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• How to develop RPG Damage Formulas?

  - by user127817

  I'm developing a classical 2d RPG (in a similar vein to final fantasy) and I was wondering if anyone had some advice on how to do damage formulas/links to resources/examples? I'll explain my current setup. Hopefully I'm not overdoing it with this question, and I apologize if my questions is too large/broad My Characters stats are composed of the following: enum Stat { HP = 0, MP = 1, SP = 2, Strength = 3, Vitality = 4, Magic = 5, Spirit = 6, Skill = 7, Speed = 8, //Speed/Agility are the same thing Agility = 8, Evasion = 9, MgEvasion = 10, Accuracy = 11, Luck = 12, }; Vitality is basically defense to physical attacks and spirit is defense to magic attacks. All stats have fixed maximums (9999 for HP, 999 for MP/SP and 255 for the rest). With abilities, the maximums can be increased (99999 for HP, 9999 for HP/SP, 999 for the rest) with typical values (at level 100) before/after abilities+equipment+etc will be 8000/20,000 for HP, 800/2000 for SP/MP, 180/350 for other stats Late game Enemy HP will typically be in the lower millions (with a super boss having the maximum of ~12 million). I was wondering how do people actually develop proper damage formulas that scale correctly? For instance, based on this data, using the damage formulas for Final Fantasy X as a base looked very promising. A full reference here http://www.gamefaqs.com/ps2/197344-final-fantasy-x/faqs/31381 but as a quick example: Str = 127, 'Attack' command used, enemy Def = 34. 1. Physical Damage Calculation: Step 1 ------------------------------------- [{(Stat^3 ÷ 32) + 32} x DmCon ÷16] Step 2 ---------------------------------------- [{(127^3 ÷ 32) + 32} x 16 ÷ 16] Step 3 -------------------------------------- [{(2048383 ÷ 32) + 32} x 16 ÷ 16] Step 4 --------------------------------------------------- [{(64011) + 32} x 1] Step 5 -------------------------------------------------------- [{(64043 x 1)}] Step 6 ---------------------------------------------------- Base Damage = 64043 Step 7 ----------------------------------------- [{(Def - 280.4)^2} ÷ 110] + 16 Step 8 ------------------------------------------ [{(34 - 280.4)^2} ÷ 110] + 16 Step 9 ------------------------------------------------- [(-246)^2) ÷ 110] + 16 Step 10 ---------------------------------------------------- [60516 ÷ 110] + 16 Step 11 ------------------------------------------------------------ [550] + 16 Step 12 ---------------------------------------------------------- DefNum = 566 Step 13 ---------------------------------------------- [BaseDmg * DefNum ÷ 730] Step 14 --------------------------------------------------- [64043 * 566 ÷ 730] Step 15 ------------------------------------------------------ [36248338 ÷ 730] Step 16 ------------------------------------------------- Base Damage 2 = 49655 Step 17 ------------ Base Damage 2 * {730 - (Def * 51 - Def^2 ÷ 11) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 18 ---------------------- 49655 * {730 - (34 * 51 - 34^2 ÷ 11) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 19 ------------------------- 49655 * {730 - (1734 - 1156 ÷ 11) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 20 ------------------------------- 49655 * {730 - (1734 - 105) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 21 ------------------------------------- 49655 * {730 - (1629) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 22 --------------------------------------------- 49655 * {730 - 162} ÷ 730 Step 23 ----------------------------------------------------- 49655 * 568 ÷ 730 Step 24 -------------------------------------------------- Final Damage = 38635 I simply modified the dividers to include the attack rating of weapons and the armor rating of armor. Magic Damage is calculated as follows: Mag = 255, Ultima is used, enemy MDef = 1 Step 1 ----------------------------------- [DmCon * ([Stat^2 ÷ 6] + DmCon) ÷ 4] Step 2 ------------------------------------------ [70 * ([255^2 ÷ 6] + 70) ÷ 4] Step 3 ------------------------------------------ [70 * ([65025 ÷ 6] + 70) ÷ 4] Step 4 ------------------------------------------------ [70 * (10837 + 70) ÷ 4] Step 5 ----------------------------------------------------- [70 * (10907) ÷ 4] Step 6 ------------------------------------ Base Damage = 190872 [cut to 99999] Step 7 ---------------------------------------- [{(MDef - 280.4)^2} ÷ 110] + 16 Step 8 ------------------------------------------- [{(1 - 280.4)^2} ÷ 110] + 16 Step 9 ---------------------------------------------- [{(-279.4)^2} ÷ 110] + 16 Step 10 -------------------------------------------------- [(78064) ÷ 110] + 16 Step 11 ------------------------------------------------------------ [709] + 16 Step 12 --------------------------------------------------------- MDefNum = 725 Step 13 --------------------------------------------- [BaseDmg * MDefNum ÷ 730] Step 14 --------------------------------------------------- [99999 * 725 ÷ 730] Step 15 ------------------------------------------------- Base Damage 2 = 99314 Step 16 ---------- Base Damage 2 * {730 - (MDef * 51 - MDef^2 ÷ 11) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 17 ------------------------ 99314 * {730 - (1 * 51 - 1^2 ÷ 11) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 18 ------------------------------ 99314 * {730 - (51 - 1 ÷ 11) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 19 --------------------------------------- 99314 * {730 - (49) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 20 ----------------------------------------------------- 99314 * 725 ÷ 730 Step 21 -------------------------------------------------- Final Damage = 98633 The problem is that the formulas completely fall apart once stats start going above 255. In particular Defense values over 300 or so start generating really strange behavior. High Strength + Defense stats lead to massive negative values for instance. While I might be able to modify the formulas to work correctly for my use case, it'd probably be easier just to use a completely new formula. How do people actually develop damage formulas? I was considering opening excel and trying to build the formula that way (mapping Attack Stats vs. Defense Stats for instance) but I was wondering if there's an easier way? While I can't convey the full game mechanics of my game here, might someone be able to suggest a good starting place for building a damage formula? Thanks

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• Synergy on macbook with osx mavericks wifi connection

  - by user332956

  I'm trying to set up Synergy with my macbook pro running OS X 10.9.3 as a client and my Windows 7 desktop as a server. I'm having some pretty bad connection problems though when I try to use my mac. Every couple seconds the mouse or the keyboard will stop working entirely then come back. I ran some tests and found that the ping from my desktop to my mac would be very high every third ping or so(1000+ ms) or sometimes even time out. If I ping my desktop from my mac the pings are all reasonably low. I believe that this is a power saving feature of Mavericks and I have found a way to get around it by continually pinging my router on my mac, keeping my wifi card from going to sleep. I'm using this right now to type this up with synergy and have had zero issues. Has anyone else ran into this issue and found a better solution? So far, I think my best bet would be to buy an ethernet adapter but I'd rather not have yet another cable running across my desk.

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• Idle state detection for server

  - by odinmillion

  Windows OS has a service that detects idle state. Details: Task Idle Conditions The computer is considered idle if all the processors and all the disks were idle for more than 90% of the past 15 minutes and if there is no keyboard or mouse input during this period of time. When the Task Scheduler service detects that the computer is idle, the service only waits for user input to mark the end of the idle state. It is very useful for usual PCs that have keyboard amd mouse. We can use standard task scheduler to start some process like defrag when PC in idle state and stop when PC isn't in idle state. But what should we use when we using a standalone server without keyboard and mouse? Server sometimes receives commands by TCP/IP and starts CPU and HDD activity. But sometimes CPU and HDD activity at zero level. I would like to use this periods of time to start defrag or another process. But this started at "idle" state processes should be terminated when another commands will appear. So, standard idle state conditions cant help me because we have not got user input to stop idle state. I need more customizable idle state detector. Automatically started processes shouldn't influence to idle state, but PC should go away from idle state when another process will apperar. What should I use? Maybe exists some advansed task scheduler? Or I should write some useful utility on C#? I hope that it is a standard task and all useful utilities already compiled :)

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• How to eliminate overscan on Ubuntu HTPC

  - by Norman Ramsey

  I'm using an Ubuntu box with Nvidia graphics card as an HTPC. My HDTV is a Sony Bravia KDS-R50XBR1; this is a rear-projection unit with many inputs. I am using the HDMI input. I'm using the proprietary Nvidia drivers and they recognize the 1080x1920 resolution just fine. The display is a little fuzzy but at 50 inches it's perfect for movies. My problem is that the TV has three overscan settings, and none of them reduces overscan to zero. When I was using dual-screen this was fine, but I'm moving to where the TV is my only screen, and the Gnome panels are not visible because of the overscan. I'd like to figure out how to eliminate the overscan, without trying to scale my 1080p content down to 920p or something ridiculous like that. Ideally there would be some scurvy trick, perhaps involving the TV service menu, to get rid of the overscan on the TV side. Or I could move the Gnome panels, but I still would be missing the edges of my movies. Suggestions most welcome.

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• Remote desktop solution where the desktop sharing party contacts the computer it wants to share with

  - by Kent

  I'm in a situation where I act as a sort of techinical support to my family and less techinically experienced friends. I'm looking for a remote desktop solution where it's possible to setup a "zero-install, double click an icon"-solution where the client computer contacts me so that I may interact with their desktop. The last part is important as the people in need of my help don't know how to configure their router or even the firewall software on their own computer. They are able to click an accept button when asked if a program should be able to make outgoing connections. They have many different kinds of routers, as well as software firewalls, and I rather not deal with the problem of how to connect to them using whatever as well as the actual problem they are having. It must be: Free of charge for non-commercial use. Possible to use it in a mode where the computer wanting to share its desktop should be able to make a connection to my computer. My computer has a DNS name we can use. Compatible with both Windows XP and Windows 7. Independent of a third party server or infrastructure. Explanations of the above: I don't want to spend money on it when I help them for free. If it's free as in freedom, all the better! I guess this boils down to being callable like showdesktopto.exe opscomputer.com where opscomputer.com is my computers DNS name. If that is possible then I can create a shortcut they can use to connect to me when they need help. It's nice if it's possible to specify a password or key file which I can use to authenticate myself, but it's not required. They use the OS which their machine comes installed with. That means Windows XP or 7. I want something which will work in the long run. Using a third party service which might not be available when I need it disqualified such solutions.

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• Help finding time of collision

  - by WannaBe

  I am making a simple game right now and am struggling with collision response. My goal is to someday be able to turn it into a 2D platformer but I have a long way to go. I am currently making this in JavaScript and using the canvas element so (0,0) is in the top left and positive X is to the right and positive Y is down. I read a helpful post on StackExchange that got me started on this but I can't seem to get the algorithm 100% correct. How to deal with corner collisions in 2D? I can detect the collision fine but I can't seem to get the response right. The goal is to detect which side the player hit first since minimum displacement doesn't always work. The X response seems to work fine but the Y only works when I am far from the corners. Here is a picture showing what happens Here is the code var bx = box.x; var by = box.y; var bw = box.width; var bh = box.height; var boxCenterX = bx + (bw/2); var boxCenterY = by + (bh/2); var playerCenterX = player.x + player.xvel + (player.width/2); var playerCenterY = player.y + player.yvel + (player.height/2); //left = negative and right = positve, 0 = middle var distanceXin = playerCenterX - boxCenterX; var distanceYin = playerCenterY - boxCenterY; var distanceWidth = Math.abs(distanceXin); var distanceHeight = Math.abs(distanceYin); var halfWidths = (bw/2) + (player.width/2); var halfHeights = (bh/2) + (player.height/2); if(distanceWidth < halfWidths){ //xcollision if(distanceHeight < halfHeights){ //ycollision if(player.xvel == 0){ //adjust y if(distanceYin > 0){ //bottom player.y = by + bh; player.yvel = 0; }else{ player.y = by - player.height; player.yvel = 0; } }else if(player.yvel == 0){ //adjust x if(distanceXin > 0){ //right player.x = bx + bw; player.xvel = 0; }else{ //left player.x = bx - player.width; player.xvel = 0; } }else{ var yTime = distanceYin / player.yvel; var xTime = distanceXin / player.xvel; if(xTime < yTime){ //adjust the x it collided first if(distanceXin > 0){ //right player.x = bx + bw; player.xvel = 0; }else{ //left player.x = bx - player.width; player.xvel = 0; } }else{ //adjust the y it collided first if(distanceYin > 0){ //bottom player.y = by + bh; player.yvel = 0; }else{ player.y = by - player.height; player.yvel = 0; } } } } } And here is a JSFiddle if you would like to see the problem yourself. http://jsfiddle.net/dMumU/ To recreate this move the player to here And press up and left at the same time. The player will jump to the right for some reason. Any advice? I know I am close but I can't seem to get xTime and yTime to equal what I want every time.

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• Safari's location bar (auto-suggest and web search)

  - by Lri

  Auto-suggest don't seem to work for queries with spaces. Am I missing something? If you select an item from the suggestion list that was matched by its title, the title is filled in before the address. Can you change it to work like in other browsers? SMRT disables searching by title completely. Can you combine Top Hit, History and Bookmarks into a single section? The preferences starting with DebugSafari4 don't work anymore. (Like DebugSafari4IncludeFancyURLCompletionList.) Can you direct unresolved addresses to something like google.com/search?q=?&btnI instead of ?.com? Like by changing keyword.URL in Firefox. Can you remove or hide the web search field? In Camino, Cruz and Fluid it can be resized to zero width. You can't circumvent the normal maximum ratio with InputFieldWidthRatio. AddressBarIncludesGoogle doesn't appear do anything in the current version. Are there fixes or workarounds to any of these? I'm lumping these issues together, because they are closely related — a lot of them were introduced when the location bar was redesigned in Safari 5. I'm also hoping to find something like an extension or a plugin that would replace the standard location bar.

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• HSSFS Part 2.1 - Parsing @@VERSION

  - by Most Valuable Yak (Rob Volk)

  For Part 2 of the Handy SQL Server Function Series I decided to tackle parsing useful information from the @@VERSION function, because I am an idiot.  It turns out I was confused about CHARINDEX() vs. PATINDEX() and it pretty much invalidated my original solution.  All is not lost though, this mistake turned out to be informative for me, and hopefully for you. Referring back to the "Version" view in the prelude I started with the following query to extract the version number: SELECT DISTINCT SQLVersion, SUBSTRING(VersionString,PATINDEX('%-%',VersionString)+2, 12) VerNum FROM VERSION I used PATINDEX() to find the first hyphen "-" character in the string, since the version number appears 2 positions after it, and got these results: SQLVersion VerNum ----------- ------------ 2000 8.00.2055 (I 2005 9.00.3080.00 2005 9.00.4053.00 2008 10.50.1600.1 As you can see it was good enough for most of the values, but not for the SQL 2000 @@VERSION.  You'll notice it has only 3 version sections/octets where the others have 4, and the SUBSTRING() grabbed the non-numeric characters after.  To properly parse the version number will require a non-fixed value for the 3rd parameter of SUBSTRING(), which is the number of characters to extract. The best value is the position of the first space to occur after the version number (VN), the trick is to figure out how to find it.  Here's where my confusion about PATINDEX() came about.  The CHARINDEX() function has a handy optional 3rd parameter: CHARINDEX (expression1 ,expression2 [ ,start_location ] ) While PATINDEX(): PATINDEX ('%pattern%',expression ) Does not.  I had expected to use PATINDEX() to start searching for a space AFTER the position of the VN, but it doesn't work that way.  Since there are plenty of spaces before the VN, I thought I'd try PATINDEX() on another character that doesn't appear before, and tried "(": SELECT SQLVersion, SUBSTRING(VersionString,PATINDEX('%-%',VersionString)+2, PATINDEX('%(%',VersionString)) FROM VERSION Unfortunately this messes up the length calculation and yields: SQLVersion VerNum ----------- --------------------------- 2000 8.00.2055 (Intel X86) Dec 16 2008 19:4 2005 9.00.3080.00 (Intel X86) Sep 6 2009 01: 2005 9.00.4053.00 (Intel X86) May 26 2009 14: 2008 10.50.1600.1 (Intel X86) Apr 2008 10.50.1600.1 (X64) Apr 2 20 Yuck.  The problem is that PATINDEX() returns position, and SUBSTRING() needs length, so I have to subtract the VN starting position: SELECT SQLVersion, SUBSTRING(VersionString,PATINDEX('%-%',VersionString)+2, PATINDEX('%(%',VersionString)-PATINDEX('%-%',VersionString)) VerNum FROM VERSION And the results are: SQLVersion VerNum ----------- -------------------------------------------------------- 2000 8.00.2055 (I 2005 9.00.4053.00 (I Msg 537, Level 16, State 2, Line 1 Invalid length parameter passed to the LEFT or SUBSTRING function. Ummmm, whoops.  Turns out SQL Server 2008 R2 includes "(RTM)" before the VN, and that causes the length to turn negative. So now that that blew up, I started to think about matching digit and dot (.) patterns.  Sadly, a quick look at the first set of results will quickly scuttle that idea, since different versions have different digit patterns and lengths. At this point (which took far longer than I wanted) I decided to cut my losses and redo the query using CHARINDEX(), which I'll cover in Part 2.2.  So to do a little post-mortem on this technique: PATINDEX() doesn't have the flexibility to match the digit pattern of the version number; PATINDEX() doesn't have a "start" parameter like CHARINDEX(), that allows us to skip over parts of the string; The SUBSTRING() expression is getting pretty complicated for this relatively simple task! This doesn't mean that PATINDEX() isn't useful, it's just not a good fit for this particular problem.  I'll include a version in the next post that extracts the version number properly. UPDATE: Sorry if you saw the unformatted version of this earlier, I'm on a quest to find blog software that ACTUALLY WORKS.

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• Why Is Web Sharing Broken on My Mac?

  - by Sam Murray-Sutton

  Background: I use my Mac for web development, running copies of web sites locally. I recently installed the Snow Leopard update, which to all intents and purposes seems to have gone fine, except... What's not working? Web-sharing; more specifically I can't turn it on via preferences. The preference pane just hangs when I try to. So Apache doesn't start on reboot. I can start Apache by hand, but I don't know enough to either setup apache to start with the computer, or to properly fix web sharing. Further details My Apache error log shows nothing on when the system boots up (as I would expect). This is the error message when I try to start web sharing from the sharing preference pane. 28/09/2009 10:58:05 System Preferences[834] setInetDServiceEnabled failed with 1 for org.apache.httpd Here's the messages given when I start apache from the command line. [Mon Sep 28 10:35:53 2009] [warn] Init: Session Cache is not configured [hint: SSLSessionCache] [Mon Sep 28 10:35:54 2009] [warn] mod_bonjour: Skipping user 'sams' - index file /Users/sams/Sites/index.html has zero length. [Mon Sep 28 10:35:54 2009] [notice] Digest: generating secret for digest authentication ... [Mon Sep 28 10:35:54 2009] [notice] Digest: done [Mon Sep 28 10:35:54 2009] [notice] Apache/2.2.11 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.11 OpenSSL/0.9.8k DAV/2 PHP/5.3.0 Phusion_Passenger/2.2.5 configured -- resuming normal operations Please let me know if you need any further details on this. Any help would be greatly appreciated. UPDATE I have added an answer of my own below - I was able to solve it thanks to being pointed in the right direction by the comments below, so thanks very much. But I'm still not totally clear as to what caused the problem or how my solution addressed it, so I'm leaving the question open for now.

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• How can we improve overall Programmer Education & Training?

  - by crosenblum

  Last week, I was just viewing this amazing interview by Kevin Rose of Phillip Rosedale, of Second Life. And they had an amazing discussion about how to find, hire and identify good programmer's, and how hard it is to find good ones. Which has lead me to really think about the way we programmer's learn, are taught. For a majority of us, myself included, we are self-taught. Which is great about being a programmer, anyone can learn and develop skills. But this also means, that there is no real standards of what a good programmer is/are, and what kind of environment's encourage the growth of programming skills. This isn't so much a question, but just a desire in me, to see how we can change the culture of programming, and the manager's of programming, so that education and self-improvement is encouraged. There are a lot of avenue's for continued education, youtube videos, books, conferences, but because of the experiental nature of what we do, it isn't always clear what's important to learn and to master. Let's look at the The Joel 12 Steps. The Joel Test Do you use source control? Can you make a build in one step? Do you make daily builds? Do you have a bug database? Do you fix bugs before writing new code? Do you have an up-to-date schedule? Do you have a spec? Do programmers have quiet working conditions? Do you use the best tools money can buy? Do you have testers? Do new candidates write code during their interview? Do you do hallway usability testing? I think all of these have important value, but because of something I call the Experiential Gap, if a programmer or manager has never experienced any of the negative consequences for not having done items on the list, they will never see the need to do any of them. The Experiental Gap, is my basic theory, that each of us has different jobs and different experiences. So for some of us, that have always worked with dozens of programmer's, source control is a must have. But for people who have always been the only programmer, they can not imagine the need for source control. And it's because of this major flaw in how we learn, that we evaluate people by what best practices they do or not do, and the reason for either can start a flame war. We always evaluate people in our field by what they do, and think "Oh if this guy/gal isn't doing xyz best practice, he/she can't be a good programmer, so let's not waste time or energy talking to them." This is exactly why we have so many programming flame wars, that it becomes, because of the Experiental Gap, we can't imagine people not having made the decisions that we have had to made. So this has lead me to think, that we totally need to rethink how we train, educate and manage programmer's. For example, what percentage of you have had encouragement by your manager's to go to conferences, and even have them pay for it? For me, and a lot of people, this is extremely rare, a lot of us would love to go to conferences, to learn more, but the money ain't there to do that. So the point of this question is really to spark a lot of how can we train, learn and manage better? How can we create a new culture of learning that doesn't insult people for not having the same job experiences. Yes we all have jobs and work to do, but our ability to do our jobs well, depends on our desire, interest and support in improving our mastery of our skills. Right now, I see our culture being rather disorganized, we support the elite, but those tons of us that want to get better, just don't have enough support to learn and improve ourselves. I mean, do we as an industry, want to be perceived as just replaceable cogs? Thank you...

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• Why Is ModSecurity Unable to Access the Data Directory?

  - by tommytwoeyes

  Update I think we've solved this; the problem appears to have been a result of the /modsec_storage directory having an incorrect value for its SELinux context type. However, we're still not sure, because although after I changed the SELinux context type value, Apache was able to create files in that directory for the global and ip collections (global.dir/global.pag and ip.dir/ip.pag), the new files still have zero bytes. I'm new to ModSecurity and am not sure if the files are empty because something is wrong with the configuration or if ModSecurity has simply determined it doesn't need to store IP addresses persistently after each transaction ends. Anyone able to offer guidance here? I've recently installed ModSecurity (v2.5.12 / CRS v2.0.8) on our production server, and everything works great, except for these errors that it keeps writing to the Apache error log: Failed to access DBM file "/modsec_storage/global": Permission denied [hostname "www.internationalstudent.com"] [uri "/includes/soc_bookmarks/images/delicious.png"] [unique_id "LZ6jc38AAAEAAFO6408AAABO"] Failed to access DBM file "/modsec_storage/ip": Permission denied [hostname "www.internationalstudent.com"] [uri "/includes/soc_bookmarks/images/delicious.png"] [unique_id "LZ6jc38AAAEAAFO6408AAABO"] After following the instructions for file permission settings in the ModSecurity handbook by Ivan Ristic, with no success, I created a /modsec_storage directory, set the owner & group to apache, and set the permissions for the directory recursively to 777. However, ModSecurity is still reporting the same permission errors, so I am stumped. Can anyone tell me how to fix this?

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• St. Louis ALT.NET

  - by Brian Schroer

  I’m a huge fan of the St. Louis .NET User Group and a regular attendee of their meetings, but always wished there was a local group that discussed more advanced .NET topics. (That’s not a criticism of the group - I appreciate that they want to server developers with a broad range of skill levels). That’s why I was thrilled when Nicholas Cloud started a St. Louis ALT.NET group in 2010. Here’s the “about us” statement from the group’s web site: The ALT.NET community is a loosely coupled, highly cohesive group of like-minded individuals who believe that the best developers do not align themselves with platforms and languages, but with principles and ideas. In 2007, David Laribee created the term "ALT.NET" to explain this "alternative" view of the Microsoft development universe--a view that challenged the "Microsoft-only" approach to software development. He distilled his thoughts into four key developer characteristics which form the basis of the ALT.NET philosophy: You're the type of developer who uses what works while keeping an eye out for a better way. You reach outside the mainstream to adopt the best of any community: Open Source, Agile, Java, Ruby, etc. You're not content with the status quo. Things can always be better expressed, more elegant and simple, more mutable, higher quality, etc. You know tools are great, but they only take you so far. It's the principles and knowledge that really matter. The best tools are those that embed the knowledge and encourage the principles (e.g. Resharper.) The St. Louis ALT.NET meetup group is a place where .NET developers can learn, share, and critique approaches to software development on the .NET stack. We cater to the highest common denominator, not the lowest, and want to help all St. Louis .NET developers achieve a superior level of software craftsmanship. I don’t see a lot of ALT.NET talk in blogs these days. The movement was harmed early on by the negative attitudes of some of its early leaders, including jerk moves like the Entity Framework “vote of no confidence”, but I do see occasional mentions of local groups like the St. Louis one. I think ALT.NET has been successful at bringing some of its ideas into the .NET world, including heavily influencing ASP.NET MVC and raising the general level of software craftsmanship for developers working on the Microsoft stack. The ideas and ideals live on, they’re just not branded as “this is ALT.NET!” In the past 18 months, St. Louis ALT.NET meetups have discussed topics like: NHibernate F# and other functional languages AOP CoffeeScript “How Ruby Is Making Me a Stronger C# Developer” Using rake for builds CQRS .NET dynamic programming micro web frameworks – Nancy & Jessica Git ALT.NET doesn’t mean (to me, anyway) “alternatives to .NET”, but “alternatives for .NET”. We look at how things are done in Ruby and other languages/platforms, but always with the idea “What can I learn from this to take back to my “day job” with .NET?”. Meetings are held at 7PM on the fourth Wednesday of each month at the offices of Professional Employment Group. PEG is located at 999 Executive Parkway (Suite 100 – lower level) in Creve Coeur (South of Olive off of Mason Road - Here's a map). Food is not supplied (sorry if you’re a big fan of the Papa John’s Crust-Lovers’ Pizza that’s a staple of user group meetings), but attendees are encouraged to come early and bring/share beer, so that’s cool. Thanks to Nick for organizing, and to Professional Employment Group for lending their offices. Please visit the meetup site for more information.

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• SQL Full-Text indexing not populating

  - by Sam

  Hi, We installed a clustered SQL 2005 installation on windows 2008 and reattached our san drives from another machine and restored to do a migration to new hardware. There have been a few minor issues, but this one has me stuck. Trying to populate Full-Text indexes is not working. I create a basic table with some simple text in a new database and get the same results as old indexes. 2010-09-27 10:30:46.85 spid19s Informational: Full-text Full population initialized for table or indexed view '[SQL_DBA].[dbo].[CIS_Report_Executions]' (table or indexed view ID '1767677345', database ID '5'). Population sub-tasks: 1. 2010-09-27 10:31:15.36 spid19s Error '0x80070003' occurred during full-text index population for table or indexed view '[SQL_DBA].[dbo].[CIS_Report_Executions]' (table or indexed view ID '1767677345', database ID '5'), full-text key value 0x000001DF. Attempt will be made to reindex it. 2010-09-27 10:31:15.37 spid19s The component 'MSFTE.DLL' reported error while indexing. Component path 'D:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\Binn\MSFTE.DLL'. 2010-09-27 10:31:15.37 spid19s Error '0x80070003' occurred during full-text index population for table or indexed view '[SQL_DBA].[dbo].[CIS_Report_Executions]' (table or indexed view ID '1767677345', database ID '5'), full-text key value 0x000001E0. Attempt will be made to reindex it. The rebuild/repopulate procedure finishes, but I get zero rows in the index. The .dll in the message is present and the service accounts have access to this. My FTData also has data in it, so it seems there wouldn't be permission issue on this folder. Application throws this error: “PHP Warning: mssql_query() [function.mssql-query]: message: Full-text catalog 'ikm_PageIndex_FText' is in an unusable state. Drop and re-create this full-text catalog. (severity 16) in E:\Inetpub\knowledgebase_insidemesa\lib\database\mssql.php on line 154” A microsoft discussion is the only post I found which had claimed to fix this - said it was registry related, but then didn't post the fix.

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• Poor Write Performance in VM inside Proxmox PVE 2.0

  - by sorsenne

  I am running a PVE 2.0 on a decent Hardware (2 SATA HDDs as RAID1, 12GB RAM, i7 CPU) but the I/O Performance is very poor inside the VM (Ubuntu 11.10 Server). The very same VM was copied to another Server running simply Ubuntu Server with KVM and had better I/O Perf. this is how the HDD is shown in the Guest: ata1: SATA link up 6.0 Gbps (SStatus 133 SControl 300) ata1.00: ATA-8: ST3000DM001-9YN166, CC49, max UDMA/133 ata1.00: 5860533168 sectors, multi 16: LBA48 NCQ (depth 31/32), AA ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133 scsi 0:0:0:0: Direct-Access ATA ST3000DM001-9YN1 CC49 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5 sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] 5860533168 512-byte logical blocks: (3.00 TB/2.72 TiB) sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] 4096-byte physical blocks sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00 sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA I tested with DD: $ dd bs=1M count=128 if=/dev/zero of=test conv=fdatasync 128+0 records in 128+0 records out 134217728 bytes (134 MB) copied, 19.2222 s, 7.0 MB/s on the Host, this same Test will result with 156 MB/s in average. PS: I am using VirtIO and see no error in dmesg.

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• Win 7 (SP1) Creationg of System Image failure... seems absurd. (0x80780119)

  - by DSKauai16

  This question seems to keep coming up in Microsoft Answers. Unfortunately, it never seems to be solved... on Microsoft Answers. Hopefully someone here will have a better idea. I'm trying to create a system image. It's not working. I have just re-installed windows as of a few hours ago. I have an admittedly older Western Digital 148 GB USB portable HDD which is not just completely empty, but I even did a long format with the NTFS file system just to be sure. The reinstallation of windows and a couple of programs take up 40 GB (seen below) When I try to create a System Image onto the USB HDD, I am told that there is not enough room. Obviously, this is wrong. The screen captures show exactly the steps that are happening to lead me to 0x80780119. I haven't done anything but put on Windows 7 (32bit; SP1) and install some programs. I haven't even done anything with them. There's almost zero in the way of data, and I checked that yes, the HDD works to accept data, send data and work with data. I've used the drive successfully for a long, long time. What's going wrong?

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• eee box "drobpox" server 24/7

  - by microspino

  I'd like to create a mini dropbox and print server on a small soho network of 5 users (all of them use windows XP desktops). The device need to run 24/7 or at least 12/7 (I can accept just workday hours too but the other two options would be better). Dropbox mini server: I mean I will have a 90gb dropbox on every computer on my network LAN syncing with It and the one onto It syncing to the web. Print Server: I have a Samsung A4 small laser printer, a HP500 Designjet Plotter, a Samsung Multifunction Machine (fax/print/scan/copy), a modern HP color A3 Deskjet printer and a HP laserjet A4 color printer. All of them need to be connected to this mini server. Fax/Scan server: since I have the above mentioned fax/print/scan/copy machine I would like to make people use It from/to their computers through the mini server. I thought to a recent EEEBOX machine because I heard good things about ATOM cpus and because It seems that a recent BIOS version could switch It off and on autonomously. I'd like to listen some advice from You. Best of all would be: - If You have something similar running for a long time - If You disagree with this hardware choice and If You would suggest some other device. - If You see any issues with my printing setup - Anything else ;) My budget is from Zero (using right sw to build something on top on a old PC) to 500€ max.

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• Very slow write performance on Debian 6.0 (AMD64) with DMCRYPT/LVM/RAID1

  - by jdelic

  I'm seeing very strange performance characteristics on one of my servers. This server is running a simple two-disk software-RAID1 setup with LVM spanning /dev/md0. One of the logical volumes /dev/vg0/secure is encrypted using dmcrypt with LUKS and mounted with the sync and noatimes flag. Writing to that volume is incredibly slow at 1.8 MB/s and the CPU usage stays near 0%. There are 8 crpyto/1-8 processes running (it's a Intel Quadcore CPU). I hope that someone on serverfault has seen this before :-(. uname -a 2.6.32-5-xen-amd64 #1 SMP Tue Mar 8 00:01:30 UTC 2011 x86_64 GNU/Linux Interestingly, when I read from the device I get good performance numbers: reading without encryption: $ dd if=/dev/vg0/secure of=/dev/null bs=64k count=100000 100000+0 records in 100000+0 records out 6553600000 bytes (6.6 GB) copied, 68.8951 s, 95.1 MB/s reading with encryption: $ dd if=/dev/mapper/secure of=/dev/null bs=64k count=100000 100000+0 records in 100000+0 records out 6553600000 bytes (6.6 GB) copied, 69.7116 s, 94.0 MB/s However, when I try to write to the device: $ dd if=/dev/zero of=./test bs=64k 8809+0 records in 8809+0 records out 577306624 bytes (577 MB) copied, 321.861 s, 1.8 MB/s Also, when I read I see CPU usage, when I write, the CPU stays at almost 0% usage. Here is output of cryptsetup luksDump: LUKS header information for /dev/vg0/secure Version: 1 Cipher name: aes Cipher mode: cbc-essiv:sha256 Hash spec: sha1 Payload offset: 2056 MK bits: 256 MK digest: dd 62 b9 a5 bf 6c ec 23 36 22 92 4c 39 f8 d6 5d c1 3a b7 37 MK salt: cc 2e b3 d9 fb e3 86 a1 bb ab eb 9d 65 df b3 dd d9 6b f4 49 de 8f 85 7d 3b 1c 90 83 5d b2 87 e2 MK iterations: 44500 UUID: a7c9af61-d9f0-4d3f-b422-dddf16250c33 Key Slot 0: ENABLED Iterations: 178282 Salt: 60 24 cb be 5c 51 9f b4 85 64 3d f8 07 22 54 d4 1a 5f 4c bc 4b 82 76 48 d8 a2 d2 6a ee 13 d7 5d Key material offset: 8 AF stripes: 4000 Key Slot 1: DISABLED Key Slot 2: DISABLED Key Slot 3: DISABLED Key Slot 4: DISABLED Key Slot 5: DISABLED Key Slot 6: DISABLED Key Slot 7: DISABLED

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• Sorry about the wait.

  - by Ratman21

  In the last two days have been trying remove “Iolo System Mechanic Professional” (With anti-virus and FireWall) from 3 of the 5 pc’s we have (3 lap tops and two Desk tops) as it was going to expire on the 13th.   So I could replace them with a free anti-virus (AVG) and just use the windows fire wall. I have been using the same set up on one of my desk tops (XP Pro) for 8 months and one of the Lap tops (Vista) for 5 months.   The problem was that System Mechanic did not want to go. Even after using the uninstall option on the desk top (my main PC, well its that because has the larger of all the PC’s hard drives but, is the oldest and runs XP home) and using Ccleaner to try and remove it.  It was still showing up as there and after I went a head and tried installing AVG and ran it. I found that the TCP/IP module was missing.  So no internet, I had to restore the PC back to the 1st to get the module back and then install AVG (after making sure window firewall was back on. I didn’t check that on the first try). Got the PC back to normal, very late last night. Only one of the two lap tops was easy but, even at that there are still some parts of System Mechanic on it but, AVG and firewall are working.   I may try an hunt down parts of System Mechanic on it and delete them on this lap top. Which was what finally had to do on the one of the Lap tops (also XP Home) as it would not uninstall after I restored the PC back to the 4th. So delete, delete, delete and Ccleaner (one dl file would not delete though). And I just finish installing AVG and now running a scan on the lap top. So all of this took two days (well three counting today). I started late Friday night and just finishing up now.   I only started this switch over after I had finished my Job search for day on Friday.   As for blogging on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, I was busy and by the end of the day was too tired to blog, that and was hung up still on that 2nd dare of The Love Dare. So I cleaned the house, while she was out of the house. I mean, I cleaned, not just vacuumed house I cleaned the kitchen counter tops and the sinks. Did the dishes and some of the laundry over two of the those days.   As to the third day of Love Dare which is “Love is not selfish” and the dare “Whatever you put your time, energy, and money into will become more important to you. It’s hard to care for something you are not investing in. Along with restraining from negative comments, buy your spouse something that says, I was thinking of you today.”   Being on a very limited income, a lot of normal guy buying for girls is out (for one thing, the comment why did you waste our money on flowers, etc, etc, would come up. Not from me though). So that one is on hold till money issues are not a problem (no that does not mean never). The 4th day “Love is thoughtful” and the dare “Contact your spouse sometime during the business of the day. Have no agenda other than asking how he or she is doing and if there is anything you could do for them”.   I did this dare while I was still working with census last week and trying to do the dares. Well I start my CCNA classes Monday the 15th and I move on to the next Love Dare day “Love is not rude”.

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• Batch copy gives errors, xcopy works fine

  - by ndm13

  I am writing a general file backup program. It searches the drive for files matching a set of types and then writes them to a folder on the desktop. I wrote it using xcopy on Windows XP but upon learning that xcopy was deprecated in favor of robocopy in Vista and newer, still wanting to maintain compatibility I decided to switch to the non-deprecated copy. This is where the problems begin. I'm trying to fix the copy routine. I thought I had everything sorted out, but it doesn't copy anything. My output is zero files copied for every iteration. Original Code using xcopy: for /r %%a in (*.bmp *.dds *.gif *.jpg *.jpeg *.png *.psd *.pspimage *.tga *.thm *.tif *.tiff) do ( echo f | xcopy "%%a" "%HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%\Desktop\LDR\Images\Bitmap\%%~nxa" /q /y /g /c ) Revised (broken) Code using copy: for /r %%a in (*.bmp *.dds *.gif *.jpg *.jpeg *.png *.psd *.pspimage *.tga *.thm *.tif *.tiff) do ( copy "%%a" "%HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%\Desktop\LDR\Images\Bitmap\%%~nxa" /d /y /z ) Output: The system cannot find the path specified. 0 files copied. I know that it seems everyone uses either xcopy or robocopy but can anyone help with copy? Note: I'm using Batch to keep it very lightweight and command-line accessible.

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• Block protect (Keep last line of paragraph with next paragraph)

  - by Ed Cottrell

  Is there a way to force Microsoft Word 2010 to keep the last line of a paragraph with the next paragraph? An example of when this is relevant is when starting a block quote; it doesn't look good to have the block quote start at the top of a new page, particularly when it's introduced by a partial sentence, like this: "Lorem ipsum" is sample text widely used in the publishing industry, as the text has spacing roughly similar to that of English and therefore looks "normal" but unintelligible to an English reader's eye, allowing the reader to focus on design elements. It begins, Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nam rhoncus laoreet risus, quis congue leo viverra congue. Suspendisse magna massa, viverra imperdiet est eu, ultrices volutpat lectus. Sed pulvinar est id risus lobortis venenatis. There shouldn't be a page break after "begins," because it looks like the sentence ends abruptly. "Keep lines together" won't work, because by definition we're talking about two paragraphs. "Keep with next" won't work if the first paragraph is larger than a couple of lines, because then you get an awkwardly large space at the bottom of a page. Manual line breaks obviously work, but only when the document is final, which is often less certain than it seems. I know WordPerfect has a feature called "block protect" that does this, but I have not found even an acceptable substitute in Word. I have played with style separators and hidden paragraph breaks, but to no avail. I would love a special character, kind of like the nonbreaking space or zero width optional space, that tells Word to move to the next page if the next paragraph would otherwise start the page. A macro would also be great, but I haven't been able to find a starting point (like how to detect where non-manual page breaks fall). Edit: It looks like "Keep with next" works this way in Word 2013, but I specifically need a fix that works in Word 2010.

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• SORT empties my file?

  - by Jonathan Sampson

  I'm attempting to sort a csv on my machine, but I seem to be erasing the contents each time I use the sort command. I've basically created a copy of my csv lacking the first row: sed '1d' original.csv > newcopy.csv To confirm that my new copy exists lacking the first row I can check with head: head 1 newcopy.csv Sure enough, it finds my file and shows me the original second now (now first row). My csv consists of numerous values seperated by commas: Jonathan Sampson,,,,[email protected],,,GA,United States,, Jane Doe,Mrs,,,[email protected],,,FL,United States,32501, As indicated above, some fields are empty. I want to sort based upon the email address field, which is either 4, or 5 - depending on whether the sort command uses a zero-based index. So I'm trying the following: sort -t, +4 -5 newcopy.csv > newcopy.csv So I'm using -t, to indicate that my fields are terminated by the comma, rather than a space. I'm not sure if +4 -5 actually sorts on the email field or not - I could use some help here. And then newcopy.csv > newcopy.csv to overwrite the original file with new sort results. After I do this, if I try to read in the first line: head 1 newcopy.csv I get the following error: head: cannot open `1' for reading: No such file or directory == newcopy.csv <== Sure enough, if I check my directory the file is now empty, and 0 bytes.

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• VoIP setup for one external PSTN line

  - by Jcl

  I'm completely new to VoIP and the likes, and I'm trying to find information about what could be the best setup for this. I need 4 (maybe more in the future, but maximum 5 or 6) wireless extensions, connected to 1 PSTN line, and maybe 2 in the future. I've been trying to gather information about the gear needed but everything I find seems too much over-the-top (and extremely expensive). The main problem is that the physical place we are on doesn't have possibilities of having a decent internet connection, so using a external VoIP "virtual PBX" is not an option. Thing is, even if small, phone is critical to this organization. I currently have an analog DECT/GAP PBX which does what I need, however the PBX is very bad and the call quality is horrible, and that's why I want to change it. The requirements would be: 4 wireless terminals (routing cable is not an option), all of them ringing on incoming PSTN calls. Ability to do internal calls (4 separate offices) and ability to pass calls between terminals. The 4 terminals should be able to access the external PSTN line without dialing any special codes. Very important: terminals should be able to issue commands on the PSTN line to the external operator in the form *nn*nnnnnnnn# . Don't know wether this could face to be a problem, but I've had problems with analog PBX which would take any * as a PBX command and wouldn't allow terminals to send it to the external lines. Not so important, but would be nice to have: call waiting music Could anyone recommend such a setup? I need to be able to do this on a EXTREMELY LIMITED budget (that is: I don't have a limit, but all should get as much to zero as possible). I have enough spare powerful computers and a 300mbps wireless network which works just fine, so that's not to include in the budget. Don't really know if this is the best place to ask, but it's the most StackExchange-related site I've found to this subject.

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• EEE PC dropbox server running 24/7

  - by microspino

  I'd like to create a mini dropbox and print server on a small soho network of 5 users (all of them use windows XP desktops). The device need to run 24/7 or at least 12/7 (I can accept just workday hours too but the other two options would be better). Dropbox mini server: I mean I will have a 90gb dropbox on every computer on my network LAN syncing with It and the one onto It syncing to the web. Print Server: I have Samsung SCX 4521F (fax/print/scan/copy), Samsung ML2010, HP Laser jet P1006, HP Color Laserjet CP1215, HP Office jet pro K8600, HP Design jet 500. All of them now are connected using little print servers and I want to get rid of them hooking everything to this mini server. The fax/print/scan/copy machine need to stay connected to a PC to make me able to use the software that comes with It. The mini server would save me on this too. Fax/Scan server: since I have the above mentioned fax/print/scan/copy machine I would like to make people use It from/to their computers through the mini server. I thought to a recent EEEBOX machine because I heard good things about ATOM cpus and because It seems that a recent BIOS version could switch It off and on autonomously. I'd like to listen some advice from You. Best of all would be: If You have something similar running for a long time If You disagree with this hardware choice and If You would suggest some other device. If You see any issues with my printing setup Anything else ;) My budget is from Zero (using right sw to build something on top on a old PC) to 500€ max.

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• Disk IO slow on ESXi, even slower on a VM (freeNAS + iSCSI)

  - by varesa

  I have a server with ESXi 5 and iSCSI attached network storage(4x1Tb Raid-Z on freenas 8.0.4). Those two machines are connected to each other with Gigabit ethernet. The raid-z volume is divided into three parts: two zvols, shared with iscsi, and one directly on top of zfs, shared with nfs and similar. I ssh'd into the freeNAS box, and did some testing on the disks. I used ddto test the third part of the disks (straight on top of ZFS). I copied a 4GB (2x the amount of RAM) block from /dev/zero to the disk, and the speed was 80MB/s. Other of the iSCSI shared zvols is a datastore for the ESXi. I did similar test with time dd .. there. Since the dd there did not give the speed, I divided the amount of data transfered by the time show by time. The result was around 30-40 MB/s. Thats about half of the speed from the freeNAS host! Then I tested the IO on a VM running on the same ESXi host. The VM was a light CentOS 6.0 machine, which was not really doing anything else at that time. There were no other VMs running on the server at the time, and the other two "parts" of the disk array were not used. A similar dd test gave me result of about 15-20 MB/s. That is again about half of the result on a lower level! Of course the is some overhead in raid-z - zfs - zvolume - iSCSI - VMFS - VM, but I don't expect it to be that big. I belive there must be something wrong in my system. I have heard about bad performance of freeNAS's iSCSI, is that it? I have not managed to get any other "big" SAN OS to run on the box (NexentaSTOR, openfiler). Can you see any obvious problems with my setup?

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• Do we still have a case against the goto statement? [closed]

  - by FredOverflow

  Possible Duplicate: Is it ever worthwhile using goto? In a recent article, Andrew Koenig writes: When asked why goto statements are harmful, most programmers will say something like "because they make programs hard to understand." Press harder, and you may well hear something like "I don't really know, but that's what I was taught." For that reason, I'd like to summarize Dijkstra's arguments. He then shows two program fragments, one without a goto and and one with a goto: if (n < 0) n = 0; Assuming that n is a variable of a built-in numeric type, we know that after this code, n is nonnegative. Suppose we rewrite this fragment: if (n >= 0) goto nonneg; n = 0; nonneg: ; In theory, this rewrite should have the same effect as the original. However, rewriting has changed something important: It has opened the possibility of transferring control to nonneg from anywhere else in the program. I emphasized the part that I don't agree with. Modern languages like C++ do not allow goto to transfer control arbitrarily. Here are two examples: You cannot jump to a label that is defined in a different function. You cannot jump over a variable initialization. Now consider composing your code of tiny functions that adhere to the single responsibility principle: int clamp_to_zero(int n) { if (n >= 0) goto n_is_not_negative: n = 0; n_is_not_negative: return n; } The classic argument against the goto statement is that control could have transferred from anywhere inside your program to the label n_is_not_negative, but this simply is not (and was never) true in C++. If you try it, you will get a compiler error, because labels are scoped. The rest of the program doesn't even see the name n_is_not_negative, so it's just not possible to jump there. This is a static guarantee! Now, I'm not saying that this version is better then the one without the goto, but to make the latter as expressive as the first one, we would at least have to insert a comment, or even better yet, an assertion: int clamp_to_zero(int n) { if (n < 0) n = 0; // n is not negative at this point assert(n >= 0); return n; } Note that you basically get the assertion for free in the goto version, because the condition n >= 0 is already written in line 1, and n = 0; satisfies the condition trivially. But that's just a random observation. It seems to me that "don't use gotos!" is one of those dogmas like "don't use multiple returns!" that stem from a time where the real problem were functions of hundreds or even thousand of lines of code. So, do we still have a case against the goto statement, other than that it is not particularly useful? I haven't written a goto in at least a decade, but it's not like I was running away in terror whenever I encountered one. 1 Ideally, I would like to see a strong and valid argument against gotos that still holds when you adhere to established programming principles for clean code like the SRP. "You can jump anywhere" is not (and has never been) a valid argument in C++, and somehow I don't like teaching stuff that is not true. 1: Also, I have never been able to resurrect even a single velociraptor, no matter how many gotos I tried :(

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