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• Week in Geek: 4chan Falls Victim to DDoS Attack Edition

  - by Asian Angel

  This week we learned how to tweak the low battery action on a Windows 7 laptop, access an eBook collection anywhere in the world, “extend iPad battery life, batch resize photos, & sync massive music collections”, went on a reign of destruction with Snow Crusher, and had fun decorating our desktops with abstract icon collections. Photo by pasukaru76. Random Geek Links We have included extra news article goodness to help you catch up on any developments that you may have missed during the holiday break this past week. Note: The three 27C3 articles listed here represent three different presentations at the 27th Chaos Communication Congress hacker conference. 4chan victim of DDoS as FBI investigates role in PayPal attack Users of 4chan may have gotten a taste of their own medicine after the site was knocked offline by a DDoS attack from an unknown origin early Thursday morning. Report: FBI seizes server in probe of WikiLeaks attacks The FBI has seized a server in Texas as part of its hunt for the groups behind the pro-WikiLeaks denial-of-service attacks launched in December against PayPal, Visa, MasterCard, and others. Mozilla exposes older user-account database Mozilla has disabled 44,000 older user accounts for its Firefox add-ons site after a security researcher found part of a database of the account information on a publicly available server. Data breach affects 4.9 million Honda customers Japanese automaker Honda has put some 2.2 million customers in the United States on a security breach alert after a database containing information on the owners and their cars was hacked. Chinese Trojan discovered in Android games An Android-based Trojan called “Geinimi” has been discovered in the wild and the Trojan is capable of sending personal information to remote servers and exhibits botnet-like behavior. 27C3 presentation claims many mobiles vulnerable to SMS attacks According to security experts, an ‘SMS of death’ threatens to disable many current Sony Ericsson, Samsung, Motorola, Micromax and LG mobiles. 27C3: GSM cell phones even easier to tap Security researchers have demonstrated how open source software on a number of revamped, entry-level cell phones can decrypt and record mobile phone calls in the GSM network. 27C3: danger lurks in PDF documents Security researcher Julia Wolf has pointed out numerous, previously hardly known, security problems in connection with Adobe’s PDF standard. Critical update for WordPress A critical update has been made available for WordPress in the form of version 3.0.4. The update fixes a security bug in WordPress’s KSES library. McAfee Labs Predicts Geolocation, Mobile Devices and Apple Will Top the List of Targets for Emerging Threats in 2011 The list comprises 2010’s most buzzed about platforms and services, including Google’s Android, Apple’s iPhone, foursquare, Google TV and the Mac OS X platform, which are all expected to become major targets for cybercriminals. McAfee Labs also predicts that politically motivated attacks will be on the rise. Windows Phone 7 piracy materializes with FreeMarketplace A proof-of-concept application, FreeMarketplace, that allows any Windows Phone 7 application to be downloaded and installed free of charge has been developed. Empty email accounts, and some bad buzz for Hotmail In the past few days, a number of Hotmail users have been complaining about a rather disconcerting issue: their Hotmail accounts, some up to 10 years old, appear completely empty.  No emails, no folders, nothing, just what appears to be a new account. Reports: Nintendo warns of 3DS risk for kids Nintendo has reportedly issued a warning that the 3DS, its eagerly awaited glasses-free 3D portable gaming device, should not be used by children under 6 when the gadget is in 3D-viewing mode. Google eyes ‘cloaking’ as next antispam target Google plans to take a closer look at the practice of “cloaking,” or presenting one look to a Googlebot crawling one’s site while presenting another look to users. Facebook, Twitter stock trading drawing SEC eye? The high degree of investor interest in shares of hot Silicon Valley companies that aren’t yet publicly traded–like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Zynga–may be leading to scrutiny from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Random TinyHacker Links Photo by jcraveiro. Exciting Software Set for Release in 2011 A few bloggers from great websites such as How-To Geek, Guiding Tech and 7 Tutorials took the time to sit down and talk about their software wishes for 2011. Take the time to read it and share… Wikileaks Infopr0n An infographic detailing the quest to plug WikiLeaks. The New York Times Guide to Mobile Apps A growing collection of all mobile app coverage by the New York Times as well as lists of favorite apps from Times writers. 7,000,000,000 (Video) A fascinating look at the world’s population via National Geographic Magazine. Super User Questions Check out the great answers to these hot questions from Super User. How to use a Personal computer as a Linux web server for development purposes? How to link processing power of old computers together? Free virtualization tool for testing suspicious files? Why do some actions not work with Remote Desktop? What is the simplest way to send a large batch of pictures to a distant friend or colleague? How-To Geek Weekly Article Recap Had a busy week and need to get caught up on your HTG reading? Then sit back and relax while enjoying these hot posts full of how-to roundup goodness. The 50 Best How-To Geek Windows Articles of 2010 The 20 Best How-To Geek Explainer Topics for 2010 The 20 Best How-To Geek Linux Articles of 2010 How to Search Just the Site You’re Viewing Using Google Search Ask the Readers: Backing Your Files Up – Local Storage versus the Cloud One Year Ago on How-To Geek Need more how-to geekiness for your weekend? Then look through this great batch of articles from one year ago that focus on dual-booting and O.S. installation goodness. Dual Boot Your Pre-Installed Windows 7 Computer with Vista Dual Boot Your Pre-Installed Windows 7 Computer with XP How To Setup a USB Flash Drive to Install Windows 7 Dual Boot Your Pre-Installed Windows 7 Computer with Ubuntu Easily Install Ubuntu Linux with Windows Using the Wubi Installer The Geek Note We hope that you and your families have had a terrific holiday break as everyone prepares to return to work and school this week. Remember to keep those great tips coming in to us at [email protected]! Photo by pjbeardsley. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC The 20 Best How-To Geek Linux Articles of 2010 The 50 Best How-To Geek Windows Articles of 2010 The 20 Best How-To Geek Explainer Topics for 2010 How to Disable Caps Lock Key in Windows 7 or Vista How to Use the Avira Rescue CD to Clean Your Infected PC The Complete List of iPad Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials Tune Pop Enhances Android Music Notifications Another Busy Night in Gotham City Wallpaper Classic Super Mario Brothers Theme for Chrome and Iron Experimental Firefox Builds Put Tabs on the Title Bar (Available for Download) Android Trojan Found in the Wild Chaos, Panic, and Disorder Wallpaper

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• Microsoft, please help me diagnose TFS Administration permission issues!

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  I recently had a fun time trying to debug a permission issue I ran into using TFS 2010’s TfsConfig. Update 5th March 2010 – In its style of true excellence my company has added rant to its “Suggestions for Better TFS”. <rant> I was trying to run the TfsConfig tool and I kept getting the message: “TF55038: You don't have sufficient privileges to run this tool. Contact your Team Foundation system administrator." This message made me think that it was something to do with the Install permissions as it is always recommended to use a single account to do every install of TFS. I did not install the original TFS on our network and my account was not used to do the TFS2010 install. But I did do the upgrade from 2010 beta 2 to 2010 RC with my current account. So I proceeded to do some checking: Am I in the administrators group on the server? Figure: Yes, I am in the administrators group on the server Am I in the Administration Console users list? Figure: Yes, I am in the Administration Console users list Have I reapplied the permissions in the Administration Console users list ticking all the options? Figure: Make sure you check all of the boxed if you want to have all the admin options Figure: Yes, I have made sure that all my options are correct. Am I in the Team Foundation administrators group? Figure: Yes, I am in the Team Foundation Administrators group Is my account explicitly SysAdmin on the Database server? Figure: Yes, I do have explicit SysAdmin on the database Can you guess what the problem was? The command line window was not running as the administrator! As with most other applications there should be an explicit error message that states: "You are not currently running in administrator mode; please restart the command line with elevated privileges!" This would have saved me 30 minutes, although I agree that I should change my name to Muppet and just be done with it. </rant>   Technorati Tags: Visual Studio ALM,Administration,Team Foundation Server Admin Console,TFS Admin Console

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• An Open Letter from Lyle Ekdahl, Group Vice President and General Manager, Oracle's JD Edwards

  - by Brian Dayton

  From Lyle Ekdahl, Group Vice President and General Manager, Oracle's JD Edwards As you may have heard, we recently announced some changes to the way Oracle will offer licensing of technology products with JD Edwards EnterpriseOne. Specifically, we have withdrawn from new sales the product known as JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Technology Foundation ("Blue Stack"). Our motivation for this change is simply to streamline licensing for our customers. Going forward, customers will license Oracle products from Oracle and IBM products from IBM. Customers who are currently licensed for Technology Foundation will continue to receive support--unchanged--through September 30, 2016. This announcement affects how customers license these IBM products; it does not affect Oracle's certification roadmap for IBM products with JD Edwards EnterpriseOne. Customers who are currently running their JD Edwards EnterpriseOne infrastructure using IBM platform components can continue to do so regardless of whether they license these components via Technology Foundation or directly from IBM. New customers choosing to run JD Edwards EnterpriseOne on IBM technology should license JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Core Tools from Oracle while licensing Infrastructure and any licenses of IBM products from IBM. For more information about this announcement, customers should refer to My Oracle Support article 1232453.1 Questions included in the "Frequently Asked Questions" document on My Oracle Support: Is Oracle dropping support for IBM DB2 and IBM WebSphere with JD Edwards EnterpriseOne? No. This announcement affects how customers license these IBM products; it does not affect Oracle's certification roadmap for these products. The JD Edwards EnterpriseOne matrix of supported databases, web servers, and portals remains unchanged, including planned support for IBM DB2, IBM WebSphere Application Server, and IBM WebSphere Portal. Customers who are currently running their JD Edwards EnterpriseOne infrastructure using IBM platform components can continue to do so regardless of whether they license these components via Technology Foundation or directly from IBM. As always, the timing and versions of such third-party certifications remain at Oracle's discretion. Does this announcement mean that Oracle is withdrawing support for JD Edwards EnterpriseOne on the IBM i platform? Absolutely not. JD Edwards EnterpriseOne support on the IBM i platform remains unchanged. This announcement simply states that customers will acquire Oracle products from Oracle and IBM products from IBM. In fact, as evidenced by the recent "IBM i Solution Edition for JD Edwards" offering, IBM and the JD Edwards product teams continue to innovate and offer attractive, cost-competitive solutions to the ERP marketplace. For more information about this offering see: http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/i/advantages/oracle/. I hope this clarifies any concerns. Let me know if you have any additional questions or concerns. -Lyle

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• Scrum in 5 Minutes

  - by Stephen.Walther

  The goal of this blog entry is to explain the basic concepts of Scrum in less than five minutes. You learn how Scrum can help a team of developers to successfully complete a complex software project. Product Backlog and the Product Owner Imagine that you are part of a team which needs to create a new website – for example, an e-commerce website. You have an overwhelming amount of work to do. You need to build (or possibly buy) a shopping cart, install an SSL certificate, create a product catalog, create a Facebook page, and at least a hundred other things that you have not thought of yet. According to Scrum, the first thing you should do is create a list. Place the highest priority items at the top of the list and the lower priority items lower in the list. For example, creating the shopping cart and buying the domain name might be high priority items and creating a Facebook page might be a lower priority item. In Scrum, this list is called the Product Backlog. How do you prioritize the items in the Product Backlog? Different stakeholders in the project might have different priorities. Gary, your division VP, thinks that it is crucial that the e-commerce site has a mobile app. Sally, your direct manager, thinks taking advantage of new HTML5 features is much more important. Multiple people are pulling you in different directions. According to Scrum, it is important that you always designate one person, and only one person, as the Product Owner. The Product Owner is the person who decides what items should be added to the Product Backlog and the priority of the items in the Product Backlog. The Product Owner could be the customer who is paying the bills, the project manager who is responsible for delivering the project, or a customer representative. The critical point is that the Product Owner must always be a single person and that single person has absolute authority over the Product Backlog. Sprints and the Sprint Backlog So now the developer team has a prioritized list of items and they can start work. The team starts implementing the first item in the Backlog — the shopping cart — and the team is making good progress. Unfortunately, however, half-way through the work of implementing the shopping cart, the Product Owner changes his mind. The Product Owner decides that it is much more important to create the product catalog before the shopping cart. With some frustration, the team switches their developmental efforts to focus on implementing the product catalog. However, part way through completing this work, once again the Product Owner changes his mind about the highest priority item. Getting work done when priorities are constantly shifting is frustrating for the developer team and it results in lower productivity. At the same time, however, the Product Owner needs to have absolute authority over the priority of the items which need to get done. Scrum solves this conflict with the concept of Sprints. In Scrum, a developer team works in Sprints. At the beginning of a Sprint the developers and the Product Owner agree on the items from the backlog which they will complete during the Sprint. This subset of items from the Product Backlog becomes the Sprint Backlog. During the Sprint, the Product Owner is not allowed to change the items in the Sprint Backlog. In other words, the Product Owner cannot shift priorities on the developer team during the Sprint. Different teams use Sprints of different lengths such as one month Sprints, two-week Sprints, and one week Sprints. For high-stress, time critical projects, teams typically choose shorter sprints such as one week sprints. For more mature projects, longer one month sprints might be more appropriate. A team can pick whatever Sprint length makes sense for them just as long as the team is consistent. You should pick a Sprint length and stick with it. Daily Scrum During a Sprint, the developer team needs to have meetings to coordinate their work on completing the items in the Sprint Backlog. For example, the team needs to discuss who is working on what and whether any blocking issues have been discovered. Developers hate meetings (well, sane developers hate meetings). Meetings take developers away from their work of actually implementing stuff as opposed to talking about implementing stuff. However, a developer team which never has meetings and never coordinates their work also has problems. For example, Fred might get stuck on a programming problem for days and never reach out for help even though Tom (who sits in the cubicle next to him) has already solved the very same problem. Or, both Ted and Fred might have started working on the same item from the Sprint Backlog at the same time. In Scrum, these conflicting needs – limiting meetings but enabling team coordination – are resolved with the idea of the Daily Scrum. The Daily Scrum is a meeting for coordinating the work of the developer team which happens once a day. To keep the meeting short, each developer answers only the following three questions: 1. What have you done since yesterday? 2. What do you plan to do today? 3. Any impediments in your way? During the Daily Scrum, developers are not allowed to talk about issues with their cat, do demos of their latest work, or tell heroic stories of programming problems overcome. The meeting must be kept short — typically about 15 minutes. Issues which come up during the Daily Scrum should be discussed in separate meetings which do not involve the whole developer team. Stories and Tasks Items in the Product or Sprint Backlog – such as building a shopping cart or creating a Facebook page – are often referred to as User Stories or Stories. The Stories are created by the Product Owner and should represent some business need. Unlike the Product Owner, the developer team needs to think about how a Story should be implemented. At the beginning of a Sprint, the developer team takes the Stories from the Sprint Backlog and breaks the stories into tasks. For example, the developer team might take the Create a Shopping Cart story and break it into the following tasks: · Enable users to add and remote items from shopping cart · Persist the shopping cart to database between visits · Redirect user to checkout page when Checkout button is clicked During the Daily Scrum, members of the developer team volunteer to complete the tasks required to implement the next Story in the Sprint Backlog. When a developer talks about what he did yesterday or plans to do tomorrow then the developer should be referring to a task. Stories are owned by the Product Owner and a story is all about business value. In contrast, the tasks are owned by the developer team and a task is all about implementation details. A story might take several days or weeks to complete. A task is something which a developer can complete in less than a day. Some teams get lazy about breaking stories into tasks. Neglecting to break stories into tasks can lead to “Never Ending Stories” If you don’t break a story into tasks, then you can’t know how much of a story has actually been completed because you don’t have a clear idea about the implementation steps required to complete the story. Scrumboard During the Daily Scrum, the developer team uses a Scrumboard to coordinate their work. A Scrumboard contains a list of the stories for the current Sprint, the tasks associated with each Story, and the state of each task. The developer team uses the Scrumboard so everyone on the team can see, at a glance, what everyone is working on. As a developer works on a task, the task moves from state to state and the state of the task is updated on the Scrumboard. Common task states are ToDo, In Progress, and Done. Some teams include additional task states such as Needs Review or Needs Testing. Some teams use a physical Scrumboard. In that case, you use index cards to represent the stories and the tasks and you tack the index cards onto a physical board. Using a physical Scrumboard has several disadvantages. A physical Scrumboard does not work well with a distributed team – for example, it is hard to share the same physical Scrumboard between Boston and Seattle. Also, generating reports from a physical Scrumboard is more difficult than generating reports from an online Scrumboard. Estimating Stories and Tasks Stakeholders in a project, the people investing in a project, need to have an idea of how a project is progressing and when the project will be completed. For example, if you are investing in creating an e-commerce site, you need to know when the site can be launched. It is not enough to just say that “the project will be done when it is done” because the stakeholders almost certainly have a limited budget to devote to the project. The people investing in the project cannot determine the business value of the project unless they can have an estimate of how long it will take to complete the project. Developers hate to give estimates. The reason that developers hate to give estimates is that the estimates are almost always completely made up. For example, you really don’t know how long it takes to build a shopping cart until you finish building a shopping cart, and at that point, the estimate is no longer useful. The problem is that writing code is much more like Finding a Cure for Cancer than Building a Brick Wall. Building a brick wall is very straightforward. After you learn how to add one brick to a wall, you understand everything that is involved in adding a brick to a wall. There is no additional research required and no surprises. If, on the other hand, I assembled a team of scientists and asked them to find a cure for cancer, and estimate exactly how long it will take, they would have no idea. The problem is that there are too many unknowns. I don’t know how to cure cancer, I need to do a lot of research here, so I cannot even begin to estimate how long it will take. So developers hate to provide estimates, but the Product Owner and other product stakeholders, have a legitimate need for estimates. Scrum resolves this conflict by using the idea of Story Points. Different teams use different units to represent Story Points. For example, some teams use shirt sizes such as Small, Medium, Large, and X-Large. Some teams prefer to use Coffee Cup sizes such as Tall, Short, and Grande. Finally, some teams like to use numbers from the Fibonacci series. These alternative units are converted into a Story Point value. Regardless of the type of unit which you use to represent Story Points, the goal is the same. Instead of attempting to estimate a Story in hours (which is doomed to failure), you use a much less fine-grained measure of work. A developer team is much more likely to be able to estimate that a Story is Small or X-Large than the exact number of hours required to complete the story. So you can think of Story Points as a compromise between the needs of the Product Owner and the developer team. When a Sprint starts, the developer team devotes more time to thinking about the Stories in a Sprint and the developer team breaks the Stories into Tasks. In Scrum, you estimate the work required to complete a Story by using Story Points and you estimate the work required to complete a task by using hours. The difference between Stories and Tasks is that you don’t create a task until you are just about ready to start working on a task. A task is something that you should be able to create within a day, so you have a much better chance of providing an accurate estimate of the work required to complete a task than a story. Burndown Charts In Scrum, you use Burndown charts to represent the remaining work on a project. You use Release Burndown charts to represent the overall remaining work for a project and you use Sprint Burndown charts to represent the overall remaining work for a particular Sprint. You create a Release Burndown chart by calculating the remaining number of uncompleted Story Points for the entire Product Backlog every day. The vertical axis represents Story Points and the horizontal axis represents time. A Sprint Burndown chart is similar to a Release Burndown chart, but it focuses on the remaining work for a particular Sprint. There are two different types of Sprint Burndown charts. You can either represent the remaining work in a Sprint with Story Points or with task hours (the following image, taken from Wikipedia, uses hours). When each Product Backlog Story is completed, the Release Burndown chart slopes down. When each Story or task is completed, the Sprint Burndown chart slopes down. Burndown charts typically do not always slope down over time. As new work is added to the Product Backlog, the Release Burndown chart slopes up. If new tasks are discovered during a Sprint, the Sprint Burndown chart will also slope up. The purpose of a Burndown chart is to give you a way to track team progress over time. If, halfway through a Sprint, the Sprint Burndown chart is still climbing a hill then you know that you are in trouble. Team Velocity Stakeholders in a project always want more work done faster. For example, the Product Owner for the e-commerce site wants the website to launch before tomorrow. Developers tend to be overly optimistic. Rarely do developers acknowledge the physical limitations of reality. So Project stakeholders and the developer team often collude to delude themselves about how much work can be done and how quickly. Too many software projects begin in a state of optimism and end in frustration as deadlines zoom by. In Scrum, this problem is overcome by calculating a number called the Team Velocity. The Team Velocity is a measure of the average number of Story Points which a team has completed in previous Sprints. Knowing the Team Velocity is important during the Sprint Planning meeting when the Product Owner and the developer team work together to determine the number of stories which can be completed in the next Sprint. If you know the Team Velocity then you can avoid committing to do more work than the team has been able to accomplish in the past, and your team is much more likely to complete all of the work required for the next Sprint. Scrum Master There are three roles in Scrum: the Product Owner, the developer team, and the Scrum Master. I’v e already discussed the Product Owner. The Product Owner is the one and only person who maintains the Product Backlog and prioritizes the stories. I’ve also described the role of the developer team. The members of the developer team do the work of implementing the stories by breaking the stories into tasks. The final role, which I have not discussed, is the role of the Scrum Master. The Scrum Master is responsible for ensuring that the team is following the Scrum process. For example, the Scrum Master is responsible for making sure that there is a Daily Scrum meeting and that everyone answers the standard three questions. The Scrum Master is also responsible for removing (non-technical) impediments which the team might encounter. For example, if the team cannot start work until everyone installs the latest version of Microsoft Visual Studio then the Scrum Master has the responsibility of working with management to get the latest version of Visual Studio as quickly as possible. The Scrum Master can be a member of the developer team. Furthermore, different people can take on the role of the Scrum Master over time. The Scrum Master, however, cannot be the same person as the Product Owner. Using SonicAgile SonicAgile (SonicAgile.com) is an online tool which you can use to manage your projects using Scrum. You can use the SonicAgile Product Backlog to create a prioritized list of stories. You can estimate the size of the Stories using different Story Point units such as Shirt Sizes and Coffee Cup sizes. You can use SonicAgile during the Sprint Planning meeting to select the Stories that you want to complete during a particular Sprint. You can configure Sprints to be any length of time. SonicAgile calculates Team Velocity automatically and displays a warning when you add too many stories to a Sprint. In other words, it warns you when it thinks you are overcommitting in a Sprint. SonicAgile also includes a Scrumboard which displays the list of Stories selected for a Sprint and the tasks associated with each story. You can drag tasks from one task state to another. Finally, SonicAgile enables you to generate Release Burndown and Sprint Burndown charts. You can use these charts to view the progress of your team. To learn more about SonicAgile, visit SonicAgile.com. Summary In this post, I described many of the basic concepts of Scrum. You learned how a Product Owner uses a Product Backlog to create a prioritized list of tasks. I explained why work is completed in Sprints so the developer team can be more productive. I also explained how a developer team uses the daily scrum to coordinate their work. You learned how the developer team uses a Scrumboard to see, at a glance, who is working on what and the state of each task. I also discussed Burndown charts. You learned how you can use both Release and Sprint Burndown charts to track team progress in completing a project. Finally, I described the crucial role of the Scrum Master – the person who is responsible for ensuring that the rules of Scrum are being followed. My goal was not to describe all of the concepts of Scrum. This post was intended to be an introductory overview. For a comprehensive explanation of Scrum, I recommend reading Ken Schwaber’s book Agile Project Management with Scrum: http://www.amazon.com/Agile-Project-Management-Microsoft-Professional/dp/073561993X/ref=la_B001H6ODMC_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1345224000&sr=1-1

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• The right way to start out in game development/design [closed]

  - by Marco Sacristão

  Greetings everyone I'm a 19 year old student looking for some help in the field of game development. This question may or may not seem a bit overused, but the fact is that game development has been my life long dream, and after several hours of search I've realized that I've been going in circles for the past three or four months whilst doing such research on how to really get down and dirty with game development, therefor I decided to ask you guys if you could help me out at all. Let me start off with some information about me and things i've already learned about GameDev which might help you out on helping me out (wordplay!): I'm not an expert programmer, but I do have knowledge on how to program in several languages including C and Java (Currently learning Java in my degree in Computer Engineering), but my methodology might not be most correct in terms of syntax (hence my difficulty in starting out, i'm afraid that the starting point might not be the most correct, and it would deploy a wrongful development methodology that would be to corrected later on, in terms of game development or other projects). I have yet to work in a project as large as a game, never in my learning curve of programming I've done a project to the scale of a video game, only very small software (PHP Front-ends and Back-ends, with some basic JQuery and CSS knowledge). I'm not the biggest mathematician or physicist, but I already know that is not a problem, because there are several game engines already available for use and integration with home-made projects (Box2D, etc). I've also learned about some libraries that could be included in said projects, to ease out some process in game development, like SDL for example. I do not know how sprites, states, particles or any specific game-related techniques work. With that being said, you can see that I have some ideas on game development, but I have absolutely no clue on how to design and produce a game, or even how game-like mechanics work. It does not have to be a complex game just to start out, I'd rather learn the basic of game design (Like 2D drawing, tiling, object collision) and test that out in a language that I feel comfortable in which could be later on migrated to other platforms, as long that what I've learned is the correct way to do things, and not just something that I've learned from some guy on Youtube by replicating that code on the video. I'm sorry if my question is not in the best format possible, but I've got so many questions on my mind that are still un-answered that I don't know were to start! Thank you for reading.

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• Chock-full of Identity Customers at Oracle OpenWorld

  - by Tanu Sood

    Oracle Openworld (OOW) 2012 kicks off this coming Sunday. Oracle OpenWorld is known to bring in Oracle customers, organizations big and small, from all over the world. And, Identity Management is no exception. If you are looking to catch up with Oracle Identity Management customers, hear first-hand about their implementation experiences and discuss industry trends, business drivers, solutions and more at OOW, here are some sessions we recommend you attend: Monday, October 1, 2012 CON9405: Trends in Identity Management 10:45 a.m. – 11:45 a.m., Moscone West 3003 Subject matter experts from Kaiser Permanente and SuperValu share the stage with Amit Jasuja, Snior Vice President, Oracle Identity Management and Security to discuss how the latest advances in Identity Management are helping customers address emerging requirements for securely enabling cloud, social and mobile environments. CON9492: Simplifying your Identity Management Implementation 3:15 p.m. – 4:15 p.m., Moscone West 3008 Implementation experts from British Telecom, Kaiser Permanente and UPMC participate in a panel to discuss best practices, key strategies and lessons learned based on their own experiences. Attendees will hear first-hand what they can do to streamline and simplify their identity management implementation framework for a quick return-on-investment and maximum efficiency. CON9444: Modernized and Complete Access Management 4:45 p.m. – 5:45 p.m., Moscone West 3008 We have come a long way from the days of web single sign-on addressing the core business requirements. Today, as technology and business evolves, organizations are seeking new capabilities like federation, token services, fine grained authorizations, web fraud prevention and strong authentication. This session will explore the emerging requirements for access management, what a complete solution is like, complemented with real-world customer case studies from ETS, Kaiser Permanente and TURKCELL and product demonstrations. Tuesday, October 2, 2012 CON9437: Mobile Access Management 10:15 a.m. – 11:15 a.m., Moscone West 3022 With more than 5 billion mobile devices on the planet and an increasing number of users using their own devices to access corporate data and applications, securely extending identity management to mobile devices has become a hot topic. This session will feature Identity Management evangelists from companies like Intuit, NetApp and Toyota to discuss how to extend your existing identity management infrastructure and policies to securely and seamlessly enable mobile user access. CON9491: Enhancing the End-User Experience with Oracle Identity Governance applications 11:45 a.m. – 12:45 p.m., Moscone West 3008 As organizations seek to encourage more and more user self service, business users are now primary end users for identity management installations.  Join experts from Visa and Oracle as they explore how Oracle Identity Governance solutions deliver complete identity administration and governance solutions with support for emerging requirements like cloud identities and mobile devices. CON9447: Enabling Access for Hundreds of Millions of Users 1:15 p.m. – 2:15 p.m., Moscone West 3008 Dealing with scale problems? Looking to address identity management requirements with million or so users in mind? Then take note of Cisco’s implementation. Join this session to hear first-hand how Cisco tackled identity management and scaled their implementation to bolster security and enforce compliance. CON9465: Next Generation Directory – Oracle Unified Directory 5:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m., Moscone West 3008 Get the 360 degrees perspective from a solution provider, implementation services partner and the customer in this session to learn how the latest Oracle Unified Directory solutions can help you build a directory infrastructure that is optimized to support cloud, mobile and social networking and yet deliver on scale and performance. Wednesday, October 3, 2012 CON9494: Sun2Oracle: Identity Management Platform Transformation 11:45 a.m. – 12:45 p.m., Moscone West 3008 Sun customers are actively defining strategies for how they will modernize their identity deployments. Learn how customers like Avea and SuperValu are leveraging their Sun investment, evaluating areas of expansion/improvement and building momentum. CON9631: Entitlement-centric Access to SOA and Cloud Services 11:45 a.m. – 12:45 p.m., Marriott Marquis, Salon 7 How do you enforce that a junior trader can submit 10 trades/day, with a total value of $5M, if market volatility is low? How can hide sensitive patient information from clerical workers but make it visible to specialists as long as consent has been given or there is an emergency? How do you externalize such entitlements to allow dynamic changes without having to touch the application code? In this session, Uberether and HerbaLife take the stage with Oracle to demonstrate how you can enforce such entitlements on a service not just within your intranet but also right at the perimeter. CON3957 - Delivering Secure Wi-Fi on the Tube as an Olympics Legacy from London 2012 11:45 a.m. – 12:45 p.m., Moscone West 3003 In this session, Virgin Media, the U.K.’s first combined provider of broadband, TV, mobile, and home phone services, shares how it is providing free secure Wi-Fi services to the London Underground, using Oracle Virtual Directory and Oracle Entitlements Server, leveraging back-end legacy systems that were never designed to be externalized. As an Olympics 2012 legacy, the Oracle architecture will form a platform to be consumed by other Virgin Media services such as video on demand. CON9493: Identity Management and the Cloud 1:15 p.m. – 2:15 p.m., Moscone West 3008 Security is the number one barrier to cloud service adoption.  Not so for industry leading companies like SaskTel, ConAgra foods and UPMC. This session will explore how these organizations are using Oracle Identity with cloud services and how some are offering identity management as a cloud service. CON9624: Real-Time External Authorization for Middleware, Applications, and Databases 3:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m., Moscone West 3008 As organizations seek to grant access to broader and more diverse user populations, the importance of centrally defined and applied authorization policies become critical; both to identify who has access to what and to improve the end user experience.  This session will explore how customers are using attribute and role-based access to achieve these goals. CON9625: Taking control of WebCenter Security 5:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m., Moscone West 3008 Many organizations are extending WebCenter in a business to business scenario requiring secure identification and authorization of business partners and their users. Leveraging LADWP’s use case, this session will focus on how customers are leveraging, securing and providing access control to Oracle WebCenter portal and mobile solutions. Thursday, October 4, 2012 CON9662: Securing Oracle Applications with the Oracle Enterprise Identity Management Platform 2:15 p.m. – 3:15 p.m., Moscone West 3008 Oracle Enterprise identity Management solutions are designed to secure access and simplify compliance to Oracle Applications.  Whether you are an EBS customer looking to upgrade from Oracle Single Sign-on or a Fusion Application customer seeking to leverage the Identity instance as an enterprise security platform, this session with Qualcomm and Oracle will help you understand how to get the most out of your investment. And here’s the complete listing of all the Identity Management sessions at Oracle OpenWorld.

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• help with fixing fwts errors log

  - by jasmines

  Here is an extract of results.log: MTRR validation. Test 1 of 3: Validate the kernel MTRR IOMEM setup. FAILED [MEDIUM] MTRRIncorrectAttr: Test 1, Memory range 0xc0000000 to 0xdfffffff (PCI Bus 0000:00) has incorrect attribute Write-Combining. FAILED [MEDIUM] MTRRIncorrectAttr: Test 1, Memory range 0xfee01000 to 0xffffffff (PCI Bus 0000:00) has incorrect attribute Write-Protect. ==================================================================================================== Test 1 of 1: Kernel log error check. Kernel message: [ 0.208079] [Firmware Bug]: ACPI: BIOS _OSI(Linux) query ignored ADVICE: This is not exactly a failure mode but a warning from the kernel. The _OSI() method has implemented a match to the 'Linux' query in the DSDT and this is redundant because the ACPI driver matches onto the Windows _OSI strings by default. FAILED [HIGH] KlogACPIErrorMethodExecutionParse: Test 1, HIGH Kernel message: [ 3.512783] ACPI Error : Method parse/execution failed [\_SB_.PCI0.GFX0._DOD] (Node f7425858), AE_AML_PACKAGE_LIMIT (20110623/psparse-536) ADVICE: This is a bug picked up by the kernel, but as yet, the firmware test suite has no diagnostic advice for this particular problem. Found 1 unique errors in kernel log. ==================================================================================================== Check if system is using latest microcode. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cannot read microcode file /usr/share/misc/intel-microcode.dat. Aborted test, initialisation failed. ==================================================================================================== MSR register tests. FAILED [MEDIUM] MSRCPUsInconsistent: Test 1, MSR SYSENTER_ESP (0x175) has 1 inconsistent values across 2 CPUs for (shift: 0 mask: 0xffffffffffffffff). MSR CPU 0 -> 0xf7bb9c40 vs CPU 1 -> 0xf7bc7c40 FAILED [MEDIUM] MSRCPUsInconsistent: Test 1, MSR MISC_ENABLE (0x1a0) has 1 inconsistent values across 2 CPUs for (shift: 0 mask: 0x400c51889). MSR CPU 0 -> 0x850088 vs CPU 1 -> 0x850089 ==================================================================================================== Checks firmware has set PCI Express MaxReadReq to a higher value on non-motherboard devices. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Test 1 of 1: Check firmware settings MaxReadReq for PCI Express devices. MaxReadReq for pci://00:00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 03) is low (128) [Audio device]. MaxReadReq for pci://00:02:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 5100 AGN [Shiloh] Network Connection is low (128) [Network controller]. FAILED [LOW] LowMaxReadReq: Test 1, 2 devices have low MaxReadReq settings. Firmware may have configured these too low. ADVICE: The MaxReadRequest size is set too low and will affect performance. It will provide excellent bus sharing at the cost of bus data transfer rates. Although not a critical issue, it may be worth considering setting the MaxReadRequest size to 256 or 512 to increase throughput on the PCI Express bus. Some drivers (for example the Brocade Fibre Channel driver) allow one to override the firmware settings. Where possible, this BIOS configuration setting is worth increasing it a little more for better performance at a small reduction of bus sharing. ==================================================================================================== PCIe ASPM check. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Test 1 of 2: PCIe ASPM ACPI test. PCIE ASPM is not controlled by Linux kernel. ADVICE: BIOS reports that Linux kernel should not modify ASPM settings that BIOS configured. It can be intentional because hardware vendors identified some capability bugs between the motherboard and the add-on cards. Test 2 of 2: PCIe ASPM registers test. WARNING: Test 2, RP 00h:1Ch.01h L0s not enabled. WARNING: Test 2, RP 00h:1Ch.01h L1 not enabled. WARNING: Test 2, Device 02h:00h.00h L0s not enabled. WARNING: Test 2, Device 02h:00h.00h L1 not enabled. PASSED: Test 2, PCIE aspm setting matched was matched. WARNING: Test 2, RP 00h:1Ch.05h L0s not enabled. WARNING: Test 2, RP 00h:1Ch.05h L1 not enabled. WARNING: Test 2, Device 85h:00h.00h L0s not enabled. WARNING: Test 2, Device 85h:00h.00h L1 not enabled. PASSED: Test 2, PCIE aspm setting matched was matched. ==================================================================================================== Extract and analyse Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI). Test 1 of 2: Check Windows Management Instrumentation in DSDT Found WMI Method WMAA with GUID: 5FB7F034-2C63-45E9-BE91-3D44E2C707E4, Instance 0x01 Found WMI Event, Notifier ID: 0x80, GUID: 95F24279-4D7B-4334-9387-ACCDC67EF61C, Instance 0x01 PASSED: Test 1, GUID 95F24279-4D7B-4334-9387-ACCDC67EF61C is handled by driver hp-wmi (Vendor: HP). Found WMI Event, Notifier ID: 0xa0, GUID: 2B814318-4BE8-4707-9D84-A190A859B5D0, Instance 0x01 FAILED [MEDIUM] WMIUnknownGUID: Test 1, GUID 2B814318-4BE8-4707-9D84-A190A859B5D0 is unknown to the kernel, a driver may need to be implemented for this GUID. ADVICE: A WMI driver probably needs to be written for this event. It can checked for using: wmi_has_guid("2B814318-4BE8-4707-9D84-A190A859B5D0"). One can install a notify handler using wmi_install_notify_handler("2B814318-4BE8-4707-9D84-A190A859B5D0", handler, NULL). http://lwn.net/Articles/391230 describes how to write an appropriate driver. Found WMI Object, Object ID AB, GUID: 05901221-D566-11D1-B2F0-00A0C9062910, Instance 0x01, Flags: 00 Found WMI Method WMBA with GUID: 1F4C91EB-DC5C-460B-951D-C7CB9B4B8D5E, Instance 0x01 Found WMI Object, Object ID BC, GUID: 2D114B49-2DFB-4130-B8FE-4A3C09E75133, Instance 0x7f, Flags: 00 Found WMI Object, Object ID BD, GUID: 988D08E3-68F4-4C35-AF3E-6A1B8106F83C, Instance 0x19, Flags: 00 Found WMI Object, Object ID BE, GUID: 14EA9746-CE1F-4098-A0E0-7045CB4DA745, Instance 0x01, Flags: 00 Found WMI Object, Object ID BF, GUID: 322F2028-0F84-4901-988E-015176049E2D, Instance 0x01, Flags: 00 Found WMI Object, Object ID BG, GUID: 8232DE3D-663D-4327-A8F4-E293ADB9BF05, Instance 0x01, Flags: 00 Found WMI Object, Object ID BH, GUID: 8F1F6436-9F42-42C8-BADC-0E9424F20C9A, Instance 0x00, Flags: 00 Found WMI Object, Object ID BI, GUID: 8F1F6435-9F42-42C8-BADC-0E9424F20C9A, Instance 0x00, Flags: 00 Found WMI Method WMAC with GUID: 7391A661-223A-47DB-A77A-7BE84C60822D, Instance 0x01 Found WMI Object, Object ID BJ, GUID: DF4E63B6-3BBC-4858-9737-C74F82F821F3, Instance 0x05, Flags: 00 ==================================================================================================== Disassemble DSDT to check for _OSI("Linux"). ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Test 1 of 1: Disassemble DSDT to check for _OSI("Linux"). This is not strictly a failure mode, it just alerts one that this has been defined in the DSDT and probably should be avoided since the Linux ACPI driver matches onto the Windows _OSI strings { If (_OSI ("Linux")) { Store (0x03E8, OSYS) } If (_OSI ("Windows 2001")) { Store (0x07D1, OSYS) } If (_OSI ("Windows 2001 SP1")) { Store (0x07D1, OSYS) } If (_OSI ("Windows 2001 SP2")) { Store (0x07D2, OSYS) } If (_OSI ("Windows 2006")) { Store (0x07D6, OSYS) } If (LAnd (MPEN, LEqual (OSYS, 0x07D1))) { TRAP (0x01, 0x48) } TRAP (0x03, 0x35) } WARNING: Test 1, DSDT implements a deprecated _OSI("Linux") test. ==================================================================================================== 0 passed, 0 failed, 1 warnings, 0 aborted, 0 skipped, 0 info only. ==================================================================================================== ACPI DSDT Method Semantic Tests. ACPICA Exception AE_AML_INFINITE_LOOP during execution of method COMP Failed to install global event handler. Test 22 of 93: Check _PSR (Power Source). ACPICA Exception AE_AML_INFINITE_LOOP during execution of method COMP WARNING: Test 22, Detected an infinite loop when evaluating method '\_SB_.AC__._PSR'. ADVICE: This may occur because we are emulating the execution in this test environment and cannot handshake with the embedded controller or jump to the BIOS via SMIs. However, the fact that AML code spins forever means that lockup conditions are not being checked for in the AML bytecode. PASSED: Test 22, \_SB_.AC__._PSR correctly acquired and released locks 16 times. Test 35 of 93: Check _TMP (Thermal Zone Current Temp). ACPICA Exception AE_AML_INFINITE_LOOP during execution of method COMP WARNING: Test 35, Detected an infinite loop when evaluating method '\_TZ_.DTSZ._TMP'. ADVICE: This may occur because we are emulating the execution in this test environment and cannot handshake with the embedded controller or jump to the BIOS via SMIs. However, the fact that AML code spins forever means that lockup conditions are not being checked for in the AML bytecode. PASSED: Test 35, \_TZ_.DTSZ._TMP correctly acquired and released locks 14 times. ACPICA Exception AE_AML_INFINITE_LOOP during execution of method COMP WARNING: Test 35, Detected an infinite loop when evaluating method '\_TZ_.CPUZ._TMP'. ADVICE: This may occur because we are emulating the execution in this test environment and cannot handshake with the embedded controller or jump to the BIOS via SMIs. However, the fact that AML code spins forever means that lockup conditions are not being checked for in the AML bytecode. PASSED: Test 35, \_TZ_.CPUZ._TMP correctly acquired and released locks 10 times. ACPICA Exception AE_AML_INFINITE_LOOP during execution of method COMP WARNING: Test 35, Detected an infinite loop when evaluating method '\_TZ_.SKNZ._TMP'. ADVICE: This may occur because we are emulating the execution in this test environment and cannot handshake with the embedded controller or jump to the BIOS via SMIs. However, the fact that AML code spins forever means that lockup conditions are not being checked for in the AML bytecode. PASSED: Test 35, \_TZ_.SKNZ._TMP correctly acquired and released locks 10 times. PASSED: Test 35, _TMP correctly returned sane looking value 0x00000b4c (289.2 degrees K) PASSED: Test 35, \_TZ_.BATZ._TMP correctly acquired and released locks 9 times. PASSED: Test 35, _TMP correctly returned sane looking value 0x00000aac (273.2 degrees K) PASSED: Test 35, \_TZ_.FDTZ._TMP correctly acquired and released locks 7 times. Test 46 of 93: Check _DIS (Disable). FAILED [MEDIUM] MethodShouldReturnNothing: Test 46, \_SB_.PCI0.LPCB.SIO_.COM1._DIS returned values, but was expected to return nothing. Object returned: INTEGER: 0x00000000 ADVICE: This probably won't cause any errors, but it should be fixed as the AML code is not conforming to the expected behaviour as described in the ACPI specification. FAILED [MEDIUM] MethodShouldReturnNothing: Test 46, \_SB_.PCI0.LPCB.SIO_.LPT0._DIS returned values, but was expected to return nothing. Object returned: INTEGER: 0x00000000 ADVICE: This probably won't cause any errors, but it should be fixed as the AML code is not conforming to the expected behaviour as described in the ACPI specification. Test 61 of 93: Check _WAK (System Wake). Test _WAK(1) System Wake, State S1. ACPICA Exception AE_AML_INFINITE_LOOP during execution of method COMP WARNING: Test 61, Detected an infinite loop when evaluating method '\_WAK'. ADVICE: This may occur because we are emulating the execution in this test environment and cannot handshake with the embedded controller or jump to the BIOS via SMIs. However, the fact that AML code spins forever means that lockup conditions are not being checked for in the AML bytecode. Test _WAK(2) System Wake, State S2. ACPICA Exception AE_AML_INFINITE_LOOP during execution of method COMP WARNING: Test 61, Detected an infinite loop when evaluating method '\_WAK'. ADVICE: This may occur because we are emulating the execution in this test environment and cannot handshake with the embedded controller or jump to the BIOS via SMIs. However, the fact that AML code spins forever means that lockup conditions are not being checked for in the AML bytecode. Test _WAK(3) System Wake, State S3. ACPICA Exception AE_AML_INFINITE_LOOP during execution of method COMP WARNING: Test 61, Detected an infinite loop when evaluating method '\_WAK'. ADVICE: This may occur because we are emulating the execution in this test environment and cannot handshake with the embedded controller or jump to the BIOS via SMIs. However, the fact that AML code spins forever means that lockup conditions are not being checked for in the AML bytecode. Test _WAK(4) System Wake, State S4. ACPICA Exception AE_AML_INFINITE_LOOP during execution of method COMP WARNING: Test 61, Detected an infinite loop when evaluating method '\_WAK'. ADVICE: This may occur because we are emulating the execution in this test environment and cannot handshake with the embedded controller or jump to the BIOS via SMIs. However, the fact that AML code spins forever means that lockup conditions are not being checked for in the AML bytecode. Test _WAK(5) System Wake, State S5. ACPICA Exception AE_AML_INFINITE_LOOP during execution of method COMP WARNING: Test 61, Detected an infinite loop when evaluating method '\_WAK'. ADVICE: This may occur because we are emulating the execution in this test environment and cannot handshake with the embedded controller or jump to the BIOS via SMIs. However, the fact that AML code spins forever means that lockup conditions are not being checked for in the AML bytecode. Test 87 of 93: Check _BCL (Query List of Brightness Control Levels Supported). Package has 2 elements: 00: INTEGER: 0x00000000 01: INTEGER: 0x00000000 FAILED [MEDIUM] Method_BCLElementCount: Test 87, Method _BCL should return a package of more than 2 integers, got just 2. Test 88 of 93: Check _BCM (Set Brightness Level). ACPICA Exception AE_AML_PACKAGE_LIMIT during execution of method _BCM FAILED [CRITICAL] AEAMLPackgeLimit: Test 88, Detected error 'Package limit' when evaluating '\_SB_.PCI0.GFX0.DD02._BCM'. ==================================================================================================== ACPI table settings sanity checks. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Test 1 of 1: Check ACPI tables. PASSED: Test 1, Table APIC passed. Table ECDT not present to check. FAILED [MEDIUM] FADT32And64BothDefined: Test 1, FADT 32 bit FIRMWARE_CONTROL is non-zero, and X_FIRMWARE_CONTROL is also non-zero. Section 5.2.9 of the ACPI specification states that if the FIRMWARE_CONTROL is non-zero then X_FIRMWARE_CONTROL must be set to zero. ADVICE: The FADT FIRMWARE_CTRL is a 32 bit pointer that points to the physical memory address of the Firmware ACPI Control Structure (FACS). There is also an extended 64 bit version of this, the X_FIRMWARE_CTRL pointer that also can point to the FACS. Section 5.2.9 of the ACPI specification states that if the X_FIRMWARE_CTRL field contains a non zero value then the FIRMWARE_CTRL field *must* be zero. This error is also detected by the Linux kernel. If FIRMWARE_CTRL and X_FIRMWARE_CTRL are defined, then the kernel just uses the 64 bit version of the pointer. PASSED: Test 1, Table HPET passed. PASSED: Test 1, Table MCFG passed. PASSED: Test 1, Table RSDT passed. PASSED: Test 1, Table RSDP passed. Table SBST not present to check. PASSED: Test 1, Table XSDT passed. ==================================================================================================== Re-assemble DSDT and find syntax errors and warnings. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Test 1 of 2: Disassemble and reassemble DSDT FAILED [HIGH] AMLAssemblerError4043: Test 1, Assembler error in line 2261 Line | AML source ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 02258| 0x00000000, // Range Minimum 02259| 0xFEDFFFFF, // Range Maximum 02260| 0x00000000, // Translation Offset 02261| 0x00000000, // Length | ^ | error 4043: Invalid combination of Length and Min/Max fixed flags 02262| ,, _Y0E, AddressRangeMemory, TypeStatic) 02263| DWordMemory (ResourceProducer, PosDecode, MinFixed, MaxFixed, Cacheable, ReadWrite, 02264| 0x00000000, // Granularity ==================================================================================================== ADVICE: (for error #4043): This occurs if the length is zero and just one of the resource MIF/MAF flags are set, or the length is non-zero and resource MIF/MAF flags are both set. These are illegal combinations and need to be fixed. See section 6.4.3.5 Address Space Resource Descriptors of version 4.0a of the ACPI specification for more details. FAILED [HIGH] AMLAssemblerError4050: Test 1, Assembler error in line 2268 Line | AML source ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 02265| 0xFEE01000, // Range Minimum 02266| 0xFFFFFFFF, // Range Maximum 02267| 0x00000000, // Translation Offset 02268| 0x011FEFFF, // Length | ^ | error 4050: Length is not equal to fixed Min/Max window 02269| ,, , AddressRangeMemory, TypeStatic) 02270| }) 02271| Method (_CRS, 0, Serialized) ==================================================================================================== ADVICE: (for error #4050): The minimum address is greater than the maximum address. This is illegal. FAILED [HIGH] AMLAssemblerError1104: Test 1, Assembler error in line 8885 Line | AML source ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 08882| Method (_DIS, 0, NotSerialized) 08883| { 08884| DSOD (0x02) 08885| Return (0x00) | ^ | warning level 0 1104: Reserved method should not return a value (_DIS) 08886| } 08887| 08888| Method (_SRS, 1, NotSerialized) ==================================================================================================== FAILED [HIGH] AMLAssemblerError1104: Test 1, Assembler error in line 9195 Line | AML source ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 09192| Method (_DIS, 0, NotSerialized) 09193| { 09194| DSOD (0x01) 09195| Return (0x00) | ^ | warning level 0 1104: Reserved method should not return a value (_DIS) 09196| } 09197| 09198| Method (_SRS, 1, NotSerialized) ==================================================================================================== FAILED [HIGH] AMLAssemblerError1127: Test 1, Assembler error in line 9242 Line | AML source ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 09239| CreateWordField (CRES, \_SB.PCI0.LPCB.SIO.LPT0._CRS._Y21._MAX, MAX2) 09240| CreateByteField (CRES, \_SB.PCI0.LPCB.SIO.LPT0._CRS._Y21._LEN, LEN2) 09241| CreateWordField (CRES, \_SB.PCI0.LPCB.SIO.LPT0._CRS._Y22._INT, IRQ0) 09242| CreateWordField (CRES, \_SB.PCI0.LPCB.SIO.LPT0._CRS._Y23._DMA, DMA0) | ^ | warning level 0 1127: ResourceTag smaller than Field (Tag: 8 bits, Field: 16 bits) 09243| If (RLPD) 09244| { 09245| Store (0x00, Local0) ==================================================================================================== FAILED [HIGH] AMLAssemblerError1128: Test 1, Assembler error in line 18682 Line | AML source ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 18679| Store (0x01, Index (DerefOf (Index (Local0, 0x02)), 0x01)) 18680| If (And (WDPE, 0x40)) 18681| { 18682| Wait (\_SB.BEVT, 0x10) | ^ | warning level 0 1128: Result is not used, possible operator timeout will be missed 18683| } 18684| 18685| Store (BRID, Index (DerefOf (Index (Local0, 0x02)), 0x02)) ==================================================================================================== ADVICE: (for warning level 0 #1128): The operation can possibly timeout, and hence the return value indicates an timeout error. However, because the return value is not checked this very probably indicates that the code is buggy. A possible scenario is that a mutex times out and the code attempts to access data in a critical region when it should not. This will lead to undefined behaviour. This should be fixed. Table DSDT (0) reassembly: Found 2 errors, 4 warnings. Test 2 of 2: Disassemble and reassemble SSDT PASSED: Test 2, SSDT (0) reassembly, Found 0 errors, 0 warnings. FAILED [HIGH] AMLAssemblerError1104: Test 2, Assembler error in line 60 Line | AML source ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 00057| { 00058| Store (CPDC (Arg0), Local0) 00059| GCAP (Local0) 00060| Return (Local0) | ^ | warning level 0 1104: Reserved method should not return a value (_PDC) 00061| } 00062| 00063| Method (_OSC, 4, NotSerialized) ==================================================================================================== FAILED [HIGH] AMLAssemblerError1104: Test 2, Assembler error in line 174 Line | AML source ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 00171| { 00172| Store (\_PR.CPU0.CPDC (Arg0), Local0) 00173| GCAP (Local0) 00174| Return (Local0) | ^ | warning level 0 1104: Reserved method should not return a value (_PDC) 00175| } 00176| 00177| Method (_OSC, 4, NotSerialized) ==================================================================================================== FAILED [HIGH] AMLAssemblerError1104: Test 2, Assembler error in line 244 Line | AML source ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 00241| { 00242| Store (\_PR.CPU0.CPDC (Arg0), Local0) 00243| GCAP (Local0) 00244| Return (Local0) | ^ | warning level 0 1104: Reserved method should not return a value (_PDC) 00245| } 00246| 00247| Method (_OSC, 4, NotSerialized) ==================================================================================================== FAILED [HIGH] AMLAssemblerError1104: Test 2, Assembler error in line 290 Line | AML source ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 00287| { 00288| Store (\_PR.CPU0.CPDC (Arg0), Local0) 00289| GCAP (Local0) 00290| Return (Local0) | ^ | warning level 0 1104: Reserved method should not return a value (_PDC) 00291| } 00292| 00293| Method (_OSC, 4, NotSerialized) ==================================================================================================== Table SSDT (1) reassembly: Found 0 errors, 4 warnings. PASSED: Test 2, SSDT (2) reassembly, Found 0 errors, 0 warnings. PASSED: Test 2, SSDT (3) reassembly, Found 0 errors, 0 warnings. ==================================================================================================== 3 passed, 10 failed, 0 warnings, 0 aborted, 0 skipped, 0 info only. ==================================================================================================== Critical failures: 1 method test, at 1 log line: 1449: Detected error 'Package limit' when evaluating '\_SB_.PCI0.GFX0.DD02._BCM'. High failures: 11 klog test, at 1 log line: 121: HIGH Kernel message: [ 3.512783] ACPI Error: Method parse/execution failed [\_SB_.PCI0.GFX0._DOD] (Node f7425858), AE_AML_PACKAGE_LIMIT (20110623/psparse-536) syntaxcheck test, at 1 log line: 1668: Assembler error in line 2261 syntaxcheck test, at 1 log line: 1687: Assembler error in line 2268 syntaxcheck test, at 1 log line: 1703: Assembler error in line 8885 syntaxcheck test, at 1 log line: 1716: Assembler error in line 9195 syntaxcheck test, at 1 log line: 1729: Assembler error in line 9242 syntaxcheck test, at 1 log line: 1742: Assembler error in line 18682 syntaxcheck test, at 1 log line: 1766: Assembler error in line 60 syntaxcheck test, at 1 log line: 1779: Assembler error in line 174 syntaxcheck test, at 1 log line: 1792: Assembler error in line 244 syntaxcheck test, at 1 log line: 1805: Assembler error in line 290 Medium failures: 9 mtrr test, at 1 log line: 76: Memory range 0xc0000000 to 0xdfffffff (PCI Bus 0000:00) has incorrect attribute Write-Combining. mtrr test, at 1 log line: 78: Memory range 0xfee01000 to 0xffffffff (PCI Bus 0000:00) has incorrect attribute Write-Protect. msr test, at 1 log line: 165: MSR SYSENTER_ESP (0x175) has 1 inconsistent values across 2 CPUs for (shift: 0 mask: 0xffffffffffffffff). msr test, at 1 log line: 173: MSR MISC_ENABLE (0x1a0) has 1 inconsistent values across 2 CPUs for (shift: 0 mask: 0x400c51889). wmi test, at 1 log line: 528: GUID 2B814318-4BE8-4707-9D84-A190A859B5D0 is unknown to the kernel, a driver may need to be implemented for this GUID. method test, at 1 log line: 1002: \_SB_.PCI0.LPCB.SIO_.COM1._DIS returned values, but was expected to return nothing. method test, at 1 log line: 1011: \_SB_.PCI0.LPCB.SIO_.LPT0._DIS returned values, but was expected to return nothing. method test, at 1 log line: 1443: Method _BCL should return a package of more than 2 integers, got just 2. acpitables test, at 1 log line: 1643: FADT 32 bit FIRMWARE_CONTROL is non-zero, and X_FIRMWARE_CONTROL is also non-zero. Se

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• Multi-Threaded Application vs. Single Threaded Application

  Why would we use a multi threaded application vs. a single threaded application? First we must define multithreading. Multithreading is a feature of an operating system that allows programs to run subcomponents or threads in parallel. Typically most applications only need to use one thread because they do not perform time consuming tasks. The use of multiple threads allows an application to distribute long running tasks so that they can be executed in parallel. This gives the user the perceived appearance that the application is working faster due to the fact that while one thread is waiting on an IO process the remaining tasks can make use of the available CPU. The allows working threads to execute in tandem so that they can be competed sooner. Multithreading Benefits Improved responsiveness — Users usually report improved responsiveness compared to single thread applications. Faster applications — Multiple threads can lead to improved application performance. Prioritization — Threads can be assigned a priority which would allow higher priority tasks to take precedence over lower priority tasks. Single Threading Benefits Programming and debugging —These activities are easier compared to multithreaded applications due to the reduced complexity Less Overhead — Threads add overhead to an application When developing multi-threaded applications, the following must be considered. Deadlocks occur when two threads hold a monitor that the other one requires. In essence each task is blocking the other and both tasks are waiting for the other monitor to be released. This forces an application to hang or deadlock. Resource allocation is used to prevent deadlocks because the system determines if approving the resource request will render the system in an unsafe state. An unsafe state could result in a deadlock. The system only approves requests that will lead to safe states. Thread Synchronization is used when multiple threads use the same instance of an object. The threads accessing the object can then be locked and then synchronized so that each task can interact with the static object on at a time.

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• Silverlight Cream for March 11, 2010 -- #812

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Walter Ferrari, Viktor Larsson, Bill Reiss(-2-, -3-, -4-), Jonathan van de Veen, Walt Ritscher, Jobi Joy, Pete Brown, Mike Taulty, and Mark Miller. Shoutouts: Going to MIX10? John Papa announced Got Questions? Ask the Experts at MIX10 Pete Brown listed The Essential WPF/Silverlight/XNA Developer and Designer Toolbox From SilverlightCream.com: How to extend Bing Maps Silverlight with an elevation profile graph - Part 2 In this second and final tutorial, Walter Ferrari adds elevation to his previous BingMaps post. I'm glad someone else worked this out for me :) Navigating AWAY from your Silverlight page Viktor Larsson has a post up on how to navigate to something other than your Silverlight page like maybe a mailto ... SilverSprite: Not just for XNA games any more Bill Reiss has a new version of SilverSprite up on CodePlex and if you're planning on doing any game development, you should check this out for sure Space Rocks game step 1: The game loop Bill Reiss has a tutorial series on Game development that he's beginning ... looks like a good thing to jump in on and play along. This first one is all about the game loop. Space Rocks game step 2: Sprites (part 1) In Part 2, Bill Reiss begins a series on Sprites in game development and positioning it. Space Rocks game step 3: Sprites (part 2) Bill Reiss's Part 3 is a follow-on tutorial on Sprites and moving according to velocity... fun stuff :) Adventures while building a Silverlight Enterprise application part No. 32 Jonathan van de Veen is discussing debugging and the evil you can get yourself wrapped up in... his scenario is definitely one to remember. Streaming Silverlight media from a Dropbox.com account Read the comments and the agreements, but I think Walt Ritscher's idea of using DropBox to serve up Streaming media is pretty cool! UniformGrid for Silverlight Jobi Joy wanted a UniformGrid like he's familiar with in WPF. Not finding one in the SDK or Toolkit, he converted the WPF one to Silverlight .. all good for you and me :) How to Get Started in WPF or Silverlight: A Learning Path for New Developers Pete Brown has a nice post up describing resources, tutorials, blogs, and books for devs just getting into Silveright or WPF, and thanks for the shoutout, Pete! Silverlight 4, MEF and the DeploymentCatalog ( again :-) ) Mike Taulty is revisiting the DeploymentCatalog to wrap it up in a class like he did the PackageCatalog previously MVVM with Prism 101 – Part 6b: Wrapping IClientChannel Mark Miller is back with a Part 6b on MVVM with Prism, and is answering some questions from the previous post and states his case against the client service proxy. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    MIX10

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• Silverlight Cream for January 14, 2011 -- #1027

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Sigurd Snørteland, Yochay Kiriaty, WindowsPhoneGeek(-2-), Jesse Liberty(-2-), Kunal Chowdhury, Martin Krüger(-2-), Jonathan Cardy. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Image Viewer using a GridSplitter control" Martin Krüger WP7: "Implementing WP7 ToggleImageControl from the ground up: Part1" WindowsPhoneGeek VS2010 Templates: "MVVM Project Templates for Visual Studio 2010" Jonathan Cardy From SilverlightCream.com: BabySmash7 - a WP7 children's game (source code included) Sigurd Snørteland not only brings Scott Hanselman's Baby Smash to WP7, but he's delivering the source to us as well as discussion of the app. Windows Push Notification Server Side Helper Library Yochay Kiriaty has a tutorial up on Push Notification... not explaining them, but a discussion of a WP7 Push Recipe that provides an easy way for sending all 3 kinds of push notification messages currently supported. Implementing WP7 ToggleImageControl from the ground up: Part1 WindowsPhoneGeek has a great 2-part series up on building a useful WP7 custom control -- a ToggleImage control... this part 1 is definition, deciding on Visual states, etc... buckle up... this is good stuff Implementing WP7 ToggleImageControl from the ground up: Part2 Part 2 in WindowsPhoneGeek's series is also up and where the real fun lives -- implementing the behavior of the control... and the source is available at the end of this post. The Full Stack #5 – Entity Framework Code First Jesse Liberty has episode 5 of the "Full Stack" series he and Jon Galloway are doing and are discussing Entity Framework Code First. Windows Phone From Scratch #18 – MVVM Light Toolkit Soup To Nuts 3 Jesse Liberty also has part 3 of his MVVMLight and WP7 post up and is digging into messaging in this one... for example view <--> ViewModel communication. Exploring Ribbon Control for Silverlight (Part - 1) Kunal Chowdhury has part 1 of a series up on using the Silverlight Ribbon Control from DevComponents... lots of information and a great intro to a great control. Image Viewer using a GridSplitter control Martin Krüger has a very nice picture viewer up as a demo and code available that simply uses the GridSplitter to implement tha aperture... check it out. How to: Gentle animation of a magnify effect Martin Krüger's latest is a take-off on a prior post he links to called 'just for fun' in which he smoothly animates a magnify effect... just very cool animation... explanation and source. MVVM Project Templates for Visual Studio 2010 Jonathan Cardy has a couple resources you probably wanna grab... two MVVM project templates for VS2010... one WPF and one Silverlight Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• CodeStock 2012 Review: Michael Eaton( @mjeaton ) - 3 Simple Things for Increased Productivity

  3 Simple Things for Increased ProductivitySpeaker: Michael EatonTwitter: @mjeatonBlog: http://mjeaton.net/blog This was the first time I had seen Michael Eaton speak but have hear a lot of really good things about his speaking abilities. Needless to say I was really looking forward to his session. He basically addressed the topic of distractions and how they can decrease or increase your productivity as a developer. He makes the case that in order to become more productive you must block/limit all distractions. For example, he covered his top distractions as a developer. Top Distractions Social Media(Twitter, Reddit, Facebook) Wiki sites Phone Email Video Games Coworkers, Friends, Family Michael stated that he uses various types of music to help him block out these distractions in order for him to get into his coding zone. While he states that music works for him, he also notes that he knows of others that cannot really work with music. I have to say I am in the latter group because I require a quiet environment in order to work. A few session attendees also recommended listening to really loud white noise or music in another language other than your own. This allows for less focus to be placed on words being sung compared to the rhythmic beats being played. I have to say that I have not tried these suggestions yet but will in the near future. However, distractions can be very beneficial to productivity in that they give your mind a chance to relax and not think about the issues at hand. He spoke highly of taking vacations, and setting boundaries at work so that develops prevent the problem of burnout. One way he suggested that developer’s combat distractions is to use the Pomodoro technique. In his example he selects one task to do for 20 minutes and he can only do that task during that time. He ignores all other distractions until this task or time limit is complete. After it is completed he allows himself to relax and distract himself for another 5- 10 minutes before his next Pomodoro. This allows him to stay completely focused on a task and when the time is up he can then focus on other things.

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• links for 2010-04-14

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Why business needs should shape IT architecture - McKinsey Quarterly - Business Technology - Organization "Too often, efforts to fix architecture issues remain rooted in a company’s IT practices, culture, and leadership. The reason, in part, is that the chief architect—the overall IT-architecture program leader—is frequently selected from within the technical ranks, bringing deep IT know-how but little direct experience or influence in leading a business-wide change program. A weak linkage to the business creates a void that limits the quality of the resulting IT architecture and the organization’s ability to enforce and sustain the benefits of implementation over time." -- Helge Buckow and Stéphane Rey (tags: architecture it technology enterprise mckinsey) Eric Maurice: April 2010 Critical Patch Update Released Eric Maurice offers the details on April 2010 Critical Patch Update (CPUApr2010), "the first one to include security fixes for Oracle Solaris" (tags: oracle otn database fusionmiddleware peoplesoft security) @shivmohan: Oracle – OAF – Oracle Application Framework – OA Framework "For all the PL/SQL and Oracle Forms developers out there, start planning your evolution. Sure PL/SQL and Forms will be around for some time, but you need to add more skills to your stack if you want to stay current (employable)." -- Shivmohan Purohit (tags: oracle otn application framework) @ORACLENERD: APEX Architecture Oracle ACE Chet Justice offer a "short list of potential architectures" for Oracle APEX, based on his experience with a client. (tags: oracle otn oracleace apex architecture) Luis Moreno Campos: Why is Exadata so fast? "You could find a lot of tech doc around oracle.com, but the bottom line is that the vision to even build a V2 and place it as an OLTP and DW (general purpose) machine is just pure genius." -- Luis Moreno Campos (tags: oracle otn exadata database) Edwin Biemond: Resetting Weblogic datasources with ANT Oracle ACE and Whitehorses architect Edwin Biemond shares an ANT script "to fire some WLST and Python commandos" to correct invalid database session states. (tags: oracle otn oracleace database ANT Python) @deltalounge: The future of MySQL with Oracle Peter Paul van de Beek has compiled an informative collection of Edward Scriven quotes, from various publications, on Oracle's plans for MySQL. (tags: oracle otn database mysql) Cristobal Soto: Coherence Special Interest Group: First Meeting in Toronto, Upcoming Events in New York and California Cameron Purdy, Patrick Peralta, and others are speaking at upcoming Coherence SIG events. Cristobal Soto shares the details. (tags: oracle otn coherence sig grid appserver)

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• SSDT - What's in a name?

  - by jamiet

  SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) recently got released as part of SQL Server 2012 and depending on who you believe it can be described as either: a suite of tools for building SQL Server database solutions or a suite of tools for building SQL Server database, Integration Services, Analysis Services & Reporting Services solutions Certainly the SQL Server 2012 installer seems to think it is the latter because it describes SQL Server Data Tools as "the SQL server development environment, including the tool formerly named Business Intelligence Development Studio. Also installs the business intelligence tools and references to the web installers for database development tools" as you can see here: Strange then that, seemingly, there is no consensus within Microsoft about what SSDT actually is. On yesterday's blog post First Release of SSDT Power Tools reader Simon Lampen asked the quite legitimate question:I understand (rightly or wrongly) that SSDT is the replacement for BIDS for SQL 2012 and have just installed this. If this is the case can you please point me to how I can edit rdl and rdlc files from within Visual Studio 2010 and import MS Access reports.To which came the following reply:SSDT doesn't include any BIDs (sic) components. Following up with the appropriate team (Analysis Services, Reporting Services, Integration Services) via their forum or msdn page would be the best way to answer you questions about these kinds of services. That's from a Microsoft employee by the way. Simon is even more confused by this and replies with:I have done some more digging and am more confused than ever. This documentation (and many others) : msdn.microsoft.com/.../ms156280.aspx expressly states that SSDT is where report editing tools are to be foundAnd on it goes....You can see where Simon's confusion stems from. He has official documentation stating that SSDT includes all the stuff for building SSIS/SSAS/SSRS solutions (this is confirmed in the installer, remember) yet someone from Microsoft tells him "SSDT doesn't include any BIDs components".I have been close to this for a long time (all the way through the CTPs) so I can kind of understand where the confusion stems from. To my understanding SSDT was originally the name of the database dev stuff but eventually that got expanded to include all of the dev tools - I guess not everyone in Microsoft got the memo.Does this sound familiar? Have we not been down this road before? The database dev tools have had upteen names over the years (do any of datadude, TSData, VSTS for DB Pros, DBPro, VS2010 Database Projects sound familiar) and I was hoping that the SSDT moniker would put all confusion to bed - evidently its as complicated now as it has ever been.Forgive me for whinging but putting meaningful, descriptive, accurate, well-defined and easily-communicated names onto a product doesn't seem like a difficult thing to do. I guess I'm mistaken!Onwards and upwards...@Jamiet

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• How do I set up MVP for a Winforms solution?

  - by JonWillis

  Question moved from Stackoverflow - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4971048/how-do-i-set-up-mvp-for-a-winforms-solution I have used MVP and MVC in the past, and I prefer MVP as it controls the flow of execution so much better in my opinion. I have created my infrastructure (datastore/repository classes) and use them without issue when hard coding sample data, so now I am moving onto the GUI and preparing my MVP. Section A I have seen MVP using the view as the entry point, that is in the views constructor method it creates the presenter, which in turn creates the model, wiring up events as needed. I have also seen the presenter as the entry point, where a view, model and presenter are created, this presenter is then given a view and model object in its constructor to wire up the events. As in 2, but the model is not passed to the presenter. Instead the model is a static class where methods are called and responses returned directly. Section B In terms of keeping the view and model in sync I have seen. Whenever a value in the view in changed, i.e. TextChanged event in .Net/C#. This fires a DataChangedEvent which is passed through into the model, to keep it in sync at all times. And where the model changes, i.e. a background event it listens to, then the view is updated via the same idea of raising a DataChangedEvent. When a user wants to commit changes a SaveEvent it fires, passing through into the model to make the save. In this case the model mimics the view's data and processes actions. Similar to #b1, however the view does not sync with the model all the time. Instead when the user wants to commit changes, SaveEvent is fired and the presenter grabs the latest details and passes them into the model. in this case the model does not know about the views data until it is required to act upon it, in which case it is passed all the needed details. Section C Displaying of business objects in the view, i.e. a object (MyClass) not primitive data (int, double) The view has property fields for all its data that it will display as domain/business objects. Such as view.Animals exposes a IEnumerable<IAnimal> property, even though the view processes these into Nodes in a TreeView. Then for the selected animal it would expose SelectedAnimal as IAnimal property. The view has no knowledge of domain objects, it exposes property for primitive/framework (.Net/Java) included objects types only. In this instance the presenter will pass an adapter object the domain object, the adapter will then translate a given business object into the controls visible on the view. In this instance the adapter must have access to the actual controls on the view, not just any view so becomes more tightly coupled. Section D Multiple views used to create a single control. i.e. You have a complex view with a simple model like saving objects of different types. You could have a menu system at the side with each click on an item the appropriate controls are shown. You create one huge view, that contains all of the individual controls which are exposed via the views interface. You have several views. You have one view for the menu and a blank panel. This view creates the other views required but does not display them (visible = false), this view also implements the interface for each view it contains (i.e. child views) so it can expose to one presenter. The blank panel is filled with other views (Controls.Add(myview)) and ((myview.visible = true). The events raised in these "child"-views are handled by the parent view which in turn pass the event to the presenter, and visa versa for supplying events back down to child elements. Each view, be it the main parent or smaller child views are each wired into there own presenter and model. You can literately just drop a view control into an existing form and it will have the functionality ready, just needs wiring into a presenter behind the scenes. Section E Should everything have an interface, now based on how the MVP is done in the above examples will affect this answer as they might not be cross-compatible. Everything has an interface, the View, Presenter and Model. Each of these then obviously has a concrete implementation. Even if you only have one concrete view, model and presenter. The View and Model have an interface. This allows the views and models to differ. The presenter creates/is given view and model objects and it just serves to pass messages between them. Only the View has an interface. The Model has static methods and is not created, thus no need for an interface. If you want a different model, the presenter calls a different set of static class methods. Being static the Model has no link to the presenter. Personal thoughts From all the different variations I have presented (most I have probably used in some form) of which I am sure there are more. I prefer A3 as keeping business logic reusable outside just MVP, B2 for less data duplication and less events being fired. C1 for not adding in another class, sure it puts a small amount of non unit testable logic into a view (how a domain object is visualised) but this could be code reviewed, or simply viewed in the application. If the logic was complex I would agree to an adapter class but not in all cases. For section D, i feel D1 creates a view that is too big atleast for a menu example. I have used D2 and D3 before. Problem with D2 is you end up having to write lots of code to route events to and from the presenter to the correct child view, and its not drag/drop compatible, each new control needs more wiring in to support the single presenter. D3 is my prefered choice but adds in yet more classes as presenters and models to deal with the view, even if the view happens to be very simple or has no need to be reused. i think a mixture of D2 and D3 is best based on circumstances. As to section E, I think everything having an interface could be overkill I already do it for domain/business objects and often see no advantage in the "design" by doing so, but it does help in mocking objects in tests. Personally I would see E2 as a classic solution, although have seen E3 used in 2 projects I have worked on previously. Question Am I implementing MVP correctly? Is there a right way of going about it? I've read Martin Fowler's work that has variations, and I remember when I first started doing MVC, I understood the concept, but could not originally work out where is the entry point, everything has its own function but what controls and creates the original set of MVC objects.

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• CodeStock 2012 Review: Michael Eaton( @mjeaton ) - 3 Simple Things for Increased Productivity

  3 Simple Things for Increased ProductivitySpeaker: Michael EatonTwitter: @mjeatonBlog: http://mjeaton.net/blog This was the first time I had seen Michael Eaton speak but have hear a lot of really good things about his speaking abilities. Needless to say I was really looking forward to his session. He basically addressed the topic of distractions and how they can decrease or increase your productivity as a developer. He makes the case that in order to become more productive you must block/limit all distractions. For example, he covered his top distractions as a developer. Top Distractions Social Media(Twitter, Reddit, Facebook) Wiki sites Phone Email Video Games Coworkers, Friends, Family Michael stated that he uses various types of music to help him block out these distractions in order for him to get into his coding zone. While he states that music works for him, he also notes that he knows of others that cannot really work with music. I have to say I am in the latter group because I require a quiet environment in order to work. A few session attendees also recommended listening to really loud white noise or music in another language other than your own. This allows for less focus to be placed on words being sung compared to the rhythmic beats being played. I have to say that I have not tried these suggestions yet but will in the near future. However, distractions can be very beneficial to productivity in that they give your mind a chance to relax and not think about the issues at hand. He spoke highly of taking vacations, and setting boundaries at work so that develops prevent the problem of burnout. One way he suggested that developer’s combat distractions is to use the Pomodoro technique. In his example he selects one task to do for 20 minutes and he can only do that task during that time. He ignores all other distractions until this task or time limit is complete. After it is completed he allows himself to relax and distract himself for another 5- 10 minutes before his next Pomodoro. This allows him to stay completely focused on a task and when the time is up he can then focus on other things.

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• Silverlight Cream for June 10, 2010 -- #879

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Emiel Jongerius, Nokola, Christian Schormann, Tim Heuer, David Poll, Mike Snow(-2-), John Papa, and Charles Petzold. Shoutout: Viktor Larsson has a frank look at WP7 based on information from MIX10 and what was said this week in his post: Licking Windows Phone 7... yeah licking, not liking :) .. my guess is even that didn't allow him to keep it! If you haven't already noticed, the CodeProject reader's choice awards are out this week and Telerik won for their RadColorPicker and RadCalendar for Silverlight Telerik also needs congratulations for winning Telerik wins “Best of TechEd” award in the “Components and Middleware” category... check out that trophy... Steven Forte has a picture up of the Telerikers after getting the award. Koen Zwikstra has a new release of Silverlight Spy up that supports the latest release: Silverlight Spy 3.0.0.12 From SilverlightCream.com: Localization of XAML files in Silverlight Emiel Jongerius is back with another post, this time discussing Localizing XAM files... external links and source included. Coolest Silverlight Sound Library for Games I've Seen Yet Nokola talks up a Sound Library for Silverlight 4 Games ... and has links to a great demo, plus the source. SketchFlow: Firing Actions when a Storyboard is Complete Christian Schormann responded to some Twitter questions and demonstrates using the StoryboardCompleted trigger with a Navigate action. Hosting cross-domain Silverlight applications (XAP) Tim Heuer responds to a question from a reader and demonstrates how to host a XAP from a domain other than the one you're working on. Taking Microsoft Silverlight 4 Applications Beyond the Browser (TechEd WEB313) David Poll has all his material up from his TechEd presentation earlier this week on Silverlight OOB... and he covered some pretty extensive material ... check it out! Silverlight Tip of the Day #29 – Configuring Service Reference to Back to LocalHost Mike Snow has a couple new tips up... this first one is quick, but very useful... how to switch your service reference back to localhost without pulling out your hair. Silverlight Tip of the Day #30 – Sending Email from Silverlight In Mike Snow's latest tip, he shows how to send email from your Silverlight app... using a WCF service... and a step-by-step set of instructions. Creating Rich Interactions Using Blend 4: Transition Effects, Fluid Layout and Layout States (Silverlight TV #32) John Papa has Silverlight TV #32 up, and he's talking with Kenny Young of the Expression Blend team while Kenny uses some built-om effects and also creates some impressive examples from scratch -- code included. Simulating Touch Inertia on Windows Phone 7 Charles Petzold has a post up on simulating inertia on WP7... demos in WPF and then moves into WP7... math, source, and external links. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• Silverlight Cream for February 05, 2011 -- #1041

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Peter Kuhn, Mike Ormond(-2-, -3-), WindowsPhoneGeek, Daniel N. Egan, Phil Middlemiss(-2-), Max Paulousky, Michael Washington. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Designing for Browser-Zoom: Part 2" Phil Middlemiss WP7: "Talking about Converters in WP7 | Coding4fun toolkit converters in depth" WindowsPhoneGeek Lightswitch: "LightSwitch: Can We Handle The Truth?" Michael Washington Shoutouts: András Velvárt has a video up of some awesome changes he has planned for SurfCube, check it out: SurfCube V2 - 3D Web Browser for Windows Phone 7, now with tabs! From SilverlightCream.com: Silverlight for keyboard junkies Peter Kuhn has a post up talking about the issues surrounding trying to use the tab key to navigate between controls... and follows it up with a behavior that resolves it. Windows Phone 7 Content On Demand Mike Ormond has a batch of WP7 Videos up... this first is "Windows Phone 7: A Different Kind of Phone" with Andrej Radinger. Windows Phone 7 Content on Demand Pt 2 Mike Ormond's 2nd WP7 video is "Understanding the Windows Phone 7 Development Tools and Getting Started" with Maarten Struys Windows Phone 7 Content on Demand Pt 3 Mike Ormond's 3rd WP7 Content on Demand is "Games Programming on Windows Phone 7 with Silverlight and XNA" with Rob Miles Talking about Converters in WP7 | Coding4fun toolkit converters in depth WindowsPhoneGeek is discussing value converters in his latest post... value converters for WP7... and the ones in the Coding4Fun toolkit to be exact... everything you wanted to know about them but didn't know to ask :) WP7 Developer Tools–Jan Update Daniel N. Egan has information up about the new WP7 Developer Tools release. Designing for Browser-Zoom: Part 1 Phil Middlemiss has both parts of a series on Browser Zoom up... this first part covers the zoom and different pieces involved. Designing for Browser-Zoom: Part 2 Phil Middlemiss's part 2 shows us some design considerations and visual states, including an attached behavior you can use in Blend to respond to the zoom event. Windows Phone Copy-Paste: How It Looks and Works Max Paulousky has the first post I've seen on WP7 Copy/Paste up... of course it's still in the emulator, but hey... that's better than nothing, right? LightSwitch: Can We Handle The Truth? Have you been playing with Lightswitch? Well... Michael Washington has, and it's got his interest up far enough that he's waving the flags trying to attract everyone else over there as well... see if you agree. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• Book Review (Book 11) - Applied Architecture Patterns on the Microsoft Platform

  - by BuckWoody

  This is a continuation of the books I challenged myself to read to help my career - one a month, for year. You can read my first book review here, and the entire list is here. The book I chose for April 2012 was: Applied Architecture Patterns on the Microsoft Platform. I was traveling at the end of last month so I’m a bit late posting this review here. Why I chose this book: I actually know a few of the authors on this book, so when they told me about it I wanted to check it out. The premise of the book is exactly as it states in the title - to learn how to solve a problem using products from Microsoft. What I learned: I liked the book - a lot. They've arranged the content in a "Solution Decision Framework", that presents a few elements to help you identify a need and then propose alternate solutions to solve them, and then the rationale for the choice. But the payoff is that the authors then walk through the solution they implement and what they ran into doing it. I really liked this approach. It's not a huge book, but one I've referred to again since I've read it. It's fairly comprehensive, and includes server-oriented products, not things like Microsoft Office or other client-side tools. In fact, I would LOVE to have a work like this for Open Source and other vendors as well - would make for a great library for a Systems Architect. This one is unashamedly aimed at the Microsoft products, and even if I didn't work here, I'd be fine with that. As I said, it would be interesting to see some books on other platforms like this, but I haven't run across something that presents other systems in quite this way. And that brings up an interesting point - This book is aimed at folks who create solutions within an organization. It's not aimed at Administrators, DBA's, Developers or the like, although I think all of those audiences could benefit from reading it. The solutions are made up, and not to a huge level of depth - nor should they be. It's a great exercise in thinking these kinds of things through in a structured way. The information is a bit dated, especially for Windows and SQL Azure. While the general concepts hold, the cloud platform from Microsoft is evolving so quickly that any printed book finds it hard to keep up with the improvements. I do have one quibble with the text - the chapters are a bit uneven. This is always a danger with multiple authors, but it shows up in a couple of chapters. I winced at one of the chapters that tried to take a more conversational, humorous style. This kind of academic work doesn't lend itself to that style. I recommend you get the book - and use it. I hope they keep it updated - I'll be a frequent customer. :)  

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• Amazon.com Cutting Off Colorado Affiliates

  - by Joe Mayo

  I received an email from Amazon.com today, essentially cutting off my affiliate status because I'm in Colorado. Colorado recently passed legislation that requires retailers to either collect sales tax for on-line transactions or engage in an onerous process that makes you wish you had collected sales tax.  After I Tweeted this, Mike Jones tweeted a link to the legislation.  Here's an excerpt from Amazon.com's email: "Dear Colorado-based Amazon Associate: We are writing from the Amazon Associates Program to inform you that the Colorado government recently enacted a law to impose sales tax regulations on online retailers. The regulations are burdensome and no other state has similar rules. The new regulations do not require online retailers to collect sales tax. Instead, they are clearly intended to increase the compliance burden to a point where online retailers will be induced to "voluntarily" collect Colorado sales tax -- a course we won't take. We and many others strongly opposed this legislation, known as HB 10-1193, but it was enacted anyway. Regrettably, as a result of the new law, we have decided to stop advertising through Associates based in Colorado. We plan to continue to sell to Colorado residents, however, and will advertise through other channels, including through Associates based in other states. There is a right way for Colorado to pursue its revenue goals, but this new law is a wrong way. As we repeatedly communicated to Colorado legislators, including those who sponsored and supported the new law, we are not opposed to collecting sales tax within a constitutionally-permissible system applied even-handedly. The US Supreme Court has defined what would be constitutional, and if Colorado would repeal the current law or follow the constitutional approach to collection, we would welcome the opportunity to reinstate Colorado-based Associates. You may express your views of Colorado's new law to members of the General Assembly and to Governor Ritter, who signed the bill. Your Associates account has been closed as of March 8, 2010, and we will no longer pay advertising fees for customers you refer to Amazon.com after that date. Please be assured that all qualifying advertising fees earned prior to March 8, 2010, will be processed and paid in accordance with our regular payment schedule. Based on your account closure date of March 8, any final payments will be paid by May 31, 2010. We have enjoyed working with you and other Colorado-based participants in the Amazon Associates Program, and wish you all the best in your future.   Best Regards,   The Amazon Associates Team"

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• VirtualBox 4.2.14 is now available

  - by user12611829

  The VirtualBox development team has just released version 4.2.14, and it is now available for download. This is a maintenance release for version 4.2 and contains quite a few fixes. Here is the list from the official Changelog. VMM: another TLB invalidation fix for non-present pages VMM: fixed a performance regression (4.2.8 regression; bug #11674) GUI: fixed a crash on shutdown GUI: prevent stuck keys under certain conditions on Windows hosts (bugs #2613, #6171) VRDP: fixed a rare crash on the guest screen resize VRDP: allow to change VRDP parameters (including enabling/disabling the server) if the VM is paused USB: fixed passing through devices on Mac OS X host to a VM with 2 or more virtual CPUs (bug #7462) USB: fixed hang during isochronous transfer with certain devices (4.1 regression; Windows hosts only; bug #11839) USB: properly handle orphaned URBs (bug #11207) BIOS: fixed function for returning the PCI interrupt routing table (fixes NetWare 6.x guests) BIOS: don't use the ENTER / LEAVE instructions in the BIOS as these don't work in the real mode as set up by certain guests (e.g. Plan 9 and QNX 4) DMI: allow to configure DmiChassisType (bug #11832) Storage: fixed lost writes if iSCSI is used with snapshots and asynchronous I/O (bug #11479) Storage: fixed accessing certain VHDX images created by Windows 8 (bug #11502) Storage: fixed hang when creating a snapshot using Parallels disk images (bug #9617) 3D: seamless + 3D fixes (bug #11723) 3D: version 4.2.12 was not able to read saved states of older versions under certain conditions (bug #11718) Main/Properties: don't create a guest property for non-running VMs if the property does not exist and is about to be removed (bug #11765) Main/Properties: don't forget to make new guest properties persistent after the VM was terminated (bug #11719) Main/Display: don't lose seamless regions during screen resize Main/OVF: don't crash during import if the client forgot to call Appliance::interpret() (bug #10845) Main/OVF: don't create invalid appliances by stripping the file name if the VM name is very long (bug #11814) Main/OVF: don't fail if the appliance contains multiple file references (bug #10689) Main/Metrics: fixed Solaris file descriptor leak Settings: limit depth of snapshot tree to 250 levels, as more will lead to decreased performance and may trigger crashes VBoxManage: fixed setting the parent UUID on diff images using sethdparentuuid Linux hosts: work around for not crashing as a result of automatic NUMA balancing which was introduced in Linux 3.8 (bug #11610) Windows installer: force the installation of the public certificate in background (i.e. completely prevent user interaction) if the --silent command line option is specified Windows Additions: fixed problems with partial install in the unattended case Windows Additions: fixed display glitch with the Start button in seamless mode for some themes Windows Additions: Seamless mode and auto-resize fixes Windows Additions: fixed trying to to retrieve new auto-logon credentials if current ones were not processed yet Windows Additions installer: added the /with_wddm switch to select the experimental WDDM driver by default Linux Additions: fixed setting own timed out and aborted texts in information label of the lightdm greeter Linux Additions: fixed compilation against Linux 3.2.0 Ubuntu kernels (4.2.12 regression as a side effect of the Debian kernel build fix; bug #11709) X11 Additions: reduced the CPU load of VBoxClient in drag'and'drop mode OS/2 Additions: made the mouse wheel work (bug #6793) Guest Additions: fixed problems copying and pasting between two guests on an X11 host (bug #11792) The full changelog can be found here. You can download binaries for Solaris, Linux, Windows and MacOS hosts at http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads Technocrati Tags: Oracle Virtualization VirtualBox

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• Best practices for logging and tracing in .NET

  - by Levidad

  I've been reading a lot about tracing and logging, trying to find some golden rule for best practices in the matter, but there isn't any. People say that good programmers produce good tracing, but put it that way and it has to come from experience. I've also read similar questions in here and through the internet and they are not really the same thing I am asking or do not have a satisfying answer, maybe because the questions lack some detail. So, folks say that tracing should sort of replicate the experience of debugging the application in cases where you can't attach a debugger. It should provide enough context so that you can see which path is taken at each control point in the application. Going deeper, you can even distinguish between tracing and event logging, in that "event logging is different from tracing in that it captures major states rather than detailed flow of control". Now, say I want to do my tracing and logging using only the standard .NET classes, those in the System.Diagnostics namespace. I figured that the TraceSource class is better for the job than the static Trace class, because I want to differentiate among the trace levels and using the TraceSource class I can pass in a parameter informing the event type, while using the Trace class I must use Trace.WriteLineIf and then verify things like SourceSwitch.TraceInformation and SourceSwitch.TraceErrors, and it doesn't even have properties like TraceVerbose or TraceStart. With all that in mind, would you consider a good practice to do as follows: Trace a "Start" event when begining a method, which should represent a single logical operation or a pipeline, along with a string representation of the parameter values passed in to the method. Trace an "Information" event when inserting an item into the database. Trace an "Information" event when taking one path or another in an important if/else statement. Trace a "Critical" or "Error" in a catch block depending on weather this is a recoverable error. Trace a "Stop" event when finishing the execution of the method. And also, please clarify when best to trace Verbose and Warning event types. If you have examples of code with nice trace/logging and are willing to share, that would be excelent. Note: I've found some good information here, but still not what I am looking for: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/ff714589.aspx Thanks in advance!

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• How to recover from finite-state-machine breakdown?

  - by Earl Grey

  My question may seems very scientific but I think it's a common problem and seasoned developers and programmers hopefully will have some advice to avoid the problem I mention in title. Btw., what I describe bellow is a real problem I am trying to proactively solve in my iOS project, I want to avoid it at all cost. By finite state machine I mean this I have a UI with a few buttons, several session states relevant to that UI and what this UI represents, I have some data which values are partly displayed in the UI, I receive and handle some external triggers (represented by callbacks from sensors). I made state diagrams to better map the relevant scenarios that are desirable and alowable in that UI and application. As I slowly implement the code, the app starts to behave more and more like it should. However, I am not very confident that it is robust enough. My doubts come from watching my own thinking and implementation process as it goes. I was confident that I had everything covered, but it was enough to make a few brute tests in the UI and I quickly realized that there are still gaps in the behavior ..I patched them. However, as each component depends and behaves based on input from some other component, a certain input from user or some external source trigers a chain of events, state changes..etc. I have several components and each behave like this Trigger received on input - trigger and its sender analyzed - output something (a message, a state change) based on analysis The problem is, this is not completely selfcontained, and my components (a database item, a session state, some button's state)...COULD be changed, influenced, deleted, or otherwise modified, outside the scope of the event-chain or desirable scenario. (phone crashes, battery is empty phone turn of suddenly) This will introduce a nonvalid situation into the system, from which the system potentially COULD NOT BE ABLE to recover. I see this (althought people do not realize this is the problem) in many of my competitors apps that are on apple store, customers write things like this "I added three documents, and after going there and there, i cannot open them, even if a see them." or "I recorded videos everyday, but after recording a too log video, I cannot turn of captions on them.., and the button for captions doesn't work".. These are just shortened examples, customers often describe it in more detail..from the descriptions and behavior described in them, I assume that the particular app has a FSM breakdown. So the ultimate question is how can I avoid this, and how to protect the system from blocking itself? EDIT I am talking in the context of one viewcontroller's view on the phone, I mean one part of the application. I Understand the MVC pattern, I have separate modules for distinct functionality..everything I describe is relevant to one canvas on the UI.

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• Get to Know a Candidate (11 of 25): Roseanne Barr&ndash;Peace &amp; Freedom Party

  - by Brian Lanham

  DISCLAIMER: This is not a post about “Romney” or “Obama”. This is not a post for whom I am voting. Information sourced for Wikipedia. Barr is an American actress, comedienne, writer, television producer, and director.  Barr began her career in stand-up comedy at clubs before gaining fame for her role in the sitcom Roseanne. The show was a hit and lasted nine seasons, from 1988 to 1997. She won both an Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress for her work on the show. Barr had crafted a "fierce working-class domestic goddess" persona in the eight years preceding her sitcom and wanted to do a realistic show about a strong mother who was not a victim of patriarchal consumerism. The granddaughter of immigrants from Europe and Russia, Barr was the oldest of four children in a working-class Jewish Salt Lake City family; she was also active in the LDS Church. In 1974 she married Bill Pentland, with whom she had three children, before divorcing in 1990 and marrying comedian Tom Arnold for four years. Controversy arose when she sang "The Star-Spangled Banner" off-key at a 1990 nationally aired baseball game, followed by grabbing her crotch and spitting. After her sitcom ended, she launched her own talk show, The Roseanne Show, which aired from 1998 to 2000. In 2005, she returned to stand-up comedy with a world tour. In 2011, she starred in an unscripted TV show, Roseanne's Nuts that lasted from July to September of that year, about her life on a Hawaiian farm. The Peace and Freedom Party (PFP) is a nationally-organized political party with affiliates in more than a dozen states, including California, Florida, Colorado and Hawaii. Its first candidates appeared on the ballot in 1966, but the Peace and Freedom Party of California was founded on June 23, 1967, after the LAPD riot in the wealthy Century City section of Los Angeles, and qualified for the ballot in January 1968.  The Peace and Freedom Party went national in 1968 as a left-wing organization opposed to the Vietnam War. From its inception, Peace and Freedom Party has been a left-wing political organization. It is a strong advocate of protecting the environment from pollution and nuclear waste. It advocates personal liberties and universal, high quality and free access to education and health care. Its understanding of socialism includes a socialist economy, where industries, financial institutions, and natural resources are owned by the people as a whole and democratically managed by the people who work in them and use them. Barr is on the Ballot in: CA, CO, FL Learn more about Roseanne Barr and Peace and Freedom Party on Wikipedia.

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• Expectations + Rewards = Innovation

  - by D'Arcy Lussier

  “Innovation” is a heavy word. We regard those that embrace it as “Innovators”. We describe organizations as being “Innovative”. We hold those associated with the word in high regard, even though its dictionary definition is very simple: Introducing something new. What our culture has done is wrapped Innovation in white robes and a gold crown. Innovation is rarely just introducing something new. Innovations and innovators are typically associated with other terms: groundbreaking, genius, industry-changing, creative, leading. Being a true innovator and creating innovations are a big deal, and something companies try to strive for…or at least say they strive for. There’s huge value in being recognized as an innovator in an industry, since the idea is that innovation equates to increased profitability. IBM ran an ad a few years back that showed what their view of innovation is: “The point of innovation is to make actual money.” If the money aspect makes you feel uneasy, consider it another way: the point of innovation is to <insert payoff here>. Companies that innovate will be more successful. Non-profits that innovate can better serve their target clients. Governments that innovate can better provide services to their citizens. True innovation is not easy to come by though. As with anything in business, how well an organization will innovate is reliant on the employees it retains, the expectations placed on those employees, and the rewards available to them. In a previous blog post I talked about one formula: Right Employees + Happy Employees = Productive Employees I want to introduce a new one, that builds upon the previous one: Expectations + Rewards = Innovation  The level of innovation your organization will realize is directly associated with the expectations you place on your staff and the rewards you make available to them. Expectations We may feel uncomfortable with the idea of placing expectations on our staff, mainly because expectation has somewhat of a negative or cold connotation to it: “I expect you to act this way or else!” The problem is in the or-else part…we focus on the negative aspects of failing to meet expectations instead of looking at the positive side. “I expect you to act this way because it will produce <insert benefit here>”. Expectations should not be set to punish but instead be set to ensure quality. At a recent conference I spoke with some Microsoft employees who told me that you have five years from starting with the company to reach a “Senior” level. If you don’t, then you’re let go. The expectation Microsoft placed on their staff is that they should be working towards improving themselves, taking more responsibility, and thus ensure that there is a constant level of quality in the workforce. Rewards Let me be clear: a paycheck is not a reward. A paycheck is simply the employer’s responsibility in the employee/employer relationship. A paycheck will never be the key motivator to drive innovation. Offering employees something over and above their required compensation can spur them to greater performance and achievement. Working in the food service industry, this tactic was used again and again: whoever has the highest sales over lunch will receive a free lunch/gift certificate/entry into a draw/etc. There was something to strive for, to try beyond the baseline of what our serving jobs were. It was through this that innovative sales techniques would be tried and honed, with key servers being top sellers time and time again. At a code camp I spoke at, I was amazed to see that all the employees from one company receive $100 Visa gift cards as a thank you for taking time to speak. Again, offering something over and above that can give that extra push for employees. Rewards work. But what about the fairness angle? In the restaurant example I gave, there were servers that would never win the competition. They just weren’t good enough at selling and never seemed to get better. So should those that did work at performing better and produce more sales for the restaurant not get rewarded because those who weren’t working at performing better might get upset? Of course not! Organizations succeed because of their top performers and those that strive to join their ranks. The Expectation/Reward Graph While the Expectations + Rewards = Innovation formula may seem like a simple mathematics formula, there’s much more going under the hood. In fact there are three different outcomes that could occur based on what you put in as values for Expectations and Rewards. Consider the graph below and the descriptions that follow: Disgruntled – High Expectation, Low Reward I worked at a company where the mantra was “Company First, Because We Pay You”. Even today I still hear stories of how this sentiment continues to be perpetuated: They provide you a paycheck and a means to live, therefore you should always put them as your top priority. Of course, this is a huge imbalance in the expectation/reward equation. Why would anyone willingly meet high expectations of availability, workload, deadlines, etc. when there is no reward other than a paycheck to show for it? Remember: paychecks are not rewards! Instead, you see employees be disgruntled which not only affects the level of production but also the level of quality within an organization. It also means that you see higher turnover. Complacent – Low Expectation, Low Reward Complacency is a systemic problem that typically exists throughout all levels of an organization. With no real expectations or rewards, nobody needs to excel. In fact, those that do try to innovate, improve, or introduce new things into the organization might be shunned or pushed out by the rest of the staff who are just doing things the same way they’ve always done it. The bigger issue for the organization with low/low values is that at best they’ll never grow beyond their current size (and may shrink actually), and at worst will cease to exist. Entitled – Low Expectation, High Reward It’s one thing to say you have the best people and reward them as such, but its another thing to actually have the best people and reward them as such. Organizations with Entitled employees are the former: their organization provides them with all types of comforts, benefits, and perks. But there’s no requirement before the rewards are dolled out, and there’s no short-list of who receives the rewards. Everyone in the company is treated the same and is given equal share of the spoils. Entitlement is actually almost identical with Complacency with one notable difference: just try to introduce higher expectations into an entitled organization! Entitled employees have been spoiled for so long that they can’t fathom having rewards taken from them, or having to achieve specific levels of performance before attaining them. Those running the organization also buy in to the Entitled sentiment, feeling that they must persist the same level of comforts to appease their staff…even though the quality of the employee pool may be suspect. Innovative – High Expectation, High Reward Finally we have the Innovative organization which places high expectations but also provides high rewards. This organization gets it: if you truly want the best employees you need to apply equal doses of pressure and praise. Realize that I’m not suggesting crazy overtime or un-realistic working conditions. I do not agree with the “Glengary-Glenross” method of encouragement. But as anyone who follows sports can tell you, the teams that win are the ones where the coaches push their players to be their best; to achieve new levels of performance that they didn’t know they could receive. And the result for the players is more money, fame, and opportunity. It’s in this environment that organizations can focus on innovation – true innovation that builds the business and allows everyone involved to truly benefit. In Closing Organizations love to use the word “Innovation” and its derivatives, but very few actually do innovate. For many, the term has just become another marketing buzzword to lump in with all the other business terms that get overused. But for those organizations that truly get the value of innovation, they will be the ones surging forward while other companies simply fade into the background. And they will be the organizations that expect more from their employees, and give them their just rewards.

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• add collision detection to sprite?

  - by xBroak

  bassically im trying to add collision detection to the sprite below, using the following: self.rect = bounds_rect collide = pygame.sprite.spritecollide(self, wall_list, False) if collide: # yes print("collide") However it seems that when the collide is triggered it continuously prints 'collide' over and over when instead i want them to simply not be able to walk through the object, any help? def update(self, time_passed): """ Update the creep. time_passed: The time passed (in ms) since the previous update. """ if self.state == Creep.ALIVE: # Maybe it's time to change the direction ? # self._change_direction(time_passed) # Make the creep point in the correct direction. # Since our direction vector is in screen coordinates # (i.e. right bottom is 1, 1), and rotate() rotates # counter-clockwise, the angle must be inverted to # work correctly. # self.image = pygame.transform.rotate( self.base_image, -self.direction.angle) # Compute and apply the displacement to the position # vector. The displacement is a vector, having the angle # of self.direction (which is normalized to not affect # the magnitude of the displacement) # displacement = vec2d( self.direction.x * self.speed * time_passed, self.direction.y * self.speed * time_passed) self.pos += displacement # When the image is rotated, its size is changed. # We must take the size into account for detecting # collisions with the walls. # self.image_w, self.image_h = self.image.get_size() global bounds_rect bounds_rect = self.field.inflate( -self.image_w, -self.image_h) if self.pos.x < bounds_rect.left: self.pos.x = bounds_rect.left self.direction.x *= -1 elif self.pos.x > bounds_rect.right: self.pos.x = bounds_rect.right self.direction.x *= -1 elif self.pos.y < bounds_rect.top: self.pos.y = bounds_rect.top self.direction.y *= -1 elif self.pos.y > bounds_rect.bottom: self.pos.y = bounds_rect.bottom self.direction.y *= -1 self.rect = bounds_rect collide = pygame.sprite.spritecollide(self, wall_list, False) if collide: # yes print("collide") elif self.state == Creep.EXPLODING: if self.explode_animation.active: self.explode_animation.update(time_passed) else: self.state = Creep.DEAD self.kill() elif self.state == Creep.DEAD: pass #------------------ PRIVATE PARTS ------------------# # States the creep can be in. # # ALIVE: The creep is roaming around the screen # EXPLODING: # The creep is now exploding, just a moment before dying. # DEAD: The creep is dead and inactive # (ALIVE, EXPLODING, DEAD) = range(3) _counter = 0 def _change_direction(self, time_passed): """ Turn by 45 degrees in a random direction once per 0.4 to 0.5 seconds. """ self._counter += time_passed if self._counter > randint(400, 500): self.direction.rotate(45 * randint(-1, 1)) self._counter = 0 def _point_is_inside(self, point): """ Is the point (given as a vec2d) inside our creep's body? """ img_point = point - vec2d( int(self.pos.x - self.image_w / 2), int(self.pos.y - self.image_h / 2)) try: pix = self.image.get_at(img_point) return pix[3] > 0 except IndexError: return False def _decrease_health(self, n): """ Decrease my health by n (or to 0, if it's currently less than n) """ self.health = max(0, self.health - n) if self.health == 0: self._explode() def _explode(self): """ Starts the explosion animation that ends the Creep's life. """ self.state = Creep.EXPLODING pos = ( self.pos.x - self.explosion_images[0].get_width() / 2, self.pos.y - self.explosion_images[0].get_height() / 2) self.explode_animation = SimpleAnimation( self.screen, pos, self.explosion_images, 100, 300) global remainingCreeps remainingCreeps-=1 if remainingCreeps == 0: print("all dead")

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