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• SQLAuthority News – 5th Anniversary Giveaways

  - by pinaldave

  Please read my 5th Anniversary post and my quick note on history of the Database. I am sure that we all have friends and we value friendship more than anything. In fact, the complete model of Facebook is built on friends. If you have lots of friends, you must be a lucky person. Having a lot of friends is indeed a good thing. I consider all you blog readers as my friends so now I want do something for you. What is it? Well, send me details about how many of your friends like my page and you would have a chance to win lots of learning materials for yourself and your friends. Here are the exciting prizes awaiting the lucky winner: Combo set of 5 Joes 2 Pros Book – 1 for YOU and 1 for Friend This is USD 444 (each set USD 222) worth gift. It contains all the five Joes 2 Pros books (Vol1, Vol2, Vol3, Vol4, Vol5) + 1 Learning DVD. [Amazon] | [Flipkart] If in case you submitted an entry but didn’t win the Combo set of 5 Joes 2 Pros books, you could still will  my SQL Server Wait Stats book as a consolation prize! I will pick the next 5 participants who have the highest number of friends who “liked” the Facebook page, http://facebook.com/SQLAuth. Instead of sending one copy, I will send you 2 copies so you can share one copy with a friend of yours. Well, it is important to share our learning and love with friends, isn’t it? Note: Just take a screenshot of http://facebook.com/SQLAuth using Print Screen function and send it by Nov 7th to pinal ‘at’ sqlauthority.com.. There are no special freebies to early birds so take your time and see if you can increase your friends like count by Nov 7th. Guess – What is in it? It is quite possible you are not a Facebook or Twitter user. In that case you can still win a surprise from me. You have 2 days to guess what is in this box. If you guess it correct and you are one of the first 5 persons to have the correct answer – you will get what is in this box for free. Please note that you have only 48 hours to guess. Please give me your guess by commenting to this blog post. Reference:  Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: About Me, Pinal Dave, PostADay, Readers Contribution, Readers Question, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Milestone, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority News, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology

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• Xorg.conf (nvidia) Second Monitor getting settings of first

  - by HennyH

  I've been spending the weekend (and some time before that) trying to set up my Korean QHD270 and Benq G2222HDL monitors with Ubuntu 13.10. With the nouveau drivers install both monitor function perfectly fine. After installing the nvidia drivers the Benq works but the QHD270 does not. Now, after days of struggling I managed to get the QHD270 to work following a mixture of blogs, particularly; this one and learnitwithme. Now, unfortunatly my G2222HDL does not work. I fixed the QHD270 by supplying a custom EDID, my xorg.conf looks like so (excluding keyboard and mouse): Section "ServerLayout" Identifier "Layout0" Screen "Default Screen" 0 0 InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard" InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer" EndSection Section "Monitor" Identifier "Configured Monitor" EndSection Section "Device" Identifier "Configured Video Device" Driver "nvidia" Option "CustomEDID" "DFP:/etc/X11/edid-shimian.bin" EndSection Section "Screen" Identifier "Default Screen" Device "Configured Video Device" Monitor "Configured Monitor" EndSection Now, I tried defining a new Device,Monitor and Screen then in ServerLayout adding Screen "Second Screen" RightOf "Default Screen", but after doing so neither monitor worked. Hoping to fix the issue using a GUI based tool I opened up NVIDIA X Server Settings, which shows my current layout as: It seems that something is being output to the monitor, as suggested by my print screen: Any help would be greatly appreciated. Output of xrandr: Screen 0: minimum 8 x 8, current 5120 x 1440, maximum 16384 x 16384 DVI-I-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) DVI-I-1 connected primary 2560x1440+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 597mm x 336mm 2560x1440 60.0*+ HDMI-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) DP-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) DVI-D-0 connected 2560x1440+2560+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 597mm x 336mm 2560x1440 60.0*+ DP-1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) And an extract from my log file (perhaps this is relevant?) [ 7.862] (--) NVIDIA(0): Valid display device(s) on GeForce GTX 680 at PCI:2:0:0 [ 7.862] (--) NVIDIA(0): CRT-0 [ 7.862] (--) NVIDIA(0): ACB QHD270 (DFP-0) (boot, connected) [ 7.862] (--) NVIDIA(0): DFP-1 [ 7.862] (--) NVIDIA(0): DFP-2 [ 7.862] (--) NVIDIA(0): DFP-3 [ 7.862] (--) NVIDIA(0): DFP-4 [ 7.862] (--) NVIDIA(0): CRT-0: 400.0 MHz maximum pixel clock [ 7.862] (--) NVIDIA(0): ACB QHD270 (DFP-0): 330.0 MHz maximum pixel clock [ 7.862] (--) NVIDIA(0): ACB QHD270 (DFP-0): Internal Dual Link TMDS [ 7.862] (--) NVIDIA(0): DFP-1: 165.0 MHz maximum pixel clock [ 7.862] (--) NVIDIA(0): DFP-1: Internal Single Link TMDS [ 7.862] (--) NVIDIA(0): DFP-2: 165.0 MHz maximum pixel clock [ 7.862] (--) NVIDIA(0): DFP-2: Internal Single Link TMDS [ 7.862] (--) NVIDIA(0): DFP-3: 330.0 MHz maximum pixel clock [ 7.862] (--) NVIDIA(0): DFP-3: Internal Single Link TMDS [ 7.862] (--) NVIDIA(0): DFP-4: 960.0 MHz maximum pixel clock [ 7.862] (--) NVIDIA(0): DFP-4: Internal DisplayPort

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• Java - 2d Array Tile Map Collision

  - by Corey

  How would I go about making certain tiles in my array collide with my player? Like say I want every number 2 in the array to collide. I am reading my array from a txt file if that matters and I am using the slick2d library. Here is my code if needed. public class Tiles { Image[] tiles = new Image[3]; int[][] map = new int[500][500]; Image grass, dirt, mound; SpriteSheet tileSheet; int tileWidth = 32; int tileHeight = 32; public void init() throws IOException, SlickException { tileSheet = new SpriteSheet("assets/tiles.png", tileWidth, tileHeight); grass = tileSheet.getSprite(0, 0); dirt = tileSheet.getSprite(7, 7); mound = tileSheet.getSprite(2, 6); tiles[0] = grass; tiles[1] = dirt; tiles[2] = mound; int x=0, y=0; BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new FileReader("assets/map.txt")); String line; while ((line = in.readLine()) != null) { String[] values = line.split(","); for (String str : values) { int str_int = Integer.parseInt(str); map[x][y]=str_int; //System.out.print(map[x][y] + " "); y=y+1; } //System.out.println(""); x=x+1; y = 0; } in.close(); } public void update() { } public void render(GameContainer gc) { for(int x = 0; x < 50; x++) { for(int y = 0; y < 50; y ++) { int textureIndex = map[y][x]; Image texture = tiles[textureIndex]; texture.draw(x*tileWidth,y*tileHeight); } } } } I tried something like this, but I it doesn't ever "collide". X and y are my player position. if (tiles.map[(int)x/32][(int)y/32] == 2) { System.out.println("Collided"); }

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• How to get my IR remote to work? Lirc can't see it

  - by user1234567

  I'm using Ubuntu 11.10 (amd64) and I'm trying to get my infrared remote control working. The IR device is a part of a DVB-T USB stick (Based on a RTL2832u chip). I'm using these drivers - it's the only way of getting this device to work under 11.10 that I found. It's a big impromevent from previous Ubuntu version, where I had to edit the driver's code. The device works quite great - and the IR part of it works, too. The driver's page says that the code it's in alpha stage, but I'm pretty sure that my issue has nothing to do with that. If, and only if driver's module is loaded with parameter rtl2832u_rc_mode=2 (which means "use NEC protocol for IR") the remote kind of works, I can see this by running cat /dev/.. ../input6 - when I press a button, random letters appear. The remote works just like a keyboard, but keys are totally messed up - when I press '5' the volume goes down, etc. I would like to use Lirc to fix that, but Lirc can't detect my device (i.e. irw shows nothing). I suspect, it's because something gets into control of the device and sets it up as a keyboard. Lirc seems to be working, it's KDE settings module works too, but it just doesn't detect the device. The Lirc page describes this issue, but since 2009 - the last year when that page was updated, Ubuntu moved from HAL (described there) to DeviceKit, rendering provided instruction useless. I had a similar issue with my previous remote, but the keys were not messed up so much - the remote was usable, so I gave up trying to get Lirc working. I tried the answer provided here, but it changed nothing. I also tried forcing lircd to use my device, but this didn't work too: for i in /sys/class/input/input* ; do echo -n "$(basename "$i"): "; cat "$i/name"; done shows input0: Power Button input1: Power Button input2: Logitech Logitech USB Keyboard input3: A4Tech PS/2+USB Mouse input6: IR-receiver inside an USB DVB receiver But when I run: lircd -n --device=name='IR*' as root (also tried with the full name) I always see: lircd-0.9.0[3983]: lircd(default) ready, using /var/run/lirc/lircd lircd-0.9.0[3983]: accepted new client on /var/run/lirc/lircd lircd-0.9.0[3983]: could not get file information for name=IR* lircd-0.9.0[3983]: default_init(): No such file or directory lircd-0.9.0[3983]: Failed to initialize hardware So, how to set up Lirc with devinput driver in such case?

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• SQL SERVER – Template Browser – A Very Important and Useful Feature of SSMS

  - by pinaldave

  Let me start today’s blog post with a direction question. How many of you have ever used Template Browser? Template Browser is a very important and useful feature of SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS). Every time when I am talking about SQL Server there is always someone comes up with the question, why there is no step by step procedure included in SSMS for features. Honestly every time I get this question, the question I ask back is How many of you have ever used Template Browser? I think the answer to this question is most of the time either no or we have not heard of the feature. One of the people asked me back – have you ever written about it on your blog? I have not yet written about it. Basically there is nothing much to write about it. It is pretty straight forward feature, like any other feature and it is indeed difficult to elaborate. However, I will try to give a quick introduction to this feature. Templates are like a quick cheat sheet or quick reference. Templates are available to create objects like databases, tables, views, indexes, stored procedures, triggers, statistics, and functions. Templates are also available for Analysis Services as well. The template scripts contain parameters to help you customize the code. You can Replace Template Parameters dialog box to insert values into the script. Additionally users can create new custom templates as well with folder structure. To open a template from Template Explorer Go to View menu >> Template Explorer or type CTRL+ALT+L. You will find a list of categories click on any category and expand the folder structure. For our sample example let us expand Index Folder. In this folder you will notice the various T-SQL Scripts. These scripts can be opened by double click or can be dragged to editor area and modified as needed. Sample template is now available in the query editor area with all the necessary parameter place folder. You can replace the same parameter by typing either CTRL+SHIFT+M or by going to Query Menu >> Specify Values for Template Parameters. In this screen it will show  Specify Values for Template Parameters dialog box, accept the value or replace it with a new value. This will now get your script ready to go. Check it one more time and change the script to fit your requirement. I personally use template explorer for two things. First one is obviously for templates but the hidden one and an important one is for learning new features and T-SQL commands. There is so much to learn and so little time. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Server Management Studio, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• PCF shadow shader math causing artifacts

  - by user2971069

  For a while now I used PCSS for my shadow technique of choice until I discovered a type of percentage closer filtering. This method creates really smooth shadows and with hopes of improving performance, with only a fraction of texture samples, I tried to implement PCF into my shader. This is the relevant code: float c0, c1, c2, c3; float f = blurFactor; float2 coord = ProjectedTexCoords; if (receiverDistance - tex2D(lightSampler, coord + float2(0, 0)).x > 0.0007) c0 = 1; if (receiverDistance - tex2D(lightSampler, coord + float2(f, 0)).x > 0.0007) c1 = 1; if (receiverDistance - tex2D(lightSampler, coord + float2(0, f)).x > 0.0007) c2 = 1; if (receiverDistance - tex2D(lightSampler, coord + float2(f, f)).x > 0.0007) c3 = 1; coord = (coord % f) / f; return 1 - (c0 * (1 - coord.x) * (1 - coord.y) + c1 * coord.x * (1 - coord.y) + c2 * (1 - coord.x) * coord.y + c3 * coord.x * coord.y); This is a very basic implementation. blurFactor is initialized with 1 / LightTextureSize. So the if statements fetch the occlusion values for the four adjacent texels. I now want to weight each value based on the actual position of the texture coordinate. If it's near the bottom-right pixel, that occlusion value should be preferred. The weighting itself is done with a simple bilinear interpolation function, however this function takes a 2d vector in the range [0..1] so I have to convert my texture coordinate to get the distance from my first pixel to the second one in range [0..1]. For that I used the mod operator to get it into [0..f] range and then divided by f. This code makes sense to me, and for specific blurFactors it works, producing really smooth one pixel wide shadows, but not for all blurFactors. Initially blurFactor is (1 / LightTextureSize) to sample the 4 adjacent texels. I now want to increase the blurFactor by factor x to get a smooth interpolation across maybe 4 or so pixels. But that is when weird artifacts show up. Here is an image: Using a 1x on blurFactor produces a good result, 0.5 is as expected not so smooth. 2x however doesn't work at all. I found that only a factor of 1/2^n produces an good result, every other factor produces artifacts. I'm pretty sure the error lies here: coord = (coord % f) / f; Maybe the modulo is not calculated correctly? I have no idea how to fix that. Is it even possible for pixel that are further than 1 pixel away?

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• Reinventing the Paged IEnumerable, Weigert Style!

  - by adweigert

  I am pretty sure someone else has done this, I've seen variations as PagedList<T>, but this is my style of a paged IEnumerable collection. I just store a reference to the collection and generate the paged data when the enumerator is needed, so you could technically add to a list that I'm referencing and the properties and results would be adjusted accordingly. I don't mind reinventing the wheel when I can add some of my own personal flare ... // Extension method for easy use public static PagedEnumerable AsPaged(this IEnumerable collection, int currentPage = 1, int pageSize = 0) { Contract.Requires(collection != null); Contract.Assume(currentPage >= 1); Contract.Assume(pageSize >= 0); return new PagedEnumerable(collection, currentPage, pageSize); } public class PagedEnumerable : IEnumerable { public PagedEnumerable(IEnumerable collection, int currentPage = 1, int pageSize = 0) { Contract.Requires(collection != null); Contract.Assume(currentPage >= 1); Contract.Assume(pageSize >= 0); this.collection = collection; this.PageSize = pageSize; this.CurrentPage = currentPage; } IEnumerable collection; int currentPage; public int CurrentPage { get { if (this.currentPage > this.TotalPages) { return this.TotalPages; } return this.currentPage; } set { if (value < 1) { this.currentPage = 1; } else if (value > this.TotalPages) { this.currentPage = this.TotalPages; } else { this.currentPage = value; } } } int pageSize; public int PageSize { get { if (this.pageSize == 0) { return this.collection.Count(); } return this.pageSize; } set { this.pageSize = (value < 0) ? 0 : value; } } public int TotalPages { get { return (int)Math.Ceiling(this.collection.Count() / (double)this.PageSize); } } public IEnumerator GetEnumerator() { var pageSize = this.PageSize; var currentPage = this.CurrentPage; var startCount = (currentPage - 1) * pageSize; return this.collection.Skip(startCount).Take(pageSize).GetEnumerator(); } IEnumerator IEnumerable.GetEnumerator() { return this.GetEnumerator(); } }

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• A new name for unit tests

  - by Will

  I never used to like unit testing. I always thought it increased the amount of work I had to do. Turns out, that's only true in terms of the actual number of lines of code you write and furthermore, this is completely offset by the increase in the number of lines of useful code that you can write in an hour with tests and test driven development. Now I love unit tests as they allow me to write useful code, that quite often works first time! (knock on wood) I have found that people are reluctant to do unit tests or start a project with test driven development if they are under strict time-lines or in an environment where others don't do it, so they don't. Kinda like, a cultural refusal to even try. I think one of the most powerful things about unit testing is the confidence that it gives you to undertake refactoring. It also gives new found hope, that I can give my code to someone else to refactor/improve, and if my unit tests still work, I can use the new version of the library that they modified, pretty much, without fear. It's this last aspect of unit testing that I think needs a new name. The unit test is more like a contract of what this code should do now, and in the future. When I hear the word testing, I think of mice in cages, with multiple experiments done on them to see the effectiveness of a compound. This is not what unit testing is, we're not trying out different code to see what is the most affective approach, we're defining what outputs we expect with what inputs. In the mice example, unit tests are more like the definitions of how the universe will work as opposed to the experiments done on the mice. Am I on crack or does anyone else see this refusal to do testing and do they think it's a similar reason they don't want to do it? What reasons do you / others give for not testing? What do you think their motivations are in not unit testing? And as a new name for unit testing that might get over some of the objections, how about jContract? (A bit Java centric I know :), or Unit Contracts?

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• It's called College.

  - by jeffreyabecker

  Today I saw yet another 'GUID vs int as your primary key' article. Like most of the ones I've read this was filled with technical misrepresentations and out-right fallices. Chef's famous line that "There's a time and a place for everything children" applies here. GUIDs have distinct advantages and disadvantages which should be considered when choosing a data type for the primary key. Fallacy 1: "Its easier" An integer data type(tinyint, smallint, int, bigint) is a better artifical key than a GUID because its easier to remember. I'm a firm believer that your artifical primary keys should be opaque gibberish. PK's are an implementation detail which should never be exposed to the user or relied on for business logic. If you want things to come back in an order, add and ORDER BY clause and SortOrder fields. If you want a human-usable look-up add a business key with a unique constraint. If you want to know what order things were inserted into a table add a timestamp. Fallacy 2: "Size Matters" For many applications, the size of the artifical primary key is going to be irrelevant. The particular article which kicked this post off stated repeatedly that joining against an int has better performance than joining against a GUID. In computer science the performance of your algorithm is always a function of the number of data points. This still holds true for databases. Unless your table is very large, the performance difference between an int and a guid probably isnt going to be mesurable let alone noticeable. My personal experience is that the performance becomes an issue when you start having billions of rows in the table. At this point, you should probably start looking to move from int to bigint so the effective space/performance gain isnt as much as you'd think. GUID Advantages: Insert-ability / Mergeability: You can reliably insert guids into tables without key collisions. Database Independence: Saving entities to the database often requires knowing ids. With identity based ids the id must be selected back after every insert. GUIDs can be generated application-side allowing much faster inserts. GUID Disadvantages: Generatability: You can calculate the next id for an integer pk pretty easily in your head but will need a program to generate GUIDs. Solution: "Select top 100 newid() from sysobjects" Fragmentation: most GUID generation algorithms generate pseudo random GUIDs. This can cause inserts into the middle of your clustered index. Solutions: add a default of newsequentialid() or use GuidComb in NHibernate.

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• URL routing similar to Facebook (related to AJAX and the URL)

  - by Guilherme Cardoso

  In this article i'm gonna show you how i do when i have to update some content with AJAX and i have to change the URL. First, let's see an example to understand it better. If the user is reading a News with Id 1 and he clicked on another News with Id 2, if we update the content with AJAX the user is now reading the News Id 2 but the URL remains the same, for example: http://localhost/News/Read/1 Now let's see another example from Facebook. If i'm reading my profile and i click on Photos, Facebook updates it with AJAX and the URL switch to: http://www.facebook.com/guilhermegeek#!/guilhermegeek?sk=photos If we enter on that URL, it's mapped to: http://www.facebook.com/guilhermegeek?sk=photos The trick here is the parameters that we use after the #!. Those parameters are never sent to the server side, so we handle them on the client side (javascript).In the example of Facebook, he receives my profile name (guilhermegeek) and the action is to read photos. A few time ago i've written an article in my Portuguese blog explaining how to use an alternative to clients with javascript disabled. Like this: <a onclick="javascript:ReadNews(id);" href="#!News/Read/@id/">Title</a> When the user enter the link of that news, my function Read(); fills the News in the page. Then, i add the #!News/Read/@id/ to my URL. It's gonna stay something like this: http://localhost/News/Read/1#!News/Read/2 As i explained before, the News that the user is reading has the Id 2.The next step is to use javascript to check if the URL that the user typed has other News Id, because if we enter on the above URL our controller will get the Id 1 (everything after to the # isn't sent to the server side). $(document).ready(function () {             var h = window.location.hash;             if (h != null) {                 var parts = window.location.href.split('#!');                 if (parts.length > 1) {                     window.location.replace("http://localhost/" + parts[1]);                 }             }    }); It's pretty simple. I'm cutting everything after the #!, then i redirect the user to a new page. So, it's gonna stay:http://localhost/News/Read/2

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• After 10 Years, MySQL Still the Right Choice for ScienceLogic's "Best Network Monitoring System on the Planet"

  - by Rebecca Hansen

  ScienceLogic has a pretty fantastic network monitoring appliance.  So good in fact that InfoWorld gave it their "2013 Best Network Monitoring System on the Planet" award.  Inside their "ultraflexible, ultrascalable, carrier-grade" enterprise appliance, ScienceLogic relies on MySQL and has since their start in 2003.  Check out some of the things they've been able to do with MySQL and their reasons for continuing to use MySQL in these highlights from our new MySQL ScienceLogic case study. Science Logic's larger customers use their appliance to monitor and manage  20,000+ devices, each of which generates a steady stream of data and a workload that is 85% write. On a large system, the MySQL database: Averages 8,000 queries every second or about 1 billion queries a day Can reach 175,000 tables and up to 20 million rows in a single table Is 2 terabytes on average and up to 6 terabytes "We told our customers they could add more and more devices. With MySQL, we haven't had any problems. When our customers have problems, we get calls. Not getting calls is a huge benefit." Matt Luebke, ScienceLogic Chief Software Architect.? ScienceLogic was approached by a number of Big Data / NoSQL vendors, but decided against using a NoSQL-only solution. Said Matt, "There are times when you really need SQL. NoSQL can't show me the top 10 users of CPU, or show me the bottom ten consumer of hard disk. That's why we weren't interested in changing and why we are very interested in MySQL 5.6. It's great that it can do relational and key-value using memcached." The ScienceLogic team is very cautious about putting only very stable technology into their product, and according to Matt, MySQL has been very stable: "We've been using MySQL for 10 years and we have never had any reliability problems. Ever." ScienceLogic now uses SSDs for their write-intensive appliance and that change alone has helped them achieve a 5x performance increase. Learn more>> ScienceLogic MySQL Case Study MySQL 5.6 InnoDB Compression options for better SSD performance Tuning MySQL 5.6 for Great Product Performance - on demand webinar Developer and DBA Guide to MySQL 5.6 white paper Guide to MySQL and NoSQL: The Best of Both Worlds white paper

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• As a web designer, which language should I learn first for my feature career? (PHP or JavaScript) [closed]

  - by kdevs3

  Possible Duplicates: Best Programming Language for Web Development How can I choose a web development language? What language will you choose if you are going to build something big? What is the right option of programming languages and tools for building our website? What is the easiest web programing language at....? Well, I'm more of a basic web designer. I know the easy stuff pretty well. (Ya know, html, css) But I've been trying to take it to the next step and I'm contemplating about what I should learn that will help me out the most in my future web design/programming career, should it be JavaScript or maybe I should try to learn a back end programming language such as PHP. Lately, I have been hearing about a lot how JavaScript is so great and useful now, because of libraries such as jQuery and what possibility's it can bring by using Node.js and other frameworks. I've only learned the most basic of JavaScript and used some jQuery (mostly plugins) so i wouldn't know at all of what it can actually do. Would JS being so popular as it is now and useful, be a reason to stick with JavaScript and only learn it that for now? Or as a web designer, how important would it be to learn how to make a web application/website operate and functional, and know how to work with servers, etc? (Such as getting forms to work and sending data to the server and back) I've took a look at frameworks such as Code Igniter before, and looks really simple to get started with if I try to learn PHP, But I'm not sure how important it is for my career and what I would gain out of it. I'm asking because I can't decide what I should learn first. When I select it, I really want to take my time and learn the language. I don't want to spend time on learning multiple languages at the same time, so I need to pick wisely. I'm trying to turn the right direction so my career can hopefully be successful in the feature. (If money/gaining a job asked if its important, then its a yeah, it is a bit) I'm hoping I can get opinions and suggestions on this question, thanks for giving me your thoughts also.

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• View the Real Links Behind Shortened URLs in Chrome

  - by Asian Angel

  When you encounter shortened URLs there is always that worry in the back of your mind about where they really lead to. Now you can get a “sneak peak” at the real links behind those URLs with the View Thru extension for Google Chrome. The URL Shortening services officially supported at this time are: bit.ly, cli.gs, ff.im, goo.gl, is.gd, nyti.ms, ow.ly, post.ly, su.pr, & tinyurl.com. Before When you encounter a shortened URL you are pretty much on your own in deciding whether to trust that link or not. It would really be nice if you could just hover your mouse over those links and know where they will lead ahead of time. After Once you have the extension installed you are ready to access that link viewing goodness. Please note that you will need to reload any pages that were open prior to installing the extension. For our first example we chose a shortened URL from “bit.ly”. As you can see the entire link behind the shortened URL is displayed very nicely…no hidden surprises there! Note: There are no options to worry with for the extension. Another perfect result for the “goo.gl URL” shown below. View Thru will certainly remove a lot of the stress related to clicking on shortened URLs. Bonus Find Just out of curiosity we looked for a shortened URL not listed as being officially supported at this time. We found one with the “http://nyti.ms/” domain and View Thru showed the link perfectly…so be sure to give it a try on other services too. Conclusion If you worry about where a shortened URL will really lead you then the View Thru extension can help alleviate that stress. Links Download the View Thru extension (Google Chrome Extensions) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips See Where Shortened URLs “Link To” in Your Favorite BrowserVerify the Destinations of Shortened URLs the Easy WayCreate Shortened goo.gl URLs in Google Chrome the Easy WayCreate Shortened goo.gl URLs in Your Favorite BrowserAccess Google Chrome’s Special Pages the Easy Way 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 DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 QuicklyCode Provides Cheatsheets & Other Programming Stuff Download Free MP3s from Amazon Awe inspiring, inter-galactic theme (Win 7) Case Study – How to Optimize Popular Wordpress Sites Restore Hidden Updates in Windows 7 & Vista Iceland an Insurance Job?

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• New hidden parameters in Oracle 11.2

  - by Mike Dietrich

  We really welcome every external review of our slides. And also recommendations from customers visiting our workshops. So it happened to me more than a week ago that Marco Patzwahl, the owner of MuniqSoft GmbH, had a very lengthy train ride in Germany (as the engine drivers go on strike this week it could have become even worse) and nothing better to do then reviewing our slide set. And he had plenty of recommendations. Besides that he pointed us to something at least I was not aware of and added it to the slides: In patch set 11.2.0.2 a new behaviour for datafile write errors has been implemented. With this release ANY write error to a datafile will cause the instance to abort. Before 11.2.0.2 those errors usually led to an offline datafile if the database operates in archivelog mode (your production database do, don’t they?!) and the datafile does not belong to the SYSTEM tablespace. Internal discussion found this behaviour not up-to-date and alligned with RAC systems and modern storages. Therefore it has been changed and a new underscore parameter got introduced. _DATAFILE_WRITE_ERRORS_CRASH_INSTANCE=TRUE This is the default setting´and the new behaviour beginning with Oracle 11.2.0.2 If you would like to revert to the pre-11.2.0.2 behaviour you’ll have to set in your init.ora/spfile this parameter to false. But keep in mind that there’s a reason why this has been changed. You’ll find more info in MOS Note: 7691270.8 and this topic in the current version of the slides on slide 255. Thanks to Marco for the review!!   And then I received an email from Kurt Van Meerbeeck today. Kurt is pretty well known in the Oracle community. And he’s the owner of jDUL/DUDE, a database unloading tool which bypasses the Oracle database engine and access data direclty from the blocks. Kurt visited the upgrade workshop two weeks ago in Belgium and did highlight to me that since Oracle 11.2.0.1 even though you haven’t set neither SGA_TARGET nor MEMORY_TARGET the database might still do resize operations. Reason why this behaviour has been changed: Prevention of ORA-4031 errors. But on databases with extremly high loads this can cause trouble. Further information can be found in MOS Note:1269139.1 . And the parameter set to TRUE by default is called _MEMORY_IMM_MODE_WITHOUT_AUTOSGA=TRUE This can be found now in the slide set as well on slide number 240. And thanks to Kurt for this information!!

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• Can I prevent an IDENTIFY PACKET DEVICE command to a specific device at boot?

  - by Brian Spisak

  This is related to a previous question related to installation that is now resolved. I'm opening a new question, because I still need to get my DVD drive working. Problem: Failed boot when my ASUS DRW-24B1/ST DVD drive is attached to my asmedia ASM1061. Symptom: ata8.00: exception Emask 0x52 Sact 0x0 SErr 0xffffffff action 0xe frozen ata8: SError: { blah blah } ata8.00: failed command: IDENTIFY PACKET DEVICE ata8.00: cmd blah blah res blah blah (ATA bus error) ata8.00: status: { DRDY } ata8: hard resetting link Background: The ASM1061 is a PCIe to SATA bridge providing 2 x 6Gb/s ports and is supposed to be fully compliant to SATA specs. I just discovered in the fine print of my ASUS P8Z77-V pro motherboard that "These SATA ports are for data hard drivers only. ATAPI devices are not supported." However, I have already installed Windows 7 using this drive and I can run the Ubuntu 12.04 installer from it as well. The only time I have a problem is during Ubuntu boot when it tries an IDENTIFY PACKET DEVICE which seems to be an ATAPI command. I can't simply switch this device to another SATA port because they are already allocated to other devices. (My chipset's 2 x 6Gb/s are connected to my boot SSD and a fast HDD while the 4 x 3Gb/s ports are running a RAID 5 array.) If this can't be fixed or worked around, I suppose I'll have to go buy SATA add-in card. Blech. Thoughts: If indeed this is a device specific issue (that it doesn't support ATAPI discovery) then I can't expect - is it udev? - to work with it. But, it seems that Windows and even the Ubuntu installer work just fine. So why does udev have a problem? At the end of the day, it would be nice to have the DVD working under Ubuntu, but I can live without it. But, as this is a dual-boot machine, I can't physically disconnect it because I want it to work with Windows. (And physically disconnecting it every time I want to boot Ubuntu is NOT an option. ;-) Questions: Should this be considered a bug? My feelings are that if it works with other OS that it should probably work with Ubuntu as well. How can I work around this problem? I have a limited knowledge of linux internals, but it seems I should be able to somehow tell udev (or whatever is doing the discovery) to ignore that device. Is there a way?

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• Ajaxy

  - by Chris Skardon

  Today is the big day, the day I attempt to use Ajax in the app… I’ve never done this (well, tell a lie, I’ve done it in a ‘tutorial’ site, but that was a while ago now), so it’s going to be interesting.. OK, basics first, let’s start with the @Ajax.ActionLink Right, first stab: @Ajax.ActionLink("Click to get latest", "LatestEntry", new AjaxOptions { UpdateTargetId = "ajaxEntrant", InsertionMode = InsertionMode.Replace, HttpMethod = "GET" }) As far as I’m aware, I’m asking to get the ‘LatestEntry’ from the current controller, and in doing so, I will replace the #ajaxEntrant DOM bit with the result. So. I guess I’d better get the result working… To the controller! public PartialResult LatestEntry() { var entrant =_db.Entrants.OrderByDescending(e => e.Id).Single(); return PartialView("_Entrant", entrant); } Pretty simple, just returns the last entry in a PartialView… but! I have yet to make my partial view, so onto that! @model Webby.Entrant <div class="entrant"> <h4>@Model.Name</h4> </div> Again, super simple, (I’m really just testing at this point)… All the code is now there (as far as I know), so F5 and in… And once again, in the traditionally disappointing way of the norm, it doesn’t work, sure… it opens the right view, but it doesn’t replace the #ajaxEntry DOM element, rather it replaces the whole page… The source code (again, as far as I know) looks ok: <a data-ajax="true" data-ajax-method="GET" data-ajax-mode="replace" data-ajax-update="#ajaxEntrants" href="/Entrants/LatestEntrant">Click to get latest</a> Changing the InsertionMode to any of the other modes has the same effect.. It’s not the DOM name either, changing that has the same effect.. i.e. none. It’s not the partial view either, just making that a <p> has (again) no effect… Ahhhhh --- what a schoolboy error… I had neglected (ahem) to actually put the script bit into the calling page (another save from stackoverflow): <script src="@Url.Content("~/Scripts/jquery.unobtrusive-ajax.js")" type="text/javascript"></script> I’ve now stuck that into the _Layout.cshtml view temporarily to aid the development process… :) Onwards and upwards! Chris

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• Smooth animation when using fixed time step

  - by sythical

  I'm trying to implement the game loop where the physics is independent from rendering but my animation isn't as smooth as I would like it to be and it seems to periodically jump. Here is my code: // alpha is used for interpolation double alpha = 0, counter_old_time = 0; double accumulator = 0, delta_time = 0, current_time = 0, previous_time = 0; unsigned frame_counter = 0, current_fps = 0; const unsigned physics_rate = 40, max_step_count = 5; const double step_duration = 1.0 / 40.0, accumulator_max = step_duration * 5; // information about the circ;e (position and velocity) int old_pos_x = 100, new_pos_x = 100, render_pos_x = 100, velocity_x = 60; previous_time = al_get_time(); while(true) { current_time = al_get_time(); delta_time = current_time - previous_time; previous_time = current_time; accumulator += delta_time; if(accumulator > accumulator_max) { accumulator = accumulator_max; } while(accumulator >= step_duration) { if(new_pos_x > 1330) velocity_x = -15; else if(new_pos_x < 70) velocity_x = 15; old_pos_x = new_pos_x; new_pos_x += velocity_x; accumulator -= step_duration; } alpha = accumulator / static_cast<double>(step_duration); render_pos_x = old_pos_x + (new_pos_x - old_pos_x) * alpha; al_clear_to_color(al_map_rgb(20, 20, 40)); // clears the screen al_draw_textf(font, al_map_rgb(255, 255, 255), 20, 20, 0, "current_fps: %i", current_fps); // print fps al_draw_filled_circle(render_pos_x, 400, 15, al_map_rgb(255, 255, 255)); // draw circle // I've added this to test how the program will behave when rendering takes // considerably longer than updating the game. al_rest(0.008); al_flip_display(); // swaps the buffers frame_counter++; if(al_get_time() - counter_old_time >= 1) { current_fps = frame_counter; frame_counter = 0; counter_old_time = al_get_time(); } } I have added a pause during the rendering part because I wanted to see how the code would behave when a lot of rendering is involved. Removing it makes the animation smooth but then I'll have to make sure that I don't let the frame rate drop too much and that doesn't seem like a good solution. I've been trying to fix this for a week and have had no luck so I'd be very grateful if someone can read through my code. Thank you! Edit: I added the following code to work out the actual velocity (pixels per second) of the ball each time the ball is rendered and surprisingly it's not constant so I'm guessing that's the issue. I'm not sure why it's not constant. alpha = accumulator / static_cast<double>(step_duration); render_pos_x = old_pos_x + (new_pos_x - old_pos_x) * alpha; cout << (render_pos_x - old_render_pos) / delta_time << endl; old_render_pos = render_pos_x;

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• Log Debug Messages without Debug Serial on Shipped Device

  - by Kate Moss' Open Space

  Debug message is one of the ancient but useful way for problem resolving. Message is redirected to PB if KITL is enabled otherwise it goes to default debug port, usually a serial port on most of the platform but it really depends on how OEMWriteDebugString and OEMWriteDebugByte are implemented. For many reasons, we don't want to have a debug serial port, for example, we don't have enough spare serial ports and it can affect the performance. So some of the BSP designers decide to dump the messages into other media, could be a log file, shared memory or any solution that is suitable for the need. In CE 5.0 and previous, OAL and Kernel are linked into one binaries; in the other word, you can use whatever function in kernel, such as SC_CreateFileW to access filesystem in OAL, even this is strongly not recommended. But since the OAL is being a standalone executable in CE 6.0, we no longer can use this back door but only interface exported in NKGlobal which just provides enough for OAL but no more. Accessing filesystem or using sync object to communicate to other drivers or application is even not an option. Sounds like the kernel lock itself up; of course, OAL is in kernel space, you can still do whatever you want to hack into kernel, but once again, it is not only make it a dirty solution but also fragile. So isn't there an elegant solution? Let's see how a debug message print out. In private\winceos\COREOS\nk\kernel\printf.c, the OutputDebugStringW is the one for pumping out the messages; most of the code is for error handling and serialization but what really interesting is the following code piece     if (g_cInterruptsOff) {         OEMWriteDebugString ((unsigned short *)str);     } else {         g_pNKGlobal->pfnWriteDebugString ((unsigned short *)str);     }     CELOG_OutputDebugString(dwActvProcId, dwCurThId, str); It outputs the message to default debug output (is redirected to KITL when available) or OAL when needed but note that highlight part, it also invokes CELOG_OutputDebugString. Follow the thread to private\winceos\COREOS\nk\logger\CeLogInstrumentation.c, this function dump whatever input to CELOG. So whatever the debug message is we always got a clone in CELOG. General speaking, all of the debug message is logged to CELOG already, so what you need to do is using celogflush.exe with CELZONE_DEBUG zone, and then viewing the data using the by Readlog tool. Here are some information about these tools CELOG - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee479818.aspx READLOG - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee481220.aspx Also for advanced reader, I encourage you to dig into private\winceos\COREOS\nk\celog\celogdll, the source of CELOG.DLL and use it as a starting point to create a more lightweight debug message logger for your own device!

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• What are the tradeoffs for using 'partial view models'?

  - by Kenny Evitt

  I've become aware of an itch due to some non-DRY code pertaining to view model classes in an (ASP.NET) MVC web application and I'm thinking of scratching my itch by organizing code in various 'partial view model' classes. By partial-view-model, I'm referring to a class like a view model class in an analogous way to how partial views are like views, i.e. a way to encapsulate common info and behavior. To strengthen the 'analogy', and to aid in visually organizing the code in my IDE, I was thinking of naming the partial-view-model classes with a _ prefix, e.g. _ParentItemViewModel. As a slightly more concrete example of why I'm thinking along these lines, imagine that I have a domain-model-entity class ParentItem and the user-friendly descriptive text that identifies these items to users is complex enough that I'd like to encapsulate that code in a method in a _ParentItemViewModel class, for which I can then include an object or a collection of objects of that class in all the view model classes for all the views that need to include a reference to a parent item, e.g. ChildItemViewModel can have a ParentItem property of the _ParentItemViewModel class type, so that in my ChildItemView view, I can use @Model.ParentItem.UserFriendlyDescription as desired, like breadcrumbs, links, etc. Edited 2014-02-06 09:56 -05 As a second example, imagine that I have entity classes SomeKindOfBatch, SomeKindOfBatchDetail, and SomeKindOfBatchDetailEvent, and a view model class and at least one view for each of those entities. Also, the example application covers a lot more than just some-kind-of-batches, so that it wouldn't really be useful or sensible to include info about a specific some-kind-of-batch in all of the project view model classes. But, like the above example, I have some code, say for generating a string for identifying a some-kind-of-batch in a user-friendly way, and I'd like to be able to use that in several views, say as breadcrumb text or text for a link. As a third example, I'll describe another pattern I'm currently using. I have a Contact entity class, but it's a fat class, with dozens of properties, and at least a dozen references to other fat classes. However, a lot of view model classes need properties for referencing a specific contact and most of those need other properties for collections of contacts, e.g. possible contacts to be referenced for some kind of relationship. Most of these view model classes only need a small fraction of all of the available contact info, basically just an ID and some kind of user-friendly description (i.e. a friendly name). It seems to be pretty useful to have a 'partial view model' class for contacts that all of these other view model classes can use. Maybe I'm just misunderstanding 'view model class' – I understand a view model class as always corresponding to a view. But maybe I'm assuming too much.

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• Sony VAIO is booting directly into Windows without showing grub

  - by Rohan Dhruva

  I bought a new Sony Vaio S series laptop. It uses Insyde H2O BIOS EFI, and trying to install Linux on it is driving me crazy. root@kubuntu:~# parted /dev/sda print Model: ATA Hitachi HTS72756 (scsi) Disk /dev/sda: 640GB Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B Partition Table: gpt Number Start End Size File system Name Flags 1 1049kB 274MB 273MB fat32 EFI system partition hidden 2 274MB 20.8GB 20.6GB ntfs Basic data partition hidden, diag 3 20.8GB 21.1GB 273MB fat32 EFI system partition boot 4 21.1GB 21.3GB 134MB Microsoft reserved partition msftres 5 21.3GB 342GB 320GB ntfs Basic data partition 6 342GB 358GB 16.1GB ext4 Basic data partition 7 358GB 374GB 16.1GB ntfs Basic data partition 8 374GB 640GB 266GB ntfs Basic data partition What is surprising is that there are 2 EFI system partitions on the disk. The sda2 partition is a 20gb recovery partition which loads windows with a basic recovery interface. This is accessible by pressing the "ASSIST" button as opposed to the normal power button. I presume that the sda1 EFI System Partition (ESP) loads into this recovery. The sda3 ESP has more fleshed out entries for Microsoft Windows, which actually goes into Windows 7 (as confirmed by bcdedit.exe on Windows). Ubuntu is installed on sda6, and while installation I chose sda3 as my boot partition. The installer correctly created a sda3/EFI/ubuntu/grubx64.efi application. The real problem: for the life of me, I can't set it to be the default! I tried creating a sda3/startup.nsh which called grubx64.efi, but it didn't help -- on rebooting, the system still boots into windows. I tried using efibootmgr, and that shows as it it worked: root@kubuntu:~# efibootmgr BootCurrent: 0000 BootOrder: 0000,0001 Boot0000* EFI USB Device Boot0001* Windows Boot Manager root@kubuntu:~# efibootmgr --create --gpt --disk /dev/sda --part 3 --write-signature --label "GRUB2" --loader "\\EFI\\ubuntu\\grubx64.efi" BootCurrent: 0000 BootOrder: 0002,0000,0001 Boot0000* EFI USB Device Boot0001* Windows Boot Manager Boot0002* GRUB2 root@kubuntu:~# efibootmgr BootCurrent: 0000 BootOrder: 0002,0000,0001 Boot0000* EFI USB Device Boot0001* Windows Boot Manager Boot0002* GRUB2 However, on rebooting, as you guessed, the machine rebooted directly back into Windows. The only things I can think of are: The sda1 partition is somehow being used Overwrite /EFI/Boot/bootx64.efi and /EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi with grubx64.efi [but this seems really radical]. Can anyone please help me out? Thanks -- any help is greatly appreciated, as this issue is driving me crazy!

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• Organizing Git repositories with common nested sub-modules

  - by André Caron

  I'm a big fan of Git sub-modules. I like to be able to track a dependency along with its version, so that you can roll-back to a previous version of your project and have the corresponding version of the dependency to build safely and cleanly. Moreover, it's easier to release our libraries as open source projects as the history for libraries is separate from that of the applications that depend on them (and which are not going to be open sourced). I'm setting up workflow for multiple projects at work, and I was wondering how it would be if we took this approach a bit of an extreme instead of having a single monolithic project. I quickly realized there is a potential can of worms in really using sub-modules. Supposing a pair of applications: studio and player, and dependent libraries core, graph and network, where dependencies are as follows: core is standalone graph depends on core (sub-module at ./libs/core) network depdends on core (sub-module at ./libs/core) studio depends on graph and network (sub-modules at ./libs/graph and ./libs/network) player depends on graph and network (sub-modules at ./libs/graph and ./libs/network) Suppose that we're using CMake and that each of these projects has unit tests and all the works. Each project (including studio and player) must be able to be compiled standalone to perform code metrics, unit testing, etc. The thing is, a recursive git submodule fetch, then you get the following directory structure: studio/ studio/libs/ (sub-module depth: 1) studio/libs/graph/ studio/libs/graph/libs/ (sub-module depth: 2) studio/libs/graph/libs/core/ studio/libs/network/ studio/libs/network/libs/ (sub-module depth: 2) studio/libs/network/libs/core/ Notice that core is cloned twice in the studio project. Aside from this wasting disk space, I have a build system problem because I'm building core twice and I potentially get two different versions of core. Question How do I organize sub-modules so that I get the versioned dependency and standalone build without getting multiple copies of common nested sub-modules? Possible solution If the the library dependency is somewhat of a suggestion (i.e. in a "known to work with version X" or "only version X is officially supported" fashion) and potential dependent applications or libraries are responsible for building with whatever version they like, then I could imagine the following scenario: Have the build system for graph and network tell them where to find core (e.g. via a compiler include path). Define two build targets, "standalone" and "dependency", where "standalone" is based on "dependency" and adds the include path to point to the local core sub-module. Introduce an extra dependency: studio on core. Then, studio builds core, sets the include path to its own copy of the core sub-module, then builds graph and network in "dependency" mode. The resulting folder structure looks like: studio/ studio/libs/ (sub-module depth: 1) studio/libs/core/ studio/libs/graph/ studio/libs/graph/libs/ (empty folder, sub-modules not fetched) studio/libs/network/ studio/libs/network/libs/ (empty folder, sub-modules not fetched) However, this requires some build system magic (I'm pretty confident this can be done with CMake) and a bit of manual work on the part of version updates (updating graph might also require updating core and network to get a compatible version of core in all projects). Any thoughts on this?

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• Friday Fun: Snowball

  - by Asian Angel

  It is Christmas Eve and hopefully you are enjoying the start of an early weekend away from work. This week we have a snowball throwing game for you to try out, so bundle up and get ready to let those snowballs fly! Snowball The object of the game is to use your snowball ammo to harass the drunk businessman and send him flying along distance-wise as far as you can. Simply use your mouse to aim and click the left button to throw snowballs. You can monitor your stats on the silver bar towards the top of the window. The sound can also be disabled if the music is bothering you, but keep in mind that all sound will be disabled if you use the option. Time to get those snowballs flying through the air!! Keep hitting the businessman with your snowballs as you chase after him. Make certain that your aim is good or you will quickly run out of snowballs! You can really get him moving along at a good rate and he can even go high enough in the air to disappear off the screen for a few moments. There is a also chance that your aim will be so wicked with the snowballs that you will literally knock the drunk businessman’s head off! Weird but possible… The game ends when one of these two events occur: 1.) you run out of snowballs or 2.) the businessman literally bounces back at and then drops behind you as seen in the screenshot here. The moment either happens your score will pop up and then you have the opportunity to try again. Have fun! Note: The bounce back event can happen when encountering cars. Play Snowball Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How to Use the Avira Rescue CD to Clean Your Infected PC The Complete List of iPad Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials Is Your Desktop Printer More Expensive Than Printing Services? 20 OS X Keyboard Shortcuts You Might Not Know HTG Explains: Which Linux File System Should You Choose? HTG Explains: Why Does Photo Paper Improve Print Quality? An Alternate Star Wars Christmas Special [Video] Sunset in a Tropical Paradise Wallpaper Natural Wood Grain Icons for Your Desktop and App Launcher Docks My Blackberry Is Not Working! The Apple Too?! [Funny Video] Hidden Tracks Your Stolen Mac; Free Until End of January Why the Other Checkout Line Always Moves Faster

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• How can story and gameplay be artfully merged?

  - by NauticalMile

  Let me give some context. Three of my friends and I have a pretty good game idea cooking. It's based off of a prototype I made that's evolving into a cool game mechanic. The mechanic itself is a toy that's fun on its own, but we haven't designed any puzzles around it yet. We have a design document going, and we are answering a lot of questions about what's in the game. It's become clear early on that everyone (including myself) likes the characters and the story a lot. Considering what our favorite games are, this is unsurprising. A story driven game makes sense to me. I like the emphasis that Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year-Door, Portal 2, and Tomb Raider place on story, and I imagine our game will have a similar feel (lots of dialogue, plot twists, lovable characters). However, one team member raised this point in the design doc: I am feeling like [fleshing out the story] is our biggest hurdle right now for making more design decisions - like more specific decisions about levels etc. Is this true? I am uncertain about working on the story extensively before gameplay, and my uneasiness was reinforced when I read this question about story vs. gameplay. What I want to say is: "Let's continue to work on the story, but also start brainstorming and prototyping abstract puzzles and combat sequences, and we'll creatively match them together later." Is this a reasonable approach? If so, how much of the development of these elements should be done independently? Should I try and create a whole bunch of puzzles while my other teammates focus on story and aesthetics? Then when we have a lot of story and game 'chunks' we can match them with eachother to build something meaningful. Or should we focus on iterating individual levels as distinct units where puzzles, story, etc... are designed together? Or maybe we need to put our excitement about the story on hold and just focus on gameplay. Is there another approach to design that we can take? Am I missing something crucial? I have discussed story and gameplay because they seem the most likely to be at odds with each other, but we also have to consider user interface, music, art direction, etc... Can we design these independently as well?

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• Is there an appropriate coding style for implementing an algorithm during an interview?

  - by GlenPeterson

  I failed an interview question in C years ago about converting hex to decimal by not exploiting the ASCII table if (inputDigitByte > 9) hex = inputDigitByte - 'a'. The rise of Unicode has made this question pretty silly, but the point was that the interviewer valued raw execution speed above readability and error handling. They tell you to review algorithms textbooks to prepare for these interviews, yet these same textbooks tend to favor the implementation with the fewest lines of code, even if it has to rely on magic numbers (like "infinity") and a slower, more memory-intensive implementation (like a linked list instead of an array) to do that. I don't know what is right. Coding an algorithm within the space of an interview has at least 3 constraints: time to code, elegance/readability, and efficiency of execution. What trade-offs are appropriate for interview code? How much do you follow the textbook definition of an algorithm? Is it better to eliminate recursion, unroll loops, and use arrays for efficiency? Or is it better to use recursion and special values like "infinity" or Integer.MAX_VALUE to reduce the number of lines of code needed to write the algorithm? Interface: Make a very self-contained, bullet-proof interface, or sloppy and fast? On the one extreme, the array to be sorted might be a public static variable. On the other extreme, it might need to be passed to each method, allowing methods to be called individually from different threads for different purposes. Is it appropriate to use a linked-list data structure for items that are traversed in one direction vs. using arrays and doubling the size when the array is full? Implementing a singly-linked list during the interview is often much faster to code and easier remember for recursive algorithms like MergeSort. Thread safety - just document that it's unsafe, or say so verbally? How much should the interviewee be looking for opportunities for parallel processing? Is bit shifting appropriate? x / 2 or x >> 1 Polymorphism, type safety, and generics? Comments? Variable and method names: qs(a, p, q, r) vs: quickSort(theArray, minIdx, partIdx, maxIdx) How much should you use existing APIs? Obviously you can't use a java.util.HashMap to implement a hash-table, but what about using a java.util.List to accumulate your sorted results? Are there any guiding principals that would answer these and other questions, or is the guiding principal to ask the interviewer? Or maybe this should be the basis of a discussion while writing the code? If an interviewer can't or won't answer one of these questions, are there any tips for coaxing the information out of them?

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• Rights and use of developed software

  - by Nils Munch

  I have been working on a piece of software for a company, that they wish to resell. There was an mail-based agreement upon a flat hourly rate for my work, and eager me chose to accept a rather low fee. Due to the stress and tempo of the task, a direct contract was never formed or signed. The software was developed locally on my machine, and I was pretty much alone with it, except by excellent help from StackOverflow when I got stuck. Now, the software is nearing completion, I suddenly hear that they have hired a new developer to make the same piece of software as me, and that I was expected to resign within long. Confused I ask around, and realize that the CEO of the company had informed the rest of the company that I was terminally ill and had cancer, and was expected to leave the company soon. Since I'm perfectly healthy, this confused me even more, until I realized what was going on. When I confronted my boss with this, I was no longer seen as a member of the company, and I left the same day, never to return. Later, I raised the question about my missing pay, since I had been working for quite a bit, and not received any payment for my software. I saw that they had already sold a fair copy of my software, and since it's not exactly sold cheap, the company should have plenty of gold to pay me. The company refused, and said that they owned the software, and everything it contained. That was a lot of drama, but my question is this: Who has the rights to the software ? The source code had my personal watermarks and copyrights inprinted, but they have since simply deleted it. The company claim that they have all the rights, because they have a website made about the product, where they write that they have "All rights reserved" in the bottom. My instinct tells me that if a company buys a service like this, and then refuses to pay their developer, then they should not be allowed to keep, and much less resell the product. I have not signed any agreements about giving the company the use of this product, I have made it in my own time and without help from the rest of the company. This all takes place in Denmark, Europe, but I would guess that the rules about this is somewhat universal. Im not the strongest person to legal-talk, so I might be wrong.

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