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• Oracle Linux Partner Pavilion Spotlight - Part II

  - by Ted Davis

  As we draw closer to the first day of Oracle OpenWorld, starting in less than a week, we continue to showcase some of our premier partners exhibiting in the Oracle Linux Partner Pavilion ( Booth #1033). We have Independent Hardware Vendors, Independent Software Vendors and Systems Integrators that show the breadth of support in the Oracle Linux and Oracle VM ecosystem. In today's post we highlight three additional Oracle Linux / Oracle VM Partners from the pavilion. Micro Focus delivers mainframe solutions software and software delivery tools with its Borland products. These tools are grouped under the following solutions: Analysis and testing tools for JDeveloper Micro Focus Enterprise Analyzer is key to the success of application overhaul and modernization strategies by ensuring that they are based on a solid knowledge foundation. It reveals the reality of enterprise application portfolios and the detailed constructs of business applications. COBOL for Oracle Database, Oracle Linux, and Tuxedo Micro Focus Visual COBOL delivers the next generation of COBOL development and deployment. Itbrings the productivity of the Eclipse IDE to COBOL, and provides the ability to deploy key business critical COBOL applications to Oracle Linux both natively and under a JVM. Migration and Modernization tooling for mainframes Enterprise application knowledge, development, test and workload re-hosting tools significantly improves the efficiency of business application delivery, enabling CIOs and IT leaders to modernize application portfolios and target platforms such as Oracle Linux. When it comes to Oracle Linux database environments, supporting high transaction rates with minimal response times is no longer just a goal. It’s a strategic imperative. The “data deluge” is impacting the ability of databases and other strategic applications to access data and provide real-time analytics and reporting. As such, customer demand for accelerated application performance is increasing. Visit LSI at the Oracle Linux Pavilion, #733, to find out how LSI Nytro Application Acceleration products are designed from the ground up for database acceleration. Our intelligent solid-state storage solutions help to eliminate I/O bottlenecks, increase throughput and enable Oracle customers achieve the highest levels of DB performance. Accelerate Your Exadata Success With Teleran. Teleran’s software solutions for Oracle Exadata and Oracle Database reduce the cost, time and effort of migrating and consolidating applications on Exadata. In addition Teleran delivers visibility and control solutions for BI/data warehouse performance and user management that ensure service levels and cost efficiency.Teleran will demonstrate these solutions at the Oracle Open World Linux Pavilion: Consolidation Accelerator - Reduces the cost, time and risk ofof migrating and consolidation applications on Exadata. Application Readiness – Identifies legacy application performance enhancements needed to take advantage of Exadata performance features Workload Accelerator – Identifies and clusters workloads for faster performance on Exadata Application Visibility and Control - Improves performance, user productivity, and alignment to business objectives while reducing support and resource costs. Thanks for reading today's Partner Spotlight. Three more partners will be highlighted tomorrow. If you missed our first Partner Spotlight check it out here.

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• Dark Sun Dispatch 001.5 (a review of City Under The Sand)

  - by Chris Williams

  City Under The Sand - a review I'm moderately familiar with the Dark Sun setting. I've read the other Dark Sun novels, ages ago and I recently started running a D&D 4.0 campaign in the Dark Sun world, so I picked up this book to help re-familiarize myself with the setting. Overall, it did accomplish that, in a limited way. The book takes place in Nibenay and a neighboring expanse of desert that includes a formerly buried city, a small town and a bandit outpost. The book does a more interesting job of describing Nibenese politics and the court of the ruling Sorcerer King, his templars and the expected jockeying for position that occurs between the Templar Wives. There is a fair amount of combat, which was interesting and fairly well detailed. The ensemble cast is introduced and eventually brought together over the first few chapters. Not a lot of backstory on most of the characters, but you get a feel for them fairly quickly. The storyline was somewhat predictable after the first third of the book. Some of the reviews on Amazon complain about the 2-dimensional characterizations, and yes there were some... but it's easy to ignore because there is a lot going on in the book... several interwoven plotlines that all eventually converge. Where the book falls short... First, it appears to have been edited by a 4th grader who knows how to use spellcheck but lacks the attention to detail to notice the frequent occurence of incorrect words that often don't make sense or change the context of the entire sentence. It happened just enough to be distracting, and honestly I expect better from WOTC. Second, there is a lot of buildup to the end of the story... the big fight, the confrontation between good and evil, etc... which is handled in just a few pages and then the story basically just ends. Kind of a letdown, honestly. There wasn't a big finish, and it wasn't a cliffhanger, it just wraps up neatly and ends. It felt pretty rushed. Overall, aside from the very end, I enjoyed it. I really liked the insight into that region of Athas and it gave me some good ideas for fleshing out my own campaign. In that sense, the book served its purpose for me. If you're looking for a light read (got a 5-6 hour flight somewhere?) or you want to learn more about the Dark Sun setting, then I'd recommend this book.

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• 5 Step Procedure for Android Deployment with NetBeans IDE

  - by Geertjan

  I'm finding that it's so simple to deploy apps to Android that I'm not needing to use the Android emulator at all, haven't been able to figure out how it works anyway (big blinky screen pops up that I don't know what to do with). I just simply deploy the app straight to Android, try it out there, and then uninstall it, if needed. The whole process (only step 4 and 5 below need to be done for each deployment iteration, after you've done steps 1, 2, and 3 once to set up the deployment environment), takes a few seconds. Here's what I do: On Android, go to Settings | Applications. Check "Unknown sources". In "Development", check "USB debugging". Connect Android to your computer via a USB cable. Start up NetBeans IDE, with NBAndroid installed, as described yesterday. and create your "Hello World" app. Right-click the project in the IDE and choose "Export Signed Android Package". Create a new keystore, or choose an existing one, via the wizard that appears. At the end of the wizard (would be nice if NBAndroid would let you set up a keystore once and then reuse it for all your projects, without needing to work through the whole wizard step by step each time), you'll have a new release APK file (Android deployment archive) in the project's 'bin' folder, which you can see in the Files window. Go to the command line (would be nice if NBAndroid were to support adb, would mean I wouldn't need the command line at all), browse to the location of the APK file above. Type "adb install helloworld-release.apk" or whatever the APK file is called. You should see a "Success" message in the command line. Now the application is installed. On your Android, go to "Applications", and there you'll see your brand new app. Then try it out there and delete it if you're not happy with it. After you've made a change in your app, simply repeat step 4 and 5, i.e., create a new APK and install it via adb. Step 4 and 5 take a couple of seconds. And, given that it's all so simple, I don't see the value of the Android emulator, at all.

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• Bukkit inventory saving: crashing somewhere

  - by HcgRandon

  I'm working on a command for a bukkit plugin that lets you transfer worlds. In the section about saving the player's inventory, I'm getting a runtime error. My question is: Why is the error happening, and how can I prevent it? The plugin code public void savePlayerInv(Player p, World w){ File playerInvConfigFile = new File(plugin.getDataFolder() + File.separator + "players" + File.separator + p.getName(), "inventory.yml"); FileConfiguration pInv = YamlConfiguration.loadConfiguration(playerInvConfigFile); PlayerInventory inv = p.getInventory(); int i = 0; for (ItemStack stack : inv.getContents()) { //increment integer i++; String startInventory = w.getName() + ".inv." + Integer.toString(i); //save inv pInv.set(startInventory + ".amount", stack.getAmount()); pInv.set(startInventory + ".durability", Short.toString(stack.getDurability())); pInv.set(startInventory + ".type", stack.getTypeId()); //pInv.set(startInventory + ".enchantment", stack.getEnchantments()); //TODO add enchant saveing } i = 0; for (ItemStack armor : inv.getArmorContents()){ i++; String startArmor = w.getName() + ".armor." + Integer.toString(i); //save armor pInv.set(startArmor + ".amount", armor.getAmount()); pInv.set(startArmor + ".durability", armor.getDurability()); pInv.set(startArmor + ".type", armor.getTypeId()); //pInv.set(startArmor + ".enchantment", armor.getEnchantments()); } //save exp if (p.getExp() != 0) { pInv.set(w.getName() + ".exp", p.getExp()); } } The offending line The stack trace complains about line 130, which is this line. pInv.set(startInventory + ".amount", stack.getAmount()); The stack trace 2012-03-21 13:23:25 [SEVERE] null org.bukkit.command.CommandException: Unhandled exception executing command 'wtp' in plugin Needs v1.0 at org.bukkit.command.PluginCommand.execute(PluginCommand.java:42) at org.bukkit.command.SimpleCommandMap.dispatch(SimpleCommandMap.java:166) at org.bukkit.craftbukkit.CraftServer.dispatchCommand(CraftServer.java:461) at net.minecraft.server.NetServerHandler.handleCommand(NetServerHandler.java:818) at net.minecraft.server.NetServerHandler.chat(NetServerHandler.java:778) at net.minecraft.server.NetServerHandler.a(NetServerHandler.java:761) at net.minecraft.server.Packet3Chat.handle(Packet3Chat.java:33) at net.minecraft.server.NetworkManager.b(NetworkManager.java:229) at net.minecraft.server.NetServerHandler.a(NetServerHandler.java:112) at net.minecraft.server.NetworkListenThread.a(NetworkListenThread.java:78) at net.minecraft.server.MinecraftServer.w(MinecraftServer.java:554) at net.minecraft.server.MinecraftServer.run(MinecraftServer.java:452) at net.minecraft.server.ThreadServerApplication.run(SourceFile:490) Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException at com.devoverflow.improved.needs.commands.CommandWorldtp.savePlayerInv(CommandWorldtp.java:130) at com.devoverflow.improved.needs.commands.CommandWorldtp.onCommand(CommandWorldtp.java:60) at org.bukkit.command.PluginCommand.execute(PluginCommand.java:40) ... 12 more

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• Loose Coupling and UX Patterns for Applications Integrations

  - by ultan o'broin

  I love that software architecture phrase loose coupling. There’s even a whole book about it. And, if you’re involved in enterprise methodology you’ll know just know important loose coupling is to the smart development of applications integrations too. Whether you are integrating offerings from the Oracle partner ecosystem with Fusion apps or applications coexistence scenarios, loose coupling enables the development of scalable, reliable, flexible solutions, with no second-guessing of technology. Another great book Enterprise Integration Patterns: Designing, Building, and Deploying Messaging Solutions tells us about loose coupling benefits of reducing the assumptions that integration parties (components, applications, services, programs, users) make about each other when they exchange information. Eliminating assumptions applies to UI development too. The days of assuming it’s enough to hard code a UI with linking libraries called code on a desktop PC for an office worker are over. The book predates PaaS development and SaaS deployments, and was written when web services and APIs were emerging. Yet it calls out how using middleware as an assumptions-dissolving technology “glue" is central to applications integration. Realizing integration design through a set of middleware messaging patterns (messaging in the sense of asynchronously communicating data) that enable developers to meet the typical business requirements of enterprises requiring integrated functionality is very Fusion-like. User experience developers can benefit from the loose coupling approach too. User expectations and work styles change all the time, and development is now about integrating SaaS through PaaS. Cloud computing offers a virtual pivot where a single source of truth (customer or employee data, for example) can be experienced through different UIs (desktop, simplified, or mobile), each optimized for the context of the user’s world of work and task completion. Smart enterprise applications developers, partners, and customers use design patterns for user experience integration benefits too. The Oracle Applications UX design patterns (and supporting guidelines) enable loose coupling of the optimized UI requirements from code. Developers can get on with the job of creating integrations through web services, APIs and SOA without having to figure out design problems about how UIs should work. Adding the already user proven UX design patterns (and supporting guidelines to your toolkit means ADF and other developers can easily offer much more than just functionality and be super productive too. Great looking application integration touchpoints can be built with our design patterns and guidelines too for a seamless applications UX. One of Oracle’s partners, Innowave Technologies used loose coupling architecture and our UX design patterns to create an integration for a customer that was scalable, cost effective, fast to develop and kept users productive while paving a roadmap for customers to keep pace with the latest UX designs over time. Innowave CEO Basheer Khan, a Fusion User Experience Advocate explains how to do it on the Usable Apps blog.

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• Showing ZFS some LOVE

  - by Kristin Rose

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} L is for the way you look at us, and O because we’re Oracle, but V is very, very, extra ordinary, and E, well that’s obvious… E is because Oracle’s new Sun ZFS Storage Appliance is Excellent, and here at OPN, we like spell out the obvious!  If you haven’t already heard, the Sun ZFS Appliance has “A simple, GUI-driven setup and configuration, solid price-performance and world-class Oracle support behind it. The CRN Test Center recommends the Sun ZFS Storage”. Read more about what CRN said here. Oracle's Sun ZFS Appliance family delivers enterprise-class network attached storage (NAS) capabilities with leading Oracle integration, simplicity, efficiency, performance, and TCO.  The systems offer an easy way to manage and expand your storage environment at a lower cost, with more efficiency, better data integrity, and higher performance when compared with competitive NAS offerings. Did we mention that set up, including configuring, will take you less than an hour since it all comes in one box and is so darn simple to use? So if you L-O-V-E what you’re hearing about Oracle’s Sun Z-F-S, learn more by watching the video below, and visiting any of our available resources . It Had to Be You, The OPN Communications Team

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• All hail the Excel Queen

  - by Tim Dexter

  An excellent question this past week from dear ol Blighty; actually from Brian at Nextgen Clearing Ltd in the big smoke (London). Brian was developing an excel template and wanted to be able to reference the data fields multiple times inside the Excel template. Damn good question and I of course has some wacky solutions, from macros and cell referencing in Excel to pre-processing the data with an XSL stylesheet to copy the data multiple times so it could be referenced multiple times. All completely outlandish, enter our Queen of Excel, Shirley from the development team. Shirley is singlehandedly responsible for the Excel templates, I put her through six months of hell a few years back, with a host of Excel template requirements. She was more than up to the challenge and has developed some great features. One of those, is the ability to use the hidden XDO_METADATA sheet to map the data to custom named fields so they can be used multiple times in the template. So simple and very neat! Excel template and regular Excel users will know that you can only use the naming function once ie the names have to be unique across the workbook so you can not reuse a cell/group name. To get around this you can just come up with as many cell names as you want and map them in the XDO_METADATA sheet to the data columns/fields in your XML data set:. For example: XDO_?DEPTNO_SUMMARY?  <?DEPTNO?> XDO_?DNAME_SUMMARY?  <?DNAME?> XDO_GROUP_?G_D_DETAIL? <xsl:for-each-group select=".//G_D" group-by="./DEPTNO"> XDO_?DEPTNO_DETAIL? <?DEPTNO?> As you can see DEPTNO has been referenced twice and mapped to different named values in the left hand column. These values can then be used to name individual cells in the Excel template. You'll also notice a mix of Publisher <? ...?> and native XSL commands. So the world is your oyster on the mapping and the complexity you might need for calculations or string manipulation. Shirley has kindly built out a sample Excel template, data and result here so you can see how it all hangs together. the XDO_METADATA sheet is hidden, just right click on the sheet names and use the Unhide command to show it.

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• RTS Game Style Application [closed]

  - by Daniel Wynand van Wyk

  My question may seem somewhat odd, but I hope that my specifications will clarify EXACTLY what it is that I am after. I need some help choosing the right tooling for a particular endeavour. My background is in desktop application development and large back-end systems. I have worked primarily on the Microsoft stack using C# and the .Net framework. My goal is to develop a 2D, RTS style, interactive office simulation. The simulation will model various office spaces, office equipment, employees and their interactions with one another. The idea is to abstract the concept of an office completely. Under the hood the application will do many things that are nothing like a game. This includes P2P networking, VPN tunnelling, streaming video, instant messaging, document collaboration, remote screen sharing, file-sharing, virus scanning, VOIP, document scanning, faxing, emailing, distributed computing, content management and much more! A somewhat similar thing has been attempted by IBM, where they created a virtual office in second life. If their attempt was a game, the game-play would be notably horrible, to say the least! The users/players will drive and control my application through the various objects modelled in the simulation. A single application capable of performing all of these various tasks would be a nightmare to navigate for even the most expert user. Using the concept of a game, I can easily separate functionality by assigning them to objects that relate 1-1 with their real world counter-parts. This can greatly simplify computing for novice users, with many added benefits in terms of visibility, transparency of process and centralized configuration. My hope is to make complex computing tasks accessible to all kinds of users and to greatly reduce the cognitive load associated with using the many different utilities and applications inside office settings. The complexity is therefore limited to the complexity of the space in which you find yourself. I want the application to target as many platforms as possible and run on computers that have no accelerated graphics capabilities. The simulation won't contain any of the fancy eye-candy you find in modern games, to the contrary, my "game" will purposefully be clean and simple. The closest thing I could imagine would be an old game like "Theme Hospital" or the first instalment of "The Sims". All the content will be pre-created and not user-generated like Second Life. New functionality will be added via a plugin system. Given my background and nature of my "game", I would like to spend most of my time writing code that does not have to do with the simulated office, as the "game" is really just a glorified application menu. I have done much reading about existing engines, frameworks and tools. I need the help of an experienced game developer who has tried and tested various products over the years who can guide me in the right direction given my very particular needs. I would appreciate any help I can get!

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• Quickly Copy Movie Files to Individually Named Folders

  - by DigitalGeekery

  Some HTPC media manager applications require movie files to be in stored in separate folders to properly store information such as cover art images and other metadata. Here we look at copying movie files to individual folders. If you already have a large movie collection stored in a single folder, we’ll show you how to quickly move those files into their own individually named folders. File2Folder FIle2folder is a handy portable app that automatically creates and moves movie files into a folder of the same filename. There is no installation needed. Simply download and run the .exe file (link below). Enter the current movie directory, or browse for the folder. File2folder now supports both local and network shares. When you are ready to create the folders and move the files, click Move! You’ll see the move progress displayed in the window. When the process is finished, you’ll have all your movie file in individual folders.   Change your mind? Just click the Undo! button…   …and the move and folder creation process will be undone. If you would like to have the folder monitored for new files, click the Start button. File2folder will process any new files it discovers every 180 seconds. To turn it off, click Stop. This simple little program is a huge timesaver for those looking to organize movie collections for their HTPC. We should also note that this will work with any files, not just videos. Download file2folder Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Hack: Turn Off Debug Mode in VMWare Workstation 6 BetaAdd Images and Metadata to Windows 7 Media Center Movie LibraryAdd Folders to the Movie Library in Windows 7 Media CenterAutomatically Mount and View ISO files in Windows 7 Media CenterMove the Public Folder in Windows Vista TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips HippoRemote Pro 2.2 Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Identify Fonts using WhatFontis.com Windows 7’s WordPad is Actually Good Greate Image Viewing and Management with Zoner Photo Studio Free Windows Media Player Plus! – Cool WMP Enhancer Get Your Team’s World Cup Schedule In Google Calendar Backup Drivers With Driver Magician

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• reference list for non-IT driven algorithmic patterns

  - by Quicker

  I am looking for a reference list for non-IT driven algorithmic patterns (which still can be helped with IT implementations of IT). An Example List would be: name; short desc; reference Travelling Salesman; find the shortest possible route on a multiple target path; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travelling_salesman_problem Ressource Disposition (aka Regulation); Distribute a limited/exceeding input on a given number output receivers based on distribution rules; http://database-programmer.blogspot.de/2010/12/critical-analysis-of-algorithm-sproc.html If there is no such list, but you instantly think of something specific, please 'put it on the desk'. Maybe I can compile something out of the input I get here (actually I am very frustrated as I did not find any such list via research by myself). Details on Scoping: I found it very hard to formulate what I want in a way everything is out that I do not need (which may be the issue why I did not find anything at google). There is a database centric definition for what I am looking for in the section 'Processes' of the second example link. That somehow fits, but the database focus sort of drifts away from the pattern thinking, which I have in mind. So here are my own thoughts around what's in and what's out: I am NOT looking for a foundational algo ref list, which is implemented as basis for any programming language. Eg. the php reference describes substr and strlen. That implements algos, but is not what I am looking for. the problem the algo does address would even exist, if there were no computers (or other IT components) the main focus of the algo is NOT to help other algo's chances are high, that there are implementions of the solution or any workaround without any IT support out there in the world however the algo could be benefitialy implemented/fully supported by a software application = means: the problem of the algo has to be addressed anyway, but running an algo implementation with software automates the process (that is why I posted it on stackoverflow and not somewhere else) typically such algo implementations have more than one input field value and more than one output field value - which implies it could not be implemented as simple function (which is fixed to produce not more than one output value) in a normalized data model often times such algo implementation outputs span accross multiple rows (sometimes multiple tables), whereby the number of output rows depends on the input paraters and rows in the table(s) at start time - which implies that any algo implementation/procedure must interact with a database (read and/or write) I am mainly looking for patterns, not for specific implementations. Example: The Travelling Salesman assumes any coordinates, however it does not say: You need a table targets with fields x and y. - however sometimes descriptions are focussed on examples with specific implementations very much - no worries, as long as the pattern gets clear

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• Separate Action from Assertion in Unit Tests

  - by DigitalMoss

  Setup Many years ago I took to a style of unit testing that I have come to like a lot. In short, it uses a base class to separate out the Arrangement, Action and Assertion of the test into separate method calls. You do this by defining method calls in [Setup]/[TestInitialize] that will be called before each test run. [Setup] public void Setup() { before_each(); //arrangement because(); //action } This base class usually includes the [TearDown] call as well for when you are using this setup for Integration tests. [TearDown] public void Cleanup() { after_each(); } This often breaks out into a structure where the test classes inherit from a series of Given classes that put together the setup (i.e. GivenFoo : GivenBar : WhenDoingBazz) with the Assertions being one line tests with a descriptive name of what they are covering [Test] public void ThenBuzzSouldBeTrue() { Assert.IsTrue(result.Buzz); } The Problem There are very few tests that wrap around a single action so you end up with lots of classes so recently I have taken to defining the action in a series of methods within the test class itself: [Test] public void ThenBuzzSouldBeTrue() { because_an_action_was_taken(); Assert.IsTrue(result.Buzz); } private void because_an_action_was_taken() { //perform action here } This results in several "action" methods within the test class but allows grouping of similar tests (i.e. class == WhenTestingDifferentWaysToSetBuzz) The Question Does someone else have a better way of separating out the three 'A's of testing? Readability of tests is important to me so I would prefer that, when a test fails, that the very naming structure of the tests communicate what has failed. If someone can read the Inheritance structure of the tests and have a good idea why the test might be failing then I feel it adds a lot of value to the tests (i.e. GivenClient : GivenUser : WhenModifyingUserPermissions : ThenReadAccessShouldBeTrue). I am aware of Acceptance Testing but this is more on a Unit (or series of units) level with boundary layers mocked. EDIT : My question is asking if there is an event or other method for executing a block of code before individual tests (something that could be applied to specific sets of tests without it being applied to all tests within a class like [Setup] currently does. Barring the existence of this event, which I am fairly certain doesn't exist, is there another method for accomplishing the same thing? Using [Setup] for every case presents a problem either way you go. Something like [Action("Category")] (a setup method that applied to specific tests within the class) would be nice but I can't find any way of doing this.

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• Code Design question, circular reference across classes?

  - by dsollen

  I have no code here, as this is more of a design question (I assume this is still the best place to ask it). I have a very simple server in java which stores a mapping between certain values and UUID which are to be used by many systems across multiple platforms. It accepts a connection from a client and creates a clientSocket which stores the socket and all the other relevant data unique to that connection. Each clientSocket will run in their own thread and will block on the socket waiting for a read. I expect very little strain on this system, it will rarely get called, but when it does get a call it will need to respond quickly and due to the risk of it having a peak time with multiple calls coming in at once threaded is still better. Each thread has a reference to a Mapper class which stores the mapping of UUID which it's reporting to others (with proper synchronization of course). This all works until I have to add a new UUID to the list. When this happens I want to report to all clients that care about that particular UUID that a new one was added. I can't multicast (limitation of the system I'm running on) so I'm having each socket send the message to the client through the established socket. However, since each thread only knows about the socket it's waiting on I didn't have a clear method of looking up every thread/socket that cares about the data to inform them of the new UUID. Polling is out mostly because it seems a little too convoluted to try to maintain a list of newly added UUID. My solution as of now is to have the 'parent' class which creates the mapper class and spawns all the threads pass itself as an argument to the mapper. Then when the mapper creates a new UUID it can make a call to the parent class telling it to send out updates to all the other sockets that care about the change. I'm concerned that this may be a bad design due to the use of a circular reference; parent has a reference to mapper (to pass it to new ClientSocket threads) and mapper points to parent. It doesn't really feel like a bad design to me but I wanted to check since circular references are suppose to be bad. Note: I realize this means that the thread associated with whatever socket originally received the request that spawned the creation of a UUID is going to pay the 'cost' of outputting to all the other clients that care about the new UUID. I don't care about this; as I said I suspect the client to receive only intermittent messages. It's unlikely for one socket to receive multiple messages at one time, and there won't be that many sockets so it shouldn't take too long to send messages to each of them. Perhaps later I'll fix the fact that I'm saddling higher work load on whatever unfortunate thread gets the first request; but for now I think it's fine.

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• Pixels - A cry for some insight

  - by CarrotFile

  I'm pretty new to web developing and I'd love some clarification. Although reading more than one book on the topic, I cannot seem to wrap my head around the pixel concept. I encounter problems with this issue when trying to use CSS and pixel units for design that fits different screen sizes. To my understanding a pixel is the most basic unit used by a monitor in order to compose an image on the screen. So if me resolution is 800 by 600, everything on my screen is rendered using those 800*600 basic building blocks. If I were to enlarge my screen resolution, 3 things would accrue: A. The basic image building block(the pixel) would shrink in size B. The pixels would move close together C. Well, more pixels would now be available All these combined lead to a sharper(depending on the viewing distance) and more detail enabling image. Well so far so good. Here is were I start getting lost: To my knowledge a pixel is not a physical, real object. Monitors are not embedded with a few thousand pixels. I am drawn to this conclusion because anyone can change his screen's resolution, making a pixel on his screen bigger or smaller, and adding or subtracting the amount of total pixels on screen. Adding to that, I have herd that different monitors have different pixel densities. For example Apple's retina monitors. Taking all of the above as my knowledge base, These are my questions: If a pixel has no real world constant size, what does comparing different pixel densities matter? Each screen company can define it's own pixel concept and declare the higher density. What does a bigger pixel density mean? Say we take two screens with the same physical dimensions, but with a different pixel density, am I to assert that the main difference would be the larger density screen being able to display a higher max resolution? Or am I to assert that given the same resolution on both monitors, the higher density one would display a sharper, smaller image? If a pixel is not a fixed size within one monitor, is it a fixed size between the same resolution on two different monitors? For example, would two different monitors, set to the same resolution, be comprised of same size, same quantity pixels? I'd love some help (:

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• Yet another frustum culling question

  - by Christian Frantz

  This one is kinda specific. If I'm to implement frustum culling in my game, that means each one of my cubes would need a bounding sphere. My first question is can I make the sphere so close to the edge of the cube that its still easily clickable for destroying and building? Frustum culling is easily done in XNA as I've recently learned, I just need to figure out where to place the code for the culling. I'm guessing in my method that draws all my cubes but I could be wrong. My camera class currently implements a bounding frustum which is in the update method like so frustum.Matrix = (view * proj); Simple enough, as I can call that when I have a camera object in my class. This works for now, as I only have a camera in my main game class. The problem comes when I decide to move my camera to my player class, but I can worry about that later. ContainmentType CurrentContainmentType = ContainmentType.Disjoint; CurrentContainmentType = CamerasFrustrum.Contains(cubes.CollisionSphere); Can it really be as easy as adding those two lines to my foreach loop in my draw method? Or am I missing something bigger here? UPDATE: I have added the lines to my draw methods and it works great!! So great infact that just moving a little bit removes the whole map. Many factors could of caused this, so I'll try to break it down. cubeBoundingSphere = new BoundingSphere(cubePosition, 0.5f); This is in my cube constructor. cubePosition is stored in an array, The vertices that define my cube are factors of 1 ie: (1,0,1) so the radius should be .5. I least I think it should. The spheres are created every time a cube is created of course. ContainmentType CurrentContainmentType = ContainmentType.Disjoint; foreach (Cube block in cube.cubes) { CurrentContainmentType = cam.frustum.Contains(cube.cubeBoundingSphere); ///more code here if (CurrentContainmentType != ContainmentType.Disjoint) { cube.Draw(effect); } Within my draw method. Now I know this works because the map disappears, its just working wrong. Any idea on what I'm doing wrong?

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• What is the most appropriate testing method in this scenario?

  - by Daniel Bruce

  I'm writing some Objective-C apps (for OS X/iOS) and I'm currently implementing a service to be shared across them. The service is intended to be fairly self-contained. For the current functionality I'm envisioning there will be only one method that clients will call to do a fairly complicated series of steps both using private methods on the class, and passing data through a bunch of "data mangling classes" to arrive at an end result. The gist of the code is to fetch a log of changes, stored in a service-internal data store, that has occurred since a particular time, simplify the log to only include the last applicable change for each object, attach the serialized values for the affected objects and return this all to the client. My question then is, how do I unit-test this entry point method? Obviously, each class would have thorough unit tests to ensure that their functionality works as expected, but the entry point seems harder to "disconnect" from the rest of the world. I would rather not send in each of these internal classes IoC-style, because they're small and are only made classes to satisfy the single-responsibility principle. I see a couple possibilities: Create a "private" interface header for the tests with methods that call the internal classes and test each of these methods separately. Then, to test the entry point, make a partial mock of the service class with these private methods mocked out and just test that the methods are called with the right arguments. Write a series of fatter tests for the entry point without mocking out anything, testing the entire functionality in one go. This looks, to me, more like "integration testing" and seems brittle, but it does satisfy the "only test via the public interface" principle. Write a factory that returns these internal services and take that in the initializer, then write a factory that returns mocked versions of them to use in tests. This has the downside of making the construction of the service annoying, and leaks internal details to the client. Write a "private" initializer that take these services as extra parameters, use that to provide mocked services, and have the public initializer back-end to this one. This would ensure that the client code still sees the easy/pretty initializer and no internals are leaked. I'm sure there's more ways to solve this problem that I haven't thought of yet, but my question is: what's the most appropriate approach according to unit testing best practices? Especially considering I would prefer to write this test-first, meaning I should preferably only create these services as the code indicates a need for them.

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• Why can't the IT industry deliver large, faultless projects quickly as in other industries?

  - by MainMa

  After watching National Geographic's MegaStructures series, I was surprised how fast large projects are completed. Once the preliminary work (design, specifications, etc.) is done on paper, the realization itself of huge projects take just a few years or sometimes a few months. For example, Airbus A380 "formally launched on Dec. 19, 2000", and "in the Early March, 2005", the aircraft was already tested. The same goes for huge oil tankers, skyscrapers, etc. Comparing this to the delays in software industry, I can't help wondering why most IT projects are so slow, or more precisely, why they cannot be as fast and faultless, at the same scale, given enough people? Projects such as the Airbus A380 present both: Major unforeseen risks: while this is not the first aircraft built, it still pushes the limits if the technology and things which worked well for smaller airliners may not work for the larger one due to physical constraints; in the same way, new technologies are used which were not used yet, because for example they were not available in 1969 when Boeing 747 was done. Risks related to human resources and management in general: people quitting in the middle of the project, inability to reach a person because she's on vacation, ordinary human errors, etc. With those risks, people still achieve projects like those large airliners in a very short period of time, and despite the delivery delays, those projects are still hugely successful and of a high quality. When it comes to software development, the projects are hardly as large and complicated as an airliner (both technically and in terms of management), and have slightly less unforeseen risks from the real world. Still, most IT projects are slow and late, and adding more developers to the project is not a solution (going from a team of ten developer to two thousand will sometimes allow to deliver the project faster, sometimes not, and sometimes will only harm the project and increase the risk of not finishing it at all). Those which are still delivered may often contain a lot of bugs, requiring consecutive service packs and regular updates (imagine "installing updates" on every Airbus A380 twice per week to patch the bugs in the original product and prevent the aircraft from crashing). How can such differences be explained? Is it due exclusively to the fact that software development industry is too young to be able to manage thousands of people on a single project in order to deliver large scale, nearly faultless products very fast?

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• Accounting for waves when doing planar reflections

  - by CloseReflector

  I've been studying Nvidia's examples from the SDK, in particular the Island11 project and I've found something curious about a piece of HLSL code which corrects the reflections up and down depending on the state of the wave's height. Naturally, after examining the brief paragraph of code: // calculating correction that shifts reflection up/down according to water wave Y position float4 projected_waveheight = mul(float4(input.positionWS.x,input.positionWS.y,input.positionWS.z,1),g_ModelViewProjectionMatrix); float waveheight_correction=-0.5*projected_waveheight.y/projected_waveheight.w; projected_waveheight = mul(float4(input.positionWS.x,-0.8,input.positionWS.z,1),g_ModelViewProjectionMatrix); waveheight_correction+=0.5*projected_waveheight.y/projected_waveheight.w; reflection_disturbance.y=max(-0.15,waveheight_correction+reflection_disturbance.y); My first guess was that it compensates for the planar reflection when it is subjected to vertical perturbation (the waves), shifting the reflected geometry to a point where is nothing and the water is just rendered as if there is nothing there or just the sky: Now, that's the sky reflecting where we should see the terrain's green/grey/yellowish reflection lerped with the water's baseline. My problem is now that I cannot really pinpoint what is the logic behind it. Projecting the actual world space position of a point of the wave/water geometry and then multiplying by -.5f, only to take another projection of the same point, this time with its y coordinate changed to -0.8 (why -0.8?). Clues in the code seem to indicate it was derived with trial and error because there is redundancy. For example, the author takes the negative half of the projected y coordinate (after the w divide): float waveheight_correction=-0.5*projected_waveheight.y/projected_waveheight.w; And then does the same for the second point (only positive, to get a difference of some sort, I presume) and combines them: waveheight_correction+=0.5*projected_waveheight.y/projected_waveheight.w; By removing the divide by 2, I see no difference in quality improvement (if someone cares to correct me, please do). The crux of it seems to be the difference in the projected y, why is that? This redundancy and the seemingly arbitrary selection of -.8f and -0.15f lead me to conclude that this might be a combination of heuristics/guess work. Is there a logical underpinning to this or is it just a desperate hack? Here is an exaggeration of the initial problem which the code fragment fixes, observe on the lowest tessellation level. Hopefully, it might spark an idea I'm missing. The -.8f might be a reference height from which to deduce how much to disturb the texture coordinate sampling the planarly reflected geometry render and -.15f might be the lower bound, a security measure.

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• Solaris 11

  - by user9154181

  Oracle has a strict policy about not discussing product features until they appear in shipping product. Now that Solaris 11 is publically available, it is time to catch up. I will be shortly posting articles on a variety of new developments in the Solaris linkers and related bits: 64-bit Archives After 40+ years of Unix, the archive file format has run out of room. The ar and link-editor (ld) commands have been enhanced to allow archives to grow past their previous 32-bit limits. Guidance The link-editor is now willing and able to tell you how to alter your link lines in order to build better objects. Stub Objects This is one of the bigger projects I've undertaken since joining the Solaris group. Stub objects are shared objects, built entirely from mapfiles, that supply the same linking interface as the real object, while containing no code or data. You can link to them, but cannot use them at runtime. It was pretty simple to add this ability to the link-editor, but the changes to the OSnet in order to apply them to building Solaris were massive. I discuss how we came to invent stub objects, how we apply them to build the OSnet in a more parallel and scalable manner, and about the follow on opportunities that have emerged from the new stub proto area we created to hold them. The elffile Utility A new standard Solaris utility, elffile is a variant of the file utility, focused exclusively on linker related files. elffile is of particular value for examining archives, as it allows you to find out what is inside them without having to first extract the archive members into temporary files. This release has been a long time coming. I joined the Solaris group in late 2005, and this will be my first FCS. From a user perspective, Solaris 11 is probably the biggest change to Solaris since Solaris 2.0. Solaris 11 polishes the ground breaking features from Solaris 10 (DTrace, FMA, ZFS, Zones), and uses them to add a powerful new packaging system, numerous other enhacements and features, along with a huge modernization effort. I'm excited to see it go out into the world. I hope you enjoy using it as much as we did creating it. Software is never done. On to the next one...

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• Powerful Lessons in Data from the Presidential Election

  - by Christina McKeon

  Now that we’ve had a few days to recover from the U.S. presidential election, it’s a good time to take a step back from politics and look for the customer experience lessons that we can take away. The most powerful lesson is that when you know more about your base, you will have an advantage over your competition. That advantage will translate into you winning and your competition losing. Michael Scherer of TIME was given access to Obama’s data analysts two days before the election. His account is documented in Inside the Secret World of the Data Crunchers Who Helped Obama Win. What we learned from Scherer’s inside view is how well Obama’s team did in getting the right data, analyzing it, and acting on it. This data team recognized how critical it was to break down data silos within the campaign. As Scherer noted, they created “a single system that merged information from pollsters, fundraisers, field workers, consumer databases, and social-media and mobile contacts with the main Democratic voter files in the swing states.” The Obama analysis was so meticulous that they knew which celebrity and which type of celebrity event would help them maximize campaign contributions. With a single system, their data models became more precise. They determined which messages were more successful with specific demographic groups and that who made the calls mattered. Data analysis also led to many other changes in Obama’s campaign including a new ad buying strategy, using social media and applications to tap into supporters’ friends, and using new social news sites. While we did not have that same inside view into Romney’s campaign, much of the post-mortem coverage indicates that Romney’s team did not have the right analysis. As Peter Hamby of CNN wrote in Analysis: Why Romney Lost, “Romney officials had modeled an electorate that looked something like a mix of 2004 and 2008….” That historical data did not account for the changing demographics in the U.S. Does your organization approach data like the Obama or Romney team? Do you really know your base? How well can you predict what is going to happen in your business? If you haven’t already put together a strategy and plan to know more, this week’s civics lesson is a powerful reason to do it sooner rather than later. Your competitors are probably thinking the same thing that you are!

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• Why is my primitive xna square not drawn/shown?

  - by Mech0z

  I have made this class to draw a rectangle, but I cant get it to be drawn, I have no issues displaying a 3d model created in 3dmax, but shown these primitives seems much harder I use this to create it board = new Board(Vector3.Zero, 1000, 1000, Color.Yellow); And here is the implementation using System; using System.Net; using System.Windows; using System.Windows.Controls; using System.Windows.Documents; using System.Windows.Ink; using System.Windows.Input; using System.Windows.Shapes; using Quadro.Models; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics; namespace Quadro { public class Board : IGraphicObject { //Private Fields private Vector3 modelPosition; private BasicEffect effect; private VertexPositionColor[] vertices; private Matrix rotationMatrix; private GraphicsDevice graphicsDevice; private Matrix cameraProjection; //Constructor public Board(Vector3 position, float length, float width, Color color) { var _color = color; vertices = new VertexPositionColor[6]; vertices[0].Position = new Vector3(position.X, position.Y, position.Z); vertices[1].Position = new Vector3(position.X, position.Y + width, position.Z); vertices[2].Position = new Vector3(position.X + length, position.Y, position.Z); vertices[3].Position = new Vector3(position.X + length, position.Y, position.Z); vertices[4].Position = new Vector3(position.X, position.Y + width, position.Z); vertices[5].Position = new Vector3(position.X + length, position.Y + width, position.Z); for(int i = 0; i < vertices.Length; i++) { vertices[i].Color = color; } initFields(); } private void initFields() { graphicsDevice = SharedGraphicsDeviceManager.Current.GraphicsDevice; effect = new BasicEffect(graphicsDevice); modelPosition = Vector3.Zero; float screenWidth = (float)graphicsDevice.Viewport.Width; float screenHeight = (float)graphicsDevice.Viewport.Height; float aspectRatio = screenWidth / screenHeight; this.cameraProjection = Matrix.CreatePerspectiveFieldOfView(MathHelper.ToRadians(45.0f), aspectRatio, 1.0f, 10000.0f); this.rotationMatrix = Matrix.Identity; } //Public Methods public void Update(GameTimerEventArgs e) { } public void Draw(Vector3 cameraPosition, GameTimerEventArgs e) { Matrix cameraView = Matrix.CreateLookAt(cameraPosition, Vector3.Zero, Vector3.Up); foreach (EffectPass pass in effect.CurrentTechnique.Passes) { pass.Apply(); effect.World = rotationMatrix * Matrix.CreateTranslation(modelPosition); effect.View = cameraView; effect.Projection = cameraProjection; graphicsDevice.DrawUserPrimitives(PrimitiveType.TriangleList, vertices, 0, 2, VertexPositionColor.VertexDeclaration); } } public void Rotate(Matrix rotationMatrix) { this.rotationMatrix = rotationMatrix; } public void Move(Vector3 moveVector) { this.modelPosition += moveVector; } } }

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• In-Store Tracking Gets a Little Harder

  - by David Dorf

  Remember how Nordstrom was tracking shopper movements within their stores using the unique number, called a MAC, emitted by the WiFi radio in smartphones?  The phones didn't need to connect to the network, only have their WiFi enabled, as most people do by default.  They did this, presumably, to track shoppers' path to purchase and better understand traffic patterns.  Although there were signs explaining this at the entrances, people didn't like the notion of being tracked.  (Nevermind that there are cameras in the ceiling watching them.)  Nordstrom stopped the program. To address this concern the Future of Privacy, a Washington think tank, created Smart Store Privacy, a do-not-track service that allows consumers to register their MAC address in much the same way people register their phone numbers in the national do-not-call list.  A group of companies agreed to respect consumers' wishes and ignore smartphones listed in the database.  The database includes Bluetooth identifiers as well.  Of course you could simply turn your bluetooth and WiFi off when shopping as well. Most know that Apple prefers to use BLE beacons to contact and track smartphones within their stores.  This feature extends the typical online experience to also work in physical stores.  By identifying themselves, shoppers can expect a more tailored shopping experience much like what we've come to expect from Amazon's website, with product recommendations and offers that are (usually) relevant. But the upcoming release of iOS8 is purported to have a new feature that randomizes the WiFi MAC address of smartphones during the "probing" phase.  That is, before connecting to the WiFi network, a random MAC number is used so as to keep the smartphone's real MAC address secret.  Unless you actually connect to the store's WiFi, they won't recognize the MAC address. The details on this are still sketchy, but if the random MAC is consistent for a short period, retailers will still be able to track movements anonymously, but they won't recognize repeat visitors.  That may be sufficient for traffic analytics, but it will stymie target marketing.  In the case of marketing, using iBeacons with opt-in permission from consumers will be the way forward. There is always a battle between utility and privacy, so I expect many more changes in this area.  Incidentally, if you'd like to see where beacons are being used this site tracks them around the world.

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• Trying to use stencils in 2D while retaining layer depth

  - by Steve

  This is a screen of what's going on just so you can get a frame of reference. http://i935.photobucket.com/albums/ad199/fobwashed/tilefloors.png The problem I'm running into is that my game is slowing down due to the amount of texture swapping I'm doing during my draw call. Since walls, characters, floors, and all objects are on their respective sprite sheet containing those types, per tile draw, the loaded texture is swapping no less than 3 to 5+ times as it cycles and draws the sprites in order to layer properly. Now, I've tried throwing all common objects together into their respective lists, and then using layerDepth drawing them that way which makes things a lot better, but the new problem I'm running into has to do with the way my doors/windows are drawn on walls. Namely, I was using stencils to clear out a block on the walls that are drawn in the shape of the door/window so that when the wall would draw, it would have a door/window sized hole in it. This is the way my draw was set up for walls when I was going tile by tile rather than grouped up common objects. first it would check to see if a door/window was on this wall. If not, it'd skip all the steps and just draw normally. Otherwise end the current spriteBatch Clear the buffers with a transparent color to preserve what was already drawn start a new spritebatch with stencil settings draw the door area end the spriteBatch start a new spritebatch that takes into account the previously set stencil draw the wall which will now be drawn with a hole in it end that spritebatch start a new spritebatch with the normal settings to continue drawing tiles In the tile by tile draw, clearing the depth/stencil buffers didn't matter since I wasn't using any layerDepth to organize what draws on top of what. Now that I'm drawing from lists of common objects rather than tile by tile, it has sped up my draw call considerably but I can't seem to figure out a way to keep the stencil system to mask out the area a door or window will be drawn into a wall. The root of the problem is that when I end a spriteBatch to change the DepthStencilState, it flattens the current RenderTarget and there is no longer any depth sorting for anything drawn further down the line. This means walls always get drawn on top of everything regardless of depth or positioning in the game world and even on top of each other as the stencil has to happen once for every wall that has a door or window. Does anyone know of a way to get around this? To boil it down, I need a way to draw having things sorted by layer depth while also being able to stencil/mask out portions of specific sprites.

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• Best way to determine surface normal for a group of pixels?

  - by Paul Renton

  One of my current endeavors is creating a 2D destructible terrain engine for iOS Cocos2D (See https://github.com/crebstar/PWNDestructibleTerrain ). It is in an infant stages no doubt, but I have made significant progress since starting a couple weeks ago. However, I have run into a bit of a performance road block with calculating surface normals. Note: For my destructible terrain engine, an alpha of 0 is considered to not be solid ground. The method posted below works just great given small rectangles, such as n < 30. Anything above 30 causes a dip in the frame rate. If you approach 100x100 then you might as well read a book while the sprite attempts to traverse the terrain. At the moment this is the best I can come up with for altering the angle on a sprite as it roams across terrain (to get the angle for a sprite's orientation just take dot product of 100 * normal * (1,0) vector). -(CGPoint)getAverageSurfaceNormalAt:(CGPoint)pt withRect:(CGRect)area { float avgX = 0; float avgY = 0; ccColor4B color = ccc4(0, 0, 0, 0); CGPoint normal; float len; for (int w = area.size.width; w >= -area.size.width; w--) { for (int h = area.size.height; h >= -area.size.height; h--) { CGPoint pixPt = ccp(w + pt.x, h + pt.y); if ([self pixelAt:pixPt colorCache:&color]) { if (color.a != 0) { avgX -= w; avgY -= h; } // end inner if } // end outer if } // end inner for } // end outer for len = sqrtf(avgX * avgX + avgY * avgY); if (len == 0) { normal = ccp(avgX, avgY); } else { normal = ccp(avgX/len, avgY/len); } // end if return normal; } // end get My problem is I have sprites that require larger rectangles in order for their movement to look realistic. I considered doing a cache of all surface normals, but this lead to issues of knowing when to recalculate the surface normals and these calculations also being quite expensive (also how large should the blocks be?). Another smaller issue is I don't know how to properly treat the case when length is = 0. So I am stuck... Any advice from the community would be greatly appreciated! Is my method the best possible one? Or should I rethink the algorithm? I am new to game development and always looking to learn new tips and tricks.

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• core.* files eating up server space (~50MB)

  - by skytreader

  I'm renting server space from someone and, upon logging in my control panel after quite sometime, noticed an abnormal spike (~50MB) in the disk usage. Upon investigating, I found a lot of core.* files scattered around my public_html directory. Each one is more than 5MB in size but no more than 6MB. The * part is all numbers (in programming regex, that should be core\.\d+). I downloaded one and checked the contents. There was a lot of balderdash characters (NUL mostly, but also a scattering of ETB, ETX, STX) but there's this block of readable text which says: This text is part of the internal format of your mail folder, and is not a real message. It is created automatically by the mail system software. If deleted, important folder data will be lost, and it will be re-created with the data reset to initial values. Pretty self-explanatory. A few blocks above the text are some more readable messages that look like logs but is sandwiched in between non printable characters. I've extracted some below. Scan not valid for mh mailboxes Bogus character 0x%x in news state Can't rewrite news state %.80s Error closing backup news state %.80s No state for newsgroup %.80s found Now, a few concerns: Am I under attack? The messages seem to be about my webmail but I don't use my personal webmail that much---only for a vanity email address and an inbox for an outdated comments system. However, lately, I seem to notice a spike in the spam for my vanity mail. (Note: the comments system is covered by a captcha but every now and then some get through. My vanity email has a spam filter but it isn't as good as I'd like). Next, if this is a feature, can I turn it off? Is it advisable to? I've only 150MB so you see why I'm fretting over a 50MB spike. Some final details: my only server-side scripts are in PHP. The directory which accumulated the most number of these core files is the one containing the Wordpress-managed subdomain of my site. I manage my server through CPanel. Lastly, I decided to delete this files and after some checking nothing seems amiss in my websites nor in my mail. They are indeed the ones responsible for the ~50MB spike as my disk space usage is back to expected.

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• Are You Meeting Social Customer Service Expectations?

  - by Mike Stiles

  Whether it’s B2B or B2C, one sure path to repeat business is making sure your buyer has a memorably pleasant and successful customer service experience with you. If they get that kind of treatment consistently, that’s called a relationship. And those aren’t broken easily. Social customer service, driven by integrated SRM (social relationship management) technology, is the venue that can effectively connect customers not only to the brand, but to other customers. Positive experiences, once administered, don’t just rest with the recipient. They’re published in the form of public raves and peer-to-peer recommendation, a force far more actionable than push advertising. What’s more, your customers have come to expect access to you and satisfaction from you using social. An NM Incite study shows 83% of Twitter users and 71% of Facebook users expect to get an answer from brands the same day they post to them on their social assets. To make sure you’re responding, you’ve got to have a tech platform that’s set up to moderate and alert so you’ll know ASAP a customer needs help. The more integrated your social enterprise is, the faster you can not only respond, but respond with the answer they’re looking for, because your system is connected to the internal resources that can surface the answer or put wheels in motion to rectify the situation in the shortest amount of time possible. But if you go to the necessary lengths to make sure your customers feel valued and important, will they really reward you? The study says 71% of consumers who got quick and effective responses from companies they contacted via social were more likely to recommend the brand to their friends and followers. So yes, sweeping people off their feet pays big dividends in terms of word-of-mouth marketing. But you should be keenly aware of the reverse side of that coin. Give people a negative experience, either in real world or virtual customer service, and that message is highly likely to get amplified through social channels faster and louder. Only 36% of the NM Incite study’s respondents reported that their problems were solved quickly and effectively. 36%? That’s hardly an impressive number. It gets worse. 10% never got so much as a response - at all. Going back to the relationship analogy, companies that are this deep in the ditch where customer service is concerned are making their girl or boyfriends really easy for a competitor to steal. Given the technology tools and data available right now for having an intimate knowledge of the customer, what products they’ve purchased, likely problems with those products, effective resolutions to those problems, and follow-up communication to gauge satisfaction, there are fewer excuses than ever for making the lifeblood of your business feel like you couldn’t care less. @mikestiles

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