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• Ti Launchpad

  - by raysmithequip

  Just thought I would get a couple of notes up here for reference to anyone that is interested...it is now Feb 2011 and I have not been posting here enough to remember this blog. Back in Nov 2010 I ordered the Ti launchpad msp430, it is a little target board kit replete with a mini USB cable, two very inexpensive programmable mcu's and a couple of pin headers with a couple of led's on board, a spi connector some on board jumpers and two programmable micro switches....all for less than $5.00...INCLUDING SHIPPING!!....not bad when the ardruino's are running around 20.00 for the target board, atmega328 and cable off of eBay...I wont even mention the microchip pic right now.  Naw, for $5.00 the Ti launchpad kit is about the cheapest fun around...if-uns your a geek that is... Well, the launchpad was backordered for almost two months, came like Xmas eve in fact...I had almost forgotten it!! And really, it was way late and not my idea of an Xmas present for myself.  That would of been the web expressions 4 I bought a few weeks back.  With all the holidays, I did not even look at it till last week, in fact I passed the wrapped board around at my local ham club meeting during points of personal privilege....some oh's and ahhs but mostly duhs...I actually ordered it to avoid downloading the huge code compressor studio 4 (CCS) that was supposed to be included on the cd.  No cd.  I had already downloaded IAR  another programming IDE for these little micro bugs. In my spare time I toyed with IAR and the launchpad board but after about two days of playing delete the driver with windows I decided to just download CCS 4, the code limited version, and give that a shot......CCS 4, is a good rewrite from the earlier versions, it is based on Eclipse as an IDE and includes the drivers for the msp430 target board I received in the kit.  Once installed I quickly configured the debugger for the target chip which was already plugged into the dip socket at the factory, msp430G2131 from he drop down list and clicked ok...I was in!! The CCS4 is full of bells and whistles compared to the IAR, which I would of preferred for the simplicity.  But the code compressor studio really does have it all!!..the code limited version is free, and of all things will give you java script editor box.  The whole layout in debugger mode reminds me of any modern programmer IDE...I mean sure give me Tex anytime but you simply must admire all the boxes and options included in the GUI.  It was a simple matter to check the assembly code in the flash and ram memory that came preloaded for the launchpad kit.  Assembly.  I am right now looking for my old assembly textbooks...sure I remember how to use mov and add etc but a couple of the commands are a little more than vague anymore.  Still, these little mcu's are about 50 cents each and might just work in a couple of projects I have lined up for the near future.  I may document the code here.  Luckily, I plan to write the code in c++ for the main project but if it has to be assembly, no prob.  For reference, the program that came already on the 2131 in the kit was a temperature indicator that alternately flashed red and green leds and changed the intensity of either depending on whether the temp was rising or falling...neat.  Neat enough that it might be worthwhile banging out a little GUI in windows 7 to test the new user device system calls, maybe put a temp gauge widget up on the desktop...just to keep from getting bored.  If you see some assembly code on this blog, you know I was doing something with one of the many mcu's out there.....thats all for now, more to follow...a bit later, of course.

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• Avoiding Duplicate Content Penalties on a Corporate/Franchise website

  - by heath

  My question is really an extension of a previous question that was ported from stackoverflow and closed so I cannot edit it. The basic gist is a regional franchise company has decided to force all independent stores into one website look; they currently all have their own domains and completely different websites. After reading the helpful answers and looking over some links provided, I think my solution is to put a 301 on each franchise store site (acme-store1.com, acme-store2.com, etc) back to the main corporate site (acme.com). All of the company history, product info, etc (about 90% of the entire site) applies to all stores. However, each store should have some exclusive content such as staff, location pictures, exclusive events and promotions, etc. I originally thought that I would simply do something like acme.com/store1/staff, acme.com/store2/staff, etc for the store exclusive content and then acme.com/our-company, for example, would cover all stores. However, I now see two issues that I don't know how to solve. They want to see site stats based on what store site they came from. If a user comes from acme-store1.com, is redirected to acme.com and hits several pages, don't I need to somehow keep that original site in the new url to track each page in that user's session and show they originally came from acme-store1.com? Each store is still independently owned and is essentially still in competition with the other stores, albeit, in less competition than they are with other brands. This is important because each store would like THEIR contact info, links to their social media pages, their mailing list sign-up and customer requests on EVERY page. So if a user originally goes to acme-store1.com and is redirected to acme.com, it still should look to the user that it's all about store 1, even though 90% of the content will be exactly the same as it is in the store 2, store 3 and corporate site. For example, acme.com/our-company would have the same company history, same header/footer/navigation, BUT depending on the original site the user came from, it would display contact and links to THAT store. If someone came directly to the corporate site, it would display their contact and links (they have their own as well). I was considering that all redirects would be to store1.acme.com, store2.acme.com, etc (or acme.com/store1) and then I can dynamically add the contact info and appropriate links based on the subdomain or subfolder. But, then I have to worry about duplicate content penalties because, again, about 90% of the text in these "subdomains" are all the same. For reference, this is a PHP5 site. I've already written a compact framework utilizing templates and mod-rewrite that I've used for other sites. Is this an easy fix that I'm just not grasping? Any suggestions?

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• How should I plan the inheritance structure for my game?

  - by Eric Thoma

  I am trying to write a platform shooter in C++ with a really good class structure for robustness. The game itself is secondary; it is the learning process of writing it that is primary. I am implementing an inheritance tree for all of the objects in my game, but I find myself unsure on some decisions. One specific issue that it bugging me is this: I have an Actor that is simply defined as anything in the game world. Under Actor is Character. Both of these classes are abstract. Under Character is the Philosopher, who is the main character that the user commands. Also under Character is NPC, which uses an AI module with stock routines for friendly, enemy and (maybe) neutral alignments. So under NPC I want to have three subclasses: FriendlyNPC, EnemyNPC and NeutralNPC. These classes are not abstract, and will often be subclassed in order to make different types of NPC's, like Engineer, Scientist and the most evil Programmer. Still, if I want to implement a generic NPC named Kevin, it would nice to be able to put him in without making a new class for him. I could just instantiate a FriendlyNPC and pass some values for the AI machine and for the dialogue; that would be ideal. But what if Kevin is the one benevolent Programmer in the whole world? Now we must make a class for him (but what should it be called?). Now we have a character that should inherit from Programmer (as Kevin has all the same abilities but just uses the friendly AI functions) but also should inherit from FriendlyNPC. Programmer and FriendlyNPC branched away from each other on the inheritance tree, so inheriting from both of them would have conflicts, because some of the same functions have been implemented in different ways on the two of them. 1) Is there a better way to order these classes to avoid these conflicts? Having three subclasses; Friendly, Enemy and Neutral; from each type of NPC; Engineer, Scientist, and Programmer; would amount to a huge number of classes. I would share specific implementation details, but I am writing the game slowly, piece by piece, and so I haven't implemented past Character yet. 2) Is there a place where I can learn these programming paradigms? I am already trying to take advantage of some good design patterns, like MVC architecture and Mediator objects. The whole point of this project is to write something in good style. It is difficult to tell what should become a subclass and what should become a state (i.e. Friendly boolean v. Friendly class). Having many states slows down code with if statements and makes classes long and unwieldy. On the other hand, having a class for everything isn't practical. 3) Are there good rules of thumb or resources to learn more about this? 4) Finally, where does templating come in to this? How should I coordinate templates into my class structure? I have never actually taken advantage of templating honestly, but I hear that it increases modularity, which means good code.

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• TFS Hosting: discountasp.net TFS

  - by Enrique Lima

  In the last month or so I have been able to test and experience first hand the offering from discountasp.net for hosted TFS 2010. This first part is a description of the setup process for the account itself and getting some additional information on what you will find through the portal on their site. Not long ago, I posted a little tidbit on hosting TFS.  Through it I also did a shameless plug to my employer, our services and the type of hosting we recommend.  So, wouldn’t me running on discountasp.net be an issue?  Actually? NO. Ok, enough rambling.  Let’s get some details here. It is a Software as a Service model.  Through it we get Source Control, Version Control, Work Item Tracking and such.  What about Build?  If your need includes Build Management and such, you may need to look at some other options.  But, still this is a great offering for those that are moving from SourceSafe.  Or organizations who have 3 to 5 developers on staff, and do not foresee getting larger anytime soon.  Can it support more than 5 developers?  Yes, but then we need to get into how are you using TFS.  Do you need more than just Basic?  For example, SharePoint and Reporting Services integration. The signup process was seamless! Very easy to follow, complete and transition to Visual Studio to start working. An email followed the signup process, it contained details on how to get to the Team Foundation Server Control Panel login.  Once there, here is what I saw after the initial setup process of naming my Team Project Collection: So, moving on … once I clicked the area to get my server info, I got the following: Then it was a matter of getting the first user in there: Then on to connecting Visual Studio to my hosted TFS. Getting the server information, and the user account created I will configure those options in Visual Studio. Using Team Explorer, I am adding a new server configuration. Once this is provided, click OK, I will be challenged for a username and password, provide them and you will land on the following screen. Then Click Close. You will now be connected to your server and Team Project Collection. Since this will likely be the first time connecting, you will have no Projects (I already have 2 going). Click Connect, and you will be back in Team Explorer. My next post in the topic will be on Creating your First Team Project and uploading a Project Template to the server.

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• The Buzz at the JavaOne Bookstore

  - by Janice J. Heiss

  I found my way to the JavaOne bookstore, a hub of activity. Who says brick and mortar bookstores are dead? I asked what was hot and got two answers: Hadoop in Practice by Alex Holmes was doing well. And Scala for the Impatient by noted Java Champion Cay Horstmann also seemed to be a fast seller. Hadoop in PracticeHadoop is a framework that organizes large clusters of computers around a problem. It is touted as especially effective for large amounts of data, and is use such companies as  Facebook, Yahoo, Apple, eBay and LinkedIn. Hadoop in Practice collects nearly 100 Hadoop examples and presents them in a problem/solution format with step by step explanations of solutions and designs. It’s very much a participatory book intended to make developers more at home with Hadoop.The author, Alex Holmes, is a senior software engineer with more than 15 years of experience developing large-scale distributed Java systems. For the last four years, he has gained expertise in Hadoop solving Big Data problems across a number of projects. He has presented at JavaOne and Jazoon and is currently a technical lead at VeriSign.At this year’s JavaOne, he is presenting a session with VeriSign colleague, Karthik Shyamsunder called “Java: A Perfect Platform for Data Science” where they will explain how the Java platform has emerged as a perfect platform for practicing data science, and also talk about such technologies as Hadoop, Hive, Pig, HBase, Cassandra, and Mahout. Scala for the ImpatientSan Jose State University computer science professor and Java Champion Cay Horstmann is the principal author of the highly regarded Core Java. Scala for the Impatient is a basic, practical introduction to Scala for experienced programmers. Horstmann has a presentation summarizing the themes of his book on at his website. On the final page he offers an enticing summary of his conclusions:* Widespread dissatisfaction with Java + XML + IDEs               --Don't make me eat Elephant again * A separate language for every problem domain is not efficient               --It takes time to master the idioms* ”JavaScript Everywhere” isn't going to scale* Trend is towards languages with more expressive power, less boilerplate* Will Scala be the “one ring to rule them”?* Maybe              --If it succeeds in industry             --If student-friendly subsets and tools are created The popularity of both books echoed comments by IBM Distinguished Engineer Jason McGee who closed his part of the Sunday JavaOne keynote by pointing out that the use of Java in complex applications is increasingly being augmented by a host of other languages with strong communities around them – JavaScript, JRuby, Scala, Python and so forth. Java developers increasingly must know the strengths and weaknesses of such languages going forward.

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• Is There a Real Advantage to Generic Repository?

  - by Sam

  Was reading through some articles on the advantages of creating Generic Repositories for a new app (example). The idea seems nice because it lets me use the same repository to do several things for several different entity types at once: IRepository repo = new EfRepository(); // Would normally pass through IOC into constructor var c1 = new Country() { Name = "United States", CountryCode = "US" }; var c2 = new Country() { Name = "Canada", CountryCode = "CA" }; var c3 = new Country() { Name = "Mexico", CountryCode = "MX" }; var p1 = new Province() { Country = c1, Name = "Alabama", Abbreviation = "AL" }; var p2 = new Province() { Country = c1, Name = "Alaska", Abbreviation = "AK" }; var p3 = new Province() { Country = c2, Name = "Alberta", Abbreviation = "AB" }; repo.Add<Country>(c1); repo.Add<Country>(c2); repo.Add<Country>(c3); repo.Add<Province>(p1); repo.Add<Province>(p2); repo.Add<Province>(p3); repo.Save(); However, the rest of the implementation of the Repository has a heavy reliance on Linq: IQueryable<T> Query(); IList<T> Find(Expression<Func<T,bool>> predicate); T Get(Expression<Func<T,bool>> predicate); T First(Expression<Func<T,bool>> predicate); //... and so on This repository pattern worked fantastic for Entity Framework, and pretty much offered a 1 to 1 mapping of the methods available on DbContext/DbSet. But given the slow uptake of Linq on other data access technologies outside of Entity Framework, what advantage does this provide over working directly with the DbContext? I attempted to write a PetaPoco version of the Repository, but PetaPoco doesn't support Linq Expressions, which makes creating a generic IRepository interface pretty much useless unless you only use it for the basic GetAll, GetById, Add, Update, Delete, and Save methods and utilize it as a base class. Then you have to create specific repositories with specialized methods to handle all the "where" clauses that I could previously pass in as a predicate. Is the Generic Repository pattern useful for anything outside of Entity Framework? If not, why would someone use it at all instead of working directly with Entity Framework? Edit: Original link doesn't reflect the pattern I was using in my sample code. Here is an (updated link).

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• Cloud service and IM protocol advice, for a backend to group chat mobile app

  - by Jonathan

  Overview I’m going to develop an app on Android and iOS. It will allow users to set up group ‘chat rooms’ and talk on chat rooms set up by other users. The service needs to be highly scalable, such that it could accommodate a massive increase in users overnight (we can only dream). Chat requirements The chat protocol used should be flexible: it should allow me to determine who can view/post on ‘chat rooms’ based on certain other factors, as determined by the first poster/creator of the particular ‘chat room’. It should also allow for users to simply install the app and begin using the service, after only providing a simple nickname (which could be changed later). Chat protocol plans Having looked around I think the XMPP protocol is the best candidate. In particular the Multi-user chat extension looks like what I’ll need. Would this be most suited to my requirements, or do you know another potential solution? Cloud service I have been deciding between Amazon Web Services, Google App Engine and Windows Azure. I’m coming to the conclusion that Azure will be best, as it is easier to manage than AWS (ease of scalability will be a key factor in the design), I think it may be less restricted than GAE, plus Azure will soon have toolkits to allow easy interfacing with both Android and iOS phones. Is this the decision you would have made, or would you recommend/look into other cloud services? General project philosophy I have only recently started looking into this project’s feasibility, and am no expert on any of its aspects. So wherever possible I will leave the actual implementations to experts, i.e. choosing a higher-level cloud service, using a well-documented plugin of a, proven reliable, group chat protocol etc. My background I have some programming knowledge from a computer science degree. Main languages I’ve used have been Java and Python, but I don’t want this to affect design decisions for the project. The most appropriate languages for the task should be used, i.e. I don’t mind learning a lot of new skills (my current programming levels are relatively basic anyway). Thank you Thanks for reading, and any advice you have about any aspect would be greatly appreciated :-)

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• Perl syntax error [closed]

  - by Linny

  I am a beginner taking a Perl programming course. We are trying to write a basic program for counting nucleotides in a DNA string. I'm getting syntax errors on the lines that have a single bracket on lines 28 & 70 and don't know why. It also reads that I have compilation errors. I have no idea where to start figuring that out. # The purpose of this program is to count the number of nucleotides in a strand. Each protein is counted separately # print "/n NOTE: Nucleotide counting /n"; # use strict; # enforce variable declarations use warnings; # enable compiler warnings # Display number of A,a,T,t,G,g,C,c, nucleotides in a word or sequence of letters. # my ($base) = ''; # an extracted letter from a string my ($nuceotide_count) = 0 ; # the current position within the word my ($position) = 0 ; # number of vowels in user-supplied word my ($word) = ''; # word to be processed my ($A_count) = 0 ; # of A nucleotides in the user-supplied sequence my ($a_count) = 0 ; # of A nucleotides in the user-supplied sequence my ($C_count) = 0 ; # of C nucleotides in the user-supplied sequence my ($c_count) = 0 ; # of C nucleotides in the user-supplied sequence my ($G_count) = 0 ; # of G nucleotides in the user-supplied sequence my ($g_count) = 0 ; # of G nucleotides in the user-supplied sequence my ($T_count) = 0 ; # of T nucleotides in the user-supplied sequence my ($t_count) = 0 ; # of T nucleotides in the user-supplied sequence word = (STDIN) for ($position = 0);($position if (($base eq 'a') or ($base eq 'A')) { ++$A_count; } # end if ++$position; if (($base eq 'T') or ($base eq 't')) { ++$T_count; } end if ++$position; if (($base eq 'G') or ($base eq 'g')) { ++$G_count; } # end if ++$position; if (($base eq 'C') or ($base eq 'c')) { ++$C_count; } # end if ++$position; } # end for # Display final results. # print " \n The number of A or a neucleotides is: $A_count"; print " \n The number of T or t neucleotides is: $T_count"; print " \n The number of G or g neucleotides is: $G_count"; print " \n The number of C or c neucleotides is: $C_count"; print " \n\n Program completed successfully. \n" ; exit ;

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• efficient collision detection - tile based html5/javascript game

  - by Tom Burman

  Im building a basic rpg game and onto collisions/pickups etc now. Its tile based and im using html5 and javascript. i use a 2d array to create my tilemap. Im currently using a switch statement for whatever key has been pressed to move the player, inside the switch statement. I have if statements to stop the player going off the edge of the map and viewport and also if they player is about to land on a tile with tileID 3 then the player stops. Here is the statement: canvas.addEventListener('keydown', function(e) { console.log(e); var key = null; switch (e.which) { case 37: // Left if (playerX > 0) { playerX--; } if(board[playerX][playerY] == 3){ playerX++; } break; case 38: // Up if (playerY > 0) playerY--; if(board[playerX][playerY] == 3){ playerY++; } break; case 39: // Right if (playerX < worldWidth) { playerX++; } if(board[playerX][playerY] == 3){ playerX--; } break; case 40: // Down if (playerY < worldHeight) playerY++; if(board[playerX][playerY] == 3){ playerY--; } break; } viewX = playerX - Math.floor(0.5 * viewWidth); if (viewX < 0) viewX = 0; if (viewX+viewWidth > worldWidth) viewX = worldWidth - viewWidth; viewY = playerY - Math.floor(0.5 * viewHeight); if (viewY < 0) viewY = 0; if (viewY+viewHeight > worldHeight) viewY = worldHeight - viewHeight; }, false); My question is, is there a more efficient way of handling collisions, then loads of if statements for each key? The reason i ask is because i plan on having many items that the player will need to be able to pickup or not walk through like walls cliffs etc. Thanks for your time and help Tom

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• The Case for Complimentary Software Copies

  - by GGBlogger

  As the Geriatric Geek you can understand that I’ve been writing and studying for over 60 years. That means that I’ve seen insane changes in the computer software industry. I’ve made the joke that I get a new college education every 6 months or so. Of course that’s an exaggeration but it doesn’t make the feeling go away. I have a long standing and strong relationship with Microsoft so I’m armed with virtually every tool they make. It also means that I have access to tons of training material. But here’s the rub… Last year I started a definitive read of Professional Visual Basic 2008. The purpose was to fill in holes in my understanding of various things. I’m currently on page 1119 of some 1400 pages. During this sojourn I’ve decided that the future is web related which is to say that the future of “thick client” applications running as Windows applications is likely to slowly disappear. To that end I’ve taken a side trip or two into the world of ASP (including XML), Silverlight and cloud development. After carefully avoiding (that’s tongue in cheek) XML for years I finally had to bite the bullet, so to speak, and start learning XML in earnest. The most recent result of that was trail downloads of Altova’s MissionKit 2010 for Software Architects and Liquid Technologies Liquid XML Studio Developer Edition. These are both beautiful products and I want to learn them and write about them. Now comes the rub… While 30 day evaluations are generous in allowing casual users to assess these technologies for purchase they are NOT long enough to allow an author to evaluate, learn and ultimately write about them. Even if I devoted the full 30 days to learning, using and writing about say Altova’s suite I wouldn’t have enough time. Liquid XML may be a little easier to learn (one product as opposed to 8).  Add to that the fact that I frequently get sidetracked to add to my kit and it really blows out. It can be extremely frustrating when I’ve devoted hours to a project and suddenly discover that to complete it I will either need to purchase a license or abandon the project. Since my life blood does not depend on the product I end up abandoning the project and moving on. So to the folks from whom I request complimentary copies… I guarantee that if I convert your product to doing paid development work I will purchase a license to do that but as long as I am using your product to study for the purpose of writing samples, teaching use or otherwise promoting your product to other paying customers I will ask that you give me a license so that I can do that without facing the dread expiration of a 30 day trial.

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• Subterranean IL: Exception handling 1

  - by Simon Cooper

  Today, I'll be starting a look at the Structured Exception Handling mechanism within the CLR. Exception handling is quite a complicated business, and, as a result, the rules governing exception handling clauses in IL are quite strict; you need to be careful when writing exception clauses in IL. Exception handlers Exception handlers are specified using a .try clause within a method definition. .try <TryStartLabel> to <TryEndLabel> <HandlerType> handler <HandlerStartLabel> to <HandlerEndLabel> As an example, a basic try/catch block would be specified like so: TryBlockStart: // ... leave.s CatchBlockEndTryBlockEnd:CatchBlockStart: // at the start of a catch block, the exception thrown is on the stack callvirt instance string [mscorlib]System.Object::ToString() call void [mscorlib]System.Console::WriteLine(string) leave.s CatchBlockEnd CatchBlockEnd: // method code continues... .try TryBlockStart to TryBlockEnd catch [mscorlib]System.Exception handler CatchBlockStart to CatchBlockEnd There are four different types of handler that can be specified: catch <TypeToken> This is the standard exception catch clause; you specify the object type that you want to catch (for example, [mscorlib]System.ArgumentException). Any object can be thrown as an exception, although Microsoft recommend that only classes derived from System.Exception are thrown as exceptions. filter <FilterLabel> A filter block allows you to provide custom logic to determine if a handler block should be run. This functionality is exposed in VB, but not in C#. finally A finally block executes when the try block exits, regardless of whether an exception was thrown or not. fault This is similar to a finally block, but a fault block executes only if an exception was thrown. This is not exposed in VB or C#. You can specify multiple catch or filter handling blocks in each .try, but fault and finally handlers must have their own .try clause. We'll look into why this is in later posts. Scoped exception handlers The .try syntax is quite tricky to use; it requires multiple labels, and you've got to be careful to keep separate the different exception handling sections. However, starting from .NET 2, IL allows you to use scope blocks to specify exception handlers instead. Using this syntax, the example above can be written like so: .try { // ... leave.s EndSEH}catch [mscorlib]System.Exception { callvirt instance string [mscorlib]System.Object::ToString() call void [mscorlib]System.Console::WriteLine(string) leave.s EndSEH}EndSEH:// method code continues... As you can see, this is much easier to write (and read!) than a stand-alone .try clause. Next time, I'll be looking at some of the restrictions imposed by SEH on control flow, and how the C# compiler generated exception handling clauses.

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• What location to put bootloader, when running multiple drives and partition

  - by Matt G

  I have Win8 on my desktop, where a 120G SSD is used to run windows and some select applications, while I have a 2TB HDD to provide basic file storage and where possible, install applications instead of on the SSD. I want to install Ubuntu on a new partition of the HDD (I allocated 300GB, with 5GB swap file). I've used a USB to install the OS, which seemed to have done the job. However, after prompting for a restart, I can no longer boot to ubuntu. During instillation I was confused about where to install the "boot loader instillation". I ended up selecting "/dev/stb" because I figured I would be able to boot with BIOS by selecting the HDD drive as a priority over the SSD. The bootloader is a large part of where I think I went wrong. My partition system looked something like this: /dev/sta ... //SSD ~120 GB /dev/sta1 NTFS (350 MB) //Win8System /dev/sta2 NTFS (118 GB) //Win8C-Drive /dev/stb ... //HDD ~2TB /dev/stb1 NTFS (1563 GB) //FileStorage /dev/stb5 Free Space (300 GB) //Space I want to use for Linux (NOTE: Created two partitions from the 300GB, ~5GB and 295GB. stb5,stb6.) It'd be great if I could get an explanation of what drive you'd select for the boot loader and why, and what selections won't work with regards to the Boot Loader Instillation. I think I understand what Grub is, but I have no idea on how to use it, or play around with it. I seem to be able to get back into OS from my usb, however I believe it's just showing me a preview/trial of Ubuntu (ie, can't access any of the system NTFS drives). Note, if I try to install from the USB again, it will recognize that a version of Ubuntu 13.10 exists on the system. Apologies in advance, have used windows all my life, don't really know to much about Linux at all. Did have a brief skim over some similar questions, didn't find anything too useful. - Where to install bootloader when installing Ubuntu as secondary OS? - ubuntu 12.10 dual boot with windows 8 on two hdds - Dual-boot Windows 7 and Ubuntu on two SSDs with UEFI

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• Set iPhone Style Location Based Alerts On Your Android Device With Google Now

  - by Gopinath

  Location based alerts of iPhone are very useful. You can set an alert to popup as soon as you reach a specific location like “Pickup milk and eggs” when I’m near a grocery store. This feature was missing in Android for a long time, but last week at Google I/O conference Google released an update to Google Now which supports location based alerts. To setup a location based alert 1. Launch Google Now 2. Type or say add reminder 3. By default it shows time based alert interface, switch it location based by touching Location icon 4. Set reminder text, choose a location and touch Set reminder 5. Your alert is set now and as soon as you are close by the specified location, you’ll see an alert on your device. This is a nice feature and I’m using it quite often for the past couple of days.  There are couple of things missing from the current version of Google Now location based alerts– recurring alerts and ability to set alerts on leaving a specific location. It is not possible to recur location based alerts. You will be alerted only once as soon as you reach the location and it is not possible to repeat the alert next time you visit the location. Lets say you want to be reminded to say hi to friend’s parents whenever you are travelling close by their home. It does not work. The second missing feature is something basic and some how Google did not incorporate in their first iteration. Lets say you are at office now and you want to set up alert to pickup flowers when you leave office. Sounds like a simple use case for location based alerts right? But there is no way to set this type of alerts. Google Now alerts you as soon as you reach a location, but not when you leave a location. Do you have an Android that supports Google Now? If so what are your thoughts on location based alerts?

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• How to suggest using an ORM instead of stored procedures?

  - by Wayne M

  I work at a company that only uses stored procedures for all data access, which makes it very annoying to keep our local databases in sync as every commit we have to run new procs. I have used some basic ORMs in the past and I find the experience much better and cleaner. I'd like to suggest to the development manager and rest of the team that we look into using an ORM Of some kind for future development (the rest of the team are only familiar with stored procedures and have never used anything else). The current architecture is .NET 3.5 written like .NET 1.1, with "god classes" that use a strange implementation of ActiveRecord and return untyped DataSets which are looped over in code-behind files - the classes work something like this: class Foo { public bool LoadFoo() { bool blnResult = false; if (this.FooID == 0) { throw new Exception("FooID must be set before calling this method."); } DataSet ds = // ... call to Sproc if (ds.Tables[0].Rows.Count > 0) { foo.FooName = ds.Tables[0].Rows[0]["FooName"].ToString(); // other properties set blnResult = true; } return blnResult; } } // Consumer Foo foo = new Foo(); foo.FooID = 1234; foo.LoadFoo(); // do stuff with foo... There is pretty much no application of any design patterns. There are no tests whatsoever (nobody else knows how to write unit tests, and testing is done through manually loading up the website and poking around). Looking through our database we have: 199 tables, 13 views, a whopping 926 stored procedures and 93 functions. About 30 or so tables are used for batch jobs or external things, the remainder are used in our core application. Is it even worth pursuing a different approach in this scenario? I'm talking about moving forward only since we aren't allowed to refactor the existing code since "it works" so we cannot change the existing classes to use an ORM, but I don't know how often we add brand new modules instead of adding to/fixing current modules so I'm not sure if an ORM is the right approach (too much invested in stored procedures and DataSets). If it is the right choice, how should I present the case for using one? Off the top of my head the only benefits I can think of is having cleaner code (although it might not be, since the current architecture isn't built with ORMs in mind so we would basically be jury-rigging ORMs on to future modules but the old ones would still be using the DataSets) and less hassle to have to remember what procedure scripts have been run and which need to be run, etc. but that's it, and I don't know how compelling an argument that would be. Maintainability is another concern but one that nobody except me seems to be concerned about.

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• ArchBeat Facebook Friday: Top 10 Shared Links - May 23-29, 2014

  - by OTN ArchBeat

  Among the 5,144 fans of the OTN ArchBeat Facebook Page the following Top 10 items were the most popular over the last seven days, May 23-29, 2014. GlassFish/Java EE Community Open Forum Today! | Reza Rahman Have questions about Glassfish? Java EE/GlassFish evangelist Reza Rahman has answers, and you can pick his brain tomorrow during an online forum organized by the London Glassfish User Group and C2B2. The event is free, but you must register in order to participate. Click the link for more information. Twitter Tuesday - Top 10 @ArchBeat Tweets - May 20-26, 2014 The top 10 @OTNArchBeat tweets for the week of May 20-26, 2014. Topics covered include ADF, Cloud, GoldenGate, KScope14, OBIEE, ODI, WebLogic, WebCenter, and more. FrameworkFolders Support has come to Oracle WebCenter Portal | JayJay Zheng Interested in working with Framework Folders in Oracle WebCenter Portal? Oracle ACE JayJay Zheng reviews the essentials. Video: Programming Best Practices - ADF Business Components | Frank Nimphius Frank Nimphius discusses best practices and recommendations for ADF Business Components in the latest video from ADF Architecture TV. Video: Kscope 2014 Preview: Data Modeling and Moving Meditation with Kent Graziano For your mind and your body! Oracle ACE Director Kent Graziano previews his Kscope 2014 data modeling presentations and the early morning Chi Gung sessions he will once again lead for Kscope attendees. OAG and OES Integration for Web API Security: skin and guts | Andre Correa A-Team architect Andre Correa's post examines a strategy for web API security that uses OAG (Oracle API Gateway) and OES (Oracle Entitlements Server). Getting Started with Coherence*Web in WebLogic Server 12.1.2 | Tim Middleton Solution architect Tim Middleton shows you how to configure Coherence*Web in WebLogic Server 12.1.2 and deploy a basic web application. SOA and Business Processes: You are the Process! Part of the 13-part "Industrial SOA" article series, this article looks at best practices for modeling and managing effective business processes. Authentication in Oracle Identity Federation/ IdP | Damien Carru Damien Carru discuss authentication when OIF acts as an IdP and how the server can be configured to use specific OAM Authentication Schemes to challenge the user. Caveats on Using WebLogic Server with JDK7 | JayJay Zheng Quick tech tips from Oracle ACE JayJay Zheng.

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• Confusion about inheritance

  - by Samuel Adam

  I know I might get downvoted for this, but I'm really curious. I was taught that inheritance is a very powerful polymorphism tool, but I can't seem to use it well in real cases. So far, I can only use inheritance when the base class is an abstract class. Examples : If we're talking about Product and Inventory, I quickly assumed that a Product is an Inventory because a Product must be inventorized as well. But a problem occured when user wanted to sell their Inventory item. It just doesn't seem to be right to change an Inventory object to it's subtype (Product), it's almost like trying to convert a parent to it's child. Another case is Customer and Member. It is logical (at least for me) to think that a Member is a Customer with some more privileges. Same problem occurred when user wanted to upgrade an existing Customer to become a Member. A very trivial case is the Employee case. Where Manager, Clerk, etc can be derived from Employee. Still, the same upgrading issue. I tried to use composition instead for some cases, but I really wanted to know if I'm missing something for inheritance solution here. My composition solution for those cases : Create a reference of Inventory inside a Product. Here I'm making an assumption about that Product and Inventory is talking in a different context. While Product is in the context of sales (price, volume, discount, etc), Inventory is in the context of physical management (stock, movement, etc). Make a reference of Membership instead inside Customer class instead of previous inheritance solution. Therefor upgrading a Customer is only about instantiating the Customer's Membership property. This example is keep being taught in basic programming classes, but I think it's more proper to have those Manager, Clerk, etc derived from an abstract Role class and make it a property in Employee. I found it difficult to find an example of a concrete class deriving from another concrete class. Is there any inheritance solution in which I can solve those cases? Being new in this OOP thing, I really really need a guidance. Thanks!

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• Writing or extending existing emacs packages: is it worth or should I move to Netbeans/Eclipse?

  - by Andrea

  I'm finishing my master degree course in CS and I've almost become addicted to Emacs. I've used it to write in C, Latex, Java, JSP,XML, CommonLisp, Ada and other languages no other editor supported, like AMPL. I'd like to improve the packages I've been using the most or create new ones, but, in practice, I find that the implementation of Emacs leaves a lot to be desired. There are a lot of poorly-featured/poorly-maintained packages with either overlapping functionalities or obscure incompatibilities, and Elisp just seems to foster the situation by lacking the common features modern lisps have. In contrast Eclipse and Netbeans are actively improved and it does seem they can be effective for non-mainstream languages. I tried Hibachi for Ada in Eclipse and it worked well, there's CUPS for Lisp in Eclipse and LambdaBeans built using NetBeans components. On the other hand those plugins seem to be less active than their Emacs' counterparts, for example Hibachi was archived last year. What's your opinion on this? Which editor should I write extension for? EDIT: To answer Larry Coleman (see comment below): I like Emacs as a user because it is efficient both for me and the computer I'm using. It's fast and the textual interface (i.e. minibuffer) allows for quick interaction. It's solid and packages are usually small and easy to manage. If I need to correct or remove something I usually just have to change a row in my .emacs or an elisp file, or delete a directory. Eclipse plugins rely on a more complicated process that screwed my Eclipse configuration a couple of times, forcing me to do a clean reinstall. Emacs works as long as I use the basic packages. If I need something more complicated the situation gets pretty hairy. As a "power user" I think that the best I can hope for is to write a severely crippled version of the extensions I'd actually like to have; in other words, that it's not worth the trouble. I'd like to write extensions for the things I'd like to have automated in Emacs, for example project support with automated tag-table update on file writing. There are a few projects on this that lack integration, documentation, extensibility and so forth. The best one is probably CEDET, for which I believe the Greenspun's 10th rule can be applied. EDIT: To comment Larry Coleman's answer I'm pretty sure I can pick elisp programming but the extensions I have in mind don't exist yet despite their relative simplicity and the effort more knowledgeable people poured into related projects.This makes me wonder whether it is so because of the way emacs is developed, i.e. people tend to write their own little extensions without coordination, or its implementation, its extension language not being able to keep up with the growing complexity.

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• The Solution

  - by Patrick Liekhus

  So I recently attended a class about time management as well as read the book “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen Covey.  Both have been instrumental in helping me get my priorities aligned as well as keep me focused. The reason I bring this up is that it gave me a great idea for a small application with which to create a great technical stack solution that would be easy to demo and explain.  Therefore, the project from this point forward with be the Liekhus.TimeTracker application which will bring some the time management skills that I have acquired into a technical implementation.  The idea is rather simple, but leverages some of the basic principles of Covey along with some of the worksheets that I garnered from class.  The basics are as such: 1) a plan is a must have and 2) write it down!  A plan not written down is just an idea.  How many times have you had an idea that didn’t materialize?  Exactly.  Hence why I am writing it all down now! The worksheet consists of a few simple columns that I will outline below as well as some modifications that I made according to the Covey habits.  The worksheet looks like the following: Status Issue Area CQ Notes P  F  L     1234   P  F  L     1234   P  F  L     1234   P  F  L     1234   P  F  L     1234   P  F  L     1234   P  F  L     1234   P  F  L     1234   P  F  L     1234   The idea is really simple and straightforward; you write down all your tasks and keep track of them along the way.  The status stands for (P)ending, (F)inished or (L)ater.  You write a quick title for the issue and select the CQ (Covey Quadrant) with which the issue occurs.  The notes section is for things that happen while you are working through the issue.  And last, but not least, is the Area column that I added as a way to identify the Role or Area of your life that this task falls within based upon Covey’s teachings. The second part of this application is a simple phone log that allows you to track your phone conversations throughout the day.  All of this is currently done on a sheet of paper, but being involved in technology, I want it to have bells and whistles.  Therefore, this is my simple idea for a project that will allow me to test my theories about coding and implementations.  Stay tuned as the next session will be flushing out the concept and coming up with user stories to begin the SCRUM process. Thanks

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• How to detect which edges of a rectange touch when they collide in iOS

  - by Mike King

  I'm creating a basic "game" in iOS 4.1. The premise is simple, there is a green rectangle ("disk") that moves/bounces around the screen, and red rectangle ("bump") that is stationary. The user can move the red "bump" by touching another coordinate on the screen, but that's irrelevant to this question. Each rectangle is a UIImageView (I will replace them with some kind of image/icon once I get the mechanics down). I've gotten as far as detecting when the rectangles collide, and I'm able to reverse the direction of the green "disk" on the Y axis if they do. This works well when the green "disk" approaches the red "bump" from top or bottom, it bounces off in the other direction. But when it approaches from the side, the bounce is incorrect; I need to reverse the X direction instead. Here's the timer I setup: - (void)viewDidLoad { xSpeed = 3; ySpeed = -3; gameTimer = [NSTimer scheduledTimerWithTimeInterval:0.05 target:self selector:@selector(mainGameLoop:) userInfo:nil repeats:YES]; [super viewDidLoad]; } Here's the main game loop: - (void) mainGameLoop:(NSTimer *)theTimer { disk.center = CGPointMake(disk.center.x + xSpeed, disk.center.y + ySpeed); // make sure the disk does not travel off the edges of the screen // magic number values based on size of disk's frame // startAnimating causes the image to "pulse" if (disk.center.x < 55 || disk.center.x > 265) { xSpeed = xSpeed * -1; [disk startAnimating]; } if (disk.center.y < 55 || disk.center.y > 360) { ySpeed = ySpeed * -1; [disk startAnimating]; } // check to see if the disk collides with the bump if (CGRectIntersectsRect(disk.frame, bump.frame)) { NSLog(@"Collision detected..."); if (! [disk isAnimating]) { ySpeed = ySpeed * -1; [disk startAnimating]; } } } So my question is: how can I detect whether I need to flip the X speed or the Y speed? ie: how can I calculate which edge of the bump was collided with?

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• As a tooling/automation developer, can I be making better use of OOP?

  - by Tom Pickles

  My time as a developer (~8 yrs) has been spent creating tooling/automation of one sort or another. The tools I develop usually interface with one or more API's. These API's could be win32, WMI, VMWare, a help-desk application, LDAP, you get the picture. The apps I develop could be just to pull back data and store/report. It could be to provision groups of VM's to create live like mock environments, update a trouble ticket etc. I've been developing in .Net and I'm currently reading into design patterns and trying to think about how I can improve my skills to make better use of and increase my understanding of OOP. For example, I've never used an interface of my own making in anger (which is probably not a good thing), because I honestly cannot identify where using one would benefit later on when modifying my code. My classes are usually very specific and I don't create similar classes with similar properties/methods which could use a common interface (like perhaps a car dealership or shop application might). I generally use an n-tier approach to my apps, having a presentation layer, a business logic/manager layer which interfaces with layer(s) that make calls to the API's I'm working with. My business entities are always just method-less container objects, which I populate with data and pass back and forth between my API interfacing layer using static methods to proxy/validate between the front and the back end. My code by nature of my work, has few common components, at least from what I can see. So I'm struggling to see how I can better make use of OOP design and perhaps reusable patterns. Am I right to be concerned that I could be being smarter about how I work, or is what I'm doing now right for my line of work? Or, am I missing something fundamental in OOP? EDIT: Here is some basic code to show how my mgr and api facing layers work. I use static classes as they do not persist any data, only facilitate moving it between layers. public static class MgrClass { public static bool PowerOnVM(string VMName) { // Perform logic to validate or apply biz logic // call APIClass to do the work return APIClass.PowerOnVM(VMName); } } public static class APIClass { public static bool PowerOnVM(string VMName) { // Calls to 3rd party API to power on a virtual machine // returns true or false if was successful for example } }

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• Need help with xorg.conf for dual Radeon HD6450 video cards with 4 monitors

  - by Eriks Goodwin-Pfister

  I am running 64-bit Ubuntu 13.10 with Unity and have dual (2) Radeon HD6450 video cards and 4 Hanns-G HL273 monitors. Each Radeon card is driving one monitor via DVI and the other via VGA. I am running the proprietary video drivers from AMD's web site: "amd-catalyst-13.11-beta V9.4-linux-x86.x86_64.run" I tried to use "amd-catalyst-13.12-linux-x86.x86_64.run" but could not get that newer version to install. What I need help with is how to "correct" my xorg.conf file and any other needed instructions to get all four of my monitors to work as a continuous desktop that allows me to drag things from one monitor to the next, etc. When I tried to use the default open source drivers that came in Ubuntu 13.10, only three of the monitors would work. Now that I am running the proprietary ones, all four monitors come on and I can move my mouse from one end to the other--but only the right-most monitor displays my desktop and allows me to "do anything". Any time I move my mouse to any of the other three monitors (which display all-white), it turns into an "X" and does not do anything else but move. Enabling xinerama makes all four displays go all-black after login. I do have amdcccle installed, but it does not seem to have the ability to handle my particular configuration. My Current xorg.conf: Section "ServerLayout" Identifier "Basic Layout" Screen 0 "Screen1" 5760 0 Screen 1 "Screen0" 0 0 Screen 2 "Screen2" 3840 0 Screen 3 "Screen3" 1920 0 EndSection Section "Module" EndSection Section "Monitor" Identifier "0-DFP2" Option "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver" Option "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor" Option "DPMS" "true" Option "PreferredMode" "1920x1080" Option "TargetRefresh" "60" Option "Position" "0 0" Option "Rotate" "normal" Option "Disable" "false" EndSection Section "Monitor" Identifier "0-CRT1" Option "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver" Option "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor" Option "DPMS" "true" Option "PreferredMode" "1920x1080" Option "TargetRefresh" "60" Option "Position" "0 0" Option "Rotate" "normal" Option "Disable" "false" EndSection Section "Monitor" Identifier "1-DFP2" Option "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver" Option "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor" Option "DPMS" "true" Option "PreferredMode" "1920x1080" Option "TargetRefresh" "60" Option "Position" "0 0" Option "Rotate" "normal" Option "Disable" "false" EndSection Section "Monitor" Identifier "1-CRT1" Option "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver" Option "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor" Option "DPMS" "true" Option "PreferredMode" "1920x1080" Option "TargetRefresh" "60" Option "Position" "0 0" Option "Rotate" "normal" Option "Disable" "false" EndSection Section "Device" Identifier "Device0" Driver "fglrx" Option "Monitor-CRT1" "1-CRT1" BusID "PCI:1:0:0" EndSection Section "Device" Identifier "Device1" Driver "fglrx" Option "Monitor-DFP2" "0-DFP2" BusID "PCI:4:0:0" EndSection Section "Device" Identifier "Device2" Driver "fglrx" Option "Monitor-DFP2" "1-DFP2" BusID "PCI:1:0:0" Screen 1 EndSection Section "Device" Identifier "Device3" Driver "fglrx" Option "Monitor-CRT1" "0-CRT1" BusID "PCI:4:0:0" Screen 1 EndSection Section "Screen" Identifier "Screen0" Device "Device0" DefaultDepth 24 SubSection "Display" Depth 24 EndSubSection EndSection Section "Screen" Identifier "Screen1" Device "Device1" DefaultDepth 24 SubSection "Display" Depth 24 EndSubSection EndSection Section "Screen" Identifier "Screen2" Device "Device2" DefaultDepth 24 SubSection "Display" Viewport 0 0 Depth 24 EndSubSection EndSection Section "Screen" Identifier "Screen3" Device "Device3" DefaultDepth 24 SubSection "Display" Viewport 0 0 Depth 24 EndSubSection EndSection

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• Why would you dual-run an app on Azure and AWS?

  - by Elton Stoneman

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/EltonStoneman/archive/2013/11/10/why-would-you-dual-run-an-app-on-azure-and-aws.aspxI had this question from a viewer of my Pluralsight course, Implementing the Reactive Manifesto with Azure and AWS, and thought I’d publish the response. So why would you dual-run your cloud app by hosting it on Azure and AWS? Sounds like a lot of extra development and management overhead. Well the most compelling reasons are reliability and portability. In 2012 I was working for a client who was making a big investment in the cloud, and at the end of the year we published their first external API for business partners. It was hosted in Azure and used some really nice features to route back into existing on-premise services. We were able to publish a clean, simple API to partners, and hide away the underlying complexity of the internal services while still leveraging them to do all the work. Two days after we went live, we were hit by the Azure SSL certificate expiry outage, and our API was unavailable for the best part of 3 days. Fortunately we had planned a gradual roll-out to partners, so the impact was minimal, but we’d been intending to ramp up quickly, and if the outage had happened a week or two later we would have been in a very bad place. Not least because our app could only run on Azure, we couldn’t package it up for another service without going back and reworking the code. More recently AWS had an issue with a networking device in one of their data centres which caused an outage that took the best part of a day to resolve. In both scenarios the SLAs are worthless, as you’ll get back a small percentage of your cloud expenditure, which is going to be negligible compared to your costs in dealing with the outage. And if your app is built specifically for AWS or Azure then if there’s an extended outage you can’t just deploy it onto a new set of kit from a different supplier. And the chances are pretty good there will be another extended outage, both for Microsoft and for Amazon. But the chances are small that it will happen to both at the same time. So my basic guidance has been: ignore the SLAs, go for better uptime by using two clouds. As soon as you need to scale beyond a single instance, start by scaling out to another cloud. Then scale out to different data centres in both clouds. Then you’ve got dual-cloud, quadruple-datacentre redundancy, so any more scaling you need can be left to the clouds to auto-scale themselves. By running in both clouds, you’ve made your app portable, so in the highly unlikely event that both AWS and Azure go down in multiple regions, you’ll have a deployment package which will let you spin up a new stack on yet another cloud, without having to rework your solution.

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• SharePoint 2010 Hosting :: How to Enable Office Web Apps on SharePoint 2010

  - by mbridge

  Office Web App is the online version of Microsoft Office 2010 which is very helpful if you are going to use SharePoint 2010 in your organization as it allows you to do basic editing of word document without installing the Office Suite in the client machine. Prerequisites : - Microsoft Server 2008 R2 - Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 or Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 - Microsoft Office Web Apps. If you have installed all the above products, just follow this steps: 1. Go to Central Administration > Click on Manage Service Application. 2. All the menus are not displayed in ribbon Menu format which was first introduced in Office 2007. Click on New > Word Viewing Services ( You can choose PowerPoint or Excel also, steps are same ). This will open a pop window. Adding Services for Office Web Apps 3. Give a Proper Name which can have your companies or project name. 4. Under Application Pool select : SharePoint Web Services Default. 5. Next keep the check box checked which says : Add this service application’s proxy to the farm’s default proxy list. Click Ok Adding Word Viewer as Service Application Office Web Apps as Services in Sharepoint 2010 6. This will install all the Office Web App services required. You can see the name as you gave in the above step. How to Activate Office Web Apps in Site Collection? 1. Go to the site for which you want to activate this feature. 2. Click on Site Action > Site Settings > Site Collection Administrator > Site Collection Features 3. Activate Office Web Apps. Activate Office Web Apps Feature in Site Collection How to make sure Office Web Apps is working for your site collection? 1. Locate any office document you have and click on the smart menu which appears when you hover your mouse on it. Dont double-click as this will launch the document in Office Client if its installed. This feature can be changed. 2. If you see View or Edit in Browser as menu item, your Office Web Apps is configured correctly. View Edit Office Document in Browser Editing Office Document in Browser Another post related SharePoint 2010: 1. How to Configure SharePoint Foundation 2010 for SharePoint Workspace 2010 2. Integrating SharePoint 2010 and SQL 2008 R2

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• Will HTML5 make Silverlight redundant?

  - by Laila

  One of the great features of Adobe AIR v2 that was launched this month was its support for some of the 2008 draft of HTML5. The HTML5 specification was started in 2004, but the full spec will probably not be approved by W3C until around 2022. One might have thought that it would take years yet from now to reach the point where any browsers were remotely HTML5-compliant, but enough of HTML5 is published and agreed to make a lot of it possible, and Safari and Adobe have got there thanks to Apple's open-source WebKit. The race for HTML 5 has been fuelled by the demand by Apple and Google for advanced graphics, typography, animations and transitions without having to rely on third party browser plug-ins such as Adobe Flash or Silverlight. There is good reason for this haste: Flash doesn't support touch-devices and has been slow in supporting hardware video decoders such as H.264. There is a strong requirement to do all that Flash can do in an open-standards way. Those with proprietary solutions remain sniffy. In AIR 2, Adobe pointedly disables the HTML5 and tags that allow basic playing of media content, saying that the specification is not final and there is still no standard for the supported formats, and adding that Safari implements a 'disjoint set' of codecs. Microsoft also has little interest in HTML 5 as it has so much invested in Silverlight. Google stands to gain by the Adobe AIR for Android as it will allow a lot of applications to be migrated easily to the platform, so sees Apple's war on Flash as a way of gaining market share. Why do we care? It is because HTML5/CSS3 provides facilities much far beyond HTML4, bring the reality of browser-based applications a lot closer. Probably most generally useful is the advanced typography: Safari and AIR already both support a way of reflowing text in a container across an arbitrary number of columns; Page-specific fonts can also be specified. Then there is 2D drawing, video, transitions, local storage, AJAX navigation and mutable DOM prototypes. HTML5 is likely to provide base functionality that is required but it is too early to be certain that it will render Flash, Silverlight or JavaFX obsolete. In the meantime, Adobe Air provides the best vehicle for developing HTML5/CSS3 applications without a twinge of worry about browser incompatibilities. Cheers, Laila

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• Is it ok to initialize an RB_ConstraintActor in PostBeginPlay?

  - by Almo

  I have a KActorSpawnable subclass that acts weird. In PostBeginPlay, I initialize an RB_ConstraintActor; the default is not to allow rotation. If I create one in the editor, it's fine, and won't rotate. If I spawn one, it rotates. Here's the class: class QuadForceKActor extends KActorSpawnable placeable; var(Behavior) bool bConstrainRotation; var(Behavior) bool bConstrainX; var(Behavior) bool bConstrainY; var(Behavior) bool bConstrainZ; var RB_ConstraintActor PhysicsConstraintActor; simulated event PostBeginPlay() { Super.PostBeginPlay(); PhysicsConstraintActor = Spawn(class'RB_ConstraintActorSpawnable', self, '', Location, rot(0, 0, 0)); if(bConstrainRotation) { PhysicsConstraintActor.ConstraintSetup.bSwingLimited = true; PhysicsConstraintActor.ConstraintSetup.bTwistLimited = true; } SetLinearConstraints(bConstrainX, bConstrainY, bConstrainZ); PhysicsConstraintActor.InitConstraint(self, None); } function SetLinearConstraints(bool InConstrainX, bool InConstrainY, bool InConstrainZ) { if(InConstrainX) { PhysicsConstraintActor.ConstraintSetup.LinearXSetup.bLimited = 1; } else { PhysicsConstraintActor.ConstraintSetup.LinearXSetup.bLimited = 0; } if(InConstrainY) { PhysicsConstraintActor.ConstraintSetup.LinearYSetup.bLimited = 1; } else { PhysicsConstraintActor.ConstraintSetup.LinearYSetup.bLimited = 0; } if(InConstrainZ) { PhysicsConstraintActor.ConstraintSetup.LinearZSetup.bLimited = 1; } else { PhysicsConstraintActor.ConstraintSetup.LinearZSetup.bLimited = 0; } } DefaultProperties { bConstrainRotation=true bConstrainX=false bConstrainY=false bConstrainZ=false bSafeBaseIfAsleep=false bNoEncroachCheck=false } Here's the code I use to spawn one. It's a subclass of the one above, but it doesn't reference the constraint at all. local QuadForceKCreateBlock BlockActor; BlockActor = spawn(class'QuadForceKCreateBlock', none, 'PowerCreate_Block', BlockLocation(), m_PreparedRotation, , false); BlockActor.SetDuration(m_BlockDuration); BlockActor.StaticMeshComponent.SetNotifyRigidBodyCollision(true); BlockActor.StaticMeshComponent.ScriptRigidBodyCollisionThreshold = 0.001; BlockActor.StaticMeshComponent.SetStaticMesh(m_ValidCreationBlock.StaticMesh); BlockActor.StaticMeshComponent.AddImpulse(m_InitialVelocity); I used to initialize an RB_ConstraintActor where I spawned it from the outside. This worked, which is why I'm pretty sure it has nothing to do with the other code in QuadForceKCreateBlock. I then added the internal constraint in QuadForceKActor for other purposes. When I realized I had two constraints on the CreateBlock doing the same thing, I removed the constraint code from the place where I spawn it. Then it started rotating. Is there a reason I should not be initializing an RB_ConstraintActor in PostBeginPlay? I feel like there's some basic thing about how the engine works that I'm missing.

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