteLook—40,000+ interactions per month—20% growth over last year— efficiently managed by 40 agents, with no increase in IT costs Intuit—50% increase in customer satisfaction and 70% decrease in cost per interaction Using Oracle’s CX Cloud & Service solutions, these retailers deliver consistent, relevant, and personalized experiences across all touchpoints, including social, mobile, and web. Their ability to connect with customers anytime, anywhere—providing the right answer at the right time—helps them create a defensible advantage in the marketplace. Want to learn more? Please visit http://www.oracle.com/goto/cloudlaunchpad for free resources on delivering exceptional customer service in the Cloud. Also, watch our YouTube channel to learn more about seamless multichannel retail and Winston Furnishings’ exceptional customer experience.

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• How do I simplify a 2D game grid for level management while keeping its by-pixel features?

  - by Eric Thoma

  (I cross-posted this from StackOverflow as this seems to be a more appropriate forum. I've looked around a little here and I did not find an answer, so I hope this is not a recurring question.) This is a question dealing with 2D world design. I am playing around by creating a 2D bird's eye view shooter game, and I am looking to make the game sleek and advanced. I hope to be able to write physics so projectiles have momentum and knock-down properties. I am immediately running into the problem of world design. I need a way to have level files that store everything there is about a game. This is easiest by just having a grid of objects. But there are thin-walls and other objects that don't seem to fit into a traditional cell of a grid. I want to be able to fit all these together so I can streamline level design; so I don't have to put in the exact pixel-specific start and end of a wall. There doesn't seem to be an obvious translation from level file to game without forcing myself into a pacman-life scenario, meaning a scenario where the game feels boxy and discrete. There is a contrast between the smoothly (relatively) moving characters and finite jumps in a grid. I would appreciate an answer that would describe implementation options or point me to resources that do. I would also appreciate references to sites that teach game design. The language I am using is Java (although I would love to use C or C++, but I can never find convenient resources in those languages). Thank you for any answers. Please leave any questions in the space below; I will be able to answer them later tonight (28th Nov).

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• An experiment: unlimited free trial

  - by Alex Davies

  The .NET Demon team have just implemented an experiment that is quite a break from Red Gate’s normal business model. Instead of the tool expiring after the trial period, it now continues to work, but with a new message that appears after the tool has saved you a certain amount of time. The rationale is that a user that stops using .NET Demon because the trial expired isn’t doing anyone any good. We’d much rather people continue using it forever, as long as everyone that finds it useful and can afford it still pays for it. Hopefully the message appearing is annoying enough to achieve that, but not for people to uninstall it. It’s true that many companies have tried it before with mixed results, but we have a secret weapon. The perfect nag message? The neat thing for .NET Demon is that we can easily measure exactly how much time .NET Demon has saved you, in terms of unnecessary project builds that Visual Studio would have done. When you press F5, the message shows you the time saved, and then makes you wait a shorter time before starting your application. Confronted with the truth about how amazing .NET Demon is, who can do anything but buy it? The real secret though, is that while you wait, .NET Demon gives you entertainment, in the form of a picture of a cute kitten. I’ve only had time to embed one kitten so far, but the eventual aim is for a random different kitten to appear each time. The psychological health benefits of a dose of kittens in the daily life of the developer are obvious. My only concern is that people will complain after paying for .NET Demon that the kittens are gone.

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• Will an online degree get you a job that requires "CS or equivalent 4-year degree"? [on hold]

  - by qel

  I'm a nerdy slacker type who didn't get my life together till I was 30. I've had a real job for a couple years doing C#/SQL. I've gotten several raises, but I'm making less than most developers, and the atmosphere is ... not positive. Looking for a new job, I think my applications get thrown out because I don't have a degree. And I want to finish a Bachelor's just to feel like less of a loser. I have a lot of college credits from 1996-2003 and a low GPA, so I don't know if that's worth much. An online degree looks like a good option, but I just don't know what I should be looking at for online schools because they all look like fake degrees. If they had programs equivalent to a real Comp Sci degree, I don't think they would have weird sounding names like they do. University of Phoenix has a B.S./Information Technology-Software Engineering. DeVry has a B.S./Computer Engineering Technology program. But that's not CS, and most other things I see have even more fake-sounding names. Are these useless degrees? Some people say DeVry and UoP are acceptable, some people say they're a joke. I have enough experience now, though, that maybe all I'm missing is being able to check the box that I have a 4-year degree. Harvard Extension seems like a real degree, even if it isn't a real Harvard degree, but I'd have to live there at least 3 months, which kinda defeats the purpose of an online degree fitting around work.

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