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• Test your internet connection - Emtel Mobile Internet

  After yesterday's report on Emtel Fixed Broadband (I'm still wondering where the 'fixed' part is), I did the same tests on Emtel Mobile Internet. For this I'm using the Huawei E169G HSDPA USB stick, connected to the same machine. Actually, this is my fail-safe internet connection and the system automatically switches between them if a problem, let's say timeout, etc. has been detected on the main line. For better comparison I used exactly the same servers on Speedtest.net. The results Following are the results of Rose Hill (hosted by Emtel) and respectively Frankfurt, Germany (hosted by Vodafone DE): Speedtest.net result of 31.05.2013 between Flic en Flac and Rose Hill, Mauritius (Emtel - Mobile Internet) Speedtest.net result of 31.05.2013 between Flic en Flac and Frankfurt, Germany (Emtel - Mobile Internet) As you might easily see, there is a big difference in speed between national and international connections. More interestingly are the results related to the download and upload ratio. I'm not sure whether connections over Emtel Mobile Internet are asymmetric or symmetric like the Fixed Broadband. Might be interesting to find out. The first test result actually might give us a clue that the connection could be asymmetric with a ratio of 3:1 but again I'm not sure. I'll find out and post an update on this. It depends on network coverage Later today I was on tour with my tablet, a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 (model GT-P7500) running on Android 4.0.4 (Ice Cream Sandwich), and did some more tests using the Speedtest.net app. The results are actually as expected and in areas with better network coverage you will get better results after all. At least, as long as you stay inside the national networks. For anything abroad, it doesn't really matter. But see for yourselves: Speedtest.net result of 31.05.2013 between Cascavelle and servers in Rose Hill, Mauritius (Emtel - Mobile Internet), Port Louis, Mauritius and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia It's rather shocking and frustrating to see how the speed on international destinations goes down. And the full capability of the tablet's integrated modem (HSDPA: 21 Mbps; HSUPA: 5.76 Mbps) isn't used, too. I guess, this demands more tests in other areas of the island, like Ebene, Pailles or Port Louis. I'll keep you updated... The question remains: Alternatives? After the publication of the test results on Fixed Broadband I had some exchange with others on Facebook. Sadly, it seems that there are really no alternatives to what Emtel is offering at the moment. There are the various internet packages by Mauritius Telecom feat. Orange, like ADSL, MyT and Mobile Internet, and there is Bharat Telecom with their Bees offer which is currently limited to Ebene and parts of Quatre Bornes.

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• Where Are You on the Visualization Maturity Curve?

  - by Celine Beck

  The old phrase “A picture is worth a thousand words” is as true now as ever. Providing the right users with access to the right product data, at the right time, can provide significant benefits to a business. This is especially evident with increasing technical and product complexities, elongated supply chains, and growing pressure to bring innovative products to market faster. With this in mind, it is easy to understand why visualization is an integral part of any successful product lifecycle management (PLM) strategy. At a bare minimum, knowledge workers use multiple individual documents of different formats and structure, and leverage visualization solutions to access information; but the real value of visualization can be fully reaped when it is connected to enterprise applications like PLM and tied to the appropriate business context. The picture below illustrates this visualization maturity curve, as we presented during the last Oracle Open World and the transformational effect that visualization can have on PLM processes and performance (check out the post about AutoVue Key Highlights from Oracle Open World 2012 for more information). Organizations are likely to see greater positive impact on business performance when visualization is connected to enterprise systems, allowing access to information coming from multiple sources, such as PLM, supply chain management (SCM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP). This allows organizations to reach higher levels of collaboration and optimize decision-making capacity as users can benefit from in-context access to visual information. For instance, within a PLM system, a design engineer can access a product assembly and review digital annotations added by other users specific to the engineering change request he is reviewing rather than all historical annotations. The last stage on the curve is what we call augmented business visualization (ABV).  ABV is an innovative framework which lets structured data (from Oracle’s Agile PLM for instance) interact with unstructured data (documents, design, 3D models, etc). With this new level of integration, information coming from multiple sources can be presented in a highly visual fashion; color displays can be used in order to identify parts with specific characteristics (for example pending quality issues) and you can take actions directly from within the context of documents and designs, maximizing user productivity. Those who had the chance to attend our PLM session during Oracle Open World already got a sneak peek of our latest augmented business visualization for Oracle’s Agile PLM. The solution generated a lot of wows. Stephen Porter, CEO at Zero Wait State, indicated in a post entitled “The PLM State: the Manhattan Project-Oracle’s Next Big Secret Weapon” that “this kind of synergy between visualization and PLM could qualify as a powerful weapon differentiating Agile PLM from other solutions.” If you are interested in learning more about ABV for Oracle’s Agile PLM and hear about real examples of usage of visualization at all stages of the visualization maturity curve, don’t miss our Visual Decision Making to Optimize New Product Development and Introduction session during the Oracle Value Chain Summit (Feb. 4-6, 2013, San Francisco). We look forward to seeing you there!

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• Why CoffeeScript is tough to maintain

  - by Renso

  I recently started trying out CoffeeScript only to find out that it caused more headaches. The abstraction level of jQuery was perfect, it did not dictate to coders how to design their code, it just works. However, I recently posted a request to the CoffeeScript team to consider introducing curly braces to help with more complex code to control the flow of logic. For example a if-then-else with many nested levels can be near impossible to debug without tracing through it when using CoffeeScript. Also with IDEs like Visual Studio, regular JavaScript intellicense and auto-formatting make it easy to appropriate indent nested levels without any work on the part of the developer and reading it is not that hard, especially with some extensions that show vertical lines in the code editor to help see what is nested within what part of the code.However with CoffeeScript that is not the case. The samples given in the CoffeeScript web site are of course just simple examples to explain the features and one gets excited pretty quick over the powerful shortcuts. I tried to convert a piece of JavaScript over to CoffeeScript and gave up since you need to first of all remove ALL non CoffeeScript coding constructs for it to even compile. However js2coffee can help with that. However to keep track of nested levels became something that was simply not manageable using CoffeeScript.Furthermore, any coding language that controls the flow of logic by indentation is extremely dangerous for obvious reasons. I liked CoffeeScript a lot, but the fact that the logical flow of the code is controlled by how much you indent code, spaces or tabs, is not reliable as there is no way the programmer has an easy way of knowing what parts of the code will get hit when the code spans a page.When I suggested introducing curly braces in CoffeeScript the team, one contributor advised me that my code needs to be re-designed! Needless to say that is absurd. When I included a piece of the code he asked my if it was legacy code. It's like saying to a Java programmer, sorry you cannot use Java because we don't agree with how you write your code.jashkenas from the CoffeeScript blog gave some great suggestions and made the point that introducing curly braces would be very problematic for them as they use them to denote objects. Makes sense, but I would still love to see some way to replace code flow control with spaces and indentation to something more concrete and human readable.

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• Misadventures at Radio Shack

  - by Chris Williams

  While I'm waiting for my Arduino kits to show up, I started reading the Getting Started With Arduino book from O'Reilly (review coming later) and I'm about 40 pages in when I get to a parts list for one of the first projects. Looks pretty straightforward, and even has Radio Shack part numbers next to almost everything. So on my lunch today, I decided to run out to "The Shack" (seriously, that's their rebranding?) to pick up some basics, like a couple resistors, a breadboard, a momentary switch and a pack of pre-cut jumper wires. I found the resistors without any difficulty, and while they didn't have the exact switch I wanted, it was easy enough to find one that would do. That's where my good luck abruptly ended. I was surprised that I couldn't find a breadboard or any jumper wires, so while I was looking around, a guy came up and asked me if I needed some help. I told him I did, explained what I needed and even gave him the Radio Shack part number for the pack of jumper wires. After a couple minutes he says he can't find anything in the system, which was unfortunate but not the end of the world.  So then I asked him about the breadboard, and he pointed me to some blank circuitboards (which are not the same thing) and I said (nicely) that those weren't breadboards and attempted to explain (again) what I needed, at which point he says to me "I don't even know what the hell you're looking for!" I stood there for a moment and tried to process his words. About that time, another salesperson came up and asked what I was trying to find. I told her I needed a breadboard, and she pointed to the blank circuit boards and said "they're right in front of you..." After seeing the look on my face, she thought for a minute and said... "OH! you mean those white things. We don't have those anymore." I thanked her, set everything down on the counter and left. (I wasn't going to buy only half the stuff I needed.. and I was pretty sure I was never going to be buying ANYTHING at that particular location ever again.) Guess I'll be ordering more stuff online at this point. It's a shame really, because I used to LOVE going to Radio Shack as a kid, and looking through all the cool electronics components and stuff, even if I didnt understand what most of them were at the time. Seems like the only thing they carry in any quantity/variety now is cell phones and random stereo connectors.

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• Loading levels from .txt or .XML for XNA

  - by Dave Voyles

  I'm attemptin to add multiple levels to my pong game. I'd like to simply exchange a few elements with each level, nothing crazy. Just the background texture, the color of the AI paddle (the one on the right side), and the music. It seems that the best way to go about this is by utilizing the StreamReader to read and write the files from XML. If there is a better, or more efficient alternative way then I'm all for it. In looking over the XNA Starter Platformer Kit provided by MS it seems that they've done it in this manner as well. I'm perplexed by a few things, however, namely parts within the Level class which aren't commented. /// <summary> /// Iterates over every tile in the structure file and loads its /// appearance and behavior. This method also validates that the /// file is well-formed with a player start point, exit, etc. /// </summary> /// <param name="fileStream"> /// A stream containing the tile data. /// </param> private void LoadTiles(Stream fileStream) { // Load the level and ensure all of the lines are the same length. int width; List<string> lines = new List<string>(); using (StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(fileStream)) { string line = reader.ReadLine(); width = line.Length; while (line != null) { lines.Add(line); if (line.Length != width) throw new Exception(String.Format("The length of line {0} is different from all preceeding lines.", lines.Count)); line = reader.ReadLine(); } } What does width = line.Length mean exactly? I mean I know how it reads the line, but what difference does it make if one line is longer than any of the others? Finally, their levels are simply text files that look like this: .................... .................... .................... .................... .................... .................... .................... .........GGG........ .........###........ .................... ....GGG.......GGG... ....###.......###... .................... .1................X. #################### It can't be that easy..... Can it?

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• How can I solve the same problems a CB-architecture is trying to solve without using hacks? [on hold]

  - by Jefffrey

  A component based system's goal is to solve the problems that derives from inheritance: for example the fact that some parts of the code (that are called components) are reused by very different classes that, hypothetically, would lie in a very different branch of the inheritance tree. That's a very nice concept, but I've found out that CBS is often hard to accomplish without using ugly hacks. Implementations of this system are often far from clean. But I don't want to discuss this any further. My question is: how can I solve the same problems a CBS try to solve with a very clean interface? (possibly with examples, there are a lot of abstract talks about the "perfect" design already). Here's an example I was going for before realizing I was just reinventing inheritance again: class Human { public: Position position; Movement movement; Sprite sprite; // other human specific components }; class Zombie { Position position; Movement movement; Sprite sprite; // other zombie specific components }; After writing that I realized I needed an interface, otherwise I would have needed N containers for N different types of objects (or to use boost::variant to gather them all together). So I've thought of polymorphism (move what systems do in a CBS design into class specific functions): class Entity { public: virtual void on_event(Event) {} // not pure virtual on purpose virtual void on_update(World) {} virtual void on_draw(Window) {} }; class Human { private: Position position; Movement movement; Sprite sprite; public: virtual void on_event(Event) { ... } virtual void on_update(World) { ... } virtual void on_draw(Window) { ... } }; class Zombie { private: Position position; Movement movement; Sprite sprite; public: virtual void on_event(Event) { ... } virtual void on_update(World) { ... } virtual void on_draw(Window) { ... } }; Which was nice, except for the fact that now the outside world would not even be able to know where a Human is positioned (it does not have access to its position member). That would be useful to track the player position for collision detection or if on_update the Zombie would want to track down its nearest human to move towards him. So I added const Position& get_position() const; to both the Zombie and Human classes. And then I realized that both functionality were shared, so it should have gone to the common base class: Entity. Do you notice anything? Yes, with that methodology I would have a god Entity class full of common functionality (which is the thing I was trying to avoid in the first place).

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• 2D water with dynamic waves

  - by user1103457

  New Super Mario Bros has really cool 2D water that I'd like to learn how to create. Here's a video showing it. When something hits the water, it creates a wave. There are also constant "background" waves. You can get a good look at the constant waves just after 00:50 when the camera isn't moving. I assume the splashes in NSMB work as in the first part of this tutorial. But in NSMB the water also has constant waves on the surface, and the splashes look very different. Another difference is that in the tutorial, if you create a splash, it first creates a deep "hole" in the water at the origin of the splash. In new super mario bros this hole is absent or much smaller. I am referring to the splashes that the player creates when jumping in and out of the water. How do they create the constant waves and the splashes? I am especially interested in the splashes, and how they work together with the constant waves. I am programming in XNA. I've tried this myself, but couldn't really get it all to work well together. Bonus questions: How do they create the light spots just under the surface of the waves and how do they texture the deeper parts of the water? This is the first time I try to create water like this. EDIT: I assume the constant waves are created using a sine function. The splashes are probably created in a way like in the tutorial. (But they are not the same, so I am still interested in how to make this kind of splashes) But I have a lot of trouble combining those things. I know I can use the sine function to set the height of a specific watercolumn but the splashes are using the speed, to determine the new height. I can't figure out how to combine those. Not that I am not asking how the developers of new super mario bros did this exactly. I am just interested in ways to recreate an effect like it. This week I have an examweek so I don't have time to work on the code. After this week I will spend a lot of time on it. But I am constantly thinking about it, so that's why I will be checking comments etc. I just won't be looking at the code since it might be too time-consuming.

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• In an Entity-Component-System Engine, How do I deal with groups of dependent entities?

  - by John Daniels

  After going over a few game design patterns, I have settle with Entity-Component-System (ES System) for my game engine. I've reading articles (mainly T=Machine) and review some source code and I think I got enough to get started. There is just one basic idea I am struggling with. How do I deal with groups of entities that are dependent on each other? Let me use an example: Assume I am making a standard overhead shooter (think Jamestown) and I want to construct a "boss entity" with multiple distinct but connected parts. The break down might look like something like this: Ship body: Movement, Rendering Cannon: Position (locked relative to the Ship body), Tracking\Fire at hero, Taking Damage until disabled Core: Position (locked relative to the Ship body), Tracking\Fire at hero, Taking Damage until disabled, Disabling (er...destroying) all other entities in the ship group My goal would be something that would be identified (and manipulated) as a distinct game element without having to rewrite subsystem form the ground up every time I want to build a new aggregate Element. How do I implement this kind of design in ES System? Do I implement some kind of parent-child entity relationship (entities can have children)? This seems to contradict the methodology that Entities are just empty container and makes it feel more OOP. Do I implement them as separate entities, with some kind of connecting Component (BossComponent) and related system (BossSubSystem)? I can't help but think that this will be hard to implement since how components communicate seem to be a big bear trap. Do I implement them as one Entity, with a collection of components (ShipComponent, CannonComponents, CoreComponent)? This one seems to veer way of the ES System intent (components here seem too much like heavy weight entities), but I'm know to this so I figured I would put that out there. Do I implement them as something else I have mentioned? I know that this can be implemented very easily in OOP, but my choosing ES over OOP is one that I will stick with. If I need to break with pure ES theory to implement this design I will (not like I haven't had to compromise pure design before), but I would prefer to do that for performance reason rather than start with bad design. For extra credit, think of the same design but, each of the "boss entities" were actually connected to a larger "BigBoss entity" made of a main body, main core and 3 "Boss Entities". This would let me see a solution for at least 3 dimensions (grandparent-parent-child)...which should be more than enough for me. Links to articles or example code would be appreciated. Thanks for your time.

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• Restoring MSDB

  - by David-Betteridge

  We recently performed a disaster recovery exercise which included the restoration of the MSDB database onto our DR server.  I did a quick google to see if there were any special considerations and found the following MS article.  Considerations for Restoring the model and msdb Databases (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms190749(v=sql.105).aspx).   It said both the original and replacement servers must be on the same version,  I double-checked and in my case they are both SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1 (10.50.2500).. So I went ahead and stopped SQL Server agent, restored the database and restarted the agent.  Checked the jobs and they were all there, everything looked great, and was until the server was rebooted a few days later.Then the syspolicy_purge_history job started failing on the 3rd step with the error message “Unable to start execution of step 3 (reason: The PowerShell subsystem failed to load [see the SQLAGENT.OUT file for details]; The job has been suspended). The step failed.”   A bit more googling pointed me to the msdb.dbo.syssubsystems table SELECT * FROM msdb.dbo.syssubsystems WHERE start_entry_point ='PowerShellStart'   And in particular the value for the subsystem_dll. It still had the path to the SQLPOWERSHELLSS.DLL but on the old server. The DR instance has a different name to the live instance and so the paths are different.   This was quickly fixed with the following SQL Use msdb; GO sp_configure 'allow updates', 1 ; RECONFIGURE WITH OVERRIDE ; GO UPDATE msdb.dbo.syssubsystems SET subsystem_dll='C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10_50.DR\MSSQL\binn\SQLPOWERSHELLSS.DLL' WHERE start_entry_point ='PowerShellStart'; GO sp_configure 'allow updates', 0; RECONFIGURE WITH OVERRIDE ; GO Stopped and started SQL Server agent and now the job completes.   I then wondered if anything else might be broken, SELECT subsystem_dll FROM msdb.dbo.syssubsystems Shows a further 10 wrong paths – fortunately for parts of SQL (replication, SSIS etc) we aren’t using! Lessons Learnt 1.       DR exercises are a good thing! 2.       Keep the Live and DR environments as similar as possible.    

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• Five Fake Sounds Engineered to Make Your Feel Better [Science]

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  As objects in our environment (like cars, ATMs, and phones) have grown lighter and quieter scientists have been carefully engineering their sounds so that they continue to sound like we expect them to. Read on to see how. At the design blog Humans Invent they share five interesting ways that the world around us is being engineered so it sounds the way we expect it to. They start with the example of the car door. Years ago cars were almost entirely steel, the doors were weighty, and when you slammed them it sounded like one big hunk of steel locking into another big hunk of steel (which, in fact, it was). Newer cars are lighter but people still crave that substantial clunk. Humans Invent highlights the effect of consumer desire: A car door is essentially a hollow shell with parts placed inside it. Without careful design the door frame amplifies the rattling of mechanisms inside. Car companies know that if buyers don’t get a satisfying thud when they close the door, it dents their confidence in the entire vehicle. To produce the ideal clunk, car doors are designed to minimise the amount of high frequencies produced (we associate them with fragility and weakness) and emphasise low, bass-heavy frequencies that suggest solidity. The effect is achieved in a range of different ways – car companies have piled up hundreds of patents on the subject – but usually involves some form of dampener fitted in the door cavity. Locking mechanisms are also tailored to produce the right sort of click and the way seals make contact is precisely controlled. On average it takes 1.8 seconds to close a car door but in that time you’re witnessing a strange kind of symphony composed by engineers and designers whose goal is to reassure you that its rock solid. They mention lock mechanisms, something you may never have thought about. A friend of mine had a Ford Focus some years ago and that particular model had electric locks that, instead of giving a satisfying thunk or solid click, made this horrible gates-of-the-prison-buzzing sound that was completely unnerving. Hit up the link below to see how sounds are engineered for car doors, electric motors, ATM machines, and more. 5 Fake Sounds Designed to Help Humans [Humans Invent via Boing Boing] How To Easily Access Your Home Network From Anywhere With DDNSHow To Recover After Your Email Password Is CompromisedHow to Clean Your Filthy Keyboard in the Dishwasher (Without Ruining it)

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for 2012-08-29

  - by Bob Rhubart

  ORCLville: OOW 2012 - Crystal BallOracle ACE Director Floyd Teter cooks up some tongue-in-cheek predictions for news and announcements that might come out of Oracle OpenWorld 2012. What's your prediction? Oracle Optimized Solutions at Oracle OpenWorld 2012 | Oracle Hardware Hardware matters, too! The people behind the Oracle Hardware blog have put together a list of Oracle Openworld 2012 sessions focused Oracle Optimized Solutions, "designed, pre-tested, tuned and fully documented architectures for optimal performance and availability." Just plug the session ID numbers into Schedule Builder and you're good to go. AIX Checklist for stable OBIEE deployment | Dick Dunbar "OBIEE is a complicated system with many moving parts and connection points," according to Oracle Business Inteligence escalation engineer Dick Dunbar. "The purpose of this article is to provide a checklist to discuss OBIEE deployment with your systems administrators." Demo for OPN: Coherence Management with EM Cloud Control 12c Oracle Partner Network members can check out a new Coherence Management demo that showcases some of the key capabilities of Management Pack for Oracle Coherence and JVM Diagnostics. "The demo flow showcases the key enhancements made in Enterprise Manager 12c release which includes new customizable performance summary, cache data management and configuration management," according to the WebLogic Partner Community EMEA blog. The Pragmatic Architect: To Boldly Go Where No One Has Gone Before | Frank Buschmann "Many architects have technical knowledge that's both impressive and sound, which is indeed an inevitable basis for design success," says Frank Buschmann. "Yet, a lot of software projects fail or suffer due to severe challenges in their architecture. The key to mastery is how architects approach design, what they value, and where they focus their attention and work." As retail dies, whom will be the winners? | Peter Evans-Greenwood "The problem for many retailers is that how consumers shop has changed but the the retailers haven't adapted, " says Peter Evans-Greenwood. "Their sole virtue was to be the last step in a supply chain delivering somebody else's products to the consumer. However, being the last step in the supply chain is no longer a virtue when consumers skip across channels and can reach around the globe, no longer dependant on or limited to what they can find locally." Thought for the Day "Brains require stimulation. If you're locked into a pattern of work, work, and more work, your brain soon habituates - the same way that it lets you stop hearing a clock ticking. So, if you want to be more effective at work, you must, paradoxically, be less single-minded in your devotion to work. Anything you do—anything—that stimulates new segments of your brain will make you a more effective programmer or analyst. I promise, with a money-back guarantee." — Gerald M. Weinberg Source: SoftwareQuotes.com

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• How do I stop icons appearing on the desktop under conky?

  - by Seamus

  When I download something to my desktop, or insert a CD or flash drive, the icon appears on my desktop. When I have conky running, the icon sometimes appears in the top right corner, underneath conky; where I can't see it. How do I stop this happening? My .conkyrc is pasted below. I didn't write it all myself, so I'm not entirely sure what I need to change, or what parts are relevant for this particular question... # UBUNTU-CONKY # A comprehensive conky script, configured for use on # Ubuntu / Debian Gnome, without the need for any external scripts. # # Based on conky-jc and the default .conkyrc. # INCLUDES: # - tail of /var/log/messages # - netstat shows number of connections from your computer and application/PID making it. Kill spyware! # # -- Pengo # # Create own window instead of using desktop (required in nautilus) own_window yes own_window_type override own_window_transparent yes own_window_hints undecorated,below,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager # Use double buffering (reduces flicker, may not work for everyone) double_buffer yes # fiddle with window use_spacer right # Use Xft? use_xft yes xftfont DejaVu Sans:size=8 xftalpha 0.8 text_buffer_size 2048 # Update interval in seconds update_interval 3.0 # Minimum size of text area # minimum_size 250 5 # Draw shades? draw_shades no # Text stuff draw_outline no # amplifies text if yes draw_borders no uppercase no # set to yes if you want all text to be in uppercase # Stippled borders? stippled_borders 3 # border margins border_margin 9 # border width border_width 10 # Default colors and also border colors, grey90 == #e5e5e5 default_color grey own_window_colour brown own_window_transparent yes # Text alignment, other possible values are commented #alignment top_left alignment top_right #alignment bottom_left #alignment bottom_right # Gap between borders of screen and text gap_x 10 gap_y 20 # stuff after 'TEXT' will be formatted on screen TEXT $color ${color orange}SYSTEM ${hr 2}$color $nodename $sysname $kernel on $machine ${color orange}CPU ${hr 2}$color ${freq}MHz Load: ${loadavg} Temp: ${acpitemp} $cpubar ${cpugraph 000000 ffffff} NAME ${goto 150}PID ${goto 200}CPU% ${goto 250}MEM% ${top name 1} ${goto 150}${top pid 1} ${goto 200}${top cpu 1} ${goto 250}${top mem 1} ${top name 2} ${goto 150}${top pid 2} ${goto 200}${top cpu 2} ${goto 250}${top mem 2} ${top name 3} ${goto 150}${top pid 3} ${goto 200}${top cpu 3} ${goto 250}${top mem 3} ${top name 4} ${goto 150}${top pid 4} ${goto 200}${top cpu 4} ${goto 250}${top mem 4} ${color orange}MEMORY / DISK ${hr 2}$color RAM: $memperc% ${membar 6}$color Swap: $swapperc% ${swapbar 6}$color Home: ${fs_free_perc /home}% ${fs_bar 6 /}$color Free Space: ${fs_free /home} ${color orange}NETWORK (${addr eth0}) ${hr 2}$color Down: $color${downspeed eth0} k/s ${alignr}Up: ${upspeed eth0} k/s ${downspeedgraph eth0 25,140 000000 ff0000} ${alignr}${upspeedgraph eth0 25,140 000000 00ff00}$color Total: ${totaldown eth0} ${alignr}Total: ${totalup eth0} ${execi 30 netstat -ept | grep ESTAB | awk '{print $9}' | cut -d: -f1 | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr} ${color orange}WIRELESS (${addr wlan0}) ${hr 2}$color Down: $color${downspeed wlan0} k/s ${alignr}Up: ${upspeed wlan0} k/s ${downspeedgraph wlan0 25,140 000000 ff0000} ${alignr}${upspeedgraph wlan0 25,140 000000 00ff00}$color Total: ${totaldown wlan0} ${alignr}Total: ${totalup wlan0} ${execi 30 netstat -ept | grep ESTAB | awk '{print $9}' | cut -d: -f1 | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr}

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• Is there a pedagogical game engine?

  - by K.G.

  I'm looking for a book, website, or other resource that gives modern 3D game engines the same treatment as Operating Systems: Design and Implementation gave operating systems. I have read Jason Gregory's Game Engine Architecture, which I enjoyed. However, by intent the author treated components of the architecture as atomic units, whereas what I'm interested in is the plumbing between those units that makes a coherent whole out of ideally loosely coupled parts. In books such as these, one usually reads that "that's academic," but that's the point! I have also read Julian Gold's Object-oriented Game Development, which likewise was good, but I feel is beginning to show its age. Since even mobile platforms these days are multicore and have fast video memory, those kinds of things (concurrency, display item buffering) would ideally be covered. There are other resources, such as the Doom 3 source code, which is highly instructive for its being a shipped product. The problem with those is as follows: float Q_rsqrt( float number ) { long i; float x2, y; const float threehalfs = 1.5F; x2 = number * 0.5F; y = number; i = * ( long * ) &y; // evil floating point bit level hacking i = 0x5f3759df - ( i >> 1 ); // what the f***? y = * ( float * ) &i; y = y * ( threehalfs - ( x2 * y * y ) ); // 1st iteration // y = y * ( threehalfs - ( x2 * y * y ) ); // 2nd iteration, this can be removed return y; } To wit, while brilliant, this kind of source requires more enlightenment than I can usually muster upon first read. In summary, here's my white whale: For an adult reader with experience in programming. I wish I could save all the trees killed by every. Single. Game Programming book ever devoting the first two chapters to "Now just what is a variable anyway?" In C or C++, very preferably C++. Languages that are more concise are fantastic for teaching, except for when what you want to learn is how to cope with a verbose language. There is also the benefit of the guardrails that C++ doesn't provide, such as garbage collection. Platform agnostic. I'm sincerely afraid that this book is out there and it's Visual C++/DirectX oriented. I'm a Linux guy, and I'd do what it takes, but I would very much like to be able to use OpenGL. Thanks for everything! Before anyone gets on my case about it, Fast inverse square root was from Quake III Arena, not Doom 3!

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• What algorithms can I use to detect if articles or posts are duplicates?

  - by michael

  I'm trying to detect if an article or forum post is a duplicate entry within the database. I've given this some thought, coming to the conclusion that someone who duplicate content will do so using one of the three (in descending difficult to detect): simple copy paste the whole text copy and paste parts of text merging it with their own copy an article from an external site and masquerade as their own Prepping Text For Analysis Basically any anomalies; the goal is to make the text as "pure" as possible. For more accurate results, the text is "standardized" by: Stripping duplicate white spaces and trimming leading and trailing. Newlines are standardized to \n. HTML tags are removed. Using a RegEx called Daring Fireball URLs are stripped. I use BB code in my application so that goes to. (ä)ccented and foreign (besides Enlgish) are converted to their non foreign form. I store information about each article in (1) statistics table and in (2) keywords table. (1) Statistics Table The following statistics are stored about the textual content (much like this post) text length letter count word count sentence count average words per sentence automated readability index gunning fog score For European languages Coleman-Liau and Automated Readability Index should be used as they do not use syllable counting, so should produce a reasonably accurate score. (2) Keywords Table The keywords are generated by excluding a huge list of stop words (common words), e.g., 'the', 'a', 'of', 'to', etc, etc. Sample Data text_length, 3963 letter_count, 3052 word_count, 684 sentence_count, 33 word_per_sentence, 21 gunning_fog, 11.5 auto_read_index, 9.9 keyword 1, killed keyword 2, officers keyword 3, police It should be noted that once an article gets updated all of the above statistics are regenerated and could be completely different values. How could I use the above information to detect if an article that's being published for the first time, is already existing within the database? I'm aware anything I'll design will not be perfect, the biggest risk being (1) Content that is not a duplicate will be flagged as duplicate (2) The system allows the duplicate content through. So the algorithm should generate a risk assessment number from 0 being no duplicate risk 5 being possible duplicate and 10 being duplicate. Anything above 5 then there's a good possibility that the content is duplicate. In this case the content could be flagged and linked to the article's that are possible duplicates and a human could decide whether to delete or allow. As I said before I'm storing keywords for the whole article, however I wonder if I could do the same on paragraph basis; this would also mean further separating my data in the DB but it would also make it easier for detecting (2) in my initial post. I'm thinking weighted average between the statistics, but in what order and what would be the consequences...

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• Problem with OpenGL or Unity, need Gnome fallback mode

  - by William Wind

  This question is in two parts, and I have been searching the web for days to find answers. With no luck I thought I'd drop by and ask for your help. Here goes: 1.) I'm running Ubuntu 13.04 and one day last week Unity suddenly wound't work. After the login screen, I was either faced with an all black and non-responsive screen, or sometimes it booted and I could see my desktop wallpaper (and add and remove icons/folders from the desktop). But there was no menu in the left hand side and no top bar :-( However I could still enter the terminal. I borrowed my dad's laptop and looked for a solution online. About two days later I gave up (I'm still kind of a n00b at Linux) and found a way to install Gnome Fallback, via the terminal. When I used it, I had the same problem. [clue #1] Missing menues. But if I rebooted into Gnome Fallback mode with no effects. It worked. Great! I have used that for some days now, while still trying to fix the original problem with either Unity or OpenGl or whatever went wrong in the first place. With no luck. After giving up on my search for a fix (I know that came out wrong) -- I decided to reinstall Ubuntu 13.04 from a CD. But! After that I was left where I began. When booting into my account, it only shows the desktop wallpaper and the icons. I can click and enter the folders, but not go into the menues. Last time I fixed it with Gnome Fallback mode, because I could enter the terminal and the PC was automatically online, via wireless network. But not this time, I can't get online. So: 1.) How do I via the LiveCD Ubuntu version (the one I'm using right now) install Gnome Fallback unto the harddrive based system? 2.) If impossible. How can I access the wireless Internet via the terminal, so I can install Gnome Fallback, from the "broken" Unity session. 3.) Is there any other things that I should try? Please help me, PS: My GFX-card is an ATI Radeon something and I have install and used the "Redwood" drive (I think its called) for many weeks prior to the shutdown.

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• Need help identifing what resources (eg. In MIT OpenCourseWare) can help me prepare for a test [closed]

  - by jiewmeng

  I am entering uni soon. I can sit for a placement test to see if I elegible for exemptions. The details are http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/undergraduates/TestScope11_12.html Or CS2100 Computer Organisation (please click title) The objective of this module is to familiarise students with the fundamentals of computing devices. Through this module students will understand the basics of data representation, and how the various parts of a computer work, separately and with each other. This allows students to understand the issues in computing devices, and how these issues affect the implementation of solutions. Topics covered include data representation systems, combinational and sequential circuit design techniques, assembly language, processor execution cycles, pipelining, memory hierarchy and input/output systems. Recommended Textbooks Digital Design: Principles and Practices [DDPP] by John F. Wakerly, Prentice-Hall. ISBN 0-13-324500-4. Computer Organizations and Design (The hardware/software interface) by David A. Patterson and John L. Hennessy. CS2105 Introduction to Computer Networks (please click title) This course aims to provide a broad introduction to computer networks and some appreciations of network application programming. It covers a range of topics including basic data communication and computer network concepts, protocols, networked computing concepts and principles, network applications development and network security. The emphasis of teaching is on the working principles and application of computer networks. As an integral part of the course, tutorials and practical assignments enforcing learning will also be given. These assignments provide an early exposure in network application programming and they should be able to complete by using personal computers and school's network facilities. Topics included: An overview of computer networks and the Internet Basic data communications Application layer Transport layer Network layer and routing Link layer and local area networks Recommended Textbook James F. Kurose & Keith W. Ross, Computer networking: A top-down approach featuring internet, Addison Wesley, 2001 I am wondering what resources eg. MIT OpenCourseWare or other universities resources are available to help he perpare for these particular modubles. I am thinking does the Networking one look like CCNA? The computer oragization. Its like electronics, assembly etc? I learnt some electronics in Poly but looking at the sample papers, uni looks very different... I have about 1 month to prepare if I want any chance of exempting from these modules :) any help?

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• One Year Oracle SocialChat - The Movie

  - by mprove

  Tweet | Like | Watch on Vimeo You’ve just watched – hopefully – my first short movie. Thank you! Here is a bit of the back stage story. About 6 weeks ago colleagues from SNBC (Social Network and Business Collaboration) announced a Social Use Case Competition. It was expected to submit a video of 2 to 5 minutes duration on the Social Enterprise (our internal phrase for Enterprise 2.0). Hmm – I had a few vague ideas, but no script – no actors – no experience in film making. Really the best conditions to try something! I chose our weekly SocialChats as my main topic. But if you don’t do Danish Dogma cinema, you still need a script. Hence I played around with the SocialChat’s archive, and all of a sudden a script and even the actors appeared in front of me. The words that you have just seen are weekly topics. Slightly abridged and rearranged to form a story. Exciting, next phase. How to get it on digital celluloid? I have to confess I am still impressed by epic. (Keep in mind, epic was done in 2004.) And my actors – words – call for a typographic style already. The main part was done over a weekend with Apple Keynote. And I even found a wonderful matching soundtrack among my albums: Didge Goes World by Delago. I picked parts of Second Day and Seventh Day. Literally, the rhythm was set, and I "just" had to complete the movie. Tools used – apart from trial and error: Keynote, Pixelmator, GarageBand, iMovie. Finally I want to mention that I am extremely thankful to BSC Music for granting permissions to use the tracks for this short film! Without this sound it would have been just an ordinary slide show. – Internal note: The next SocialChat is on Death by PowerPoint vs. Presentation Zen. CU this Friday 3pm Greenwich / 7am Pacific.

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• Unable to connect to mail server via IMAP and roundcube

  - by mrhatter

  I am having trouble getting the final parts of my mail server up and working. I followed this tutorial to get everything set up on the mail server side. I have installed roundcube for webmail and configured it but it is saying "error connecting, connection refused" when attempting to connect to it using IMAP. This is thorough the "test imap" section of its installer. Also it is giving me an error message about perissions for it's log and temp folders but that's not as important as acutally getting mail to work. I have also tried connecting to the mail server using thunderbird however it cannot establish a connection either and I know my login information is correct. I know that the databases are working correctly based on the roundcube installer telling me that they have been "successfully initialized". Here are my firewall rules -A INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT -A INPUT -m conntrack --ctstate RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT -A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 22 -j ACCEPT -A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 25 -j ACCEPT -A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 80 -j ACCEPT -A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 443 -j ACCEPT -A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 465 -j ACCEPT -A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 487 -j ACCEPT -A OUTPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 993 -j ACCEPT -A INPUT -j DROP Which I set up in iptables. I have modified them from what I used in this tutorial I'm not sure what to try next. Any help would be wonderful! I am using Ubuntu 14.04 server, apache 2.4.7, roundcube 1.0.1, and the latest versions of dovecot and postfix. The email databases are contained in mysql. I am running this on a VPS server. UPDATE: I have changed from iptables to using ufw. I have run the following commands to set up a basic firewall with ufw. ufw default deny ufw allow ssh ufw allow http ufw allow https ufw allow imap ufw allow imaps ufw allow smtp I then used telnet to check all of the mail ports. But Port 993 isnt working even though ufw says both 993 and 993/tcp are open. What am I missing?

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• How to determine the source of a request in a distributed service system?

  - by Kabumbus

  Map/Reduce is a great concept for sorting large quantities of data at once. What to do if you have small parts of data and you need to reduce it all the time? Simple example - choosing a service for request. Imagine we have 10 services. Each provides services host with sets of request headers and post/get arguments. Each service declares it has 30 unique keys - 10 per set. service A: name id ... Now imagine we have a distributed services host. We have 200 machines with 10 services on each. Each service has 30 unique keys in there sets. but now to find to which service to map the incoming request we make our services post unique values that map to that sets. We can have up to or more than 10 000 such values sets on each machine per each service. service A machine 1 name = Sam id = 13245 ... service A machine 1 name = Ben id = 33232 ... ... service A machine 100 name = Ron id = 777888 ... So we get 200 * 10 * 30 * 30 * 10 000 == 18 000 000 000 and we get 500 requests per second on our gateway each containing 45 items 15 of which are just noise. And our task is to find a service for request (at least a machine it is running on). On all machines all over cluster for same services we have same rules. We can first select to which service came our request via rules filter 10 * 30. and we will have 200 * 30 * 10 000 == 60 000 000. So... 60 mil is definitely a problem... I hope to get on idea of mapping 30 * 10 000 onto some artificial neural network alike Perceptron that outputs 1 if 30 words (some hashes from words) from the request are correct or if less than Perceptron should return 0. And I’ll send each such Perceptron for each service from each machine to gateway. So I would have a map Perceptron <-> machine for each service. Can any one tall me if my Perceptron idea is at least “sane”? Or normal people do it some other way? Or if there are better ANNs for such purposes?

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• What could be the best way to generalize data from Facebook and Twitter?

  - by Sjaak van der Heide

  I am not sure if this is the best subsite to ask this question, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't fit on the normal or facebook SO page... I've been asked to make a general API for connecting to several Social Media platforms (at the moment Facebook and Twitter). I have already realised both of them seperately. Meaning I retrieve the data I need from both Facebook and Twitter and hold the data in it's own dataclass. In my case a list of FacebookTimelineItems and a list of TwitterTimelineItems. now the hard part is taking the parts that are used in both (username, id, message and such) and make 1 general class that is eventually passed on to who/whatever sent the call to my API. these are two pics of the data classes I have: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/703/facebookdata.png/ http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/204/twitterdata.png/ probably not 100% correct but it gives an idea what it looks like. Now I've been having several idea about how to go about and generalize the two, which is harder then I thought at first. Create an interface (TimelineItem) and let the other classes extend that one. this way I'll always be sure I have a class that contains at least the basic info I need. downside is that deserializing the JSON seems to be a nightmare. Use the two dataclasses I have and combine them into a new class afterwards, then pass that one back to whoever requested it. This would probably work but I get the idea it's not the best way to tackle this problem, and is pretty dodgy IF I get it working. Or, in case of the other two being nearly impossible. Keep the two seperated in the front end, and go sit in the corner crying because I've just figured out you can't lump together facebook and twitter... Note: I don't have to make the front end part (view), I just make sure the Model is nicely filled with data :) I hope I placed this in the right section, if I didn't I apologise and would like to know where I should go with my question. Thanks in advance for any replied/ideas/opinions on this.

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• Interesting Topics in Comp. Sci. for New Students?

  - by SoulBeaver

  I hope this is the right forum to ask this question. Last friday I was in a discussion with my professors about the students' lack of motivation and interest in the field of Computer Science. All of the students are enrolled, but through questionnaires and other questions that my professor posed it was revealed that over 90% of all enrolled students are just in it for the reward of getting a job sometime in the future (since it's a growing field with high job potential) I asked my professor for the permission to take over the first couple of lectures and try and motivate, interest and inspire students for the field of Computer Science and programming in particular (this is the Intro to Programming course). This request was granted and I now have a week to come up with a lecture topic for my professor's five groups. My main goal isn't to teach, I just want to get students to be as interested in the field as I am. I want to show them what's possible, what awesome magical things have been done in the field, the future we are heading towards using programming and Comp. Sci. Therefore, I would like to pose this question: I have a few topics, materials and sample projects that I would like to talk about: -- Grace Hopper (It is my hope to interest the female programmers in the class. There are never more than two or three per group and they, more than males, are prone to jumping ship and abandoning Comp. Sci.) -- The Singularity Institute -- Alan Turing -- Robotics -- Programming not as a chore or a must, but the idea that we are, at our core, the nexus to which anything anybody does in the digital world is connected to. We are the problem solvers; we assemble all the parts together and we are the ones that, essentially, make the vision a reality. -- Give them an idea for a programming project which, through the help of the professor, could be significant to every student (I want students to not only feel interested in the topic, but they should feel important, that what they do here makes a difference) Do you have interesting topics worthy of discussion, something I can tell the students which they can get interested about? How would you approach the lecture? If you had 90 minutes worth of time to try and get students interested in the project, what would you do?

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• Caching items in Orchard

  - by Bertrand Le Roy

  Orchard has its own caching API that while built on top of ASP.NET's caching feature adds a couple of interesting twists. In addition to its usual work, the Orchard cache API must transparently separate the cache entries by tenant but beyond that, it does offer a more modern API. Here's for example how I'm using the API in the new version of my Favicon module: _cacheManager.Get( "Vandelay.Favicon.Url", ctx => { ctx.Monitor(_signals.When("Vandelay.Favicon.Changed")); var faviconSettings = ...; return faviconSettings.FaviconUrl; }); .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } There is no need for any code to test for the existence of the cache entry or to later fill that entry. Seriously, how many times have you written code like this: var faviconUrl = (string)cache["Vandelay.Favicon.Url"]; if (faviconUrl == null) { faviconUrl = ...; cache.Add("Vandelay.Favicon.Url", faviconUrl, ...); } Orchard's cache API takes that control flow and internalizes it into the API so that you never have to write it again. Notice how even casting the object from the cache is no longer necessary as the type can be inferred from the return type of the Lambda. The Lambda itself is of course only hit when the cache entry is not found. In addition to fetching the object we're looking for, it also sets up the dependencies to monitor. You can monitor anything that implements IVolatileToken. Here, we are monitoring a specific signal ("Vandelay.Favicon.Changed") that can be triggered by other parts of the application like so: _signals.Trigger("Vandelay.Favicon.Changed"); In other words, you don't explicitly expire the cache entry. Instead, something happens that triggers the expiration. Other implementations of IVolatileToken include absolute expiration or monitoring of the files under a virtual path, but you can also come up with your own.

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• Handling bugs, quirks, or annoyances in vendor-supplied headers

  - by supercat

  If the header file supplied by a vendor of something with whom one's code must interact is deficient in some way, in what cases is it better to: Work around the header's deficiencies in the main code Copy the header file to the local project and fix it Fix the header file in the spot where it's stored as a vendor-supplied tool Fix the header file in the central spot, but also make a local copy and try to always have the two match Do something else As an example, the header file supplied by ST Micro for the STM320LF series contains the lines: typedef struct { __IO uint32_t MODER; __IO uint16_t OTYPER; uint16_t RESERVED0; .... __IO uint16_t BSRRL; /* BSRR register is split to 2 * 16-bit fields BSRRL */ __IO uint16_t BSRRH; /* BSRR register is split to 2 * 16-bit fields BSRRH */ .... } GPIO_TypeDef; In the hardware, and in the hardware documentation, BSRR is described as a single 32-bit register. About 98% of the time one wants to write to BSRR, one will only be interested in writing the upper half or the lower half; it is thus convenient to be able to use BSSRH and BSSRL as a means of writing half the register. On the other hand, there are occasions when it is necessary that the entire 32-bit register be written as a single atomic operation. The "optimal" way to write it (setting aside white-spacing issues) would be: typedef struct { __IO uint32_t MODER; __IO uint16_t OTYPER; uint16_t RESERVED0; .... union // Allow BSRR access as 32-bit register or two 16-bit registers { __IO uint32_t BSRR; // 32-bit BSSR register as a whole struct { __IO uint16_t BSRRL, BSRRH; };// Two 16-bit parts }; .... } GPIO_TypeDef; If the struct were defined that way, code could use BSRR when necessary to write all 32 bits, or BSRRH/BSRRL when writing 16 bits. Given that the header isn't that way, would better practice be to use the header as-is, but apply an icky typecast in the main code writing what would be idiomatically written as thePort->BSRR = 0x12345678; as *((uint32_t)&(thePort->BSSRH)) = 0x12345678;, or would be be better to use a patched header file? If the latter, where should the patched file me stored and how should it be managed?

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• C Minishell Command Expansion Printing Gibberish

  - by Optimus_Pwn

  I'm writing a unix minishell in C, and am at the point where I'm adding command expansion. What I mean by this is that I can nest commands in other commands, for example: $> echo hello $(echo world! ... $(echo and stuff)) hello world! ... and stuff I think I have it working mostly, however it isn't marking the end of the expanded string correctly, for example if I do: $> echo a $(echo b $(echo c)) a b c $> echo d $(echo e) d e c See it prints the c, even though I didn't ask it to. Here is my code: msh.c - http://pastebin.com/sd6DZYwB expand.c - http://pastebin.com/uLqvFGPw I have a more code, but there's a lot of it, and these are the parts that I'm having trouble with at the moment. I'll try to tell you the basic way I'm doing this. Main is in msh.c, here it gets a line of input from either the commandline or a shellfile, and then calls processline (char *line, int outFD, int waitFlag), where line is the line we just got, outFD is the file descriptor of the output file, and waitFlag tells us whether or not we should wait if we fork. When we call this from main we do it like this: processline (buffer, 1, 1); In processline, we allocate a new line: char expanded_line[EXPANDEDLEN]; We then call expand, in expand.c: expand(line, expanded_line, EXPANDEDLEN); In expand, we copy the characters literally from line to expanded_line until we find a $(, which then calls: static int expCmdOutput(char *orig, char *new, int *oldl_ind, int *newl_ind) orig is line, and new is expanded line. oldl_ind and newl_ind are the current positions in the line and expanded line, respectively. Then we pipe, and recursively call processline, passing it the nested command(for example, if we had "echo a $(echo b)", we would pass processline "echo b"). This is where I get confused, each time expand is called, is it allocating a new chunk of memory EXPANDEDLEN long? If so, this is bad because I'll run out of stack room really quickly(in the case of a hugely nested commandline input). In expand I insert a null character at the end of the expanded string, so why is it printing past it? If you guys need any more code, or explanations, just ask. Secondly, I put the code in pastebin because there's a ton of it, and in my experience people don't like it when I fill up several pages with code. Thanks.

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• RTS Game Style Application [closed]

  - by Daniel Wynand van Wyk

  My question may seem somewhat odd, but I hope that my specifications will clarify EXACTLY what it is that I am after. I need some help choosing the right tooling for a particular endeavour. My background is in desktop application development and large back-end systems. I have worked primarily on the Microsoft stack using C# and the .Net framework. My goal is to develop a 2D, RTS style, interactive office simulation. The simulation will model various office spaces, office equipment, employees and their interactions with one another. The idea is to abstract the concept of an office completely. Under the hood the application will do many things that are nothing like a game. This includes P2P networking, VPN tunnelling, streaming video, instant messaging, document collaboration, remote screen sharing, file-sharing, virus scanning, VOIP, document scanning, faxing, emailing, distributed computing, content management and much more! A somewhat similar thing has been attempted by IBM, where they created a virtual office in second life. If their attempt was a game, the game-play would be notably horrible, to say the least! The users/players will drive and control my application through the various objects modelled in the simulation. A single application capable of performing all of these various tasks would be a nightmare to navigate for even the most expert user. Using the concept of a game, I can easily separate functionality by assigning them to objects that relate 1-1 with their real world counter-parts. This can greatly simplify computing for novice users, with many added benefits in terms of visibility, transparency of process and centralized configuration. My hope is to make complex computing tasks accessible to all kinds of users and to greatly reduce the cognitive load associated with using the many different utilities and applications inside office settings. The complexity is therefore limited to the complexity of the space in which you find yourself. I want the application to target as many platforms as possible and run on computers that have no accelerated graphics capabilities. The simulation won't contain any of the fancy eye-candy you find in modern games, to the contrary, my "game" will purposefully be clean and simple. The closest thing I could imagine would be an old game like "Theme Hospital" or the first instalment of "The Sims". All the content will be pre-created and not user-generated like Second Life. New functionality will be added via a plugin system. Given my background and nature of my "game", I would like to spend most of my time writing code that does not have to do with the simulated office, as the "game" is really just a glorified application menu. I have done much reading about existing engines, frameworks and tools. I need the help of an experienced game developer who has tried and tested various products over the years who can guide me in the right direction given my very particular needs. I would appreciate any help I can get!

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