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• Finding bugs is difficult, right?

  - by Laila

  Something I hear developers tell us all the time is that they take pride in being a developer.and that bugs are a dent in that pride. Someone once told me "I know I have found bugs years later, and it's the worst feeling in the world." So how can you avoid that sinking feeling when you find out a bug has been in production months before someone lets you know about it? Besides, let's face it: hearing about a bug often means a world of pain, because it can take hours to track down where the problem is and more hours (if not days) to fix it. And during that time, you're not working on something new, and that, my friends, is really frustrating! So to cheer you up, we've created a Bug Hunt game, where you battle against the clock to spot bugs. We've really enjoyed putting this together and hope you enjoy playing it too. Once you're done with the bug hunt, we explain how easy it can be to find and fix bugs in real life, using a neat mechanism that we call Automated Error Reporting. Play the game now.

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• What is meant by, "A user shouldn't decide whether it is an Admin or not. The Privileges or Security system should."

  - by GlenPeterson

  The example used in the question pass bare minimum data to a function touches on the best way to determine whether the user is an administrator or not. One common answer was: user.isAdmin() This prompted a comment which was repeated several times and up-voted many times: A user shouldn't decide whether it is an Admin or not. The Privileges or Security system should. Something being tightly coupled to a class doesn't mean it is a good idea to make it part of that class. I replied, The user isn't deciding anything. The User object/table stores data about each user. Actual users don't get to change everything about themselves. But this was not productive. Clearly there is an underlying difference of perspective which is making communication difficult. Can someone explain to me why user.isAdmin() is bad, and paint a brief sketch of what it looks like done "right"? Really, I fail to see the advantage of separating security from the system that it protects. Any security text will say that security needs to be designed into a system from the beginning and considered at every stage of development, deployment, maintenance, and even end-of-life. It is not something that can be bolted on the side. But 17 up-votes so far on this comment says that I'm missing something important.

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• 2011 Tech Goal Review

  - by kerry

  A year ago I wrote a post listing my professional goals for 2011.  I thought I would review them and see how I did. Release an Android app to the marketplace – Didn’t do it.  In fact, haven’t really touched Android much since I wrote that.  I still have some ideas but am not sure if I will get around to it. Contribute free software to the community – I did do this.  I have been collaborating with others via github more lately. Regularly attend a user group meetings outside of Java – Did not do this.  Family life being what it is makes this not that much of a priority right now. Obtain the Oracle Certified Web Developer Certification – Did not do this.  This is not much of a priority to me any more. Learn scala – I am about 50/50 on this one.  I read a few scala books but did not write an actual application. Write an app using JSF – Did not do this.  Still interested. Present at a user group meeting – I did a Maven presentation at the Java user group. Use git more, and more effectively – Definitely did this.  Using it on a daily basis now. Overall, I got about halfway on my goals.  It’s not too bad since I did do a few things that weren’t on my list. Learned to develop applications using GWT and deploy them to Google App Engine Converted one of my sites from PHP to Ruby / Sinatra (learning to use it in the process) Studied up on the HTML 5 features and did a lot of Javascript development

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• Is there a precedent for the license on a compiler restricting the kind of development you can use it for?

  - by Jim McKeeth

  It was recently let slip that the new EULA for Delphi XE3 will prohibit Client Server development with the Professional edition without the additional purchase of a Client Server license pack. This is not to say the Professional version will lack the features, but the license will specifically prohibit the developer from using the compiler for a specific class of development, even with 3rd party or home grown solutions. So my question is if there is a precedent of a compiler or similar creative tool prohibiting the class of work you can use it for. Specifically a commercially licensed "professional" tool like Delphi XE3. Also, would such a restriction be legally enforceable? I know there have been educational edition or starter edition tools in the past that have restricted their use for commercial purposes, but those were not sold as "professional" tools. Also I know that a lot of computing software and equipment will have a disclaimer that it is not for use in "life support equipment" or "nuclear power" but that is more of avoiding liability than prohibiting activity. Seems like I recall Microsoft putting a restriction in FrontPage that you couldn't use it to create a web site that reflected poorly on Microsoft, but they pulled that restriction before it could be tested legally.

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• How to handle coworker with "obsessive refactoring disorder"

  - by ThuneGrill

  My coworker (who is very clever, but with severly limited inter-personal skills), keeps refactoring my code even when it is work in progress and assigned to me as a task. Whereas I fully subscribed to the idea of collective ownership of code, I find this extremely irritating, but attempts to have him stop seem to have no effect. My analysis of his personality is that he considers himself the best, and if it had not been for him, the codebase would have been in a mess. I should add that I am not a novice, I know my skills and I produce quality work. Some of the refactorings are indeed to the better, most are basically just introduction of a style that he likes better than mine. In addition, he has a almost child-like need to have the last word in any discussion and has never any word of praise for work done by co-workers. There is always something that he, the master, would have done differently. I feel this is strongly affecting the quality of my work-life. What should I do ?

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• How to procedurally (create) grow an artistic (2D) tree in real-time (L-System?).

  - by lalan

  Recently I programmed an L-system module, It got me interested further. I am a Plants vs Zombies junkie as well, really liked the concept of Tree of Wisdom. Would love to create similar procedural art just for fun and learn more. Question: How should I approach the process of creating an artistic tree (2d perhaps with fixed camera/perspective) dynamically? Ideally I would like to start with a plant (only a stem with a leaf) and grow it dynamically using some influence (input/user action) over its structure. These influences may result in different type of branching, curves in branches, its spread, location of fruits, color of flowers, etc. Want it to be really full of life/spirit. :) Plants vs Zombies: Tree of wisdom It would be great to dynamically grow a similar tree, but with lot more variation and animations happening. My Background: Student / Programmer, have used few game engines (Ogre3d, cocos2d, unity). Haven't really programmed directly using openGL, trying to fix that :). I am ready to spend considerable time, Please let me know about the APIs? and how would an expert like you would take on this problem? Why 2D? I think it's easier to solve the problem only considering 2 dimensions. Artistic inspirations: Only the tree, with fruits and leaves, without the shrubs at the bottom The large tree (visible branches, green leaves, flowers, fruits, etc) on the left, behind monkey. PixelJunk's Eden (Art style inspiration). Procedurally Generated Apple Tree using Fractals Please let me know if it was easy for you to understand the question, I may elaborate further. I hope a discussion of various approach would be helpful for everyone. You guys are awesome.

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• How to monetize and protect a engine's and its framework's copyrights and patents?

  - by Arthur Wulf White

  I created a game engine that handles: Rendering levels with 2d textured curved surfaces Collisions with curved surfaces Animationn paths on and navigation in 2d-sapce I have also made a framework for: Procedural organic level generation with round surfaces Level editing Light weight sprite design The engine and framework are written in AS3 and I am in the process of translating the code into HaXe to better support other platforms. I am also interested in adding Animated curved platforms More advanced level editing features Currently, I have a part time job and any time I spend on this engine is either taken out of my limited free time (I'm a student working to support myself through school) or out my time working at my job. I really believe this engine can make life much easier for people designing Tower Defence games, Shooters and and Platformers while also possibly improving their results. It could also support RTS, RPGs and racing games very well. It continains original algorithms that could be used for procedural generation of organic round and smooth levels. The algorithms I used are new and are not available in any other level editor I've seen. In order to constantly improve the Engine and have it tested thoroughly I think the best route is releasing it to the public. What are the best ways to benefit myself and others with my new framework? I want to have some lisence, allowing me to share the framework and still benefit from it. Any advice would be appreciated. This issue has been on my mind a lot this year. I am hoping to find a solution that will bring me some relief. I am thinking of designing three sample games, releasing them and starting a kickstarter, any advice and thoughts on the matter would be valuable. My goal is like Markus von Broady suggested, to get people involved in developing the engine and let people use it for games for either a symbolic fee or for free and charge for support. That or use some form of croud sourcing. Do I need to hire a lawyer to get some sort of legal document to protect my work?

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• Developer momentum on open source projects

  - by sashang

  Hi I've been struggling to develop momentum contributing to open source projects. I have in the past tried with gcc and contributed a fix to libstdc++ but it was a once off and even though I spent months in my spare time on the dev mailing list and reading through things I just never seemed to develop any momentum with the code. Eventually I unsubscribed and got my free time back and uncluttered my mailbox. Like a lot of people I have some little open source defunct projects lying around on the net, but they're not large and I'm the only contributor. At the moment I'm more interested in contributing to a large open source project and want to know how people got started because I find it difficult while working full time to develop any momentum with the code base. Other more regular contributors, who are on the project full-time, are able to make changes at will and as result enter that positive feedback cycle where they understand the code and also know where it's heading. It makes the barrier to entry higher for those that come along later. My questions are to people who actively contribute to large opensource projects, like the Linux kernel, or gcc or clang/llvm or anything else with say a developer head count of more than 10. How did you get started? Was there a large chunk of time in your life that you just could dedicate to working on the project? I know in Linus's case he had a chunk of time (6 months) to get it started. What barriers to entry did you encounter? Can you describe the initial stages of the time spent with the project, from when you had little understanding of the code to when you understood enough to commit regularly. Thanks

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• Lifecycle of an ASP.NET MVC 5 Application

  Here you can download a PDF Document that charts the lifecycle of every ASP.NET MVC 5 application, from receiving the HTTP request to sending the HTTP response back to the client. It is designed both as an educational tool for those who are new to ASP.NET MVC and also as a reference for those who need to drill into specific aspects of the application. The PDF document has the following features: Relevant HttpApplication stages to help you understand where MVC integrates into the ASP.NET application lifecycle. A high-level view of the MVC application lifecycle, where you can understand the major stages that every MVC application passes through in the request processing pipeline. A detail view that shows drills down into the details of the request processing pipeline. You can compare the high-level view and the detail view to see how the lifecycles details are collected into the various stages. Placement and purpose of all overridable methods on the Controller object in the request processing pipeline. You may or may not have the need to override any one method, but it is important for you to understand their role in the application lifecycle so that you can write code at the appropriate life cycle stage for the effect you intend. Blown-up diagrams showing how each of the filter types (authentication, authorization, action, and result) is invoked. Link to a useful article or blog from each point of interest in the detail view. span.fullpost {display:none;}

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• Battery is drained too quickly

  - by LucaB

  I'm getting really low battery life under ubuntu, not even close to windows. I tried powertop, and I saw that my laptop is consuming in idle nearly 20 watts (a bit more). I tried to install laptop-mode-tools, change "good" into "bad" in powertop, but nothing changes. I see that I have the the HD audio output device which is running at 100% every time. Could this be the problem? This is a report from powertop. The battery reports a discharge rate of 22.8 W The estimated remaining time is 33 minutes Summary: 381.8 wakeups/second, 0.0 GPU ops/second and 0.0 VFS ops/sec Usage Events/s Category Description 3.2 ms/s 182.7 Timer tick_sched_timer 100.0% Device Audio codec hwC0D3: Intel 7.9 ms/s 25.1 Process /usr/bin/X :0 -auth /var/run/lightdm/root/:0 -nolisten tcp vt7 -novtswitch -background no 1.9 ms/s 24.2 Interrupt [6] tasklet(softirq) 2.9 ms/s 23.2 Process /usr/lib/chromium-browser/chromium-browser --type=zygote 8.1 ms/s 20.3 Process /usr/lib/unity/unity-panel-service 0.7 ms/s 17.4 Timer hrtimer_wakeup 4.2 ms/s 12.6 Process unity-2d-panel 604.4 µs/s 9.7 Process syndaemon -i 2.0 -K -R -t 149.7 µs/s 9.7 kWork ieee80211_iface_work 0.8 ms/s 8.7 Process metacity 19.5 ms/s 1.0 Process powertop 3.0 ms/s 6.8 Process //bin/dbus-daemon --fork --print-pid 5 --print-address 7 --session 699.0 µs/s 6.8 Process /usr/lib/thunderbird/thunderbird 4.3 ms/s 4.8 Process gnome-terminal 658.9 µs/s 2.9 Interrupt [1] timer(softirq) 75.1 µs/s 2.9 kWork iwl_bg_run_time_calib_work 163.8 µs/s 1.9 Process /usr/lib/accountsservice/accounts-daemon 70.6 µs/s 1.9 Process [ksoftirqd/2] 25.8 µs/s 1.9 Process [ksoftirqd/0] 1.0 ms/s 1.0 Process /usr/bin/python /usr/sbin/powernapd 408.2 µs/s 1.0 Process unity-2d-shell 189.8 µs/s 1.0 Process /usr/lib/chromium-browser/chromium-browser 124.4 µs/s 1.0 Process /usr/lib/unity-lens-applications/unity-applications-daemon 113.3 µs/s 1.0 Process /usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon/gnome-settings-daemon 112.0 µs/s 1.0 Process nautilus -n 104.9 µs/s 1.0 Process /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfsd-trash --spawner :1.2 /org/gtk/gvfs/exec_spaw/0 77.5 µs/s 1.0 Process /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/colord/colord 75.6 µs/s 1.0 Process /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfs-gdu-volume-monitor 75.0 µs/s 1.0 Interrupt [53] i915 74.9 µs/s 1.0 Process /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfs-afc-volume-monitor What should I do to make the battery consumption lower?

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• How to debug suspend?

  - by mlissner

  I've been using Ubuntu for about five years now, and I still can't make it suspend when I want to. It's quite irritating that I can program up a storm, hack the machine in numerous other ways, and yet, and yet when I try to make it suspend or debug suspend, I fail miserably. I need help. Where do I begin to find the problem? What do I do to fix it? I'm placing a bounty on this, because I've literally lost hours of my life to this problem, and leaving my computer on ALL the time is terrible. The symptoms: Pressing suspend brings my computer to a state where it has a blinking cursor, the fans are running, it seems that the HD has turned off (I think), and I can't do anything to bring it back from this state (short of a hard reboot). Possibly related: My fans stay on even after a shutdown, and even then, I have to press the power button for five seconds before I can start it up again. I don't know what logs to look at to debug the problem, and I imagine they'd get nuked on reboot anyway. Please, please help. This drives me completely nuts, and I've been living with it for over a year.

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• Developing momentum on open source projects

  - by sashang

  Hi I've been struggling to develop momentum contributing to open source projects. I have in the past tried with gcc and contributed a fix to libstdc++ but it was a once off and even though I spent months in my spare time on the dev mailing list and reading through things I just never seemed to develop any momentum with the code. Eventually I unsubscribed and got my free time back and uncluttered my mailbox. Like a lot of people I have some little open source defunct projects lying around on the net, but they're not large and I'm the only contributor. At the moment I'm more interested in contributing to a large open source project and want to know how people got started because I find it difficult while working full time to develop any momentum with the code base. Other more regular contributors, who are on the project full-time, are able to make changes at will and as result enter that positive feedback cycle where they understand the code and also know where it's heading. It makes the barrier to entry higher for those that come along later. My questions are to people who actively contribute to large opensource projects, like the Linux kernel, or gcc or clang/llvm or anything else with say a developer head count of more than 10. How did you get started? Was there a large chunk of time in your life that you just could dedicate to working on the project? I know in Linus's case he had a chunk of time (6 months) to get it started. What barriers to entry did you encounter? Can you describe the initial stages of the time spent with the project, from when you had little understanding of the code to when you understood enough to commit regularly. Thanks

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• Book Review: Professional ASP.Net MVC4

  - by Sam Abraham

  The past few weeks have been particularly busy as I continue to dedicate a bigger portion of my free time to refreshing my memory and enhancing my knowledge of best practices pertaining to technologies we plan on using for a major upcoming project. In this blog post, I will be providing a brief overview of my latest reading “Professional ASP.Net MVC4” by Jon Galloway, Phil Haack, Brad Wilson and K. Scott Allen. This book is a must read for web developers looking to enhance their MVC expertise with best practices and tips shared from recognized industry experts. This book takes the reader on a 16-chapter long journey towards being a better ASP.NET MVC developer with chapter 16 putting all information covered in practical context by dissecting the implementation of Nuget.org, a real-life open-source, ASP.NET MVC project.  All code samples referenced in this book are conveniently accessible via NuGet, a free, open-source Library package manager that installs as a Visual Studio Extension. Chapters 2, 3 and 4 thoroughly cover MVC’s various components: Controllers “C”, Views “V” and Models “M” respectively. Chapter 5 covers additional extension methods (Helpers) provided to speed and ease the use of common HTML elements such as forms, textboxes, grids, to name a few… Chapter 6 tackles built-in validation while providing examples and use cases on implementing custom validation that plugs into the MVC framework. Chapters 7 thru 13 discusses the latest on Membership, Ajax, Routing, NuGet and the ASP.Net Web API. Chapters 12 (Dependency Injection) and 13 (Unit Testing) demonstrate a big competitive advantage of MVC with its ease of test-ability and plug-ability. Chapters 14 and 15 targets the advanced developer showcasing how to extend MVC to customize and replace every piece in the framework.In conclusion, I strongly recommend Professional ASP.NET MVC 4 as an excellent read for both developers already using MVC as well as those getting started with the framework.   Many thanks to the Wiley/Wrox User Group Program for their support of our West Palm Beach Developers’ Group.  You can access my reviews of books I recently read: Professional ASP.NET Design Patterns Professional WCF 4.0 Inside Windows Communication Foundation Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2008 series

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• Tree Surgeon 2.0 - The future on the T4 Express

  - by Malcolm Anderson

  If you've never been a fan of TreeSurgeon (http://treesurgeon.codeplex.com/) then skip this post.However, if have been there have been some interesting developments over the last couple of years.The biggest one is T4Recently Bill Simser wrote a detailed post about the potential future of tree surgeon, called "Tree Surgeon - Alive and Kicking or Dead and Buried" He raised the question:Times have changed. Since that last release in 2008 so much has changed for .NET developers. The question is, today is the project still viable? Do we still need a tool to generate a project tree given that we have things like scaffolding systems, NuGet, and T4 templates. Or should we just give the project its rightful and respectful send off as its had a good life and has outlived its usefulness.For myself, the answer is, keep it.I've spent the last couple of years doing agile engineering coaching and architecture and from my experience, I can tell you, there are a lot of shops out there that would benefit from having Tree Surgeon as a viable product.  Many would benefit simply from having the software engineering information that is embedded in the tree surgeon site be floating around their conversation.Little things like, keep all of your software needed to run the build, with the build in the version control system.Have your developers and the build system using the same build.Have a one-touch buildSeparate your code from your interfacePut unit tests in first, not lastI've seen companies with great developers suffer from the problems that naturally come from builds taking 3 and 4 hours to run.  It takes work to get that build down to 10 minutes, but the benefits are always worth it.  Tree Surgeon gives you a leg up, by starting you off with a project that you can drop into your Continuous Integration system, right out of the box.Well, it used to be right out of the box.  Today, you have to play with the project to make it work for you, but even with the issues (it hasn't been updated since 2008) it still gives you a framework, with logical separations that you can build from.If you have used Tree Surgeon in the past, take a few minutes and drop a comment about what difference it made in your development style, and what you are doing differently today because of it.

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• Which programming language should i choose? (much more info inside) [closed]

  - by Andreas

  I am not completely sure if this is the right place to put this question, but since it's the programming thread I guessed that there's many experienced programmers here. :) Ok, hello! My name is Andreas and I am a 16 years old guy from Norway. For some time now I've wanted to learn a programming language. Six months ago I started learning C++, but quit withing a week due to lack of motivation. The same thing happend only 2 months ago when I tried to learn Lua. I wanted to program mods to the game Garry's mod, and was really motivated. Then I stopped playing the game, and the programming stopped with it. Today though I am ready again. The only difference is that I am not completely sure what I want to do with the language. I only want to create something, and I miss the progress of failing and enduring hard work until I finally solve the problem I've worked on for hours. What I am trying to say is; Is there any program out there that allows me, a complete noob (I didn't learn that much in a week, so I like to call myself a beginner), to create apps, mods or something similar but at the same time being qualified as a first time language? I was thinking of Java, because Android, Minecraft and many other applications and games use it. But I've heard that it is going to be replaced by a program called HTML 5 (whatever that is), is this true? I certainly don't want to spend many hours of my life on something that is useless in a year or two. Hopefully I didn't make this too complicated. I know that it is hard to recommend something when I don't have a goal, but I really don't know what to say. Have a good day kind folks! - Andreas EDIT:* I did not know that this was an off topic question, really sorry!

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• Oracle OpenWorld Session: “Business Driven Development with BPM: Lessons from the Real World”

  - by Ajay Khanna

  One of key values that BPM promises is “Business Empowerment”. People closest to the processes, who participate in the process every day, are the ones who know most about the process. These are the people who run day-to-day operations, people who triage customer issues, people who envision improvements and innovations. It is, therefore, imperative that when a company decides to use BPM technology to automate their business processes, business people take the driver’s seat. BPM is not an IT only project. Oracle BPM suite has been designed keeping this core tenet of BPM, Business Empowerment, in mind. The result is business user centered design of Process Composer. Process Composer is designed to let business users document their processes, analyze them using simulation, create web forms, specify business rules and even run them in testing mode using process player, to see if the designed process meets their needs. This does not mean that IT has no role in this process. In fact, Oracle BPM Suite has made it very easy for Business and IT to collaborate. The same process can be shared among business, and IT stakeholders and each can collaborate to create model-driven, process based executable applications. A process may need to integrate with multiple systems via various mechanisms, and IT leads system and data integration effort. IT helps fine tune the performance of process applications and ensures that the deployment of process application meets scalability and failover standards. In this session, we saw Harish Gaur and Satya Narayanan from Oracle demonstrate roles Business and IT play in BPM projects and how Oracle BPM Suite enables business and IT collaboration to design and automate process based applications. They also discussed real life customer stories. Some key takeaways from this session: There are no IT projects, only business initiatives, requiring IT support Identify high impact processes – critical, better BPM ROI Identify key metrics to measure process performance Align business with IT layer

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• An experiment: unlimited free trial

  - by Alex.Davies

  The .NET Demon team have just implemented an experiment that is quite a break from Red Gate's normal business model. Instead of the tool expiring after the trial period, it now continues to work, but with a new message that appears after the tool has saved you a certain amount of time. The rationale is that a user that stops using .NET Demon because the trial expired isn't doing anyone any good. We'd much rather people continue using it forever, as long as everyone that finds it useful and can afford it still pays for it. Hopefully the message appearing is annoying enough to achieve that, but not for people to uninstall it. It's true that many companies have tried it before with mixed results, but we have a secret weapon. The perfect nag message? The neat thing for .NET Demon is that we can easily measure exactly how much time .NET Demon has saved you, in terms of unnecessary project builds that Visual Studio would have done. When you press F5, the message shows you the time saved, and then makes you wait a shorter time before starting your application. Confronted with the truth about how amazing .NET Demon is, who can do anything but buy it? The real secret though, is that while you wait, .NET Demon gives you entertainment, in the form of a picture of a cute kitten. I've only had time to embed one kitten so far, but the eventual aim is for a random different kitten to appear each time. The psychological health benefits of a dose of kittens in the daily life of the developer are obvious. My only concern is that people will complain after paying for .NET Demon that the kittens are gone.

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• Hydraulics in game

  - by Mungoid

  I'm not completely sure if this would be better in the Physics site or not as this question is more about how hydraulics should work in game as opposed to how they really work (although that is taken into account) - So I apologize if this is in the wrong place. A project we are on, we have a machine with hydraulics that are powered (They don't just look like they move something, they are the only thing moving/turning/lifting something) - However, the hydraulic extends the same speed no matter what it is pushing. So, say there is a 10 ton object attached to one end of the hydraulic and the other end is attached to a plate on the ground. In real life it takes a few seconds to build up pressure depending on how heavy the object is, but in our project the hydraulics don't care about that. It will lift a 100 ton object the same speed as a 10 ton object. We have a way to fake the hydraulic pressurizing by reducing the 'drive amount' (how fast or slow the hydraulic extends) when we sense that it is touching the ground and that does a relatively decent job but we would like to be able to take other things into account like engine speed, ratios, loads, etc. but we aren't too sure what we need to think about. I'm kinda wondering if anyone here has any experience with this and could offer some suggestions on what to take into account?

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• Impressions and Reactions from Alliance 2012

  - by user739873

  Alliance 2012 has come to a conclusion.  What strikes me about every Alliance conference is the amazing amount of collaboration and cooperation I see across higher education in the sharing of best practices around the entire Oracle PeopleSoft software suite, not just the student information system (Oracle’s PeopleSoft Campus Solutions).  In addition to the vibrant U.S. organization, it's gratifying to see the growth in the international attendance again this year, with an EMEA HEUG organizing to complement the existing groups in the Netherlands, South Africa, and the U.K.  Their first meeting is planned for London in October, and I suspect they'll be surprised at the amount of interest and attendance. In my discussions with higher education IT and functional leadership at Alliance there were a number of instances where concern was expressed about Oracle's commitment to higher education as an industry, primarily because of a lack of perceived innovation in the applications that Oracle develops for this market. Here I think perception and reality are far apart, and I'd like to explain why I believe this to be true. First let me start with what I think drives this perception. Predominately it's in two areas. The first area is the user interface, both for students and faculty that interact with the system as "customers", and for those employees of the institution (faculty, staff, and sometimes students as well) that use the system in some kind of administrative role. Because the UI hasn't changed all that much from the PeopleSoft days, individuals perceive this as a dead product with little innovation and therefore Oracle isn't investing. The second area is around the integration of the higher education suite of applications (PeopleSoft Campus Solutions) and the rest of the Oracle software assets. Whether grown organically or acquired, there is an impressive array of middleware and other software products that could be leveraged much more significantly by the higher education applications than is currently the case today. This is also perceived as lack of investment. Let me address these two points.  First the UI.  More is being done here than ever before, and the PAG and other groups where this was discussed at Alliance 2012 were more numerous than I've seen in any past meeting. Whether it's Oracle development leveraging web services or some extremely early but very promising work leveraging the recent Endeca acquisition (see some cool examples here) there are a lot of resources aimed at this issue.  There are also some amazing prototypes being developed by our UX (user experience team) that will eventually make their way into the higher education applications realm - they had an impressive setup at Alliance.  Hopefully many of you that attended found this group. If not, the senior leader for that team Jeremy Ashley will be a significant contributor of content to our summer Industry Strategy Council meeting in Washington in June. In the area of integration with other elements of the Oracle stack, this is also an area of focus for the company and my team.  We're making this a priority especially in the areas of identity management and security, leveraging WebCenter more effectively for content, imaging, and mobility, and driving towards the ultimate objective of WebLogic Suite as our platform for SOA, links to learning management systems (SAIP), and content. There is also much work around business intelligence centering on OBI applications. But at the end of the day we get enormous value from the HEUG (higher education user group) and the various subgroups formed as a part of this community that help us align and prioritize our investments, whether it's around better integration with other Oracle products or integration with partner offerings.  It's one of the healthiest, mutually beneficial relationships between customers and an Education IT concern that exists on the globe. And I can't avoid mentioning that this kind of relationship between higher education and the corporate IT community that can truly address the problems of efficiency and effectiveness, institutional excellence (which starts with IT) and student success.  It's not (in my opinion) going to be solved through community source - cost and complexity only increase in that model and in the end higher education doesn't ultimately focus on core competencies: educating, developing, and researching.  While I agree with some of what Michael A. McRobbie wrote in his EDUCAUSE Review article (Information Technology: A View from Both Sides of the President’s Desk), I take strong issue with his assertion that the "the IT marketplace is just the opposite of long-term stability...."  Sure there has been healthy, creative destruction in the past 2-3 decades, but this has had the effect of, in the aggregate, benefiting education with greater efficiency, more innovation and increased stability as larger, more financially secure firms acquire and develop integrated solutions. Cole

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• A Quarter Century of SPARC

  - by kemer

  You might have missed an interesting milestone: the 25th anniversary of SPARC. Twenty-five years! Almost 40% of my life: humbling, maybe a little scary. When I joined Sun Microsystems in 1988, SPARC was just starting to shake things up. The next year we introduced the SPARCstation 1, which had basically triple the performance of our Motrolla-based Sun–3 systems. Not too long after that, our competition began a campaign of “SPARC is dead.” We really distressed them with our success, in spite of our small size. “It won’t last.” “It can’t last!” So they told themselves. For a stroll down memory lane take a look at this page. I remember the sales meeting we had in Atlanta to internally announce the SPARCstation 1. Sun hadn’t really hit the big times, yet. Our much bigger competitors viewed us as an ill-mannered pest, certain of our demise. And, why wouldn’t they be certain: other startups more our size, such as Apollo (remember them?), Silicon Graphics (they fought the good fight!), and the incredibly cool Symbolics are memories. Wait! There was also a BIG company, DEC, who scoffed at us: they are history, too. In fact, we really upset them with what was supposed to be an internal-only video production that was a take-off on Bruce Lee movies, in which we battled the evil Doctor DEC – complete with computer mice (or is that “mouses”?) wielded like nun chucks with the new SPARCstation 1 somehow in the middle of everything. The memory is vivid, but the details hazy. After all, that was almost a quarter century ago. So, here’s to Oracle’s SPARC: still going strong after all these years. – Kemer

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• Does the term "Learning Curve" include the knowing of the gotchas?

  - by voroninp

  When you learn new technology you spend time understanding its concepts and tools. But when technology meets real life strange and not pleasant things happen. Reuqirements are often far from ideal and differ from 'classic' scenario. And soon I find myself bending the technology to my real needs. At this point I begin to know bugs of the system or that is is not so flexible as it seemed at the very begining. And this 'fighting' with technology consumes a great part of the time while developing. What is more depressing is that the bunch of such gotchas and workarounds are not concentrated at one place (book, site, etc.) And before you really confront it you cannot really ask the correct question because you do not even suspect the reason for the problem to occur (unknown-unknown). So my question consiststs of three: 1) Do you really manage (and how) to predict possible future problems? 2) How much time do you spend for finding the workaround/fix/solution before you leave it and switch to other problems. 3) What are the criteria for you to think about yourself as experienced in the tecnology. Do you take these gotchas into account?

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• Oracle E-Business Suite is Helping to Save Lives at the National Marrow Donor Program

  - by Di Seghposs

  To improve the management of its life-saving operations, the National Marrow Donor Program recently modernized its financial and procurement operations by upgrading to Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1.   As the global leader in bone marrow and umbilical cord blood transplants, the NMDP manages a complex ecosystem of donor, patient, hospital, and biological data. “Maintaining accurate data and having an efficient matching process is essential, particularly as our global database of bone marrow patients grows and donor lists expand,” says Bruce Schmaltz, director of finance/controller. “We rely on the Oracle E-Business Suite to ensure our procurement and financial management processes meet the highest standards, enabling our growing non-profit to work swiftly and efficiently to help improve and save lives.” As the non-profit organization and its registry grew larger, NMDP needed a modern platform to store and integrate its financial information and complicated procurement process. It selected Oracle E-Business Suite for its ability to fit seamlessly into NMDP’s enterprise architecture. NMDP initially implemented Oracle E-Business Suite release 12 by leveraging Oracle Business Accelerators, which are rapid implementation tools and templates that help reduce implementation time and costs. With Oracle Financial Management and Oracle Procurement, NMDP has streamlined back-office processes and integrated its procure-to-pay business processes by leveraging industry leading accounts payable, accounts receivable, and general ledger modules. NMDP is currently rolling out Oracle Hyperion Performance Management applications and plans to implement Oracle Order Management and Oracle Advanced Pricing by the end of 2012. Read more details about NMDP’s modernization efforts.  For more updates on Oracle Financial Management Solutions, view our November 2012 Oracle Information InDepth Financial Management newsletter. Subscribe Now. 

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• When to use each user research method

  - by user12277104

  There are a lot of user research methods out there, but sometimes we get stuck in a rut, conducting all formative usability testing before coding, or running surveys to gather satisfaction data. I'll be the first to admit that it happens to me, but to get out of a rut, it just takes a minute to look at where I am in the design & development cycle, what kind(s) of data I need, and what methods are available to me. We need reminders, or refreshers, every once in a while. One tool I've found useful is a graphic organizer that I created many years ago. It's been through several revisions, as I've adapted it to the product cycles of the places I've worked, changed my mind about how to categorize it, and added methods that I've used or created over time. I shared a version of this table at the 2012 International UPA conference, and I was contacted by someone yesterday who wanted to use it in a university course on user-center design. I was flattered at the the thought, but embarrassed, because I was sure it needed updating -- that was a year ago, after all. But I opened it today, and really, there's not much I'd change -- sure, I could add some nuance regarding what types of formative testing, such as modality (remote, unmoderated remote, or in-person) or flavor of testing (RITE, RITE-Krug, comparative, performance), but I think it's pretty much ok as is. Click on the image below, to get the full-size PDF. And whether it's entirely "right" or "wrong" isn't the whole value of looking at these methods across the product lifecycle. The real value lies in the reminder that I have options. And what those options are change as the field changes, so while I don't expect this graphic to have an eternal shelf life, it's still ok a year after I last updated it. That said, if you find something missing or out of place, let me know :) 

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• Oracle India Provides Choices For Students

  - by user769227

  For next year's graduating class of computer science and engineering students, the world is their oyster. I believe that in today's day and age the opportunities for graduates are truly endless. Many students have a misconception that Oracle is mainly a Database Company. While we certainly are leaders in the database space, there is so much more that we do. If you look a little bit deeper you will find we have business groups within Oracle creating technical solutions across all areas of the business world. I think that the opportunities available at Oracle can be those 'life changing' roles that students are looking for where they will learn, develop, be challenged and still have the opportunity to be themselves. What other company provides as many choices for students as Oracle. The range of business and technical solutions we provide is enormous. At Oracle India we hire students across a range of different business groups. Below is a presentation showing you just some of the different business groups that hire graduates in Oracle India. The theme is 'choices' because we believe with the variety of work we do we provide the choice to allow you to be you. .prezi-player { width: 550px; } .prezi-player-links { text-align: center; } Oracle Campus Recruitment India: Choices on Prezi As you can see, here at Oracle you get the chance to allow 'You to be You'. If Cloud Computing is what you are interested in, great explore opportunities in our Cloud Services Team. Have you always wanted to work as a Systems Engineer, maybe a role in our Systems/Hardware Business is right for you. With Oracle you have the choice to carve out your career in the path you want it to take. Do you want to find our more, send us your details at [email protected] 

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• Oracle Fusion Applications Design Patterns Now Available For Developers

  - by ultan o'broin

  The Oracle Fusion Applications user experience design patterns are published! These new, reusable usability solutions and best-practices, which will join the Oracle dashboard patterns and guidelines that are already available online, are used by Oracle to artfully bring to life a new standard in the user experience, or UX, of enterprise applications. Now, the Oracle applications development community can benefit from the science behind the Oracle Fusion Applications user experience, too. The design patterns are based on Oracle ADF components and easily implemented in Oracle JDeveloper. These Oracle Fusion Applications UX Design Patterns, or blueprints, enable Oracle applications developers and system implementers everywhere to leverage professional usability insight when: tailoring an Oracle Fusion application, creating coexistence solutions that existing users will be delighted with, thus enabling graceful user transitions to Oracle Fusion Applications down the road, or designing exciting, new, highly usable applications in the cloud or on-premise. Based on the Oracle Application Development Framework (ADF) components, the Oracle Fusion Applications patterns and guidelines are proven with real users and in the Applications UX usability labs, so you can get right to work coding productivity-enhancing designs that provide an advantage for your entire business. What’s the best way to get started? We’ve made that easy, too. The Design Filter Tool (DeFT) selects the best pattern for your user type and task. Simply adapt your selection for your own task flow and content, and you’re on your way to a really great applications user experience. More Oracle applications design patterns and training are coming your way in the future. To provide feedback on the sets that are currently available, let me know in the comments!.

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