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• Building a distributed system on Amazon Web Services

  - by Songo

  Would simply using AWS to build an application make this application a distributed system? For example if someone uses RDS for the database server, EC2 for the application itself and S3 for hosting user uploaded media, does that make it a distributed system? If not, then what should it be called and what is this application lacking for it to be distributed? Update Here is my take on the application to clarify my approach to building the system: The application I'm building is a social game for Facebook. I developed the application locally on a LAMP stack using Symfony2. For production I used an a single EC2 Micro instance for hosting the app itself, RDS for hosting my database, S3 for the user uploaded files and CloudFront for hosting static content. I know this may sound like a naive approach, so don't be shy to express your ideas.

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• What to include in metadata?

  - by shyam

  I'm wondering if there are any general guidelines or best practices regarding when to split data into a metadata format, as oppose to directly embedding it within the data. (Specific example below). My understanding of metadata is that it describes data (without the need to actually look at the data), allowing for data to be quickly search/filtered for easy access. Let's take for example a simple 3D model format. The actual data file itself is a binary file containing vertices and colors. Things like creation date, modified data and author name would be things that describe the binary data, so I would say these belong as metadata (outside of the binary file). But what if the application had no need to search or filter by these fields? Would it be acceptable to embed these fields directly into the binary data itself? Could they be duplicated in both the binary data and the meta data, or would this be considered bad practice? What about more ambiguous fields such as the model name, which could be considered part of the data itself, but also as data describing the binary data?... How do you decide which data to embed in the actual binary file, as opposed to separating into a more flexible metadata format? Thanks!

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• Publish/Subscribe/Request for exchange of big, complex, and confidential data?

  - by Morten

  I am working on a project where a website needs to exchange complex and confidential (and thus encrypted) data with other systems. The data includes personal information, technical drawings, public documents etc. We would prefer to avoid the Request-Reply pattern to the dependent systems (and there are a LOT of them), as that would create an awful lot of empty traffic. On the other hand, I am not sure that a pure Publisher/Subscriber pattern would be apropriate -- mainly because of the complex and bulky nature of the data to be exchanged. For that reason we have discussed the possibility of a "publish/subscribe/request" solution. The Publish/Subscribe part would be to publish a message to the dependent systems, that something is ready for pickup. The actual content is then picked up by old-school Request-Reply action. How does this sound to you?? Regards, Morten

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• How can I separate the user interface from the business logic while still maintaining efficiency?

  - by Uri

  Let's say that I want to show a form that represents 10 different objects on a combobox. For example, I want the user to pick one hamburguer from 10 different ones that contain tomatoes. Since I want to separate UI and logic, I'd have to pass the form a string representation of the hamburguers in order to display them on the combobox. Otherwise, the UI would have to dig into the objects fields. Then the user would pick a hamburguer from the combobox, and submit it back to the controller. Now the controller would have to find again said hamburguer based on the string representation used by the form (maybe an ID?). Isn't that incredibly inefficient? You already had the objects you wanted to pick one from. If you submited to the form the whole objects, and then returned a specific object, you wouldn't have to refind it later on since the form already returned a reference to that object. Moreover, if I'm wrong and you actually should send the whole object to the form, how can I isolate UI from logic?

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• How to "translate" interdependent object states in code?

  - by Earl Grey

  I have the following problem. My UI interace contains several buttons, labels, and other visual information. I am able to describe every possible workflow scenario that should be be allowed on that UI. That means I can describe it like this - when button A is pressed, the following should follow - In the case of that A button, there are three independent factors that influence the possible result when pushing the A button. The state of the session (blank, single, multi, multi special), the actual work that is being done by the system at the moment of pressing the A button (nothing was happening, work was being done, work was paused) and a separate UI element that has two states (on , off)..This gives me a 3 dimensional cube with 24 possible outcomes. I could write code for this using if cycles, switch cycles etc....but the problem is, I have another 7 buttons on that ui, I can enter this UI from different states..some buttons change the state, some change parameters... To sum up, the combinations are mindbogling and I am not able come up with a methodology that scales and is systematically reliable. I am able to describe EVERY workflow with words, I am sure my description is complete and without logical errors. But I am not able to translate that into code. I was trying to draw flowcharts but it soon became visually too complicated due to too many if "emafors". Can you advice how to proceeed?

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• Great Example of a Simple Cost-Benefit Analysis

  - by BuckWoody

  I saw a post the other day that you should definitely go check out. It’s a cost/benefit decision, and although the author gives it a quick treatment and doesn’t take all points in the decision into account, you should focus on the process he follows. It’s a quick and simple example of the kind of thought process we should have as data professionals when we pick a server, a process, or application and even platform software. The key is to include more than just the price of a piece of software or hardware. You need to think about the “other” costs in the decision, and then make the right one. Sometimes the cheapest option is the cheapest, and other times, well, it isn’t. I’ve seen this played out not only in the decision to go with a certain selection, but in the options or editions it comes in. You have to put all of the decision points in the analysis to come up with the right answer, and you have to be able to explain your logic to your team and your company. This is the way you become a data professional, not just a DBA. You can check out the post here – it deals with Azure, but the point is the process, not Azure itself: http://blogs.msdn.com/eugeniop/archive/2010/03/19/windows-azure-guidance-a-simplistic-economic-analysis-of-a-expense-migration.aspx Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• How to handle a player's level and its consequent privileges?

  - by Songo

  I'm building a game similar to Mafia Wars where a player can do tasks for his gang and gain experience and thus advancing his level. The game is built using PHP and a Mysql database. In the game I want to limit the resources allowed to player based on his level. For example: ________| (Max gold) | (Max army size) | (Max moves) | ... Level 1 | 1000 | 100 | 10 | ... Level 2 | 1500 | 200 | 20 | ... Level 3 | 3000 | 300 | 25 | ... . . . In addition certain features of the game won't be allowed until a certain level is reached such as players under Level 10 can't trade in the game market, players under Level 20 can't create alliances,...etc. The way I have modeled it is by implementing a very loooong ACL (Access Control List) with about 100 entries (an entry for each level). However, I think there may be a simpler approach to this seeing that this feature have been implemented in many games before.

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• When to use abstract classes instead of interfaces and extension methods in C#?

  - by Gulshan

  "Abstract class" and "interface" are similar type of ideas, while interface being more abstract. One need of abstract classes was to provide method implementations for the derived classes. But in C#, that need has also been reduced by lately introduced extension methods. So, in C#, when should we use abstract classes instead of using interfaces and extension methods associated with the interface? And now, we can use 'Properties' in interfaces also. A notable example of interface+ extension methods is the Heavily used IEnumerable and it's helper methods. You use Linq and it's all by this extension methods!

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• Which Game Engine to Use for an Angry Bird style game? [JAVA] [on hold]

  - by Arch1tect

  Our team is building an Angry Bird Style game, and we have only about ten days. The game is a little more complex than Angry Bird because there are two players, they each have a castle with pigs to protect(not destroy:)). And the goal is to destroy the other player's pigs. I wonder what Game Engine would help us finish this game most efficiently. We at least need a physics engine but I guess game engine is more helpful since it usually includes physics engine. Correct me if I'm wrong. (So I'm wondering which game engine I should use, if it's just physics engine, I'll use box2d) Networking may or may not be added later depend on time we have. Thanks in advance for any advice! EDIT: image looks small, I'll add one:

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• Are there specific legal issues for web developers working on sex dating sites?

  - by YumYumYum

  Say I have created many ordinary websites which are not related to any dating/sexual content. Are the rules and regulations for a developer the same when making a sex-related dating site? I'm talking about a site where people meet together and get to know each other, with the intent of having a sexual relationship (you know what I mean), also featuring webcam sex, but not explicitly a porno site. Do such sites have any special legal issues for developers compared with non-sexual/dating sites?

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• Overloading interface buttons, what are the best practices?

  - by XMLforDummies

  Imagine you'll have always a button labeled "Continue" in the same position in your app's GUI. Would you rather make a single button instance that takes different actions depending on the current state? private State currentState = State.Step1; private ContinueButton_Click() { switch(currentState) { case State.Step1: DoThis(); currentState = State.Step2; break; case State.Step2: DoThat(); break; } } Or would you rather have something like this? public Form() { this.ContinueStep2Button.Visible = false; } private ContinueStep1Button_Click() { DoThis(); this.ContinueStep1Button.Visible = false; this.ContinueStep2Button.Visible = true; } private ContinueStep2Button_Click() { DoThat(); }

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• Bachelor in Game Development [on hold]

  - by vandamon taigi

  At this moment, I'm in year 11 in Romania. I have started thinking about an university to go to and I am not really sure which should be my choice. I want it to be game development, but I also want it to be good and fun university.Thing is, I don't want to pay 30 grands a year or so for Cambridge or something like that. I am looking for a decent university at a decent price. I have in my hometown a University that is ranked 1613 world-wide which has a software development category. I need some advices and some possible options for decent universities ( Personal experience is greatly appreciated )

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• Reusable skill class structure

  - by Martino Wullems

  Hello, Pretty new to the whole game development scene, but I have experience in other branches of programming. Anyway, I was wondering what methods are used to implement a skill structure. I imagine a skill in itself would a class. I'm using actionscript 3 for this project btw. public class Skill { public var power:int; public var delay:int; public var cooldown:int; public function Attack(user:Mob, target:Mob) { } } } Each skill would extend the Skill class and add it's own functionality. public class Tackle extends Skill { public function Tackle(user:Mob, target:Mob) { super(user, target); executeAttack(); } private function executeAttack():void { //multiply user.strength with power etc //play attack animation } } } This where I get stuck. How do I termine which mobs has which skills? And which skill will they later be able to retrieve (by reaching a certain level etc). How does the player actually execute the skill and how is it determine if it hits. It's all very new to me so I have no idea where to begin. Any links would also be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

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• Is my Document Type Definition Still Up to Date?

  - by Sam

  Hi folks, currently all my php generated rich html webpages start with this line, which I have been adding to my tempaltes YEARS ago... <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> Am I still up to date and 2011-proof? or Should I be changing this into something fasterloaden/more agile/more flexible? I have heard of XHTML 1.1. When I remove this line all still works fine. Is it very much needed still? What are my alternatives? Thanks very much for your suggestions.

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• Recommended method towards making custom maps for a 2d game?

  - by Qasim

  I am planning on making a 2D game, however different from my last personal projects I want this one to have enhanced graphics, with custom-designed levels. My previous 2d platformers were tile-based, in which I made a map editor for to create levels. However, I am wondering the best way to implement custom designed maps? For say, some grass is a litter higher than others, flowers here and there, cool drawings and structures along the way, etc. instead of just the same old tiles over and over again. I am thinking but I just can't grasp the idea of how to implement it. I have seen it done in other games and am interested to see how they accomplish it, but can't get my hands on some source code. :(

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• Moving camera, or camera with discrete "screens"?

  - by Jacob Millward

  I'm making a game with a friend, but having trouble deciding on a camera style. The basic idea for the game, is having a randomly generated 2-dimensional world, with settlements in it. These settlements would have access to different resources, and it would be the job of the player to create bridges and ladders and links between these villages so they can trade. The player would advance personally by getting better gear, fighting monsters and looking for materials in the world, in order to craft and trade them at the settlements. My friend wants to use an old-style camera, where the world is split into a discrete number of screens that the player moves between. Similar to early Zelda dungeons, or Knytt Stories. This is opposite to me, as I want a standard camera that follows the player around as I feel the split-screen style camera limits the game. Can anyone argue the case either way? We've hit a massive roadblock here and can't seem to get past it.

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• Would you use UML if it kept stakeholders from requesting changes frequently?

  - by Huperniketes

  As much as programmers hate to document their code/system and draw UML (especially, Sequencing, Activity and State machine diagrams) or other diagramming notation, would you agree to do it if it kept managers from requesting a "minor change" every couple of weeks? IOW, would you put together visual models to document the system if it helped you demonstrate to managers what the effect of changes are and why it takes so long to implement them? (Edited to help programmers understand what type of answer I'm looking for.) 2nd edit: Restating my question again, "Would you be willing to use some diagramming notation, against your better nature as a programmer, if it helped you manage change requests?" This question isn't asking if there might be something wrong with the process. It's a given that there's something wrong with the process. Would you be willing to do more work to improve it?

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• Customer won't decide, how to deal?

  - by Crazy Eddie

  I write software that involves the use of measured quantities, many input by the user, most displayed, that are fed into calculation models to simulate various physical thing-a-majigs. We have created a data type that allows us to associate a numeric value with a unit, we call these "quantities" (big duh). Quantities and units are unique to dimension. You can't attach kilogram to a length for example. Math on quantities does automatic unit conversion to SI and the type is dimension safe (you can't assign a weight to a pressure for example). Custom UI components have been developed that display the value and its unit and/or allow the user to edit them. Dimensionless quantities, having no units, are a single, custom case implemented within the system. There's a set of related quantities such that our target audience apparently uses them interchangeably. The quantities are used in special units that embed the conversion factors for the related quantity dimensions...in other words, when using these units converting from one to another simply involves multiplying the value by 1 to the dimensional difference. However, conversion to/from the calculation system (SI) still involves these factors. One of these related quantities is a dimensionless one that represents a ratio. I simply can't get the "customer" to recognize the necessity of distinguishing these values and their use. They've picked one and want to use it everywhere, customizing the way we deal with it in special places. In this case they've picked one of the dimensions that has a unit...BUT, they don't want there to be a unit (GRR!!!). This of course is causing us to implement these special overrides for our UI elements and such. That of course is often times forgotten and worse...after a couple months everyone forgets why it was necessary and why we're using this dimensional value, calling it the wrong thing, and disabling the unit. I could just ignore the "customer" and implement the type as the dimensionless quantity, which makes most sense. However, that leaves the team responsible for figuring it out when they've given us a formula using one of the other quantities. We have to not only figure out that it's happening, we have to decide what to do. This isn't a trivial deal. The other option is just to say to hell with it, do it the customer's way, and let it waste continued time and effort because it's just downright confusing as hell. However, I can't count the amount of times someone has said, "Why is this being done this way, it makes no sense at all," and the team goes off the deep end trying to figure it out. What would you do? Currently I'm still attempting to convince them that even if they use terms interchangeably, we at the least can't do that within the product discussion. Don't have high hopes though.

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• Isn't MVC anti OOP?

  - by m3th0dman

  The main idea behind OOP is to unify data and behavior in a single entity - the object. In procedural programming there is data and separately algorithms modifying the data. In the Model-View-Controller pattern the data and the logic/algorithms are placed in distinct entities, the model and the controller respectively. In an equivalent OOP approach shouldn't the model and the controller be placed in the same logical entity?

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• String patterns that can be used to filter and group files

  - by Louis Rhys

  One of our application filters files in certain directory, extract some data from it and export a document from the extracted data. The algorithm for extracting the data depends on the file, and so far we use regex to select the algorithm to be used, for example .*\.txt will be processed by algorithm A, foo[0-5]\.xml will be processed by algo B, etc. However now we need some files to be processed together. For example, in one case we need two files, foo.*\.xml and bar.*\.xml. Part of the information to be extracted exist in the foo file, and the other part in the bar file. Moreover, we need to make sure the wild card is compatible. For example, if there are 6 files foo1.xml foo23.xml bar1.xml bar9.xml bar23.xml foo4.xml I would expect foo1 and bar1 to be identified as a group, and foo23 and bar23 as another group. bar9 and foo4 has no pair, so they will not be treated. Now, since the filter is configured by user, we need to have a pattern that can express the above requirement. I don't think you can express meaning like above in standard regex. (foo|bar).*\.xml will match all 6 file above and we can't identify which file is paired for a particular file. Is there any standard pattern that can express it? Or any idea how to modify regex to support this, that can be implemented easily?

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• What's the best Wireframing tool?

  - by Strae

  I'm looking for something similar to iPlotz or Mockup. I've found the Pencil Project, but it requires xulrunner-1.9 (which seems to be incompatible with xulrunner-1.9.2) in order to run as a standalone application. It can be used as a firefox plugin... but it is a bit slower. The error on my desktop (Ubuntu 10.04) is: Could not find compatible GRE between version 1.9.1 and 1.9.2.* Does anyone know other software? Edit: Open-source software is preferred, and it doesn't matter whether or not it's free.

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• Java Desktop Application For Network users

  - by Motasem Abu Aker

  I'm developing a desktop application using Java. My application will run in a network environment where multiple users will access the same database through the application. There will be basic CRUD opreations (Insert, Update, Delete, & select), which means there will be chances of deadlock, or two users trying to update the same record at same time. I'm using the following Java Swing for Clients (MVC). MySQL Server for database (InnODB). Java Web start. Now, MySQL is centralized on the network, and all of the clients connect to it. The Application for ERP Purpose. I searched the internet to find a very good solution to ensure data integrity & to make sure that when updating one record from one client, other clients are aware of it. I read about Socket-server-client & RESTful web services. I don't want to go web application & don't want to use any extra libraries. So how can I handle this scenario: If User A updates a record: Is there a way to update User B's screen with the new value? If user A starts updating a record, how can I prevent other users from attempting to update the same record?

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• Can someone recommend an appriopriate drawing tablet that fits my needs?

  - by Syg

  I'm looking for something that can help me to easily create small hand drawn graphics and mock-ups digitalize technical drawings I would normally draw on a whiteboard. I'm a developer, not a designer, so it doesn't have to be high-end I guess. Just something to help make it easier, more fun and more productive to quickly draw mockups etc. After a quick search I landed on the wacom site, but it's hard for me to tell the difference between the offerings never having used something like this. Is small too small? is it annoying? Other suggestion are also welcome ofcourse. Thanx for any help you can give me

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• Why are Javascript for/in loops so verbose?

  - by Matthew Scharley

  I'm trying to understand the reasoning behind why the language designers would make the for (.. in ..) loops so verbose. For example: for (var x in Drupal.settings.module.stuff) { alert("Index: " + x + "\nValue: " + Drupal.settings.module.stuff[x]); } It makes trying to loop over anything semi-complex like the above a real pain as you either have to alias the value locally inside the loop yourself, or deal with long access calls. This is especially painful if you have two to three nested loops. I'm assuming there is a reason why they would do things this way, but I'm struggling with the reasoning.

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• How to refactor and improve this XNA mouse input code?

  - by Andrew Price

  Currently I have something like this: public bool IsLeftMouseButtonDown() { return currentMouseState.LeftButton == ButtonState.Pressed && previousMouseSate.LeftButton == ButtonState.Pressed; } public bool IsLeftMouseButtonPressed() { return currentMouseState.LeftButton == ButtonState.Pressed && previousMouseSate.LeftButton == ButtonState.Released; } public bool IsLeftMouseButtonUp() { return currentMouseState.LeftButton == ButtonState.Released && previousMouseSate.LeftButton == ButtonState.Released; } public bool IsLeftMouseButtonReleased() { return currentMouseState.LeftButton == ButtonState.Released && previousMouseSate.LeftButton == ButtonState.Pressed; } This is fine. In fact, I kind of like it. However, I'd hate to have to repeat this same code five times (for right, middle, X1, X2). Is there any way to pass in the button I want to the function so I could have something like this? public bool IsMouseButtonDown(MouseButton button) { return currentMouseState.IsPressed(button) && previousMouseState.IsPressed(button); } public bool IsMouseButtonPressed(MouseButton button) { return currentMouseState.IsPressed(button) && !previousMouseState.IsPressed(button); } public bool IsMouseButtonUp(MouseButton button) { return !currentMouseState.IsPressed(button) && previousMouseState.IsPressed(button); } public bool IsMouseButtonReleased(MouseButton button) { return !currentMouseState.IsPressed(button) && previousMouseState.IsPressed(button); } I suppose I could create some custom enumeration and switch through it in each function, but I'd like to first see if there is a built-in solution or a better way.. Thanks!

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