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• Masters vs. PhD - long [closed]

  - by Sterling

  I'm 21 years old and a first year master's computer science student. Whether or not to continue with my PhD has been plaguing me for the past few months. I can't stop thinking about it and am extremely torn on the issue. I have read http://www.cs.unc.edu/~azuma/hitch4.html and many, many other masters vs phd articles on the web. Unfortunately, I have not yet come to a conclusion. I was hoping that I could post my ideas about the issue on here in hopes to 1) get some extra insight on the issue and 2) make sure that I am correct in my assumptions. Hopefully having people who have experience in the respective fields can tell me if I am wrong so I don't make my decision based on false ideas. Okay, to get this topic out of the way - money. Money isn't the most important thing to me, but it is still important. It's always been a goal of mine to make 6 figures, but I realize that will probably take me a long time with either path. According to most online salary calculating sites, the average starting salary for a software engineer is ~60-70k. The PhD program here is 5 years, so that's about 300k I am missing out on by not going into the workforce with a masters. I have only ever had ~1k at one time in my life so 300k is something I can't even really accurately imagine. I know that I wouldn't have at once obviously, but just to know I would be earning that is kinda crazy to me. I feel like I would be living quite comfortably by the time I'm 30 years old (but risk being too content too soon). I would definitely love to have at least a few years of my 20s to spend with that kind of money before I have a family to spend it all on. I haven't grown up very financially stable so it would be so nice to just spend some money…get a nice car, buy a new guitar or two, eat some good food, and just be financially comfortable. I have always felt like I deserved to make good money in my life, even as a kid growing up, and I just want to have it be a reality. I know that either path I take will make good money by the time I'm ~40-45 years old, but I guess I'm just sick of not making money and am getting impatient about it. However, a big idea pushing me towards a PhD is that I feel the masters path would give me a feeling of selling out if I have the capability to solve real questions in the computer science world. (pretty straight-forward - not much to elaborate on, but this is a big deal) Now onto other aspects of the decision. I originally got into computer science because of programming. I started in high school and knew very soon that it was what I wanted to do for a career. I feel like getting a masters and being a software engineer in the industry gives me much more time to program in my career. In research, I feel like I would spend more time reading, writing, trying to get grant money, etc than I would coding. A guy I work with in the lab just recently published a paper. He showed it to me and I was shocked by it. The first two pages was littered with equations and formulas. Then the next page or so was followed by more equations and formulas that he derived from the previous ones. That was his work - breaking down and creating all of these formulas for robotic arm movement. And whenever I read computer science papers, they all seem to follow this pattern. I always pictured myself coding all day long…not proving equations and things of that nature. I know that's only one part of computer science research, but that part bores me. A couple cons on each side - Phd - I don't really enjoy writing or feel like I'm that great at technical writing. Whenever I'm in groups to make something, I'm always the one who does the large majority of the work and then give it to my team members to write up a report. Presenting is different though - I don't mind presenting at all as long as I have a good grasp on what I am presenting. But writing papers seems like such a chore to me. And because of this, the "publish or perish" phrase really turns me off from research. Another bad thing - I feel like if I am doing research, most of it would be done alone. I work best in small groups. I like to have at least one person to bounce ideas off of when I am brainstorming. The idea of being a part of some small elite group to build things sounds ideal to me. So being able to work in small groups for the majority of my career is a definite plus. I don't feel like I can get this doing research. Masters - I read a lot online that most people come in as engineers and eventually move into management positions. As of now, I don't see myself wanting to be a part of management. Lets say my company wanted to make some new product or system - I would get much more pride, enjoyment, and overall satisfaction to say "I made this" rather than "I managed a group of people that made this." I want to be a big part of the development process. I want to make things. I think it would be great to be more specialized than other people. I would rather know everything about something than something about everything. I always have been that way - was a great pitcher during my baseball years, but not so good at everything else, great at certain classes in school, but not so good at others, etc. To think that my career would be the same way sounds okay to me. Getting a PhD would point me in this direction. It would be great to be some guy who is someone that people look towards and come to ask for help because of being such an important contributor to a very specific field, such as artificial neural networks or robotic haptic perception. From what I gather about the software industry, being specialized can be a very bad thing because of the speed of the new technology. I When it comes to being employed, I have pretty conservative views. I don't want to change companies every 5 years. Maybe this is something everyone wishes, but I would love to just be an important person in one company for 10+ (maybe 20-25+ if I'm lucky!) years if the working conditions were acceptable. I feel like that is more possible as a PhD though, being a professor or researcher. The more I read about people in the software industry, the more it seems like most software engineers bounce from company to company at rapid paces. Some even work like a hired gun from project to project which is NOT what I want AT ALL. But finding a place to make great and important software would be great if that actually happens in the real world. I'm a very competitive person. I thrive on competition. I don't really know why, but I have always been that way even as a kid growing up. Competition always gave me a reason to practice that little extra every night, always push my limits, etc. It seems to me like there is no competition in the research world. It seems like everyone is very relaxed as long as research is being conducted. The only competition is if someone is researching the same thing as you and its whoever can finish and publish first (but everyone seems to careful to check that circumstance). The only noticeable competition to me is just with yourself and your own discipline. I like the idea that in the industry, there is real competition between companies to put out the best product or be put out of business. I feel like this would constantly be pushing me to be better at what I do. One thing that is really pushing me towards a PhD is the lifetime of the things you make. I feel like if you make something truly innovative in the industry…just some really great new application or system…there is a shelf-life of about 5-10 years before someone just does it faster and more efficiently. But with research work, you could create an idea or algorithm that last decades. For instance, the A* search algorithm was described in 1968 and is still widely used today. That is amazing to me. In the words of Palahniuk, "The goal isn't to live forever, its to create something that will." Over anything, I just want to do something that matters. I want my work to help and progress society. Seriously, if I'm stuck programming GUIs for the next 40 years…I might shoot myself in the face. But then again, I hate the idea that less than 1% of the population will come into contact with my work and even less understand its importance. So if anything I have said is false then please inform me. If you think I come off as a masters or PhD, inform me. If you want to give me some extra insight or add on to any point I made, please do. Thank you so much to anyone for any help.

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• Project Jigsaw: Late for the train: The Q&A

  - by Mark Reinhold

  I recently proposed, to the Java community in general and to the SE 8 (JSR 337) Expert Group in particular, to defer Project Jigsaw from Java 8 to Java 9. I also proposed to aim explicitly for a regular two-year release cycle going forward. Herewith a summary of the key questions I’ve seen in reaction to these proposals, along with answers. Making the decision Q Has the Java SE 8 Expert Group decided whether to defer the addition of a module system and the modularization of the Platform to Java SE 9? A No, it has not yet decided. Q By when do you expect the EG to make this decision? A In the next month or so. Q How can I make sure my voice is heard? A The EG will consider all relevant input from the wider community. If you have a prominent blog, column, or other communication channel then there’s a good chance that we’ve already seen your opinion. If not, you’re welcome to send it to the Java SE 8 Comments List, which is the EG’s official feedback channel. Q What’s the overall tone of the feedback you’ve received? A The feedback has been about evenly divided as to whether Java 8 should be delayed for Jigsaw, Jigsaw should be deferred to Java 9, or some other, usually less-realistic, option should be taken. Project Jigsaw Q Why is Project Jigsaw taking so long? A Project Jigsaw started at Sun, way back in August 2008. Like many efforts during the final years of Sun, it was not well staffed. Jigsaw initially ran on a shoestring, with just a handful of mostly part-time engineers, so progress was slow. During the integration of Sun into Oracle all work on Jigsaw was halted for a time, but it was eventually resumed after a thorough consideration of the alternatives. Project Jigsaw was really only fully staffed about a year ago, around the time that Java 7 shipped. We’ve added a few more engineers to the team since then, but that can’t make up for the inadequate initial staffing and the time lost during the transition. Q So it’s really just a matter of staffing limitations and corporate-integration distractions? A Aside from these difficulties, the other main factor in the duration of the project is the sheer technical difficulty of modularizing the JDK. Q Why is modularizing the JDK so hard? A There are two main reasons. The first is that the JDK code base is deeply interconnected at both the API and the implementation levels, having been built over many years primarily in the style of a monolithic software system. We’ve spent considerable effort eliminating or at least simplifying as many API and implementation dependences as possible, so that both the Platform and its implementations can be presented as a coherent set of interdependent modules, but some particularly thorny cases remain. Q What’s the second reason? A We want to maintain as much compatibility with prior releases as possible, most especially for existing classpath-based applications but also, to the extent feasible, for applications composed of modules. Q Is modularizing the JDK even necessary? Can’t you just put it in one big module? A Modularizing the JDK, and more specifically modularizing the Java SE Platform, will enable standard yet flexible Java runtime configurations scaling from large servers down to small embedded devices. In the long term it will enable the convergence of Java SE with the higher-end Java ME Platforms. Q Is Project Jigsaw just about modularizing the JDK? A As originally conceived, Project Jigsaw was indeed focused primarily upon modularizing the JDK. The growing demand for a truly standard module system for the Java Platform, which could be used not just for the Platform itself but also for libraries and applications built on top of it, later motivated expanding the scope of the effort. Q As a developer, why should I care about Project Jigsaw? A The introduction of a modular Java Platform will, in the long term, fundamentally change the way that Java implementations, libraries, frameworks, tools, and applications are designed, built, and deployed. Q How much progress has Project Jigsaw made? A We’ve actually made a lot of progress. Much of the core functionality of the module system has been prototyped and works at both compile time and run time. We’ve extended the Java programming language with module declarations, worked out a structure for modular source trees and corresponding compiled-class trees, and implemented these features in javac. We’ve defined an efficient module-file format, extended the JVM to bootstrap a modular JRE, and designed and implemented a preliminary API. We’ve used the module system to make a good first cut at dividing the JDK and the Java SE API into a coherent set of modules. Among other things, we’re currently working to retrofit the java.util.ServiceLoader API to support modular services. Q I want to help! How can I get involved? A Check out the project page, read the draft requirements and design overview documents, download the latest prototype build, and play with it. You can tell us what you think, and follow the rest of our work in real time, on the jigsaw-dev list. The Java Platform Module System JSR Q What’s the relationship between Project Jigsaw and the eventual Java Platform Module System JSR? A At a high level, Project Jigsaw has two phases. In the first phase we’re exploring an approach to modularity that’s markedly different from that of existing Java modularity solutions. We’ve assumed that we can change the Java programming language, the virtual machine, and the APIs. Doing so enables a design which can strongly enforce module boundaries in all program phases, from compilation to deployment to execution. That, in turn, leads to better usability, diagnosability, security, and performance. The ultimate goal of the first phase is produce a working prototype which can inform the work of the Module-System JSR EG. Q What will happen in the second phase of Project Jigsaw? A The second phase will produce the reference implementation of the specification created by the Module-System JSR EG. The EG might ultimately choose an entirely different approach than the one we’re exploring now. If and when that happens then Project Jigsaw will change course as necessary, but either way I think that the end result will be better for having been informed by our current work. Maven & OSGi Q Why not just use Maven? A Maven is a software project management and comprehension tool. As such it can be seen as a kind of build-time module system but, by its nature, it does nothing to support modularity at run time. Q Why not just adopt OSGi? A OSGi is a rich dynamic component system which includes not just a module system but also a life-cycle model and a dynamic service registry. The latter two facilities are useful to some kinds of sophisticated applications, but I don’t think they’re of wide enough interest to be standardized as part of the Java SE Platform. Q Okay, then why not just adopt the module layer of OSGi? A The OSGi module layer is not operative at compile time; it only addresses modularity during packaging, deployment, and execution. As it stands, moreover, it’s useful for library and application modules but, since it’s built strictly on top of the Java SE Platform, it can’t be used to modularize the Platform itself. Q If Maven addresses modularity at build time, and the OSGi module layer addresses modularity during deployment and at run time, then why not just use the two together, as many developers already do? A The combination of Maven and OSGi is certainly very useful in practice today. These systems have, however, been built on top of the existing Java platform; they have not been able to change the platform itself. This means, among other things, that module boundaries are weakly enforced, if at all, which makes it difficult to diagnose configuration errors and impossible to run untrusted code securely. The prototype Jigsaw module system, by contrast, aims to define a platform-level solution which extends both the language and the JVM in order to enforce module boundaries strongly and uniformly in all program phases. Q If the EG chooses an approach like the one currently being taken in the Jigsaw prototype, will Maven and OSGi be made obsolete? A No, not at all! No matter what approach is taken, to ensure wide adoption it’s essential that the standard Java Platform Module System interact well with Maven. Applications that depend upon the sophisticated features of OSGi will no doubt continue to use OSGi, so it’s critical that implementations of OSGi be able to run on top of the Java module system and, if suitably modified, support OSGi bundles that depend upon Java modules. Ideas for how to do that are currently being explored in Project Penrose. Java 8 & Java 9 Q Without Jigsaw, won’t Java 8 be a pretty boring release? A No, far from it! It’s still slated to include the widely-anticipated Project Lambda (JSR 335), work on which has been going very well, along with the new Date/Time API (JSR 310), Type Annotations (JSR 308), and a set of smaller features already in progress. Q Won’t deferring Jigsaw to Java 9 delay the eventual convergence of the higher-end Java ME Platforms with Java SE? A It will slow that transition, but it will not stop it. To allow progress toward that convergence to be made with Java 8 I’ve suggested to the Java SE 8 EG that we consider specifying a small number of Profiles which would allow compact configurations of the SE Platform to be built and deployed. Q If Jigsaw is deferred to Java 9, would the Oracle engineers currently working on it be reassigned to other Java 8 features and then return to working on Jigsaw again after Java 8 ships? A No, these engineers would continue to work primarily on Jigsaw from now until Java 9 ships. Q Why not drop Lambda and finish Jigsaw instead? A Even if the engineers currently working on Lambda could instantly switch over to Jigsaw and immediately become productive—which of course they can’t—there are less than nine months remaining in the Java 8 schedule for work on major features. That’s just not enough time for the broad review, testing, and feedback which such a fundamental change to the Java Platform requires. Q Why not ship the module system in Java 8, and then modularize the platform in Java 9? A If we deliver a module system in one release but don’t use it to modularize the JDK until some later release then we run a big risk of getting something fundamentally wrong. If that happens then we’d have to fix it in the later release, and fixing fundamental design flaws after the fact almost always leads to a poor end result. Q Why not ship Jigsaw in an 8.5 release, less than two years after 8? Or why not just ship a new release every year, rather than every other year? A Many more developers work on the JDK today than a couple of years ago, both because Oracle has dramatically increased its own investment and because other organizations and individuals have joined the OpenJDK Community. Collectively we don’t, however, have the bandwidth required to ship and then provide long-term support for a big JDK release more frequently than about every other year. Q What’s the feedback been on the two-year release-cycle proposal? A For just about every comment that we should release more frequently, so that new features are available sooner, there’s been another asking for an even slower release cycle so that large teams of enterprise developers who ship mission-critical applications have a chance to migrate at a comfortable pace.

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• Need help with setting up comet code

  - by Saif Bechan

  Does anyone know off a way or maybe think its possible to connect Node.js with Nginx http push module to maintain a persistent connection between client and browser. I am new to comet so just don't understand the publishing etc maybe someone can help me with this. What i have set up so far is the following. I downloaded the jQuery.comet plugin and set up the following basic code: Client JavaScript <script type="text/javascript"> function updateFeed(data) { $('#time').text(data); } function catchAll(data, type) { console.log(data); console.log(type); } $.comet.connect('/broadcast/sub?channel=getIt'); $.comet.bind(updateFeed, 'feed'); $.comet.bind(catchAll); $('#kill-button').click(function() { $.comet.unbind(updateFeed, 'feed'); }); </script> What I can understand from this is that the client will keep on listening to the url followed by /broadcast/sub=getIt. When there is a message it will fire updateFeed. Pretty basic and understandable IMO. Nginx http push module config default_type application/octet-stream; sendfile on; keepalive_timeout 65; push_authorized_channels_only off; server { listen 80; location /broadcast { location = /broadcast/sub { set $push_channel_id $arg_channel; push_subscriber; push_subscriber_concurrency broadcast; push_channel_group broadcast; } location = /broadcast/pub { set $push_channel_id $arg_channel; push_publisher; push_min_message_buffer_length 5; push_max_message_buffer_length 20; push_message_timeout 5s; push_channel_group broadcast; } } } Ok now this tells nginx to listen at port 80 for any calls to /broadcast/sub and it will give back any responses sent to /broadcast/pub. Pretty basic also. This part is not so hard to understand, and is well documented over the internet. Most of the time there is a ruby or a php file behind this that does the broadcasting. My idea is to have node.js broadcasting /broadcast/pub. I think this will let me have persistent streaming data from the server to the client without breaking the connection. I tried the long-polling approach with looping the request but I think this will be more efficient. Or is this not going to work. Node.js file Now to create the Node.js i'm lost. First off all I don't know how to have node.js to work in this way. The setup I used for long polling is as follows: var sys = require('sys'), http = require('http'); http.createServer(function (req, res) { res.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/html'}); res.write(new Date()); res.close(); seTimeout('',1000); }).listen(8000); This listens to port 8000 and just writes on the response variable. For long polling my nginx.config looked something like this: server { listen 80; server_name _; location / { proxy_pass http://mydomain.com:8080$request_uri; include /etc/nginx/proxy.conf; } } This just redirected the port 80 to 8000 and this worked fine. Does anyone have an idea on how to have Node.js act in a way Comet understands it. Would be really nice and you will help me out a lot. Recources used An example where this is done with ruby instead of Node.js jQuery.comet Nginx HTTP push module homepage Faye: a Comet client and server for Node.js and Rack To use faye I have to install the comet client, but I want to use the one supplied with Nginx. Thats why I don't just use faye. The one nginx uses is much more optimzed. extra Persistant connections Going evented with Node.js

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• On REST: WADL or not IDL, is the following approach right ?

  - by redben

  This question is a bit long, please bear with me. In REST, i think we should not need WADL or any IDL. But rather something that would implicitly cover its concept. The way I think about it is when we (humans) surf the Web, when we go to a web site for the first time, we don't know what services it provides. You discover those on the html home page (or a sitemap page in a help section) or maybe just the main menu on the home page. If you make an analogy, the homepage or site map to us humans is what WSDL is to WS-* or what WADL could be to a REST service. Only that its just like any other html content. I think that in REST the following is a good way to do things, respecting the HATEOS paradigm. Have a top level (or default) resource that lists links to your other resources. For a library example, say RestLibrary.com/ it could be something like: <root xmlns:lib="http://librarystandards.com/libraryml"> <resource class="lib:book"> <link type="application/vnd.libraryml+xml" template="mylib.com/book/{isbn}" /> <link type="application/vnd.libraryml+xml" rel="add" href="mylib.com/book" method="POST" /> <link type="application/vnd.libraryml+xml" rel="update" template="mylib.com/book/{isbn}" method="PUT" /> </resource> <resource class="lib:bookList"> <link template="mylib.com/book?keywords={keywords}" type="application/vnd.openlibrary+xml" rel="search" /> </resource> </root> Note that it is assumed that the media type "application/vnd.libraryml+xml" is a defined standard or (may be just proprietary vocabulary) named libraryml. Also, the client should be able to understand this "homepage" resource (elements root, resource and link). This is the part that could be used instead of WADL : an Abstract vocabulary that should be understandable by any client. You could use an existing standard like Atom for example. But the main idea is to have an abstract vocabulary understandable by any client. Why not WADL then ? well wadl is only for service discovery. The idea here is to have an light abstract vocabulary that would serve as a base for hypermedia. A "root" vocabulary. Like in owl we have owl:thing...etc Now if the client knows the "libraryml" standard it can follow the links to the things it understands (after parsing the media type properties and xmlns). If not, it just won't. When i can't understand how to deal with something in REST architecture i tend to see how we Humans do it in the Web. In the Web, we have the Generic language that is HTML that enables site builders to deliver any specific content, regardless of its meaning to the client (the user), Browsers understand HTML but not the "meaning" of its content. It is the user that understands the (domain specific) content. If i go to say QuantumPhysics.org, my browser can render the home page (it is just html after all) and i can read the home page. If i understand quantum then fine i can continue browsing. If i don't i just get out (unless i want to learn the hardway :) ) In the RetsLibrary.com example the client app is just like me+my browser on QuantumPhysics.org. the media type "application/vnd.libraryml+xml" is quantum physics (knowledge). http is http in both examples. Now HTML of QuantumPhysics.org is in RestLibrary.com is XML + that tiny little abstract vocabulary (root resource and link, that you could replace with something like Atom). So does this approach have any value ? don't we need a root tiny hyper-vocabulary so we can succeed with hypermedia and the "initial URI" concept ? edit Yeah why not RDF as the root vocabulary !

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• Summer Programming Plans

  - by Gabe

  I've wanted to start "hacking" for many months now. But I put it off in favor of school and other things. Now, though, I'm free for the summer and want to learn as much as I can. I have a rough idea of what I want to try my hand at, but need some guidance as to what specifically - and how - I should learn. This is my plan so far: 1) Get good at programming in general. I plan to read up on how to think/work like a programmer. I'm waiting for the Pragmatic Programmer to arrive, which will be the first book I read. Q: What other books/ebooks should I look at? What more can I do here? 2) Learn/Improve at HTML/CSS. My first project will be to make a personal website/blog for myself using HTML and CSS. ----Then I hope to write/design articles like Dustin Curtis. After I finish this (and learn a programming language) I'll try to create user-based a user-focused website. Q: It's my understanding that just trying to design/manage websites is a good way to learn/improve at HTML/CSS. Is that all correct? 3) Try music development. This might be a sort of stretch for stackoverflow, but I'm interested in mixing/making techno songs. (Think Justice, or Daft Punk, or MSTRKRFT.) Q: I have a Mac. Any ideas on how I could start/learn music making? Any programs I should download, for instance? 4) My main goal: Learning a web development language/framework. I'm a year into learning/using C++. But what I really want to do is develop websites and web apps. I've searched online, and there seems to be great debate over which language/framework to learn first (and which is best). I think I've narrowed it down to three: Ruby (Rails), Python (Django), and PHP (?). Q #1: Which should I learn and use first? (Reasons?) Q #2: One reason I was leaning towards PHP is that I'm taking a PHP development course next semester. Learning it now would make that course easy. If PHP was not the answer to Q #1, is it worth learning both? Or, would it be better to just focus on PHP for this summer and next semester, and then transition thereafter to a better language? 5) iPhone/iPad Programming (Maybe). I've a number of simple, useful app ideas that I'd like to eventually get too. I just bought a Mac, as well as a few app development books. Q #1: Am I spreading myself thin trying to learn all of the above, and objective-C? Q #2: How much harder/easier is objective-C compared to the above languages? Also, how easy is it to learn obj-C after learning a web development language (and some C++)? Q #3: Yes or no? Should I go for it, or just keeep with #1-4 for now? Also: If you have any tips on how I should learn (or how you learned to hack), I'm all ears. I'd be especially interested in how you planned out learning: did you just hack whenever you felt like it, or did you "study" the language a few hours a day, or something else? Thanks so much, guys.

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• Help with dynamic range compression function (audio)

  - by MusiGenesis

  I am writing a C# function for doing dynamic range compression (an audio effect that basically squashes transient peaks and amplifies everything else to produce an overall louder sound). I have written a function that does this (I think): public static void Compress(ref short[] input, double thresholdDb, double ratio) { double maxDb = thresholdDb - (thresholdDb / ratio); double maxGain = Math.Pow(10, -maxDb / 20.0); for (int i = 0; i < input.Length; i += 2) { // convert sample values to ABS gain and store original signs int signL = input[i] < 0 ? -1 : 1; double valL = (double)input[i] / 32768.0; if (valL < 0.0) { valL = -valL; } int signR = input[i + 1] < 0 ? -1 : 1; double valR = (double)input[i + 1] / 32768.0; if (valR < 0.0) { valR = -valR; } // calculate mono value and compress double val = (valL + valR) * 0.5; double posDb = -Math.Log10(val) * 20.0; if (posDb < thresholdDb) { posDb = thresholdDb - ((thresholdDb - posDb) / ratio); } // measure L and R sample values relative to mono value double multL = valL / val; double multR = valR / val; // convert compressed db value to gain and amplify val = Math.Pow(10, -posDb / 20.0); val = val / maxGain; // re-calculate L and R gain values relative to compressed/amplified // mono value valL = val * multL; valR = val * multR; double lim = 1.5; // determined by experimentation, with the goal // being that the lines below should never (or rarely) be hit if (valL > lim) { valL = lim; } if (valR > lim) { valR = lim; } double maxval = 32000.0 / lim; // convert gain values back to sample values input[i] = (short)(valL * maxval); input[i] *= (short)signL; input[i + 1] = (short)(valR * maxval); input[i + 1] *= (short)signR; } } and I am calling it with threshold values between 10.0 db and 30.0 db and ratios between 1.5 and 4.0. This function definitely produces a louder overall sound, but with an unacceptable level of distortion, even at low threshold values and low ratios. Can anybody see anything wrong with this function? Am I handling the stereo aspect correctly (the function assumes stereo input)? As I (dimly) understand things, I don't want to compress the two channels separately, so my code is attempting to compress a "virtual" mono sample value and then apply the same degree of compression to the L and R sample value separately. Not sure I'm doing it right, however. I think part of the problem may the "hard knee" of my function, which kicks in the compression abruptly when the threshold is crossed. I think I may need to use a "soft knee" like this: Can anybody suggest a modification to my function to produce the soft knee curve?

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• Implementing a popularity algorithm in Django

  - by TheLizardKing

  I am creating a site similar to reddit and hacker news that has a database of links and votes. I am implementing hacker news' popularity algorithm and things are going pretty swimmingly until it comes to actually gathering up these links and displaying them. The algorithm is simple: Y Combinator's Hacker News: Popularity = (p - 1) / (t + 2)^1.5` Votes divided by age factor. Where` p : votes (points) from users. t : time since submission in hours. p is subtracted by 1 to negate submitter's vote. Age factor is (time since submission in hours plus two) to the power of 1.5.factor is (time since submission in hours plus two) to the power of 1.5. I asked a very similar question over yonder http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1964395/complex-ordering-in-django but instead of contemplating my options I choose one and tried to make it work because that's how I did it with PHP/MySQL but I now know Django does things a lot differently. My models look something (exactly) like this class Link(models.Model): category = models.ForeignKey(Category) user = models.ForeignKey(User) created = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add = True) modified = models.DateTimeField(auto_now = True) fame = models.PositiveIntegerField(default = 1) title = models.CharField(max_length = 256) url = models.URLField(max_length = 2048) def __unicode__(self): return self.title class Vote(models.Model): link = models.ForeignKey(Link) user = models.ForeignKey(User) created = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add = True) modified = models.DateTimeField(auto_now = True) karma_delta = models.SmallIntegerField() def __unicode__(self): return str(self.karma_delta) and my view: def index(request): popular_links = Link.objects.select_related().annotate(karma_total = Sum('vote__karma_delta')) return render_to_response('links/index.html', {'links': popular_links}) Now from my previous question, I am trying to implement the algorithm using the sorting function. An answer from that question seems to think I should put the algorithm in the select and sort then. I am going to paginate these results so I don't think I can do the sorting in python without grabbing everything. Any suggestions on how I could efficiently do this? EDIT This isn't working yet but I think it's a step in the right direction: from django.shortcuts import render_to_response from linkett.apps.links.models import * def index(request): popular_links = Link.objects.select_related() popular_links = popular_links.extra( select = { 'karma_total': 'SUM(vote.karma_delta)', 'popularity': '(karma_total - 1) / POW(2, 1.5)', }, order_by = ['-popularity'] ) return render_to_response('links/index.html', {'links': popular_links}) This errors out into: Caught an exception while rendering: column "karma_total" does not exist LINE 1: SELECT ((karma_total - 1) / POW(2, 1.5)) AS "popularity", (S... EDIT 2 Better error? TemplateSyntaxError: Caught an exception while rendering: missing FROM-clause entry for table "vote" LINE 1: SELECT ((vote.karma_total - 1) / POW(2, 1.5)) AS "popularity... My index.html is simply: {% block content %} {% for link in links %} karma-up {{ link.karma_total }} karma-down {{ link.title }} Posted by {{ link.user }} to {{ link.category }} at {{ link.created }} {% empty %} No Links {% endfor %} {% endblock content %} EDIT 3 So very close! Again, all these answers are great but I am concentrating on a particular one because I feel it works best for my situation. from django.db.models import Sum from django.shortcuts import render_to_response from linkett.apps.links.models import * def index(request): popular_links = Link.objects.select_related().extra( select = { 'popularity': '(SUM(links_vote.karma_delta) - 1) / POW(2, 1.5)', }, tables = ['links_link', 'links_vote'], order_by = ['-popularity'], ) return render_to_response('links/test.html', {'links': popular_links}) Running this I am presented with an error hating on my lack of group by values. Specifically: TemplateSyntaxError at / Caught an exception while rendering: column "links_link.id" must appear in the GROUP BY clause or be used in an aggregate function LINE 1: ...karma_delta) - 1) / POW(2, 1.5)) AS "popularity", "links_lin... Not sure why my links_link.id wouldn't be in my group by but I am not sure how to alter my group by, django usually does that.

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• WinQual: Why would WER not accept code-signing certificates?

  - by Ian Boyd

  In 2005 i tried to establish a WinQual account with Microsoft, so i could pick up our (if any) crash dump files submitted automatically through Windows Error Reporting (WER). i was not allowed to have my crash dumps, because i don't have a Verisign certificate. Instead i have a cheaper one, generated by a Verisign subsidiary: Thawte. The method in which you join is: you digitally sign a sample exe they provide. This proves that you are the same signer that signed apps that they got crash dumps from in the wild. Cryptographically, the private key is needed to generate a digital signature on an executable. Only the holder of that private key can create a signature with for the matching public key. It doesn't matter who generated that private key. That includes certificates that are generated from: self-signing Wells Fargo DigiCert SecureTrust Trustware QuoVadis GoDaddy Entrust Cybertrust GeoTrust GlobalSign Comodo Thawte Verisign Yet Microsof's WinQual only accepts digital certificates generated by Verisign. Not even Verisign's subsidiaries are good enough (Thawte). Can anyone think of any technical, legal or ethical reason why Microsoft doesn't want to accept code-signing certificates? The WinQual site says: Why Is a Digital Certificate Required for Winqual Membership? A digital certificate helps protect your company from individuals who seek to impersonate members of your staff or who would otherwise commit acts of fraud against your company. Using a digital certificate enables proof of an identity for a user or an organization. Is somehow a Thawte digital certificate not secure? Two years later, i sent a reminder notice to WinQual that i've been waiting to be able to get at my crash dumps. The response from WinQual team was: Hello, Thanks for the reminder. We have notified the appropriate people that this is still a request. In 2008 i asked this question in a Microsoft support forum, and the response was: We are only setup to accept VeriSign Certificates at this point. We have not had an overwhelming demand to support other types of certificates. What can it possibly mean to not be "setup" to accept other kinds of certificates? If the thumbprint of the key that signed the WinQual.exe test app is the same as the thumbprint that signed the executable who's crash dump you got in the wild: it is proven - they are my crash dumps, give them to me. And it's not like there's a special API to check if a Verisign digital signature is valid, as opposed to all other digital signatures. A valid signature is valid no matter who generated the key. Microsoft is free to not trust the signer, but that's not the same as identity. So that is my question, can anyone think of any practical reason why WinQual isn't setup to support digital signatures? One person theorized that the answer is that they're just lazy: Not that I know but I would assume that the team running the winQual system is a live team and not a dev team - as in, personality and skillset geared towards maintenance of existing systems. I could be wrong though. They don't want to do work to change it. But can anyone think of anything that would need to be changed? It's the same logic no matter what generated the key: "does the thumbprint match". What am i missing?

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• DoubleBuffering in Java

  - by DDP

  Hello there, I'm having some trouble implementing DoubleBuffer into my program. Before you faint from the wall of text, you should know that a lot of it is there just in case you need to know. The actual place where I think I'm having problems is in one method. I've recently looked up a tutorial on the gpwiki about double buffering, and decided to try and implement the code they had into the code I have that I'm trying to implement doublebuffer in. I get the following error: "java.lang.IllegalStateException: Component must have a valid peer". I don't know if it makes any difference if you know it or not, but the following is the code with the main method. This is just a Frame that displays the ChronosDisplay class inside it. I omitted irrelevant code with "..." public class CDM extends JFrame { public CDM(String str) { super("CD:M - "+str); try { ... ChronosDisplay theGame = new ChronosDisplay(str); ((Component)theGame).setFocusable(true); add(theGame); } catch(Exception e) { System.out.println("CDM ERROR: " +e); } } public static void main( String args[] ) { CDM run = new CDM("DP_Mini"); } } Here is the code where I think the problem resides (I think the problem is in the paint() method). This class is displayed in the CDM class public class ChronosDisplay extends Canvas implements Runnable { String mapName; public ChronosDisplay (String str) { mapName = str; new Thread(this).start(); setVisible(true); createBufferStrategy(2); } public void paint( Graphics window ) { BufferStrategy b = getBufferStrategy(); Graphics g = null; window.setColor(Color.white); try { g = b.getDrawGraphics(); paintMap(g); paintUnits(g); paintBullets(g); } finally { g.dispose(); } b.show(); Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().sync(); } public void paintMap( Graphics window ) { TowerMap m = new TowerMap(); try { m = new TowerMap(mapName); for(int x=0; x<m.getRows()*50; x+=50) { for(int y = 0; y<m.getCols()*50; y+=50) { int tileType = m.getLocation(x/50,y/50); Image img; if(tileType == 0) { Tile0 t = new Tile0(x,y); t.draw(window); } ...// More similar if statements for other integers } catch(Exception e) ... } ...// Additional methods not shown here public void run() { try { while(true) { Thread.currentThread().sleep(20); repaint(); } } catch(Exception e) ... } } If you're curious (I doubt it matters), the draw() method in the Tile0 class is: public void draw( Graphics window ) { window.drawImage(img,getX(),getY(),50,50,null); } Any pointers, tips, or solutions are greatly appreciated. Thanks for your time! :D

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• What is "elegant" code?

  - by Breton

  I see a lot of lip service and talk about the most "elegant" way to do this or that. I think if you spend enough time programming you begin to obtain a sort of intuitive feel for what it is we call "elegance". But I'm curious. Even if we can look at a bit of code, and say instinctively "That's elegant", or "That's messy", I wonder if any of us really understands what that means. Is there a precise definition for this "elegance" we keep referring to? If there is, what is it? Now, what I mean by a precise definition, is a series of statements which can be used to derive questions about a peice of code, or a program as a whole, and determine objectively, or as objectively as possible, whether that code is "elegant" or not. May I assert, that perhaps no such definition exists, and it's all just personal preference. In this case, I ask you a slightly different question: Is there a better word for "elegance", or a better set of attributes to use for judging code quality that is perhaps more objective than merely appealing to individual intuition and taste? Perhaps code quality is a matter of taste, and the answer to both of my questions is "no". But I can't help but feel that we could be doing better than just expressing wishy washy feelings about our code quality. For example, user interface design is something that to a broad range of people looks for all the world like a field of study that oughtta be 100% subjective matter of taste. But this is shockingly and brutally not the case, and there are in fact many objective measures that can be applied to a user interface to determine its quality. A series of tests could be written to give a definitive and repeatable score to user interface quality. (See GOMS, for instance). Now, okay. is Elegance simply "code quality" or is it something more? Is it something that can be measured? Or is it a matter of taste? Does our profession have room for taste? Maybe I'm asking the wrong questions altogether. Help me out here. Bonus Round If there is such a thing as elegance in code, and that concept is useful, do you think that justifies classifying the field of programming as an "Art" capital A, or merely a "craft". Or is it just an engineering field populated by a bunch of wishful thinking humans? Consider this question in the light of your thoughts about the elegance question. Please note that there is a distinction between code which is considered "art" in itself, and code that was written merely in the service of creating an artful program. When I ask this question, I ask if the code itself justifies calling programming an art. Bounty Note I liked the answers to this question so much, I think I'd like to make a photographic essay book from it. Released as a free PDF, and published on some kind of on demand printing service of course, such as "zazz" or "tiggle" or "printley" or something . I'd like some more answers, please!

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• Mono-LibreOffice System.TypeLoadException

  - by Marco

  In the past I wrote a C# library to work with OpenOffice and this worked fine both in Windows than under Ubuntu with Mono. Part of this library is published here as accepted answer. In these days I discovered that Ubuntu decided to move to LibreOffice, so I tried my library with LibreOffice latest stable release. While under Windows it's working perfectly, under Linux I receive this error: Unhandled Exception: System.TypeLoadException: A type load exception has occurred. [ERROR] FATAL UNHANDLED EXCEPTION: System.TypeLoadException: A type load exception has occurred. Usually Mono tells us which library can't load, so I can install correct package and everything is OK, but in this case I really don't know what's going bad. I'm using Ubuntu oneiric and my library is compiled with Framework 4.0. Under Windows I had to write this into app.config: <?xml version="1.0"?> <configuration> <startup useLegacyV2RuntimeActivationPolicy="true"> <supportedRuntime version="v4.0" sku=".NETFramework,Version=v4.0,Profile=Client"/> </startup> </configuration> because LibreOffice assemblies uses Framework 2.0 (I think). How can I find the reason of this error to solve it? Thanks UPDATE: Even compiling with Framework 2.0 problem (as expected) is the same. Problem (I think) is that Mono is not finding cli-uno-bridge package (installable on previous Ubuntu releases and now marked as superseded), but I cannot be sure. UPDATE 2: I created a test console application referencing cli-uno dlls on Windows (they are registered in GAC_32 and GAC_MSIL). CONSOLE app static void Main(string[] args) { Console.WriteLine("Starting"); string dir = Path.GetDirectoryName(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location); string doc = Path.Combine(dir, "Liberatoria siti web.docx"); using (QOpenOffice.OpenOffice oo = new QOpenOffice.OpenOffice()) { if (!oo.Init()) return; oo.Load(doc, true); oo.ExportToPdf(Path.ChangeExtension(doc, ".pdf")); } } LIBRARY: using unoidl.com.sun.star.lang; using unoidl.com.sun.star.uno; using unoidl.com.sun.star.container; using unoidl.com.sun.star.frame; using unoidl.com.sun.star.beans; using unoidl.com.sun.star.view; using unoidl.com.sun.star.document; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.IO; using System; namespace QOpenOffice { class OpenOffice : IDisposable { private XComponentContext context; private XMultiServiceFactory service; private XComponentLoader component; private XComponent doc; public bool Init() { Console.WriteLine("Entering Init()"); try { context = uno.util.Bootstrap.bootstrap(); service = (XMultiServiceFactory)context.getServiceManager(); component = (XComponentLoader)service.createInstance("com.sun.star.frame.Desktop"); XNameContainer filters = (XNameContainer)service.createInstance("com.sun.star.document.FilterFactory"); return true; } catch (System.Exception ex) { Console.WriteLine(ex.Message); if (ex.InnerException != null) Console.WriteLine(ex.InnerException.Message); return false; } } } } but I'm not able to see "Starting" !!! If I comment using(...) on application, I see line on console... so I think it's something wrong in DLL. There I'm not able to see "Entering Init()" message on Init(). Behaviour is the same when LibreOffice is not installed and when it is !!! try..catch block is not executed...

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• Is the Unix Philosophy still relevant in the Web 2.0 world?

  - by David Titarenco

  Introduction Hello, let me give you some background before I begin. I started programming when I was 5 or 6 on my dad's PSION II (some primitive BASIC-like language), then I learned more and more, eventually inching my way up to C, C++, Java, PHP, JS, etc. I think I'm a pretty decent coder. I think most people would agree. I'm not a complete social recluse, but I do stuff like write a virtual machine for fun. I've never taken a computer course in college because I've been in and out for the past couple of years and have only been taking core classes; never having been particularly amazing at school, perhaps I'm missing some basic tenet that most learn in CS101. I'm currently reading Coders at Work and this question is based on some ideas I read in there. A Brief (Fictionalized) Example So a certain sunny day I get an idea. I hire a designer and hammer away at some C/C++ code for a couple of months, soon thereafter releasing silvr.com, a website that transmutes lead into silver. Yep, I started my very own start-up and even gave it a clever web 2.0 name with a vowel missing. Mom and dad are proud. I come up with some numbers I should be seeing after 1, 2, 3, 6, 9, 12 months and set sail. Obviously, my transmuting server isn't perfect, sometimes it segfaults, sometimes it leaks memory. I fix it and keep truckin'. After all, gdb is my best friend. Eventually, I'm at a position where a very small community of people are happily transmuting lead into silver on a semi-regular basis, but they want to let their friends on MySpace know how many grams of lead they transmuted today. And they want to post images of their lead and silver nuggets on flickr. I'm losing out on potential traffic unless I let them log in with their Yahoo, Google, and Facebook accounts. They want webcam support and live cock fighting, merry-go-rounds and Jabberwockies. All these things seem necessary. The Aftermath Of course, I have to re-write the transmuting server! After all, I've been losing money all these months. I need OAuth libraries and OpenID libraries, JSON support, and the only stable Jabberwocky API is for Java. C++ isn't even an option anymore. I'm just one guy! The Java binary just grows and grows since I need some legacy Apache include for the JSON library, and some antiquated Sun dependency for OAuth support. Then I pick up a book like Coders at Work and read what people like jwz say about complexity... I think to myself.. Keep it simple, stupid. I like simple things. I've always loved the Unix Philosophy but even after trying to keep the new server source modular and sleek, I loathe having to write one more line of code. It feels that I'm just piling crap on top of other crap. Maybe I'm naive thinking every piece of software can be simple and clever. Maybe it's just a phase.. or is the Unix Philosophy basically dead when it comes to the current state of (web) development? I'm just kind of disheartened :(

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• iPhone dev - viewDidUnload subviews

  - by Mk12

  I'm having a hard time undestand a couple of the methods in UIViewController, but first I'll say what I think they are meant for (ignoring interface builder because I'm not using it): -init: initialize non view-related stuff that won't need to be released in low memory situations (i.e. not objects or objects that can't be recreated easily). -loadView: create the view set the [self view] property. -viewDidLoad: Create all the other view elements -viewDidUnload: Release objects created in -viewDidLoad. didReceiveMemoryWarning: Low-memory situation, release unnecessary things such as cached data, if this view doesn't have a superview then the [super didReceiveMemoryWarning] will go on to release (unload) the view and call -viewDidUnload. -dealloc: release everything -viewWillAppear:, -viewDidAppear:, -viewWillDisappear:, -viewDidDisappear: self-explanatory, not necessary unless you want to respond (do something) to those events. I'm not sure about a couple of things. First, the Apple docs say that when -viewDidUnload is called, the view has already been released and set to nil. Will -loadView get called again to recreate the view later on? There's a few things I created in -viewDidLoad that I didn't make a ivar/property for because there is no need and it will be retained by the view (because they are subviews of it). So when the view is released, it will release those too, right? When the view is released, will it release all its subviews? Because all the objects I created in -viewDidLoad are subviews of [self view]. So if they already get released why release them again in -viewDidUnload? I can understand data that is necessary when the view is visible being loaded and unloaded in these methods, but like I asked, why release the subviews if they already get released? EDIT: After reading other questions, I think I might have got it (my 2nd question). In the situation where I just use a local variable, alloc it, make it a subview and release, it will have a retain count of 1 (from adding it as a subview), so when the view is released it is too. Now for the view elements with ivars pointing to them, I wasn't using properties because no outside class would need to access them. But now I think that that's wrong, because in this situation: // MyViewController.h @interface MyViewController : UIViewController { UILabel *myLabel; } // MyViewController.m . . . - (void)viewDidLoad { myLabel = [[UILabel alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0, 0, 40, 10)]; [myLabel setText:@"Foobar"]; [[self view] addSubview:myLabel]; } - (void)viewDidUnload [ // equivalent of [self setMyLabel:nil]; without properties [myLabel release]; myLabel = nil; } In that situation, the label will be sent the -release message after it was deallocated because the ivar didn't retain it (because it wasn't a property). But with a property the retain count would be two: the view retaining it and the property. So then in -viewDidUnload it will get deallocated. So its best to just always use properties for these things, am I right? Or not? EDIT: I read somewhere that -viewDidLoad and -viewDidUnload are only for use with Interface Builder, that if you are doing everything programmatically you shouldn't use them. Is that right? Why?

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• Why do some Flask session values disappear from the session after closing the browser window, but then reappear later without me adding them?

  - by Ben

  So my understanding of Flask sessions is that I can use it like a dictionary and add values to a session by doing: session['key name'] = 'some value here' And that works fine. On a route I have the client call using AJAX post, I assign a value to the session. And it works fine. I can click on various pages of my site and the value stays in the session. If I close the browser window however, and then go back to my site, the session value I had in there is gone. So that's weird and you would think the problem is the session isn't permanent. I also implemented Flask-Openid and that uses the session to store information and that does persist if I close the browser window and open it back up again. I also checked the cookie after closing the browser window, but before going back to my site, and the cookie is indeed still there. Another odd piece of behaviour (which may be related) is that some values I have written to the session for testing purposes will go away when I access the AJAX post route and assign the correct value. So that is odd, but what is truly weird is that when I then close the browser window and open it up again, and have thus lost the value I was trying to retain, the ones that I lost previously actually return! They aren't being reassigned because there's no code in my Python files to reassign those values. Here is some outputs to helper make it clearer. They are all outputed from a route for a real page, and not the AJAX post route I mentioned above. This is the output after I have assigned the value I want to store in the session. The value key is 'userid' - all the other values are dummy ones I have added in trying to solve this problem. 'userid': 8 will stay in the session as long as I don't close the browser window. I can access other routes and the value will stay there just like it should. ['session.=', <SecureCookieSession {'userid': 8, 'test_variable_num': 102, 'adding using before request': 'hi', '_permanent': True, 'test_variable_text': 'hi!'}>] If I do close the browser window, and go back into the site, but without redoing the AJAX post request, I get this output: ['session.=', <SecureCookieSession {'adding using before request': 'hi', '_permanent': True, 'yo': 'yo'}>] The 'yo' value was not in the first first output. I don't know where it came from. I searched my code for 'yo' and there is no instances of me assigning that value anywhere. I think I may have added it to the session days ago. So it seems like it is persisting, but being hidden when the other values are written. And this last one is me accessing the AJAX post route again, and then going to the page that prints out the keys using debug. Same output as the first output I pasted above, which you would expect, and the 'yo' value is gone again (but it will come back if I close the browser window) ['session.=', <SecureCookieSession {'userid': 8, 'test_variable_num': 102, 'adding using before request': 'hi', '_permanent': True, 'test_variable_text': 'hi!'}>] I tested this in both Chrome and Firefox. So I find this all weird and I am guessing it stems from a misunderstanding of how sessions work. I think they're dictionaries and I can write dictionary values into them and retrieve them days later as long as I set the session to permanent and the cookie doesn't get deleted. Any ideas why this weird behaviour is happening?

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• Code runs 6 times slower with 2 threads than with 1

  - by Edward Bird

  So I have written some code to experiment with threads and do some testing. The code should create some numbers and then find the mean of those numbers. I think it is just easier to show you what I have so far. I was expecting with two threads that the code would run about 2 times as fast. Measuring it with a stopwatch I think it runs about 6 times slower! void findmean(std::vector<double>*, std::size_t, std::size_t, double*); int main(int argn, char** argv) { // Program entry point std::cout << "Generating data..." << std::endl; // Create a vector containing many variables std::vector<double> data; for(uint32_t i = 1; i <= 1024 * 1024 * 128; i ++) data.push_back(i); // Calculate mean using 1 core double mean = 0; std::cout << "Calculating mean, 1 Thread..." << std::endl; findmean(&data, 0, data.size(), &mean); mean /= (double)data.size(); // Print result std::cout << " Mean=" << mean << std::endl; // Repeat, using two threads std::vector<std::thread> thread; std::vector<double> result; result.push_back(0.0); result.push_back(0.0); std::cout << "Calculating mean, 2 Threads..." << std::endl; // Run threads uint32_t halfsize = data.size() / 2; uint32_t A = 0; uint32_t B, C, D; // Split the data into two blocks if(data.size() % 2 == 0) { B = C = D = halfsize; } else if(data.size() % 2 == 1) { B = C = halfsize; D = hsz + 1; } // Run with two threads thread.push_back(std::thread(findmean, &data, A, B, &(result[0]))); thread.push_back(std::thread(findmean, &data, C, D , &(result[1]))); // Join threads thread[0].join(); thread[1].join(); // Calculate result mean = result[0] + result[1]; mean /= (double)data.size(); // Print result std::cout << " Mean=" << mean << std::endl; // Return return EXIT_SUCCESS; } void findmean(std::vector<double>* datavec, std::size_t start, std::size_t length, double* result) { for(uint32_t i = 0; i < length; i ++) { *result += (*datavec).at(start + i); } } I don't think this code is exactly wonderful, if you could suggest ways of improving it then I would be grateful for that also.

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• A very strange problem related to Flash and Java

  - by Nitesh Panchal

  Hello, I have created one simple program for showing webcam of the user. It works absolutely fine when i am running without integrating it in my java web application. But as soon as i copy paste the same files in Netbeans 6.8 and try to run it. My swf file is visible but the buttons in it are totally unclickable. I get the message of allow or deny showing webcam but the buttons are not clickable. It makes my application totally useless. I thought it's a minor issue but now it's getting on my nerves. I am trying it since 3 hours but didn't find any solution. I don't think anybody faced this issue till now that's why can't seem to find any thread in any forum on it in google. I am using Netbeans 6.8, Ubuntu, Glassfish V3 and JSF. Thanks in advance :). UPDATE:- It works fine on Windows XP. Then what can be the problem with Ubuntu? Any kind of permission rights that i need to give? 2nd UPDATE:- I think this is bug with Flash. I found that this code doesn't work :- <object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,0,0" id="VideoConferenceAdmin" align="middle"> <param name="allowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain" /> <param name="wmode" value="opaque"/> <param name="allowFullScreen" value="false" /> <param NAME="FlashVars" VALUE="rootIp=localhost&amp;userName=admin&amp;roomName=test" /> <param name="movie" value="Conference/VideoConference.swf" /><param name="quality" value="high" /> <embed src="Conference/VideoConference.swf" wmode="window" FlashVars="rootIp=localhost&amp;userName=test&amp;roomName=test" quality="high" width="600" height="500" name="VideoConference" align="middle" allowScriptAccess="sameDomain" allowFullScreen="false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" /> </object> And this one works :- <object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,0,0" id="VideoConferenceAdmin" align="middle"> <param name="allowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain" /> <param name="wmode" value="opaque"/> <param name="allowFullScreen" value="false" /> <param NAME="FlashVars" VALUE="rootIp=localhost&amp;userName=admin&amp;roomName=test" /> <param name="movie" value="Conference/VideoConference.swf" /><param name="quality" value="high" /> <embed src="Conference/VideoConference.swf" wmode="window" FlashVars="rootIp=localhost&amp;userName=test&amp;roomName=test" quality="high" name="VideoConference" align="middle" allowScriptAccess="sameDomain" allowFullScreen="false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" /> </object> As you can see, just by removing the height and width attribute the panels of Flash settings work fine. I know you will find me funny but i am not. You can check out on your own if you don't trust me. Now, my question would be, can anybody tell me how do i set height and width of swf? I want it to be 600px width and 500px height. Even the style attribute doesn't work. Can i set height and width from within Flash? because without explicitly setting height and width, it looks very small. I think this should be very easy for all now. Thanks in advance :)

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• How to select table column names in a view and pass to controller in rails?

  - by zachd1_618

  So I am new to Rails, and OO programming in general. I have some grasp of the MVC architecture. My goal is to make a (nearly) completely dynamic plug-and-play plotting web server. I am fairly confused with params, forms, and select helpers. What I want to do is use Rails drop downs to basically pass parameters as strings to my controller, which will use the params to select certain column data from my database and plot it dynamically. I have the latter part of the task working, but I can't seem to pass values from my view to controller. For simplicity's sake, say my database schema looks like this: --------------Plot--------------- |____x____|____y1____|____y2____| | 1 | 1 | 1 | | 2 | 2 | 4 | | 3 | 3 | 9 | | 4 | 4 | 16 | | 5 | 5 | 25 | ... and in my Model, I have dynamic selector scopes that will let me select just certain columns of data: in Plot.rb class Plot < ActiveRecord::Base scope :select_var, lambda {|varname| select(varname)} scope :between_x, lambda {|x1,x2| where("x BETWEEN ? and ?","#{x1}","#{x2}")} So this way, I can call: irb>>@p1 = Plot.select_var(['x','y1']).between_x(1,3) and get in return a class where @p1.x and @p1.y1 are my only attributes, only for values between x=1 to x=4, which I dynamically plot. I want to start off in a view (plot/index), where I can dynamically select which variable names (table column names), and which rows from the database to fetch and plot. The problem is, most select helpers don't seem to work with columns in the database, only rows. So to select columns, I first get an array of column names that exist in my database with a function I wrote. Plots Controller def index d=Plot.first @tags = d.list_vars end So @tags = ['x','y1','y2'] Then in my plot/index.html.erb I try to use a drop down to select wich variables I send back to the controller. index.html.erb <%= select_tag( :variable, options_for_select(@plots.first.list_vars,:name,:multiple=>:true) )%> <%= button_to 'Plot now!', :controller =>"plots/plot_vars", :variable => params[:variable]%> Finally, in the controller again Plots controller ... def plot_vars @plot_data=Plot.select_vars([params[:variable]]) end The problem is everytime I try this (or one of a hundred variations thereof), the params[:variable] is nill. How can I use a drop down to pass a parameter with string variable names to the controller? Sorry its so long, I have been struggling with this for about a month now. :-( I think my biggest problem is that this setup doesn't really match the Rails architecture. I don't have "users" and "articles" as individual entities. I really have a data structure, not a data object. Trying to work with the structure in terms of data object speak is not necessarily the easiest thing to do I think. For background: My actual database has about 250 columns and a couple million rows, and they get changed and modified from time to time. I know I can make the database smarter, but its not worth it on my end. I work at a scientific institute where there are a ton of projects with databases just like this. Each one has a web developer that spends months setting up a web interface and their own janky plotting setups. I want to make this completely dynamic, as a plug-and-play solution so all you have to do is specify your database connection, and this rails setup will automatically show and plot which data you want in it. I am more of a sequential programmer and number cruncher, as are many people here. I think this project could be very helpful in the end, but its difficult to figure out for me right now.

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• Please clarify how create/update happens against child entities of an aggregate root

  - by christian

  After much reading and thinking as I begin to get my head wrapped around DDD, I am a bit confused about the best practices for dealing with complex hierarchies under an aggregate root. I think this is a FAQ but after reading countless examples and discussions, no one is quite talking about the issue I'm seeing. If I am aligned with the DDD thinking, entities below the aggregate root should be immutable. This is the crux of my trouble, so if that isn't correct, that is why I'm lost. Here is a fabricated example...hope it holds enough water to discuss. Consider an automobile insurance policy (I'm not in insurance, but this matches the language I hear when on the phone w/ my insurance company). Policy is clearly an entity. Within the policy, let's say we have Auto. Auto, for the sake of this example, only exists within a policy (maybe you could transfer an Auto to another policy, so this is potential for an aggregate as well, which changes Policy...but assume it simpler than that for now). Since an Auto cannot exist without a Policy, I think it should be an Entity but not a root. So Policy in this case is an aggregate root. Now, to create a Policy, let's assume it has to have at least one auto. This is where I get frustrated. Assume Auto is fairly complex, including many fields and maybe a child for where it is garaged (a Location). If I understand correctly, a "create Policy" constructor/factory would have to take as input an Auto or be restricted via a builder to not be created without this Auto. And the Auto's creation, since it is an entity, can't be done beforehand (because it is immutable? maybe this is just an incorrect interpretation). So you don't get to say new Auto and then setX, setY, add(Z). If Auto is more than somewhat trivial, you end up having to build a huge hierarchy of builders and such to try to manage creating an Auto within the context of the Policy. One more twist to this is later, after the Policy is created and one wishes to add another Auto...or update an existing Auto. Clearly, the Policy controls this...fine...but Policy.addAuto() won't quite fly because one can't just pass in a new Auto (right!?). Examples say things like Policy.addAuto(VIN, make, model, etc.) but are all so simple that that looks reasonable. But if this factory method approach falls apart with too many parameters (the entire Auto interface, conceivably) I need a solution. From that point in my thinking, I'm realizing that having a transient reference to an entity is OK. So, maybe it is fine to have a entity created outside of its parent within the aggregate in a transient environment, so maybe it is OK to say something like: auto = AutoFactory.createAuto(); auto.setX auto.setY or if sticking to immutability, AutoBuilder.new().setX().setY().build() and then have it get sorted out when you say Policy.addAuto(auto) This insurance example gets more interesting if you add Events, such as an Accident with its PolicyReports or RepairEstimates...some value objects but most entities that are all really meaningless outside the policy...at least for my simple example. The lifecycle of Policy with its growing hierarchy over time seems the fundamental picture I must draw before really starting to dig in...and it is more the factory concept or how the child entities get built/attached to an aggregate root that I haven't seen a solid example of. I think I'm close. Hope this is clear and not just a repeat FAQ that has answers all over the place.

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• Fake ISAPI Handler to serve static files with extention that are rewritted by url rewriter

  - by developerit

  Introduction I often map html extention to the asp.net dll in order to use url rewritter with .html extentions. Recently, in the new version of www.nouvelair.ca, we renamed all urls to end with .html. This works great, but failed when we used FCK Editor. Static html files would not get serve because we mapped the html extension to the .NET Framework. We can we do to to use .html extension with our rewritter but still want to use IIS behavior with static html files. Analysis I thought that this could be resolve with a simple HTTP handler. We would map urls of static files in our rewriter to this handler that would read the static file and serve it, just as IIS would do. Implementation This is how I coded the class. Note that this may not be bullet proof. I only tested it once and I am sure that the logic behind IIS is more complicated that this. If you find errors or think of possible improvements, let me know. Imports System.Web Imports System.Web.Services ' Author: Nicolas Brassard ' For: Solutions Nitriques inc. http://www.nitriques.com ' Date Created: April 18, 2009 ' Last Modified: April 18, 2009 ' License: CPOL (http://www.codeproject.com/info/cpol10.aspx) ' Files: ISAPIDotNetHandler.ashx ' ISAPIDotNetHandler.ashx.vb ' Class: ISAPIDotNetHandler ' Description: Fake ISAPI handler to serve static files. ' Usefull when you want to serve static file that has a rewrited extention. ' Example: It often map html extention to the asp.net dll in order to use url rewritter with .html. ' If you want to still serve static html file, add a rewritter rule to redirect html files to this handler Public Class ISAPIDotNetHandler Implements System.Web.IHttpHandler Sub ProcessRequest(ByVal context As HttpContext) Implements IHttpHandler.ProcessRequest ' Since we are doing the job IIS normally does with html files, ' we set the content type to match html. ' You may want to customize this with your own logic, if you want to serve ' txt or xml or any other text file context.Response.ContentType = "text/html" ' We begin a try here. Any error that occurs will result in a 404 Page Not Found error. ' We replicate the behavior of IIS when it doesn't find the correspoding file. Try ' Declare a local variable containing the value of the query string Dim uri As String = context.Request("fileUri") ' If the value in the query string is null, ' throw an error to generate a 404 If String.IsNullOrEmpty(uri) Then Throw New ApplicationException("No fileUri") End If ' If the value in the query string doesn't end with .html, then block the acces ' This is a HUGE security hole since it could permit full read access to .aspx, .config, etc. If Not uri.ToLower.EndsWith(".html") Then ' throw an error to generate a 404 Throw New ApplicationException("Extention not allowed") End If ' Map the file on the server. ' If the file doesn't exists on the server, it will throw an exception and generate a 404. Dim fullPath As String = context.Server.MapPath(uri) ' Read the actual file Dim stream As IO.StreamReader = FileIO.FileSystem.OpenTextFileReader(fullPath) ' Write the file into the response context.Response.Output.Write(stream.ReadToEnd) ' Close and Dipose the stream stream.Close() stream.Dispose() stream = Nothing Catch ex As Exception ' Set the Status Code of the response context.Response.StatusCode = 404 'Page not found ' For testing and bebugging only ! This may cause a security leak ' context.Response.Output.Write(ex.Message) Finally ' In all cases, flush and end the response context.Response.Flush() context.Response.End() End Try End Sub ' Automaticly generated by Visual Studio ReadOnly Property IsReusable() As Boolean Implements IHttpHandler.IsReusable Get Return False End Get End Property End Class Conclusion As you see, with our static files map to this handler using query string (ex.: /ISAPIDotNetHandler.ashx?fileUri=index.html) you will have the same behavior as if you ask for the uri /index.html. Finally, test this only in IIS with the html extension map to aspnet_isapi.dll. Url rewritting will work in Casini (Internal Web Server shipped with Visual Studio) but it’s not the same as with IIS since EVERY request is handle by .NET. Versions First release

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• Which programming idiom to choose for this open source library?

  - by Walkman

  I have an interesting question about which programming idiom is easier to use for beginner developers writing concrete file parsing classes. I'm developing an open source library, which one of the main functionality is to parse plain text files and get structured information from them. All of the files contains the same kind of information, but can be in different formats like XML, plain text (each of them is structured differently), etc. There are a common set of information pieces which is the same in all (e.g. player names, table names, some id numbers) There are formats which are very similar to each other, so it's possible to define a common Base class for them to facilitate concrete format parser implementations. So I can clearly define base classes like SplittablePlainTextFormat, XMLFormat, SeparateSummaryFormat, etc. Each of them hints the kind of structure they aim to parse. All of the concrete classes should have the same information pieces, no matter what. To be useful at all, this library needs to define at least 30-40 of these parsers. A couple of them are more important than others (obviously the more popular formats). Now my question is, which is the best programming idiom to choose to facilitate the development of these concrete classes? Let me explain: I think imperative programming is easy to follow even for beginners, because the flow is fixed, the statements just come one after another. Right now, I have this: class SplittableBaseFormat: def parse(self): "Parses the body of the hand history, but first parse header if not yet parsed." if not self.header_parsed: self.parse_header() self._parse_table() self._parse_players() self._parse_button() self._parse_hero() self._parse_preflop() self._parse_street('flop') self._parse_street('turn') self._parse_street('river') self._parse_showdown() self._parse_pot() self._parse_board() self._parse_winners() self._parse_extra() self.parsed = True So the concrete parser need to define these methods in order in any way they want. Easy to follow, but takes longer to implement each individual concrete parser. So what about declarative? In this case Base classes (like SplittableFormat and XMLFormat) would do the heavy lifting based on regex and line/node number declarations in the concrete class, and concrete classes have no code at all, just line numbers and regexes, maybe other kind of rules. Like this: class SplittableFormat: def parse_table(): "Parses TABLE_REGEX and get information" # set attributes here def parse_players(): "parses PLAYER_REGEX and get information" # set attributes here class SpecificFormat1(SplittableFormat): TABLE_REGEX = re.compile('^(?P<table_name>.*) other info \d* etc') TABLE_LINE = 1 PLAYER_REGEX = re.compile('^Player \d: (?P<player_name>.*) has (.*) in chips.') PLAYER_LINE = 16 class SpecificFormat2(SplittableFormat): TABLE_REGEX = re.compile(r'^Tournament #(\d*) (?P<table_name>.*) other info2 \d* etc') TABLE_LINE = 2 PLAYER_REGEX = re.compile(r'^Seat \d: (?P<player_name>.*) has a stack of (\d*)') PLAYER_LINE = 14 So if I want to make it possible for non-developers to write these classes the way to go seems to be the declarative way, however, I'm almost certain I can't eliminate the declarations of regexes, which clearly needs (senior :D) programmers, so should I care about this at all? Do you think it matters to choose one over another or doesn't matter at all? Maybe if somebody wants to work on this project, they will, if not, no matter which idiom I choose. Can I "convert" non-programmers to help developing these? What are your observations? Other considerations: Imperative will allow any kind of work; there is a simple flow, which they can follow but inside that, they can do whatever they want. It would be harder to force a common interface with imperative because of this arbitrary implementations. Declarative will be much more rigid, which is a bad thing, because formats might change over time without any notice. Declarative will be harder for me to develop and takes longer time. Imperative is already ready to release. I hope a nice discussion will happen in this thread about programming idioms regarding which to use when, which is better for open source projects with different scenarios, which is better for wide range of developer skills. TL; DR: Parsing different file formats (plain text, XML) They contains same kind of information Target audience: non-developers, beginners Regex probably cannot be avoided 30-40 concrete parser classes needed Facilitate coding these concrete classes Which idiom is better?

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• Developer’s Life – Every Developer is a Batman

  - by Pinal Dave

  Batman is one of the darkest superheroes in the fantasy canon.  He does not come to his powers through any sort of magical coincidence or radioactive insect, but through a lot of psychological scarring caused by witnessing the death of his parents.  Despite his dark back story, he possesses a lot of admirable abilities that I feel bear comparison to developers. Batman has the distinct advantage that his alter ego, Bruce Wayne is a millionaire (or billionaire in today’s reboots).  This means that he can spend his time working on his athletic abilities, building a secret lair, and investing his money in cool tools.  This might not be true for developers (well, most developers), but I still think there are many parallels. So how are developers like Batman? Well, read on my list of reasons. Develop Skills Batman works on his skills.  He didn’t get the strength to scale Gotham’s skyscrapers by inheriting his powers or suffering an industrial accident.  Developers also hone their skills daily.  They might not be doing pull-ups and scaling buldings, but I think their skills are just as impressive. Clear Goals Batman is driven to build a better Gotham.  He knows that the criminal who killed his parents was a small-time thief, not a super villain – so he has larger goals in mind than simply chasing one villain.  He wants his city as a whole to be better.  Developers are also driven to make things better.  It can be easy to get hung up on one problem, but in the end it is best to focus on the well-being of the system as a whole. Ultimate Teamplayers Batman is the hero Gotham needs – even when that means appearing to be the bad guys.  Developers probably know that feeling well.  Batman takes the fall for a crime he didn’t commit, and developers often have to deliver bad news about the limitations of their networks and servers.  It’s not always a job filled with glory and thanks, but someone has to do it. Always Ready Batman and the Boy Scouts have this in common – they are always prepared.  Let’s add developers to this list.  Batman has an amazing tool belt with gadgets and gizmos, and let’s not even get into all the functions of the Batmobile!  Developers’ skills might be the knowledge and skills they have developed, not tools they can carry in a utility belt, but that doesn’t make them any less impressive. 100% Dedication Bruce Wayne cultivates the personality of a playboy, never keeping the same girlfriend for long and spending his time partying.  Even though he hides it, his driving force is his deep concern and love for his friends and the city as a whole.  Developers also care a lot about their company and employees – even when it is driving them crazy.  You do your best work when you care about your job on a personal level. Quality Output Batman believes the city deserves to be saved.  The citizens might have a love-hate relationship with both Batman and Bruce Wayne, and employees might not always appreciate developers.  Batman and developers, though, keep working for the best of everyone. I hope you are all enjoying reading about developers-as-superheroes as much as I am enjoying writing about them.  Please tell me how else developers are like Superheroes in the comments – especially if you know any developers who are faster than a speeding bullet and can leap tall buildings in a single bound. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL Tagged: Developer, Superhero

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• Performance and Optimization Isn’t Evil

  - by Reed

  Donald Knuth is a fairly amazing guy.  I consider him one of the most influential contributors to computer science of all time.  Unfortunately, most of the time I hear his name, I cringe.  This is because it’s typically somebody quoting a small portion of one of his famous statements on optimization: “premature optimization is the root of all evil.” I mention that this is only a portion of the entire quote, and, as such, I feel that Knuth is being quoted out of context.  Optimization is important.  It is a critical part of every software development effort, and should never be ignored.  A developer who ignores optimization is not a professional.  Every developer should understand optimization – know what to optimize, when to optimize it, and how to think about code in a way that is intelligent and productive from day one. I want to start by discussing my own, personal motivation here.  I recently wrote about a performance issue I ran across, and was slammed by multiple comments and emails that effectively boiled down to: “You’re an idiot.  Premature optimization is the root of all evil.  This doesn’t matter.”  It didn’t matter that I discovered this while measuring in a profiler, and that it was a portion of my code base that can take “many hours to complete.”  Even so, multiple people instantly jump to “it’s premature – it doesn’t matter.” This is a common thread I see.  For example, StackOverflow has many pages of posts with answers that boil down to (mis)quoting Knuth.  In fact, just about any question relating to a performance related issue gets this quote thrown at it immediately – whether it deserves it or not.  That being said, I did receive some positive comments and emails as well.  Many people want to understand how to optimize their code, approaches to take, tools and techniques they can use, and any other advice they can discover. First, lets get back to Knuth – I mentioned before that Knuth is being quoted out of context.  Lets start by looking at the entire quote from his 1974 paper Structured Programming with go to Statements: “We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil. Yet we should not pass up our opportunities in that critical 3%. A good programmer will not be lulled into complacency by such reasoning, he will be wise to look carefully at the critical code; but only after that code has been identified.” Ironically, if you read Knuth’s original paper, this statement was made in the middle of a discussion of how Knuth himself had changed how he approaches optimization.  It was never a statement saying “don’t optimize”, but rather, “optimizing intelligently provides huge advantages.”  His approach had three benefits: “a) it doesn’t take long” … “b) the payoff is real”, c) you can “be less efficient in the other parts of my programs, which therefore are more readable and more easily written and debugged.” Looking at Knuth’s premise here, and reading that section of his paper, really leads to a few observations: Optimization is important  “he will be wise to look carefully at the critical code” Normally, 3% of your code – three lines out of every 100 you write, are “critical code” and will require some optimization: “we should not pass up our opportunities in that critical 3%” Optimization, if done well, should not be time consuming: “it doesn’t take long” Optimization, if done correctly, provides real benefits: “the payoff is real” None of this is new information.  People who care about optimization have been discussing this for years – for example, Rico Mariani’s Designing For Performance (a fantastic article) discusses many of the same issues very intelligently. That being said, many developers seem unable or unwilling to consider optimization.  Many others don’t seem to know where to start.  As such, I’m going to spend some time writing about optimization – what is it, how should we think about it, and what can we do to improve our own code.

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• DESIGNING FOR WIN PHONE 7

  Designing applications for the Win Phone 7 is very similar to designing for print. In my opinion, it feels like a cross between a tri-fold brochure and a poster. I based my prototype designs on Microsofts Metro style guide, with typography as the main focus and stunning imagery for support. Its nice to have fixed factors regulating the design, making it a fun and fresh design experience. Microsoft provides a UI Design Guidelines document that outlines layout sizes, background image size, recommended typefaces and spacing. You know what you are designing for and you know how it will look and act on the win phone 7 platform. Although applications are not required to strictly adhere to the Metro style guide I feel it makes the best use of the panorama view  and navigation. With strong examples of this UI concept in place like their Zune-like music + videos hub, I found it fairly easy to put together a few quick app mockups (see below). In addition to design guidelines, using a ready built design templates, or a win phone 7 specific panorama control like the one by Clarity Consulting will make the process of bringing your designs to life much more efficient. Likes, Dislikes, and Challenges I think the idea of the hub is completely intuitive. This concept clearly breaks down info into more manageable pieces, and greatly helps with organization when designing for the phone. I like the chromeless appearance, allowing the core functionality of the application to take precedence over gradients, textures, bevels, drop shadows, and the complicated animations you see on the web. Although I understand the Win Phone 7 guidelines are a work in progress, I found a few contradictions. I also noticed that certain design specifications did not translate well to the phone emulator . If you use their guidelines as suggested best practices and not as fixed definitions you will have more success. Multi-directional vs Linear The main challenge I had was stepping away from familiar navigational examples seen in other mobile phones. I had to keep reminding myself that the content to the right and to the left of what I was working on didnt necessarily have to have a direct link to one another. I started thinking multi-directional as opposed to linear. Win phone 7 vs IPhone The Metro styling of the Win Phone 7 is similar to the Zune HD and the Windows Media Center UI and offers a different interface paradigm than the IPhone. When navigating an application it feels like you are panning a long seamless page of information in contrast to the multiple panels of an IPhone. I think there is less of an opportunity to overdesign your application, which happens often with IPhone applications. While both interfaces are simple and sleek, win phone 7 really gets down to the basics. IPhone sets a high standard for designing for touch, designing for win phone 7 could improve on that user experience with a consistent and strategic use of white space and staying away from a menu and icon heavy UI. Design Examples for Win Phone 7 Applications Here are some concepts for both generic and brand specific applications for Win Phone 7: View Full Album Resources to get you going with your own Win Phone 7 design: Helpful design templates for Win Phone 7  http://www.shazaml.com/archives/windows-phone-7-ui-templates Here is the interaction design guide for Win Phone 7 http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9713252 Windows has a project template for Blend 4 and Visual Studio 2010 RC1 http://developer.windowsphone.com/ Clarity Consulting developed a panorama control for Win Phone 7 http://blogs.claritycon.com/blogs/design/archive/2010/03/30/building-the-elusive-windows-phone-panorama-control.aspxDid you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• DESIGNING FOR WIN PHONE 7

  Designing applications for the Win Phone 7 is very similar to designing for print. In my opinion, it feels like a cross between a tri-fold brochure and a poster. I based my prototype designs on Microsofts Metro style guide, with typography as the main focus and stunning imagery for support. Its nice to have fixed factors regulating the design, making it a fun and fresh design experience. Microsoft provides a UI Design Guidelines document that outlines layout sizes, background image size, recommended typefaces and spacing. You know what you are designing for and you know how it will look and act on the win phone 7 platform. Although applications are not required to strictly adhere to the Metro style guide I feel it makes the best use of the panorama view  and navigation. With strong examples of this UI concept in place like their Zune-like music + videos hub, I found it fairly easy to put together a few quick app mockups (see below). In addition to design guidelines, using a ready built design templates, or a win phone 7 specific panorama control like the one by Clarity Consulting will make the process of bringing your designs to life much more efficient. Likes, Dislikes, and Challenges I think the idea of the hub is completely intuitive. This concept clearly breaks down info into more manageable pieces, and greatly helps with organization when designing for the phone. I like the chromeless appearance, allowing the core functionality of the application to take precedence over gradients, textures, bevels, drop shadows, and the complicated animations you see on the web. Although I understand the Win Phone 7 guidelines are a work in progress, I found a few contradictions. I also noticed that certain design specifications did not translate well to the phone emulator . If you use their guidelines as suggested best practices and not as fixed definitions you will have more success. Multi-directional vs Linear The main challenge I had was stepping away from familiar navigational examples seen in other mobile phones. I had to keep reminding myself that the content to the right and to the left of what I was working on didnt necessarily have to have a direct link to one another. I started thinking multi-directional as opposed to linear. Win phone 7 vs IPhone The Metro styling of the Win Phone 7 is similar to the Zune HD and the Windows Media Center UI and offers a different interface paradigm than the IPhone. When navigating an application it feels like you are panning a long seamless page of information in contrast to the multiple panels of an IPhone. I think there is less of an opportunity to overdesign your application, which happens often with IPhone applications. While both interfaces are simple and sleek, win phone 7 really gets down to the basics. IPhone sets a high standard for designing for touch, designing for win phone 7 could improve on that user experience with a consistent and strategic use of white space and staying away from a menu and icon heavy UI. Design Examples for Win Phone 7 Applications Here are some concepts for both generic and brand specific applications for Win Phone 7: View Full Album Resources to get you going with your own Win Phone 7 design: Helpful design templates for Win Phone 7  http://www.shazaml.com/archives/windows-phone-7-ui-templates Here is the interaction design guide for Win Phone 7 http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9713252 Windows has a project template for Blend 4 and Visual Studio 2010 RC1 http://developer.windowsphone.com/ Clarity Consulting developed a panorama control for Win Phone 7 http://blogs.claritycon.com/blogs/design/archive/2010/03/30/building-the-elusive-windows-phone-panorama-control.aspxDid you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• What are developer's problems with helpful error messages?

  - by Moo-Juice

  It continue to astounds me that, in this day and age, products that have years of use under their belt, built by teams of professionals, still to this day - fail to provide helpful error messages to the user. In some cases, the addition of just a little piece of extra information could save a user hours of trouble. A program that generates an error, generated it for a reason. It has everything at its disposal to inform the user as much as it can, why something failed. And yet it seems that providing information to aid the user is a low-priority. I think this is a huge failing. One example is from SQL Server. When you try and restore a database that is in use, it quite rightly won't let you. SQL Server knows what processes and applications are accessing it. Why can't it include information about the process(es) that are using the database? I know not everyone passes an Applicatio_Name attribute on their connection string, but even a hint about the machine in question could be helpful. Another candidate, also SQL Server (and mySQL) is the lovely string or binary data would be truncated error message and equivalents. A lot of the time, a simple perusal of the SQL statement that was generated and the table shows which column is the culprit. This isn't always the case, and if the database engine picked up on the error, why can't it save us that time and just tells us which damned column it was? On this example, you could argue that there may be a performance hit to checking it and that this would impede the writer. Fine, I'll buy that. How about, once the database engine knows there is an error, it does a quick comparison after-the-fact, between values that were going to be stored, versus the column lengths. Then display that to the user. ASP.NET's horrid Table Adapters are also guilty. Queries can be executed and one can be given an error message saying that a constraint somewhere is being violated. Thanks for that. Time to compare my data model against the database, because the developers are too lazy to provide even a row number, or example data. (For the record, I'd never use this data-access method by choice, it's just a project I have inherited!). Whenever I throw an exception from my C# or C++ code, I provide everything I have at hand to the user. The decision has been made to throw it, so the more information I can give, the better. Why did my function throw an exception? What was passed in, and what was expected? It takes me just a little longer to put something meaningful in the body of an exception message. Hell, it does nothing but help me whilst I develop, because I know my code throws things that are meaningful. One could argue that complicated exception messages should not be displayed to the user. Whilst I disagree with that, it is an argument that can easily be appeased by having a different level of verbosity depending on your build. Even then, the users of ASP.NET and SQL Server are not your typical users, and would prefer something full of verbosity and yummy information because they can track down their problems faster. Why to developers think it is okay, in this day and age, to provide the bare minimum amount of information when an error occurs? It's 2011 guys, come on.

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