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  • I am having trouble booting 12.04 keyboard and little man in circle appears and then nothing

    - by Rich J.
    I have a new system (ASUS 990FX mother board, 2 western dig drives, 32 gb memory, an ASUS nvidia video card (GeForce GTX560), and an ASUS DVD Burner (24B1ST)) I am struggling to get the 12.04 cd to work. I have been able to see the little man inside a circle and a graphic of a keyboard? with an == sign between them. Is this is a clue? What does it mean? After that the mauve screen with keyboard and little man in circle goes away. I get a dark background and underline cursor... even hear some work being done reading the rom.... but nothing appears on the screen. I haven't even got to the point where the graphic card is displaying improperly... it is just not displaying anything. If any kind soul has an idea about how to proceed, I am all ears. BTW, I have posted the issue to ASUS... waiting for reply.

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  • How to manage drawing loop when changing render targets

    - by George Duckett
    I'm managing my game state by having a base GameScreen class with a Draw method. I then have (basically) a stack of GameScreens that I render. I render the bottom one first, as screens above might not completely cover the ones below. I now have a problem where one GameScreen changes render targets while doing its rendering. Anything the previous screens have drawn to the backbuffer is lost (as XNA emulates what happens on the xbox). I don't want to just set the backbuffer to preserve its contents as I want this to work on the xbox as well as PC. How should I manage this problem? A few ideas I've had: Render every GameScreen to its own render target, then render them all to the backbuffer. Create some kind of RenderAction queue where a game screen (and anything else I guess) could queue something to be rendered to the back buffer. They'd render whatever they wanted to any render target as normal, but if they wanted to render to the backbuffer they'd stick that in a queue which would get processed once all rendertarget rendering was done. Abstract away from render targets and backbuffers and have some way of representing the way graphics flows and transforms between render targets and have something manage/work out the correct rendering order (and render targets) given what rendering process needs as input and what it produces as output. I think each of my ideas have pros and cons and there are probably several other ways of approaching this general problem so I'm interested in finding out what solutions are out there.

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  • Reacting to rectangle on rectangle collisions

    - by mcjohnalds45
    I don't know how to react to collisions between two axis aligned rectangles that have x, y, width and height values (x and y are from the centre of the box) to make them simply not overlap. I figured I'd just make them move away from each other depending on how far they intersect in the opposite direction (left, right, up or down) of where they collided. If I check for collisions only on the x axis or only on the y axis it works fine, but when checking for both collisions crazy stuff happens. This code executes when the first box collides with the second. It's in lua but feel free to answer in anything that isn't to too counter-intuitive. if box1.x < box2.x then box1.x = box1.x + box2.x - box1.x - (box1.width / 2) - (box2.width / 2) end if box1.x > box2.x then box1.x = box1.x - (box1.x - box2.x - (box1.width / 2) - (box2.width / 2)) end if box1.y < box2.y then box1.y = box1.y + box2.y - box1.y - (box1.height / 2) - (box2.height / 2) end if box1.y > box2.y then box1.y = box1.y - (box1.y - box2.y - (box1.height / 2) - (box2.height / 2)) end

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  • Should I stay in my degree or take an opportunity for management experience?

    - by Adam
    I've read a couple other post along these lines and they've been helpful but I'm wondering if my case is any different. I've been working towards my CS degree while working part time in a programming job. I'm now about two years away from getting my degree and was just offered a management position at my job. This would mean that I have to work full-time at my job and I can't really work towards my degree anymore in person. My school doesn't really offer CS classes after hours nor online. It seems that getting a degree is very important from the other post that I read. Does having management experience trump that? I'm currently leaning towards taking the job and finding some sort of online degree. Also my school only offers a business degree online, could I just get this in place. Does the type of degree really matter? For some jobs it's not the type of degree just that you have one, is there any merit for this in the programming industry? Thanks :)

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  • Automatic Generalization

    - by Nick Harrison
    I have been interested in functional programming since college. I played around a little with LISP back then, but I have not had an opportunity since then. Now that F# ships standard with VS 2010, I figured now is my chance. So, I was reading up on it a little over the weekend when I came across a very interesting topic. F# includes a concept called "Automatic Generalization". As I understand it, the compiler will look at your method and analyze how you are using parameters. It will automatically switch to a generic parameter if it is possible based on your usage. Wow! I am looking forward to playing with this. I have long been an advocate of using the most generic types possible especially when developing library classes. Use the highest level base class that you can get away with. Use an interface instead of a specific implementation. I don't advocate passing object around, but you get the idea. Tools like resharper, fxCop, and most static code analysis tools provide guidance to help you identify when a more generalized type is possible, but this is the first time I have heard about the compiler taking matters into its own hands. I like the sound of this. We'll see if it is a good idea or not. What are your thoughts? Am I missing the mark on what Automatic Generalization does in F#? How would this work in C#? Do you see any problems with this?

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  • The most mind-bending programming language? [closed]

    - by Xepoch
    From a reasonably common programming language, which do you find to be the most mind-bending? I have been listening to a lot of programming podcasts and taking some time to learn some new languages that are being considered upcoming, and important. I'm not necessarily talking about BrainFuck, but which language would you consider to be one that challenges the common programming paradigms? For me, I did some functional and logic (ex. Prolog) programming in the 90s, so can't say that I find anything special there. I am far from being an expert in it, but even today the most mind-bending programming language for me is Perl. Not because "Hello World" is hard to implement but rather there is so much lexical flexibility that some of the hardest solutions can be decomposed so poetically that I have to walk outside away from my terminal to clear my head. I'm not saying I'd likely sell a commercial software implementation, just that there is a distinct reason Perl is so (in)famous. Just look at the basic list of books on it. So, what is your mind-bending language that promotes your better programming and practices?

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  • Upcoming events : OBUG Connect Conference 2012

    - by Maria Colgan
    The Oracle Benelux User Group (OBUG) have given me an amazing opportunity to present a one day Optimizer workshop at their annual Connect Conference in Maastricht on April 24th. The workshop will run as one of the parallel tracks at the conference and consists of three 45 minute sessions. Each session can be attended stand alone but they will build on each other to allow someone new to the Oracle Optimizer or SQL tuning to come away from the conference with a better understanding of how the Optimizer works and what techniques they should deploy to tune their SQL. Below is a brief description of each of the sessions Session 7 - 11:30 am Oracle Optimizer: Understanding Optimizer StatisticsThe workshop opens with a discussion on Optimizer statistics and the features introduced in Oracle Database 11g to improve the quality and efficiency of statistics-gathering. The session will also provide strategies for managing statistics in various database environments. Session 27 -  14:30 pm Oracle Optimizer: Explain the Explain PlanThe workshop will continue with a detailed examination of the different aspects of an execution plan, from selectivity to parallel execution, and explains what information you should be gleaning from the plan. Session 47 -  15:45 pm Top Tips to get Optimal Execution Plans Finally I will show you how to identify and resolving the most common SQL execution performance problems, such as poor cardinality estimations, bind peeking issues, and selecting the wrong access method.   Hopefully I will see you there! +Maria Colgan

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  • Oracle Java Embedded Client 1.1 Released

    - by Roger Brinkley
    Yesterday an update release of Oracle Java Embedded Client (OJEC) 1.1 quietly slipped out door for general availability. Until last year it was pretty difficult to get your hands on either a Connected Limited Device Configuration (CLDC) for small devices or a Connected Device Configuration (CDC) for medium devices java implementation without a substantial initial commitment. But with the the release of OJWC (CLDC) and OJEC (CDC) last year that has changed. OJEC 1.1 is a binary distribution designed for installation on medium configurations which is a mid range processor requiring a  slow startup time, seamless upgrades, in a cost sensitive hardware environment  anywhere from 3.5mb to 8 mb. There are headless as well as headed versions available. It is intended for devices, such as Blu-­-ray Disc players, set-­-top boxes, residential gateways,VOIP phones, and similar. From a software point of view, OJEC is the Java runtime platform implementation of Connected Device Configuration (CDC v1.1, JSR-­-218), Foundation Profile (FP v1.1, JSR-­-219), and Personal Basis Profile (PBP v1.1, JSR-­-217)  and includes optional packages RMI (JSR 66), JDBC (JSR 169) and XML API for Java ME (JSR 280), and Java TV (JSR-­-927). New to this release is support for the XML API (JSR 280) and a number of bug fixes and performance enhancements, including an improved Just-in-Time (JIT) compilation for the x86 chipset architecture. The platforms supported include ArmV5, ArmV6/ArmV7, MIPS 32 74K, and X86 in headless mode. For embedded developers there are number of advantages to using Java and if you have shied away from the JavaME edition in the past I would encourage you to look into the updated version of OJEC 1.1.

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  • Why The Athene Group Chose Fusion CRM

    - by Tony Berk
    A guest post by Vikas Bhambri, Managing Partner, The Athene Group This year, The Athene Group (www.theathenegroup.com) celebrated our tenth anniversary. The company has accomplished a lot in ten years overcoming a number of hurdles and challenges to have grown organically to a 150+ person global company with offices in the US, UK, and India and customers in the US, Canada, and Europe. Now more than ever with the current global landscape from an economic and competitive standpoint it was vital that we make some changes to remain successful for the next ten years. There were two key initiatives that we discussed internally that would enable us to successfully accomplish this – collaboration and the concept of “insight to action”. With our existing Oracle CRM On Demand platform we had components of this but not the full depth and breadth that we were looking for. When we started to discuss Fusion CRM we immediately saw several next generation tools that would embrace these two objectives. For a consulting and development organization the collaboration required between business development and consulting delivery is as important as the collaboration required during the projects between the project delivery and account management teams. The Activity Streams functionality in Fusion CRM immediately addressed the communication of key discussion topics and exchanges around our clients. Of course when we saw the Oracle Social Network (which is part of our Fusion CRM roadmap) we were blown away. The combination OSN and our CRM is going to make us more effective as we discuss and work cohesively on client engagements – ensuring mutual success for both Athene and our clients. When we looked at “insight to action” we saw that we had a great platform when folks were at their desks, unfortunately a lot of our business development and consulting folks are on the road. The Fusion Mobile Sales and Fusion Outlook Desktop provide information to our teams when they are on the go. So that they can provide real-time information and react to real-time information provided by their peers. We are in the early stages of our transformative experience with Fusion CRM but we believe the platform along with our people and processes are going to help us achieve our goals in the future.

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  • Game programming basics under Windows

    - by dreta
    I've been trying to learn some Windows programming using the Win32 API. Now, i'm used to working with the OS layer being abstracted away, mostly thanks to libraries like SFML or Allegro. Could you guys help me out and tell me if i'm thinking right here. The place for my gameloop is where i'm reading the messages? while (TRUE) { if (PeekMessage (&msg, NULL, 0, 0, PM_REMOVE)) { if (msg.message == WM_QUIT) break ; TranslateMessage (&msg) ; DispatchMessage (&msg) ; } else { //my game loop goes here } } Now the slightly bigger issue, that is, drawing. Do i run my drawing where i normaly do it, inside the game loop after the game logic? Or do i do it when WM_PAIN is being called and just call InvalidateRect (hwnd, NULL, TRUE); when i want to draw? This does feel weird, the WM_PAINT is a queued message, so i don't know for sure when it'll be called. So if i wanted to avoid this, do i just get the device handle inside the game loop and only ValidateRect (hwnd, NULL); in the WM_PAINT case (beside the ValidateRect (hwnd, NULL); called after drawing in the game loop)? Actually, now that i think about it, do i even need WM_PAINT in this situation or can i skip it and let DefWindowProc handle it (does it validate the screen if WM_PAINT isn't processed)? If this is any important, i'm setting up my code for OpenGL.

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  • It's Raining Solaris Training

    - by rajeshr
    That the popularity of Solaris 11 is only growing is clear from how regular the training sessions have been around this product. It's such an excitement to be going around sharing knowledge on Solaris, more so to explore the nitty gritty of many new and evolving features. Trust me, it's only getting better! In the process, just like in the past I stumbled on several individuals, each teaching me a lesson or two. I'm grateful. And if I've managed to get over the laziness to come back to the web logs with a collection of class photos from the last couple of months, it's because of a sense of gratitude to all 'em in the picture below. Solaris 11 Network Administration Pilot Teach in Bangalore. Sun Identity Manager (n.k.a Oracle Waveset IDM) Deployment Fundamentals Training. I'm missing from the snap because these delegates sat well over 10,000 Kms away from where I taught this class from, but were kind enough to help me associate a face with the voice by sending me a group photograph. If you want to attend one such OU program cutting down the travel, try OU's Live Virtual Class (a.k.a LVC) . Transition to Solaris 11 in Mumbai. Solaris 11 Advanced Administration Session in Bangalore. Transition to Solaris 11 in Mumbai. Attending Gary Riseborough's Exadata Training at Singapore. Solaris 11 Advanced Administration Session in Bangalore. If only the participants of each LVC session belonged to the same location, there would've been additional three group photographs occupying this space! Thank you everyone for many many memorable moments.

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  • DHCP-server doesn't start at boot because of wrong startup order

    - by stolsvik
    Apparently the isc-dhcp-server is started too early in the boot sequence, it states that it has nothing to do. If I just log directly in as root and start it using the init.d-script, it starts normally. My setup is basically an utterly standard router, with an eth0 on the inet side, and an eth1 on the lan side. However, I've defined a bridge instead of the eth1 for the lan-side. Thus, the lan-part of the network isn't up until the bridge is up. I currently believe that the dhcp server is brought up before the bridge is brought up, probably because the bridge is brought up with the 'networking' task, while the eth's are taken up with the 'network-interface' tasks - which are run earlier. (also, the bridge takes a small age to get up compared to the eth's). If I do take away the bridge config, instead using eth1 directly for the lan side, things work. (However, judging by syslog, things are still tight.) Ideas of how the get DHCP to start later? (The reason for the bridge, is to be able to use KVM with bridged networking..)

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  • How to cover the widest range of computers when publishing?

    - by DevilWithin
    When you plan a game, or even when you already made a game, and its time to publish, you wonder how much of your audience is covered by the game technology demands. I'm directing this essentialy to casual games, as I constantly see people having old laptops and being unable to replace them. Laptops with integrated cards whose OpenGL version doesn't even support textures larger than 1024x1024. These people may be avid gamers as well, and a reasonable share of the audience to consider giving them the chance to play casual games, once they cannot play any blockbusters. As I've seen happening, a very "noticeable" example is Angry Birds. It's gameplay is merely casual (I think nobody disagrees here) and still, it uses so high resolution textures that at least OpenGL 2.0 or around is needed, which blocks away a lot of people. So, the actual question is: what is a good tradeoff for this issue? Would it be better to just sacrifice the texture resolution for everyone, but have more supported hardware? Would it be better to keep the high quality and just slice the textures into smaller ones, sacrificing the performance a little bit? What else? Any ideas about this topic are welcome for discussion.

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  • Finding a mentor online [closed]

    - by Athena Santos
    Possible Duplicate: How to find programming mentor? I'm a programming intern, but I want to "transition" into a product manager role after graduation. I just know that I will never be a super A++ Rockstar programmer, but from my internship I know that I can be a great program manager..one of those presumably rare people who can code well (enough)/speak programmer-ese and management-ese. Being a girl, I am looking for both male and female mentors. Female, because they know what its like to be a minority, and male, because..well, you guys are tough, and I believe to succeed in tech, a girl's gotta know how to act like a man (when appropriate). I've found some really amazing people I'd like to ask to be my mentor (in blogs, magazines, etc), but sadly, I live far, far away from them. Will be awkward/rude if I shoot them an email about being a mentor? What is the best way to establish a relationship with people like these that I admire? Any volunteers? :) Thank you in advance, and I hope you all have a great day/night.

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  • Complexity of defense AI

    - by Fredrik Johansson
    I have a non-released game, and currently it's only possible to play with another human being. As the game rules are made up by me, I think it would be great if new players could learn basic game play by playing against an AI opponent. I mean it's not like Tennis, where the majority knows at least the fundamental rules. On the other hand, I'm a bit concerned that this AI implementation can be quite complex. I hope you can help me with an complexity estimation. I've tried to summarize the gameplay below. Is this defense AI very hard to do? Basic Defense Game Play Player Defender can move within his land, i.e. inside a random, non-convex, polygon. This land will also contain obstacles modeled as polygons, that Defender has to move around. Player Attacker has also a land, modeled as another such polygon. Assume that Defender shall defend against Attacker. Attacker will then throw a thingy towards Defender's land. To be rewarded, Attacker wants to hit Defender's land, and Defender will want to strike away the thingy from his land before it stops to prevent Attacker from scoring. To feint Defender, Attacker might run around within his land before the throw, and based on these attacker movements Defender shall then continuously move to the best defense position within his land.

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  • Agile Data Book from O'Reilly Media

    - by Compudicted
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/Compudicted/archive/2013/07/01/153309.aspxAs part of my ongoing self-education and approaching of some free time, yeah, both is a must for every IT person and geek! I have carefully examined the latest trends in the Computersphere with whatever tools I had at my disposal (nothing really fancy was used) and came to a conclusion that for a database pro the *hottest* topic today is undoubtedly the #BigData and all the rapidly growing and spawning ecosystem around it. Having recently immersed myself into the NoSQL world (let me tell here right away NoSQL means Not Only SQL) one book really stood out of the crowd: Book site: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920025054.doDespite being a new book I am sure it will end up on the tables of many Big Data Generalists.In a few dozen words, it is primarily for two reasons:1) The author understands that a  typical business today cannot wait for a Data Scientist for too long to deliver results demanding as usual a very quick turnaround on investments (ROI), and 2) The book covers all the needed and proven modern brick and mortar offerings to get the job done by a relatively newcomer to the Big Data World.It certainly enables such a professional to grow and expand based on the acquired knowledge, and one can truly do it very fast.

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  • What is the point of dynamic allocation in C++?

    - by Aerovistae
    I really have never understood it at all. I can do it, but I just don't get why I would want to. For instance, I was programming a game yesterday, and I set up an array of pointers to dynamically allocated little enemies in the game, then passed it to a function which updates their positions. When I ran the game, I got one of those nondescript assertion errors, something about a memory block not existing, I don't know. It was a run-time error, so it didn't say where the problem was. So I just said screw it and rewrote it with static instantiation, i.e.: while(n<4) { Enemy tempEnemy = Enemy(3, 4); enemyVector.push_back(tempEnemy); n++; } updatePositions(&enemyVector); And it immediately worked perfectly. Now sure, some of you may be thinking something to the effect of "Maybe if you knew what you were doing," or perhaps "n00b can't use pointers L0L," but frankly, you really can't deny that they make things way overcomplicated, hence most modern languages have done away with them entirely. But please-- someone -- What IS the point of dynamic allocation? What advantage does it afford? Why would I ever not do what I just did in the above example?

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  • The Oracle Platform

    - by Naresh Persaud
    Today’s enterprises typically create identity management infrastructures using ad-hoc, multiple point solutions. Relying on point solutions introduces complexity and high cost of ownership leading many organizations to rethink this approach. In a recent worldwide study of 160 companies conducted by Aberdeen Research, there was a discernible shift in this trend as businesses are now looking to move away from the point solution approach from multiple vendors and adopt an integrated platform approach. By deploying a comprehensive identity and access management strategy using a single platform, companies are saving as much as 48% in IT costs, while reducing audit deficiencies by nearly 35%. According to Aberdeen's research, choosing an integrated suite or “platform” of solutions for Identity Management from a single vendor can have many advantages over choosing “point solutions” from multiple vendors. The Oracle Identity Management Platform is uniquely designed to offer several compelling benefits to our customers.  Shared Services: Instead of separate solutions for - Administration, Authentication, Authorization, Audit and so on–  Oracle Identity Management offers a set of share services that allows these services to be consumed by each component in the stack and by developers of new applications  Actionable Intelligence: The most compelling benefit of the Oracle platform is ” Actionable intelligence” which means if there is a compliance violation, the same platform can fix it. And If a user is logging in from an un-trusted device or we detect an attack and act proactively on that information. Suite Interoperability: With the oracle platform the components all connect and integrated with each other. So if an organization purchase the platform for provisioning and wants to manage access, then the same platform can offer access management which leads to cost savings. Extensible and Configurable: With point solutions – you typically get limited ability to extend the tool to address custom requirements. But with the Oracle platform all of the components have a common way to extend the UI and behavior Find out more about the Oracle Platform approach in this presentation. Platform approach-series-the oracleplatform-final View more PowerPoint from OracleIDM

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  • Simple Architecture Verification

    - by Jean Carlos Suárez Marranzini
    I just made an architecture for an application with the function of scoring, saving and loading tennis games. The architecture has 2 kinds of elements: components & layers. Components: Standalone elements that can be consumed by other components or by layers. They might also consume functionality from the model/bottom layer. Layers: Software components whose functionality rests on previous layers (except for the model layer). -Layers: -Models: Data and it's behavior. -Controllers: A layer that allows interaction between the views and the models. -Views: The presentation layer for interacting with the user. -Components: -Persistence: Makes sure the game data can be stored away for later retrieval. -Time Machine: Records changes in the game through time so it's possible to navigate the game back and forth. -Settings: Contains the settings that determine how some of the game logic will apply. -Game Engine: Contains all the game logic, which it applies to the game data to determine the path the game should take. This is an image of the architecture (I don't have enough rep to post images): http://i49.tinypic.com/35lt5a9.png The requierements which this architecture should satisfy are the following: Save & load games. Move through game history and see how the scoreboard changes as the game evolves. Tie-breaks must be properly managed. Games must be classified by hit-type. Every point can be modified. Match name and player names must be stored. Game logic must be configurable by the user. I would really appreciate any kind of advice or comments on this architecture. To see if it is well built and makes sense as a whole. I took the idea from this link. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model%E2%80%93view%E2%80%93controller

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  • Office arangement - comfort vs. teamwork?

    - by finrod
    Our team works in an open-space office. Luckily the cubicles are quite big (L shaped tables for everyone!), there is quite a lot of space so we are not sandwiched. Without going into further detail, there are comfortable spots (window), normal spots and stupid spots (near the corridor). Until recently, the development team of twelve engineers was seated so that all types of spots were occupied and we were all close together. In the old arrangement, verbal communication was very easy - half of the team was withing talking distance. The other half was like ten steps away. Often times I could ask, discuss, solve problems without leaving the cube. Most of the communication is work related, no bullshit or mental masturbation that would unnecessarily distract others. Now we have moved to another part of the building and have larger space to occupy. At this point, everyone could pick their spot. Naturally all stupid spots are left empty (for the poor newcomers to occupy bwehaha). In the new arrangement, the development team is stretched across the floor and some of the key engineers are seated 'far' from each other - definitely not within talking distance. I have yet to experience how this works out but am getting concerned that team work and communication may have been traded for personal comfort. Finally the questions... What do you think is better office arrangement? Such that allows for free verbal communication but trading for some developer's comfort, or such that potentially hinders verbal communication but makes developer's more comfortable in their spot? Or maybe it does not matter at all and we will evolve to be efficient in any arrangement? What is your personal experience? Note - yes I read books and posts how workplace is important in our job. However in this case - we are all still in open space and the difference between the different spots are not really groundbreaking. So I'm thinking the little comfort that few developers gain is not worth the loss of easy communication.

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  • What have you learned from the bugs you helped discover and fix?

    - by Ethel Evans
    I liked the core of this question, and wanted to re-ask it in a way that made it less about 'fun' and more about 'What do these past mistakes tell us about how we can write and test software better?' As an SDET, I'm always looking for anecdotes about new and interesting ways that programs can fail. I've learned a lot from these tales in the past, and would like to get that from the intelligent people in this community as well. I'd be interested in hearing what the issue was, how it was caught, if you think there was anything that could have reasonably done to catch it earlier or to avoid the same issue on later projects, and any other interesting lessons you took away from this bug. Please only write about bugs you personally were involved with, ideally on a project you worked on (e.g., no "10 years before I was born, this happened and it was FUNNY!" answers). Please vote up answers that are thought-provoking or could change how you develop or test in some way, so this isn't just 'social fun'. Try to avoid voting up something just because it was funny.

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  • My Feelings About Microsoft Surface

    - by Valter Minute
    Advice: read the title carefully, I’m talking about “feelings” and not about advanced technical points proved in a scientific and objective way I still haven’t had a chance to play with a MS Surface tablet (I would love to, of course) and so my ideas just came from reading different articles on the net and MS official statements. Remember also that the MVP motto begins with “Independent” (“Independent Experts. Real World Answers.”) and this is just my humble opinion about a product and a technology. I know that, being an MS MVP you can be called an “MS-fanboy”, I don’t care, I hope that people can appreciate my opinion, even if it doesn’t match theirs. The “Surface” brand can be confusing for techies that knew the “original” surface concept but I think that will be a fresh new brand name for most of the people out there. But marketing department are here to confuse people… so I can understand this “recycle” of an existing name. So Microsoft is entering the hardware arena… for me this is good news. Microsoft developed some nice hardware in the past: the xbox, zune (even if the commercial success was quite limited) and, last but not least, the two arc mices (old and new model) that I use and appreciate. In the past Microsoft worked with OEMs and that model lead to good and bad things. Good thing (for microsoft, at least) is market domination by windows-based PCs that only in the last years has been reduced by the return of the Mac and tablets. Google is also moving in the hardware business with its acquisition of Motorola, and Apple leveraged his control of both the hardware and software sides to develop innovative products. Microsoft can scare OEMs and make them fly away from windows (but where?) or just lead the pack, showing how devices should be designed to compete in the market and bring back some of the innovation that disappeared from recent PC products (look at the shelves of your favorite electronics store and try to distinguish a laptop between the huge mass of anonymous PCs on displays… only Macs shine out there…). Having to compete with MS “official” hardware will force OEMs to develop better product and bring back some real competition in a market that was ruled only by prices (the lower the better even when that means low quality) and no innovative features at all (when it was the last time that a new PC surprised you?). Moving into a new market is a big and risky move, but with Windows 8 Microsoft is playing a crucial move for its future, trying to be back in the innovation run against apple and google. MS can’t afford to fail this time. I saw the new devices (the WinRT and Pro) and the specifications are scarce, misleading and confusing. The first impression is that the device looks like an iPad with a nice keyboard cover… Using “HD” and “full HD” to define display resolution instead of using the real figures and reviving the “ClearType” brand (now dead on Win8 as reported here and missed by people who hate to read text on displays, like myself) without providing clear figures (couldn’t you count those damned pixels?) seems to imply that MS was caught by surprise by apple recent “retina” displays that brought very high definition screens on tablets.Also there are no specifications about the processors used (even if some sources report NVidia Tegra for the ARM tablet and i5 for the x86 one) and expected battery life (a critical point for tablets and the point that killed Windows7 x86 based tablets). Also nothing about the price, and this will be another critical point because other platform out there already provide lots of applications and have a good user base, if MS want to enter this market tablets pricing must be competitive. There are some expansion ports (SD and USB), so no fixed storage model (even if the specs talks about 32-64GB for RT and 128-256GB for pro). I like this and don’t like the apple model where flash memory (that it’s dirt cheap used in thumdrives or SD cards) is as expensive as gold (or cocaine to have a more accurate per gram measurement) when mounted inside a tablet/phone. For big files you’ll be able to use external media and an SD card could be used to store files that don’t require super-fast SSD-like access times, I hope. To be honest I really don’t like the marketplace model and the limitation of Windows RT APIs (no local database? from a company that based a good share of its success on VB6+Access!) and lack of desktop support on the ARM (even if the support is here and has been used to port office). It’s a step toward the consumer market (where competitors are making big money), but may impact enterprise (and embedded) users that may not appreciate Windows 8 new UI or the limitations of the new app model (if you aren’t connected you are dead ). Not having compatibility with the desktop will require brand new applications and honestly made all the CPU cycles spent to convert .NET IL into real machine code in the past like a huge waste of time… as soon as a new processor architecture is supported by Windows you still have to rewrite part of your application (and MS is pushing HTML5+JS and native code more than .NET in my perception). On the other side I believe that the development experience provided by Visual Studio is still miles (or kilometres) ahead of the competition and even the all-uppercase menu of VS2012 hasn’t changed this situation. The new metro UI got mixed reviews. On my side I should say that is very pleasant to use on a touch screen, I like the minimalist design (even if sometimes is too minimal and hides stuff that, in my opinion, should be visible) but I should also say that using it with mouse and keyboard is like trying to pick your nose with boxing gloves… Metro is also very interesting for embedded devices where touch screen usage is quite common and where having an application taking all the screen is the norm. For devices like kiosks, vending machines etc. this kind of UI can be a great selling point. I don’t need a new tablet (to be honest I’m pretty happy with my wife’s iPad and with my PC), but I may change my opinion after having a chance to play a little bit with those new devices and understand what’s hidden under all this mysterious and generic announcements and specifications!

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  • How do I stop sound coming from my speakers with a faulty headphone socket?

    - by Andy
    On my laptop, I have a faulty headphone socket, so when I insert headphones into it, the speakers do not mute. I can confirm that this problem is caused by faulty hardware and not software as when I twist the headphone jack, the speakers come on and off according to the movements. On previous versions of Ubuntu, I worked around this problem by going into alsamixer and disabling "Auto-Mute Mode", and then going into the sound settings and choosing "Analog Headphones". However, on 12.04, no such option exists, rendering my headphones unusable with no way to work around the problem. I momentarily thought I had this problem fixed when I installed PulseAudio Volume Control from the Software Centre. I selected the Output Devices tab, and under "Built-in Audio Analogue Stereo" I selected "Headphones" for the port. However, this almost randomly seems to change back to "Speakers", despite me setting "Auto-Mute Mode" as disabled. Basically, I would like a way to permanently mute the speakers so only the headphones will play sound, without it losing my settings. It is ridiculous that such a simple setting has been taken away to "simplify" the user interface.

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  • Windows 8 Developer Camp - Raleigh September 25th

    - by Jim Duffy
    Time is ticking away and the time to act is now! How's that for some motivation? :-)  Microsoft Developer Evangelist Brian Hitney and I want to help you get your app in the store in time for the October 26 Windows 8 launch. Come join us on Tuesday, September 25, at 9:00 AM in the Microsoft RTP offices to learn how simple it can be to construct a world class Windows 8 application. Don't think you can be ready to join the Windows 8 launch? Come anyway. You might be surprised. Don't have any idea what kind of app to build? Come anyway. They're are plenty of places to look for inspiration. Either way you can learn what it takes to create or tune an app for Windows 8 and publish it in the Windows App Store. Learn more about this free event on the registration page. Registration is now open and space is limited. Have a day.

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  • .html extension or no for SEO purposes

    - by Scott Schluer
    I know this question has been asked before on Stack Overflow, but what I have not been able to find in the posts I've read are concrete references as to WHY one is better than the other (something I can take to my boss). So I'm working on an MVC 3 application that is basically a rewrite of the existing production application (web forms) using MVC. The current site uses a URL rewriter to rewrite "friendly" urls with HTML extensions to their ASPX counterpart. i.e. http://www.site.com/products/18554-widget.html gets rewritten to http://www.site.com/products.aspx?id=18554 We're moving away from this with the MVC site, but the powers that be still want the HTML extension on the URLs. As a developer, that just feels wrong on an MVC site. I've written a quick and dirty HttpModule that will perform a 301 redirect from the .html URL to the same URL without the .html extension and it works fine, but I need to convince management that removing the .html extension is not going to hurt SEO. I'd prefer to have this sort of friendly URL: http://www.site.com/products/18554-widget Can anyone provide information to back up my position or am I actually trying to do something that WOULD hurt SEO, in which case can you provide references on that?

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