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• Windows 7 PC browsers having trouble to open certain sites but not others

  - by user55345

  Hi, My Win7 PC these days acting very weird: Examples: It can not open bing.com, alexa.com, msdn.microsoft.com (blank page or page can not be found); It can open zdnet.com but lost all CSS layouts and pictures; It can open stackoverflow and Google no problem; I tried all three browsers (IE8, Chrome, Firefox 3.6) same thing. I didn't change anything on this PC in days. This PC does have Anti-Virus installed and updated. I'm also pretty sure it's not a network problem, because my other laptops are just fine at the same time. The only thing I can think of is it might be some auto-update stuff underneath happened without my knowledge, but I have no idea where to troubleshoot? Please shed some lights for me? Thanks a lot.

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• Is there a secure way to add a database troubleshooting page to an application?

  - by Josh Yeager

  My team makes a product (business management software) that our customers install on their own servers. The product uses a SQL database for data storage and app configuration. There have been quite a few cases where something strange happened in the customer's database (caused by bugs in our app and also sometimes admins who mess with the database). To figure out what is wrong with the data, we have to send SQL scripts to the customer and tell them how to run them on the database server. Then, once we know how to fix it, we have to send another script to repair the data. Is there a secure way to add a page in our application that allows an application admin to enter SQL scripts that read and write directly to the database? Our support team could use that to help customers run these scripts, without needing direct access to the SQL server. My big concerns are that someone might abuse this power to get data they shouldn't have and maybe to erase or modify data that they shouldn't be able to modify. I'm not worried about system admins, because they could find another way to do the same thing. But what if someone else got access to the form? Is there any way to do this kind of thing securely?

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• Antenna Aligner Part 6: Little Robots

  - by Chris George

  A week ago I took temporary ownership of a HTC Desire S so that I could start testing my app under Android. Support for Android was not in my original plan, but when Nomad added support for it recently, I starting thinking why not! So with some trepidation, I clicked the Build for Android button on the Nomad toolbar... nothing. Hmm... that's not right, I was expecting something to build. After a bit of faffing around I finally realised that I hadn't read the text on the Android setup page properly (yes that's right, RTFM!), and I needed a two-part application identifier, separated by a dot. I did this (not sure what the two part thing is all about, that one my list to investigate!) After making the change, the Android build worked and created the apk file. I uploaded this to the device and nervously ran it... it worked!!!  Well, more or less! So, there was not splash screen, but this was no surprise because I only have the iOS icons and splash screen in my project at the moment. What was more concerning was the compass update didn't seem to be working. I suspect this is a result of using an iOS specific option in the Phonegap compass watcher. Another thing to investigate. I've also just noticed that the css gradient background hasn't worked either... These issues aside, it was actually more successful than I was expecting, so happy days! Right, lets get Googling...   Next time: Preparing for submission to the App Store! :-)

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• Un-balanced network speed although using fiberoptic cable line

  - by Hoàng Long

  I'm not sure this is a right place to ask this question, but there's a strange thing that I don't quite sure what the reason is. My company has hired a fiberoptic cable line for network use (Wifi and cable through a router). But the strange thing is that, whenever someone view YouTube or listen stream music, then network speed for all the others become extremely slow. The download speed for that person is about 4-5 MB/s (or more), but others suffer. I'm still a newbie about networking. But I know there should be a solution. Could anyone tell me a way to stop this bad behavior? It's not possible for asking people not viewing YouTube, since that's part of their jobs. Any insights about this problem would be very welcome.

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• What's your most controversial programming opinion?

  - by Jon Skeet

  This is definitely subjective, but I'd like to try to avoid it becoming argumentative. I think it could be an interesting question if people treat it appropriately. The idea for this question came from the comment thread from my answer to the "What are five things you hate about your favorite language?" question. I contended that classes in C# should be sealed by default - I won't put my reasoning in the question, but I might write a fuller explanation as an answer to this question. I was surprised at the heat of the discussion in the comments (25 comments currently). So, what contentious opinions do you hold? I'd rather avoid the kind of thing which ends up being pretty religious with relatively little basis (e.g. brace placing) but examples might include things like "unit testing isn't actually terribly helpful" or "public fields are okay really". The important thing (to me, anyway) is that you've got reasons behind your opinions. Please present your opinion and reasoning - I would encourage people to vote for opinions which are well-argued and interesting, whether or not you happen to agree with them.

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• Collabnet Subversion and Self Signed Certificates

  - by Robert May

  We installed Collabnet as our subversion server recently.  This is the first time that we’ve used it.  In general, it seems pretty good, but we ran into a problem with it.  People were getting the following error in Tortoise: OPTIONS of ’https://xxxx.xxxxxxxx.xxxx/svn/xxxxx’: SSL handshake failed: SSL error code – 1/1/336032856 (https://xxxx.xxxxxxxx.xxxx) The odd thing is that for some people, it worked, for others, it didn’t!  I also couldn’t find anything useful out on the internet. We had checked the Subversion Server should serve via https option in the settings, and all of the ports were open, etc. This option causes a self signed certificate to be used. What we discovered: Tortoise must use the same url as is in the Hostname field on the General settings for collabnet or you’ll get this error.  Basically, some people were using https://svn.xxxxxxx.xxxxx and others were using https://computername.xxxxxxxx.xxxx.  Because the host name said used the computer name version, the whole thing broke.  By changing the host name to the svn version, which is what they should be using, the problem went away.  The users do get the “Accept Certificate” prompt, but we can live with that! Technorati Tags: Subversion,Collabnet

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for 2012-09-06

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Oracle Technology Network Architect Day - Boston, MA - 9/12/2012 Sure, you could ask a voodoo priestess for help in improving your solution architecture skills. But there's the whole snake thing, and the zombie thing, and other complications. So why not keep it simple and register for Oracle Technology Network Architect Day in Boston, MA. There's no magic, just a full day of technical sessions covering Cloud, SOA, Engineered Systems, and more. Registration is free, but seating is limited. You'll curse yourself if you miss this one. Register now. Adding a runtime LOV for a taskflow parameter in WebCenter | Yannick Ongena Oracle ACE Yannick Ongena illustrates how to customize the parameters tab for a taskflow in WebCenter. Tips on Migrating from AquaLogic .NET Accelerator to WebCenter WSRP Producer for .NET | Scott Nelson "It has been a very winding path and this blog entry is intended to share both the lessons learned and relevant approaches that led to those learnings," says Scott Nelson. "Like most journeys of discovery, it was not a direct path, and there are notes to let you know when it is practical to skip a section if you are in a hurry to get from here to there." Using FMAP and AnalyticsRes in a Oracle BI High Availability Implementation | Christian Screen "The fmap syntax has been used for a long time in Oracle BI / Siebel Analytics when referencing images inherent in the application as well as custom images," says Oracle ACE Christian Screen. "This syntax is used on Analysis requests an dashboards." More on Embedded Business Intelligence | David Haimes David Haimes give an example of Timeliness as "one of the three key attributes required for BI to be considered embedded BI." Thought for the Day "Architect: Someone who knows the difference between that which could be done and that which should be done. " — Larry McVoy Source: Quotes for Software Engineers

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• Is there any way to limit my Internet connection to a per program basis?

  - by Igoru

  My Linux connection is REALLY free. I live in Brazil, so where I live I can only have 1 Mbit/s. Yes I know it's sad, but it's not the point. Everytime I'm updating my Ubuntu 9.04 or downloading something, it does eat all my bandwidth. Like, while update-manager is downloading the packages, I can see by netspeed applet in my panel that the incoming traffic goes to 110 kB/s. And then, my Emesene suddenly goes disconnected, and I can't navigate. As you can imagine, I can't use my Internet connection again until the packages are all downloaded or I cancel the update in the middle. As I said, same thing happens when I'm dowloading something, but less intrusive and immediate. The question is: is there any way to limit that APT/downloads traffic to some way I can still use my other Internet services, or to reserve some bandwidth for common navigation tasks (like we have on Windows, but I forgot this thing's name, it's like "something packages".

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• Graciously shutdown external HDD enclosure?

  - by Jakobud

  I recently purchased a large HDD along with the following HDD enclosure: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817173043 It has a simple on-off switch on the back. When I want to turn this thing off, do I simply just flip the switch? I assume the switch simply kills the power to the HDD, but isn't that potentially a bad thing in the case that the HDD is still reading/writing? I used to have a Seagate external HDD and it had a button on the front that I had to hold down for a second or two before it would turn off, but it at least appeared to sort of go through a shutdown procedure where it probably would stop the HDD activity before cutting power. So with this external HDD, I'm a little bit leery about that power switch and understanding exactly what it does. Is this how all HDD enclosures are? EDIT: I'm running the drive in Ubuntu Server. So there is no 'ejecting' the drive lol

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• Functional programming compared to OOP with classes

  - by luckysmack

  I have been interested in some of the concepts of functional programming lately. I have used OOP for some time now. I can see how I would build a fairly complex app in OOP. Each object would know how to do things that object does. Or anything it's parents class does as well. So I can simply tell Person().speak() to make the person talk. But how do I do similar things in functional programming? I see how functions are first class items. But that function only does one specific thing. Would I simply have a say() method floating around and call it with an equivalent of Person() argument so I know what kind of thing is saying something? So I can see the simple things, just how would I do the comparable of OOP and objects in functional programming, so I can modularize and organize my code base? For reference, my primary experience with OOP is Python, PHP, and some C#. The languages that I am looking at that have functional features are Scala and Haskell. Though I am leaning towards Scala. Basic Example (Python): Animal(object): def say(self, what): print(what) Dog(Animal): def say(self, what): super().say('dog barks: {0}'.format(what)) Cat(Animal): def say(self, what): super().say('cat meows: {0}'.format(what)) dog = Dog() cat = Cat() dog.say('ruff') cat.say('purr')

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• Antenna Aligner Part 6: Little Robots

  - by Chris George

  A week ago I took temporary ownership of a HTC Desire S so that I could start testing my app under Android. Support for Android was not in my original plan, but when Nomad added support for it recently, I starting thinking why not! So with some trepidation, I clicked the Build for Android button on the Nomad toolbar... nothing. Hmm... that's not right, I was expecting something to build. After a bit of faffing around I finally realised that I hadn't read the text on the Android setup page properly (yes that's right, RTFM!), and I needed a two-part application identifier, separated by a dot. I did this (not sure what the two part thing is all about, that one my list to investigate!) After making the change, the Android build worked and created the apk file. I uploaded this to the device and nervously ran it... it worked!!!  Well, more or less! So, there was not splash screen, but this was no surprise because I only have the iOS icons and splash screen in my project at the moment. What was more concerning was the compass update didn't seem to be working. I suspect this is a result of using an iOS specific option in the Phonegap compass watcher. Another thing to investigate. I've also just noticed that the css gradient background hasn't worked either... These issues aside, it was actually more successful than I was expecting, so happy days! Right, lets get Googling...   Next time: Preparing for submission to the App Store! :-)

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• With Choice Comes Complexity

  - by BuckWoody

  "Complex" may be defined as "Having many steps, details or parts." Many of Microsoft's products, including SQL Server, can be complex. I'm stating what most data professionals already know - there's usually multiple ways to do things in SQL Server. For instance, to import some data into a table you can use graphical tools, SQLCMD, bcp, SQL Server Integration Services, BULK INSERT, even PowerShell, just to name a few tools at your disposal. That's really not the issue, though. The bigger issue is that there are normally multiple thought-processes, or methods, that you have available for a task. That's both a strength and a weakness. If things were more simple, you would have fewer choices. Sometimes that's a good thing. Just tell me what I need to do and I'll do it. However, your particular situation may not fit that tool or process, so having more options increases your ability to get your job done the way you need to do it. On the other hand, that's more for you to learn, which is harder. There's another side of this benefit/difficulty that you need to be aware of. Even if you're quite good at what you do, keep in mind that the way you know how to do something may not be the only way to do it. Keep your mind open to new possibilities, and most importantly - to new knowledge. SQL Server professionals teach me something new every day. So embrace the complexity - on balance, it's a good thing! Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• how to properly implement alpha blending in a complex 3d scene

  - by Gajet

  I know this question might sound a bit easy to answer but It's driving me crazy. There are too many possible situations that a good alpha blending mechanism should handle, and for each Algorithm I can think of there is something missing. these are the methods I've though about so far: first of I though about object sorting by depth, this one simply fails because Objects are not simple shapes, they might have curves and might loop inside each other. so I can't always tell which one is closer to camera. then I thought about sorting triangles but this one also might fail, thought I'm not sure how to implement it there is a rare case that might again cause problem, in which two triangle pass through each other. again no one can tell which one is nearer. the next thing was using depth buffer, at least the main reason we have depth buffer is because of the problems with sorting that I mentioned but now we get another problem. Since objects might be transparent, in a single pixel there might be more than one object visible. So for which Object should I store pixel depth? I then thought maybe I can only store the most front Object depth, and using that determine how should I blend next draw calls at that pixel. But again there was a problem, think about 2 semi transparent planes with a solid plane in middle of them. I was going to render the solid plane at the end, one can see the most distant plane. note that I was going to merge every two planes until there is only one color left for that pixel. Obviously I can use sorting methods too because of the same reasons I've explained above. Finally the only thing I imagine being able to work is to render all objects into different render targets and then sort those layers and display the final output. But this time I don't know how can I implement this algorithm.

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• libreadline history lines combine

  - by jettero

  This has been driving me crazy for about three years. I don't know how to fully describe the problem, but I think I can finally describe a way to recreate it. Your milage may vary. I have a mixture of ubuntu server and desktop machines of various versions and a few gentoo machines with various states of disrepair. They all seem to kindof do their own thing, although with similarities. Try this and let me know if you see the same thing. pop open two xterms (TERM=xterm) resize one so they're not the same issue screen -R test1 in one (TERM=screen) and screen -x test1 in the other hooray, typing in one shows up in the other; although notice that their different size produces artifacts and things issue a couple commands in your shell hit ^AF in the one that doesn't fit quite right, now it fits!! scroll back over the history a little goto 6 Eventually you'll notice a couple history lines combine. If you don't, then it's something unique to my setup, which spans various distributions and computers; so that's a confusing concept to me. If you see the thing I'm seeing then this: bash$ ls -al bash$ ps auxfw becomes this: bash$ ls -al; ps auxfw It doesn't happen every time. I have to really play with it — unless I don't want it to happen, then it always does. On some systems (or combinations), I get a line separator like the example above. On some systems, I do not. That I get the line separator on some systems seems to indicate to me that bash supports this behavior. Its history is entirely handled by libreadline and after perusing (ie, carefully reading) the man pages, I couldn't find a single readline setting for combining two history lines. Nor can I find anything in the bash manpage. So, how can I invoke this on purpose? Or, if I can't do that, how can I disable it completely? I would take either answer as a solution. Currently, I only see it when I don't want it.

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• Ubuntu on an XPS 14 Ultrabook with mSATA cache and 500GB HD - how to partition for dual boot?

  - by JDS

  I am getting an XPS 14 ( http://www.dell.com/us/p/xps-14-l421x/pd ) and I want to dual-boot Windows and Ubuntu. This thing has a 500GB standard HD and a 32GB mSATA that can be used as cache. Does anyone know how this thing is partitioned? Is the OS installed on the mSATA drive and data is on the big HD? Is there a BIOS controller or maybe even a Windows driver that makes the mSATA drive and 500GB HD appear contiguous? I get the impression that something makes the mSATA be used invisibly as cache, but I can't find any technical documentation how that works. My primary concern here is wrt dual-booting Ubuntu. I want to know if I need to partition the mSATA separately, or the big HD, or just partition the "magic" contiguous disk space that appears available to the OS.

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• What kind of language will replace C++ as C++ replaced C ? [closed]

  - by jokoon

  I think I'm not totally wrong when thinking that C++0x (or C++1x) is still C++, just better, with functionnalities coming from boost. I can't stop thinking that computer sciences, even with all that has been made so far, have to evolve again. I don't really like D since it just try to be some sort of "what C++ should have been", and Go seems to be too sophisticated when I dig a little into it, especially after watching some presentation video like this one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKnDgT73v8s The first thing that come into my mind is a new kind of syntax to directly handle specific datatypes and containers such as map, vectors, queues... What kind of things are researchers thinking about ? What are the real features that could make C++ better or a new C-like language could invent ? Does Go features such things ? Would there be a new kind of syntax that would "unbloat" C++ while keeping its advantages ? Could C++ have some of the interesting stuff of languages such as C# and ObjC ? EDIT: Please consider that I'm talking about a system language, not a VM/CLI/bytecode thing.

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• Is there a canonical source supporting "all-surrogates"?

  - by user61852

  Background The "all-PK-must-be-surrogates" approach is not present in Codd's Relational Model or any SQL Standard (ANSI, ISO or other). Canonical books seems to elude this restrictions too. Oracle's own data dictionary scheme uses natural keys in some tables and surrogate keys in other tables. I mention this because these people must know a thing or two about RDBMS design. PPDM (Professional Petroleum Data Management Association) recommend the same canonical books do: Use surrogate keys as primary keys when: There are no natural or business keys Natural or business keys are bad ( change often ) The value of natural or business key is not known at the time of inserting record Multicolumn natural keys ( usually several FK ) exceed three columns, which makes joins too verbose. Also I have not found canonical source that says natural keys need to be immutable. All I find is that they need to be very estable, i.e need to be changed only in very rare ocassions, if ever. I mention PPDM because these people must know a thing or two about RDBMS design too. The origins of the "all-surrogates" approach seems to come from recommendations from some ORM frameworks. It's true that the approach allows for rapid database modeling by not having to do much business analysis, but at the expense of maintainability and readability of the SQL code. Much prevision is made for something that may or may not happen in the future ( the natural PK changed so we will have to use the RDBMS cascade update funtionality ) at the expense of day-to-day task like having to join more tables in every query and having to write code for importing data between databases, an otherwise very strightfoward procedure (due to the need to avoid PK colisions and having to create stage/equivalence tables beforehand ). Other argument is that indexes based on integers are faster, but that has to be supported with benchmarks. Obviously, long, varying varchars are not good for PK. But indexes based on short, fix-length varchar are almost as fast as integers. The questions - Is there any canonical source that supports the "all-PK-must-be-surrogates" approach ? - Has Codd's relational model been superceded by a newer relational model ?

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• Ping, firewall or DNS issue on Win Server 2008 R2

  - by Fred Kaiser

  I've installed windows server 2008 as a VM for the developers here to work on. Installed SQL Server 2008 as well as IIS7. I am not quite sure why, I can remote into that machine using the name I gave to it (winserverdev) but the guys that are supposed to use the bloody thing can't. One very interesting thing is that I can connect but I can't ping... not the name nor the IP address. Is there anything that I should be looking in order to make it work? Any ideas are welcome. Thanks heaps in advance, I really appreciate it.

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• Internet Explorer 9 auto "feeling lucky" for gmail bing search

  - by Gareth Jones

  When Im at school and using school computers, i have to use has IE9. When I want to access my gmail, I type in "gmail" in the URL bar, and thus IE9 does a bing search. The page half loads (As in, loads just about every thing but the search results) and then opens my gmail, kinda like google's "i'm feeling lucky". My question is this: Why? IE9 doesn't have the URL of gmail, as i can watch the bing search load, and then the url changes to gmail, and it only happens for Gmail, having tired with searching Google and Facebook in the same method. The computer is running Windows 7 with Windows Aero disabled, and limited account privileges. While its a cool thing, I would like to known what causes it to happen. Thanks

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• Release notes for 9/25/2012

  Below are the release notes from today's deployment. 1. With today’s deployment we’ve made some significant changes to the source code experience. First of all, you’ll noticed that we moved the Source Code tab closer to the project home tab.   We believe that this will help make source code more discoverable and emphasizes our focus on developer collaboration. The next thing you’ll notice is that when you click on the Source Code tab, you will immediately be browsing code. We want to get you to the project source code in a minimum number of clicks, and this change helps get you there. The changeset history is still there, which brings us to the next change… We implemented an action bar in the source code section, which will make certain actions more discoverable, including forking, cloning, and downloading source code The popups in the action bar will help you perform the tasks you need to do when contributing to projects, as well as managing your own projects. Take a look at how easy it is to find the clone/connection URL now! 2. The second exciting thing we turned on this week is the ability to enable Windows Azure Web Sites to build and deploy your project source code (for Git source code projects). You can read more about how to do this in Mark's post here. 3. We also made some improvements in other areas this week: Made some improvements to screen reader accessibility Fixed some minor UI issues in the browse source code page We'd love to have your feedback on the new changes to the source code tab. Please let us know what you think on our suggestions page, send us a message on Twitter @codeplex, or you can reach Mark Groves directly @mgroves84

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• How to be hired as a remote programmer abroad and not to be an entrepreneur?

  - by user592704

  The question is quite interesting as for me because I watched jobs adds and mostly they all: A) Require being located the same country a vacancy is B) Employers don't want to hire foreign programmers if they don't have H1B or something C) As a rule, most adds provide 6 month contract position I can keep adding the list for long time describing some job adds specifications, anyway, as a rule, most positions require non-employee cooperation status. I don't have a company for such kind of "making projects by a client order" so it is quite complicated; So I was trying, just, as for a statistics, to find out is there a way to be hired abroad as a remote programmer as if I get hired in my native city? The thing is not about being hired where I can be hired "because I am located this or that place" but the thing is about a possibility (not to relocate) which actually should provide nowadays technologies especially for IT specialists in many different fields; So the question is it possible to work any country in remote mode as if I am working in my own place? What do I need for that? Can you advice some useful web sites in this direction? If you can share your own experience I'd love to listen to. Any useful advices are much appreciated

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• Will We See More Partisan Splits from the SEC?

  - by Theresa Hickman

  The SEC's lawsuit against Goldman Sachs has made recent headlines. The fact that the SEC seems to be growing more litigious by making examples out of invididuals and companies is not the topic of my blog. The most interesting thing about this case is that the 5 SEC commissioners did not vote unanimously to bring the lawsuit. The commissioners had a 3-2 partisan split. Ms. Shapiro (a registered independent) voted with the 2 Democrats. Split votes rarely happen by the SEC, especially when they are enforcing actions against firms they regulate. I wonder if we will be seeing more of these partisan split votes when it comes to other decisions, say IFRS adoption? I know both the Democrats and Republicans have stated that they support a unified accounting standard. However, will the Republicans want to push back simply because there is a Democrat in office? (Seems childish to me, but I never understood politics). I think Ms. Shapiro will most definitely want a unanimous consensus related to the IFRS topic. There is already talk that we will be seeing more SEC split votes in the future. For example, there will most likely be a split vote regarding Obama's proposed financial-regulatory overhaul. I don't see why IFRS would be exempt. I really hope it doesn't happen because the last thing we need is more road blocks on our IFRS road trip.

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• How exactly to implement multiple threads in a game

  - by xerwin

  So I recently started learning Java, and having a interest in playing games as well as developing them, naturally I want to create game in Java. I have experience with games in C# and C++ but all of them were single-threaded simple games. But now, I learned how easy it is to make threads in Java, I want to take things to the next level. I started thinking about how would I actually implement threading in a game. I read couple of articles that say the same thing "Usually you have thread for rendering, for updating game logic, for AI, ..." but I haven't (or didn't look hard enough) found example of implementation. My idea how to make implementation is something like this (example for AI) public class AIThread implements Runnable{ private List<AI> ai; private Player player; /*...*/ public void run() { for (int i = 0; i < ai.size(); i++){ ai.get(i).update(player); } Thread.sleep(/* sleep until the next game "tick" */); } } I think this could work. If I also had a rendering and updating thread list of AI in both those threads, since I need to draw the AI and I need to calculate the logic between player and AI(But that could be moved to AIThread, but as an example) . Coming from C++ I'm used to do thing elegantly and efficiently, and this seems like neither of those. So what would be the correct way to handle this? Should I just keep multiple copies of resources in each thread or should I have the resources on one spot, declared with synchronized keyword? I'm afraid that could cause deadlocks, but I'm not yet qualified enough to know when a code will produce deadlock.

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• How can I make permanent death in a MUD seem acceptable and fair to players?

  - by Luke Laupheimer

  I have considered writing a MUD for years, and I have a lot of ideas my friends think are really cool (and that's how I'd hope to get anywhere -- word of mouth). Thing is, there's one thing I have always wanted, that my friends and strangers hated: permanent death. Now, the emotional response I get to this is visceral revulsion, every time. I'm pretty sure I am the only person that wants this, or if I'm not, I'm a tiny minority. Now, the reason I want it is because I want the actions of the players to matter. Unlike a lot of other MUDs, which have a set of static city-states and social institutions etc, I want the things my players do, should I get any, to actually change the situation. And that includes killing people. If you kill someone, you didn't send them to time out, you killed them. What happens when you kill people? They go away. They don't come back in half an hour to smack talk you some more. They're gone. Forever. By making death non-permanent, you make death not matter. It would be similar if a climax to a character's arc is getting a speeding ticket. It cheapens it. Non-permanent death cheapens death. How can I: 1) Convince my players (and random people!) that this is actually a good idea?, or 2) Find some other way to make death and violence matter as much as it does in real life (except within the game, of course) sans character deletion? What alternatives are there out there?

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• Dealing with bad/incomplete/unclear specifications?

  - by eagerMoose

  I'm working on a project where our dev team gets the specifications from the business part of the company. Both the business management and the IT management require estimates and deadline projections, as they should. The good thing is that estimates are mostly made by the actual developers who get to do the required features. The bad thing is that the specifications are usually either too simple (it turns out you're left with a lot of question marks over your head because a lot of information seems to be missing) or too complex(up to the point that you can't even visualize where everything would "fit" in the app). More often than not, the business part of the specs are either incomplete or unaware of what can and can't be done (given the previously implemented business logic). Dev team is given about a day per new spec to give an estimate and we do try to clear uncertainties, usually by meeting up with whoever did the spec. Most of the times it turns out that spec writers haven't really thought everything through, and it's usually only when we start designing and developing that we end up in trouble, as a lot of the spec seems to have holes. How do you deal with this? Are you generous on estimates in advance?

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