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  • What is the best way to render a 2d game map?

    - by Deukalion
    I know efficiency is key in game programming and I've had some experiences with rendering a "map" earlier but probably not in the best of ways. For a 2D TopDown game: (simply render the textures/tiles of the world, nothing else) Say, you have a map of 1000x1000 (tiles or whatever). If the tile isn't in the view of the camera, it shouldn't be rendered - it's that simple. No need to render a tile that won't be seen. But since you have 1000x1000 objects in your map, or perhaps less you probably don't want to loop through all 1000*1000 tiles just to see if they're suppose to be rendered or not. Question: What is the best way to implement this efficiency? So that it "quickly/quicker" can determine what tiles are suppose to be rendered? Also, I'm not building my game around tiles rendered with a SpriteBatch so there's no rectangles, the shapes can be different sizes and have multiple points, say a curved object of 10 points and a texture inside that shape; Question: How do you determine if this kind of objects is "inside" the View of the camera? It's easy with a 48x48 rectangle, just see if it X+Width or Y+Height is in the view of the camera. Different with multiple points. Simply put, how to manage the code and the data efficiently to not having to run through/loop through a million of objects at the same time.

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  • Tips about how to spread Object Oriented practices

    - by Augusto
    I work for a medium company that has around 250 developers. Unfortunately, lots of them are stuck in a procedural way of thinking and some teams constantly deliver big Transactional Script applications, when in fact the application contains rich logic. They also fail to manage the design dependencies, and end up with services which depend on another large number of services (a clean example of Big Ball of Mud). My question is: Can you suggest how to spread this type of knowledge? I know that the surface of the problem is that these applications have a poor architecture and design. Another issue is that there are some developers who are against writing any kind of test. A few things I'm doing to change this (but I'm either failing or the change is too small are) Running presentations about design principles (SOLID, clean code, etc). Workshops about TDD and BDD. Coaching teams (this includes using sonar, findbugs, jdepend and other tools). IDE & Refactoring talks. A few things I'm thinking to do in the future (but I'm concern that they might not be good) Form a team of OO evangelists, who disseminate an OO way of thinking in differet teams (these people would need to change teams every few months). Running design review sessions, to criticise the design and suggest improvements (even if the improvements are not done because of time constraints, I think this might be useful) . Something I found with the teams I coach, is that as soon as I leave them, they revert back to the old practices. I know I don't spend a lot of time with them, usually just one month. So whatever I'm doing, it doesn't stick. I'm sorry this question is spattered with frustration, but the alterative to write this was to hit my head on the wall until I pass out.

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  • Not allowed to upload .HTML files to my own DNN Site: Is it normal?

    - by Jake M
    My Question: Our webhost provider wont make it so we can upload .html files to our DNN site trhough the DNN File Manager page. Is that normal, should I push them to allow me to do this? We have recently transferred our website to a Dot Net Nuke run website. We originally had our website on a Linux server with Python scripts handling the backend. Obviously we now have a Windows server running .NET with ASP .NET code on the backend. Our webhost is a local Australian company. And they are saying we cant upload any .html files to the main part of the server, ie, www.ourdomain.com/Portals/0/. They are saying that the only place I can upload .html files is via FTP to this folder *www.ourdomain.com/Portals/0/html_content* This is a major problem for me because I am trying to upload my own skin which means I need to upload a main.html file to www.ourdomain.com/Portals/0/skins/myskin/ but they wont let me?! I guess what I am asking is, is this normal practice, why would they not allow this? As an experienced web admin for Linux servers and as someone who is used to being able to do whatever I want on my OWN server this is someing that really pis$%s me off!

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  • Technology Choice for a Client Application [on hold]

    - by AK_
    Not sure this is the right place to ask... I'm involved in the development of a new system, and now we are passing the demos stage. We need to build a proper client application. The platform we care most about is Windows, for now at least, but we would love to support other platforms, as long as it's free :-). Or at least very cheap. We anticipate two kinds of users: Occasional, coming mostly from the web. Professional, who would probably require more features, and better performance, and probably would prefer to see a native client. Our server exposes two APIs: A SOAP API, WCF behind the scenes, that supports 100% of the functionality. A small and very fast UDP + Binary API, that duplicates some of the functionality and is intended for the sake of performance for certain real-time scenarios. Our team is mostly proficient in .Net, C#, C++ development, and rather familiar with Web development (HTML, JavaScript). We are probably intending to develop two clients (for both user profiles), a web app, and a native app. Architecturally, we would like to have as many common components as possible. We would like to have several layers: Communication, Client Model, Client Logic, shared by both of the clients. We would also like to be able to add features to both clients when only the actual UI is a dual cost, and the rest is shared. We are looking at several technologies: WPF + Silverlight, Pure HTML, Flash / Flex (AIR?), Java (JavaFx?), and we are considering poking at WinRT(or whatever the proper name is). The question is which technology would you recommend and why? And which advantages or disadvantages will it have regarding our requirements?

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  • How to provide value?

    - by Francisco Garcia
    Before I became a consultant all I cared about was becoming a highly skilled programmer. Now I believe that what my clients need is not a great hacker, coder, architect... or whatever. I am more and more convinced every day that there is something of greater value. Everywhere I go I discover practices where I used to roll my eyes in despair. I saw the software industry with pink glasses and laughed or cried at them depending on my mood. I was so convinced everything could be done better. Now I believe that what my clients desperately need is finding a balance between good engineering practices and desperate project execution. Although a great design can make a project cheap to maintain thought many years, usually it is more important to produce quick fast and cheap, just to see if the project can succeed. Before that, it does not really matters that much if the design is cheap to maintain, after that, it might be too late to improve things. They need people who get involved, who do some clandestine improvements into the project without their manager approval/consent/knowledge... because they are never given time for some tasks we all know are important. Not all good things can be done, some of them must come out of freewill, and some of them must be discussed in order to educate colleagues, managers, clients and ourselves. Now my big question is. What exactly are the skills and practices aside from great coding that can provide real value to the economical success of software projects? (and not the software architecture alone)

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  • What data should be cached in a multiplayer server, relative to AI and players?

    - by DevilWithin
    In a virtual place, fully network driven, with an arbitrary number of players and an arbitrary number of enemies, what data should be cached in the server memory, in order to optimize smooth AI simulation? Trying to explain, lets say player A sees player B to E, and enemy A to G. Each of those players, see player A, but not necessarily each other. Same applies to enemies. Think of this question from a topdown perspective please. In many cases, for example, when a player shoots his gun, the server handles the sound as a radial "signal" that every other entity within reach "hear" and react upon. Doing these searches all the time for a whole area, containing possibly a lot of unrelated players and enemies, seems to be an issue, when the budget for each AI agent is so small. Should every entity cache whatever enters and exits from its radius of awareness? Is there a great way to trace the entities close by without flooding the memory with such caches? What about other AI related problems that may arise, after assuming the previous one works well? We're talking about environments with possibly hundreds of enemies, a swarm.

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  • How do I convince my boss that it's OK to use an application to access an outside website?

    - by Cyberherbalist
    That is, if you agree that it's OK. We have a need to maintain an accurate internal record of bank routing numbers, and my boss wants me to set up a process where once a week someone goes to the Federal Reserve's website, clicks on the link to get the list of routing numbers (or the link giving the updates since a particular date), and then manually uploads the resultant text file to an application that will make the update to our data. I told him that a manual process was not at all necessary, and that I could write a routine that would access the FED's routing numbers in the application that keeps our data updated, and put it on whatever schedule was appropriate. But he is greatly opposed to doing this, and calls it "hacking the Federal Reserve website." I think he's afraid that the FED is going to get after us. I showed him the FED's robot.txt file, and the only thing it forbids is an automated indexing of pages with extension .cf*: User-agent: * # applies to all robots Disallow: CF # disallow indexing of all CF* directories and pages This says nothing about accessing the same data automatically that you could access manually. Anyone have a good counterargument to the idea that we'd be "hacking" the FED?

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  • Are there plans for handwriting recognition?

    - by Patrick
    This is a big feature when it comes to putting Ubuntu onto tablets. Currently, Netbook edition works great for that purpose and the pen digitiser is perfect, but the handwriting would be a real dealmaker (especially for my business - we could actually move to Linux) to compete with the Windows one. CellWriter exists, but that only handles character and keyboard input (but I don't know about multitouch on the keyboard). It also needs to handle print and cursive, because character mode can be slow and uncomfortable (unless you're writing passwords). Lastly, CellWriter needs to have some default letter shapes rather than having to be trained from the start. There is a software package called MyScript (by Vision Objects) that handles all four modes (keyboard, character, print, cursive) plus calculator and fullscreen, but it's only free as a trial. Still, it would be nice to see it in the For Purchase section and the trial in the free section of the Software Centre. The only other ones are for Chinese/Japanese/Korean characters. What would really make a difference for us is the integration of some formal API with the OS that can automatically activate when running on a tablet to pass ink data to whatever recognition system is installed, and have something available (however rudimentary) to use it.

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  • How to associate all file types within Wine with its corresponding native application?

    - by MestreLion
    This is easily done for a single file type, as answered in How to associate a file type within Wine with a native application?, by creating a .reg for the desired filetype. But this is for AVI only. I use some wine apps (uTorrent, Soulseek, Eudora, to name a few) that can launch a wide range of files. Email attachments, for example, can be JPG, DOC, PDF, PPS... its impossible (and not desirable) to track down all possible file types that one may receive in an email or download in a torrent. So I neeed a solution to be more generic and broad. I need the file association to honor whatever native app is currently configured. And I want this to be done for all file types configured in my system. I've already figured out how to make the solution generic. Simply replacing the launched app in .reg for winebrowser, like this: [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.pdf] @="PDFfile" "Content Type"="application/pdf" [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\PDFfile\Shell\Open\command] @="C:\\windows\\system32\\winebrowser.exe \"%1\"" Ive tested this and it works correctly. Since winebrowser uses xdg-open as a backend, and converts my windows path to a Unix one, the correct (Linux) app is launched. So I need a "batch" updater to wine's registry, sort of a wine-update-associations script that I can run whenever a new app is installed. Maybe a tool that can: List all Mime Types types in my system that have a default, installed app associated Extract all the needed info (glob, mime type, etc) Generate the .REG file in the above format The tricky part is: i've searched a LOT to find info about how association is done in Ubuntu 10.10 onwards, and documentation is scarce and confusing, to say the least. Freedesktop.org has no complete spec, and even Gnome docs are obsolete. So far I've gathered 4 files that contain association info, but im clueless on which (or why) to use, or how to use them to generate the .reg file: ~/.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list ~/.local/share/applications/miminfo.cache /usr/share/applications/miminfo.cache /etc/gnome/defaults.list Any help, script or explanation would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

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  • How do install Ubuntu from a USB stick?

    - by Sophia
    When I go to the boot menu on my computer and select USB stick, the screen goes black and there comes a flickering underline. Like I could write something. But I can't. Whatever I push, nothing happens. Except the PrintScrn/SysRq button. When I push it, mu computer beeps. I get no choose menu. Nothing. I found out the usb stick is in msdos format. So what format should I use and how can I format it? I am not a computer geek who knows everything. I'm just a beginner. And only 16 years old. I've got a new problem. The screen isn't black anymore. Now there comes an error message: SYSLINUX 4.04 CHS 20110518 Copyright (C) 1994-2011 H.Peter Anvin et al ERROR:No configurationfile found No DEFAULT or UI configuration directive found! boot: And when I write something: boot:example Could not find kernel image:example boot: Why does this fail all the time? ps. I'm using Ubuntu Oneiric 11.10.

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  • Floating point undesireable in highly critical code?

    - by Kirt Undercoffer
    Question 11 in the Software Quality section of "IEEE Computer Society Real-World Software Engineering Problems", Naveda, Seidman, lists fp computation as undesirable because "the accuracy of the computations cannot be guaranteed". This is in the context of computing acceleration for an emergency braking system for a high speed train. This thinking seems to be invoking possible errors in small differences between measurements of a moving object but small differences at slow speeds aren't a problem (or shouldn't be), small differences between two measurements at high speed are irrelevant - can there be a problem with small roundoff errors during deceleration for an emergency braking system? This problem has been observed with airplane braking systems resulting in hydroplaning but could this actually happen in the context of a high speed train? The concern about fp errors seems to not be well-founded in this context. Any insight? The fp is used for acceleration so perhaps the concern is inching over a speed limit? But fp should be just fine if they use a double in whatever implementation language. The actual problem in the text states: During the inspection of the code for the emergency braking system of a new high speed train (a highly critical, real-time application), the review team identifies several characteristics of the code. Which of these characteristics are generally viewed as undesirable? The code contains three recursive functions (well that one is obvious). The computation of acceleration uses floating point arithmetic. All other computations use integer arithmetic. The code contains one linked list that uses dynamic memory allocation (second obvious problem). All inputs are checked to determine that they are within expected bounds before they are used.

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  • starting up with VPS or cloud hosting? [closed]

    - by FlyOn
    Possible Duplicate: How to find web hosting that meets my requirements? Summary: I want to start hosting my product. I'd like to register domains (at some point). I'm a linux beginner. Thinking about scalability and price, I'm thinking am I better off on a VPN to get started or would some form of cloud hosting be better (not being familiar with either). Full question: I'm creating a product where people can create their own 3D representations of whatever data / info they have, and (re)organise that data. The product is coming along beautifully on my local environment, but it's about time I start getting some form of hosting ready, and I could really use some advice where / how to get started: I'd like people to be able to move/register their own domains on my server. I could start without this just to demo the product, but it would be the very first on the todo list. I'd like to automatically copy some files / install databases etc for each domain. I probably want to see if I can let users manage their own subdomains at some points, but for now: I'd like start as simple as possible. I've always on a windows machine, so my linux experience is quite basic. I really don't mind getting into it, but I'm thinking it's better to get my product out first of all and see where to go from there. Although... I'd like things to be scalable. If I set up some reseller VPN now which only scales to 100 domains or so, which means I have to set up something else / move again when I pass that level, or which means that I'm in trouble if I suddenly get lots of new customers... hmm. Finally, I need to start cheap. I'm putting all I have into starting this company, and live on very little. So before I have any customers, 50 dollars a month is a fair bit and 100 dollars a month may be too much. If anyone has some tips to help get me started I'd be really grateful.

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  • Need help with exploring a USB drive

    - by Bob Getsla
    When I plug in a USB drive, I see it on the left hand edge of the Unity desktop (11.10, 64 bit) but when I try to explore it, VLC starts and tries to play whatever it can find in the USB drive. This behavior began when I updated from 11.04 to 11.10. I literally cannot look into the contents of any of the USB drives I have, because I cannot stop VLC, nor can I do anything when I click Open other than watch VLC start up. This is very frustrating because it makes my USB sticks essentially useless. HELP! I'm sure that there is something a wizard could do about this, but I am not a wizard, and I am at my wits ends. Trying to get to the System Settings menu works, and I can see the setup for "Removable" devices, and they are all set to "Ask" but that is clearly not what is happening. So it looks like I must reach for the command line, but where do I go to find the settings for what the desktop does when I plug in a USB drive and wish to explore the file structure in it and possible copy a file into the USB or from the USB drive. Right now, VLC media player is always getting in my way. :-(

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  • Database Driven Web Application, C# Front-End and F# Back-End meaning

    - by user1473053
    Hi I am an intern working with ASP.NET. My current task is to make a website which will incorporate some jquery viewing features. This project seems to me will be primarily dealing with reading data from a database and making graphs out of them. This will require me to make custom queries from whatever the client is looking at. I think it is going to be what this guy calls an Ad Hoc Query tool My plan for this is to make it a database-driven website. So I can utilize the jquery dynamic viewing capabilities. I stumbled upon the functional programming paradigm and found F#. I read that because of it's functional programming paradigm, it makes it a good language to do asynchronous functions. I read about how you can use this with LINQ to SQL and how easy it is to make queries without actually putting the query language in. I understand the concept of the MVC design pattern. But I don't understand what they mean about C# being the front-end and F# being the back-end. Can someone clarify this to me? Also what are your thoughts about doing this project in this way? Any comments and thoughts are greatly appreciated. I feel as if learning F# will be a great learning experience for me. My guess is that the F# back-end is like the part where it controls the calls to the database. F# is possibly the model part of the design pattern. And C# is the controller. So HTML, Javascript and Jquery stuff will be my View design pattern. Clarify please?

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  • Problems with Ubuntu and AMD A10-4655M APU

    - by Robert Hanks
    I have a new HP Sleekbook 6z with AMD A10-4655M APU. I tried installing Ubuntu with wubi--the first attempt ended up with a 'AMD unsupported hardware' watermark that I wasn't able to remove (the appeared when I tried to update the drivers as Ubuntu suggested) On the second attempted install Ubuntu installed (I stayed away from the suggested drivers) but the performance was extremely poor----as in Windows Vista poor. I am not sure what the solution is--if I need to wait until there is a kernel update with Ubuntu or if there are other solutions--I realise this is a new APU for the market. I would love to have Ubuntu 12.04 up and running--Windows 7 does very well with this new processor so Ubuntu should, well, be lightening speed. The trial on the Sleekbook with Ubuntu 12.10 Alpha 2 release was a complete failure. I created a bootable USB. By using either the 'Try Ubuntu' or 'Install Ubuntu' options resulted in the usual purple Ubuntu splash screen, followed by nothing...as in a black screen without any hint of life. Interestingly one can hear the Ubuntu intro sound. In case you are wondering, this same USB was trialed subsequently on another computer with and Intel Atom Processor. Worked flawlessly. Lastly the second trial on the Sleekbook resulted in the same results as the first paragraph. Perhaps 12.10 Beta will overcome this issue, or the finalised 12.10 release in October. I don't have the expertise to know what the cause of the behaviour is-the issue could be something else entirely. Sadly, the Windows 7 performance is very good with this processor-very similar and in some instances better to the 2nd generation Intel i5 based computer I use at my workplace. Whatever the cause is for the performance with Ubuntu 12.04 or 12.10 Alpha 2, the situation doesn't bode well for Ubuntu. Ubuntu aside, the HP Sleekbook is a good performer for the price. I am certain once the Ubuntu issue is worked on and solutions arise, the Ubuntu performance will probably be better than ever.

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  • Switch or a Dictionary when assigning to new object

    - by KChaloux
    Recently, I've come to prefer mapping 1-1 relationships using Dictionaries instead of Switch statements. I find it to be a little faster to write and easier to mentally process. Unfortunately, when mapping to a new instance of an object, I don't want to define it like this: var fooDict = new Dictionary<int, IBigObject>() { { 0, new Foo() }, // Creates an instance of Foo { 1, new Bar() }, // Creates an instance of Bar { 2, new Baz() } // Creates an instance of Baz } var quux = fooDict[0]; // quux references Foo Given that construct, I've wasted CPU cycles and memory creating 3 objects, doing whatever their constructors might contain, and only ended up using one of them. I also believe that mapping other objects to fooDict[0] in this case will cause them to reference the same thing, rather than creating a new instance of Foo as intended. A solution would be to use a lambda instead: var fooDict = new Dictionary<int, Func<IBigObject>>() { { 0, () => new Foo() }, // Returns a new instance of Foo when invoked { 1, () => new Bar() }, // Ditto Bar { 2, () => new Baz() } // Ditto Baz } var quux = fooDict[0](); // equivalent to saying 'var quux = new Foo();' Is this getting to a point where it's too confusing? It's easy to miss that () on the end. Or is mapping to a function/expression a fairly common practice? The alternative would be to use a switch: IBigObject quux; switch(someInt) { case 0: quux = new Foo(); break; case 1: quux = new Bar(); break; case 2: quux = new Baz(); break; } Which invocation is more acceptable? Dictionary, for faster lookups and fewer keywords (case and break) Switch: More commonly found in code, doesn't require the use of a Func< object for indirection.

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  • Language Design: Are languages like Python and CoffeeScript really more comprehensible?

    - by kittensatplay
    The "Verbally Readable !== Quicker Comprehension" argument on http://ryanflorence.com/2011/case-against-coffeescript/ is really potent and interesting. I and I'm sure others would be very interested in evidence arguing against this. There's clear evidence for this and I believe it. People naturally think in images, not words, so we should be designing languages that aren't similar to human language like English, French, whatever. Being "readable" is quicker comprehension. Most articles on Wikipedia are not readable as they are long, boring, dry, sluggish and very very wordy. Because Wikipedia documents a ton of info, it is not especially helpful when compared to sites with more practical, useful and relevant info. Languages like Python and CoffeScript are "verbally readable" in that they are closer to English syntax. Having programmed firstly and mainly in Python, I'm not so sure this is really a good thing. The second interesting argument is that CoffeeScript is an intermediator, a step between two ends, which may increase the chance of bugs. While CoffeeScript has other practical benefits, this question specifically requests evidence showing support for the counter-case of language "readability"

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  • Trouble with SAT style vector projection in C#/XNA

    - by ssb
    Simply put I'm having a hard time working out how to work with XNA's Vector2 types while maintaining spatial considerations. I'm working with separating axis theorem and trying to project vectors onto an arbitrary axis to check if those projections overlap, but the severe lack of XNA-specific help online combined with pseudo code everywhere that omits key parts of the algorithm, googling has left me little help. I'm aware of HOW to project a vector, but the way that I know of doing it involves the two vectors starting from the same point. Particularly here: http://www.metanetsoftware.com/technique/tutorialA.html So let's say I have a simple rectangle, and I store each of its corners in a list of Vector2s. How would I go about projecting that onto an arbitrary axis? The crux of my problem is that taking the dot product of say, a vector2 of (1, 0) and a vector2 of (50, 50) won't get me the dot product I'm looking for.. or will it? Because that (50, 50) won't be the vector of the polygon's vertex but from whatever XNA calculates. It's getting the calculation from the right starting point that's throwing me off. I'm sorry if this is unclear, but my brain is fried from trying to think about this. I need a better understanding of how XNA calculates Vector2s as actual vectors and not just as random points.

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  • How do I increase the open files limit for a non-root user?

    - by iCode
    This is happening on Ubuntu Release 12.04 (precise) 64-bit Kernel Linux 3.2.0-25-virtual I'm trying to increase the number of open files allowed for a user. This is for an my ecplise java application where the current limit of 1024 is not enough. According to the posts I've found so far, I should be able to put lines into /etc/security/limits.conf like this; soft nofile 4096 hard nofile 4096 to increase the number of open files allowed for all users. But, that's not working for me, and I think the problem is not related to that file. For all users, the default limit is 1024, regardless of what is in /etc/security/limits.conf (I have been rebooting after changing that file) $ ulimit -n 1024 Now, despite the entries in /etc/security/limits.conf I can't increase that; $ ulimit -n 2048 -bash: ulimit: open files: cannot modify limit: Operation not permitted The weird part is that I can change the limit downwards, but can't change it upwards - even to go back to a number which is below the original limit; $ ulimit -n 800 $ ulimit -n 800 $ ulimit -n 900 -bash: ulimit: open files: cannot modify limit: Operation not permitted As root, I can change that limit to whatever I want, up or down. It doesn't even seem to care about the supposedly system-wide limit in /proc/sys/fs/file-max # cat /proc/sys/fs/file-max 188897 # ulimit -n 188898 # ulimit -n 188898 So far, I haven't found any way to increase the open files limit for a non-root user, and I really don't want to be running my application as root. How should I properly do this? I have looked at all the posted and tried the given options but no luck!

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  • How to Create Shortcuts to Programs on USB Drives

    - by Lori Kaufman
    If you work on multiple computers, you probably use a USB drive to take your favorite portable software with you. Portable application suites like PortableApps.com, CodySafe, or Lupo PenSuite, each have a main menu providing access to the programs installed into the suite. However, there may be reasons why you need to create shortcuts to programs on your USB drive. You may be using a program that does not integrate into the suite’s main menu. Or, you may not be using an official portable application suite at all, and just placing portable software in a folder on your USB drive. Maybe you prefer using shortcuts on the root of the USB drive, like a portable desktop. Whatever your reason, you can’t just create a shortcut to an application on the USB drive and place it in the root of the drive. The shortcut will always refer to the full path of the application, including the drive letter. Different computers assign different drive letters to USB flash drives, so you would have to change the drive letter for your shortcuts when it changes. You can assign a static drive letter to the USB drive. However, if you would rather not do that, there is a way to create shortcuts to programs on a USB drive using relative paths. Because Windows does not support relative paths in shortcuts, we will show you how to create a “shortcut” on the root of a USB drive by creating a batch (.bat) file and converting it to an executable (.exe) file. What’s the Difference Between Sleep and Hibernate in Windows? Screenshot Tour: XBMC 11 Eden Rocks Improved iOS Support, AirPlay, and Even a Custom XBMC OS How To Be Your Own Personal Clone Army (With a Little Photoshop)

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  • How do you motivate peers to become better developers?

    - by Brian Rasmussen
    In my experience there seems to be two kinds of developers (if we simplify matters a great deal of course). On the one hand we have the developers, who may do a perfectly acceptable job, but who do not really care about the computer science part of their craft. They usually know few languages / technologies and are happy to let things stay that way. For whatever reason, they don't try to improve their computer science skills unless this is required in their current position. On the other hand, we have the geeks or the pragmatic programmers if you subscribe to that idea. They play around with other languages and technologies and usually have knowledge about several topics outside the technical domain of their current job. I would like to see more developers, who are enthusiastic about software development. If you share this point of view, what do you do to push your peers in that direction? Edit: follow-up question inspired by one of the answers: As non-managers, should we really care about this? And why/why not?

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  • Java Applet Tower Defence Game needs tweeking

    - by Ephiras
    Hello :) i have made a tower defence Game for my computer science class as one of my major projects, but have encountered some rather fatal roadblocks. here they are creating a menu screen (class Menu) that can set the total number of enimies, the max number of towers, starting money and the map. i tried creating a constructor in my Main class that sets all the values to whatever the Menu class passes in. I want the Menu screen to close after a difficulty has been selected and the main class to begin. Another problem i would really like some help with is instead of having to write entire arrays i would like to create a small segment of code that runs through an entire picture and sets up an array based on that pixels color.this way i can have multiple levels just dragged into a level folder and have the program read through them. users can even create their own. so a 1 if its yellow, a two if blue and a 3 if purple, then everything else = 0; you can download all the classes and code uif you'd like here sorry about having to redirect you but i wasn't sure how to efficently add a code spoiler. help is greatly appreciated

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  • Is there ever a reason to do all an object's work in a constructor?

    - by Kane
    Let me preface this by saying this is not my code nor my coworkers' code. Years ago when our company was smaller, we had some projects we needed done that we did not have the capacity for, so they were outsourced. Now, I have nothing against outsourcing or contractors in general, but the codebase they produced is a mass of WTFs. That being said, it does (mostly) work, so I suppose it's in the top 10% of outsourced projects I've seen. As our company has grown, we've tried to take more of our development in house. This particular project landed in my lap so I've been going over it, cleaning it up, adding tests, etc etc. There's one pattern I see repeated a lot and it seems so mindblowingly awful that I wondered if maybe there is a reason and I just don't see it. The pattern is an object with no public methods or members, just a public constructor that does all the work of the object. For example, (the code is in Java, if that matters, but I hope this to be a more general question): public class Foo { private int bar; private String baz; public Foo(File f) { execute(f); } private void execute(File f) { // FTP the file to some hardcoded location, // or parse the file and commit to the database, or whatever } } If you're wondering, this type of code is often called in the following manner: for(File f : someListOfFiles) { new Foo(f); } Now, I was taught long ago that instantiated objects in a loop is generally a bad idea, and that constructors should do a minimum of work. Looking at this code it looks like it would be better to drop the constructor and make execute a public static method. I did ask the contractor why it was done this way, and the response I got was "We can change it if you want". Which was not really helpful. Anyway, is there ever a reason to do something like this, in any programming language, or is this just another submission to the Daily WTF?

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  • Building a template engine - starting point

    - by Anirudh
    We're building a Django-based project with a template component. This component will be separate from the project as such and can be Django/Python, Node, Java or whatever works. The template has to be rendered into HTML. The templates will contain references to objects with properties that are defined in the DB, say, a Bus. For eg, it could be something like [object type="vehicle" weight="heavy"] and it would have to pull a random object from the DB fulfilling the criteria : type="vehicle" weight="heavy" (bus/truck/jet) and then substitute that tag with an image, say, of a Bus. Also it would have to be able to handle some processing. Eg: What is [X type="integer" lte="10"] + [Y type="integer" lte="10"] [option X+Y correct_ans="true"] [option X-Y correct_ans="false"] [option X+y+1 correct_ans="false"] The engine would be expected to fill in a random integer value <= 10 for X and Y and show radioboxes for each of the options. Would also have to store the fact that the first option is the correct answer. Does it to make sense to write something from the scratch? Or is it better to use an existing templating system (like Django's own templating system) as a starting point? Any suggestions on how I can approach this?

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  • How do I choose which way to enable/disable, start/stop, or check the status of a service?

    - by Glyph
    If I want to start a system installed service, I can do: # /etc/init.d/some-svc start # initctl start some-svc # service some-svc start # start some-svc If I want to disable a service from running at boot, I can do: # rm /etc/rc2.d/S99some-svc # update-rc.d some-svc disable # mv /etc/init/some-svc.conf /etc/init/some-svc.conf.disabled Then there are similarly various things I can do to enable services for starting at boot, and so on. I'm aware of the fact that upstart is a (relatively) new thing, and I know about how SysV init used to work, and I'm vaguely aware of a bunch of D-Bus nonsense, but what I don't know is how one is actually intended to interface with this stuff. For example, I don't know how to easily determine whether a service is an Upstart job or a legacy SysV thing, without actually reading through the source of its shell scripts extensively. So: if I want to start or stop a service, either at the moment or persistently, which of these tools should I use, and why? If the answer depends on some attribute (like "this service supports upstart") then how do I quickly and easily learn about that attribute of an installed package? Relatedly, are there any user interface tools which can safely and correctly interact with the modern service infrastructure (upstart, and/or whatever its sysv compatibility is)? For example, could I reliably use sysv-rc-conf to determine which services should start?

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