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• Account Listings on APress and O'Reilly

  - by TATWORTH

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/TATWORTH/archive/2013/06/20/e-books-from-apress-and-oreilly.aspxIn recent days both APress and O'Reilly have radically improved the way they display items registered against your account with them.APress now show only one line per e-book and the multitude of formats is handled by a drop-down list. The result is that the list of APress books I have bought now requires less paging through. The only things that the APress lacks are:The ability to show all on the page (currently options for 10,20 and 50 per page)The ability to sort on title or date bought or date updatedO'Reilly have always shown the formats available by a series of hyperlinks along one line. They have improved their list as follows:You can sort on title or date bought or date updatedClicking on a line shows full detail of the item (include image, download details, errata link and catalog page). Clicking again collapses the detail.You can select all your purchased items together or just show E-Books or Print or VideosNow why is the date updated important? Updates are issued for various books  (particularly those made available whilst still being written) - the publishers very kindly email you when an update is available but finding it in the list to download it again is not as easy as you think, however sort on release date and they are easy to find!

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• How do I parse a header with two different version [ID3] avoiding code duplication?

  - by user66141

  I really hope you can give me some interesting viewpoints for my situation, because I am not satisfied with my current approach. I am writing an MP3 parser, starting with an ID3v2 parser. Right now I`m working on the extended header parsing, my issue is that the optional header is defined differently in version 2.3 and 2.4 of the tag. The 2.3 version optional header is defined as follows: struct ID3_3_EXTENDED_HEADER{ DWORD dwExtHeaderSize; //Extended header size (either 6 or 8 bytes , excluded) WORD wExtFlags; //Extended header flags DWORD dwSizeOfPadding; //Size of padding (size of the tag excluding the frames and headers) }; While the 2.4 version is defined : struct ID3_4_EXTENDED_HEADER{ DWORD dwExtHeaderSize; //Extended header size (synchsafe int) BYTE bNumberOfFlagBytes; //Number of flag bytes BYTE bFlags; //Flags }; How could I parse the header while minimizing code duplication? Using two different functions to parse each version sounds less great, using a single function with a different flow for each occasion is similar, any good practices for this kind of issues ? Any tips for avoiding code duplication? Any help would be appreciated.

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• Are long methods always bad?

  - by wobbily_col

  So looking around earlier I noticed some comments about long methods being bad practice. I am not sure I always agree that long methods are bad (and would like opinions from others). For example I have some Django views that do a bit of processing of the objects before sending them to the view, a long method being 350 lines of code. I have my code written so that it deals with the paramaters - sorting / filtering the queryset, then bit by bit does some processing on the objects my query has returned. So the processing is mainly conditional aggregation, that has complex enough rules it can't easily be done in the database, so I have some variables declared outside the main loop then get altered during the loop. varaible_1 = 0 variable_2 = 0 for object in queryset : if object.condition_condition_a and variable_2 > 0 : variable 1+= 1 ..... ... . more conditions to alter the variables return queryset, and context So according to the theory I should factor out all the code into smaller methods, so That I have the view method as being maximum one page long. However having worked on various code bases in the past, I sometimes find it makes the code less readable, when you need to constantly jump from one method to the next figuring out all the parts of it, while keeping the outermost method in your head. I find that having a long method that is well formatted, you can see the logic more easily, as it isn't getting hidden away in inner methods. I could factor out the code into smaller methods, but often there is is an inner loop being used for two or three things, so it would result in more complex code, or methods that don't do one thing but two or three (alternatively I could repeat inner loops for each task, but then there will be a performance hit). So is there a case that long methods are not always bad? Is there always a case for writing methods, when they will only be used in one place?

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• Hosting and domain registrations for multiple clients under a single hosting account of mine?

  - by letseatfood

  I am finally getting regular work designing, developing, and deploying websites for small businesses and individuals. So far the websites utilize single-user content management systems, so the websites create, as far as I know, minimal load on the shared servers. I have always required that each of my clients purchase annual shared hosting at Dreamhost. For domain registration, I ask that they register with Dreamhost, but some already have a registered domain elsewhere and this is fine with me. I do this so the billing issues are the client's responsibility, not mine. My question is: Since I can register unlimited domains and connect them to my one shared hosting account at Dreamhost, should I not be requiring clients to individually pay for shared hosting and a domain? Should I actually be paying for one hosting account and then hosting all of my client's websites on that account? As I said before, I currently have each client buy their own hosting, because I feel that, for example, if there is high traffic to their site, there would be less a chance of the site going down than if their site was hosted with many others on one account. I am famous for being long-winded, please let me know if I can clarify at all. Thanks!

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• Is the Alternate Ubuntu installer still required for LVM or Software RAID setup?

  - by jimp

  Over the past 5 years, I have been setting up Ubuntu servers using the Alternate installer. I need to provision a new server today, and I'm curious if the Alternate CD is still the only way to setup LVM/RAID at installation time. I'm my limited experience with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, I noticed it's single installer configures LVM automatically. Has Ubuntu's installer, at least the standard "Server" installer, added support for LVM/RAID, or is the Alternate installer still required for that kind of server setup? http://mirror.anl.gov/pub/ubuntu-iso/DVDs/ubuntu/12.04.1/release/ Alternate install CD The alternate install CD allows you to perform certain specialist installations of Ubuntu. It provides for the following situations: setting up automated deployments; upgrading from older installations without network access; LVM and/or RAID partitioning; installs on systems with less than about 384MiB of RAM (although note that low-memory systems may not be able to run a full desktop environment reasonably). LVM has always been fundamental for our server needs, so I'm surprised if it is still not considered a server-worthy feature.

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• What is a correct/polite way to inherit from an abandoned open-source project for a new open-source project?

  - by Kabumbus

  My team just tried to contact some guys from an old open source project hosted on code.google.com. We told them that we'd like to join their project and commit to it — at least to some branch of it — but no one responded to us. We tried everyone, owners and committers; no one was in any way active, and no one replied. But we have some code to commit and we really would love to continue work on that project. So we need to create a new project. We came up with a name for it which is close to but not a duplicate of the name of the project we want to inherit from. How should we do our first commit, and what should the commit message be? Should we just copy their code to our repository with a comment like "we inherited this code, we found it here under such and such a license ... now we're upgrading it to this more/less strict license ..."? Or should we just use their code as our first commit, with updates saying "we inherited from ... we made such and such changes ..."?

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• Tiled Editor: How is this Map Handling Collision?

  - by user2736286

  BrowserQuest map in question. From what I understand, with tiled, there are two main ways to specify collision: Create an object layer, and interpret the shapes in the engine as collision objects. Create a tiled layer, and make all tiles in the layer have a collision property, and interpret all tiles in the layer as collision objects. I'm using BrowserQuest as a big source of inspiration for my project, and I want to know how they handled collision on the level editing side. I've checked through all their layers, expecting an object layer to be handling cliff collision like: But there are no such object layers to be found. Furthermore, the tile layers containing the tiles for such cliffs have no properties at all, meaning that they didn't just specify "collision" for such tile layers. I especially need to know how they handled less rectangular shapes like: I could imagine that they are not using explicit collision layers, but instead determining collision in the actual engine, based off the presence of specific tile layer sprites. Only because BrowserQuest has whole-tile movement, and it wouldn't look too odd if a small apple, taking up only a fraction of the tile size, prevents movement over that entire tile. But I'm creating a game with more precise movement, so collision has to be tight to the apple, and I really want to know how BrowserQuest approached collision defining. If anyone knowledgeable with Tiled could take a quick look at the map, I'd appreciate it! I'm tearing my hair out here :). Thanks

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• Modular Database Structures

  - by John D

  I have been examining the code base we use in work and I am worried about the size the packages have grown to. The actual code is modular, procedures have been broken down into small functional (and testable) parts. The issue I see is that we have 100 procedures in a single package - almost an entire domain model. I had thought of breaking these packages down - to create sub domains that are centered around the procedure relationships to other objects. Group a bunch of procedures that have 80% of their relationships to three tables etc. The end result would be a lot more packages, but the packages would be smaller and I feel the entire code base would be more readable - when procedures cross between two domain models it is less of a struggle to figure which package it belongs to. The problem I now have is what the actual benefit of all this would really be. I looked at the general advantages of modularity: 1. Re-usability 2. Asynchronous Development 3. Maintainability Yet when I consider our latest development, the procedures within the packages are already reusable. At this advanced stage we rarely require asynchronous development - and when it is required we simply ladder the stories across iterations. So I guess my question is if people know of reasons why you would break down classes rather than just the methods inside of classes? Right now I do believe there is an issue with these mega packages forming but the only benefit I can really pin down to break them down is readability - something that experience gained from working with them would solve.

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• Deciding on a company-wide javascript strategy [on hold]

  - by drogon

  Our company is moving most of its software from thick-client winforms apps to web apps. We are using asp.net mvc on the server side. Most of the developers are brand new to the web and need to become efficient and knowledgeable at writing client-side web code (javascript). We are deciding on a number of things and would appreciate feedback on the following: Angular.js or Backbone.js? Backbone (w/ Underscore) is certainly more light weight, but requires more custom development. Angular seems to be a full-fledged framework, but would require everyone to embrace it and probably a longer learning curve(??). (Note: I know nothing about Angular at this point) Require.js or script includes w/ MVC bundleconfig? Require.js makes development "feel like" c# (importing namespaces). But, integrating the build/minification process can be a pain (especially the configuration). Bundling via mvc requires developers to worry more about which scripts to include but has less overall development friction. Typescript vs Javascript Regardless of frameworks, our developers are going to need to learn the basics. Typescript is more like c# and MAY be easier for c# developers to understand. However, learning TypeScript before javascript may hinder their mastery of javascript at the expense of efficiency.

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• Hash Algorithm Randomness Visualization

  - by clstroud

  I'm curious if anyone here has any idea how the images were generated as shown in this response: Which hashing algorithm is best for uniqueness and speed? Ian posted a very well-received response but I can't seem to understand how he went about making the images. I hate to make a new question dedicated to this, but I can't find any means to ask him more directly. On the other hand, perhaps someone has an alternative perspective. The best I can personally come up with would be to have it almost like a bar graph, which would illustrate how evenly the buckets of the hash table are being generated. I have a working Cocoa program that does this, but it can't generate anything like what he showed there. So the question is two fold I suppose: A) How does one truly interpret the data he shows? Is it more than "less whitespace = better"? B) How does one generate such an image based on some set of inputs, a hash, and an index? Perhaps I'm misunderstanding entirely, but I really would like to know more about this particular visualization technique. Or maybe I'm mis-applying this to hash tables rather than just hashes in general, but in that case I don't know how it would be "bounded" for the image.

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• Generic rule parser for RPG board game rules - how to do it?

  - by burzum

  I want to build a generic rule parser for pen and paper style RPG systems. A rule can involve usually 1 to N entities 1 to N roles of a dice and calculating values based on multiple attributes of an entity. For example: Player has STR 18, his currently equipped weapon gives him a bonus of +1 STR but a malus of DEX -1. He attacks a monster entity and the game logic now is required to run a set of rules or actions: Player rolls the dice, if he gets for example 8 or more (base attack value he needs to pass is one of his base attributes!) his attack is successfully. The monster then rolls the dice to calculate if the attack goes through it's armor. If yes the damage is taken if not the attack was blocked. Besides simple math rules can also have constraints like applying only to a certain class of user (warrior vs wizzard for example) or any other attribute. So this is not just limited to mathematical operations. If you're familiar with RPG systems like Dungeon and Dragons you'll know what I'm up to. My issue is now that I have no clue how to exactly build this the best possible way. I want people to be able to set up any kind of rule and later simply do an action like selecting a player and a monster and run an action (set of rules like an attack). I'm asking less for help with the database side of things but more about how to come up with a structure and a parser for it to keep my rules flexible. The language of choice for this is php by the way.

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• How is determined an impact of a requirement change on the existing code?

  - by MainMa

  Hi, How companies working on large projects evaluate an impact of a single modification on an existing code? Since my question is probably not very clear, here's an example: Let's take a sample business application which deals with tasks. In the database, each task has a state, 0 being "Pending", ... 5 - "Finished". A new requirement adds a new state, between 2nd and 3rd one. It means that: A constraint on the values 1 - 5 in the database must be changed, Business layer and code contracts must be changed to add a new state, Data access layer must be changed to take in account that, for example the state StateReady is now 6 instead of 5, etc. The application must implement a new state visually, add new controls for it, new localized strings for tool-tips, etc. When an application is written recently by one developer, it's more or less easy to predict every change to do. On the other hand, when an application was written for years by many people, no single person can anticipate every change immediately, without any investigation. So since this situation (such changes in requirements) is very frequent, I imagine there are already some clever techniques and ways to predict the impact. Is there any? Do you know any books which deal about this subject? Note: my question is not related to How do you deal with changing requirements? question. In fact, I'm not interested in evaluating the cost of a change, but rather the way to predict the parts of an application which will be concerned by the change. What will be those changes and how difficult they are really doesn't matter in my question.

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• What is the value to checking in broken unit tests?

  - by Adam W.

  While there are ways of keeping unit tests from being executed, what is the value of checking in broken unit tests? I will use a simple example. Case sensitivity. The current code is Case Sensitive. A valid input into the method is "Cat" and it would return an enum of Animal.Cat. However, the desired functionality of the method should not be case sensitive. So if the method described was passed "cat" it could possibly return something like Animal.Null instead of Animal.Cat and the unit test would fail. Though a simple code change would make this work, a more complex issue may take weeks to fix, but identifying the bug with a unit test could be a less complex task. The application currently being analyzed has 4 years of code that "works". However, recent discussions regarding unit tests has found flaws in the code. Some just need explicit implementation documentation (ex. case sensitive or not), or code that does not execute the bug based on how it is currently called. But unit tests can be created executing specific scenarios that will cause the bug to be seen and are valid inputs. What is the value of checking in unit tests that exercise the bug until someone can get around to fixing the code? Should this unit test be flagged with ignore, priority, category etc, to determine whether a build was successful based on tests executed? Eventually the unit test should be created to execute the code once someone fixes it. On one hand it shows that identified bugs have not been fixed. On the other, there could be hundreds of failed unit tests showing up in the logs and weeding through the ones that should fail vs. failures due to a code check-in would be difficult to find.

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• How can I get cross-browser consistent behavior for TR heights within a table with a set height? [migrated]

  - by Dan

  I have an arbitrary number of tables with an arbitrary number of rows in each, and all tables are the same height. My initial approach was to just set the overall height of the table and hope the rows were smart enough to distribute themselves appropriately. That's not the case. I have 4 different behaviors going on with 4 browsers, but I need them to all render at the very least in a similar way. Safari & Chrome (WebKit): All rows are equal height, creating scroll bars as needed and fitting within table height. Firefox: All rows are the height necessary to fit their content, with the remaining rows overflowing out of the table. Additionally, If the content of the rows does not take up all of the height, only the part of the table with content in it takes the background (though it seems, through use of Firebug, that the actual table [and TR] extend to the bottom of the proper table height). IE: All rows are the height necessary to fit their content, with the remaining rows overflowing out of the table. Obviously this only includes one version of each browser and additional variation would likely appear with more being tested. Ideally, a solution where the browser renders TRs with less content smaller than those with larger content, while still using scrolling within the variable height TRs when the overall height of the table is not enough would be optimum. I could potentially see a solution to achieve that with JS, but can it be done with CSS? Or, if not, can the behavior that WebKit displays be made to work across the browsers? Thanks! PS: Example can be found here.

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• How to refactor a myriad of similar classes

  - by TobiMcNamobi

  I'm faced with similar classes A1, A2, ..., A100. Believe it or not but yeah, there are roughly hundred classes that almost look the same. None of these classes are unit tested (of course ;-) ). Each of theses classes is about 50 lines of code which is not too much by itself. Still this is way too much duplicated code. I consider the following options: Writing tests for A1, ..., A100. Then refactor by creating an abstract base class AA. Pro: I'm (near to totally) safe by the tests that nothing goes wrong. Con: Much effort. Duplication of test code. Writing tests for A1, A2. Abstracting the duplicated test code and using the abstraction to create the rest of the tests. Then create AA as in 1. Pro: Less effort than in 1 but maintaining a similar degree of safety. Con: I find generalized test code weird; it often seems ... incoherent (is this the right word?). Normally I prefer specialized test code for specialized classes. But that requires a good design which is my goal of this whole refactoring. Writing AA first, testing it with mock classes. Then inheriting A1, ..., A100 successively. Pro: Fastest way to eliminate duplicates. Con: Most Ax classes look very much the same. But if not, there is the danger of changing the code by inheriting from AA. Other options ... At first I went for 3. because the Ax classes are really very similar to each other. But now I'm a bit unsure if this is the right way (from a unit testing enthusiast's perspective).

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• Confusion with floats converted into ints during collision detection

  - by TheBroodian

  So in designing a 2D platformer, I decided that I should be using a Vector2 to track the world location of my world objects to retain some sub-pixel precision for slow-moving objects and other such subtle nuances, yet representing their bodies with Rectangles, because as far as collision detection and resolution is concerned, I don't need sub-pixel precision. I thought that the following line of thought would work smoothly... Vector2 wrldLocation; Point WorldLocation; Rectangle collisionRectangle; public void Update(GameTime gameTime) { Vector2 moveAmount = velocity * (float)gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalSeconds wrldLocation += moveAmount; WorldLocation = new Point((int)wrldLocation.X, (int)wrldLocation.Y); collisionRectangle = new Rectangle(WorldLocation.X, WorldLocation.Y, genericWidth, genericHeight); } and I guess in theory it sort of works, until I try to use it in conjunction with my collision detection, which works by using Rectangle.Offset() to project where collisionRectangle would supposedly end up after applying moveAmount to it, and if a collision is found, finding the intersection and subtracting the difference between the two intersecting sides to the given moveAmount, which would theoretically give a corrected moveAmount to apply to the object's world location that would prevent it from passing through walls and such. The issue here is that Rectangle.Offset() only accepts ints, and so I'm not really receiving an accurate adjustment to moveAmount for a Vector2. If I leave out wrldLocation from my previous example, and just use WorldLocation to keep track of my object's location, everything works smoothly, but then obviously if my object is being given velocities less than 1 pixel per update, then the velocity value may as well be 0, which I feel further down the line I may regret. Does anybody have any suggestions about how I might go about resolving this?

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• Should you always pass the bare minimum data needed into a function

  - by Anders Holmström

  Let's say I have a function IsAdmin that checks whether a user is an admin. Let's also say that the admin checking is done by matching user id, name and password against some sort of rule (not important). In my head there are then two possible function signatures for this: public bool IsAdmin(User user); public bool IsAdmin(int id, string name, string password); I most often go for the second type of signature, thinking that: The function signature gives the reader a lot more info The logic contained inside the function doesn't have to know about the User class It usually results in slightly less code inside the function However I sometimes question this approach, and also realize that at some point it would become unwieldy. If for example a function would map between ten different object fields into a resulting bool I would obviously send in the entire object. But apart from a stark example like that I can't see a reason to pass in the actual object. I would appreciate any arguments for either style, as well as any general observations you might offer. I program in both object oriented and functional styles, so the question should be seen as regarding any and all idioms.

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• Should Developers Perform All Tasks or Should They Specialize?

  - by Bob Horn

  Disclaimer: The intent of this question isn't to discern what is better for the individual developer, but for the system as a whole. I've worked in environments where small teams managed certain areas. For example, there would be a small team for every one of these functions: UI Framework code Business/application logic Database I've also worked on teams where the developers were responsible for all of these areas and more (QA, analsyt, etc...). My current environment promotes agile development (specifically scrum) and everyone has their hands in every area mentioned above. While there are pros and cons to each approach, I'd be curious to know if there are more pros and cons than I list below, and also what the generally feeling is about which approach is better. Devs Do It All Pros 1. Developers may be more well-rounded 2. Developers know more of the system Cons 1. Everyone has their hands in all areas, increasing the probability of creating less-than-optimal results in that area 2. It can take longer to do something with which you are unfamiliar (jack of all trades, master of none) Devs Specialize Pros 1. Developers can create policies and procedures for their area of expertise and more easily enforce them 2. Developers have more of a chance to become deeply knowledgeable about their specific area and make it the best it can be 3. Other developers don't cross boundaries and degrade another area Cons 1. As one colleague put it: "Why would you want to pigeon-hole yourself like that?" (Meaning some developers won't get a chance to work in certain areas.) It's easy to say how wonderful agile is, and that we should do it all, but I'm somewhat of a fan of having areas of expertise. Without that expertise, I've seen code degrade, database schemas become difficult to manage, hack UI code, etc... Let's face it, some people make careers out of doing just UI work, or just database work. It's not that easy to just fill in and do as good of a job as an expert in that area.

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• In the Aggregate: How Will We Maintain Legacy Systems? [closed]

  - by Jim G.

  NEW YORK - With a blast that made skyscrapers tremble, an 83-year-old steam pipe sent a powerful message that the miles of tubes, wires and iron beneath New York and other U.S. cities are getting older and could become dangerously unstable. July 2007 Story About a Burst Steam Pipe in Manhattan We've heard about software rot and technical debt. And we've heard from the likes of: "Uncle Bob" Martin - Who warned us about "the consequences of making a mess". Michael C. Feathers - Who gave us guidance for 'Working Effectively With Legacy Code'. So certainly the software engineering community is aware of these issues. But I feel like our aggregate society does not appreciate how these issues can plague working systems and applications. As Steve McConnell notes: ...Unlike financial debt, technical debt is much less visible, and so people have an easier time ignoring it. If this is true, and I believe that it is, then I fear that governments and businesses may defer regular maintenance and fortification against hackers until it is too late. [Much like NYC and the steam pipes.] My Question: Is there a way that we can avoid the software equivalent of NYC and the steam pipes?

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• Where is Oracle Utilities Application Framework V3?

  - by Anthony Shorten

  You may of noticed that the latest version of the Oracle Utilities Application Framework is V4.0.1. The last release of the Framework was V2.2. So what happened to V3? The short answer is that there is no V3 of the framework. The long answer is that the Oracle Utilities Application Framework has long been associated with Oracle Utilities Customer Care And Billing and Oracle Enterprise Taxation Management only. As more and more of the Oracle Tax And Utilities products are migrated onto the framework the association betweent eh original products on the framework is less appropriate. Therefore it was decided to pick a version number to emphasize the decouplinf of the releases of the Framework with any particular product. To illustrate this, the Oracle Mobile Workforce Management (MWM) V2.0.0 product uses Oracle Utilities Applicaton Framework V4.0.1. If we used the old numberings schema then MWM would be V4.0.1 which makes no sense, given the last release of MWM was V1.x The framework has its own development team and product management. It basicaly has its own schedule (though it is influenced by the products that use it still - which makes sense). So that s the reasoning around the version numbering change for the framework.

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• use subdomain on different host

  - by Roy

  I want to accomplish something that I thought was simple. My wish is as follows: I have a domainname with hosting, a WordPress multisite (with subfolder setup) installed and running: gangleri.nl. I have another domain at another host and without hosting: monas.nl I created a subdomain on gangleri.nl: monas.gangleri.nl and the domain redirects to that subdomain. Now what I want is to have monas.nl act like a website, not a website in a subdomain. I would like to have post urls as in monas.nl/posttitle. I first thought to do this with the DNS settings of Monas.nl. I now have an URL forward, CURL is not what I want and I did not manage to get A-records or CNAMEs to work. I tried using the htaccess file of the WP installation in monas.gangleri.nl. I tried 301, rewrite and whatnot, but also without success. Meanwhile, I have been reading so much that I no longer have a clue what to do. A-record doesn't sound probable, since I have no IP for the subdomain, so an A-record would point to gangleri.nl rather than using the subdomain. Also I have no idea if I should do something in the DNS settings of gangleri.nl or monas.nl, both, one of them and something somewhere else. I have the idea that I've tried everything, but the more I try and read about it, the less I can get my head around. People talking about A-records to subdomains while I can only use IPs, CNAME settings that my host doesn't support or something. Could somebody tell me if what I want is possible and if so, take me by the hand and guide me through it?

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• How to start and maintain an after-work project

  - by Sam

  I work as a full time developer. My workplace, however, is very limiting in the technologies and programming languages I can use. All of the work is done in C++. It is clear that C++ is rapidly losing (or maybe already lost) its leading position. (please don't flame me, I have years and years of C++ experience, and I love this language, I am merely stating a fact). I have a few ideas for java/android projects as well as a project I would like to implement in C#. I see this as a way for me to stay current with the job market's trends and I hope that it will help me find my next job in a more up to date area. So here's the problem, my normal workday is 10-11 hours, after finishing with the kids and house chores I get about 1-2.5 hours before I am too tired to think much less code. at that point I am going to bed frustrated, disappointed with myself for not being able to stick with my plans, and then I wake up the next morning to do it all again. I have a few hours more during the weekends but clearly I would need to do something different if I want to reach any of my goals. Is there any way for me to make better use of the time I have? Did any of you guys have a similar problem, and had succefully resolved it?

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• I'm applying for a position at a startup. To whom should I address my cover letter?

  - by sapphiremirage

  One of the co-founders answered questions about the company when the job was posted, but I feel like I shouldn't assume that he's the one who is in charge of hiring. Since it's relatively new and has a lot of name overlap with other things already on the web, it's hard to find any information about the company online, much less the name of their hiring manager. I'm not even certain that they do have a hiring manager, since I seem to remember that they are just an 8 person team. I've heard that "To whom it may concern" is tacky, and normally I would say something along the lines of "Dear Head of Human Resources", but that clearly doesn't work in this case. Any idea what my salutation should be? Later Edits: Final Version: To Joe Programmer and/or the AwesomeStartup.com hiring team, (+ a few words in first paragraph explaining why I am addressing Joe Programmer) I've already sent the email, so nothing you say here will save me. However, feel free to comment on my decision if you think your words be useful to future generations. Old Version (left here because some people responded to it): To the hiring manager for internships at Awesomestartup.com, Additionally, because so many people made comments about the content of my letter: I did spent several hours writing the cover letter itself and making sure that it was awesome. After spending such a long time working on the important part, I asked this question because I wanted to make sure that it wouldn't get passed over by some human who was having a bad day and decided that my salutation was inappropriate. Not likely when the most likely reader of that email is a programmer type, I know, but I figured that it wouldn't hurt not to be sloppy.

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• GeForce and Radeon: what is present condition of opensource and proprietary drivers?

  - by Septagram

  So, it'm about to buy a fresh videocard. Since I do most of my stuff on Linux, I wonder how well will either videocard perform. I recently had a good experience with GeForce 6600 with proprietary drivers and a less than satisfactory experience with Radeon 9000 a while ago. From my experience, proprietary drivers for GeForce used to work very well, while proprietary drivers for Radeon failed miserably. And opensource drivers were sloooow. A few months ago I found out that ATI opened their specifications, and a work on fully featured opensource driver is in progress. I prefer to use free software whenever possible, with the exception of games, so, if that driver is fast enough, feature-rich enough and reliable enough I'd very much like to try it out. I wish I could say that if I can just to basic things, like watch video, heavily use compiz and work with simple applications, this may be enough. I do most of my gaming under Windows anyway. However, there is a good chance I'll go into indie game development in a few months fulltime, so it should also be able to run not-so-very-demanding games (say Nexuiz). But if it isn't, I'd like to know, what to expect from proprietary drivers. Do recent proprietary drivers from NVIDIA and ATI work well? Are ATI drivers just as easy to install on Ubuntu as are NVIDIA drivers?

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• Leaving the field of programming. What are the options?

  - by hal10001

  A lot of graduates ask about getting into this field, but I know there are times when I (as well as many others) think about leaving, too. My issue is that I love solving problems and the act of creating something that people enjoy using, and that is what keeps bringing me back. Lately, though, programming has become less of the act of creation and about solving problems, and has become more about being "a monkey at a keyboard". Can you offer any advice with regard to: What fields would offer equivalent problem-solving challenges consistently? How you would go about doing the research, or considering the career change? Basically anything else you think would be helpful in this situation. EDIT: I guess I should clarify and say that I've been in the field about 10 years, and I have had my fair share of working environments. The place where I am at now, and even the previous two jobs, the people I worked with have been great. I've been very lucky in that respect. I'm beginning to wonder if the next step for me has little to do with actual programming and more to do with business analysis or strategic consulting. I would hate to get too much onto the business side of things though, as I like being around tech folks more.

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