Search Results

Search found 9954 results on 399 pages for 'mean'.

Page 193/399 | < Previous Page | 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200  | Next Page >

• Friends Don’t Let Friends Play with Portal Guns [Video]

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  Many Portal fan films are sci-fi stories in their own right; this humorous video is simply focused on what happens when three guys get their hands on a portal gun. Jason Craft, the video’s director, explains: My interpretation of what a real POrtal gun would be like if one existed. Based on the video game, POrtal. I tried to match the game as close as possible. This was the most challenging project I have ever undertaken, consisting of 3D tracking, seamless camera cuts and 3D camera projection. ENJOY! We certainly wish our goofing around with friends videos came off this polished. For those of you wondering how he got such an awesome Portal Gun prop, it’s all CGI (you can check out his model here). [via Boing Boing] HTG Explains: What Is Windows RT & What Does It Mean To Me? HTG Explains: How Windows 8′s Secure Boot Feature Works & What It Means for Linux Hack Your Kindle for Easy Font Customization

  Read the article

• Is it illegal to rewrite every line of an open source project in a slightly different way, and use it in a closed source project?

  - by Chris Barry

  There is some code which is GPL or LGPL that I am considering using for an iPhone project. If I took that code (JavaScript) and rewrote it in a different language for use on the iPhone would that be a legal issue? In theory the process that has happened is that I have gone through each line of the project, learnt what it is doing, and then reimplemented the ideas in a new language. To me it seems this is like learning how to implement something, but then reimplementing it separately from the original licence. Therefore you have only copied the algorithm, which arguably you could have learnt from somewhere else other than the original project. Does the licence cover the specific implementation or the algorithm as well? EDIT------ Really glad to see this topic create a good conversation. To give a bit more backing to the project, the code involved does some kind of audio analysis. I believe it is non-trivial to learn or implement, although I was prepared to embark on this task (I'm at the level where I can implement an FFT algorithm, and this was going to go beyond that.) It is a fairly low LOC script, so I didn't think it would be too hard to do a straight port. I really like the idea of rereleasing my port as well as using it in the application. I don't see any problem with that, and it would be a great way to give something back to the community. I was going to add a line about not wanting to discuss the moral issues, but I'm quite glad I didn't as it seems to have fired the debate a bit. I still feel a bit odd about using open source code to learn from. Does this mean that anything one learns from an open source project is not allowed to be used in a closed source project? And how long after or different does an implementation have to be to not be considered violation of the licence? Murky! EDIT 2 -------- Follow up question

  Read the article

• The Disloyalty Card

  - by David Dorf

  Let's take a break from technology for a second; please indulge me. (That's for you Erick.) A few months back, James Hoffmann reported that Gwilym Davies, the 2009 World Barista Champion, had implemented a rather unique idea for his cafe: the disloyalty card. His card lists eight nearby cafes in London that the cardholder must visit and try a coffee. After sampling all eight and collecting the required stamps, Gwilym provides a free coffee from his shop. His idea sends customers to his competitors. What does this say about Gwilym? First, it tells me he's confident in his abilities to make a mean cup of java. Second, it tells me he's truly passionate about his his trade. But was this a sound business endeavor? Obviously the risk is that one of his loyal customers might just find a better product at a competitor and not return. But the goal isn't really to strengthen his customer base -- its to strengthen the market, which will in turn provide more customers over the long run. This idea seems great for frequently purchased products like restaurants, bars, bakeries, music, and of course, cafes. Its probably not a good idea for high priced merchandise or infrequently purchased items like shoes, electronics, and housewares. Nevertheless, its a great example of thinking in reverse. Try this: Instead of telling your staff how you want customers treated, list out the ways you don't want customers treated. Why should you limit people's imagination and freedom to engage customers? Instead, give them guidelines to avoid the bad behavior, and leave them open to be creative with the positive behavior. Instead of asking the question, "how can we get more people in our stores?" try asking the inverse: "why aren't people visiting our stores?" Innovation doesn't only come from asking "why?" Often it comes from asking "why not?"

  Read the article

• Geeks with Blogs acquired by Watson Technology Group

  - by Tarun Arora

  Just received the following email… It’s now official! Hello bloggers, you are receiving this email to let you know that Geeks with Blogs (http://geekswithblogs.net) has been acquired by my company, Watson Technology Group. Jeff Julian started the site in 2003 and since then him and John Alexander (AJI Software) have done a great job with the community. I am a long time friend of theirs and I was actually one of the first bloggers on the site in 2003. I am excited to take over the reins and I have a lot of plans to improve the blog platform and community. My goal is to make the site the #1 blogging site for all IT professionals. The site currently has over 3,000 bloggers and has received 75,000,000 website visitors over the last 5 years. Some of the planned improvements in the coming months: Overall look and feel upgrades to the site Improve editor for blog postings including support for code formatting and uploading images Mobile support and more responsive design templates Improve community side of the site to drive more traffic between blogs Highlight top articles and bloggers by redesigning the home page ... and lots of other things. One of the delicate balances I want to ensure is that each blogger can maintain their own identity and blog personality but at the same time be part of the community of bloggers. The community helps everyone receive more blog traffic and visibility. The blog templates need to be somewhere between Facebook and Myspace if you know what I mean. Since this website is designed to be a community, I would love to have your feedback and hear your ideas. Please submit idea via UserVoice at http://geekswithblogs.uservoice.com or email [email protected] at anytime. For those who are interested to know more about me, here is a link to my LinkedIn profile and you can follow me on Twitter @mattwatson81. LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/mattwatsonkc Thanks, Matt Watson Geeks with Blogs Member of Geeks with Blogs Unsubscribe [email protected] from this list. Our mailing address is: GeeksWithBlogs,LLC 9201 Ward Parkway Suite 302 Kansas City, MO 64114

  Read the article

• Stop Believing TV’s Lies: The Real Truth About "Enhancing" Images

  - by Eric Z Goodnight

  You’ve seen it over and over. The FBI uses their advanced technology to “enhance” a blurry image, and find a villain’s face in the worst possible footage. Well, How-To Geek is calling their bluff. Read on to see why. It’s one of the most common tropes in television and movies, but is there any possibility a government agency could really have the technology to find faces where there are only blurry pixels? We’ll make the argument that not only is it impossible with current technology, but it is very unlikely to ever be a technology we’ll ever see. Stick around to see us put this trope under the lenses of science and technology, and prove it wrong once and for all Latest Features How-To Geek ETC Stop Believing TV’s Lies: The Real Truth About "Enhancing" Images The How-To Geek Valentine’s Day Gift Guide Inspire Geek Love with These Hilarious Geek Valentines RGB? CMYK? Alpha? What Are Image Channels and What Do They Mean? How to Recover that Photo, Picture or File You Deleted Accidentally How To Colorize Black and White Vintage Photographs in Photoshop A History of Vintage Transformers: Decepticons Edition [Infographic] How to Determine What Kind of Comment to Leave on Facebook [Humorous Flow Chart] View the Cars of Tomorrow Through the Eyes of the Past [Historical Video] Add Romance to Your Desktop with These Two Valentine’s Day Themes for Windows 7 Gmail’s Priority Inbox Now Available for Mobile Web Browsers Touchpad Blocker Locks Down Your Touchpad While Typing

  Read the article

• IE9 RC fixed the “Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage” error when running an ASP.NET application in Visual Studio

  - by Jon Galloway

  One of the obstacles ASP.NET developers faced in using the Internet Explorer 9 Beta was the dreaded “Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage” error when running an ASP.NET application in Visual Studio. In the bug information on Connect (issue 601047), Eric Lawrence said that the problem was due to “caused by failure to failover from IPv6 to IPv4 when the connection is local.” Robert MacLean gives some more information as what was going wrong: “The problem is Windows, especially since it assumes IPv6 is better than IPv4. Note […] that when you ping localhost you get an IPv6 address. So what appears to be happening is when IE9 tries to go to localhost it uses IPv6, and the ASP.NET Development Server is IPv4 only and so nothing loads and we get the error.” The Simple Fix - Install IE 9 RC Internet Explorer 9 RC fixes this bug, so if you had tried IE 9 Beta and stopped using it due to problems with ASP.NET development, install the RC. The Workaround in IE 9 Beta If you're stuck on IE 9 Beta for some reason, you can follow Robert's workaround, which involves a one character edit to your hosts file. I've been using it for months, and it works great. Open notepad (running as administrator) and edit the hosts file (found in %systemroot%\system32\drivers\etc) Remove the # comment character before the line starting with 127.0.0.1 Save the file - if you have problems saving, it's probably because you weren't running as administrator When you're done, your hosts file will end with the following lines (assuming you were using a default hosts file setup beforehand): # localhost name resolution is handled within DNS itself.     127.0.0.1       localhost #    ::1             localhost Note: more information on editing your hosts file here. This causes Windows to default to IPv4 when resolving localhost, which will point to 127.0.0.1, which is right where Cassini - I mean the ASP.NET Web Development Server - is waiting for it.

  Read the article

• Does a site's bounce rate influence Google rankings?

  - by Joel Spolsky

  Does Google consider bounce rate or something similar in ranking sites? Background: here at Stack Exchange we noticed that the latest Google algorithm changes resulted in about a 20% dip in traffic to Server Fault (and a much smaller dip in traffic to Super User). Stack Overflow traffic was not affected. There was an article on WebProNews which hypothesized that bounce rate might be a ranking signal in Google's latest Panda update. According to Google Analytics, these are our bounce rates over the last month: Site Bounce Rate Avg Time on Site ------------- ----------- ---------------- SuperUser 84.67% 01:16 ServerFault 83.76% 00:53 Stack Overflow 63.63% 04:12 Now, technically, Google has no way to know the bounce rate. If you go to Google, search for something, and click on the first result, Google can't tell the difference between: a user who turns off their computer a user who goes to a completely different web site a user who spends hours clicking around on the website they landed on What Google does know is how long it takes the user to come back to Google and do another search. According to the book In The Plex (page 47), Google distinguishes between what they call "short clicks" and "long clicks": A short click is a search where the user quickly comes back to Google and does another search. Google interprets this as a signal that the first search results were unsatisfactory. A long click is a search where the user doesn't search again for a long time. The book says that Google uses this information internally, to judge the quality of their own algorithms. It also said that short click data in which someone retypes a slight variation of the search is used to fuel the "Did you mean...?" spell checking algorithm. So, my hypothesis is that Google has recently decided to use long click rates as a signal of a high quality site. Does anyone have any evidence of this? Have you seen any high-bounce-rate sites which lost traffic (or vice-versa)?

  Read the article

• The Best Tips and Tweaks for Getting the Most Out of Internet Explorer 9

  - by Lori Kaufman

  If you use Internet Explorer 9, we have many tips and tricks for you to improve your web surfing experience, from customizing the interface to using the many features, and to make your time online more secure with IE9’s many security and privacy enhancements. Surf or Search Using the One Box (Address Bar) In IE versions prior to 9, the address bar and search bar were separate. They are now combined into the One Box in IE9, allowing you to navigate to websites or start a search from a single place. According to Microsoft, if you enter a single word that represents a valid URL, such as “microsoft” or “howtogeek,” the word will be evaluated as a URL and you can click on the URL or press Shift + Enter to load that site. The One Box also provides inline autocomplete functionality, so you only have to type a few letters to quickly get to your favorite sites. IE9 autocompletes what you are typing with popular websites, as well as with items from your Favorites and History lists. HTG Explains: What Is Windows RT and What Does It Mean To Me? HTG Explains: How Windows 8′s Secure Boot Feature Works & What It Means for Linux Hack Your Kindle for Easy Font Customization

  Read the article

• NINE Questions with Michelle Juett

  - by NINEQuestions

  Michelle Juett is one of the more interesting people I know, even though we’ve never met face to face. She’s part artist, part techie and all cool. We “met” via my good buddy George Clingerman and have plotting to take over the world, errr… I mean “collaborating” ever since. If you happen to live in the Seattle area, you can catch her and her work at Sakura Con on April 2-4, 2010 and various other gamer and art cons throughout the year. You can also find her on Twitter as @Shelldragon. Now that you know a little bit, I’ll let her tell you the rest of the story in these NINE Questions: 1. Where are you from? I was born in Clearwater, Florida. I like to tell people I'm from the Bermuda Triangle, it just makes explaining myself so much easier. My family moved to Washington when I was 5 and I've been in the Pacific Northwest ever since. We like to QQ about the rain but we really love the green trees and clean water. 2. What do you do? I fight evil by moonlight and win love by daylight.. or something like that.  I’ve been in quality assurance for games during the day since January 2008 and an artist for life. I currently work in QA for a really awesome game company in Bellevue.  At home, I work on personal digital art, making game assets as well as other random freelance projects as they pop up. 3. How did you get to where you are now? I'm still not where I want to be but I'm getting closer. The biggest piece of advice I can give is to work hard and never settle for the minimum required. I tend to overwork myself but I've never regretted it. You can want something really bad but if you aren't willing to work for it, then you can't expect it to just happen. I've always drawn and had an unhealthy love for video games that I was told I’d grow out of.  I knew I would not ‘grow out’ of games and that real adults make them and I could too. After I graduated, in searching for jobs, I discovered game testing. I figured this would be a good way to get my foot in the door and start networking. I’ve worked with consoles, websites and now, PC games.  I stuck with my journey, although it has been a rocky one, daylighting as a tester and moonlighting as an artist. I'm still on that journey but I wouldn't have it any other way. Test has given me a perspective that is difficult, if not impossible, to obtain any other way. It gives an unconditional respect for other hard working testers and an insight into creative problem solving. 4. So video game testing probably sounds WAY cooler than the reality. What's it like? What's a given day for you? Game testers don't get a lot of respect because of their stigmas and the fact most people don't actually know what we do.  People hear about the opening and closing disc trays all day. Many places do treat their testers like numbers. It all depends on where you work and how awesome your company is. I've had to deal with a lot of bad work situations to get to a really good one. QA exists to ensure the game is as flawless and enjoyable as it can be by the time it has to leave the nest and go out into the world. This includes everything obvious: “can I beat the level and save the princess?” to the more obscure: ‘What happens when I lose internet connection while trying to save right before falling into a pit to my death while holding the jump key then my cat pulls out my memory card and hides it in her litter box?” On the dev side, for developers, testers can be very scary people. Especially when the test team is not in house and you can’t see each other’s faces.  I've seen both sides. We don't mean to hurt your feelings. We really DO love you and want your game to be the best it can be! It can be some serious tough love. 5. You are also an accomplished artist. Got any major projects right now you'd like to talk about? LOL, I don't know if I’d say I'm an accomplished artist just yet. I’m still a long way from where I want to be. I figure that’s what makes you grow though: the desire to never stop improving. I like QA but I want to be a full time artist. I was lucky enough to register for a table at Sakura Con in the 11 second window that the tables sold out. As such, I’ll be selling my wares in the Artist Alley April 2-4th. Part of preparing for this is actually making the art to be sold there. Anime is a fun pass time but I don’t draw a whole lot of it so I’m making up for lost time. As I seem to enjoy burying myself in work, I’m an art lead for a secret project that’s so secret I might be killed tonight for even mentioning it. I also take on various freelance projects and do what I can to help out indie games. I discovered the XNA community a year and a half ago and developed a love for Indies when I was writing a weekly newsletter on XBLA news. I’m a little late to the party but I find myself in a unique position where I am an artist and also have technical skills in games. While not programmer myself, I have a lot of game sense and experience. I hope to make some awesome happen. Lastly, I have an ongoing web comic Shell’s Angels) that tends to get neglected when I get busy. I still love drawing comics and keep a little book with me to sketch down ideas as they pop into my head. I may pick it back up again as a larger project sometime in the future. 6. Can you talk about any of the other freelance projects you're doing or are you sworn to secrecy on those too? We wouldn't want a team of game developer ninjas to take you out or anything. All my projects are currently 2d. I have personal projects such as the ongoing comic as well as a graphic novel I've been picking at here and there. My main focus until April is Sakura Con, Sakura Con, Sakura Con.  I see it as a great way to get exposure and convention experience. I found out I love conventions a couple years ago and I want to get more involved in them. 7. As an artist, what is your weapon of choice? What do you use to get most of your stuff done? I am a Photoshop Hero and I have the hoodie to prove it. (http://www.pennyarcademerch.com/pah090011.html) I've dabbled in other paint programs but I always gravitate back to Photoshop. She is my one true love. I'd like to learn programs like Flash or Anime Studio when I get a bit more time because of their animation abilities. I've worked on frame by frame animation forever but I would love to learn 2d rigging. Still, nothing can compare to a simple sketchpad and a pencil. I always have one on me in case I come across or think of something interesting and can't get to a computer. If the Courier ever comes to exist it will be an ideal weapon for me. 8. You did some videos too, depicting the art creation process. What was the motivation behind those? The creative process is just as important as the final product, if not more so.  I've always loved watching speed paint videos and wanted to try it out myself. Turns out it's a lot of work and time but it's definitely fun to go back and rewatch them. Art isn't always the end result and is more often the process itself. 9. Got any interesting tattoos? Designed any for yourself or other people? Not yet, but not for lack of desire. I've toiled over what and where for years. Last year, I finally decided the back of my shoulders would be the place. Like anything permanent, I want it to have meaning. I thought of somehow incorporating games but I couldn't find something I felt would stand the test of time even with all the classic sprite games. I'm very picky so we'll see if I can get something solid decided. Come see me at Sakura Con April 2 -4!!!

  Read the article

• Oracle CRM in the UK- Gartner CRM Summit 2010

  - by divya.malik

  We are now headed to the UK to co-sponsor and participate in the Gartner Customer Relationship Management Summit 2010 on the 16th and 17th of March in London. Oracle CRM Vice President Mark Woollen will be presenting on Tuesday, 16 March 2010 from 15:20-15:50 on                                                                                                                                          CRM is dead, long live CRM?  Everyone is saying the world has changed and with it a new set of acronyms/buzzwords/vendors etc have appeared. What does this really mean for CRM software? Is it Dead or Alive? Listen to Mark’s view from Oracle and its customers.                  Location- Westbourne 2, Level –1. Also stop by the Oracle booth at the demogrounds.  The event looks promising with some great content from the Gartner analysts and from what the Gartner folks just told me, the event is oversold. And the weather in London town? As expected…slight showers on Monday with a high of 49 degrees F and partly cloudy on Tuesday, with a high of 50 degrees F.

  Read the article

• Favorite Programmer Quotes…

  - by SGWellens

    "A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing." — Emo Philips   "There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't. " – Unknown.   "Premature optimization is the root of all evil." — Donald Knuth   "I should have become a doctor; then I could bury my mistakes." — Unknown   "Code softly and carry a large backup thumb drive." — Me   "Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live." — Martin Golding   "DDE…the protocol from hell"— Charles Petzold   "Just because a thing is new don't mean that it's better" — Will Rogers   "The mark of a mature programmer is willingness to throw out code you spent time on when you realize it's pointless." — Bram Cohen   "A good programmer is someone who looks both ways before crossing a one-way street." — Doug Linder   "The early bird may get the worm but it's the second mouse that gets the cheese." — Unknown   I hope someone finds this amusing. Steve Wellens CodeProject

  Read the article

• Step Aside Google

  - by David Dorf

  Step aside Google. While search will always be a huge part of the web, I can see a day in the not-too-distance future where search takes a backseat to the social graph. Links between pages will give way to relationships between people, including context like location. What does this mean for retail? It means your e-commerce strategy will slowly transition to an f-commerce strategy. Remember when a large portion of the online population was held captive inside the walls of AOL? All the commercials listed an AOL keyword, not a web address because that's where the majority of people surfed. Now, people are spending a huge amount of time in Facebook (despite Betty White's proclamation that its a big waste of time). According to Facebook, users spend 500 billion minutes per month on the site. Selling products where consumers are spending their time makes sense. The power of Like and Share are the most effective approach to marketing. More and more stores are popping up on Facebook, and soon they will be the front-end to e-commerce systems. As sites adopt the Facebook Open Graph API, users will have a harder time distinguishing the open web from their Facebook experience, including shopping. Of course e-commerce sites won't go away, but a large portion of their traffic will emanate from Facebook and in some cases Facebook will act as the front-end for the web store. Ignore Facebook Open Graph at your peril. In a Mashable article, Mitchell Harper made several predictions about how e-commerce will change based on Facebook. His five points are not far-fetched at all, so we need to watch this space carefully.

  Read the article

• stress testing opencl/Ati GPU on 12.04

  - by lurscher

  What does people normally use to stress test their GPU on ubuntu 12.04? I tried installing Phoronix Benchmark suite ubuntu .deb but it tries to install freeglu3-dev and at the same time complains about $ phoronix-test-suite benchmark pts/opencl The following dependencies are needed and will be installed: freeglut3-dev This process may take several minutes. Reading package lists... Building dependency tree... Reading state information... freeglut3-dev is already the newest version. 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 90 not upgraded. There are dependencies still missing from the system: - OpenGL Utility Kit / GLUT 1: Ignore missing dependencies and proceed with installation. 2: Skip installing the tests with missing dependencies. 3: Re-attempt to install the missing dependencies. 4: Quit the current Phoronix Test Suite process. Missing dependencies action: 4 so even if it is installing freeglu3, it still complains about missing GLUT. You can't win against GLUT it seems So, what does people use for this? i mean, really, because i have tried googling for an hour and it is not paying up Thanks!

  Read the article

• The How-To Geek Valentine’s Day Gift Guide

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  Valentine’s Day is less than week away; if you want to prove yourself the geekiest cupid around you’ll definitely want to check out our guide to geeky Valentine’s big and small. The following gift guide includes gifts for the geeks in your life and gifts for geeks to give those that appreciate their geeky nature. Our methodology for picking Valentine’s-related gifts focused on gifts that were either traditional Valentine’s day gifts with a geek-slant or a nod to an aspect of geek culture. Read on to check out the geektacular pickings we mined the internet to unearth. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC The How-To Geek Valentine’s Day Gift Guide Inspire Geek Love with These Hilarious Geek Valentines RGB? CMYK? Alpha? What Are Image Channels and What Do They Mean? How to Recover that Photo, Picture or File You Deleted Accidentally How To Colorize Black and White Vintage Photographs in Photoshop How To Get SSH Command-Line Access to Windows 7 Using Cygwin View the Cars of Tomorrow Through the Eyes of the Past [Historical Video] Add Romance to Your Desktop with These Two Valentine’s Day Themes for Windows 7 Gmail’s Priority Inbox Now Available for Mobile Web Browsers Touchpad Blocker Locks Down Your Touchpad While Typing Arrival of the Viking Fleet Wallpaper A History of Vintage Transformers [Infographic]

  Read the article

• Slide-decks from recent Adelaide SQL Server UG meetings

  - by Rob Farley

  The UK has been well represented this summer at the Adelaide SQL Server User Group, with presentations from Chris Testa-O’Neill (isn’t that the right link? Maybe try this one) and Martin Cairney. The slides are available here and here. I thought I’d particularly mention Martin’s, and how it’s relevant to this month’s T-SQL Tuesday. Martin spoke about Policy-Based Management and the Enterprise Policy Management Framework – something which is remarkably under-used, and yet which can really impact your ability to look after environments. If you have policies set up, then you can easily test each of your SQL instances to see if they are still satisfying a set of policies as defined. Automation (the topic of this month’s T-SQL Tuesday) should mean that your life is made easier, thereby enabling to you to do more. It shouldn’t remove the human element, but should remove (most of) the human errors. People still need to manage the situation, and work out what needs to be done, etc. We haven’t reached a point where computers can replace people, but they are very good at replace the mundaneness and monotony of our jobs. They’ve made our lives more interesting (although many would rightly argue that they have also made our lives more complex) by letting us focus on the stuff that changes. Martin named his talk Put Your Feet Up, which nicely expresses the fact that managing systems shouldn’t be about running around checking things all the time. It must be about having systems in place which tell you when things aren’t going well. It’s never quite as simple as being able to actually put your feet up, but certainly no system should require constant attention. It’s definitely a policy we at LobsterPot adhere to, whether it’s an alert to let us know that an ETL package has run successfully, or a script that generates some code for a report. If things can be automated, it reduces the chance of error, reduces the repetitive nature of work, and in general, keeps both consultants and clients much happier.

  Read the article

• Should we enforce code style in our large codebase?

  - by eighttrackmind

  By "code style" I mean 2 things: Style, eg. // bad if(foo){ ... } // good if (foo) { ... } Conventions and idiomaticity, where two ways of writing the same thing are functionally equivalent, but one is more idiomatic. eg. // bad if (fooLib.equals(a, b)) { ... } // good if (a == b) { ... } I think it makes sense to use an auto-formatter to enforce #1 automatically. So my question is specifically about #2. I like to break things down into pros and cons, here's what I've come up with so far: Pros: Used by many large codebases (eg. Google, jQuery) Helps make it a bit easier to work on new areas of the codebase Helps make code more portable (this is not necessarily true) Code style is automatic once you get used to it Makes it easier to fast-decline pull requests Cons: Takes engineers’ and code reviewers’ time away from more important things (like developing features) Code should ideally be rewritten every 2-3 years anyway, so it’s more important to focus on getting the architecture right, and achieving high test coverage Adds strain to code reviews (eg. “don’t do it this way, I like this other way better”) Even if I’ve been using a code style for a while, I still sometime have to pause and think about how to write a line better Having an enforced, uniform code style makes it hard to experiment with potentially better styles Maintaining a style guide takes a lot of incremental effort Engineers rarely read through the style guide. More often, it's cited in code reviews And as a secondary question: we also have many smaller repositories - should the same code style be enforced there?

  Read the article

• Geek it Up

  - by BuckWoody

  I’ve run into a couple of kinds of folks in IT. Some really like technology a lot – a whole lot –and others treat it more as a job. For those of you in the second camp, you can go back to your drab, meaningless jobs – this post is for the first group. I’m a geek. Not a little bit of a geek, a really big one. I love technology, I get excited about science and electronics in general, and I read math books when I don’t have to. Yes, I have a Star Trek item or two around the house. My daughter is fluent in both Monty Python AND Serenity. I totally admit it. So if you’re like me (OK, maybe a little less geeky than that), then go for it. Put those toys in your cubicle, wear your fan shirt, but most of all, geek up your tools. No, this isn’t an April Fool’s post – I really mean it. I’ve noticed that when I get the larger monitor, better mouse, cooler keyboard, I LIKE coming to work. It’s a way to reward yourself – I’ve even found that it makes work easier if I have the kind of things I enjoy around to work with. So buy that old “clicky” IBM keyboard, get three monitors, and buy a nice headset so that you can set all of your sounds to Monty Python WAV’s. And get to work. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

  Read the article

• How to run 'apt-get install' to install all dependencies?

  - by michael

  I am running this in ubuntu server installation: sudo apt-get install git-core gnupg flex bison gperf build-essential \ zip curl libc6-dev libncurses5-dev:i386 x11proto-core-dev \ libx11-dev:i386 libreadline6-dev:i386 libgl1-mesa-glx:i386 \ libgl1-mesa-dev g++-multilib mingw32 openjdk-6-jdk tofrodos \ python-markdown libxml2-utils xsltproc zlib1g-dev:i386 but I am getting this: Reading package lists... Building dependency tree... Reading state information... curl is already the newest version. gnupg is already the newest version. Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable distribution that some required packages have not yet been created or been moved out of Incoming. The following information may help to resolve the situation: The following packages have unmet dependencies: build-essential : Depends: gcc (>= 4:4.4.3) but it is not going to be installed Depends: g++ (>= 4:4.4.3) but it is not going to be installed g++-multilib : Depends: cpp (>= 4:4.7.2-1ubuntu2) but it is not going to be installed Depends: gcc-multilib (>= 4:4.7.2-1ubuntu2) but it is not going to be installed Depends: g++ (>= 4:4.7.2-1ubuntu2) but it is not going to be installed Depends: g++-4.7-multilib (>= 4.7.2-1~) but it is not going to be installed How can I fix this?

  Read the article

• How does an optimizing compiler react to a program with nested loops?

  - by D.Singh

  Say you have a bunch of nested loops. public void testMethod() { for(int i = 0; i<1203; i++){ //some computation for(int k=2; k<123; k++){ //some computation for(int j=2; j<12312; j++){ //some computation for(int l=2; l<123123; l++){ //some computation for(int p=2; p<12312; p++){ //some computation } } } } } } When the above code reaches the stage where the compiler will try to optimize it (I believe it's when the intermediate language needs to converted to machine code?), what will the compiler try to do? Is there any significant optimization that will take place? I understand that the optimizer will break up the loops by means of loop fission. But this is only per loop isn't it? What I mean with my question is will it take any action exclusively based on seeing the nested loops? Or will it just optimize the loops one by one? If the Java VM complicates the explanation then please just assume that it's C or C++ code.

  Read the article

• Is duck typing a subset of polymorphism

  - by Raynos

  From Polymorphism on WIkipedia In computer science, polymorphism is a programming language feature that allows values of different data types to be handled using a uniform interface. From duck typing on Wikipedia In computer programming with object-oriented programming languages, duck typing is a style of dynamic typing in which an object's current set of methods and properties determines the valid semantics, rather than its inheritance from a particular class or implementation of a specific interface. My interpretation is that based on duck typing, the objects methods/properties determine the valid semantics. Meaning that the objects current shape determines the interface it upholds. From polymorphism you can say a function is polymorphic if it accepts multiple different data types as long as they uphold an interface. So if a function can duck type, it can accept multiple different data types and operate on them as long as those data types have the correct methods/properties and thus uphold the interface. (Usage of the term interface is meant not as a code construct but more as a descriptive, documenting construct) What is the correct relationship between ducktyping and polymorphism ? If a language can duck type, does it mean it can do polymorphism ?

  Read the article

• Book Review: Getting Started With Window 8 Apps By Ben Dewey

  - by Tim Murphy

  When O’Reilly gave me an opportunity to review this book I was excited.  It gave me a reason to finally put some time into this new platform and what developers will need to learn in order to be successful. This book by Ben Dewey is only 92 pages long, so if you were looking for an in-depth treatment of Windows 8 development you will need supplemental materials.  It is also due for an update from the perspective of recent changes made by Microsoft prior to the final release of the OS and tools.  This causes a few issues if you try to run the code samples because of namespace changes. I was encouraged by the fact that the author didn’t do the typical “hello world” app.  He uses a lot of pattern based development techniques and hits many of the main topics including: Application lifecycle Charms integration Tiles Sensors The lifecycle is critical for anyone who hasn’t done mobile development before.  Limited resources on these devices mean that the OS can suspend or kill your app altogether if it decides it needs to.  He covers tombstoning which is the key to Windows 8 and Windows Phone lifecycle management. He also dedicates a chapter to marketing and distributing the application you build.  From my experience with Windows Phone development this is crucial information.  You need to know how to test your application so that it is going to pass certification and present your app so that it is going to get noticed amongst thousands of other apps. The main things that I wish had been in the book explanations of more of the common controls and more complete explanation of patterns that were implemented. In the end this book is a good foundation getting exposure to the concepts that underlie this new version of the Windows platform and how it effects developers.  It isn’t a book that I would suggest for someone just getting into development with no understanding of pattern based development. del.icio.us Tags: Windows 8,O'Reilly,Ben Dewey,Book Review,Review

  Read the article

• New version of SQL Server Data Tools is now available

  - by jamiet

  If you don’t follow the SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) blog then you may not know that two days ago an updated version of SSDT was released (and by SSDT I mean the database projects, not the SSIS/SSRS/SSAS stuff) along with a new version of the SSDT Power Tools. This release incorporates a an updated version of the SQL Server Data Tier Application Framework (aka DAC Framework, aka DacFX) which you can read about on Adam Mahood’s blog post SQL Server Data-Tier Application Framework (September 2012) Available. DacFX is essentially all the gubbins that you need to extract and publish .dacpacs and according to Adam’s post it incorporates a new feature that I think is very interesting indeed: Extract DACPAC with data – Creates a database snapshot file (.dacpac) from a live SQL Server or Windows Azure SQL Database that contains data from user tables in addition to the database schema. These packages can be published to a new or existing SQL Server or Windows Azure SQL Database using the SqlPackage.exe Publish action. Data contained in package replaces the existing data in the target database. In short, .dacpacs can now include data as well as schema. I’m very excited about this because one of my long-standing complaints about SSDT (and its many forebears) is that whilst it has great support for declarative development of schema it does not provide anything similar for data – if you want to deploy data from your SSDT projects then you have to write Post-Deployment MERGE scripts. This new feature for .dacpacs does not change that situation yet however it is a very important pre-requisite so I am hoping that a feature to provide declaration of data (in addition to declaration of schema which we have today) is going to light up in SSDT in the not too distant future. Read more about the latest SSDT, Power Tools & DacFX releases at: Now available: SQL Server Data Tools - September 2012 update! by Janet Yeilding New SSDT Power Tools! Now for both Visual Studio 2010 and Visual Studio 2012 by Sarah McDevitt SQL Server Data-Tier Application Framework (September 2012) Available by Adam Mahood @Jamiet

  Read the article

• Twitter status id conundrum

  - by jamiet

  I have an interest, a slightly perverse one some might say, in using online services and trying to figure out what the underlying (logical) data model is and in this day and age Twitter is one that lends itself very well to scrutiny. Consider this recent tweet of mine: The URL that enables you to see that tweet is http://twitter.com/jamiet/status/12154647354. We can interpret that URL to mean "a tweet by jamiet with an id of 12154647354" and hence we might further assume that the unique identifier for the tweet is {jamiet,12154647354}. However, its well-known that Twitter gives each status a unique ID regardless of who tweeted it so we might expect we could reach that tweet just by using a URL of http://twitter.com/status/12154647354 however (at the time of writing) that only redirects to Twitter's homepage. That seems strange to me especially given that we can use Twitter's API to access information about that tweet using only the id of the status. Witness http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/show/12154647354.xml: [We can also access a JSON version of that information using http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/show/12154647354.json] I'm puzzled as to why a tweet can't be accessed using on the main twitter website using the id alone. Anyone have any suggestions? @jamiet Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

  Read the article

• Examining ASP.NET's Membership, Roles, and Profile - Part 18

  Membership, in a nutshell, is a framework build into the .NET Framework that supports creating, authenticating, deleting, and modifying user account information. Each user account has a set of core properties: username, password, email, a security question and answer, whether or not the account has been approved, whether or not the user is locked out of the system, and so on. These user-specific properties are certainly helpful, but they're hardly exhaustive - it's not uncommon for an application to need to track additional user-specific properties. For example, an online messageboard site might want to also also associate a signature, homepage URL, and IM address with each user account. There are two ways to associate additional information with user accounts when using the Membership model. The first - which affords the greatest flexibility, but requires the most upfront effort - is to create a custom data store for this information. If you are using the SqlMembershipProvider, this would mean creating an additional database table that had as a primary key the UserId value from the aspnet_Users table and columns for each of the additional user properties. The second option is to use the Profile system, which allows additional user-specific properties to be defined in a configuration file. (See Part 6 for an in-depth look at the Profile system.) This article explores how to store additional user information in a separate database table. We'll see how to allow a signed in user to update these additional user-specific properties and how to create a page to display information about a selected user. What's more, we'll look at using ASP.NET Routing to display user information using an SEO-friendly, human-readable URL like www.yoursite.com/Users/username. Read on to learn more! Read More >

  Read the article

• How to Create Quality Photo Prints With Free Software

  - by Eric Z Goodnight

  Photoshop may be the professional standard for high quality photo prints, but that doesn’t mean you have to pay hundreds of dollars for printing software. Freeware program Google Picasa can create excellent quality photo prints that’ll only cost you a download. Picasa and other freeware graphics programs are hardly news to savvy geeks, although with a little patience, they can produce quality prints few could tell apart from thousand dollar graphics suites. Stay tuned for links to various graphics programs, and a simple how-to on getting the perfect print settings for your photos Latest Features How-To Geek ETC The Complete List of iPad Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials The 50 Best Registry Hacks that Make Windows Better The How-To Geek Holiday Gift Guide (Geeky Stuff We Like) LCD? LED? Plasma? The How-To Geek Guide to HDTV Technology The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 8: Filters Improve Digital Photography by Calibrating Your Monitor Deathwing the Destroyer – WoW Cataclysm Dragon Wallpaper Drag2Up Lets You Drag and Drop Files to the Web With Ease The Spam Police Parts 1 and 2 – Goodbye Spammers [Videos] Snow Angels Theme for Windows 7 Exploring the Jungle Ruins Wallpaper Protect Your Privacy When Browsing with Chrome and Iron Browser

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200  | Next Page >