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  • WPF TextBlock refresh in real time

    - by TheOnlyBrien
    I'm new to C#, in fact, this is one of the first projects I've tried to start on my own. I am curious why the TextBlock will not refresh with the following code? The WPF window does not even show up when I add the "while" loop to the code. I just want this to have a real time display of the days since I was born. Please help me out or give me constructive direction. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using System.Threading.Tasks; using System.Windows; using System.Windows.Controls; using System.Windows.Data; using System.Windows.Documents; using System.Windows.Input; using System.Windows.Media; using System.Windows.Media.Imaging; using System.Windows.Navigation; using System.Windows.Shapes; namespace daysAliveWPF { /// <summary> /// Interaction logic for MainWindow.xaml /// </summary> public partial class MainWindow : Window { public MainWindow() { InitializeComponent(); DateTime myBirthday = new DateTime(1984, 01, 19); while (true) { TimeSpan daysAlive = DateTime.Now.Subtract(myBirthday); MyTextBlock.Text = daysAlive.TotalDays.ToString(); } } } } Similar code has worked in a Console Window application, so I don't understand what's going on here. Console Application code snip that did work is: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using System.Threading.Tasks; namespace DisplayRealTime { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { DateTime myBirthday = new DateTime(1984, 06, 19); while (true) { TimeSpan daysAlive = DateTime.Now.Subtract(myBirthday); Console.Write("\rTotal Days Alive: {0}", daysAlive.TotalDays.ToString(".#####")); } } } } Thank you!

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  • Oracle Solaris at the OpenStack Summit in Atlanta

    - by Glynn Foster
    I had the fortune of attending my 2nd OpenStack summit in Atlanta a few weeks ago and it turned out to be a really excellent event. Oracle had many folks there this time around across a variety of different engineering teams - Oracle Solaris, Oracle ZFSSA, Oracle Linux, Oracle VM and more. Really great to see continuing momentum behind the project and we're very happy to be involved. Here's a list of the highlights that I had during the summit: The operators track was a really excellent addition, with a chance for users/administrators to voice their opinions based on experiences. Really good to hear how OpenStack is making businesses more agile, but also equally good to hear about some of the continuing frustrations they have (fortunately many of them are new and being addressed). Seeing this discussion morph into a "Win the enterprise" working group is also very pleasing. Enjoyed Troy Toman's keynote (Rackspace) about designing a planet scale cloud OS and the interoperability challenges ahead of us. I've been following some of the discussion around DefCore for a bit and while I have some concerns, I think it's mostly heading in the right direction. Certainly seems like there's a balance to strike to ensure that this effects the OpenStack vendors in such a way as to avoid negatively impacting our end users. Also enjoyed Toby Ford's keynote (AT&T) about his desire for a NVF (Network Function Virtualization) architecture. What really resonated was also his desire for OpenStack to start addressing the typical enterprise workload, being less like cattle and more like pets. The design summit was, as per usual, pretty intense for - definitely would get more value from these if I knew the code base a little better. Nevertheless, attended some really great sessions and got a better feeling of the roadmap for Juno. Markus Flierl gave a great presentation (see below) at the demo theatre for what we're doing with OpenStack on Oracle Solaris (and more widely at Oracle across different products). Based on the discussions that we had at the Oracle booth, there's a huge amount of interest there and we talked to some great customers during the week about their thoughts and directions in this respect. Undoubtedly Atlanta had some really good food. Highlights were the smoked ribs and brisket and the SweetWater brewing company. That said, I also loved the fried chicken, fried green tomatoes and collared greens, and wonderful hosting of "big momma" at Pitty Pat's Porch. Couldn't quite bring myself to eat biscuits and gravy in the morning though. Visiting the World of Coca-Cola just before flying out. A total brain washing exercise, but very enjoyable. And very much liked Beverly (contrary to many other opinions on the internet) - but then again, I'd happily drink tonic water every day of the year... Looking forward to Paris in November!

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  • Which techniques to study?

    - by Djentleman
    Just to give you some background info, I'm studying a programming major at a tertiary level and am in my third year, so I'm not a newbie off the street. However, I am still quite new to game programming as a subset of programming. One of my personal projects for next semester is to design and create a 2D platformer game with emphasis on procedural generation and "neato" effects (think metroidvania). I've written up a list of some techniques to help me improve my personal skills (using XNA for the time being). The list is as follows: QuadTrees: Build a basic program in XNA that moves basic 2D sprites (circles and squares) around a set path and speed and changes their colour when they collide. Add functionality to add and delete objects of different sizes (select a direction and speed when adding and just drag and drop them in). Particles: Build a basic program in XNA in which you can select different colours and create particle effects of those colours on screen by clicking and dragging the mouse around (simple particles emerging from where the mouse is clicked). Add functionality where you can change the amount of particles to be drawn and the speed at which they travel and when they expire. Possibly implement gravity and wind after part 3 is complete. Physics: Build a basic program in XNA where you have a ball in a set 2D environment, a wind slider, and a gravity slider (can go to negative for reverse gravity). You can click to drag the ball around and release to throw it and, depending on what you do, the ball interacts with the environment. Implement other shapes afterwards. Random 2D terrain generation: Build a basic program in XNA that randomly generates terrain (including hills, caves, etc) created from 2D tiles. Add functionality that draws the tiles from a tileset and places different tiles depending on where they lie on the y-axis (dirt on top, then rock, then lava, etc). Randomised objects: Build a basic program in XNA that, when a button is clicked, displays a randomised item sprite based on parameters (type, colour, etc) with the images pulled from tilesets. Add the ability to save the item as an object, which stores it in a side-pane where it can be selected for viewing. Movement: Build a basic program in XNA where you can move an object around in an environment (tile-based) with a camera that pans with it. No gravity. Implement gravity and wind, allow the character to jump and fall with some basic platforms. So my question is this: Are there any other commonly used techniques that I should research, and can I get some suggestions as to the effectiveness of the techniques I've chosen to work on (e.g., don't do QuadTree stuff because [insert reason here], or, do [insert technique here] before you start working on particles because [insert reason here])? I hope this is clear enough and please let me know if I can further clarify anything!

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  • Silverlight Cream for March 05, 2011 -- #1053

    - by Dave Campbell
    In this all-sumbittal (while I was at MVP11) Issue: Michael Washington(-2-), goldytech, JFo, Andrea Boschin, Jonathan Marbutt, Gregor Biswanger, Michael Wolf, and Peter Kuhn. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "A Simple Bindable CheckboxList Control" Jonathan Marbutt WP7: "Struggles with the Panorama Control" JFo Lightswitch: "HTML (including HTML 5) and LightSwitch at the same time?" Michael Washington From SilverlightCream.com: LightSwitch vs HTML 5 ? In his first post-MVP11 post, Michael Washington takes on HTML5 with a Lightswitch discussion. Good discussion follows in the comments also. HTML (including HTML 5) and LightSwitch at the same time? Michael Washington's 2nd post is a great tutorial on creating a re-usable business layer with Lightswitch... all good stuff, and look for more from Michael as Lightswitch matures. How to add Computed Properties in WCF Ria Services on client goldytech has a new post up about providing real-time solutions to client-side calculations with WCF RIA services. Struggles with the Panorama Control JFo details a problem he had with the Panorama control on WP7... detailing 4 problems she had and her solutions... well thought-out explanations too.. a definite good read... and another blogger to add to my list! Windows Phone 7 - Part #7: Understanding Push Notifications Andrea Boschin has part 7 of his WP7 series up at SilverlightShow, concentrating on Push Notifications this time out... great explanation of push notifications in this tutorial from the service and phone side with a working sample to boot. A Simple Bindable CheckboxList Control Jonathan Marbutt took a completely different direction than most and created his own Bindable CheckboxList by starting with ContentControl rather than a Listbox as most do... pretty cool and all the source. Own routed events in Silverlight I met Gregor Biswanger at the MVP Summit and asked him to send me his blog run through Microsoft Translator ... here's a great post on routed events he did back in November... and a discussion of his CallMethodAction Behavior... which looks like another good post subject! Creating a Silverlight Out-of-Browser Splash Screen Michael Wolf has a post up discussing OOB splash screens... I like his "White screen of Awesome" definition ... I'm very familiar with that :) ... check out his solution for getting around that white screen, and lots of external links too. XNA for Silverlight developers: Part 5 - Input (touch + gestures) Peter Kuhn has Part 5 in his tutorial series on XNA for Silverlight devs up at SilverlightShow... this time covering touch and gestures ... how to enable and read gestures, and the difference between Silverlight and XNA in the touch department. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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  • Advice on designing a robust program to handle a large library of meta-information & programs

    - by Sam Bryant
    So this might be overly vague, but here it is anyway I'm not really looking for a specific answer, but rather general design principles or direction towards resources that deal with problems like this. It's one of my first large-scale applications, and I would like to do it right. Brief Explanation My basic problem is that I have to write an application that handles a large library of meta-data, can easily modify the meta-data on-the-fly, is robust with respect to crashing, and is very efficient. (Sorta like the design parameters of iTunes, although sometimes iTunes performs more poorly than I would like). If you don't want to read the details, you can skip the rest Long Explanation Specifically I am writing a program that creates a library of image files and meta-data about these files. There is a list of tags that may or may not apply to each image. The program needs to be able to add new images, new tags, assign tags to images, and detect duplicate images, all while operating. The program contains an image Viewer which has tagging operations. The idea is that if a given image A is viewed while the library has tags T1, T2, and T3, then that image will have boolean flags for each of those tags (depending on whether the user tagged that image while it was open in the Viewer). However, prior to being viewed in the Viewer, image A would have no value for tags T1, T2, and T3. Instead it would have a "dirty" flag indicating that it is unknown whether or not A has these tags or not. The program can introduce new tags at any time (which would automatically set all images to "dirty" with respect to this new tag) This program must be fast. It must be easily able to pull up a list of images with or without a certain tag as well as images which are "dirty" with respect to a tag. It has to be crash-safe, in that if it suddenly crashes, all of the tagging information done in that session is not lost (though perhaps it's okay to loose some of it) Finally, it has to work with a lot of images (10,000) I am a fairly experienced programmer, but I have never tried to write a program with such demanding needs and I have never worked with databases. With respect to the meta-data storage, there seem to be a few design choices: Choice 1: Invidual meta-data vs centralized meta-data Individual Meta-Data: have a separate meta-data file for each image. This way, as soon as you change the meta-data for an image, it can be written to the hard disk, without having to rewrite the information for all of the other images. Centralized Meta-Data: Have a single file to hold the meta-data for every file. This would probably require meta-data writes in intervals as opposed to after every change. The benefit here is that you could keep a centralized list of all images with a given tag, ect, making the task of pulling up all images with a given tag very efficient

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  • Atmospheric scattering sky from space artifacts

    - by ollipekka
    I am in the process of implementing atmospheric scattering of a planets from space. I have been using Sean O'Neil's shaders from http://http.developer.nvidia.com/GPUGems2/gpugems2_chapter16.html as a starting point. I have pretty much the same problem related to fCameraAngle except with SkyFromSpace shader as opposed to GroundFromSpace shader as here: http://www.gamedev.net/topic/621187-sean-oneils-atmospheric-scattering/ I get strange artifacts with sky from space shader when not using fCameraAngle = 1 in the inner loop. What is the cause of these artifacts? The artifacts disappear when fCameraAngle is limtied to 1. I also seem to lack the hue that is present in O'Neil's sandbox (http://sponeil.net/downloads.htm) Camera position X=0, Y=0, Z=500. GroundFromSpace on the left, SkyFromSpace on the right. Camera position X=500, Y=500, Z=500. GroundFromSpace on the left, SkyFromSpace on the right. I've found that the camera angle seems to handled very differently depending the source: In the original shaders the camera angle in SkyFromSpaceShader is calculated as: float fCameraAngle = dot(v3Ray, v3SamplePoint) / fHeight; Whereas in ground from space shader the camera angle is calculated as: float fCameraAngle = dot(-v3Ray, v3Pos) / length(v3Pos); However, various sources online tinker with negating the ray. Why is this? Here is a C# Windows.Forms project that demonstrates the problem and that I've used to generate the images: https://github.com/ollipekka/AtmosphericScatteringTest/ Update: I have found out from the ScatterCPU project found on O'Neil's site that the camera ray is negated when the camera is above the point being shaded so that the scattering is calculated from point to the camera. Changing the ray direction indeed does remove artifacts, but introduces other problems as illustrated here: Furthermore, in the ScatterCPU project, O'Neil guards against situations where optical depth for light is less than zero: float fLightDepth = Scale(fLightAngle, fScaleDepth); if (fLightDepth < float.Epsilon) { continue; } As pointed out in the comments, along with these new artifacts this still leaves the question, what is wrong with the images where camera is positioned at 500, 500, 500? It feels like the halo is focused on completely wrong part of the planet. One would expect that the light would be closer to the spot where the sun should hits the planet, rather than where it changes from day to night. The github project has been updated to reflect changes in this update.

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  • How to impale and stack targets correctly according to the collider and its coordinate?

    - by David Dimalanta
    I'm making another simple game, a catch game, where a spawning target game object must be captured using a skewer to impale it. Here how: At the start, the falling object (in red) will fall in a vertical direction (in blue) When aimed properly, the target will fall down along the line of the skewer. (in blue) Then, another target is spawned and will fall vertically. (in red) When aimed successfully again in a streak, the second target will fall along the skewer and stacked. Same process over and over when another target is spawned. However, when I test run it on the scene tab in Unity, when impaled several targets, instead of a smooth flow and stacking it ended up overlaying it instead of stacking it up like a pancake. Here's what it look like: As I noticed when reaching the half-way of my progress, I tried to figure out how to deal with collider bodies without sticking each other so that it will actually stack like in the example of the image at no. 3. Here's the script code I added in the target game object: using UnityEngine; using System.Collections; public class ImpaleStateTest : MonoBehaviour { public GameObject target; public GameObject skewer; public bool drag = false; private float stack; private float impaleCount; void Start () { stack = 0; impaleCount = 0; } void Update () { if(drag) { target.transform.position = new Vector3 (DragTest.dir.transform.position.x, DragTest.dir.transform.position.y - 0.35f, 0); target.transform.rotation = DragTest.degrees; target.rigidbody2D.fixedAngle = true; target.rigidbody2D.isKinematic = true; target.rigidbody2D.gravityScale = 0; if(Input.GetMouseButton(0)) { Debug.Log ("Skewer: " + DragTest.dir.transform.position.x); Debug.Log ("Target: " + target.transform.position.x); } } } void OnTriggerEnter2D(Collider2D collider) { impaleCount++; Debug.Log ("Impaled " + impaleCount + " time(s)!"); drag = true; audio.Play (); } } Aside from that, I'm not sure if it's right but, the only way to stick the impaled targets while dragging the skewer left or right is to get the X coordinates from the skewer only. Is there something else to recommend it in order to improve this behavior as realistic as possible? Please help.

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  • More Changes...

    - by MOSSLover
    Stuff has changed drastically for me in the past two to three years.  I moved over 1000 miles from Saint Louis.  I go outside and I get up in front of crowds with less issues.  Now I'm changing jobs again.  I'm not really sure what to say here.  I was obviously unhappy and I needed to do something different.  So quit two days ago and I guess it worked out that I end with B&R this Friday, then head to TEC and SPS Huntsville and a week from this Monday I start my new job at Gig Werks.  I'm not sure what to expect or where I'm heading, but I think it's a step in the right direction.  I won't really know what kind of impact this will have on my life for at least another 6 months to a year. For some reason I can't sleep tonight and I think it's really a reflection of my last day.  Tomorrow is an ending and a beginning at the same time.  So it's both kind of sad and exciting.  I don't know why I'm really excited to go to Disney Land for the second time ever in my life time.  I get to ride the Teacups.  For the longest time when I was a kid I wanted to go to Disney Land.  I wanted to ride the teacups.  In 2007, at the age of 25, I rode the teacups for my first ever visit to LA.  That was the start of finally syncing up with my childhood goals.  I wanted to live near a major city.  I wanted to visit all the major cities in the world.  I wanted to see everything and meet everyone.  This job change will probably turn into something great I just don't know it yet.  I'm walking again outside my comfort zone and stepping into uncharted territory.  In 2-3 years I'll probably write another blog post how this week lead to something great.  It just stinks when you have to leave behind something you know and love.  I will miss all my current colleagues, but I'm sure I'll gain some new ones and keep in touch with the old.  To 2010 being a great year for change and hopefully by the end of the year I can say I went to Europe.  To reaching my goals and my dreams.  Don't let anyone stop you from getting what you want in life (unless you are axe murderer please don't kill anyone that's just wrong).  Have a good weekend everyone!

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  • ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for December 6, 2012

    - by Bob Rhubart
    Above and Beyond with the A-Team Maybe it's the coffee… If you follow this blog you've probably noticed that I regularly feature posts from members of the Oracle Fusion Middleware Architecture team, otherwise known as the A-Team. One of those bloggers, someone identified only as "fip" who writes on the A-Team SOA blog, went above and beyond on Dec 4, publishing a total of four substantial technical posts in a single day, each one worth a look: Retrieve Performance Data from SOA Infrastructure Database Configure Oracle SOA JMSAdatper to Work with WLS JMS Topics How to Achieve OC4J RMI Load Balancing Using BPEL Performance Statistics to Diagnose Performance Bottlenecks Web Service Example - Part 3: Asynchronous | The Oracle ADF Mobile Blog Part 3 in this series from the Oracle ADF Mobile blog looks at "firing the web service asynchronously and then filling in the UI when it completes." Denis says, "This can be useful when you have data on the device in a local store and want to show that to the user while the application uses lazy loading from a web service to load more data." ADF Mobile - Implementing Reusable Mobile Architecture | Andrejus Baranovskis "Reusability was always a strong part of ADF," says Oracle ACE Director Andrejus Baranovskis. "The same high reusability level is supported now in ADF Mobile." The objective of this post is "to prove technically that [the] reusable architecture concept works for ADF Mobile." Basic is Best | Eric Stephens "The world we live in and enterprises we strive to transform with enterprise architecture are complicated organisms, much like the human body," says Oracle Enterprise Architect Eric Stephens. "But sometimes a simple solution is the best approach...Whatever level of abstraction you are working at, less is more." Selling Federal Enterprise Architecture | Ted McLaughlan "EA must be 'sold' directly to the communities that matter from a coordinated, proactive messaging perspective that takes BOTH the Program-level value drivers AND the broader Agency mission and IT maturity context into consideration, " explains Ted McLaughlan. And that's true for any organization. Avoiding the "I'm Spartacus" Scenario in SOA | Ben Wilcock "This ‘SOA Spartacus’ scenario usually occurs quite soon after SOA is articulated as the primary strategic direction of the programme," says Ben Wilcock, "but before the organisation’s SOA capability is mature enough to understand what is meant by SOA, and how it should be designed and delivered." In such cases, perhaps the "A" in SOA is missing, no? Thought for the Day "It makes me feel guilty that anybody should have such a good time doing what they are supposed to do." — Charles Eames (1907–1978) Source: SoftwareQuotes.com

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  • Leveraging Social Networks for Retail

    - by David Dorf
    For retailers, social media is all about B2C2C. That is, Business to Consumer to Consumer, or more specifically, retailer to influencer to consumer. Traditional marketing targeted mass media, trying to expose the message to as many people as possible. While effective, this approach has never been very efficient, with high costs for relatively low penetration. Then it was thought that marketers should focus their efforts on a relative few super-influencers that would then sway the masses. History shows a few successes with this approach but lacked any consistency or predictability. After all, if super-influencers were easy to find, most campaigns would easily go viral. Alas, research shows that most wide-spread trends were the result of several fortunate events, including some luck. So do people exert influence over each other when it comes to purchase decisions? Of course they do, all the time. But that influence is usually limited to a small set of friends and specific specialization. For instance, although I have 165 friends on Facebook, I am only able to influence my close friends and family on PC purchases, and I have no sway at all for fashion purchases. People trust my knowledge on technology, but nobody asks my advice on shoes. How then should retailers leverage social networks in order to reinforce brand image and push promotions? Two obvious ways are Like and Share. Online advertisements or wall-postings receive more clicks when the viewer sees that friends have "liked" the posting. That's our modern-day version of word-of-mouth advertising. Statistics show that endorsements from friends make it more likely a person will engage. If my friends and I liked it, then I might also "share" (or "retweet" in the case of Twitter) it with other friends. In that case the retailer has paid for X showings of the advertisement, but sharing has pushed it to an additional Y people at no cost. And further, the implicit endorsement by the sharer makes it more likely the recipient will engage. So a good first step is to find people active in social networks that will Like and Share in order to exert influence. Its still tough to go viral, but doubling engagement is still a big step in the right direction. More complex social graph analysis would be a second step, but I'll leave that topic for another day. If you're interested in the academic side of social dynamics, I suggest reading Duncan Watts' work.

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  • Leading an offshore team

    - by Chuck Conway
    I'm in a position where I am leading two teams of 4. Both teams are located in India. I am on the west coast of the U.S. I'm finding leading remote teams challenging: First, their command of the English language is weak. Second, I'm having difficultly understanding them through their accents. Third is timing, we are 12 hours apart. We use Skype to communicate. I have a month to get the project done. We've burned through a week just setting up the environments. At this point I'm considering working their hours, 11p PDT to 7a PDT, to get them up to speed, so that I can get the project off the ground. A 12 hour lag time is too much. I'm looking for steps I can take to be successful at leading an offshore team. Update The offshore team's primary task is coding, of course, most coding tasks do involve some design work. The offshore team's are composed of one lead, 2 mid level (4 to 5 years) developers and a junior (~2 years) developer. The project is classic waterfall. We've handed the offshore team a business and a technical design document. We are trying to manage the offshore in an agile way. We have daily conference calls with them and I'm requiring the teams to send me a daily scrum in the form of an email answering the following questions: What did I do today? What am I going to do tomorrow? What do I need from Chuck so I can do my job tomorrow? There is some ambiguity in the tasks. The intent was to give them enough direction for them to develop the task with out writing the code for them. I don't have a travel budget. I am using Fogbugz to track the tasks. Each task has been entered into Fogbugz and given a priority. Each team member has access to FogBugz and can choose what task they wish to complete. Related question: What can we do to improve the way outsourcing/offshoring works? Update 2 I've decided that I can not talk to the team once a day. I must work with them. Starting tonight I've started working the same hours they are. This makes me available to them when they have questions. It also allows me to gain their trust and respect. Stackoverflow question Leading an offshore team

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  • As a web designer, which language should I learn first for my feature career? (PHP or JavaScript) [closed]

    - by kdevs3
    Possible Duplicates: Best Programming Language for Web Development How can I choose a web development language? What language will you choose if you are going to build something big? What is the right option of programming languages and tools for building our website? What is the easiest web programing language at....? Well, I'm more of a basic web designer. I know the easy stuff pretty well. (Ya know, html, css) But I've been trying to take it to the next step and I'm contemplating about what I should learn that will help me out the most in my future web design/programming career, should it be JavaScript or maybe I should try to learn a back end programming language such as PHP. Lately, I have been hearing about a lot how JavaScript is so great and useful now, because of libraries such as jQuery and what possibility's it can bring by using Node.js and other frameworks. I've only learned the most basic of JavaScript and used some jQuery (mostly plugins) so i wouldn't know at all of what it can actually do. Would JS being so popular as it is now and useful, be a reason to stick with JavaScript and only learn it that for now? Or as a web designer, how important would it be to learn how to make a web application/website operate and functional, and know how to work with servers, etc? (Such as getting forms to work and sending data to the server and back) I've took a look at frameworks such as Code Igniter before, and looks really simple to get started with if I try to learn PHP, But I'm not sure how important it is for my career and what I would gain out of it. I'm asking because I can't decide what I should learn first. When I select it, I really want to take my time and learn the language. I don't want to spend time on learning multiple languages at the same time, so I need to pick wisely. I'm trying to turn the right direction so my career can hopefully be successful in the feature. (If money/gaining a job asked if its important, then its a yeah, it is a bit) I'm hoping I can get opinions and suggestions on this question, thanks for giving me your thoughts also.

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  • 3rd Party Tools: dbForge Studio for SQL Server

    - by Greg Low
    I've been taking a look at some of the 3rd party tools for SQL Server. Today, I looked at DBForge Studio for SQL Server from the team at DevArt. Installation was smooth. I did find it odd that it defaults to SQL authentication, not to Windows but either works fine. I like the way they have followed the SQL Server Management Studio visual layout. That will make the product familiar to existing SQL Server Management Studio users. I was keen to see what the database diagram tools are like. I found that the layouts generated where quite good, and certainly superior to the built-in SQL Server ones in SSMS. I didn't find any easy way to just add all tables to the diagram though. (That might just be me). One thing I did like was that it doesn't get confused when you have role playing dimensions. Multiple foreign key relationships between two tables display sensibly, unlike with the standard SQL Server version. It was pleasing to see a printing option in the diagramming tool. I found the database comparison tool worked quite well. There are a few UI things that surprised me (like when you add a new connection to a database, it doesn't select the one you just added by default) but generally it just worked as advertised, and the code that was generated looked ok. I used the SQL query editor and found the code formatting to be quite fast and while I didn't mind the style that it used by default, it wasn't obvious to me how to change the format. In Tools/Options I found things that talked about Profiles but I wasn't sure if that's what I needed. The help file pointed me in the right direction and I created a new profile. It's a bit odd that when you create a new profile, that it doesn't put you straight into editing the profile. At first I didn't know what I'd done. But as soon as I chose to edit it, I found that a very good range of options were available. When entering SQL code, the code completion options are quick but even though they are quite complete, one of the real challenges is in making them useful. Note in the following that while the options shown are correct, none are actually helpful: The Query Profiler seemed to work quite well. I keep wondering when the version supplied with SQL Server will ever have options like finding the most expensive operators, etc. Now that it's deprecated, perhaps never but it's great to see the third party options like this one and like SQL Sentry's Plan Explorer having this functionality. I didn't do much with the reporting options as I use SQL Server Reporting Services. Overall, I was quite impressed with this product and given they have a free trial available, I think it's worth your time taking a look at it.

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  • Somewhere to get inspiration - Pair up the creative with the tech

    - by Morten Bergfall
    I am a somewhat green developer; some work experience, last year of school. As most of you, I am constantly working on an assortment of personal projects. Since my mind often has a somewhat drifting characteristic; I am not always able to keep the projects in check. After some time they all exhibit the moral fiber of Vikings, harlots and chain-letter-knitters. This includes constant forking, round-abouting, eating of school assignments of rather mundane, and hence pretty yawn-inducing, specifications, and of course quite a bit of gathering of folder dust. Well, on to my question....is there a place, forum... or something with the purpose of linking people with ideas to the people actually being able to bring said ideas to life? Of course, I know of the professional ones, like rent-a-coder and such. And there seem to be a lot of open source projects available for participation. What I'm looking for doesn't really fit into any of those categories....the form would be somewhat like rent-a-coder, but this is ideas&inspiration, not bubble-sort-my-quarterly-for-a-buck. The possibilities for developing bonds, spicy code, and plain old fun seem quite possible.As I see it, the main benefit would be that we (that is the tech-flipside of the proverbial eCoin) get something worthwhile to do, rather than squeeze the last creative grain out of our code-heavy brains.To give it some perspective...: My last project consists of an absurd jQuery-plugin that includes animated png-robots migrating from Google Earth to drag a html-element of your choosing onto the map, where it gets color, for so to be dragged back by this poorly animated robot.... Often, the line between the creative and the tech is blurred, to say the least. I wouldn't think that would be a problem. Think someone who has developed a nifty little windows application, then sees possibility for a broader use, perhaps some sort of networking functionality. This fellow sadly lacks the skill to implememet this. So he, she or it would then seek a developer with the know-how and they could complete this project together. So, do any of you know of such a place, or can nudge in the right direction? And yes, I understand completely that I should be dedicating myself to doing school work, or applying for mundane developer positions, so please.... :-) UPDATE Sadly, I'm situated in Oslo, Norway, and the number of developers are somewhat limited...and I have had quite some ahem personality issues with the ones who are available ;-) So I feel I must go deeper; search the multitude of the web...

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  • How can story and gameplay be artfully merged?

    - by NauticalMile
    Let me give some context. Three of my friends and I have a pretty good game idea cooking. It's based off of a prototype I made that's evolving into a cool game mechanic. The mechanic itself is a toy that's fun on its own, but we haven't designed any puzzles around it yet. We have a design document going, and we are answering a lot of questions about what's in the game. It's become clear early on that everyone (including myself) likes the characters and the story a lot. Considering what our favorite games are, this is unsurprising. A story driven game makes sense to me. I like the emphasis that Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year-Door, Portal 2, and Tomb Raider place on story, and I imagine our game will have a similar feel (lots of dialogue, plot twists, lovable characters). However, one team member raised this point in the design doc: I am feeling like [fleshing out the story] is our biggest hurdle right now for making more design decisions - like more specific decisions about levels etc. Is this true? I am uncertain about working on the story extensively before gameplay, and my uneasiness was reinforced when I read this question about story vs. gameplay. What I want to say is: "Let's continue to work on the story, but also start brainstorming and prototyping abstract puzzles and combat sequences, and we'll creatively match them together later." Is this a reasonable approach? If so, how much of the development of these elements should be done independently? Should I try and create a whole bunch of puzzles while my other teammates focus on story and aesthetics? Then when we have a lot of story and game 'chunks' we can match them with eachother to build something meaningful. Or should we focus on iterating individual levels as distinct units where puzzles, story, etc... are designed together? Or maybe we need to put our excitement about the story on hold and just focus on gameplay. Is there another approach to design that we can take? Am I missing something crucial? I have discussed story and gameplay because they seem the most likely to be at odds with each other, but we also have to consider user interface, music, art direction, etc... Can we design these independently as well?

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  • Why is Spritebatch drawing my Textures out of order?

    - by Andrew
    I just started working with XNA Studio after programming 2D games in java. Because of this, I have absolutely no experience with Spritebatch and sprite sorting. In java, I could just layer the images by calling the draw methods in order. For a while, my Spritebatch was working fine in deferred sorting mode, but when I made a change to one of my textures, it suddenly started drawing them out of order. I have searched for a solution to this problem, but nothing seems to work. I have tried adding layer depths to the sprites and changing the sort mode to BackToFront or FrontToBack or even immediate, but nothing seems to work. Here is my drawing code: protected override void Draw(GameTime gameTime) { GraphicsDevice.Clear(Color.Gray); Game1.spriteBatch.Begin(SpriteSortMode.Deferred, BlendState.AlphaBlend, SamplerState.PointClamp, null, null); for (int x = 0; x < 5; x++) { for (int y = 0; y < 5; y++) { region[x, y].draw(((float)w / aw)); // Draws the Tile-Based background } } player.draw(spriteBatch, ((float)w / aw));//draws the character (This method is where the problem occurs) enemy.draw(spriteBatch, (float)w/aw); // draws a basic enemy Game1.spriteBatch.End(); base.Draw(gameTime); } player.draw method: public void draw(SpriteBatch sb, float ratio){ //draws the player base (The character without hair or equipment) sb.Draw(playerbase[0], new Rectangle((int)(pos.X - (24 * ratio)), (int)(pos.Y - (48 * ratio)), (int)(48 * ratio), (int)(48 * ratio)), new Rectangle(orientation * 48, animFrame * 48, 48, 48), Color.White,0,Vector2.Zero,SpriteEffects.None,0); //draws the player's hair sb.Draw(playerbase[3], new Rectangle((int)(pos.X - (24 * ratio)), (int)(pos.Y - (48 * ratio)), (int)(48 * ratio), (int)(48 * ratio)), new Rectangle(orientation * 48, animFrame * 48, 48, 48), Color.White, 0, Vector2.Zero, SpriteEffects.None, 0); //draws the player's shirt sb.Draw(equipment[0], new Rectangle((int)(pos.X - (24 * ratio)), (int)(pos.Y - (48 * ratio)), (int)(48 * ratio), (int)(48 * ratio)), new Rectangle(orientation * 48, animFrame * 48, 48, 48), Color.White, 0, Vector2.Zero, SpriteEffects.None, 0); //draws the player's pants sb.Draw(equipment[1], new Rectangle((int)(pos.X - (24 * ratio)), (int)(pos.Y - (48 * ratio)), (int)(48 * ratio), (int)(48 * ratio)), new Rectangle(orientation * 48, animFrame * 48, 48, 48), Color.White, 0, Vector2.Zero, SpriteEffects.None, 0); //draws the player's shoes sb.Draw(equipment[2], new Rectangle((int)(pos.X - (24 * ratio)), (int)(pos.Y - (48 * ratio)), (int)(48 * ratio), (int)(48 * ratio)), new Rectangle(orientation * 48, animFrame * 48, 48, 48), Color.White, 0, Vector2.Zero, SpriteEffects.None, 0); } the game has a top-down perspective much like the early legend of zelda games. It draws sections of the texture depending on which direction the character is facing and the animation frame. However, instead of drawing the character in the order the draw methods are called, it ends up drawing the character out of order. Please help me with this problem.

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  • How to implement a simple bullet trajectory

    - by AirieFenix
    I searched and searched and although it's a fair simple question, I don't find the proper answer but general ideas (which I already have). I have a top-down game and I want to implement a gun which shoots bullets that follow a simple path (no physics nor change of trajectory, just go from A to B thing). a: vector of the position of the gun/player. b: vector of the mouse position (cross-hair). w: the vector of the bullet's trajectory. So, w=b-a. And the position of the bullet = [x=x0+speed*time*normalized w.x , y=y0+speed*time * normalized w.y]. I have the constructor: public Shot(int shipX, int shipY, int mouseX, int mouseY) { //I get mouse with Gdx.input.getX()/getY() ... this.shotTime = TimeUtils.millis(); this.posX = shipX; this.posY = shipY; //I used aVector = aVector.nor() here before but for some reason didn't work float tmp = (float) (Math.pow(mouseX-shipX, 2) + Math.pow(mouseY-shipY, 2)); tmp = (float) Math.sqrt(Math.abs(tmp)); this.vecX = (mouseX-shipX)/tmp; this.vecY = (mouseY-shipY)/tmp; } And here I update the position and draw the shot: public void drawShot(SpriteBatch batch) { this.lifeTime = TimeUtils.millis() - this.shotTime; //position = positionBefore + v*t this.posX = this.posX + this.vecX*this.lifeTime*speed*Gdx.graphics.getDeltaTime(); this.posY = this.posY + this.vecY*this.lifeTime*speed*Gdx.graphics.getDeltaTime(); ... } Now, the behavior of the bullet seems very awkward, not going exactly where my mouse is (it's like the mouse is 30px off) and with a random speed. I know I probably need to open the old algebra book from college but I'd like somebody says if I'm in the right direction (or points me to it); if it's a calculation problem, a code problem or both. Also, is it possible that Gdx.input.getX() gives me non-precise position? Because when I draw the cross-hair it also draws off the cursor position. Sorry for the long post and sorry if it's a very basic question. Thanks!

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  • Is there an appropriate coding style for implementing an algorithm during an interview?

    - by GlenPeterson
    I failed an interview question in C years ago about converting hex to decimal by not exploiting the ASCII table if (inputDigitByte > 9) hex = inputDigitByte - 'a'. The rise of Unicode has made this question pretty silly, but the point was that the interviewer valued raw execution speed above readability and error handling. They tell you to review algorithms textbooks to prepare for these interviews, yet these same textbooks tend to favor the implementation with the fewest lines of code, even if it has to rely on magic numbers (like "infinity") and a slower, more memory-intensive implementation (like a linked list instead of an array) to do that. I don't know what is right. Coding an algorithm within the space of an interview has at least 3 constraints: time to code, elegance/readability, and efficiency of execution. What trade-offs are appropriate for interview code? How much do you follow the textbook definition of an algorithm? Is it better to eliminate recursion, unroll loops, and use arrays for efficiency? Or is it better to use recursion and special values like "infinity" or Integer.MAX_VALUE to reduce the number of lines of code needed to write the algorithm? Interface: Make a very self-contained, bullet-proof interface, or sloppy and fast? On the one extreme, the array to be sorted might be a public static variable. On the other extreme, it might need to be passed to each method, allowing methods to be called individually from different threads for different purposes. Is it appropriate to use a linked-list data structure for items that are traversed in one direction vs. using arrays and doubling the size when the array is full? Implementing a singly-linked list during the interview is often much faster to code and easier remember for recursive algorithms like MergeSort. Thread safety - just document that it's unsafe, or say so verbally? How much should the interviewee be looking for opportunities for parallel processing? Is bit shifting appropriate? x / 2 or x >> 1 Polymorphism, type safety, and generics? Comments? Variable and method names: qs(a, p, q, r) vs: quickSort(theArray, minIdx, partIdx, maxIdx) How much should you use existing APIs? Obviously you can't use a java.util.HashMap to implement a hash-table, but what about using a java.util.List to accumulate your sorted results? Are there any guiding principals that would answer these and other questions, or is the guiding principal to ask the interviewer? Or maybe this should be the basis of a discussion while writing the code? If an interviewer can't or won't answer one of these questions, are there any tips for coaxing the information out of them?

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  • ATI (fglrx) Dual monitor / laptop hot-plugging

    - by Brendan Piater
    I feel like I've gone back 5 years on my desktop today. I'll try not dump to much frustration here... I been running 12.04 since alpha with the ATI open source drivers and the gnome 3 desktop. I been generally very happy with them with only small issues along the way. Now of course it does not support 3D acceleration 100%, so games like my newly purchased Amnesia from the Humble bundle would not play. OK, no worries, the ATI driver is in the repos so let me have a go I thought. With all this testing that's been done with multi-monitor support, what could go wrong...? How I use my computer: It's laptop, with a HD 3670 card in it. I spend about 50% of the time working directly on the laptop (at home) and about 50% of the time working with an additional display connected (at work), multi desktop environment. What happening now: installed drivers things seemed to working, save some small other bugs (not critical) this morning I take my machine and plug the additional monitor into it, and nothing happens... ok fine. open "displays" try configure dual display, won't work open ati config "thing" (cause it is a thing, a crap thing) and set-up monitors there reboot it says (oh ffs, really.... ok) reboot, login and wow, I got a gnome 2 desktop (presume gnome 3 fall back) and no multi-monitor...great. (screenshot: http://ubuntuone.com/5tFe3QNFsTSIGvUSVLsyL7 ) after getting into a situation where I had to Ctrl + Alt + Del to get out of a frozen display, I eventually manage to set-up a single display desktop on the "main" monitor ok.. time to go home... unplug monitor... nothing happens.. oh boy here we go... try displays again, nothing, just hangs the display.. great. crash all the apps and reboot... So it's been a trying day... What I really hope is that someone else has figured out how to avoid this PAIN. Please help with a solution that: allows me run fglrx (so I can run the games I want) allows me to hot-plug a monitor to my laptop and remove it again allows me to change the display so include the hot-plugged monitor (preferable automatically like it did with the open drivers) Next best if that's not possible: switch between laptop only display and monitor only display easily (i.e. not having to reboot/logout/suspened etc) Really appreciate the time of anyone that has a solution. Thanks in advance. Regards Brendan PS: I guess I should file a bug about this too, so some direction as to the best place to file this would be appreciated too.

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  • Send raw data to USB parallel port after upgrading to 11.10

    - by zaphod
    I have a laser cutter connected via a generic USB to parallel adapter. The laser cutter speaks HPGL, as it happens, but since this is a laser cutter and not a plotter, I usually want to generate the HPGL myself, since I care about the ordering, speed, and direction of cuts and so on. In previous versions of Ubuntu, I was able to print to the cutter by copying an HPGL file directly to the corresponding USB "lp" device. For example: cp foo.plt /dev/usblp1 Well, I just upgraded to Ubuntu 11.10 oneiric, and I can't find any "lp" devices in /dev anymore. D'oh! What's the preferred way to send raw data to a parallel port in Ubuntu? I've tried System Settings Printing + Add, hoping that I might be able to associate my device with some kind of "raw printer" driver and print to it with a command like lp -d LaserCutter foo.plt But my USB to parallel adapter doesn't seem to show up in the list. What I do see are my HP Color LaserJet, two USB-to-serial adapters, "Enter URI", and "Network Printer". Meanwhile, over in /dev, I do see /dev/ttyUSB0 and /dev/ttyUSB1 devices for the 2 USB-to-serial adapters. I don't see anything obvious corresponding to the HP printer (which was /dev/usblp0 prior to the upgrade), except for generic USB stuff. For example, sudo find /dev | grep lp produces no output. I do seem to be able to print to the HP printer just fine, though. The printer setup GUI gives it a device URI starting with "hp:" which isn't much help for the parallel adapter. The CUPS administrator's guide makes it sound like I might need to feed it a device URI of the form parallel:/dev/SOMETHING, but of course if I had a /dev/SOMETHING I'd probably just go on writing to it directly. Here's what dmesg says after I disconnect and reconnect the device from the USB port: [ 924.722906] usb 1-1.1.4: USB disconnect, device number 7 [ 959.993002] usb 1-1.1.4: new full speed USB device number 8 using ehci_hcd And here's how it shows up in lsusb -v: Bus 001 Device 008: ID 1a86:7584 QinHeng Electronics CH340S Device Descriptor: bLength 18 bDescriptorType 1 bcdUSB 1.10 bDeviceClass 0 (Defined at Interface level) bDeviceSubClass 0 bDeviceProtocol 0 bMaxPacketSize0 8 idVendor 0x1a86 QinHeng Electronics idProduct 0x7584 CH340S bcdDevice 2.52 iManufacturer 0 iProduct 2 USB2.0-Print iSerial 0 bNumConfigurations 1 Configuration Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 2 wTotalLength 32 bNumInterfaces 1 bConfigurationValue 1 iConfiguration 0 bmAttributes 0x80 (Bus Powered) MaxPower 96mA Interface Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 4 bInterfaceNumber 0 bAlternateSetting 0 bNumEndpoints 2 bInterfaceClass 7 Printer bInterfaceSubClass 1 Printer bInterfaceProtocol 2 Bidirectional iInterface 0 Endpoint Descriptor: bLength 7 bDescriptorType 5 bEndpointAddress 0x82 EP 2 IN bmAttributes 2 Transfer Type Bulk Synch Type None Usage Type Data wMaxPacketSize 0x0020 1x 32 bytes bInterval 0 Endpoint Descriptor: bLength 7 bDescriptorType 5 bEndpointAddress 0x02 EP 2 OUT bmAttributes 2 Transfer Type Bulk Synch Type None Usage Type Data wMaxPacketSize 0x0020 1x 32 bytes bInterval 0 Device Status: 0x0000 (Bus Powered)

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  • Project Euler 11: (Iron)Python

    - by Ben Griswold
    In my attempt to learn (Iron)Python out in the open, here’s my solution for Project Euler Problem 11.  As always, any feedback is welcome. # Euler 11 # http://projecteuler.net/index.php?section=problems&id=11 # What is the greatest product # of four adjacent numbers in any direction (up, down, left, # right, or diagonally) in the 20 x 20 grid? import time start = time.time() grid = [\ [8,02,22,97,38,15,00,40,00,75,04,05,07,78,52,12,50,77,91,8],\ [49,49,99,40,17,81,18,57,60,87,17,40,98,43,69,48,04,56,62,00],\ [81,49,31,73,55,79,14,29,93,71,40,67,53,88,30,03,49,13,36,65],\ [52,70,95,23,04,60,11,42,69,24,68,56,01,32,56,71,37,02,36,91],\ [22,31,16,71,51,67,63,89,41,92,36,54,22,40,40,28,66,33,13,80],\ [24,47,32,60,99,03,45,02,44,75,33,53,78,36,84,20,35,17,12,50],\ [32,98,81,28,64,23,67,10,26,38,40,67,59,54,70,66,18,38,64,70],\ [67,26,20,68,02,62,12,20,95,63,94,39,63,8,40,91,66,49,94,21],\ [24,55,58,05,66,73,99,26,97,17,78,78,96,83,14,88,34,89,63,72],\ [21,36,23,9,75,00,76,44,20,45,35,14,00,61,33,97,34,31,33,95],\ [78,17,53,28,22,75,31,67,15,94,03,80,04,62,16,14,9,53,56,92],\ [16,39,05,42,96,35,31,47,55,58,88,24,00,17,54,24,36,29,85,57],\ [86,56,00,48,35,71,89,07,05,44,44,37,44,60,21,58,51,54,17,58],\ [19,80,81,68,05,94,47,69,28,73,92,13,86,52,17,77,04,89,55,40],\ [04,52,8,83,97,35,99,16,07,97,57,32,16,26,26,79,33,27,98,66],\ [88,36,68,87,57,62,20,72,03,46,33,67,46,55,12,32,63,93,53,69],\ [04,42,16,73,38,25,39,11,24,94,72,18,8,46,29,32,40,62,76,36],\ [20,69,36,41,72,30,23,88,34,62,99,69,82,67,59,85,74,04,36,16],\ [20,73,35,29,78,31,90,01,74,31,49,71,48,86,81,16,23,57,05,54],\ [01,70,54,71,83,51,54,69,16,92,33,48,61,43,52,01,89,19,67,48]] # left and right max, product = 0, 0 for x in range(0,17): for y in xrange(0,20): product = grid[y][x] * grid[y][x+1] * \ grid[y][x+2] * grid[y][x+3] if product > max : max = product # up and down for x in range(0,20): for y in xrange(0,17): product = grid[y][x] * grid[y+1][x] * \ grid[y+2][x] * grid[y+3][x] if product > max : max = product # diagonal right for x in range(0,17): for y in xrange(0,17): product = grid[y][x] * grid[y+1][x+1] * \ grid[y+2][x+2] * grid[y+3][x+3] if product > max: max = product # diagonal left for x in range(0,17): for y in xrange(0,17): product = grid[y][x+3] * grid[y+1][x+2] * \ grid[y+2][x+1] * grid[y+3][x] if product > max : max = product print max print "Elapsed Time:", (time.time() - start) * 1000, "millisecs" a=raw_input('Press return to continue')

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  • Stop Saying "Multi-Channel!"

    - by David Dorf
    I keep hearing the term "multi-channel" in our industry, but its time to move on. It kinda reminds me of the term "ECR" or electronic cash register. Long ago ECR was a leading-edge term, but nowadays its rarely used because its table-stakes. After all, what cash register today isn't electronic? The same logic applies to multi-channel, at least when we're talking about tier-1 and tier-2 retailers. If you're still talking about multi-channel retailing, you're in big trouble. Some have switched over to the term "cross-channel," and that's a step in the right direction but still falls short. Its kinda like saying, "I upgraded my ECR to accept debit cards!" Yawn. Who hasn't? Today's retailers need to focus on omni-channel, which I first heard from my friends over at RSR but was originally coined at IDC. First retailers added e-commerce to their store and catalog channels yielding multi-channel retailing. Consumers could use the channel that worked best for them. Then some consumers wanted to combine channels with features like buy-on-the-Web, pickup-in-the-store. Thus began the cross-channel initiatives to breakdown the silos and enable the channels to communicate with each other. But the multi-channel architecture is full of duplication that thwarts efforts of providing a consistent experience. Each has its own cart, its own pricing, and often its own CRM. This was an outcrop of trying to bring the independent channels to market quickly. Rather than reusing and rebuilding existing components to meet the new demands, silos were created that continue to exist today. Today's consumers want omni-channel retailing. They want to interact with brands in a consistent manner that is channel transparent, yet optimized for that particular interaction. The diagram below, from the soon-to-be-released NRF Mobile Blueprint v2, shows this progression. For retailers to provide an omni-channel experience, there needs to be one logical representation of products, prices, promotions, and customers across all channels. The only thing that varies is the presentation of the content based on the delivery mechanism (e.g. shelf labels, mobile phone, web site, print, etc.) and often these mechanisms can be combined in various ways. I'm looking forward to the day in which I can use my phone to scan QR-codes in a catalog to create a shopping cart of items. Then do some further research on the retailer's Web site and be told about related items that might interest me. Be able to easily solicit opinions and reviews from social sites, and finally enter the store to pickup my items, knowing that any applicable coupons have been applied. In this scenario, I the consumer are dealing with a single brand that is aware of me and my needs throughout the entire transaction. Nirvana.

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  • SQL SERVER – Template Browser – A Very Important and Useful Feature of SSMS

    - by pinaldave
    Let me start today’s blog post with a direction question. How many of you have ever used Template Browser? Template Browser is a very important and useful feature of SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS). Every time when I am talking about SQL Server there is always someone comes up with the question, why there is no step by step procedure included in SSMS for features. Honestly every time I get this question, the question I ask back is How many of you have ever used Template Browser? I think the answer to this question is most of the time either no or we have not heard of the feature. One of the people asked me back – have you ever written about it on your blog? I have not yet written about it. Basically there is nothing much to write about it. It is pretty straight forward feature, like any other feature and it is indeed difficult to elaborate. However, I will try to give a quick introduction to this feature. Templates are like a quick cheat sheet or quick reference. Templates are available to create objects like databases, tables, views, indexes, stored procedures, triggers, statistics, and functions. Templates are also available for Analysis Services as well. The template scripts contain parameters to help you customize the code. You can Replace Template Parameters dialog box to insert values into the script. Additionally users can create new custom templates as well with folder structure. To open a template from Template Explorer Go to View menu >> Template Explorer or type CTRL+ALT+L. You will find a list of categories click on any category and expand the folder structure. For our sample example let us expand Index Folder. In this folder you will notice the various T-SQL Scripts. These scripts can be opened by double click or can be dragged to editor area and modified as needed. Sample template is now available in the query editor area with all the necessary parameter place folder. You can replace the same parameter by typing either CTRL+SHIFT+M or by going to Query Menu >> Specify Values for Template Parameters. In this screen it will show  Specify Values for Template Parameters dialog box, accept the value or replace it with a new value. This will now get your script ready to go. Check it one more time and change the script to fit your requirement. I personally use template explorer for two things. First one is obviously for templates but the hidden one and an important one is for learning new features and T-SQL commands. There is so much to learn and so little time. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Server Management Studio, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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  • Cannot get Virtualbox to install properly on Ubuntu 12.04

    - by lopac1029
    I cannot get Virtualbox to install properly on my 12.04. I first went with a manual install for the .deb from the old builds section of the Virtualbox page. That .deb opened up the Software Center and installed. Then I got the error coming up of VT-x/AMD-V hardware acceleration is not available on your system. Your 64-bit guest will fail to detect a 64-bit CPU and will not be able to boot. which I can only assume was due to my Ubuntu version being 32-bit (System Details - Overview - OC type: 32-bit, right?) So I followed these instructions to remove the .deb manually, restarted my laptop, and then FOUND the actual Virtualbox install in the Software Center and installed from that (assuming it would give me the correct version I need for my system) So after all that (and then some), I'm still getting the same error when I connect to my new job's project in Virtualbox. Can anyone point me in the right direction of what to do here? This is the first time I've ever worked with Virtualbox, and no one at this company is using Ubuntu, so I'm on my own here. EDIT: Here is the direct info from running the 2 suggested commands Inspiron-1750-brick:~ $lscpu Architecture: i686 CPU op-mode(s): 32-bit, 64-bit Byte Order: Little Endian CPU(s): 2 On-line CPU(s) list: 0,1 Thread(s) per core: 1 Core(s) per socket: 2 Socket(s): 1 Vendor ID: GenuineIntel CPU family: 6 Model: 23 Stepping: 10 CPU MHz: 2100.000 BogoMIPS: 4189.45 L1d cache: 32K L1i cache: 32K L2 cache: 2048K Inspiron-1750-brick:~ $cat /proc/cpuinfo processor : 0 vendor_id : GenuineIntel cpu family : 6 model : 23 model name : Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T6500 @ 2.10GHz stepping : 10 microcode : 0xa07 cpu MHz : 1200.000 cache size : 2048 KB physical id : 0 siblings : 2 core id : 0 cpu cores : 2 apicid : 0 initial apicid : 0 fdiv_bug : no hlt_bug : no f00f_bug : no coma_bug : no fpu : yes fpu_exception : yes cpuid level : 13 wp : yes flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe nx lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm sse4_1 xsave lahf_lm dtherm bogomips : 4189.80 clflush size : 64 cache_alignment : 64 address sizes : 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual power management: processor : 1 vendor_id : GenuineIntel cpu family : 6 model : 23 model name : Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T6500 @ 2.10GHz stepping : 10 microcode : 0xa07 cpu MHz : 1200.000 cache size : 2048 KB physical id : 0 siblings : 2 core id : 1 cpu cores : 2 apicid : 1 initial apicid : 1 fdiv_bug : no hlt_bug : no f00f_bug : no coma_bug : no fpu : yes fpu_exception : yes cpuid level : 13 wp : yes flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe nx lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm sse4_1 xsave lahf_lm dtherm bogomips : 4189.45 clflush size : 64 cache_alignment : 64 address sizes : 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual power management:

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  • How to port animation from one skeleton to another?

    - by shawn
    While I need to do this in a Blender3D modeler script, the math should be similar for other modelers or realtime engines. Blender3D specific terminology: Armature = skeleton EditBone = rest pose bone (stores the rest pose matrix) PoseBone = can store a different pose (animation matrix) for each frame of your animation I need to share animations (Blender Actions) between Armatures which have EditBones with same names and which have the same positions, but can have different (rest pose) angles and scales. Plus the Armatures might have different bone hierarchy (bone parenting/ no bone parenting). Why I need this: I've made an importer/exporter for a 3d format for a game. The format doesn't store enough info to connect/parent the bones, which makes posing/animating character models in a 3d modeller nearly impossible (original model files for the 3d modeler don't exist, this is for modding). As there are only 2 character skeleton types in the game, I decided to optionally allow to generate the bone from a hardcoded data in the model importer and undo that in the exporter. This allows to easily pose the model for checking weights, easily create weights, makes it easier for Blender to generate automatic weights and of course makes animating possible. This worked perfectly: the importer optionally generated the Armature itself and the exporter removed those changes, so the exported model works with existing animations in the game. But now I'm writing an importer and exporter for the game's animation format and here come the problems of: Trying to make original animations work in Blender with my "custom" (modified) Armature Trying to make animations created by using the "custom" (modified) Armature work with the original models in the game (and Blender). Constraints or bone snapping inside Blender won't work as they don't care that the bones have different angles in the rest pose, they will still face the same direction. It seems I just need to get the "difference" between the EditBone matrices of all EditBones for the two Armatures somehow and apply that difference to PoseBone matrices of all PoseBones, for all frames of my animation. I need to know how to get that difference and how to apply it. BTW, PoseBone matrices are relative to rest pose, they are by default [1.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000](matrix [row 0]) [0.000000, 1.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000](matrix [row 1]) [0.000000, 0.000000, 1.000000, 0.000000](matrix [row 2]) [0.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 1.000000](matrix [row 3]) So the question is: How to get the difference between two bone (EditBone) matrices to apply that difference to the animation matrices (PoseBone matrices)? Please be easy on the matrix math.

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