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• How common is prototyping as the first stage of development?

  - by EpsilonVector

  I've been taking some software design courses in the past few semesters, and while I see the benefit in a lot of the formalism, I feel like it doesn't tell me anything about the program itself: You can't tell how the program is going to operate from the Use Case spec, even though it discusses what the program can do. You can't tell anything about the user experience from the requirements document, even though it can include quality requirements. Sequence diagrams are a good description of how the software works as the call stack, but are very limited, and give a highly partial view of the overall system. Class diagrams are great for describing how the system is built, but are utterly useless in helping you figure out what the software needs to be. Where in all this formalism is the bottom line: how the program looks, operates, and what experience it gives? Doesn't it make more sense to design off of that? Isn't it better to figure out how the program should work via a prototype and strive to implement it for real? I know that I'm probably suffering from being taught engineering by theoreticians, but I need to ask, do they do this in the industry? How do people figure out what the program actually is, not what it should conform to? Do people prototype a lot, or do they mostly use the formal tools like UML and I just didn't get the hang of using them yet?

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• internet sharing over wifi between ubuntu 11.10 and windows7

  - by Vivek Pradhan

  So i have looked up a lot of forums for these solution but haven't really found one that works. I have a laptop running ubuntu 11.10 connected to the ethernet cord at home and i want to share the internet over wifi with my friend's laptop running windows7. I did not think it would be so difficult, I tried a lot of things: I went to networks and then wireless and set up a wifi hotspot, my laptop got connected to it and the ipv4 was set to "shared to other computers". Thankfully the network was discoverable and after some tries my friend was able to connect to the network, but it still showed that there was no internet access. I tried coniguring the tcp addresses of the wifi on his laptop. Bottom line: did not work. I went to the network manager, clicked on create a new wireless network, created one with security WEP 40/128 bit passphrase, tried the other 2 options later, and did the same thing as with the wifi, this network was also not discoverable initially and after some tries, we could connect to it but then ICS was not working although there was a working internet on my ubuntu laptop. I would really appreciate if some one who has faced a similar problem and got it fixed to please give me a step by step solution of how to get this work, because this is a prety common problem with ubuntu distros I have noticed. Note: This however seems to work with ubuntu to ubuntu connections, but specifically cross OS connections like windows or my phone running android ICS are not able to see or if connect not able to share internet on my laptop

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• What I&rsquo;m Reading &ndash; Microsoft Silverlight 4 Business Application Development: Beginner&rs

  - by Dave Campbell

  I don’t have a lot of time for reading lately, so James Patterson and all those guys are *way* ahead of me … but I do try to make time to read technical material. A couple books have come across just recently and I thought I’d mention them one at a time. The book I want to mention tonight is Microsoft Silverlight 4 Business Application Development: Beginner’s Guide : by Cameron Albert and Frank LaVigne. Cameron and Frank are both great guys and you’ve seen their blog posts come across my SilverlightCream posts many times. I like the writing and format of the book. It leads you quite well from one concept to the next and for a technical book, it holds your interest. You can check out a free chapter here. I have the eBook because for technical material, at least lately, I’ve gravitated toward that. I can have it with me on a USB stick at work, or at home. Read the free chapter then check out their blogs. Even if you think you know a lot of this material, I think you’ll find yourself learning something, and besides, it’s a great one-place reference. Good work guys! Technorati Tags: Silverlight 4

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• Entry / JR Php Programmer - What do I learn next?

  - by dtj

  I got very interested in programming toward the end of college. Took a few classes, but learned most everything on my own via books and such. Its mostly been Php and MySQL. Right out of school, I got a job working at a company for 2 years (web media) and ended up learning a lot of stuff and programming some things for them. I am no longer at that company but I am looking for my next steps as a programmer. I really enjoy Web Development and Php and MySQL seems to be my thing. Basically, I know how to do CRUD operations, i am mediocre at OOP and still have more to learn, I know HTML and CSS quite well, I know my way around a Unix terminal and can access MySQL through it and set up cron jobs and such. I know some basic Javascript. Whats a good next step? I don't anything about 3rd party services, PDO, APIs (twitter, facebook, etc), Drupal / Joomla, Unit Testing, E-Commerce, PECL, PEAR ....in other words A LOT I get easily overwhelmed by the amount of stuff there is to learn, so I'm sort of trying to find a path. Right now, I'm digging into OOP more, as that seems like a good conceptual first-step. Any suggestions?

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• Creating a Windows 7 USB installation disk on a Mac

  - by Alex B.

  Hey, I was wondering if you know of a way of creating a Win 7 USB installation disk on Mac OS. Thanks a lot!

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• Performance issues with visibility detection and object transparency

  - by maul

  I'm working on a 3d game that has a view similar to classic isometric games (diablo, etc.). One of the things I'm trying to implement is the effect of turning walls transparent when the player walks behind them. By itself this is not a huge issue, but I'm having trouble determining which walls should be transparent exactly. I can't use a circle or square mask. There are a lot of cases where the wall piece at the same (relative) position has different visibility depending on the surrounding area. With the help of a friend I came up with this algorithm: Create a grid around the player that contains a lot of "visibility points" (my game is semi tile-based so I create one point for every tile on the grid) - the size of the square's side is close to the radius where I make objects transparent. I found 6x6 to be a good value, so that's 36 visibility points total. For every visibility point on the grid, check if that point is in the player's line of sight. For every visibility point that is in the LOS, cast a ray from the camera to that point and mark all objects the ray hits as transparent. This algorithm works - not perfectly, but only requires some tuning - however this is very slow. As you can see, it requries 36 ray casts minimum, but most of the time 60-70 depending on the position. That's simply too much for the CPU. Is there a better way to do this? I'm using Unity 3D but I'm not looking for an engine-specific solution.

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• Which of these design patterns is superior?

  - by durron597

  I find I tend to design class structures where several subclasses have nearly identical functionality, but one piece of it is different. So I write nearly all the code in the abstract class, and then create several subclasses to do the one different thing. Does this pattern have a name? Is this the best way for this sort of scenario? Option 1: public interface TaxCalc { String calcTaxes(); } public abstract class AbstractTaxCalc implements TaxCalc { // most constructors and fields are here public double calcTaxes(UserFinancials data) { // code double diffNumber = getNumber(data); // more code } abstract protected double getNumber(UserFinancials data); protected double initialTaxes(double grossIncome) { // code return initialNumber; } } public class SimpleTaxCalc extends AbstractCalc { protected double getNumber(UserFinancials data) { double temp = intialCalc(data.getGrossIncome()); // do other stuff return temp; } } public class FancyTaxCalc extends AbstractTaxCalc { protected double getNumber(UserFinancials data) { int temp = initialCalc(data.getGrossIncome()); // Do fancier math return temp; } } Option 2: This version is more like the Strategy pattern, and should be able to do essentially the same sorts of tasks. public class TaxCalcImpl implements TaxCalc { private final TaxMath worker; public DummyImpl(TaxMath worker) { this.worker = worker; } public double calcTaxes(UserFinancials data) { // code double analyzedDouble = initialNumber; int diffNumber = worker.getNumber(data, initialNumber); // more code } protected int initialTaxes(double grossIncome) { // code return initialNumber; } } public interface TaxMath { double getNumber(UserFinancials data, double initial); } Then I could do: TaxCalc dum = new TaxCalcImpl(new TaxMath() { @Override public double getNumber(UserFinancials data, double initial) { double temp = data.getGrossIncome(); // do math return temp; }); And I could make specific implementations of TaxMath for things I use a lot, or I could make a stateless singleton for certain kinds of workers I use a lot. So the question I'm asking is: Which of these patterns is superior, when, and why? Or, alternately, is there an even better third option?

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• Rendering large and high poly meshes

  - by Aurus

  Consider an huge terrain that has a lot polygons, to render this terrain I thought of following techniques: Using height-map instead of raw meshes: Yes, but I want to create a lot of caves and stuff that simply wont work with height-maps. Using voxels: Yes, but I think that this would be to much since I don't even want to support changing terrain.. Split into multiple chunks and do some sort of LOD with the mesh: Yes, but how would I do that? Tessellation usually creates more detail not less. Precompute the same mesh in lower poly version (like Mudbox does) and depending on the distance it renders one of these meshes: Graphic memory is limited and uploading only the chunks won't solve that problem since the traffic would be too high. IMO the last one sounds really good, but imagine the following process: Upload and render the chunks depending on the current player position. [No problem] Player will walk straight forward Now we maybe have to change on of the low poly chunk with the high poly one So, Remove the low poly chunk and load the high poly chunk [Already to much traffic here, I think] I am not very experienced in graphic programming and maybe the upper process is totally okay but somehow I think it is too much. And how about the disk space it would require.. I think 3 kind of levels would be fine but isn't that also too much? (I am using OpenGL but I don't think that this is important)

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• Full Circle

  - by capgpilk

  Things have been a little bit hectic these past 6 months hence the lack of posts. My excuse is a good one though, my wife gave birth to our first son Tom back in September and it has been one hell of a rollercoaster ride since then. Things have settled back down now thank hevens.My last development gig didn't quite work out so now I have took the plunge and started contracting. It turns out my first contract is with the NHS trust that I started my development career with, which seems a bit wierd as that was 10 years ago. A lot has changed in the techniques and tools the NHS now use to develop with, there is a lot more .net with a slant towards the web side of the spectrum (at least in this NHS trust). They are really getting to grips with the MVC platform, so you will hopefully see some MVC posts coming up. The really suprising thing is that the Intranet I developed back in 2001 (classic asp migrated to .net 1.0) is still up and running and will finally be fazed out these coming weeks (to Sharepoint). It is like seeing an old friend all grown up. 

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• Should I use procedural animation?

  - by user712092

  I have started to make a fantasy 3d fps swordplay game and I want to add animations. I don't want to animate everything by hand because it would take a lot of time, so I decided to use procedural animation. I would certainly use IK (starting with simple reaching an object with hand ...). I also assume procedural generation of animations will make less animations to do by hand (I can blend animations ...). I want also to have a planner for animation which would simplify complex animations; those which can be split to a sequence - run and then jump, jump and then roll - or which are separable - legs running and torso swinging with sword -. I want for example a character to chop a head of a big troll. If troll crouches character would just chop his head off, if it is standing he would climb on a troll. I know that I would have to describe the state ("troll is low", "troll is high", "chop troll head" ..) which would imply what regions animation will be in (if there is a gap between them character would jump), which would imply what places character can have some of legs and hands or would choose an predefined animation. My main goal is simplicity of coding, but I want my game to be looking cool also. Is it worthy to use procedural animation or does it make more troubles that it solves? (there can be lot of twiddling ...) I am using Blender Game Engine (therefore Python for scripting, and Bullet Physics).

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• Got a Great Solaris Story to Tell? Come to OpenWorld and Tell It

  - by Larry Wake

  I know there are a lot of Solaris veterans that still haven't experienced the enormousness that is Oracle OpenWorld. Simply put: if you have a chance to go, you should go. You'll learn a lot, and you'll be in one of the greatest cities in the world at the same time. Even better: if you've got something to share, we might be able to get you in for free. Yep, it's that time already: the Call for Papers for this year's OpenWorld (and JavaOne) is open.  But not for long -- you've only got until April 9th to submit your abstract. As a Solaris person, you'll probably be most interested in participating in one of two tracks: SERVER AND STORAGE SYSTEMS: Oracle Solaris ORACLE DEVELOP: Oracle Solaris and Oracle Linux Development All you need to give us right now is a title and an abstract. If your session is accepted, we'll let you know by early June, and you can start to plan to join us in San Francisco from September 30 to October 4. (If you're planning on attending in listen-only mode, be aware that the early registration price is available until March 30.) As is true every year, this is your opportunity to meet the leading Oracle hardware and software engineers, including lots of the Oracle Solaris team, and interact with your peers from all over the world. See you there!

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• The Other "C" in CRM

  - by [email protected]

  By Brian Dayton on April 5, 2010 7:04 PM Folks who know me know that I rarely, if ever, talk politics. And I never talk politicians. Having grown up in a household with one parent leaning left and the other leaning to the right it was the best way to keep the peace. This isn't about politics. It's about "constituents" and the need to improve the services and service levels for people--at the city, county, state/province, etc. level all the way up to national governments. As a citizen and tax payer it's also important to me that these services be provided at a reasonable cost. If there's a better and more efficient way to do something then it's my hope that a public sector organization takes advantage of technology the same way private sector companies do. Social services organizations have a complex job. They provide the services that people need, from healthcare and children's assistance to helping people find jobs. But many of these organizations are still managing these processes manually or outdated, home-grown applications that could have been written up to 30 years ago. A lot has changed in technology. On the (this is as political as I'm going to get) political front, stakeholders like you and me are expecting greater transparency on where and how funds are spent. I'll admit that most of the time, when I think about CRM systems, I think about my experience as a customer of my bank, utilities company or cable operator. But now that I'm older, have children and a house--I find myself interacting more and more with agencies and services organizations. My experiences are sometimes good and sometimes not so good. Along those lines, last week's announcement of Siebel CRM 8.2 for Public Sector caught my eye. You may not work in the public sector, but you are a constituent of some--actually a lot--of public sector organizations. I don't know which CRM systems city and county utilize but I'm going to start paying closer attention.

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• Touch Screen Ubuntu 10.04LTS

  - by WalterJ89

  I'm trying to get a touch screen working with Ubuntu 10.04LTS (64bit) -it is a serial touchsceen, connected at /dev/ttyS0 ,i know that works because I get garbage in the terminal when I enable it. -before the screen used a 3m driver (I believe) in XP. My knowledge of Linux is passive so I generally pick up something when I need it. To get this working I came accross a lot of tutorials (a lot outdated a bit), I'm still at a loss to get this work. I'm not sure where to put linux drivers (/usr/ or /dev/?) most tutorials kind of skip over that part. I have tried editing the /etc/X11/xorg.conf unsuccessfully. I'm not sure what the syntax for that is supposed to be. Thank You

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• Why is VMware vSphere Client hanging at the console?

  - by David

  When I use the vSphere Client (against an ESXi 4.1 server) it hangs a lot. It's always at the same place - using the console on a VM. The console stops responding - and a lot of times, the management window stops responding as well. The operating system won't close the window (as the application isn't responding) and requires a force close. I've had the console refuse to give up the mouse, and have had the console freeze with the cursor in the top left (before any VM software starts, maybe?). The environment is this: the system is a Dell laptop running Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick) fully updated with VirtualBox OSE running Windows XP (also fully updated). The vSphere Client is running in the Windows XP VM. Got all that? How do I keep these hangs from happening? It is very aggravating. I'm still trying just to get the VM loaded with Ubuntu Server...

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• Folder Size Column on Explorer on Windows Vista/Seven

  - by Click Ok

  I'm a big fan of FolderSize, but unfortunately it works only on Windows XP. Even reading this and this, I'm not convinced that I cannot to have a column showing the folder size on Windows Explorer. Even with all "problems" FolderSize worked like a charm in WindowsXP. In a sysadmin life, FolderSize is explendid. Before select a lot of folders to send to backup in DVDs, I can check directly in Windows Explorer the size of the folders and get a set of folders with 4.3Gb to burn in a DVD. In another situation, I can view in the root folder the size of the bigger folders in the hard drive and start a good strategy of backup/partitioning/transfer to another drive/etc. If desired, I can tell a lot of another needs that in my sysadmin life I need a tool like FolderSize... There is someone that is actively developing a solution to show folder size on Windows Explorer in Vista/Seven Windows? What the problems that I can face if I develop myself that "add-in" for Windows Explorer?

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• What techniques would you use for a next generation java web application?

  - by jakob

  I'm working at a site similar to Foursquare and Yelp, with approximately 100000 unique requests each week that generates content, growing steadily. We are currently using: Seam as Java web framework. MySQL as DB Hibernate as ORM Hibernate Search as Index EhCache for Caching. Since our site is slowly growing out of the current setup and has a lot of legacy code, it is time for us to start thinking about a major refactoring/changing setup. Web framework We are not ready to change the language but we are leaning towards Spring Web Framework, since: Seam is no more. Almost all of us have worked with Spring and liked it. DB and ORM We have done a little research and we are thinking about MongoDB. Index Do we need to have a separate Index if we use MongoDB? Cache ? So my question is basically: If you take Spring Web Framework and MongoDB into consideration, how would a good setup be for a web application that is growing and handles a lot of logged in users generating input and performing searches?

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• 12.04 grub unable to boot on /sde, upgrade-grub and boot-repair failed, please help

  - by VGR

  My problem is I've 4 disks in a raid array listed as sda, sdb... sdd and grub 2 refuses to boot on /sde (the 5th disk, standalone and containing a clean install of 12.04 64 bits). I tried all solutions but all fail. (live CD/USB with grub-setup, also tried repair-grub, and tried also in the "grub rescue" set prefix= etc). I also tried to deactivate the RAID array in the BIOS, but I'd rather not destroy it, and I didn't find a way to make the standalone disk as '/sda1' (this would satisfy grub). In the BIOS, the would-be /sda is the only bootable hard disk; it ends up as /sde and grubs complains. I've made repair-grub issue a pastebin. I always end up in grub-rescue and I'm stuck. I need Ubuntu to boot so that I can add the device array handler for my disks. I can't switch the disks and I can't disconnect the SATA RAID controller. I need: (a) a workaround so that grub starts on /sde; or (b) a way to change the order in which Ubuntu sees the disks, at boot time. I could then provide grub with a /sda1. Thanks a lot. up please thanks a lot it's not the same problem as booting ubuntu from raid. My RAID array serves only of data repository windows had no problem with this configuration

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• Would you refactor this and if so, would you charge your client?

  - by Julius

  I am working on a freelance job at home. The client wants me to write some new functionality for his CMS, but it is taking me a lot of time to figure out what the code is doing, because it is written in a very unreadable style. Below is just an example of what I mean. The previous programmer made extensive use of anonymous functions, of eval(), he uses deeply nested ternary operators, he didn't indent code, didn't use comments, and he uses funny constructions like misusing the behaviour of logical operators || and && for creating if/else conditions (the second condition of && only gets tested if the first one is true, opening the possibility to use && as an if/else construction). All in all it's insane code and it's costing me a lot of time to find out how the current code works. return ($this->main->context != "ajax" || in_array($this->type, $this->definition->ajax)) ? eval('return method_exists($this,"Show'.ucfirst($this->type).'") ? $this->Show'.ucfirst($this->type).'('.(count($args) ? join(",",array_map(create_function('$a','return (is_numeric($a) || preg_match("/^array/",$a)) ? $a : "\"".$a."\"";'),$args)) : "").') : null;') : ''; Would you refactor this code and how would you handle this sort of thing with your client, I mean financially?

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• correct Installation and configuration of openJDK and R

  - by Marco K

  I am relatively new to Ubuntu so I wont know a lot of commands that probably became standard to a lot of you guys. I am trying to set up R and with it the necessary java dependencies to install e.g. JGR, rjava, etc. I read through quite a few instructions to do that but somehow I must have done sth wrong. Here is the state of R and java: R --version R version 2.14.1 (2011-12-22) Copyright (C) 2011 The R Foundation for Statistical Computing ISBN 3-900051-07-0 Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu (64-bit) java -version java version "1.6.0_23" OpenJDK Runtime Environment (IcedTea6 1.11pre) (6b23~pre11-0ubuntu1.11.10.1) OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build 20.0-b11, mixed mode) R CMD javareconf Java interpreter : /usr/bin/java Java version : 1.6.0_23 Java home path : /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-openjdk/jre Java compiler : /usr/bin/javac Java headers gen.: /usr/bin/javah Java archive tool: /usr/bin/jar Java library path: /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-openjdk/jre/lib/amd64/server:/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-openjdk/jre/lib/amd64:/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-openjdk/jre/../lib/amd64:/usr/java/packages/lib/amd64:/usr/lib/jni:/lib:/usr/lib JNI linker flags : -L/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-openjdk/jre/lib/amd64/server -L/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-openjdk/jre/lib/amd64 -L/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-openjdk/jre/../lib/amd64 -L/usr/java/packages/lib/amd64 -L/usr/lib/jni -L/lib -L/usr/lib -ljvm JNI cpp flags : But when I try to install 'JavaGD' in R, which is a dependency for JGR I get: ... checking Java support in R... present: interpreter : '/usr/bin/java' cpp flags : '' java libs : '-L/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-openjdk/jre/lib/amd64/server -L/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-openjdk/jre/lib/amd64 -L/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-openjdk/jre/../lib/amd64 -L/usr/java/packages/lib/amd64 -L/usr/lib/jni -L/lib -L/usr/lib -ljvm' configure: error: One or more Java configuration variables are not set. Make sure R is configured with full Java support (including JDK). Run R CMD javareconf as root to add Java support to R. ... Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

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• Ghosting context menu clicks in WinXP

  - by Swish

  Let me preface by saying I have a lot of windows open most of the time, although not resource intensive ones, just browsers, ssh sessions, a music player, FTP client, Notepad++, IM clkients, etc. Anyway, I get a lot of weird visual "ghosting" type effects. For example when right-clicking and then selecting an option from a context menu the selected item will remain in view until I right click somewhere on the desktop. Same thing happens when selecting items from the File, Edit, etc. menu in various programs. I'm assuming this is just a result of a less than high quality video card (NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200), all the other hardware in the machine is newer higher quality, that specific video card was added after the fact for multiple monitors. I have looked all over the web for solutions and have increased the number of GDI handles for Windows, reduced the hardware accelaration on the card, etc. Any suggestions other than replace the card?

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• How to disable "N" Wireless Mode RTL8192 (Thinkpad Edge 15 Core i5) in natty

  - by Gustavo Rubio

  I've seen many owners of thinkpad edges which are supossed to be linux-friendly having problems with wireless adapter. I've found several links inside askubuntu and in ubuntuforums which have a lot of work-arounds for those problems, mine seems to be wierd though. I use my laptop on both my office and at home. At home I have a router which is A/B/G and here at home the wireless connection works just fine, using a WEP key. But in work I have a B/G/N wireless router and it doesn't work, my guess is that this adapter works with N modes but somehow this is buggy in the bundled driver in natty. I've tried to disable the "N" mode in the router but that didn't work. Later I went to realtek website, downloaded their driver and compiled myself, kinda seems to work most of the time but sometimes some websites keep trying to load or load just parts of it and images start to look like their links are broken and so on, much like what you get when you were loading a page and suddenly the connection is lost. This problem, as I said, is only using the realtek driver from their website. Dmesg gives me this a lot of these: [ 5869.049454] rtl8192se_update_ratr_table: ratr_index=0 ratr_table=0x00000ff5 [ 5879.240563] DHCP pkt src port:68, dest port:67!! So I thougth I might as well switch back to the original driver which seems to work just fine on A/B/G wireless networks but not on N networks so if anybody knows how to disable that mode from within the driver please let us know :) Thanks in advance! PS: I do found a link to a similar question and it was answered but let me remind you I'm NOT using the intel version of wireless for my thinkpad but the realtek (RTL8192SvB)

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• Node.JS testing with Jasmine, databases, and pre-existing code

  - by Jim Rubenstein

  I've recently built the start of a core system which is likely going turn into a monster product. I'm building the system with node.js, and decided after I got a small base built, that It'd be a great idea to start using some sort of automated test suite to test the application. I decided to use jasmine, as it seems pretty solid and has a lot of features for stubbing spying and mocking methods and classes. The application has a lot of external data stores and api access (kestrel, mysql, mongodb, facebook, and more). My issue is, I've got a good amount of code written that I want to start testing - as it represents the underpinnings of the application. What are the best practices for testing methods/classes that access external APIs that I may or may not have control over? As an example, I have a data structure that fetches a bunch of data from a MySQL database. I want to test the method that retrieves the data; and I'm not sure how to go about it. I could test the fetch method which is supposed to return an array of objects, but to isolate the method from the database, I need to define my own fixture data. So what I end up doing is stubbing the mysql execution, and returning a static dataset. So, I end up writing a function that returns the dataset that makes my test pass. That doesn't seem to actually test the code, other than verifying a method is being called. I know this is kind of abstract and vague, it seems that the idea of testing is very much abstract though, so hopefully someone has some experience and can guide me in the right direction. Any advice, or reading I can do is more than welcomed. Thanks in advance.

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• Why is it that software is still easily pirated today?

  - by mohabitar

  I've always been curious about this. Now I wouldn't call myself a programmer yet, but I'm learning, so maybe the answer to this is obvious. It just seems a little hard to believe that with all of our technological advances and the billions of dollars spent on engineering the most unbelievable and mind-blowing software, we still have no other means of protecting against piracy then a "serial number/activation key". I'm sure a ton of money, maybe even billions, went into creating Windows 7 or Office and even Snow Leopard, yet I can get it for free in less than 20 minutes. Same for all of Adobe's products, which are probably the easiest. I guess my question is: can there exist a fool proof and hack proof method of protecting your software against piracy? If not realistically, how about theoretically possible? Or no matter what mechanisms these companies deploy, hackers can always find a way around it? EDIT: So apparently, the answer is no. There's pretty much no way. And so I'm sure these big companies have realized this as well. Should they adopt another sales model rather than charging a crapload for their software (I know its justified and they put a lot of hard work into their software, but its still a lot of money). Are there any alternative solutions that will benefit both the company and the user (i.e. if you purchase our product, we'll apply $X dollars to your account that will apply to future purchases from our company)?

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• how a pure functional programming language manage without assignment statements?

  - by Gnijuohz

  When reading the famous SICP,I found the authors seem rather reluctant to introduce the assignment statement to Scheme in Chapter 3.I read the text and kind of understand why they feel so. As Scheme is the first functional programming language I ever know something about,I am kind of surprised that there are some functional programming languages(not Scheme of course) can do without assignments. Let use the example the book offers,the bank account example.If there is no assignment statement,how can this be done?How to change the balance variable?I ask so because I know there are some so-called pure functional languages out there and according to the Turing complete theory,this must can be done too. I learned C,Java,Python and use assignments a lot in every program I wrote.So it's really an eye-opening experience.I really hope someone can briefly explain how assignments are avoided in those functional programming languages and what profound impact(if any) it has on these languages. The example mentioned above is here: (define (make-withdraw balance) (lambda (amount) (if (>= balance amount) (begin (set! balance (- balance amount)) balance) "Insufficient funds"))) This changed the balance by set!.To me it looks a lot like a class method to change the class member balance. As I said,I am not familiar with functional programming languages,so if I said something wrong about them,feel free to point out.

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• How common is prototyping as the first stage of development?

  - by EpsilonVector

  I've been taking some software design courses in the past few semesters, and while I see the benefit in a lot of the formalism, I still feel like it doesn't tell me anything about the program itself. You can't tell how the program is going to operate from the Use Case spec, even though it discusses what the program can do, and you can't tell anything about the user experience from the requirements document, even though it can include QA requirements. ...sequence diagrams are as good a description of how the software works as the call stack, in other words- very limited, highly partial view of the overall system, and a class diagram is great for describing how the system is built, but is utterly useless in helping you figure out what the software needs to be. Where in all this formalism is the bottom line- how the program looks, operates, and what experience it gives? Doesn't it make more sense to design off of that? Isn't it better to figure out how the program should work via a prototype and strive to implement it for real? I know that I'm probably suffering from being taught engineering by theoreticians, but I got to ask, do they do this in the industry? How do people figure out what the program actually is, not what it should conform to? Do people prototype a lot? ...or do they mostly use the formal tools like UML and I just didn't get the hang of using them yet?

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