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• Java language book for an experienced programmer?

  - by Andrew

  I am looking for book to get up to speed with (start with) a Java language. I am experienced (more than 15 years) C# and C++ programmer with a bit of Python, so I don't need a book which starts with a programming concepts for a beginner. In fact I think I need a "Java language specification" sort of book. I checked the answers to questions similar to mine and found that there two books which is being recommended most: "Effective Java" and "Sun Certified Java Programmer". After a quick look at the "Effective Java" I realised it should not be a book to start with, it is a good book (I read all books in Effective C++, STL series and liked them but they are more "good practices" books, rather than a book for a beginners) "Sun Certified Java Programmer" looks closer to what I am after - but goes too slow for me. So I did some more search and found these two books: The Java(TM) Language Specification by Gosling himself Java™ Programming Language, The (4th Edition) by Ken Arnold I gather the first one a little bit dated and the second one is the best Java Language Reference books up to date, but I am not sure - as I am not a Java person to make such judgements. After reading the language reference book I will start learning the basic libraries / packages / namespaces (collections, algorithms, IO, etc) and then something about UI architecture. But that will come later. Question: - which Java Language reference book for an experienced programmer you can recomend ? and why? Cheers.

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• How can dev teams prevent slow performance in consumer apps?

  - by Crashworks

  When I previously asked what's responsible for slow software, a few answers I've received suggested it was a social and management problem: This isn't a technical problem, it's a marketing and management problem.... Utimately, the product mangers are responsible to write the specs for what the user is supposed to get. Lots of things can go wrong: The product manager fails to put button response in the spec ... The QA folks do a mediocre job of testing against the spec ... if the product management and QA staff are all asleep at the wheel, we programmers can't make up for that. —Bob Murphy People work on good-size apps. As they work, performance problems creep in, just like bugs. The difference is - bugs are "bad" - they cry out "find me, and fix me". Performance problems just sit there and get worse. Programmers often think "Well, my code wouldn't have a performance problem. Rather, management needs to buy me a newer/bigger/faster machine." The fact is, if developers periodically just hunt for performance problems (which is actually very easy) they could simply clean them out. —Mike Dunlavey So, if this is a social problem, what social mechanisms can an organization put into place to avoid shipping slow software to its customers?

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• Can't boot Ubuntu 12.04 from external Hard Drive using Mac

  - by Catgirl the Crazy

  Recently, I upgraded the RAM and hard drive on my Early 2008 Macbook to improve the performance. Rather than throw away the old hard drive, I bought an enclosure for it to turn it into an external hard drive, and, since all the data was migrated to my new drive, I decided to install Ubuntu on it for funsies (note: I am a near-total Ubuntu n00b). My first attempt to install Ubuntu didn't work (it gave me errors about not being able to find the BIOS or something), but my second attempt finished successfully (can't remember what, if anything, I did different). However, when I plug the external drive into my Macbook, it gives me a message saying it can't read the disk. Moreover, when I go into the Startup Manager (i.e.: what you get when you turn on the Macbook while holding the option key), the external drive is not one of the available startup disks. I thought this might be because I have an older Macbook, so I tried booting it with my mom's Late 2011 Macbook, and got the same results. Then I tried booting it through my dad's Dell laptop that runs Windows 7, and that time it worked. This is really counter intuitive to me, since the hard drive originally came from a Macbook, so if anything you'd think it would be less compatible with the Windows laptop than the Macbook. In case it helps, here's a link to a picture of how I set up the partition table while doing the install (not shown there is the fact that I checked the "Format?" box next to the /boot partition, since it gave me a warning when I tried to continue the installation without doing so) Anyone have any clue at all? If it helps, the hard drive I'm using is a 120GB 5400-rpm Serial ATA hard disk drive.

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• Smart defaults [SSDT]

  - by jamiet

  I’ve just discovered a new, somewhat hidden, feature in SSDT that I didn’t know about and figured it would be worth highlighting here because I’ll bet not many others know it either; the feature is called Smart Defaults. It gets around the problem of adding a NOT NULLable column to an existing table that has got data in it – previous to SSDT you would need to define a DEFAULT constraint however it does feel rather cumbersome to create an object purely for the purpose of pushing through a deployment – that’s the situation that Smart Defaults is meant to alleviate. The Smart Defaults option exists in the advanced section of a Publish Profile file: The description of the setting is “Automatically provides a default value when updating a table that contains data with a column that does not allow null values”, in other words checking that option will cause SSDT to insert an arbitrary default value into your newly created NON NULLable column. In case you’re wondering how it does it, here’s how: SSDT creates a DEFAULT CONSTRAINT at the same time as the column is created and then immediately removes that constraint: ALTER TABLE [dbo].[T1]    ADD [C1] INT NOT NULL,         CONSTRAINT [SD_T1_1df7a5f76cf44bb593506d05ff9a1e2b] DEFAULT 0 FOR [C1];ALTER TABLE [dbo].[T1] DROP CONSTRAINT [SD_T1_1df7a5f76cf44bb593506d05ff9a1e2b]; You can then update the value as appropriate in a Post-Deployment script. Pretty cool! On the downside, you can only specify this option for the whole project, not for an individual table or even an individual column – I’m not sure that I’d want to turn this on for an entire project as it could hide problems that a failed deployment would highlight, in other words smart defaults could be seen to be “papering over the cracks”. If you think that should be improved go and vote (and leave a comment) at [SSDT] Allow us to specify Smart defaults per table or even per column. @Jamiet

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• Using XML as data storage

  - by Kian Mayne

  I was thinking about the XML format and the following quote: “XML is not a database. It was never meant to be a database. It is never going to be a database. Relational databases are proven technology with more than 20 years of implementation experience. They are solid, stable, useful products. They are not going away. XML is a very useful technology for moving data between different databases or between databases and other programs. However, it is not itself a database. Don't use it like one.“ -Effective XML: 50 Specific Ways to Improve Your XML by Elliotte Rusty Harold (page 230, Part 4, Item 41, 2nd paragraph) This seems to really stress that XML should not be used for data storage and should only be used for program to program interoperability. Personally, I disagree and .NET's app.config file that's used to store a program's settings is an example of data storage in an XML file. However for databases rather than configurations etc XML should not be used. To develop my point, I will use two examples: A) Data about customers with fields that are all on one level i.e. there are a number of fields all relating to one customer with no children B) Data about configuration of an application where nested fields and properties make a lot of sense So my question is, Is this still a valid statement and is it now acceptable to store data using XML? EDIT: I've sent an email to the author of that quote to ask for his input/extra context.

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• Google Rolls Out a New and Compact Navigation Bar

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  Earlier this spring Google introduced the black navigation bar; now they’ve updated the bar to take up less space and be more useful. Although the black bar is useful in-so-far as it gives you quick access to Google services (useful, of course, only if you use those services) the new navigation bar–seen in the video above–includes an improved layout. Rather than use the bar space to spread out links which the user may or may not use the service links are now tucked into a mouse-over menu accessed by hovering on the Google logo. The majority of the space previously just taken up by links and the black bar itself is now a a search box. If you don’t already see the new interface, look for it to appear in your Google account within the next few days. Hit up the link below to read the official announcement. The Next Stage In Our Redesign [The Official Google Blog] HTG Explains: Understanding Routers, Switches, and Network Hardware How to Use Offline Files in Windows to Cache Your Networked Files Offline How to See What Web Sites Your Computer is Secretly Connecting To

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• BlitzMax - generating 2D neon glowing line effect to png file

  - by zanlok

  Originally asked on StackOverflow, but it became tumbleweed. I'm looking to create a glowing line effect in BlitzMax, something like a Star Wars lightsaber or laserbeam. Doesn't have to be realtime, but just to TImage objects and then maybe saved to PNG for later use in animation. I'm happy to use 3D features, but it will be for use in a 2D game. Since it will be on black/space background, my strategy is to draw a series of white blurred lines with color and high transparency, then eventually central lines less blurred and more white. What I want to draw is actually bezier curved lines. Drawing curved lines is easy enough, but I can't use the technique above to create a good laser/neon effect because it comes out looking very segmented. So, I think it may be better to use a blur effect/shader on what does render well, which is a 1-pixel bezier curve. The problems I've been having are: Applying a shader to just a certain area of the screen where lines are drawn. If there's a way to do draw lines to a texture and then blur that texture and save the png, that would be great to hear about. There's got to be a way to do this, but I just haven't gotten the right elements working together yet. Any help from someone familiar with this stuff would be greatly appreciated. Using just 2D calls could be advantageous, simpler to understand and re-use. It would be very nice to know how to save a PNG that preserves the transparency/alpha stuff. p.s. I've reviewed this post (and many many others on the Blitz site), have samples working, and even developed my own 5x5 frag shaders. But, it's 3D and a scene-wide thing that doesn't seem to convert to 2D or just a certain area very well. I'd rather understand how to apply shading to a 2D scene, especially using the specifics of BlitzMax.

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• [MINI HOW-TO] Remove the Search Helper Extension from Firefox

  - by Asian Angel

  If you found a new surprise extension added to Firefox after the June Patch from Microsoft, then you are likely to be rather unhappy right now. Join us as we show you how to remove the Search Helper extension from your browser. An Unexpected Addition to Your Extensions You may be wondering what the new mysterious extension that showed up is for. Its’ purpose is to help the Bing Toolbar better integrate with your browser. Unless you have the Bing Toolbar installed you really do not need this cluttering your browser up. So how do you get rid of it? Removing the Extension In order to remove the extension you will need to navigate to the following location: C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Search Enhancement Pack\Search Helper Once there delete the “firefoxextension folder”…that is all there is to it. If you want to remove the search helper add-on for Internet Explorer then delete the “SEPsearchhelperie.dll file” while you are here. Note: You may need to have administrator rights in order to delete the folder. No more Search Helper Extension! If you are unhappy about this update being snuck into your system, following these instructions will remove it. Microsoft Support Page About Update KB982217 Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Remove the New Tab Button in FirefoxAdd Search Forms to the Firefox Search BarAdd Notes to Zoho Notebook in FirefoxOrganize Your Firefox Search Engines Into FoldersManually Remove Skype Extension from Firefox TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips HippoRemote Pro 2.2 Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Steve Jobs’ iPhone 4 Keynote Video Watch World Cup Online On These Sites Speed Up Windows With ReadyBoost Awesome World Cup Soccer Calendar Nice Websites To Watch TV Shows Online 24 Million Sites

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• How to deal with colleagues refuse to follow practices?

  - by Adrian Shum

  I was discussing with another colleague about what we should be used when an DB entity is referring to another. I don't think there is any good reason to break the practice of putting the Primary Key in the referring entity. However, one of my colleague says: "You should use a surrogate key in the entity, but it is better to put the human-readable natural key in the referring entity. As long it is unique, it is fine and it is easier when you are doing support or maintenance job" I know it will works, but obviously it is not a good practice you are putting a non-PK unique column as "foreign key", just for gaining a bit of ease in writing SQL during support as we can have less table join. Though I mentioned the his approach is conceptual incorrect, and causing problem too practically etc, he seems rather trade off correctness in data model in exchange of ease of maintenance. And he said: "I know it is not good practice, but good practice is not golden rule" Honestly I feel frustrated when dealing with something like this. I know there are always case that we should break some rule or practice, but doubtless it is not such case now. What will you when you are facing situation like this? Please assume yourself being a senior developer which is expected to contribute in misc development direction and convention.

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• Suggestions for a CMS markup language for PHP

  - by Yanick Rochon

  As a learning experience, and as project, I am attempting to write a CMS module for ZF2. One of the functionality I would like to have is the possibility of adding dynamic contents in the pages by calling PHP functions in the view scripts. However, I do not want to give the users freedom in writing PHP code directly inside the page content, but rather implement custom view helpers (or widgets) to handle logic. For example: calling partial, partialLoop, url, etc. specifying arguments and all. I liked the idea of extending Markdown but this would get complicated when trying to add custom CSS class to elements, etc. Then I had the idea of simply doing a preg_replace on some patterns. For example, the string : ### partialLoop:['partials/display.phtml',[{id:'p1',price:4.99},{id:'p2',price:12.34}]] ### would be replaced by <?php echo $this->partialLoop('partials/display.phtml', array(array('id'=>'p1','price'=>4.99),array('id'=>'p2','price'=>12.34))) ?> Obviously, there would be some caching done so the page content is not rendered everytime. Does this sound good? If not, what would be a good way of doing this? Or is there a project already being developed for doing this? (I'd like to avoid heavy third party libs and something fairly or fully compatible with ZF2 would be nice.) Thanks.

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• Is my use case diagram correct?

  - by Dummy Derp

  NOTE: I am self studying UML so I have nobody to verify my diagrams and hence I am posting here, so please bear with me. This is the problem I got from some PDF available on Google that simply had the following problem statement: Problem Statement: A library contains books and journals. The task is to develop a computer system for borrowing books. In order to borrow a book the borrower must be a member of the library. There is a limit on the number of books that can be borrowed by each member of the library. The library may have several copies of a given book. It is possible to reserve a book. Some books are for short term loans only. Other books may be borrowed for 3 weeks. Users can extend the loans. 1. Draw a use case diagram for a library. 2. Give a use case description for two use cases: • Borrow copy of book • Extend loan Diagram: Use case description: 1. Borrow a copy of the book: If the person wishes to borrow a book from Derpville Public Library, he/she must be a member of the library in which case they will be allowed to issue a certain number of books. If the person is not a member, the book will not be issued to them for taking away, rather they will have to sit and read in the library. 2. Extending loan: Some books will be lent for 3 weeks while others will be lent for more than 3 weeks in which case the person borrowing has to come to the library and get the date extended. There is a limit on how much the user can extend the date of a particular book.

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• NCurses, scrolling of multiline items, "current item" pointer and "selected items"

  - by mjf

  I am looking for hints/ideas for the best (most effective) way on how to scroll multi-line items as well as emphasizing of the "current item" and "selected items" such as: 1 FOO ITEM 1 Foo sub-item 2 Foo sub-item 3 Foo sub-item 2 BAR ITEM 1 Bar sub-item 3 BAZ ITEM 1 Baz sub-item 2 Baz sub-item 4 RAB ITEM 5 ZZZ ITEM 1 Zzz sub-item 2 Zzz sub-item 3 Zzz sub-item 4 Zzz sub-item using NCurses (some combination of windows, sub-windows, pads, copywin? Uff! In fact, the lines could exceed the stdscr's width so that possibility to scroll left/right would be also nice - pads?)... The whole items (including the sub-items) are supposed to be emphasized as full-width window/pad areas. The "current item" (including it's set of lines) should be emphasized (i.e. using A_BOLD), selected set of items of choice (including the set of lines for each the selected item) should be emphasized in another way (i.e. using A_REVERSE). What would you choose to cope with it the most effective NCurses way? (The less redrawals/refreshes the better and terminal is supposed to have the ability to change it's size - such as XTerm running under "floating window" management.) Thank you for your ideas (or perhaps some piece of code where something similar is already solved - I was not able to find anything helpful on the Internet. I mean I am not going to copy/paste foreign code but programming NCurses properly is still somehow difficult to me). P.S.: Would you suggest to "smooth-scroll" +1/-1 screen line or rather "jump-scroll" +lines/-lines of the items? (I personally prefer the latter one.) Sincerely, -- mjf

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• How to get search engines to properly index an ajax driven search page

  - by Redtopia

  I have an ajax-driven search page that will allow users to search through a large collection of records. Each search result points to index.php?id=xyz (where xyz is the id of the record). The initial view does not have any records listed, and there is no interface that allows you to browse through all records. You can only conduct a search. How do I build the page so that spiders can crawl each record? Or is there another way (outside of this specific search page) that will allow me to point spiders to a list of all records. FYI, the collection is rather large, so dumping links to every record in a single request is not a workable solution. Outputting the records must be done in multiple requests. Each record can be viewed via a single page (eg "record.php?id=xyz"). I would like all the records indexed without anything indexed from the sitemap that shows where the records exist, for example: <a href="/result.php?id=record1">Record 1</a> <a href="/result.php?id=record2">Record 2</a> <a href="/result.php?id=record3">Record 3</a> <a href="/seo.php?page=2">next</a> Assuming this is the correct approach, I have these questions: How would the search engines find the crawl page? Is it possible to prevent the search engines from indexing the words "Record 1", etc. and "next"? Can I output only the links? Or maybe something like:  

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• Handling Errors In PHP When Using MVC

  - by James Jeffery

  I've been using Codeigniter a lot recently, but one thing that gets on my nerves is handling errors and displaying them to the user. I've never been good at handling errors without it getting messy. My main concern is when returning errors to the user. Is it good practice to use exceptions and throw/catch exceptions rather than returning 0 or 1 from functions and then using if/else to handle the errors. Thus, making it easier to inform the user about the issue. I tend to go away from exceptions. My Java tutor at university some years ago told me "exceptions shouldn't be used in production code it's more for debugging". I get the feeling he was lying. But, an example, I have code that adds a user to a database. During the process more than 1 thing could go wrong, such as a database issue, a duplicate entry, a server issue, etc. When an issue happens during registration the user needs to know about it. What's the best way to handle errors in PHP, keeping in mind that I'm using an MVC framework.

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• DNS NAmeserver Aname and cname records

  - by David

  Hi - I am inexperienced in the configuration of DNS and have an issue with dominan hosting set up. I have two domains 'www.mydomain1.com' and 'www.mydomain2.com', with mydomain2 pointed at the same place as mydomain1. The domains were passed to me recently by the person who previoulsy controlled them. I have an account with fasthosts in the uk. When I accepted the domains I could not access the DNS settings and enquired with fasthosts as to why. The replied saying 'The delegate hosting option for both domains were enabled and this is the reason why you were unable to find the option to edit the advanced DNS records. I have now disabled the delegate hosting option so you can now edit the advanced DNS records for both domains in your account.' When i log into the fasthost control panel now i can access the DNS controls but both domains have no A Record of Cname record set up. I am concerned that fasthosts have blatted the previous Nameserver entries and set me up on theirs but not added any record. 'www.mydomain1.com' currently still works but 'www.mydomain2.com' does not find the site anymore. i am worried i will lose mydomain1 to as teh dns changes filter through the system. my webhosting is at 'xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/mydomain1.com/' and this is where I want both domains to point. Any advice would be much appreciated. one thing which is confusing me is that because I am on a shared server I have to put 'xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/mydomain1.com/' to get to my site rather than just 'xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx'. The form on fasthosts for the aname record only allows an IP to be entered - does it add the mydomain1.com/ onto the end itself? Thanks for any help given - I'm quite worried about this David

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• To my lola

  - by Erik Araojo

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/Erik/archive/2013/06/29/153290.aspx I've been staring at the computer for a few minutes now and I honestly don't know what to write.  First I thought of writing about myself, where I was born, where I studied, where I am now... but that seems shallow.  Now that I thought about it.  I'd rather not talk about who I am because it seems irrelevant right now.  What I really want to say is..I'm sad.  Been like this for quite some time now.Nobody knows I'm sad.I tried telling my wife but I guess she didn't think it was serious.  We were having a fight when I told her so she probably thought I was just making up an excuse for my behavior.  And besides, she's not the kind of person who'd put my interests before hers especially when she's got lots of things on her mind.I'm not sad every single day.  Some days I'm perfectly fine.  I actually have no idea when I'd feel sad.  It just happens. I'd wake up cheerful and then before I go to bed I already feel depressed.  I have no idea what triggers it.  On the bed, I'd turn my back to my wife, curl up into a fetal position and start sobbing silently. Awful.  Maybe you're wondering now what's the cause of all this.My grandma passed away and I haven't completely  come to terms with that fact.  I long to see her, talk to her and hold her... but I can't do that anymore because she's gone.  I will never be able to hear her voice and feel her touch again.  To make matters worse, the only person whom I wish would stay beside me whenever I'm feeling miserable and dejected is never around.  She's either working late or out with her friends.  Such is my life at the moment.  I doubt it will improve anytime soon.

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• Changing Palette for Day/Light Mode using GIMP

  - by J.C.

  Hello, Suppose I've a picture, which want to achieve day/light mode by changing 8bpp color palette. If I want the pixel index of my picture is always fixed for both day mode and night mode. For example, the 1st pixel index is 100. Which I can look up index 100 in day mode palette and night mode palette. How can I use GIMP to do so? My goal is to not update my pixel index of my picture. Also, as you see in two palette, they are not one one mapping. That is index 1 of the day mode palette and index 1 of the night mode palette may not used in the same pixel of the picture, how can I tackle this problem? Actually, my use case is as follow I want to use one 8bpp picture to achieve day/night mode by update only the color palette (without updating the pixel index). The advantage is I only have to prepare 2 256 byte palette rather than saving 2 big pictures in my limited data ram. Thanks a lot

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• Make Google Plus One only work for the domain and not the path [closed]

  - by Saeed Neamati

  Possible Duplicate: Make Google +1 button +1 a specific URL rather than the URL it's on? I'm creating an image sharing website, and since it's going to have many thousand links, then it's almost impossible to put a Google Plus One button in my site. Plus one is an indication of site's popularity and trust. You follow a link in SERP, because you see that somebody that you know has already plused one that link. So, you trust that link and click it. The more plus a page get, the more trustworthy it becomes. Sites which has simple static pages can get many plus ones, but sites like mine (dynamic sites with thousands of links) can't aggregate plus ones in one page. Is there any way to tell Google that I only want the Plus Ones to be counted for the domain only, and not for the path? In other words, how can I transfer a plus one given to the http://example.com/tag1-tag2/2525 to plus ones given to the http://example.com? Is it possible at all?

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• Web developing- Strange happenings

  - by Jason

  As I'm teaching myself PHP and MySQL during break, I'm experimenting coding in a Ubuntu virtual machine where Apache, MySQL and PHP have been installed and configured to a shared folder. I'm not a big fan of Kompozer because the source code layout is a PIA, so I've started checking out gPHPEdit. However, since using it, I've come across two issues: when I edit the .html and .php files, sometimes the file extension will change to .html~ and .php~, becoming invisible to the browser. The only solution is to switch to Windows, right click and rename the file extension. In Ubuntu Firefox, when I click on my prpject's Submit button for in a practice form, a dialog box pops up asking what Firefox should do with the .php file, rather than simply displaying it in the browser. When I do this in Windows Chrome & Firefox, it goes right to the response page. I'm not sure if this behavior is limited to gPHPEdit/Kompozer, but I've never noticed this happening in Dreamweaver. Any solutions? EDIT The behavior in Point 1 occurs both when Dreamweaver is open in Windows accessing the same files and when it is not. I changed the extension filename of welcome.php, added a comment in gPHPEdit, and the file changed to welcome.php~ upon saving.

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• Tell me what&rsquo;s wrong! &ndash; An XNA sample demonstrating exception handling and reporting in

  - by George Clingerman

  I’ve always enjoyed using Nick Gravelyn’s exception handling in all of my games. You’re always going to encounter those unhandled exception that your players are going to ferret out and having a method to display them rather than just crashing to the dashboard is definitely more of an elegant solution. But the other day I got to thinking…what if we could do more? What if instead of just displaying the error, we could encourage the players to send us the error. So I started playing with that an expanding upon Nick’s sample code to see what I could come up with. I got close to what I envisioned, but unfortunately there were some limitations to just what the XNA API could do. In my head I was picturing the players hitting “Send Message” and a 360 message would just be sent to the XBLIG developer. Unfortunately, you can only send messages in an XNA game to someone you’re currently in a network session with. Since I didn’t want to have a 360 server running all the time, virally connecting to players just to get error messages, I did the next best thing and just open up a 360 message and encourage them to manually enter the gamertag. Maybe someday we’ll be able to do that a little better, but this works for now. In the sample, players can hit the “A” button or key to generate in an exception. If the debugger is not attached, then the Exception message screen will be shown explaining what has happened and giving the player a chance to send a 360 message to the gamertag provided or maybe even just send an email. Nick’s code has been changed just a bit. It now accepts any PlayerIndex (no longer hard coded to just PlayerIndex.One) and it no longer uses a MessageBox to get the users selection. The code has also been modified so that it works both for the 360 and for the PC. Check out “Tell me what’s wrong!” and let me know if you have any thoughts or suggestions. I really do appreciate the feedback.

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• How should I implement a command processing application?

  - by Nini Michaels

  I want to make a simple, proof-of-concept application (REPL) that takes a number and then processes commands on that number. Example: I start with 1. Then I write "add 2", it gives me 3. Then I write "multiply 7", it gives me 21. Then I want to know if it is prime, so I write "is prime" (on the current number - 21), it gives me false. "is odd" would give me true. And so on. Now, for a simple application with few commands, even a simple switch would do for processing the commands. But if I want extensibility, how would I need to implement the functionality? Do I use the command pattern? Do I build a simple parser/interpreter for the language? What if I want more complex commands, like "multiply 5 until >200" ? What would be an easy way to extend it (add new commands) without recompiling? Edit: to clarify a few things, my end goal would not be to make something similar to WolframAlpha, but rather a list (of numbers) processor. But I want to start slowly at first (on single numbers). I'm having in mind something similar to the way one would use Haskell to process lists, but a very simple version. I'm wondering if something like the command pattern (or equivalent) would suffice, or if I have to make a new mini-language and a parser for it to achieve my goals?

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• 2D graphics - why use spritesheets?

  - by Columbo

  I have seen many examples of how to render sprites from a spritesheet but I havent grasped why it is the most common way of dealing with sprites in 2d games. I have started out with 2d sprite rendering in the few demo applications I've made by dealing with each animation frame for any given sprite type as its own texture - and this collection of textures is stored in a dictionary. This seems to work for me, and suits my workflow pretty well, as I tend to make my animations as gif/mng files and then extract the frames to individual pngs. Is there a noticeable performance advantage to rendering from a single sheet rather than from individual textures? With modern hardware that is capable of drawing millions of polygons to the screen a hundred times a second, does it even matter for my 2d games which just deal with a few dozen 50x100px rectangles? The implementation details of loading a texture into graphics memory and displaying it in XNA seems pretty abstracted. All I know is that textures are bound to the graphics device when they are loaded, then during the game loop, the textures get rendered in batches. So it's not clear to me whether my choice affects performance. I suspect that there are some very good reasons most 2d game developers seem to be using them, I just don't understand why.

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• Why should I use Zend_Application?

  - by Billy ONeal

  I've been working on a Zend Framework application which currently does a bunch of things through Zend Application and a few resource plugins written for it. However, looking at this codebase now, it seems to me that using Zend_Application just makes things more complicated; and a plain, more "traditional" bootstrap file would do a better job of being transparent. This is even more the case because the individual components of Zend -- Zend_Controller, Zend_Navigation, etc. -- don't reference Zend_Application at all. Therefore they do things like "Well just call setRoute and be on your way," and the user is left scratching their head as to how to implement that in terms of the application.ini configuration file. This is not to say that one can't figure out what's going on by doing spelunking through the ZF source code. My problem with that approach is that it's to easy to depend on something that's an implementation detail, rather than a contract, and that all it seems to do is add an extra layer of indirection that one must wade through to understand an application. I look at pre ZF 1.8 example code, before Zend_Application existed, and everywhere I see plain bootstrap files that setup the MVC framework and get on their way. The code is clear and easy to understand, even if it is a bit repetitive. I like the DRY concept that Application gets you, but particularly when I'm assuming first people looking at the app's code aren't really familiar with Zend at all, I'm considering blowing away any dependence I have on Zend_Application and returning to a traditional bootstrap file. Now, my concern here is that I don't have much experience doing this, and I don't want to get rid of Zend_Application if it does something particularly important of which I am unaware, or something of that nature. Is there a really good reason I should keep it around?

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• Security in a private web service

  - by Oni

  I am developing a web site and a web service for a small on-line game. Technically, I'll be using Express (node.js) and MongoDB+Redis for the databases. This the structure I came up with: One Express server that will server as the Web Service. This will connect to the databases. One Express server that will provide the web site. It will connect to the Web Service to retrieve and push the information. iOS and Android application will be able to interact with the WebService. Taking into account: It is a small game. The information transferred is not critical. There will NOT be third party applications. At least for the moment. My concern is about which level of security I should use in each of the scenarios: Security of the user playing through web browser Security of the applications and the Web Server connecting to the WS. I have take a look at the different options and: OAuth and/or Https is too much for this scenario, isn't it? Will be a good option to hash the user and password with MD5(or similar) and some salt? I would like to get some directions and investigate by my own rather than getting a response like "you should you use this node.js module..." Thanks in advance,

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• Git Project Dependencies on GitHub

  - by VirtuosiMedia

  I've written a PHP framework and a CMS on top of the framework. The CMS is dependent on the framework, but the framework exists as a self-contained folder within the CMS files. I'd like to maintain them as separate projects on GitHub, but I don't want to have the mess of updating the CMS project every time I update the framework. Ideally, I'd like to have the CMS somehow pull the framework files for inclusion into a predefined sub-directory rather than physically committing those files. Is this possible with Git/GitHub? If so, what do I need to know to make it work? Keep in mind that I'm at a very, very basic level of experience with Git - I can make repositories and commit using the Git plugin for Eclipse, connect to GitHub, and that's about it. I'm currently working solo on the projects, so I haven't had to learn much more about Git so far, but I'd like to open it up to others in the future and I want to make sure I have it right. Also, what should my ideal workflow be for projects with dependencies? Any tips on that subject would also greatly appreciated. If you need more info on my setup, just ask in the comments.

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