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• CodeStock 2012 Review: Michael Eaton( @mjeaton ) - 3 Simple Things for Increased Productivity

  3 Simple Things for Increased ProductivitySpeaker: Michael EatonTwitter: @mjeatonBlog: http://mjeaton.net/blog This was the first time I had seen Michael Eaton speak but have hear a lot of really good things about his speaking abilities. Needless to say I was really looking forward to his session. He basically addressed the topic of distractions and how they can decrease or increase your productivity as a developer. He makes the case that in order to become more productive you must block/limit all distractions. For example, he covered his top distractions as a developer. Top Distractions Social Media(Twitter, Reddit, Facebook) Wiki sites Phone Email Video Games Coworkers, Friends, Family Michael stated that he uses various types of music to help him block out these distractions in order for him to get into his coding zone. While he states that music works for him, he also notes that he knows of others that cannot really work with music. I have to say I am in the latter group because I require a quiet environment in order to work. A few session attendees also recommended listening to really loud white noise or music in another language other than your own. This allows for less focus to be placed on words being sung compared to the rhythmic beats being played. I have to say that I have not tried these suggestions yet but will in the near future. However, distractions can be very beneficial to productivity in that they give your mind a chance to relax and not think about the issues at hand. He spoke highly of taking vacations, and setting boundaries at work so that develops prevent the problem of burnout. One way he suggested that developer’s combat distractions is to use the Pomodoro technique. In his example he selects one task to do for 20 minutes and he can only do that task during that time. He ignores all other distractions until this task or time limit is complete. After it is completed he allows himself to relax and distract himself for another 5- 10 minutes before his next Pomodoro. This allows him to stay completely focused on a task and when the time is up he can then focus on other things.

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• ASP.NET 4.0- Menu control enhancement.

  - by Jalpesh P. Vadgama

  Till asp.net 3.5 asp.net menu control was rendered through table. And we all know that it is very hard to have CSS applied to table. For a professional look of our website a CSS is must required thing. But in asp.net 4.0 Menu control is table less it will loaded with UL and LI tags which is easier to manage through CSS. Another problem with table is it will create a large html which will increase your asp.net page KB and decrease your performance. While with UL and LI Tags its very easy very short. So You page KB Size will also be down. Let’s take a simple example. Let’s Create a menu control in asp.net with four menu item like following. <asp:Menu ID="myCustomMenu" runat="server" > <Items> <asp:MenuItem Text="Menu1" Value="Menu1"></asp:MenuItem> <asp:MenuItem Text="Menu2" Value="Menu2"></asp:MenuItem> <asp:MenuItem Text="Menu3" Value="Menu3"></asp:MenuItem> <asp:MenuItem Text="Menu4" Value="Menu4"></asp:MenuItem> </Items></asp:Menu> It will render menu in browser like following. Now If we render this menu control with tables then HTML as you can see via view page source like following.   Now If in asp.net 4.0 It will be loaded with UL and LI tags and if you now see page source then it will look like following. Which will have must lesser HTML then it was earlier like following. So isn’t that great performance enhancement?.. It’s very cool. If you still like old way doing with tables then in asp.net 4.0 there is property called ‘RenderingMode’ is given. So you can set RenderingMode=Table then it will load menu control with table otherwise it will load menu control with UL and LI Tags. That’s it..Stay tuned for more..Happy programming.. Technorati Tags: Menu,Asp.NET 4.0

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• Voxel Face Crawling (Mesh simplification, possibly using greedy)

  - by Tim Winter

  This is in regards to a Minecraft-like terrain engine. I store blocks in chunks (16x256x16 blocks in a chunk). When I generate a chunk, I use multiple procedural techniques to set the terrain and to place objects. While generating, I keep one 1D array for the full chunk (solid or not) and a separate 1D array of solid blocks. After generation, I iterate through the solid blocks checking their neighbors so I only generate block faces that don't have solid neighbors. I store which faces to generate in their own list (that's 6 lists, one per possible face). When rendering a chunk, I render all lists in the camera's current chunk and only the lists facing the camera in all other chunks. Using a 2D atlas with this little shader trick Andrew Russell suggested, I want to merge similar faces together completely. That is, if they are in the same list (same normal), are adjacent to each other, have the same light level, etc. My assumption would be to have each of the 6 lists sorted by the axis they rest on, then by the other two axes (the list for the top of a block would be sorted by it's Y value, then X, then Z). With this alone, I could quite easily merge strips of faces, but I'm looking to merge more than just strips together when possible. I've read up on this greedy meshing algorithm, but I am having a lot of trouble understanding it. To even use it, I would think I'd need to perform a type of flood-fill per sorted list to get the groups of merge-able faces. Then, per group, perform the greedy algorithm. It all sounds awfully expensive if I would ever want dynamic terrain/lighting after initial generation. So, my question: To perform merging of faces as described (ignoring whether it's a bad idea for dynamic terrain/lighting), is there perhaps an algorithm that is simpler to implement? I would also quite happily accept an answer that walks me through the greedy algorithm in a much simpler way (a link or explanation). I don't mind a slight performance decrease if it's easier to implement or even if it's only a little better than just doing strips. I worry that most algorithms focus on triangles rather than quads and using a 2D atlas the way I am, I don't know that I could implement something triangle based with my current skills. PS: I already frustum cull per chunk and as described, I also cull faces between solid blocks. I don't occlusion cull yet and may never.

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• What to do if I am working on a language that I don't like

  - by Sayem Ahmed

  Hi there, I really don't know if this is the right place to ask this question, but if it isn't, then I guess someone will notify. Anyway, I am working in a software development farm which is currently using PowerBuilder to develop a mid-size ERP solution. The work environment and company management are so great that it may be the best in the whole Bangladesh. Only problem is the technology that are currently being used, which is this PowerBuilder. Now I am a guy who tends to prefer modern development technologies, like DI containers, ORM, TDD, JQuery etc. PowerBuilder is a great tool too, but I couldn' like the application techniques used to build PB applications. These techniques are so inheritance-dependent that many a times these create a great deal of sufferings. I remember two days ago I had to change some processing logic in a core user object and as a result I had to test and re-test all the forms that the application have(apparently, there are almost 20 forms there, each of them with 3-4 kinds of functionalities). Also, learning PB is tough, because online material on this thing is very, very low. I can't afford to read all the documentation that PB provide because I have hard deadlines on the work that I have to do. Another thing with PB is that applications tend to rely on business logic that are implemented on databases which causes debugging to be a nightmare. As a result, I don't feel motivated enough to work in this IDE/System/Framework (or whatever) anymore. My productivity has greatly decreased, and I am not delivering quality code. I think I have the following options available to me - Remain in the current job, keep delivering worse code and let my productivity decrease day by day, taking salaries and bonuses but not delivering quality codes/doing my job the way I should, Search for a new job. At this point number 2 seems a good option, but there are also some issues. As I mentioned before, our management may be the best in the country. Our company owner is himself a software developer with 24 years of experience in software development. He is currently our Team Leader and System Analyst. He is by far the greatest manager and boss I have ever seen. He understands developer's mentality very well(as he IS himself a developer). He is also a great, kind and generous guy. Our company is only a start-up company with 10 developers. Among them, only 3-4 people knows about the business logic behind the ERP, and I am one of them. If I switch my current job, it may hamper the development of this product which I really don't want. I couldn't decide what to do in this situation, so I turned to the community for advice.

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• Ideas for attack damage algorithm (language irrelevant)

  - by Dillon

  I am working on a game and I need ideas for the damage that will be done to the enemy when your player attacks. The total amount of health that the enemy has is called enemyHealth, and has a value of 1000. You start off with a weapon that does 40 points of damage (may be changed.) The player has an attack stat that you can increase, called playerAttack. This value starts off at 1, and has a possible max value of 100 after you level it up many times and make it farther into the game. The amount of damage that the weapon does is cut and dry, and subtracts 40 points from the total 1000 points of health every time the enemy is hit. But what the playerAttack does is add to that value with a percentage. Here is the algorithm I have now. (I've taken out all of the gui, classes, etc. and given the variables very forward names) double totalDamage = weaponDamage + (weaponDamage*(playerAttack*.05)) enemyHealth -= (int)totalDamage; This seemed to work great for the most part. So I statrted testing some values... //enemyHealth ALWAYS starts at 1000 weaponDamage = 50; playerAttack = 30; If I set these values, the amount of damage done on the enemy is 125. Seemed like a good number, so I wanted to see what would happen if the players attack was maxed out, but with the weakest starting weapon. weaponDamage = 50; playerAttack = 100; the totalDamage ends up being 300, which would kill an enemy in just a few hits. Even with your attack that high, I wouldn't want the weakest weapon to be able to kill the enemy that fast. I thought about adding defense, but I feel the game will lose consistency and become unbalanced in the long run. Possibly a well designed algorithm for a weapon decrease modifier would work for lower level weapons or something like that. Just need a break from trying to figure out the best way to go about this, and maybe someone that has experience with games and keeping the leveling consistent could give me some ideas/pointers.

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• add collision detection to sprite?

  - by xBroak

  bassically im trying to add collision detection to the sprite below, using the following: self.rect = bounds_rect collide = pygame.sprite.spritecollide(self, wall_list, False) if collide: # yes print("collide") However it seems that when the collide is triggered it continuously prints 'collide' over and over when instead i want them to simply not be able to walk through the object, any help? def update(self, time_passed): """ Update the creep. time_passed: The time passed (in ms) since the previous update. """ if self.state == Creep.ALIVE: # Maybe it's time to change the direction ? # self._change_direction(time_passed) # Make the creep point in the correct direction. # Since our direction vector is in screen coordinates # (i.e. right bottom is 1, 1), and rotate() rotates # counter-clockwise, the angle must be inverted to # work correctly. # self.image = pygame.transform.rotate( self.base_image, -self.direction.angle) # Compute and apply the displacement to the position # vector. The displacement is a vector, having the angle # of self.direction (which is normalized to not affect # the magnitude of the displacement) # displacement = vec2d( self.direction.x * self.speed * time_passed, self.direction.y * self.speed * time_passed) self.pos += displacement # When the image is rotated, its size is changed. # We must take the size into account for detecting # collisions with the walls. # self.image_w, self.image_h = self.image.get_size() global bounds_rect bounds_rect = self.field.inflate( -self.image_w, -self.image_h) if self.pos.x < bounds_rect.left: self.pos.x = bounds_rect.left self.direction.x *= -1 elif self.pos.x > bounds_rect.right: self.pos.x = bounds_rect.right self.direction.x *= -1 elif self.pos.y < bounds_rect.top: self.pos.y = bounds_rect.top self.direction.y *= -1 elif self.pos.y > bounds_rect.bottom: self.pos.y = bounds_rect.bottom self.direction.y *= -1 self.rect = bounds_rect collide = pygame.sprite.spritecollide(self, wall_list, False) if collide: # yes print("collide") elif self.state == Creep.EXPLODING: if self.explode_animation.active: self.explode_animation.update(time_passed) else: self.state = Creep.DEAD self.kill() elif self.state == Creep.DEAD: pass #------------------ PRIVATE PARTS ------------------# # States the creep can be in. # # ALIVE: The creep is roaming around the screen # EXPLODING: # The creep is now exploding, just a moment before dying. # DEAD: The creep is dead and inactive # (ALIVE, EXPLODING, DEAD) = range(3) _counter = 0 def _change_direction(self, time_passed): """ Turn by 45 degrees in a random direction once per 0.4 to 0.5 seconds. """ self._counter += time_passed if self._counter > randint(400, 500): self.direction.rotate(45 * randint(-1, 1)) self._counter = 0 def _point_is_inside(self, point): """ Is the point (given as a vec2d) inside our creep's body? """ img_point = point - vec2d( int(self.pos.x - self.image_w / 2), int(self.pos.y - self.image_h / 2)) try: pix = self.image.get_at(img_point) return pix[3] > 0 except IndexError: return False def _decrease_health(self, n): """ Decrease my health by n (or to 0, if it's currently less than n) """ self.health = max(0, self.health - n) if self.health == 0: self._explode() def _explode(self): """ Starts the explosion animation that ends the Creep's life. """ self.state = Creep.EXPLODING pos = ( self.pos.x - self.explosion_images[0].get_width() / 2, self.pos.y - self.explosion_images[0].get_height() / 2) self.explode_animation = SimpleAnimation( self.screen, pos, self.explosion_images, 100, 300) global remainingCreeps remainingCreeps-=1 if remainingCreeps == 0: print("all dead")

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• Euler angles to Cartesian Coordinates for use with gluLookAt

  - by notrodash

  I have searched all of the internet but just couldn't find the answer. I am using LibGDX and this is part of my code that loops over and over: public void render() { GL11 gl = Gdx.gl11; float centerX = (float)Math.cos(yaw) * (float)Math.cos(pitch); float centerY = (float)Math.sin(yaw) * (float)Math.cos(pitch); float centerZ = (float)Math.sin(pitch); System.out.println(centerX+" "+centerY+" "+centerZ+" ~ "+GDXRacing.camera.position.x+" "+GDXRacing.camera.position.y+" "+GDXRacing.camera.position.z); Gdx.glu.gluLookAt(gl, GDXRacing.camera.position.x, GDXRacing.camera.position.y, GDXRacing.camera.position.z, centerX, centerY, centerZ, 0, 1, 0); if(Gdx.input.isKeyPressed(Keys.A)) { yaw--; } if(Gdx.input.isKeyPressed(Keys.D)) { yaw++; } } I might just be bad at the math, but I dont get it. Does someone have a good explanation and an idea about how to deal with this? I am trying to make a first person camera. By the way, the camera is translated by +10 on the Z axis. Currently when I run the application, this is what I get: Watch video in browser | Download video (for those who cant download the video, everything shakes in a clockwise/anticlockwise action, depending on if I increase or decrease the Yaw value) -Thank you. [edit] and with this code: public void render() { GL11 gl = Gdx.gl11; float centerX = (float)(MathUtils.cosDeg(yaw)*4); float centerY = 0; float centerZ = (float)(MathUtils.sinDeg(yaw)*4); System.out.println(centerX+" "+centerY+" "+centerZ+" ~ "+GDXRacing.camera.position.x+" "+GDXRacing.camera.position.y+" "+GDXRacing.camera.position.z); Gdx.glu.gluLookAt(gl, GDXRacing.camera.position.x, GDXRacing.camera.position.y, GDXRacing.camera.position.z, centerX, centerY, centerZ, 0, 1, 0); if(Gdx.input.isKeyPressed(Keys.A)) { yaw--; } if(Gdx.input.isKeyPressed(Keys.D)) { yaw++; } } it slowly swings from the left to the right. This approach worked for turning left and right for 2d games though. What am I doing wrong?

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• Simple collision detection in Unity 2D

  - by N1ghtshade3

  I realise other posts exist with this topic yet none have gone into enough detail for me. I am attempting to create a 2D game in Unity using C# as my scripting language. Basically I have two objects, player and bomb. Both were created simply by dragging the respective PNG to the stage. I have set up touch controls to move player left and right; gravity of any kind is not needed as I only require it to move x units when I tap either the left or right side of the screen. This movement is stored in a script called playerController.cs and works just fine. I also have a variable health = 3 for player, which is stored in healthScript.cs. I am now at a point where I am stuck. I would like it so that when player collides with bomb, health decreases by one and the bomb object is destroyed. So what I tried doing is using a new script called playerPhysics.cs, I added the following: void OnCollisionEnter2D(Collision2D coll){ if(coll.gameObject.name=="bomb") GameObject.Destroy("bomb"); healthScript.health -= 1; } While I'm fairly sure I don't know the proper way to reference a variable in another script and that's why the health didn't decrease when I collided, bomb never disappeared from the stage so I'm thinking there's also a problem with my collision. Initially, I had simply attached playerPhysics.cs to player. After searching around though, it appeared as though player also needed a rigidBody attached to it, so I did that. Still no luck. I tried using a circleCollider (player is a circle), using a rigidBody2D, and using all manner of colliders on one and/or both of the objects. If you could please explain what colliders (if any) should be attached to which objects and whether I need to change my script(s), that would be much more helpful than pointing me to one of the generic documentation examples I've already read. Also, if it would be simple to fix the health thing not working that would be an added bonus but not exactly the focus of this question. Bear in mind that this game is 2D; I'm not sure if that changes anything. Thanks!

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• Exalogic 2.0.1 Tea Break Snippets - Creating and using Distribution Groups

  - by The Old Toxophilist

  By default running your Exalogic in a Virtual provides you with, what to Cloud Users, is a single large resource and they can just create vServers and not care about how they are laid down on the the underlying infrastructure. All the Cloud Users will know is that they can create vServers. For example if we have a Quarter Rack (8 Nodes) and our Cloud User creates 8 vServers those 8 vServers may run on 8 distinct nodes or may all run on the same node. Although in many cases we, as Cloud Users, may not be to worried how the Virtualisation Algorithm decides where to place our vServers there are cases where it is extremely important that vServers run on distinct physical compute nodes. For example if we have a Weblogic Cluster we will want the Servers with in the cluster to run on distinct physical node to cover for the situation where one physical node is lost. To achieve this the Exalogic Virtualised implementation provides Distribution Groups that define and anti-aliasing policy that the underlying Virtualisation Algorithm will take into account when placing vServers. It should be noted that Distribution Groups must be created before you create vServers because a vServer can only be added to a Distribution Group at creation time. Creating A Distribution Group To create a Distribution Groups we will first need to select the Account in which we want the Distribution Group to be created. Once we have selected the account we will see the Interface update and Account specific Actions will be displayed within the Action Panes. From the Action pane (or Right-Click on the Account) select the "Create Distribution Group" action. This will initiate the create wizard as follows. Distribution Group Details Within the first Step of the Wizard we can specify the name of the distribution group and this should be unique. In addition we can provide a detailed description of the group. Distribution Group Configuration The second step of the configuration wizard allows you to specify the number of elements that are required within this group and will specify a maximum of the number of nodes within you Exalogic. At this point it is always better to specify a group with spare capacity allowing for future expansion. As vServers are added to group the available slots decrease. Summary Finally the last step of the wizard display a summary of the information entered.

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• Zooming in isometric engine using XNA

  - by Yheeky

  I´m currently working on an isometric game engine and right now I´m looking for help concerning my zoom function. On my tilemap there are several objects, some of them are selectable. When a house (texture size 128 x 256) is placed on the map I create an array containing all pixels (= 32768 pixels). Therefore each pixel has an alpha value I check if the value is bigger than 200 so it seems to be a pixel which belongs to the building. So if the mouse cursor is on this pixel the building will be selected - PixelCollision. Now I´ve already implemented my zooming function which works quite well. I use a scale variable which will change my calculation on drawing all map items. What I´m looking for right now is a precise way to find out if a zoomed out/in house is selected. My formula works for values like 0,5 (zoomed out) or 2 (zoomed in) but not for in between. Here is the code I use for the pixel index: var pixelIndex = (int)(((yPos / (Scale * Scale)) * width) + (xPos / Scale) + 1); Example: Let´s assume my mouse is over pixel coordinate 38/222 on the original house texture. Using the code above we get the following pixel index. var pixelIndex = ((222 / (1 * 1)) * 128) + (38 / 1) + 1; = (222 * 128) + 39 = 28416 + 39 = 28455 If we now zoom out to scale 0,5, the texture size will change to 64 x 128 and the amount of pixels will decrease from 32768 to 8192. Of course also our mouse point changes by the scale to 19/111. The formula makes it easy to calculate the original pixelIndex using our new coordinates: var pixelIndex = ((111 / (0.5 * 0.5)) * 64) + (19 / 0.5) + 1; = (444 * 64) + 39 = 28416 + 39 = 28455 But now comes the problem. If I zoom out just to scale 0.75 it does not work any more. The pixel amount changes from 32768 to 18432 pixels since texture size is 96 x 192. Mouse point is transformed to point 28/166. The formula gives me a wrong pixelIndex. var pixelIndex = ((166 / (0.75 * 0.75)) * 96) + (28 / 0.75) + 1; = (295.11 * 96) + 38.33 = 28330.66 + 38.33 = 28369 Does anyone have a clue what´s wrong in my code? Must be the first part (28330.66) which causes the calculation problem. Thanks! Yheeky

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• How do you take into account usability and user requirements for your application?

  - by voroninp

  Our team supports BackOffice application: a mix of WinForm and WPF windows. (about 80 including dialogs). Really a kind of a Swiss Army Knife. It is used by developers, tech writers, security developers, testers. The requirements for new features come quite often and sometimes we play Wizard of Oz to decide which GUI our users like the most. And it usually happens (I admit it can be just my subjective interpretation of the reality) that one tiny detail giving the flavor of good usability to our app requires a lot of time. This time is being spent on 'fighting' with GUI framework making it act like we need. And it very difficult to make estimations for this type of tasks (at least for me and most members of our team). Scrum poker is not a help either. Management often considers this usability perfectionism to be a waste of time. On the other hand an accumulated affect of features where each has some little usability flaw frustrates users. But the same users want frequent releases and instant bug fixes. Hence, no way to get the positive feedback: there is always somebody who is snuffy. I constantly feel myself as competing with ourselves: more features - more bugs/tasks/architecture. We are trying to outrun the cart we are pushing. New technologies arrive and some of them can potentially help to improve the design or decrease task implementation time but these technologies require learning, prototyping and so on. Well, that was a story. And now is the question: How do you balance between time pressure, product quality, users and management satisfaction? When and how do you decide to leave the problem with not a perfect but to some extent acceptable solution, how often do you make these decisions? How do you do with your own satisfaction? What are your priorities? P.S. Please keep in mind, we are a BackOffice team, we have neither dedicated technical writer nor GUI designer. The tester have joined us recently. We've much work to do and much freedom concerning 'how'. I like it because it fosters creativity but I don't want to become too nerdy perfectionist.

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• Is this an effective monetization method for an Android game? [on hold]

  - by Matthew Page

  The short version: I plan to make an Android puzzle game where the user tries to get 3-6 numbers to their predetermined goal numbers. The free version of the app will have three predetermined levels (easy, medium, hard). The full version ($0.99, probably) will have a level generator where there will be unlimited easy, medium, or hard levels, as well as a custom difficulty option where users can set specific vales to the number of numbers to equate to their goal, the number of buttons to use, etc. Users will also have the option to get a one-time "hint" for a fee of $0.49, or unlimited hints for a one-time fee of $2.99. The long version: Mechanics of Game and Victory The application is a number puzzle. When the user begins a new game, depending on the input by the user, between 3 and 6 numbers show up on the top of the screen, and between 3 and 6 buttons show up on the bottom of the screen. The buttons all have two options: to increase every number the same way, or decrease every number the same way. The buttons either use addition / subtraction, multiplication / division, or exponents / roots, all depending on the number displayed on the button. Addition buttons are green, multiplication buttons are blue, and exponential buttons are red. The user wins when all of the numbers displayed on the screen equate to their goal number, displayed below each number. Monetization If the user is playing the full (priced) version of the app, upon the start of the game, the user will be confronted with a dialogue asking for the number of buttons and the number of numbers to equate in the game. Then, based on the user input, a random puzzle will be generated. If the user is playing the free version of the app, the user will be asked to either play an “easy”, “hard”, or “expert” puzzle. A pre-determined puzzle from each category will be used in the game. If the user has played that puzzle before, a dialogue will show saying this to the user and advertising the full version of the app. The full version of the app will also be advertised upon the successful or in successful completion of a puzzle. Upon exiting this advertisement, another full screen advertisement will appear from a third party. Also, the solution to the puzzle should be stored by the program, and if the user pays a small fee, he/she can see a hint to the solution to the program. In the free version of the app, the user may use their first hint for free. Also, the user can use unlimited hints for a slightly larger fee. Is this an effective monetization method?

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• Organization &amp; Architecture UNISA Studies &ndash; Chap 13

  - by MarkPearl

  Learning Outcomes Explain the advantages of using a large number of registers Discuss the way in which compilers optimize register usage Discuss the evolution of CISC machines Describe the characteristics of RISC architecture Discuss the RISC vs. CISC controversy Describe the way in which RISC and CISC design principles can be combined Instruction Execution Characteristics To understand the the line of reasoning of RISC advocates, we need a brief overview of instruction execution characteristics. These include… Operations Operands Procedure Calls These three sections can be studied in depth in the textbook at pages 503 - 505 A number of groups have come up with the conclusion that the attempt to make the instruction set architecture closer to HLLs (High Level Languages) is not the most effective design strategy. Rather HLL’s can be best supported by optimizing performance of the most time-consuming features of typical HLL programs. Generally 3 main characteristics came up to improve performance… Use a large number of registers or use a compiler to optimize register usage Careful attention needs to be paid to the design of instruction pipelines A simplified (reduced) instruction set is indicated The use of a large register optimization One of the most important design principles of RISC machines is the use of a large number of registers. The concept of register windows and the use of a large register file versus the use of cache memory are discussed. On the face of it, the use of a large set of registers should decrease the need to access memory. The design task is to organize the registers in such a fashion that this goal is realized. Read page 507 – 510 for a detailed explanation. Compiler-based register optimization   Reduced Instructions Set Architecture There are two advantages to smaller programs… Because the program takes up less memory, there is a savings in that resource (this was more compelling when memory was more expensive) Smaller programs should improve performance, and this will happen in two ways – fewer instructions means fewer instruction bytes to be fetched and in a paging environment smaller programs occupy fewer pages, reducing page faults. Certain characteristics are common to RISC processors… One instruction per cycle Register-to-register operations Simple addressing modes Simple instruction formats RISC vs. CISC After initial enthusiasm for RISC machines, there has been a growing realization that RISC designs may benefit from the inclusion of some CISC features CISC designs may benefit from the inclusion of some RISC features

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• Can compressing Program Files save space *and* give a significant boost to SSD performance?

  - by Christopher Galpin

  Considering solid-state disk space is still an expensive resource, compressing large folders has appeal. Thanks to VirtualStore, could Program Files be a case where it might even improve performance? Discovery In particular I have been reading: SSD and NTFS Compression Speed Increase? Does NTFS compression slow SSD/flash performance? Will somebody benchmark whole disk compression (HD,SSD) please? (may have to scroll up) The first link is particularly dreamy, but maybe head a little too far in the clouds. The third link has this sexy semi-log graph (logarithmic scale!). Quote (with notes): Using highly compressable data (IOmeter), you get at most a 30x performance increase [for reads], and at least a 49x performance DECREASE [for writes]. Assuming I interpreted and clarified that sentence correctly, this single user's benchmark has me incredibly interested. Although write performance tanks wretchedly, read performance still soars. It gave me an idea. Idea: VirtualStore It so happens that thanks to sanity saving security features introduced in Windows Vista, write access to certain folders such as Program Files is virtualized for non-administrator processes. Which means, in normal (non-elevated) usage, a program or game's attempt to write data to its install location in Program Files (which is perhaps a poor location) is redirected to %UserProfile%\AppData\Local\VirtualStore, somewhere entirely different. Thus, to my understanding, writes to Program Files should primarily only occur when installing an application. This makes compressing it not only a huge source of space gain, but also a potential candidate for performance gain. Testing The beginning of this post has me a bit timid, it suggests benchmarking NTFS compression on a whole drive is difficult because turning it off "doesn't decompress the objects". However it seems to me the compact command is perfectly capable of doing so for both drives and individual folders. Could it be only marking them for decompression the next time the OS reads from them? I need to find the answer before I begin my own testing.

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• Why is my Compaq NC8430 laptop so darned HOT ?

  - by Cheeso

  For a long time I've had a Compaq nc8430 laptop. It's nearly 3 years old now. Originally shipped with WinXP, but I installed Vista on it. From the very start it was not a good experience. This thing has one of those "stickpoint" mice, which I like. After a while, I noticed that the computer was generating lots and lots of heat. So much heat, that the stickpoint bumper would melt and disintegrate. Normally I would expect heat if the CPU was working hard, but even when the CPU was idle, the computer was hot. Much too hot to keep on my lap. Turns out this is not an uncommon problem. I installed the HWmonitor tool, and found that the CPU temp was 82C when it was plugged in - pretty darn hot. And because the temp was so high, the fan never turned off, so the laptop was as loud as a jet engine, always. If I unplugged it from A/C power, the screen would dim and the temperature would decrease, and the fan noise would lessen, but still, it was too loud. It's totally unusable. What is the problem?

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• Best CPUs for speeding up compiling times of C++ w/ DistGCC

  - by Jay

  I'm putting together a distributed build farm with DistGCC to speed up our teams compile times and just looking for thoughts on which processors to use in the hosts. Are we going to get a noticeable decrease in time using 8 cores vs. 4-hyperthreaded cores? Big difference in time between i7 and Xeon? etc, etc. Just need advice from people who've put together kick-a build clusters. We've got a majority of the normal things to speed up builds in place (pre-compiled headers, ccache, local gigabit connections between them, tons of ram, etc) so please just give advice on the best processor to use. And money is a factor, but anythings doable if the performance increase is noticeable. Thanks. Jay EDIT: Although any advice IS welcome, please refrain from "Do this first" posts as we're not planning on skimping on things like SSD, maxed out RAM, etc. My personal system is a iMac Quad-core i5 with 8GB of RAM. When I build our project locally, my processor floats around 99-100% a majority of the time, which makes me assume it is a bottleneck, even if you made everything else faster. My ram on the other hand doesn't even get close to maxing out. It's also worth noting that I did research this, however every discussion I could find was primarily for gaming machines, which is obviously a different beast in usage. These machines won't even have monitors or anything but integrated graphics since they have one purpose: Build freakin fast. (hopefully)

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• Best CPUs for speeding up compiling times of C++ w/ DistGCC

  - by Jay

  I'm putting together a distributed build farm with DistGCC to speed up our teams compile times and just looking for thoughts on which processors to use in the hosts. Are we going to get a noticeable decrease in time using 8 cores vs. 4-hyperthreaded cores? Big difference in time between i7 and Xeon? etc, etc. Just need advice from people who've put together kick-a build clusters. We've got a majority of the normal things to speed up builds in place (pre-compiled headers, ccache, local gigabit connections between them, tons of ram, etc) so please just give advice on the best processor to use. And money is a factor, but anythings doable if the performance increase is noticeable. Thanks. Jay EDIT: Although any advice IS welcome, please refrain from "Do this first" posts as we're not planning on skimping on things like SSD, maxed out RAM, etc. My personal system is a iMac Quad-core i5 with 8GB of RAM. When I build our project locally, my processor floats around 99-100% a majority of the time, which makes me assume it is a bottleneck, even if you made everything else faster. My ram on the other hand doesn't even get close to maxing out. It's also worth noting that I did research this, however every discussion I could find was primarily for gaming machines, which is obviously a different beast in usage. These machines won't even have monitors or anything but integrated graphics since they have one purpose: Build freakin fast. (hopefully)

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• Best CPUs for speeding up compiling times of C++ w/ DistGCC

  - by Jay

  I'm putting together a distributed build farm with DistGCC to speed up our teams compile times and just looking for thoughts on which processors to use in the hosts. Are we going to get a noticeable decrease in time using 8 cores vs. 4-hyperthreaded cores? Big difference in time between i7 and Xeon? etc, etc. Just need advice from people who've put together kick-a build clusters. We've got a majority of the normal things to speed up builds in place (pre-compiled headers, ccache, local gigabit connections between them, tons of ram, etc) so please just give advice on the best processor to use. And money is a factor, but anythings doable if the performance increase is noticeable. Thanks. Jay EDIT: Although any advice IS welcome, please refrain from "Do this first" posts as we're not planning on skimping on things like SSD, maxed out RAM, etc. My personal system is a iMac Quad-core i5 with 8GB of RAM. When I build our project locally, my processor floats around 99-100% a majority of the time, which makes me assume it is a bottleneck, even if you made everything else faster. My ram on the other hand doesn't even get close to maxing out. It's also worth noting that I did research this, however every discussion I could find was primarily for gaming machines, which is obviously a different beast in usage. These machines won't even have monitors or anything but integrated graphics since they have one purpose: Build freakin fast. (hopefully)

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• Tuning Windows 7 for use in a VM

  - by intuited

  I'm running Windows 7 in a VirtualBox Virtual Machine, and would like to make it run in a more streamlined fashion. I'll be using the install primarily for testing web apps, and have no need for it to run quickly. I would like it to run with minimal memory requirements, and with minimal changes to its virtual hard drive's contents. Changes to the hard drive contents, for example the paging file, result in larger snapshot sizes. Another recent post of mine seems to be related to this issue, but does not directly address issues with Windows. One concern that I have is that Windows seems to be using 17% of its paging file even with over 900MB of memory marked "Standby" or "Free". My uneducated guess is that this is being used to store indexes or some other data that helps to speed up the system but is not really necessary. I'm also wondering if it's normal for Windows to use over 500 MB of "In Use" memory with no apps running. Will this amount decrease if I reduce the amount of "installed" memory in the VM? What steps can I take to reduce the system's memory footprint without incurring an increase in paging file usage?

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• java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: unable to create new native thread

  - by Brad

  I consistently get this exception when trying to run my Junit tests on my mac: java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: unable to create new native thread at java.lang.Thread.start0(Native Method) at java.lang.Thread.start(Thread.java:658) at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.addIfUnderMaximumPoolSize(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:727) at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.execute(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:657) at java.util.concurrent.AbstractExecutorService.submit(AbstractExecutorService.java:92) at com.google.appengine.tools.development.ApiProxyLocalImpl$PrivilegedApiAction.run(ApiProxyLocalImpl.java:197) at com.google.appengine.tools.development.ApiProxyLocalImpl$PrivilegedApiAction.run(ApiProxyLocalImpl.java:184) at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method) at com.google.appengine.tools.development.ApiProxyLocalImpl.doAsyncCall(ApiProxyLocalImpl.java:172) at com.google.appengine.tools.development.ApiProxyLocalImpl.makeAsyncCall(ApiProxyLocalImpl.java:138) The same set of unit tests pass perfectly fine on ubuntu and windows. Some information about my system resources on the mac: $ ulimit -a core file size (blocks, -c) 0 data seg size (kbytes, -d) unlimited file size (blocks, -f) unlimited max locked memory (kbytes, -l) unlimited max memory size (kbytes, -m) unlimited open files (-n) 1024 pipe size (512 bytes, -p) 1 stack size (kbytes, -s) 8192 cpu time (seconds, -t) unlimited max user processes (-u) 266 virtual memory (kbytes, -v) unlimited $ java -version java version "1.6.0_24" Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_24-b07-334-10M3326) Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 19.1-b02-334, mixed mode) The reason I dont think this is an application issue is because the same tests pass in different environments. I have tried setting heap to 1024m, 512m and setting the stack to 64k and 128k (and each of these combinations) with no luck. My open files was originally 256 and I have bumped this to 1024. I have been googling around for a bit and all posts say to decrease heap size and increase stack size but that doesnt seem to help. Anyone have anymore ideas? EDIT: Here are is some environment information on my ubuntu box: $ ulimit -a core file size (blocks, -c) 0 data seg size (kbytes, -d) unlimited scheduling priority (-e) 20 file size (blocks, -f) unlimited pending signals (-i) 16382 max locked memory (kbytes, -l) 64 max memory size (kbytes, -m) unlimited open files (-n) 1024 pipe size (512 bytes, -p) 8 POSIX message queues (bytes, -q) 819200 real-time priority (-r) 0 stack size (kbytes, -s) 8192 cpu time (seconds, -t) unlimited max user processes (-u) unlimited virtual memory (kbytes, -v) unlimited file locks (-x) unlimited $ java -version java version "1.6.0_24" Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_24-b07) Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 19.1-b02, mixed mode)

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• Interpreting and using the Asterisk "timing test" command

  - by zigg

  Timing is very important for certain kinds of applications in Asterisk. If DAHDI is the timing source, the dahdi_test command can be used to check the timing provided by the DAHDI kernel module. If dahdi_test returns exclusively measurements above 99.975%, the DAHDI timing source is generally considered good. Since Asterisk 1.6, new timing sources have become available, such as pthread and timerfd. The accuracy of these timing sources seems to be measurable with the Asterisk CLI timing test command: localhost*CLI> timing test Attempting to test a timer with 50 ticks per second. Using the 'timerfd' timing module for this test. It has been 1000 milliseconds, and we got 50 timer ticks My concern is that timing 50 ticks seems to be a considerably less stressful test than dahdi_test's 8192 samples in 8000 ms, particularly since just about every system I've tried it on, virtual or otherwise, can handle it. I can ask timing test to ramp it up to what I think are dahdi_test's standards: localhost*CLI> timing test 1024 Attempting to test a timer with 1024 ticks per second. Using the 'timerfd' timing module for this test. It has been 1000 milliseconds, and we got 1024 timer ticks This will indeed break down a bit depending on the system I'm using, usually with a decrease in timer ticks. But I'm not sure whether this is useful to stress it to this level. Is there authoritative guidance on using and interpreting the timing test command to insure that a given Asterisk system has a timing source that will work well?

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• BIOS setting: AHCI or RAID (when using SSD + 2x HDD in RAID-0)

  - by nixdagibts

  Hello there, I want to add a new SSD and use it as system drive with Win7 x64 installed. As driver I chose newest Intel Rapid Storage driver (not MSAHCI). I know that I have to use AHCI as BIOS setting for optimal SSD read/write performance. But I'm also using 2 normal HDDs as separate RAID-0 SSD: Win7 HDD: RAID-0 HDD: RAID-0 If I set my BIOS on my ASUS P5W DH Deluxe to AHCI, my RAID-0 cant be recognized And If im using RAID as setting, maybe my SSD has not its top speed. But I'm not sure about that. In short: AHCI no RAID-0 RAID no optimal SSD performance (?) Now my question: Can I use RAID as BIOS setting and be sure, that theres no decrease in SSD performance? Google finds so many articles with similar topics and my head is just exploding. Two examples: - set AHCI and after installing OS switch to RAID as BIOS setting... what? - use a diskette and F6 while installing win7... really? O.o I thought those times are gone

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• What's next for all of these Microsoft "overlapping" and "enhanced" products ?

  - by indyvoyage

  Recently I attended a road show, organised by MS Gold Partner company in the UK. The products discussed were: SharePoint server (2010 and 2007), Exchange server, Office Communication Server 2007, Exchange hosted services Office Live meeting, Office Communicator, System Center Configuration Manager and Operation Manager, VMware, Windows 7 etc. As Microsoft claims the enhancement in the each product against higher version, I felt that clients are not much interested in all these details. For example Office Communicator, surely they have improved a lot the product and first site all said 'WOW' great product, but nobody wish to pay money for all these extra features. Some argued, they are bogged down by all these increased number of menus. They don't need soft call feature included with mobile call. It apply for all other products as well such as MS office (next what 2 ribbons ?), windows OS and many more. Indeed there must be good features in all these products, but is it worth to spend money and time to update the older system ? Also sometimes these feature will decrease the productivity instead increase it. *So do you think what ever enhancement MS is doing in the products is only for selling purpose, not a real use ?? and I think also keep the developer busy learning the new tools and features. * I am sure some some people here will argue that some people need this sort of features. But I am not talking about NASA or MI5 guys. I am talking of usual businesses and joe public. Any ideas welcome.

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• Samsung laptop randomly shuts down

  - by Dmatig

  I've rewritten this question because it turned into an indecipherable mess. I have a Samsung R560 laptop that is overheating, and shutting itself down under load consistantly. Thank you quickcel for reccomending me Speedfan to monitor my temps. Here they are (Load / Idle): (Ignore "Temp1 and Temp2", whatever sensors they are they'd always random, pretty sure they're broke). The load temperature is after just 5 minites of playing Fallout 3 - another 5 minutes and it (the GPU - 9600M GS) consistantly breaches the mid 90's then shuts down, so it's hard to get a good picture of it. I'm looking for some solution or way to decrease these temperatures, because they seem far too high even idle. I've tried: Opening up the case and clearing of all dust with compressed air. Updating drivers for my Graphics card Have purchased and am using a notebook cooler I don't want to: Undervolt / underclock (defeats the point of having a more expensive card) Use lower power / performance settings (again, i might as well have bought something cheaper) Is there anything else i can try (software or inexpensive hardware) that can help me fix this? Has anybody had a Samsung laptop and knows if this can be sorted under my warranty, and the turnaround time of sending it off (UK?)(it has always ran hotter than it should, but now at 6 months old is getting hot enough to power off)

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• Best usage for a laptop being used as a desktop without removable batteries

  - by Senseful

  After reading the information on http://batteryuniversity.com, I realize that one of the best ways to permanently damage a lithium ion battery is to use the battery at a high temperature while it's fully charged. This is exactly what happens when you use the computer as if it were a desktop computer, since leaving it plugged in will keep the battery at 100% and using the computer will heat up the battery. This is why it's recommend to remove the battery from your laptop if you are using it is this scenario. My question is what would you do if the laptop doesn't have removable batteries (e.g. a MacBook Pro)? Should I use some kind of charge cycle such as: charge to 80%, unplug the power chord, use the laptop until it reaches 20%, then repeat the cycle by charging to 80% again? If so, which values should I use instead of 80% and 20%? (I think charging to 80% is better than 100% because of the damage that a hot battery at 100% can do, but I just made the figure 80% up, and I'm sure there's a better number to strive for which is backed by science.) I've read many of the articles on batteryuniversity.com, but couldn't find anything pertaining to this. Update: What about doing something like charge (or discharge) it to 50%, then plug it in and turn on settings which use the battery as much as possible (e.g. brightness all the way up, wi-fi on, etc.), in order to try to maintain the battery at 50% (i.e. the rate it is charging is the same as it is discharging). This will probably heat up the battery, but would make it so you don't need to constantly plug and unplug the laptop. The one bad thing is that you are taking up more charge cycles which would decrease the battery life, thus I'm not sure this is a good idea.

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