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• Unity 3d (Using Blender) - anime/manga/cel-shaded style characters

  - by David Archer

  Making a game using Blender for 3D models and Unity for the game engine. Just wondering if anyone knows any links to pages that give a tutorial on Japanese anime style 3D modelling, texturing and shading through blender. I'm actually looking to create a cel-shaded look eventually (read: Okami/Jet Set Radio style) and I'm kind of stuck with the design stuff. I'm not a Blender expert by any means, and still kind of new to the design side of things (I'm a programmer by trade), so please don't vote me down too hard. I've tried googling, but there doesn't seem to be much in the way of what I'm after. The only thing I've found really is a plugin for blender called freestyle, or using the ToonShader shading tool. If there are any good tutorials or anything, I'm really happy to sit through them - just want to learn :) Thanks for any help :)

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• How vibrations might effect Kinect depth measurements

  - by dreza

  I'm currently doing some research into development with the Microsoft Kinect product. My project manager has come up with a potential design for mounting the camera to do the capturing. However the solution means that the camera might be subject to vibrations as the platform it is on is directly connected to where the subjects will be moving. It was my thought that vibrations would effect the quality of the results, however I could not come up with a viable explanation as to why, other than it's the same as if you held a camera in your hand and your hand was shaking vs using a tripod. Do vibrations effect the depth measurements on a Kinect and if so how can I explain this in simple terms to my PM to help come up with a better design to attach the sensor to?

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• Subterranean IL: Generics and array covariance

  - by Simon Cooper

  Arrays in .NET are curious beasts. They are the only built-in collection types in the CLR, and SZ-arrays (single dimension, zero-indexed) have their own commands and IL syntax. One of their stranger properties is they have a kind of built-in covariance long before generic variance was added in .NET 4. However, this causes a subtle but important problem with generics. First of all, we need to briefly recap on array covariance. SZ-array covariance To demonstrate, I'll tweak the classes I introduced in my previous posts: public class IncrementableClass { public int Value; public virtual void Increment(int incrementBy) { Value += incrementBy; } } public class IncrementableClassx2 : IncrementableClass { public override void Increment(int incrementBy) { base.Increment(incrementBy); base.Increment(incrementBy); } } In the CLR, SZ-arrays of reference types are implicitly convertible to arrays of the element's supertypes, all the way up to object (note that this does not apply to value types). That is, an instance of IncrementableClassx2[] can be used wherever a IncrementableClass[] or object[] is required. When an SZ-array could be used in this fashion, a run-time type check is performed when you try to insert an object into the array to make sure you're not trying to insert an instance of IncrementableClass into an IncrementableClassx2[]. This check means that the following code will compile fine but will fail at run-time: IncrementableClass[] array = new IncrementableClassx2[1]; array[0] = new IncrementableClass(); // throws ArrayTypeMismatchException These checks are enforced by the various stelem* and ldelem* il instructions in such a way as to ensure you can't insert a IncrementableClass into a IncrementableClassx2[]. For the rest of this post, however, I'm going to concentrate on the ldelema instruction. ldelema This instruction pops the array index (int32) and array reference (O) off the stack, and pushes a pointer (&) to the corresponding array element. However, unlike the ldelem instruction, the instruction's type argument must match the run-time array type exactly. This is because, once you've got a managed pointer, you can use that pointer to both load and store values in that array element using the ldind* and stind* (load/store indirect) instructions. As the same pointer can be used for both input and output to the array, the type argument to ldelema must be invariant. At the time, this was a perfectly reasonable restriction, and maintained array type-safety within managed code. However, along came generics, and with it the constrained callvirt instruction. So, what happens when we combine array covariance and constrained callvirt? .method public static void CallIncrementArrayValue() { // IncrementableClassx2[] arr = new IncrementableClassx2[1] ldc.i4.1 newarr IncrementableClassx2 // arr[0] = new IncrementableClassx2(); dup newobj instance void IncrementableClassx2::.ctor() ldc.i4.0 stelem.ref // IncrementArrayValue<IncrementableClass>(arr, 0) // here, we're treating an IncrementableClassx2[] as IncrementableClass[] dup ldc.i4.0 call void IncrementArrayValue<class IncrementableClass>(!!0[],int32) // ... ret } .method public static void IncrementArrayValue<(IncrementableClass) T>( !!T[] arr, int32 index) { // arr[index].Increment(1) ldarg.0 ldarg.1 ldelema !!T ldc.i4.1 constrained. !!T callvirt instance void IIncrementable::Increment(int32) ret } And the result: Unhandled Exception: System.ArrayTypeMismatchException: Attempted to access an element as a type incompatible with the array. at IncrementArrayValue[T](T[] arr, Int32 index) at CallIncrementArrayValue() Hmm. We're instantiating the generic method as IncrementArrayValue<IncrementableClass>, but passing in an IncrementableClassx2[], hence the ldelema instruction is failing as it's expecting an IncrementableClass[]. On features and feature conflicts What we've got here is a conflict between existing behaviour (ldelema ensuring type safety on covariant arrays) and new behaviour (managed pointers to object references used for every constrained callvirt on generic type instances). And, although this is an edge case, there is no general workaround. The generic method could be hidden behind several layers of assemblies, wrappers and interfaces that make it a requirement to use array covariance when calling the generic method. Furthermore, this will only fail at runtime, whereas compile-time safety is what generics were designed for! The solution is the readonly. prefix instruction. This modifies the ldelema instruction to ignore the exact type check for arrays of reference types, and so it lets us take the address of array elements using a covariant type to the actual run-time type of the array: .method public static void IncrementArrayValue<(IncrementableClass) T>( !!T[] arr, int32 index) { // arr[index].Increment(1) ldarg.0 ldarg.1 readonly. ldelema !!T ldc.i4.1 constrained. !!T callvirt instance void IIncrementable::Increment(int32) ret } But what about type safety? In return for ignoring the type check, the resulting controlled mutability pointer can only be used in the following situations: As the object parameter to ldfld, ldflda, stfld, call and constrained callvirt instructions As the pointer parameter to ldobj or ldind* As the source parameter to cpobj In other words, the only operations allowed are those that read from the pointer; stind* and similar that alter the pointer itself are banned. This ensures that the array element we're pointing to won't be changed to anything untoward, and so type safety within the array is maintained. This is a typical example of the maxim that whenever you add a feature to a program, you have to consider how that feature interacts with every single one of the existing features. Although an edge case, the readonly. prefix instruction ensures that generics and array covariance work together and that compile-time type safety is maintained. Tune in next time for a look at the .ctor generic type constraint, and what it means.

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• Are Google Maps Open?

  - by EmbeddedInsider

  Right now they are ‘free’ but it is clear what the path forward is:   4.3 Advertising. The Service currently does not include advertising in the maps images. However, Google reserves the right to include advertising in the maps images provided to you through the Service, but will provide you with ninety (90) days notice prior to the commencement of advertising in the maps images. Such notice may be provided on relevant Google websites, including but not limited to the Google Geo Developers Blog and the Google Maps API Group (or such successor URLs that Google may designate from time to time). During that 90 day period, you may terminate your use of the Service, or provide notice of your refusal to accept advertising in the maps images in accordance with Google's policies and procedures for providing such notice (which Google may make available from time to time in its sole discretion). Lawrence Ricci www.EmbeddedInsider.com

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• Utility Objects Series Introduction (but mostly a bit of an update)

  - by drsql

  So, I have been away from blogging about technical stuff for a  long time,  (I haven’t blogged at all since my resolutions blog , and even my Simple Talk “commentary” blog hasn’t had an entry since December!)  Most of this has been due to finishing up my database design book , which I will blog about at least one more time after it ships next month, but now it is time to get back to it certainly in a bit more regularly. For SQL Rally, I have two sessions, a precon on Database Design,...(read more)

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• I don't understand why algorithms are so special

  - by Jessica

  I'm a student of computer science trying to soak up as much information on the topic as I can during my free time. I keep returning to algorithms time and again in various formats (online course, book, web tutorial), but the concept fails to sustain my attention. I just don't understand: why are algorithms so special? I can tell you why fractals are awesome, why the golden ratio is awesome, why origami is awesome and scientific applications of all the above. Heck I even love Newton's laws and conical sections. But when it comes to algorithms, I'm just not astounded. They are not insightful in new ways about human cognition at all. I was expecting algorithms to be shattering preconceptions and mind-altering but time and time again they fail miserably. What am I doing wrong in my approach? Can someone tell me why algorithms are so awesome?

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• Poor Customer Service Example

  - by MightyZot

  Lately I have been frustrated by examples of poor customer service. At least one is worth writing about because I don’t think companies realize the effects of their service policies on loyal customers. Bad Customer Service Example #1 Recently, I received an offer in the mail from my cable company, suddenLink. The offer was for an updated TiVo for $12/mo. Normally I ignore offers like this one because I already have the service they’re offering and many times advertisers are offering alternatives to what is already an excellent product offering. I tend to exhibit a high level of loyalty to the products and brands that I use. In this case, we were looking to upgrade our TiVo and this deal is attractive for several reasons: I don’t want to pay a huge amount up-front for the device, so paying a monthly amount for the device is attractive to me. My entertainment is almost all on a single invoice. I’m no longer going to be billed by suddenLink and TiVo. TiVo is still involved, so I am still loyal to the brand I love. I have resisted moving to other DVRs and services for over a decade. I called suddenLink to order the new TiVo and was rewarded with great customer service. In fact, I can’t remember ever getting poor customer service from suddenLink. They are always there to answer my technical support questions and they are very responsive to outages. Then I called TiVo. First of all, I chose the option on the phone system to change or cancel my service, which was consequently met by an inordinate hold time. (I’m calling this time inordinate because I get through very quickly if I want to purchase something.) This is a trend that I’ve noticed with companies – if you want me to be loyal to you, it should be just as easy to cancel your service as it is to purchase it. Because, I should never be cancelling because I am unhappy. And, if you ever want my business again, or more importantly a reference, then you’d better make the exit door open just as easy as the enter door. After quite some time on hold, I talked to “Victor” who was very courteous. Victor canceled my service and then told me that I could keep my current TiVo and transfer recorded programs to it from the new TiVo.  Cool I said, but what about the cost?  He said there was no extra cost.  This was also attractive to me because I paid for my TiVo and it would be good to use it for something at least.  That was four months ago. This month I noticed that TiVo was still charging me for my original service. I was a little upset, but I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt. After all, I am a loyal TiVo customer and I have resisted moving to other solutions for over a decade. I’m sure they will do whatever it takes to keep my business, through TiVo or through suddenLink. After quite some time on hold, I was able to talk to a customer service representative, “Les”. I explained that I am a loyal TiVo customer, but I purchased this deal through my cable provider. I’m still with TiVo, I just wanted a single bill and to take advantage of the pay-over-time option. “Les” told me that he was very sorry to hear that I’m leaving TiVo, to which I responded again that I wasn’t leaving TiVo, I just want one invoice, and to take advantage of the pay-over-time. So, after explaining that I requested a termination of the non-suddenLink account (TiVo can see both of course), I was put on hold again for quite some time while my refund was “approved”.  “Les” said that he could see my cancellation request back in July. Note that it is now November, so they have billed me inappropriately four times. After quite some time, he came back on the line and told me that he was able to “get me most of my money back.” He got approval to refund 90 days. Even though I requested cancellation of one of my accounts, TiVo has that cancellation request on file and they admit overbilling me, I am going to get “most” of my money back. To top this experience off, when we were ready to hang up, “Les” told me that he was sorry to see me go and that he hoped I would come back to TiVo again. Again, I explained to “Les” that I have not left TiVo. I am just paying them through suddenLink. At that point, he went into a small dissertation about how this is a special arrangement they have with suddenLink and very few others. He made me feel like I was doing something wrong. Why should I feel that way? TiVo made the deal with suddenLink, not me, and the deal seemed like a good compromise for me to be able to get what I need. Here is what TiVo Customer Service accomplished on those two calls – I no longer feel like I need to be loyal to the TiVo brand or service. If I had been treated better on these two calls, I would still be recommending TiVo to my friends. They would still be getting revenue from a loyal customer, who paid the same rate for over a decade, and this article wouldn’t be here for you to read. Interesting… In my opinion, if you want brand loyalty, be loyal to your customers!

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• Should integer divide by zero halt execution?

  - by Pyrolistical

  I know that modern languages handle integer divide by zero as an error just like the hardware does, but what if we could design a whole new language? Ignoring existing hardware, what should a programming language does when an integer divide by zero occurs? Should it return a NaN of type integer? Or should it mirror IEEE 754 float and return +/- Infinity? Or is the existing design choice correct, and an error should be thrown? Is there a language that handles integer divide by zero nicely? EDIT When I said ignore existing hardware, I mean don't assume integer is represented as 32 bits, it can be represented in anyway you can to imagine.

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• Project Euler 11: (Iron)Python

  - by Ben Griswold

  In my attempt to learn (Iron)Python out in the open, here’s my solution for Project Euler Problem 11.  As always, any feedback is welcome. # Euler 11 # http://projecteuler.net/index.php?section=problems&id=11 # What is the greatest product # of four adjacent numbers in any direction (up, down, left, # right, or diagonally) in the 20 x 20 grid? import time start = time.time() grid = [\ [8,02,22,97,38,15,00,40,00,75,04,05,07,78,52,12,50,77,91,8],\ [49,49,99,40,17,81,18,57,60,87,17,40,98,43,69,48,04,56,62,00],\ [81,49,31,73,55,79,14,29,93,71,40,67,53,88,30,03,49,13,36,65],\ [52,70,95,23,04,60,11,42,69,24,68,56,01,32,56,71,37,02,36,91],\ [22,31,16,71,51,67,63,89,41,92,36,54,22,40,40,28,66,33,13,80],\ [24,47,32,60,99,03,45,02,44,75,33,53,78,36,84,20,35,17,12,50],\ [32,98,81,28,64,23,67,10,26,38,40,67,59,54,70,66,18,38,64,70],\ [67,26,20,68,02,62,12,20,95,63,94,39,63,8,40,91,66,49,94,21],\ [24,55,58,05,66,73,99,26,97,17,78,78,96,83,14,88,34,89,63,72],\ [21,36,23,9,75,00,76,44,20,45,35,14,00,61,33,97,34,31,33,95],\ [78,17,53,28,22,75,31,67,15,94,03,80,04,62,16,14,9,53,56,92],\ [16,39,05,42,96,35,31,47,55,58,88,24,00,17,54,24,36,29,85,57],\ [86,56,00,48,35,71,89,07,05,44,44,37,44,60,21,58,51,54,17,58],\ [19,80,81,68,05,94,47,69,28,73,92,13,86,52,17,77,04,89,55,40],\ [04,52,8,83,97,35,99,16,07,97,57,32,16,26,26,79,33,27,98,66],\ [88,36,68,87,57,62,20,72,03,46,33,67,46,55,12,32,63,93,53,69],\ [04,42,16,73,38,25,39,11,24,94,72,18,8,46,29,32,40,62,76,36],\ [20,69,36,41,72,30,23,88,34,62,99,69,82,67,59,85,74,04,36,16],\ [20,73,35,29,78,31,90,01,74,31,49,71,48,86,81,16,23,57,05,54],\ [01,70,54,71,83,51,54,69,16,92,33,48,61,43,52,01,89,19,67,48]] # left and right max, product = 0, 0 for x in range(0,17): for y in xrange(0,20): product = grid[y][x] * grid[y][x+1] * \ grid[y][x+2] * grid[y][x+3] if product > max : max = product # up and down for x in range(0,20): for y in xrange(0,17): product = grid[y][x] * grid[y+1][x] * \ grid[y+2][x] * grid[y+3][x] if product > max : max = product # diagonal right for x in range(0,17): for y in xrange(0,17): product = grid[y][x] * grid[y+1][x+1] * \ grid[y+2][x+2] * grid[y+3][x+3] if product > max: max = product # diagonal left for x in range(0,17): for y in xrange(0,17): product = grid[y][x+3] * grid[y+1][x+2] * \ grid[y+2][x+1] * grid[y+3][x] if product > max : max = product print max print "Elapsed Time:", (time.time() - start) * 1000, "millisecs" a=raw_input('Press return to continue')

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• Web services, Java EE, Spring, DB integration project ideas - maybe data mining related?

  - by saral jain

  I am a graduate Computer Science student (Data Mining and Machine Learning) and have good exposure to core Java (3 years). I have read up on a bunch of stuff on the following topics: Design patterns, Java EE Web services (SOAP and REST), Spring, and Hibernate Java Concurrency - advanced features like Task and Executors. I would now like to do a project combining this stuff -- over my free time of course -- to get a better understanding of these things and to kind of make an end to end software (to learn the best design principles etc + SVN, maven). Any good project ideas would be really appreciated. I just want to build this stuff to learn, so I don't really mind re-inventing the wheel. Also, anything related to data mining would be an added bonus as it fits with my research but is absolutely not necessary since this project is more to learn to do large scale software development.

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• Databinder.Eval using Lamda Expressions

  Using lambda expression to help with compile time checking of Eval statements

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• Expanding on requestaudit - Tracing who is doing what...and for how long

  - by Kyle Hatlestad

  One of the most helpful tracing sections in WebCenter Content (and one that is on by default) is the requestaudit tracing.  This tracing section summarizes the top service requests happening in the server along with how they are performing.  By default, it has 2 different rotations.  One happens every 2 minutes (listing up to 5 services) and another happens every 60 minutes (listing up to 20 services).  These traces provide the total time for all the requests against that service along with the number of requests and its average request time.  This information can provide a good start in possibly troubleshooting performance issues or tracking a particular issue.   >requestaudit/6 12.10 16:48:00.493 Audit Request Monitor !csMonitorTotalRequests,47,1,0.39009329676628113,0.21034042537212372,1>requestaudit/6 12.10 16:48:00.509 Audit Request Monitor Request Audit Report over the last 120 Seconds for server wcc-base_4444****requestaudit/6 12.10 16:48:00.509 Audit Request Monitor -Num Requests 47 Errors 1 Reqs/sec. 0.39009329676628113 Avg. Latency (secs) 0.21034042537212372 Max Thread Count 1requestaudit/6 12.10 16:48:00.509 Audit Request Monitor 1 Service FLD_BROWSE Total Elapsed Time (secs) 3.5320000648498535 Num requests 10 Num errors 0 Avg. Latency (secs) 0.3531999886035919 requestaudit/6 12.10 16:48:00.509 Audit Request Monitor 2 Service GET_SEARCH_RESULTS Total Elapsed Time (secs) 2.694999933242798 Num requests 6 Num errors 0 Avg. Latency (secs) 0.4491666555404663requestaudit/6 12.10 16:48:00.509 Audit Request Monitor 3 Service GET_DOC_PAGE Total Elapsed Time (secs) 1.8839999437332153 Num requests 5 Num errors 1 Avg. Latency (secs) 0.376800000667572requestaudit/6 12.10 16:48:00.509 Audit Request Monitor 4 Service DOC_INFO Total Elapsed Time (secs) 0.4620000123977661 Num requests 3 Num errors 0 Avg. Latency (secs) 0.15399999916553497requestaudit/6 12.10 16:48:00.509 Audit Request Monitor 5 Service GET_PERSONALIZED_JAVASCRIPT Total Elapsed Time (secs) 0.4099999964237213 Num requests 8 Num errors 0 Avg. Latency (secs) 0.051249999552965164requestaudit/6 12.10 16:48:00.509 Audit Request Monitor ****End Audit Report***** To change the default rotation or size of output, these can be set as configuration variables for the server: RequestAuditIntervalSeconds1 – Used for the shorter of the two summary intervals (default is 120 seconds)RequestAuditIntervalSeconds2 – Used for the longer of the two summary intervals (default is 3600 seconds)RequestAuditListDepth1 – Number of services listed for the first request audit summary interval (default is 5)RequestAuditListDepth2 – Number of services listed for the second request audit summary interval (default is 20) If you want to get more granular, you can enable 'Full Verbose Tracing' from the System Audit Information page and now you will get an audit entry for each and every service request.  >requestaudit/6 12.10 16:58:35.431 IdcServer-68 GET_USER_INFO [dUser=bob][StatusMessage=You are logged in as 'bob'.] 0.08765099942684174(secs) What's nice is it reports who executed the service and how long that particular request took.  In some cases, depending on the service, additional information will be added to the tracing relevant to that  service. >requestaudit/6 12.10 17:00:44.727 IdcServer-81 GET_SEARCH_RESULTS [dUser=bob][QueryText=%28+dDocType+%3cmatches%3e+%60Document%60+%29][StatusCode=0][StatusMessage=Success] 0.4696030020713806(secs) You can even go into more detail and insert any additional data into the tracing.  You simply need to add this configuration variable with a comma separated list of variables from local data to insert. RequestAuditAdditionalVerboseFieldsList=TotalRows,path In this case, for any search results, the number of items the user found is traced: >requestaudit/6 12.10 17:15:28.665 IdcServer-36 GET_SEARCH_RESULTS [TotalRows=224][dUser=bob][QueryText=%28+dDocType+%3cmatches%3e+%60Application%60+%29][Sta... I also recently ran into the case where services were being called from a client through RIDC.  All of the services were being executed as the same user, but they wanted to correlate the requests coming from the client to the ones being executed on the server.  So what we did was add a new field to the request audit list: RequestAuditAdditionalVerboseFieldsList=ClientToken And then in the RIDC client, ClientToken was added to the binder along with a unique value that could be traced for that request.  Now they had a way of tracing on both ends and identifying exactly which client request resulted in which request on the server.

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• Be aware of the difference between CURRENT_DATE and SYSDATE

  - by Kevin Smith

  I was running some queries in SQL Developer against the WebCenter Content (WCC) schema that included date fields such as dInDate. I was comparing the dates against CURRENT_DATE. I was not getting the expected results. I did some googlng and didn’t find a solution, but I did run across a reference to SYSDATE. I tried SYSDATE in my queries and got the expected results. I did a TO_CHAR on the two date fields and found they returned different times. CURRENT_DATE returned the time from my laptop which was  in the EDT time zone. SYSDATE returned the time from the database server which happened to be in the PDT time zone. I guess if both the database server and my laptop were in the same time zone I would not have seen any problem. Here is the query I ran to display the two fields. select to_char(current_date,'DD-MON-YY HH:MI:SS'), to_char(sysdate,'DD-MON-YY HH:MI:SS') from dual; As you can see from the screen shot from SQL Developer they definitely returned different times. I’m sure there is some command or setting you can use to prevent this problem, but for me the take away is to use SYSDATE in your queries when you want to do any date comparison.

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• An Oracle's Interns Story by Samarth Varshney

  - by user769227

  I have written a short write-up about my experience at Oracle and am attaching some pics along:  I joined Oracle on 5th January 2011 as part of my internship program in BITS Pilani Goa Campus. In the short period of six months, I had the most beautiful and interesting time of my life. It was fun to work in Oracle, thanks to the whole team. I had an excellent manager, simple and sophisticated, who gave me the utmost enthusiasm to work. I gained a lot of knowledge during my internship, thanks to my colleagues. They were very helpful and motivated us (interns) in every possible way. In the initial stages of work, in which you know almost nothing, they helped me gain knowledge at a rapid speed. Thanks to the vast database of study material at the Oracle site, that I could start on with my project in a very short time.  For me, the time flew like anything and made the 6 months look like a few days. It was probably due to the team, that the work was so much fun. We had our deadlines but had full freedom as to how to work and when to work. I don't remember a single instance, in which I was working and not listening to songs. I mean it will always be a time to remember. I hope to join this company and make this time last forever.  Samarth 

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• How Estimates Became Quotes

  - by Lee Brandt

  It’s our fault. Well, not completely, but we haven’t helped the situation any. All of what follows comes from my own experiences which, from talking to lots of other developers about it, seems to be pretty much par for the course. Where We Started When we first started estimating, we estimated pretty clearly. We would try to imagine something we’d done that was similar to the project being estimated and we’d toss it about in our heads a bit and see how much bigger or smaller we thought this new thing was, and add or subtract accordingly. We wouldn’t spend too much time on it, because we wanted to get to writing the software. Eventually, we’d come across some huge problem that there was now way we could’ve known about ahead of time. Either we didn’t see this thing or, we didn’t realize that this particular version of a problem would be so… problematic. We usually call this “not knowing what we don’t know”. It’s unavoidable. We just can’t know. Until we wade in and start putting some code together, there are just some things we won’t know… and some things we don’t even know that we don’t know. Y’know? So what happens? We go over budget. Project managers scream and dance the dance of the stressed-out project manager, and there is nothing we can do (or could’ve done) about it. We didn’t know. We thought about it for a bit and we didn’t see this herculean task sitting in the middle of our nice quiet project, and it has bitten us in the rear end. We now know how to handle this in the future, though. We will take some more time to pick around the requirements and discover all those things we don’t know. We’ll do some prototyping, we’ll read some blogs about similar projects, we’ll really grill the customer with questions during the requirements gathering phase. We’ll keeping asking “what else?” until the shove us down the stairs. We’ll take our time and uncover it all. We Learned, But Good The next time comes, and you know what happens? We do it. We grill the customer for weeks and prototype and read and research and we estimate everything down to the last button on the last form. Know what that gets us? It gets us three months of wasted time, and our estimate will still be off. Possibly off by a factor of four. WTF, mate? No way we could be surprised by something! We uncovered every particle. We turned every stone. How is it we still came across unknowns? Because we STILL didn’t know what we didn’t know. How could we? We didn’t know to ask. The worst part is, we’ve now convinced the product that this is NOT an estimate. It is a solid number based on massive research and an endless number of questions that they answered. There is absolutely now way you don’t know everything there is to know about this project now. No way there is anything you haven’t uncovered. And their faith in that “Esti-Quote” goes through the roof. When the project goes over this time, they might even begin to question whether or not you know what you’re doing. Who could blame them? You drilled them for weeks about every little thing, and when they complained about all the questions, you told them you wanted to uncover everything so there would be no surprises. SO we set them up to faile Guess, Then Plan We had a chance. At the beginning we could have just said, “That’s just a gut-feeling estimate, based on my past experience with similar projects. There could still be surprises.” If we spend SOME time doing SOME discovery and then bounce that against our own past experiences, we can come up with a fairly healthy estimate. We can then help the product owner understand that an estimate is a guess. Sure, it’s an educated guess, but it is still a guess. If we get it right it will be almost completely luck. Then, we help them to plan the development by taking that guess (yes, they still need the guess for planning purposes) and start measuring early and often to see if we still think we are right. We should adjust the estimate and alert the product owner as soon as we see problems (bad news does not age well) and we should be able to see any problems immediately if we are constantly measuring our pace. In lean software, we start with that guess and begin measuring cycle times immediately. Then we can make projections based on those cycle times and compare them to our estimate. This constant feedback is the best way to ensure that there are no surprises at the END of the project. There sill still be surprises, but we’ll see them sooner and have a better understanding of how they will affect our overall timeline. What do you think?

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• SP1 of RadControls for WinForms Q1 2010 released, featuring VS2010 and Client Profile support

  As always, Telerik's plans were closely aligned with Microsoft's release schedule, and we were dedicated to provide VS2010 support even before Visual Studio 2010 was officially launched. Now that the first VS2010 launch event is over, here comes the first of many Telerik Service Packs to support VS2010. This RadControls for WinForms release is the first to provide support for the Client Profile, introduced with .NET3.5, and now default when starting new windows forms projects with VS2010. The Client Profile is a smaller version of the.NET Framework that includes only the assemblies needed for deploying client-based applications, which in turn reduces the size of the application. Basically, the Design time classes are excluded from the Client Profile (CP), because they are only needed for designing and not for running an application. In Q1 2010 SP1 we have moved the designer classes from the run-time assemblies to a new dedicated assembly (Telerik.WinControls.UI.Design.dll), ...Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Android Swipe In Unity 3D World with AR

  - by Christian

  I am working on an AR application using Unity3D and the Vuforia SDK for Android. The way the application works is a when the designated image(a frame marker in our case) is recognized by the camera, a 3D island is rendered at that spot. Currently I am able to detect when/which objects are touched on the model by raycasting. I also am able to successfully detect a swipe using this code: if (Input.touchCount > 0) { Touch touch = Input.touches[0]; switch (touch.phase) { case TouchPhase.Began: couldBeSwipe = true; startPos = touch.position; startTime = Time.time; break; case TouchPhase.Moved: if (Mathf.Abs(touch.position.y - startPos.y) > comfortZoneY) { couldBeSwipe = false; } //track points here for raycast if it is swipe break; case TouchPhase.Stationary: couldBeSwipe = false; break; case TouchPhase.Ended: float swipeTime = Time.time - startTime; float swipeDist = (touch.position - startPos).magnitude; if (couldBeSwipe && (swipeTime < maxSwipeTime) && (swipeDist > minSwipeDist)) { // It's a swiiiiiiiiiiiipe! float swipeDirection = Mathf.Sign(touch.position.y - startPos.y); // Do something here in reaction to the swipe. swipeCounter.IncrementCounter(); } break; } touchInfo.SetTouchInfo (Time.time-startTime,(touch.position-startPos).magnitude,Mathf.Abs (touch.position.y-startPos.y)); } Thanks to andeeeee for the logic. But I want to have some interaction in the 3D world based on the swipe on the screen. I.E. If the user swipes over unoccluded enemies, they die. My first thought was to track all the points in the moved TouchPhase, and then if it is a swipe raycast into all those points and kill any enemy that is hit. Is there a better way to do this? What is the best approach? Thanks for the help!

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• Who is likely to need the most this high-quality, measurable, reliable approach to software? [closed]

  - by Marek Cruz

  Software engineering is the application of principles of engineering to software. Trouble is, most of those who like to flatter with the title "software engineer" don't do that. They just keep writing code and patching it until it's stable enough to foist off on users. That's not software engineering. Who is likely to need the most the practice of software engineering? (with all the project planning, requirements engineering, software design, implementation based on the design, testing, deployment, awareness of IEEE standards, metrics, security, dependability, usability, etc.)

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• DBA Best Practices - A Blog Series: Episode 1 - Backups

  - by Argenis

    This blog post is part of the DBA Best Practices series, on which various topics of concern for daily database operations are discussed. Your feedback and comments are very much welcome, so please drop by the comments section and be sure to leave your thoughts on the subject. Morning Coffee When I was a DBA, the first thing I did when I sat down at my desk at work was checking that all backups had completed successfully. It really was more of a ritual, since I had a dual system in place to check for backup completion: 1) the scheduled agent jobs to back up the databases were set to alert the NOC in failure, and 2) I had a script run from a central server every so often to check for any backup failures. Why the redundancy, you might ask. Well, for one I was once bitten by the fact that database mail doesn't work 100% of the time. Potential causes for failure include issues on the SMTP box that relays your server email, firewall problems, DNS issues, etc. And so to be sure that my backups completed fine, I needed to rely on a mechanism other than having the servers do the taking - I needed to interrogate the servers and ask each one if an issue had occurred. This is why I had a script run every so often. Some of you might have monitoring tools in place like Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) or similar 3rd party products that would track all these things for you. But at that moment, we had no resort but to write our own Powershell scripts to do it. Now it goes without saying that if you don't have backups in place, you might as well find another career. Your most sacred job as a DBA is to protect the data from a disaster, and only properly safeguarded backups can offer you peace of mind here. "But, we have a cluster...we don't need backups" Sadly I've heard this line more than I would have liked to. You need to understand that a cluster is comprised of shared storage, and that is precisely your single point of failure. A cluster will protect you from an issue at the Operating System level, and also under an outage of any SQL-related service or dependent devices. But it will most definitely NOT protect you against corruption, nor will it protect you against somebody deleting data from a table - accidentally or otherwise. Backup, fine. How often do I take a backup? The answer to this is something you will hear frequently when working with databases: it depends. What does it depend on? For one, you need to understand how much data your business is willing to lose. This is what's called Recovery Point Objective, or RPO. If you don't know how much data your business is willing to lose, you need to have an honest and realistic conversation about data loss expectations with your customers, internal or external. From my experience, their first answer to the question "how much data loss can you withstand?" will be "zero". In that case, you will need to explain how zero data loss is very difficult and very costly to achieve, even in today's computing environments. Do you want to go ahead and take full backups of all your databases every hour, or even every day? Probably not, because of the impact that taking a full backup can have on a system. That's what differential and transaction log backups are for. Have I answered the question of how often to take a backup? No, and I did that on purpose. You need to think about how much time you have to recover from any event that requires you to restore your databases. This is what's called Recovery Time Objective. Again, if you go ask your customer how long of an outage they can withstand, at first you will get a completely unrealistic number - and that will be your starting point for discussing a solution that is cost effective. The point that I'm trying to get across is that you need to have a plan. This plan needs to be practiced, and tested. Like a football playbook, you need to rehearse the moves you'll perform when the time comes. How often is up to you, and the objective is that you feel better about yourself and the steps you need to follow when emergency strikes. A backup is nothing more than an untested restore Backups are files. Files are prone to corruption. Put those two together and realize how you feel about those backups sitting on that network drive. When was the last time you restored any of those? Restoring your backups on another box - that, by the way, doesn't have to match the specs of your production server - will give you two things: 1) peace of mind, because now you know that your backups are good and 2) a place to offload your consistency checks with DBCC CHECKDB or any of the other DBCC commands like CHECKTABLE or CHECKCATALOG. This is a great strategy for VLDBs that cannot withstand the additional load created by the consistency checks. If you choose to offload your consistency checks to another server though, be sure to run DBCC CHECKDB WITH PHYSICALONLY on the production server, and if you're using SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1 CU4 and above, be sure to enable traceflags 2562 and/or 2549, which will speed up the PHYSICALONLY checks further - you can read more about this enhancement here. Back to the "How Often" question for a second. If you have the disk, and the network latency, and the system resources to do so, why not backup the transaction log often? As in, every 5 minutes, or even less than that? There's not much downside to doing it, as you will have to clear the log with a backup sooner than later, lest you risk running out space on your tlog, or even your drive. The one drawback to this approach is that you will have more files to deal with at restore time, and processing each file will add a bit of extra time to the entire process. But it might be worth that time knowing that you minimized the amount of data lost. Again, test your plan to make sure that it matches your particular needs. Where to back up to? Network share? Locally? SAN volume? This is another topic where everybody has a favorite choice. So, I'll stick to mentioning what I like to do and what I consider to be the best practice in this regard. I like to backup to a SAN volume, i.e., a drive that actually lives in the SAN, and can be easily attached to another server in a pinch, saving you valuable time - you wouldn't need to restore files on the network (slow) or pull out drives out a dead server (been there, done that, it’s also slow!). The key is to have a copy of those backup files made quickly, and, if at all possible, to a remote target on a different datacenter - or even the cloud. There are plenty of solutions out there that can help you put such a solution together. That right there is the first step towards a practical Disaster Recovery plan. But there's much more to DR, and that's material for a different blog post in this series.

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• Can I customize the appearance of the Ubuntu Software Center?

  - by blade19899

  I just opened software-center for the first time since ages(am an apt-get kinda guy) an my first taught was, Meh. Design of it, is not my only issue! the overall look and feel is a bit, Meh. It looks like everything has been thrown in to a direction, and thats it. It works! But it looks, Meh. My question is: Will there be a new version of the Ubuntu software-center that introduces a new design? (Or can i edit a software-center.css file and make something myself?)

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• Why do apt-get and wget fail on my server when ping is working?

  - by klox

  Yesterday my server still OK, but today after try to sudo apt-get update i got this error: update process. I try: sudo rm /var/lib/apt/lists/* -vf And got This.Then try update again, but it's not solving my problem then show May be still same error. I checked my internet connection try ping google.com, get result : PING google.com (74.125.235.40) 56(84) bytes of data. From 136.198.117.254: icmp_seq=1 Redirect Network(New nexthop: fw1.jvc-jein.co.id (136.198.117.6)) 64 bytes from sin01s05-in-f8.1e100.net (74.125.235.40): icmp_req=1 ttl=53 time=20.6 ms 64 bytes from sin01s05-in-f8.1e100.net (74.125.235.40): icmp_req=2 ttl=53 time=18.2 ms 64 bytes from sin01s05-in-f8.1e100.net (74.125.235.40): icmp_req=3 ttl=53 time=33.0 ms 64 bytes from sin01s05-in-f8.1e100.net (74.125.235.40): icmp_req=4 ttl=53 time=30.0 ms 64 bytes from sin01s05-in-f8.1e100.net (74.125.235.40): icmp_req=5 ttl=53 time=28.1 ms In some sites said that may be it caused by getdeb server is down. try to install: jeinqa@SVRQAR:~$ sudo apt-get install pastebinit Reading package lists... Error! E: Encountered a section with no Package: header E: Problem with MergeList /var/lib/apt/lists/security.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_precise-security_restricted_binary-amd64_Packages E: The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened. try : sudo ufw status verbose result : Status: inactive

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• AlwaysOn Architecture Guide: Building a High Availability and Disaster Recovery Solution by Using AlwaysOn Availability Groups

  SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn Availability Groups provides a unified high availability and disaster recovery (HADR) solution that improves upon legacy functionality previously found across disparate features. Prior to SQL Server 2012, several customers used database mirroring to provide local high availability within a data center, and log shipping for disaster recovery across a remote data center. With SQL Server 2012, this common design pattern can be replaced with an architecture that uses availability groups for both high availability and disaster recovery. This paper details the key topology requirements of this specific design pattern, including quorum configuration considerations, steps required to build the environment, and a workflow that shows how to handle a disaster recovery event in the new topology.

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• apt-get works with --force-yes but cannot reproduce the issue on a fresh box

  - by deepak

  apt-get does not work the first time but works the second time i install ntp like: apt-get -q -y install ntp=1:4.2.6.p3+dfsg-1ubuntu3.1 It failed saying: WARNING: The following packages cannot be authenticated! libcap2 libopts25 ntp E: There are problems and -y was used without --force-yes Afterwards i ran, apt-key update and ran the same commad with --force-yes: apt-get -q -y --force-yes install ntp=1:4.2.6.p3+dfsg-1ubuntu3.1 Thereafter running apt-get purge and reinstalling ntp runs. "without" --force-yes apt-get purge libcap2 libopts25 ntp apt-get -q -y install ntp=1:4.2.6.p3+dfsg-1ubuntu3.1 Also i created a fresh VM and could not reproduce the issue. On a fresh VM, the same apt-get command runs the first time, without "--force-yes" Two questions, why does running apt-get work the second time and cannot reproduce the error ? full errors and sequential steps at, https://gist.github.com/3017966

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• Creating a Simple Sheet Designer in C#

  Give the user the flexibility to design his sheets, reports, bills, invoices, whatever, using a rich interface.

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• Microsoft`s FUSE Labs Unveils Spindex Social Networking Tool

  Microsoft s FUSE Labs has been busy lately with researching and creating new products. One such product was introduced this week at San Francisco s Web 2. Expo. The product is Spindex a social networking tool that allows users to simplify their social networking lives. At the moment Spindex is in its infancy with its preview being limited to those attending the Web 2. Expo. What has been released so far however is promising and should give social networking fans something to look forward to.... Transportation Design - AutoCAD Civil 3D Design Road Projects 75% Faster with Automatic Documentation Updates!

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