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• General directions on developing a server side control system for JS/Canvas Action RPG

  - by Billy Ninja

  Well, yesterday I asked on anti-cheat JS, and confirmed what I kind of already knew that it's just not possible. Now I wanna measure roughly how hard it is to implement a server side checking that is agnostic to client input, that does not mess with the game experience so much. I don't wanna waste to much resource on this matter, since it's going to be initially a single player game, that I may or would like to introduce some kind of ranking, trading system later on. I'd rather deliver better more cool game features instead. I don't wanna have to guarantee super fast server response to keep the game going lag free. I'd rather go with more loose discrete control of key variables and instances. Like store user's action on a fifo buffer on the client, and push that actions to the server gradually. I'd love to see a elegant, generic solution that I could plug into my client game logic root (not having to scatter treatments everywhere in my client js) - and have few classes on Node.js server that could handle that - without having to mirror/describe all of my game entities a second time on the server.

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• ext4 jbd2 journaling active even on empty filesystem

  - by Paul

  I have been having several issues with my ext4 filesystems that seem to be due to jbd2 journaling. I made a related post here and am rephrasing it with the hope that someone may be able to help. For a minimal example, I start with an empty 8gb USB stick and use gparted to create one ext4 partition. The command used by gparted when creating the ext4 file system is: mkfs.ext4 -j -O extent -L DataTraveler8gb /dev/sde1 I check the filesystem with gparted: e2fsck -f -y -v /dev/sde1 and I mount it: sudo mount /dev/sde1 /media/test The disk is empty, but the journaling is very active on this disk (/dev/sde1). The other disks are ext4 SSDs formatted similarly. A snapshot of iotop: % sudo iotop -oPa Total DISK READ: 0.00 B/s | Total DISK WRITE: 2027.21 K/s PID PRIO USER DISK READ DISK WRITE SWAPIN IO COMMAND 262 be/3 root 0.00 B 56.00 K 0.00 % 0.18 % [jbd2/sda1-8] 29069 be/3 root 0.00 B 0.00 B 0.00 % 0.16 % [jbd2/sde1-8] 891 be/3 root 0.00 B 4.00 K 0.00 % 0.03 % [jbd2/sdc1-8] What is jbd2 doing with /dev/sde1? If I follow the same steps with a larger 2Tb disk, iotop indicates this empty disk is constantly being written to by jbd2 at the rate of Mb/s as soon as I mount it. On the other disks, which have the OS and /home, I have tried to find if any files are being modified by processes to cause this behavior but couldn't find any. I also moved many of the disk intensive process to use a tmpfs. And used noatime. I have another non-SSD hard disk on this machine, /dev/sdb, that is also ext4 but was not formatted by gparted (given to me by a coworker). It does not appear in iotop. So I am assuming there an issue with gparted. Any suggestions are appreciated. Also any tips on how to modify existing partitions to fix the issue without having to start from scratch would be great. There are some posts related to jbd2 but they didn't help (eg. here).

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• Accessing and Updating Data in ASP.NET: Filtering Data Using a CheckBoxList

  Filtering Database Data with Parameters, an earlier installment in this article series, showed how to filter the data returned by ASP.NET's data source controls. In a nutshell, the data source controls can include parameterized queries whose parameter values are defined via parameter controls. For example, the SqlDataSource can include a parameterized SelectCommand, such as: SELECT * FROM Books WHERE Price > @Price. Here, @Price is a parameter; the value for a parameter can be defined declaratively using a parameter control. ASP.NET offers a variety of parameter controls, including ones that use hard-coded values, ones that retrieve values from the querystring, and ones that retrieve values from session, and others. Perhaps the most useful parameter control is the ControlParameter, which retrieves its value from a Web control on the page. Using the ControlParameter we can filter the data returned by the data source control based on the end user's input. While the ControlParameter works well with most types of Web controls, it does not work as expected with the CheckBoxList control. The ControlParameter is designed to retrieve a single property value from the specified Web control, but the CheckBoxList control does not have a property that returns all of the values of its selected items in a form that the CheckBoxList control can use. Moreover, if you are using the selected CheckBoxList items to query a database you'll quickly find that SQL does not offer out of the box functionality for filtering results based on a user-supplied list of filter criteria. The good news is that with a little bit of effort it is possible to filter data based on the end user's selections in a CheckBoxList control. This article starts with a look at how to get SQL to filter data based on a user-supplied, comma-delimited list of values. Next, it shows how to programmatically construct a comma-delimited list that represents the selected CheckBoxList values and pass that list into the SQL query. Finally, we'll explore creating a custom parameter control to handle this logic declaratively. Read on to learn more! Read More >

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• Leaving Microsoft

  - by Stephen Walther

  After two and a half years working with the ASP.NET team, I’ve decided that this is the right time to leave Microsoft and, with the help of some friends, re-launch my ASP.NET training and consulting company. The company has the modest name Superexpert. While working on my Ph.D. at MIT, I was surrounded by professors and students who were passionate about knowledge. During the Internet boom, I was lucky enough to work side-by-side with some very smart and hard-working people to create several successful startups. However, the people I worked with at Microsoft were among the smartest and hardest working. Microsoft hires a small number of people and gives them huge responsibilities. It continues to amaze me that so few people work on the ASP.NET team when you consider how much the team produces. I had the opportunity to work with a number of inspiring people at Microsoft. I’ll miss working with Scott Hunter, Dave Reed, Boris Moore, Eilon Lipton, Scott Guthrie, James Senior, Jim Wang, Phil Haack, Damian Edwards, Vishal Joshi, Mike Pope, Jon Young, Dmitry Robsman, Simon Calvert, Stefan Schackow, and many others. I’m proud of what we accomplished while I was working at Microsoft. We reached out to the jQuery team and changed direction from Microsoft Ajax to jQuery. We successfully contributed several important new features to the open-source jQuery project including jQuery Templates, jQuery Data-Linking, jQuery Globalization, and (as John Resig announced at the last jQuery conference) jQuery Require. I’m looking forward to returning to training and consulting. We want to focus on providing consulting on the “right way” of building ASP.NET websites, which we call Modern ASP.NET applications. By Modern ASP.NET applications, I mean applications built with ASP.NET MVC, jQuery, HTML5, and Visual Studio ALM. Additionally, we want to help companies that have existing ASP.NET Web Forms applications migrate to ASP.NET MVC. If you are interested in having us provide training for your company or you need help building a custom ASP.NET application then please contact us at [email protected] or visit our website at Superexpert.com.

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• Organizing an entity system with external component managers?

  - by Gustav

  I'm designing a game engine for a top-down multiplayer 2D shooter game, which I want to be reasonably reuseable for other top-down shooter games. At the moment I'm thinking about how something like an entity system in it should be designed. First I thought about this: I have a class called EntityManager. It should implement a method called Update and another one called Draw. The reason for me separating Logic and Rendering is because then I can omit the Draw method if running a standalone server. EntityManager owns a list of objects of type BaseEntity. Each entity owns a list of components such as EntityModel (the drawable representation of an entity), EntityNetworkInterface, and EntityPhysicalBody. EntityManager also owns a list of component managers like EntityRenderManager, EntityNetworkManager and EntityPhysicsManager. Each component manager keeps references to the entity components. There are various reasons for moving this code out of the entity's own class and do it collectively instead. For example, I'm using an external physics library, Box2D, for the game. In Box2D, you first add the bodies and shapes to a world (owned by the EntityPhysicsManager in this case) and add collision callbacks (which would be dispatched to the entity object itself in my system). Then you run a function which simulates everything in the system. I find it hard to find a better solution to do this than doing it in an external component manager like this. Entity creation is done like this: EntityManager implements the method RegisterEntity(entityClass, factory) which registers how to create an entity if that class. It also implements the method CreateEntity(entityClass) which would return an object of type BaseEntity. Well now comes my problem: How would the reference to a component be registered to the component managers? I have no idea how I would reference the component managers from a factory/closure.

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• Multiple computers on Ubuntu One

  - by L R Bellmore Jr

  I have added files from 4 computers to Ubuntu One. One computer failed. What happens to the files that I uploaded. Are they still on Ubuntu One? How come when I upload a file from computer A, computer B with the same Ubuntu One account does not sync and load that file into computer B - That has created this question.. what happens to files from computers from which I uploaded documents when those computers are no longer active or failed, or no longer have Ubuntu One on that computer from which the files were uploaded... Have I lost the files? The followup question is how come files from Computer A uploaded to Ubuntu One don't sync to Computer B. That is a related question. I need to shut down a computer, reformat the hard drive and install Linux on the entire harddrive instead of a dual boot with Windows XP as I am going to use Virtual Machines instead.. what happens to the files from the Windows Dual Boot that were uploaded to Ubuntu One? Are they removed from Ubuntu One and then have I lost those files if I don't backup to another service first.

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• Performance Optimization &ndash; It Is Faster When You Can Measure It

  - by Alois Kraus

  Performance optimization in bigger systems is hard because the measured numbers can vary greatly depending on the measurement method of your choice. To measure execution timing of specific methods in your application you usually use Time Measurement Method Potential Pitfalls Stopwatch Most accurate method on recent processors. Internally it uses the RDTSC instruction. Since the counter is processor specific you can get greatly different values when your thread is scheduled to another core or the core goes into a power saving mode. But things do change luckily: Intel's Designer's vol3b, section 16.11.1 "16.11.1 Invariant TSC The time stamp counter in newer processors may support an enhancement, referred to as invariant TSC. Processor's support for invariant TSC is indicated by CPUID.80000007H:EDX[8]. The invariant TSC will run at a constant rate in all ACPI P-, C-. and T-states. This is the architectural behavior moving forward. On processors with invariant TSC support, the OS may use the TSC for wall clock timer services (instead of ACPI or HPET timers). TSC reads are much more efficient and do not incur the overhead associated with a ring transition or access to a platform resource." DateTime.Now Good but it has only a resolution of 16ms which can be not enough if you want more accuracy.   Reporting Method Potential Pitfalls Console.WriteLine Ok if not called too often. Debug.Print Are you really measuring performance with Debug Builds? Shame on you. Trace.WriteLine Better but you need to plug in some good output listener like a trace file. But be aware that the first time you call this method it will read your app.config and deserialize your system.diagnostics section which does also take time.   In general it is a good idea to use some tracing library which does measure the timing for you and you only need to decorate some methods with tracing so you can later verify if something has changed for the better or worse. In my previous article I did compare measuring performance with quantum mechanics. This analogy does work surprising well. When you measure a quantum system there is a lower limit how accurately you can measure something. The Heisenberg uncertainty relation does tell us that you cannot measure of a quantum system the impulse and location of a particle at the same time with infinite accuracy. For programmers the two variables are execution time and memory allocations. If you try to measure the timings of all methods in your application you will need to store them somewhere. The fastest storage space besides the CPU cache is the memory. But if your timing values do consume all available memory there is no memory left for the actual application to run. On the other hand if you try to record all memory allocations of your application you will also need to store the data somewhere. This will cost you memory and execution time. These constraints are always there and regardless how good the marketing of tool vendors for performance and memory profilers are: Any measurement will disturb the system in a non predictable way. Commercial tool vendors will tell you they do calculate this overhead and subtract it from the measured values to give you the most accurate values but in reality it is not entirely true. After falling into the trap to trust the profiler timings several times I have got into the habit to Measure with a profiler to get an idea where potential bottlenecks are. Measure again with tracing only the specific methods to check if this method is really worth optimizing. Optimize it Measure again. Be surprised that your optimization has made things worse. Think harder Implement something that really works. Measure again Finished! - Or look for the next bottleneck. Recently I have looked into issues with serialization performance. For serialization DataContractSerializer was used and I was not sure if XML is really the most optimal wire format. After looking around I have found protobuf-net which uses Googles Protocol Buffer format which is a compact binary serialization format. What is good for Google should be good for us. A small sample app to check out performance was a matter of minutes: using ProtoBuf; using System; using System.Diagnostics; using System.IO; using System.Reflection; using System.Runtime.Serialization; [DataContract, Serializable] class Data { [DataMember(Order=1)] public int IntValue { get; set; } [DataMember(Order = 2)] public string StringValue { get; set; } [DataMember(Order = 3)] public bool IsActivated { get; set; } [DataMember(Order = 4)] public BindingFlags Flags { get; set; } } class Program { static MemoryStream _Stream = new MemoryStream(); static MemoryStream Stream { get { _Stream.Position = 0; _Stream.SetLength(0); return _Stream; } } static void Main(string[] args) { DataContractSerializer ser = new DataContractSerializer(typeof(Data)); Data data = new Data { IntValue = 100, IsActivated = true, StringValue = "Hi this is a small string value to check if serialization does work as expected" }; var sw = Stopwatch.StartNew(); int Runs = 1000 * 1000; for (int i = 0; i < Runs; i++) { //ser.WriteObject(Stream, data); Serializer.Serialize<Data>(Stream, data); } sw.Stop(); Console.WriteLine("Did take {0:N0}ms for {1:N0} objects", sw.Elapsed.TotalMilliseconds, Runs); Console.ReadLine(); } } The results are indeed promising: Serializer Time in ms N objects protobuf-net   807 1000000 DataContract 4402 1000000 Nearly a factor 5 faster and a much more compact wire format. Lets use it! After switching over to protbuf-net the transfered wire data has dropped by a factor two (good) and the performance has worsened by nearly a factor two. How is that possible? We have measured it? Protobuf-net is much faster! As it turns out protobuf-net is faster but it has a cost: For the first time a type is de/serialized it does use some very smart code-gen which does not come for free. Lets try to measure this one by setting of our performance test app the Runs value not to one million but to 1. Serializer Time in ms N objects protobuf-net 85 1 DataContract 24 1 The code-gen overhead is significant and can take up to 200ms for more complex types. The break even point where the code-gen cost is amortized by its faster serialization performance is (assuming small objects) somewhere between 20.000-40.000 serialized objects. As it turned out my specific scenario involved about 100 types and 1000 serializations in total. That explains why the good old DataContractSerializer is not so easy to take out of business. The final approach I ended up was to reduce the number of types and to serialize primitive types via BinaryWriter directly which turned out to be a pretty good alternative. It sounded good until I measured again and found that my optimizations so far do not help much. After looking more deeper at the profiling data I did found that one of the 1000 calls did take 50% of the time. So how do I find out which call it was? Normal profilers do fail short at this discipline. A (totally undeserved) relatively unknown profiler is SpeedTrace which does unlike normal profilers create traces of your applications by instrumenting your IL code at runtime. This way you can look at the full call stack of the one slow serializer call to find out if this stack was something special. Unfortunately the call stack showed nothing special. But luckily I have my own tracing as well and I could see that the slow serializer call did happen during the serialization of a bool value. When you encounter after much analysis something unreasonable you cannot explain it then the chances are good that your thread was suspended by the garbage collector. If there is a problem with excessive GCs remains to be investigated but so far the serialization performance seems to be mostly ok.  When you do profile a complex system with many interconnected processes you can never be sure that the timings you just did measure are accurate at all. Some process might be hitting the disc slowing things down for all other processes for some seconds as well. There is a big difference between warm and cold startup. If you restart all processes you can basically forget the first run because of the OS disc cache, JIT and GCs make the measured timings very flexible. When you are in need of a random number generator you should measure cold startup times of a sufficiently complex system. After the first run you can try again getting different and much lower numbers. Now try again at least two times to get some feeling how stable the numbers are. Oh and try to do the same thing the next day. It might be that the bottleneck you found yesterday is gone today. Thanks to GC and other random stuff it can become pretty hard to find stuff worth optimizing if no big bottlenecks except bloatloads of code are left anymore. When I have found a spot worth optimizing I do make the code changes and do measure again to check if something has changed. If it has got slower and I am certain that my change should have made it faster I can blame the GC again. The thing is that if you optimize stuff and you allocate less objects the GC times will shift to some other location. If you are unlucky it will make your faster working code slower because you see now GCs at times where none were before. This is where the stuff does get really tricky. A safe escape hatch is to create a repro of the slow code in an isolated application so you can change things fast in a reliable manner. Then the normal profilers do also start working again. As Vance Morrison does point out it is much more complex to profile a system against the wall clock compared to optimize for CPU time. The reason is that for wall clock time analysis you need to understand how your system does work and which threads (if you have not one but perhaps 20) are causing a visible delay to the end user and which threads can wait a long time without affecting the user experience at all. Next time: Commercial profiler shootout.

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• [GEEK SCHOOL] Network Security 2: Preventing Disaster with User Account Control

  - by Ciprian Rusen

  In this second lesson in our How-To Geek School about securing the Windows devices in your network, we will talk about User Account Control (UAC). Users encounter this feature each time they need to install desktop applications in Windows, when some applications need administrator permissions in order to work and when they have to change different system settings and files. UAC was introduced in Windows Vista as part of Microsoft’s “Trustworthy Computing” initiative. Basically, UAC is meant to act as a wedge between you and installing applications or making system changes. When you attempt to do either of these actions, UAC will pop up and interrupt you. You may either have to confirm you know what you’re doing, or even enter an administrator password if you don’t have those rights. Some users find UAC annoying and choose to disable it but this very important security feature of Windows (and we strongly caution against doing that). That’s why in this lesson, we will carefully explain what UAC is and everything it does. As you will see, this feature has an important role in keeping Windows safe from all kinds of security problems. In this lesson you will learn which activities may trigger a UAC prompt asking for permissions and how UAC can be set so that it strikes the best balance between usability and security. You will also learn what kind of information you can find in each UAC prompt. Last but not least, you will learn why you should never turn off this feature of Windows. By the time we’re done today, we think you will have a newly found appreciation for UAC, and will be able to find a happy medium between turning it off completely and letting it annoy you to distraction. What is UAC and How Does it Work? UAC or User Account Control is a security feature that helps prevent unauthorized system changes to your Windows computer or device. These changes can be made by users, applications, and sadly, malware (which is the biggest reason why UAC exists in the first place). When an important system change is initiated, Windows displays a UAC prompt asking for your permission to make the change. If you don’t give your approval, the change is not made. In Windows, you will encounter UAC prompts mostly when working with desktop applications that require administrative permissions. For example, in order to install an application, the installer (generally a setup.exe file) asks Windows for administrative permissions. UAC initiates an elevation prompt like the one shown earlier asking you whether it is okay to elevate permissions or not. If you say “Yes”, the installer starts as administrator and it is able to make the necessary system changes in order to install the application correctly. When the installer is closed, its administrator privileges are gone. If you run it again, the UAC prompt is shown again because your previous approval is not remembered. If you say “No”, the installer is not allowed to run and no system changes are made. If a system change is initiated from a user account that is not an administrator, e.g. the Guest account, the UAC prompt will also ask for the administrator password in order to give the necessary permissions. Without this password, the change won’t be made. Which Activities Trigger a UAC Prompt? There are many types of activities that may trigger a UAC prompt: Running a desktop application as an administrator Making changes to settings and files in the Windows and Program Files folders Installing or removing drivers and desktop applications Installing ActiveX controls Changing settings to Windows features like the Windows Firewall, UAC, Windows Update, Windows Defender, and others Adding, modifying, or removing user accounts Configuring Parental Controls in Windows 7 or Family Safety in Windows 8.x Running the Task Scheduler Restoring backed-up system files Viewing or changing the folders and files of another user account Changing the system date and time You will encounter UAC prompts during some or all of these activities, depending on how UAC is set on your Windows device. If this security feature is turned off, any user account or desktop application can make any of these changes without a prompt asking for permissions. In this scenario, the different forms of malware existing on the Internet will also have a higher chance of infecting and taking control of your system. In Windows 8.x operating systems you will never see a UAC prompt when working with apps from the Windows Store. That’s because these apps, by design, are not allowed to modify any system settings or files. You will encounter UAC prompts only when working with desktop programs. What You Can Learn from a UAC Prompt? When you see a UAC prompt on the screen, take time to read the information displayed so that you get a better understanding of what is going on. Each prompt first tells you the name of the program that wants to make system changes to your device, then you can see the verified publisher of that program. Dodgy software tends not to display this information and instead of a real company name, you will see an entry that says “Unknown”. If you have downloaded that program from a less than trustworthy source, then it might be better to select “No” in the UAC prompt. The prompt also shares the origin of the file that’s trying to make these changes. In most cases the file origin is “Hard drive on this computer”. You can learn more by pressing “Show details”. You will see an additional entry named “Program location” where you can see the physical location on your hard drive, for the file that’s trying to perform system changes. Make your choice based on the trust you have in the program you are trying to run and its publisher. If a less-known file from a suspicious location is requesting a UAC prompt, then you should seriously consider pressing “No”. What’s Different About Each UAC Level? Windows 7 and Windows 8.x have four UAC levels: Always notify – when this level is used, you are notified before desktop applications make changes that require administrator permissions or before you or another user account changes Windows settings like the ones mentioned earlier. When the UAC prompt is shown, the desktop is dimmed and you must choose “Yes” or “No” before you can do anything else. This is the most secure and also the most annoying way to set UAC because it triggers the most UAC prompts. Notify me only when programs/apps try to make changes to my computer (default) – Windows uses this as the default for UAC. When this level is used, you are notified before desktop applications make changes that require administrator permissions. If you are making system changes, UAC doesn’t show any prompts and it automatically gives you the necessary permissions for making the changes you desire. When a UAC prompt is shown, the desktop is dimmed and you must choose “Yes” or “No” before you can do anything else. This level is slightly less secure than the previous one because malicious programs can be created for simulating the keystrokes or mouse moves of a user and change system settings for you. If you have a good security solution in place, this scenario should never occur. Notify me only when programs/apps try to make changes to my computer (do not dim my desktop) – this level is different from the previous in in the fact that, when the UAC prompt is shown, the desktop is not dimmed. This decreases the security of your system because different kinds of desktop applications (including malware) might be able to interfere with the UAC prompt and approve changes that you might not want to be performed. Never notify – this level is the equivalent of turning off UAC. When using it, you have no protection against unauthorized system changes. Any desktop application and any user account can make system changes without your permission. How to Configure UAC If you would like to change the UAC level used by Windows, open the Control Panel, then go to “System and Security” and select “Action Center”. On the column on the left you will see an entry that says “Change User Account Control settings”. The “User Account Control Settings” window is now opened. Change the position of the UAC slider to the level you want applied then press “OK”. Depending on how UAC was initially set, you may receive a UAC prompt requiring you to confirm this change. Why You Should Never Turn Off UAC If you want to keep the security of your system at decent levels, you should never turn off UAC. When you disable it, everything and everyone can make system changes without your consent. This makes it easier for all kinds of malware to infect and take control of your system. It doesn’t matter whether you have a security suite or antivirus installed or third-party antivirus, basic common-sense measures like having UAC turned on make a big difference in keeping your devices safe from harm. We have noticed that some users disable UAC prior to setting up their Windows devices and installing third-party software on them. They keep it disabled while installing all the software they will use and enable it when done installing everything, so that they don’t have to deal with so many UAC prompts. Unfortunately this causes problems with some desktop applications. They may fail to work after you enable UAC. This happens because, when UAC is disabled, the virtualization techniques UAC uses for your applications are inactive. This means that certain user settings and files are installed in a different place and when you turn on UAC, applications stop working because they should be placed elsewhere. Therefore, whatever you do, do not turn off UAC completely! Coming up next … In the next lesson you will learn about Windows Defender, what this tool can do in Windows 7 and Windows 8.x, what’s different about it in these operating systems and how it can be used to increase the security of your system.

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• Help implementing virtual d-pad

  - by Moshe

  Short Version: I am trying to move a player around on a tilemap, keeping it centered on its tile, while smoothly controlling it with SneakyInput virtual Joystick. My movement is jumpy and hard to control. What's a good way to implement this? Long Version: I'm trying to get a tilemap based RPG "layer" working on top of cocos2d-iphone. I'm using SneakyInput as the input right now, but I've run into a bit of a snag. Initially, I followed Steffen Itterheim's book and Ray Wenderlich's tutorial, and I got jumpy movement working. My player now moves from tile to tile, without any animation whatsoever. So, I took it a step further. I changed my player.position to a CCMoveTo action. Combined with CCfollow, my player moves pretty smoothly. Here's the problem, though: Between each CCMoveTo, the movement stops, so there's a bit of a jumpiness introduced between movements. To deal with that, I changed my CCmoveTo into a CCMoveBy, and instead of running it once, I decided to have it CCRepeatForever. My plan was to stop the repeating action whenever the player changed directions or released the d-pad. However, when the movement stops, the player is not necessarily centered along the tiles, as it should be. To correctly position the player, I use a CCMoveTo and get the closest position that would put the player back into the proper position. This reintroduces an earlier problem of jumpiness between actions. What is the correct way to implement a smooth joystick while smoothly animating the player and keeping it on the "grid" of tiles? Edit: It turns out that this was caused by a "Bug Fix" in the cocos2d engine.

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• Aging vs. Coding Skills

  - by Renan Malke Stigliani

  A little background, since it can be part of my point fo view. I'm a C#/Java programmer with age of 23, coding since my 18's. I started studying C and working with Cobol, and after 1 year I quickly moved to C#/Java Web Development, and have worked with it in about 3/4 companies. (I've just moved again) In my (brief) professional career I encountered some older programmers, all the times it was very hard to work with them, since I was way better programmer than they. And it is not about just the language skills, some of them had seriously problems understanding basic logic. Now I wonder how theese programmer get jobs on the market since (I imagine) they have more expenses, and thus have to make more money, and are really counter-productives. In theese examples, others project member have to constantly keep stoping for helping them out. All the times, they eventually quit... So I wonder... May the aging process slow down the learning rate and logic thinking? Does the programmer has to, or at least should, move to a management area before getting old? Please, my intention is not to be disrespectful with older persons. I am fully aware that this is NOT the case of all older programmers, I often see around very good old programmers on the net, I just never met them for close.

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• hp pavilion g6 1250 with a BCM 4313 doesn't see any wireless networks

  - by Ahmed Kotb

  i have tried using ubuntu 10.04 and ubuntu 11.10 and both have the same problem the driver is detected by the additional propriety drivers wizard and after installation, ubuntu can't see except on wireless network which is not mine (and i can't connect to it as it is secured) There are plenty of wireless networks around me but ubuntu can't detect them and if i tried to connect to one of them as if it was hidden connection time out. the command lspci -nvn | grep -i net gives 04:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller [14e4:4727] (rev 01) 05:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller [10ec:8136] (rev 05) iwconfig gives lo no wireless extensions. eth0 no wireless extensions. wlan0 IEEE 802.11bgn ESSID:off/any Mode:Managed Access Point: Not-Associated Tx-Power=19 dBm Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off Power Management:off i guess it is something related to Broadcom driver .. but i don't know , any help will be appreciated UPDATE: ok i installed a new copy of 11.10 to remove the effect of any trials i have made i followed the link (http://askubuntu.com/q/67806) as suggested all what i have done now is trying the command lsmod | grep brc and it gave me the following brcmsmac 631693 0 brcmutil 17837 1 brcmsmac mac80211 310872 1 brcmsmac cfg80211 199587 2 brcmsmac,mac80211 crc_ccitt 12667 1 brcmsmac then i blacklisted all the other drivers as mentioned in the link the wireless is still disabled.. in the last installation installing the Brodcom STA driver form the additional drivers enabled the menu but as i have said before it wasn't able to connect or even get a list of available networks so what should i do now ? the output of command rfkill list all rfkill list all 0: phy0: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no

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• Dual monitors won't accept new settings

  - by mschulze

  I'm trying to use dual monitors but every time I try to change the display settings(external monitor is on the right of the laptop, not the left etc...) my screens go black, then my laptop screen will come back "normally" but my external monitor will just flash different shades of red or black. I cannot interact with anything on my laptop screen even though I can move my mouse around. Even when the monitors attempt to revert back the external monitor continues to flicker instead of reverting. The only way to stop it is to hard-boot but the new settings aren't saved. Also, when the dual monitors are both working my laptop screen has two vertical black bars along its sides. It's like Natty just decided I couldn't use the outer inch and a half of my laptop screen. My external monitor doesn't have this problem, and my laptop uses its full screen size when the external monitor is not hooked up. Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong? I have an HP Pavillion dv7 and an HP w2338h external monitor. Thanks!

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• Anonymous Access and Sharepoint Web Services

  - by Stacy Vicknair

  A month or so ago I was working on a feature for a project that required a level of anonymity on the Sharepoint site in order to function. At the same time I was also working on another feature that required access to the Sharepoint search.asmx web service. I found out, the hard way, that the Sharepoint Web Services do not operate in an expected way while the IIS site is under anonymous access. Even though these web services expect requests with certain permissions (in theory) they never attempt to request those credentials when the web service is contacted. As a result the services return a 401 Unauthorized response. The fix for my situation was to restrict anonymous access to the area that needed it (in this case the control in question had support for being used in an ASP.NET app that I could throw in a virtual directory). After that I removed anonymous access from IIS for the site itself and the QueryService requests were working once more. Here’s a related article with a bit more depth about a similar experience: http://chrisdomino.com/Blog/Post/401-Reasons-Why-SharePoint-Web-Services-Don-t-Work-Anonymously?Length=4 Technorati Tags: Sharepoint,QueryService,WSS,IIS,Anonymous Access

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• The Eight Most-Important EBS Techstack Stories in 2010

  - by Steven Chan

  I've never really understood the custom of stuffing a summary of one's family's activities for the year in a Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa card.  It seems a little self-congratulatory and impersonal.  I'd rather my friends kept authentically in touch throughout the year, but perhaps that's just me.Nonetheless, I see the value of a year-end summary in the IT industry.  I spend a lot of time helping our customers understand the latest new developments... and straightening out confusion over changes to the old and familiar.  It can be hard to keep up with the latest news in this space.Here are the eight most-important news items for 2010, with suggested actions for Apps DBAs:Premier Support for EBS 11.5.10 ended on November 30, 2010You need to be on a minimum baseline of 11.5.10 patches to be eligible for Extended Support.  New patches for EBS 11i released during the Extended Support period will be produced only for the minimum baseline configuration.Action: Ensure that your EBS 11i environments meet the minimum baseline requirements. Minimum Baselines are Emerging for EBS 12.0 Extended SupportExtended Support for EBS 12.0 begins on February 1, 2012.  That's only 13 months away.  Minimum baselines haven't been finalized yet, but the 12.0.6 Release Update Pack and the Financials CPC July 2009 are currently slated.  Action: Ensure that your EBS 12.0 environments meet the currently-specified baseline requirements. Sun, Windows, and Linux users should have upgraded to JDK 6 by nowJDK 5's End of Service Life was October 30, 2009 for those three platforms.  If you're running the E-Business Suite on Sun, Windows, or Linux, you should upgrade your EBS servers to JDK 6.  Alternatively, you can purchase Java for Business support (the equivalent of Extended Support for Java). Action: Upgrade your Sun, Windows, or Linux EBS servers to JDK 6. Premier Support for Database 10gR2 ended on July 31, 2010The 10gR2 Database is now in Extended Support.  If you're still on 10gR2, you should start planning your upgrade to a higher certified database version such as 11gR2 11.2.0.2.Action: Upgrade to 10gR2 databases to 11gR2 11.2.0.2. 

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• What is the proper way to Windows 7/Ubuntu 10.10 Dual-Triple Boot Partitioning for Laptop OEM?

  - by Denja

  Hi Linux Community, I find my self struggling with the slowness of windows OS once again. It's Time to change with the Ubuntu 10.10 64bit for I like to use a faster Operating System. My Hard Disk laptop has a RECOVERY and HP_TOOLS partition they are both Primary. I Have the System Recovery DVD for Windows 64bit should anything bad happen. Here's the layout I used with windows before: * (C:) Windows 7 system partition NTFS - 284,89GB (Primary,ad Boot,Pagefile,Dump) * HP_TOOLS system partition FAT32 - 99MB (Primary) * (D:) RECOVERY partition NTFS - 12,90GB (Primary) * SYSTEM partition NTFS 199MB (Primary) Here's the layout I wanted to make: * (C:) Windows 7 system partition NTFS - 60GB (Primary) (sda1) * (D:) Windows DATA partition (user files) NTFS - 120GB(Primary)(sda2);wanna share with Linux * Linux root Ext4 - 10GB (Extended)(sda3) (Ubuntu 10.10 64bit) * Linux home Ext3 - 90GB (Extended)(sda4) (Ubuntu 10.10 64bit) * Linux swap swap- RAM size, 3GB (sda5) * Linux root Ext3- 18GB (Extended) (sda6) (OpenSuse or Puppy or kubuntu) Here is my New Ubuntu 10.10 64bit layout in use now: * SYSTEM partition NTFS 199MB (Primary) (sda1) * (C:) Windows 7 system partition NTFS - 90GB (Primary) (sda2) * (D:) Windows 7 RECOVERY partition NTFS - 12,90GB (Primary) (sda3) * Linux system partition EXTENDED - 195,1GB (Logical) * Linux root Ext4- 10GB (Extended) (sda4) * Linux swap swap- RAMx2 size, 6,1GB (sda5) * Linux home Ext3- 179GB (Extended) (sda6) When I installed Ubuntu,I didn't know if I could wipe all previous partitions,because of the RECOVERY partition. So I just made the space for my extended partition with GParted by deleting the HP_TOOLS (Fat32). By doing this I managed somehow to install Ubuntu 64 with Success. And I also made the partitions for the swap or a third Linux OS as Jordan suggested. But I couldn't actually make the partitions for the shared NTFS.(no option!) Question 1: What is the proper way to Windows 7/Ubuntu 10.10 Dual-Triple Boot Partitioning for Laptop OEM?? Thank you in advance for your advises and suggestions and Happy New Year to All!!

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• Keyboard locking up in Visual Studio 2010

  - by Jim Wang

  One of the initiatives I’m involved with on the ASP.NET and Visual Studio teams is the Tactical Test Team (TTT), which is a group of testers who dedicate a portion of their time to roaming around and testing different parts of the product.  What this generally translates to is a day and a bit a week helping out with areas of the product that have been flagged as risky, or tackling problems that span both ASP.NET and Visual Studio.  There is also a separate component of this effort outside of TTT which is to help with customer scenarios and design. I enjoy being on TTT because it allows me the opportunity to look at the entire product and gain expertise in a wide range of areas.  This week, I’m looking at Visual Studio 2010 performance problems, and this gem with the keyboard in Visual Studio locking up ended up catching my attention. First of all, here’s a link to one of the many Connect bugs describing the problem: Microsoft Connect I like this problem because it really highlights the challenges of reproducing customer bugs.  There aren’t any clear steps provided here, and I don’t know a lot about your environment: not just the basics like our OS version, but also what third party plug-ins or antivirus software you might be running that might contribute to the problem.  In this case, my gut tells me that there is more than one bug here, just by the sheer volume of reports.  Here’s another thread where users talk about it: Microsoft Connect The volume and different configurations are staggering.  From a customer perspective, this is a very clear cut case of basic functionality not working in the product, but from our perspective, it’s hard to find something reproducible: even customers don’t quite agree on what causes the problem (installing ReSharper seems to cause a problem…or does it?). So this then, is the start of a QA investigation. If anybody has isolated repro steps (just comment on this post) that they can provide this will immensely help us nail down the issue(s), but I’ll be doing a multi-part series on my progress and methodologies as I look into the problem.

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• Complex knowledge management system with CRM..written internally

  - by JonH

  We've all heard of salesforce and sugarcrm and the likes of systems like this. Unfortunately at my workplace we have been asked to write a similiar system (rather then license or purchase). Basically the database is fairly large. Think of modules such as: Corporate groups, customers, programs, projects, sub projects, and issue management. In simple terms a corporate group has one to many customers. A program has one or more projects. A project has one or more sub projects. And an issue can be created on many sub projects. Of course the system is a bit more complex but instead of listing every single module I think its best to keep it simple. In any event, the system in its current state has only two resources to be working on it (basically we have to do it all: CSS, database, jquery, asp.net and C#). We've started off well by defining the UI master and footer pages that way we can reuse those across all of our pages. Now comes the hard part. The system will have about 4k end users with say 5-10% being concurrent users. We are wondering if it makes sense to cache our database data (For say 5-10 minutes) rather then continously hit our database. The reason being is some of these pages may have 5-10 search filters associated with the page. Imagine every time a selection is made from a search box how many database hits. Also some of these search fields cascade so selecting for instance an initial drop down may cascade several drop down boxes under them. Is it wrong to cache because I am not finding too many articles on whether it is a good idea or not. Remember the system is similiar to say a CRM system where we manage our various customers, projects, sub projects, issues, etc.

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• PHP Aspect Oriented Design

  - by Devin Dixon

  This is a continuation of this Code Review question. What was taken away from that post, and other aspect oriented design is it is hard to debug. To counter that, I implemented the ability to turn tracing of the design patterns on. Turning trace on works like: //This can be added anywhere in the code Run::setAdapterTrace(true); Run::setFilterTrace(true); Run::setObserverTrace(true); //Execute the functon echo Run::goForARun(8); In the actual log with the trace turned on, it outputs like so: adapter 2012-02-12 21:46:19 {"type":"closure","object":"static","call_class":"\/public_html\/examples\/design\/ClosureDesigns.php","class":"Run","method":"goForARun","call_method":"goForARun","trace":"Run::goForARun","start_line":68,"end_line":70} filter 2012-02-12 22:05:15 {"type":"closure","event":"return","object":"static","class":"run_filter","method":"\/home\/prodigyview\/public_html\/examples\/design\/ClosureDesigns.php","trace":"Run::goForARun","start_line":51,"end_line":58} observer 2012-02-12 22:05:15 {"type":"closure","object":"static","class":"run_observer","method":"\/home\/prodigyview\/public_html\/public\/examples\/design\/ClosureDesigns.php","trace":"Run::goForARun","start_line":61,"end_line":63} When the information is broken down, the data translates to: Called by an adapter or filter or observer The function called was a closure The location of the closure Class:method the adapter was implemented on The Trace of where the method was called from Start Line and End Line The code has been proven to work in production environments and features various examples of to implement, so the proof of concept is there. It is not DI and accomplishes things that DI cannot. I wouldn't call the code boilerplate but I would call it bloated. In summary, the weaknesses are bloated code and a learning curve in exchange for aspect oriented functionality. Beyond the normal fear of something new and different, what are other weakness in this implementation of aspect oriented design, if any? PS: More examples of AOP here: https://github.com/ProdigyView/ProdigyView/tree/master/examples/design

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• Add a Search Box to the Drop-Down Tab List in Firefox

  - by Asian Angel

  Do you have a lot of tabs open no matter what time of day it is and find sorting through the tabs list frustrating? Then get control back with the List All Tabs Menu extension for Firefox. Before If you have a large number of tabs open using the “Tab List Menu” can start to become a little awkward. You can use your mouse’s middle button to scroll through the list or the tiny arrow button at the bottom but there needs to be a better way to deal with this. After Once you have installed the extension you will notice two differences in the “Tab List Menu”. There will be a search box available and a nice scrollbar for those really long lists. A closer look at the search box and scrollbar setup… Depending on your style you can use the scrollbar to look for a particular page or enter a search term and watch that list become extremely manageable. A closer look at our much shorter list after conducting a search. Definitely not hard to find what we were looking for at all. Conclusion If you are someone who has lots of tabs open at once throughout the day then the List All Tabs Menu extension might be the perfect tool to help you sort and manage those tabs. Links Download the List All Tabs Menu extension (Mozilla Add-ons) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Organize Your Firefox Search Engines Into FoldersAdd Search Forms to the Firefox Search BarGain Access to a Search Box in Google ChromeWhy Doesn’t Tab Work for Drop-down Controls in Firefox on OS X?Quick Tip: Spell Check Firefox Text Input Fields 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 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Stormpulse provides slick, real time weather data Geek Parents – Did you try Parental Controls in Windows 7? Change DNS servers on the fly with DNS Jumper Live PDF Searches PDF Files and Ebooks Converting Mp4 to Mp3 Easily Use Quick Translator to Translate Text in 50 Languages (Firefox)

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• How to read Scala code with lots of implicits?

  - by Petr Pudlák

  Consider the following code fragment (adapted from http://stackoverflow.com/a/12265946/1333025): // Using scalaz 6 import scalaz._, Scalaz._ object Example extends App { case class Container(i: Int) def compute(s: String): State[Container, Int] = state { case Container(i) => (Container(i + 1), s.toInt + i) } val d = List("1", "2", "3") type ContainerState[X] = State[Container, X] println( d.traverse[ContainerState, Int](compute) ! Container(0) ) } I understand what it does on high level. But I wanted to trace what exactly happens during the call to d.traverse at the end. Clearly, List doesn't have traverse, so it must be implicitly converted to another type that does. Even though I spent a considerable amount of time trying to find out, I wasn't very successful. First I found that there is a method in scalaz.Traversable traverse[F[_], A, B] (f: (A) => F[B], t: T[A])(implicit arg0: Applicative[F]): F[T[B]] but clearly this is not it (although it's most likely that "my" traverse is implemented using this one). After a lot of searching, I grepped scalaz source codes and I found scalaz.MA's method traverse[F[_], B] (f: (A) => F[B])(implicit a: Applicative[F], t: Traverse[M]): F[M[B]] which seems to be very close. Still I'm missing to what List is converted in my example and if it uses MA.traverse or something else. The question is: What procedure should I follow to find out what exactly is called at d.traverse? Having even such a simple code that is so hard analyze seems to me like a big problem. Am I missing something very simple? How should I proceed when I want to understand such code that uses a lot of imported implicits? Is there some way to ask the compiler what implicits it used? Or is there something like Hoogle for Scala so that I can search for a method just by its name?

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• How to uninstall Ubuntu from an ubuntu only system

  - by Jo Blick

  I installed Ubuntu 12.4 by wiping Windows and not creating another partition for Ubuntu in the hard drive. I realize that, this was a mistake. I have tried repartitioning using various tools, So that I can run Windows alongside Ubuntu, using my copy of Windows from another PC, but it has all become too complex. I love Ubuntu, wish I could keep it on its own, but I am tired of trying because, I need Windows for work related things. In particular, I have to instal my "Wacom intuos graphics tablet" with a serial port, but this appears too technical to me to achieve that in Ubuntu. I think I now have to first remove Ubuntu, reinstall Windows and then, reinstall Ubuntu by partitioning it properly, as I was advised to begin with. I would appreciate any answers very much, but I need answers in plain English unfortunately, because I do not understand much of the abbreviations used in Ubuntu forums. I should add that my treasured Ubuntu system is on an HPMini netbook, so it all has to be done with USB's. which does complicate things. Sorri :/

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• Comparison between Cocos2d and Corona

  - by dontangg

  I'm having a really hard time deciding which way to go on this. I'm about to start developing a game and I haven't been able to find many good comparisons between these approaches. I don't have many requirements for the game yet, but here is what I do know. needs to work on iPhone I don't have much money ($400 for Unity for iPhone is probably too much. I can probably afford $99 for Corona.) Graphics will be 2D Physics support is not needed Ability to use particles would be nice Game Center support would be nice (Corona is planning to support it soon) It would be nice to be able to support Android as well if it isn't much effort. I have done my own research, so I know basic things about them. I know Corona uses Lua and Cocos2D uses Objective C. I know that Corona allows deployment to iPhone and Android, but how easy is it? Cocos2D is free, but so many people talk about how easy it is to use Corona, but I don't like being restricted to features Corona supports or the price tag. I feel so torn here.

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• Writing to the UI with MonoDroid using RunOnUIThread

  - by Wallym

  I've been pulling my hair out over the past day or so trying to update the UI in my test app.  I was having problem after problem.  I finally got down to my base problem.  I could not write out to my TextView.  WTF could be causing that?  I can write to my UI in other parts of my app.  This is pure craziness.  I thought long and hard and nothing was coming to me.  Wait, the light bulb went on.  I am in the wrong thread.  Great, how do I write in the correct thread?  MonoDroid supports the entire AsyncTask set of objects, but this seemed like overkill.  I was reading and came across RunOnUIThread().......Bing..........The lightbulb has been invented...BlueStar Airlines (oh wait, wrong context). Anyway, here is what I needed:this.RunOnUiThread(() => TextViewControl.Text = "Hello World"); Enjoy!!!!!!!  Remember kiddies, running on the main ui for off device operations is bad, not as bad as crossing the streams bad, but bad as in trying to drive on a flat tire bad. It won't kill you, but it does keep you from getting anywhere.

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• Learning advanced java skills

  - by moe

  I've been programming in java for a while and I really like the language, I've mostly just done game programming, but I want to get a feel for some of the more commonly used api's and frameworks and just get a generally more well-rounded grasp of the language and the common libraries in the current job market. From what I found things like spring, hibernate, and GWT are pretty in demand right now. I looked at some tutorials online and they weren't hard to follow but I really felt like I had no context for what I was learning - I had no idea how any of it would be use in a real work environment. I know nothing can rival the benefit I'd get from actual work experience but that's not an option for me right now, I need another way to learn these technologies in a way where I'll at least feel comfortable working with them and know what I'm doing beyond just understanding what code does what. I checked out a few books but they were all really old(like pre-2006, am I right to assume those books would be kind of out of date today?) or required experience with libraries that I didn't have and can't get. I hate getting stuck looking for the best resource to learn something instead of spending my time actually learning. All I really want is someone to point me to a resource(website or ebook) that is aimed at already experienced java developers and will not only teach me some interesting useful java technology(anything that is useful, I dont know much outside of graphics libraries and game related things so I was thinking some database or web programming api's) but also give me a good perspective of it and leave me feeling confident that I could actually use what I learned on a practical application. If my post makes you think I'm not yet experienced to be learning these things, which I doubted earlier today but am now starting to question, then what do you think is the next step for me? I just want to get better at java. Thanks everyone

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• Developers are strange

  - by DavidWimbush

  Why do developers always use the GUI tools in SQL Server? I've always found this irritating and just vaguely assumed it's because they aren't familiar with SQL syntax. But when you think about it it, it's a genuine puzzle. Developers type code all day - really heavy code too like generics, lamda functions and extension methods. They (thankfully) scorn the Visual Studio stuff where you drag a table onto the class and it pastes in lots of code to query the table into a DataSet or something. But when they want to add a column to a table, without fail they dive into the graphical table designer. And half the time the script it generates does horrible things like copy the table to another one with the new column, delete the old table, and rename the new table. Which is fine if your users don't care about uptime. Is ALTER TABLE ADD <column definition> really that hard? I just don't get it.

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