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• A project idea I've got...

  - by Mr Teeth

  Hi, Next year I will be doing a final year project at Uni. I've already thought of one and was wondering what you guys think of it. I want to create a University Information Search for prospective students who are trying to look for an affordable University to attend. It will depend on the student's family income and the grades they get. They enter in those two parameters (and some more) and it comes up with a list of suitable Unis based on their criteria. This is not about the price of tution fee. It's mostly to do with the cost of living. Stuff like: Rent (if living in a private flat). Student Accomadation. Cost of traveling to your home and back (for holidays). ...and some other stuff stuff I haven't thought about yet. It'll mostly be GUI driven with some textual information. I'm also thinking of using it as a website interface. What do you guys think? Can I program something like this Java? If there's any holes you see in my idea please tell me.

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• OpenGL sprites and point size limitation

  - by Srdan

  I'm developing a simple particle system that should be able to perform on mobile devices (iOS, Andorid). My plan was to use GL_POINT_SPRITE/GL_PROGRAM_POINT_SIZE method because of it's efficiency (GL_POINTS are enough), but after some experimenting, I found myself in a trouble. Sprite size is limited (to usually 64 pixels). I'm calculating size using this formula gl_PointSize = in_point_size * some_factor / distance_to_camera to make particle sizes proportional to distance to camera. But at some point, when camera is close enough, problem with size limitation emerges and whole system starts looking unrealistic. Is there a way to avoid this problem? If no, what's alternative? I was thinking of manually generating billboard quad for each particle. Now, I have some questions about that approach. I guess minimum geometry data would be four vertices per particle and index array to make quads from these vertices (with GL_TRIANGLE_STRIP). Additionally, for each vertex I need a color and texture coordinate. I would put all that in an interleaved vertex array. But as you can see, there is much redundancy. All vertices of same particle share same color value, and four texture coordinates are same for all particles. Because of how glDrawArrays/Elements works, I see no way to optimise this. Do you know of a better approach on how to organise per-particle data? Should I use buffers or vertex arrays, or there is no difference because each time I have to update all particles' data. About particles simulation... Where to do it? On CPU or on a vertex processors? Something tells me that mobile's CPU would do it faster than it's vertex unit (at least today in 2012 :). So, any advice on how to make a simple and efficient particle system without particle size limitation, for mobile device, would be appreciated. (animation of camera passing through particles should be realistic)

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• Installing Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  As has become customary when the product team releases a new patch, SP or version I like to document the install. This post seams almost redundant as I had no problems, but I think that is as valuable to other thinking of installing the Service Pack as all the problems that we sometimes get. As per Brian's post I am Installing Visual Studio Team Foundation Server Service Pack 1 first and indeed as this is a single server local deployment I need to install both. If I only install one it will leave the other product broken. Figure: Hopefully this will be more uneventful It takes a little while for your system to be checked to see what components need updating. On my main computer this was pretty quick, but on the laptop it took some time. Figure: There are a lot of components to update With this update also comes an update to .NET as well as many other components. Figure: I downloaded the full 1.5GB’s, but you could do a web install It depends on how good you internet connection is to how long it would take to download, but as I am now in the US I decided not to trust the internet connection speeds. It took around 30-40 minutes to download the full thing which is a little slow. Figure: I did not need to download, but that would increase the install time So on my main computer again this was fast, but again on my netbook this took a little while. Figure: The actual install took around 30-40 minutes (2 hours on netbook) I was pretty impressed with the speed of the install, and as Team Explore is now out of the box with Visual Studio 2010 I don’t get the problem of the SP being installed before Team Explorer and having a disjointed experience Figure: As I suspected, no problems with the install Figure: Checking in Visual Studio shows that all the servicing points were successful This was an easy experience even if the SP was over 1.5GB’s to download Hopefully I will be discovering things that work better for a good while to come, as well as not seeing holes in the product that I had no encountered yet. What were your experiences of installing Visual Studio 2010 Service pack 1?

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• Antenna Aligner Part 6: Little Robots

  - by Chris George

  A week ago I took temporary ownership of a HTC Desire S so that I could start testing my app under Android. Support for Android was not in my original plan, but when Nomad added support for it recently, I starting thinking why not! So with some trepidation, I clicked the Build for Android button on the Nomad toolbar... nothing. Hmm... that's not right, I was expecting something to build. After a bit of faffing around I finally realised that I hadn't read the text on the Android setup page properly (yes that's right, RTFM!), and I needed a two-part application identifier, separated by a dot. I did this (not sure what the two part thing is all about, that one my list to investigate!) After making the change, the Android build worked and created the apk file. I uploaded this to the device and nervously ran it... it worked!!!  Well, more or less! So, there was not splash screen, but this was no surprise because I only have the iOS icons and splash screen in my project at the moment. What was more concerning was the compass update didn't seem to be working. I suspect this is a result of using an iOS specific option in the Phonegap compass watcher. Another thing to investigate. I've also just noticed that the css gradient background hasn't worked either... These issues aside, it was actually more successful than I was expecting, so happy days! Right, lets get Googling...   Next time: Preparing for submission to the App Store! :-)

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• Tools for game script / storyboard

  - by Pietro Polsinelli

  I am searching for a tool that will help in writing a game script. By "script" I mean the text core of a storyboard - without the drawing drafts, which may or may not be there (yet). What I'm thinking of will let write a piece of text of the script, define a simplified workflow from that step, and then define the text of next steps, and so on. Searching online, I found Inform http://inform7.com/ ("A Design System for Interactive Fiction Based on Natural Language") which in theory is exactly what I am searching for, but trying to use it it has this model of a space (a dungeon, a library) where you are picking up objects and exploring them. In my case I am designing more a Sims like game, the flow is entirely different. Considering non specific software, mind mapping tools miss the linearity of the process. What I am writing is a directed graph - simply a work-flow, but the way I want to design it is more text based than work-flow based. SO what I'm doing now is using a text editor, which I'll transform directly in code. Any suggestions?

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• Game programming basics under Windows

  - by dreta

  I've been trying to learn some Windows programming using the Win32 API. Now, i'm used to working with the OS layer being abstracted away, mostly thanks to libraries like SFML or Allegro. Could you guys help me out and tell me if i'm thinking right here. The place for my gameloop is where i'm reading the messages? while (TRUE) { if (PeekMessage (&msg, NULL, 0, 0, PM_REMOVE)) { if (msg.message == WM_QUIT) break ; TranslateMessage (&msg) ; DispatchMessage (&msg) ; } else { //my game loop goes here } } Now the slightly bigger issue, that is, drawing. Do i run my drawing where i normaly do it, inside the game loop after the game logic? Or do i do it when WM_PAIN is being called and just call InvalidateRect (hwnd, NULL, TRUE); when i want to draw? This does feel weird, the WM_PAINT is a queued message, so i don't know for sure when it'll be called. So if i wanted to avoid this, do i just get the device handle inside the game loop and only ValidateRect (hwnd, NULL); in the WM_PAINT case (beside the ValidateRect (hwnd, NULL); called after drawing in the game loop)? Actually, now that i think about it, do i even need WM_PAINT in this situation or can i skip it and let DefWindowProc handle it (does it validate the screen if WM_PAINT isn't processed)? If this is any important, i'm setting up my code for OpenGL.

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• Object pools for efficient resource management

  - by GameDevEnthusiast

  How can I avoid using default new() to create each object? My previous demo had very unpleasant framerate hiccups during dynamic memory allocations (usually, when arrays are resized), and creating lots of small objects which often contain one pointer to some DirectX resource seems like an awful lot of waste. I'm thinking about: Creating a master look-up table to refer to objects by handles (for safety & ease of serialization), much like EntityList in source engine Creating a templated object pool, which will store items contiguously (more cache-friendly, fast iteration, etc.) and the stored elements will be accessed (by external systems) via the global lookup table. The object pool will use the swap-with-last trick for fast removal (it will invoke the object's ~destructor first) and will update the corresponding indices in the global table accordingly (when growing/shrinking/moving elements). The elements will be copied via plain memcpy(). Is it a good idea? Will it be safe to store objects of non-POD types (e.g. pointers, vtable) in such containers? Related post: Dynamic Memory Allocation and Memory Management

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• JavaScript loaded external content SEO

  - by user005569871

  I wonder what is the best way to have Javascript loaded content indexed by search engines. I know that search engines don't execute Javascript, but I am thinking more of an progressive enchantment. I am creating a responsive website, and on the home page I will have some sections about most visited products and recommended product that I plan to load depending on the device detected. These products will be in sliders with thumbnail images and names of the products. If mobile is detected slider content will not load, ant the link to the external page will be shown. I know that external content will be indexed via link to those resources. Where will the users be directed from search in this case? To the external page or home page? Will it be bad for SEO if I show only product names on front page so they can be indexed and hide them with CSS? What is the best way to index that content and possibly direct users from search to home page? Also, i've seen the Ajax crawling but iI would like not to use that if there is any better way.

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• Finding header files

  - by rwallace

  A C or C++ compiler looks for header files using a strict set of rules: relative to the directory of the including file (if "" was used), then along the specified and default include paths, fail if still not found. An ancillary tool such as a code analyzer (which I'm currently working on) has different requirements: it may for a number of reasons not have the benefit of the setup performed by a complex build process, and have to make the best of what it is given. In other words, it may find a header file not present in the include paths it knows, and have to take its best shot at finding the file itself. I'm currently thinking of using the following algorithm: Start in the directory of the including file. Is the header file found in the current directory or any subdirectory thereof? If so, done. If we are at the root directory, the file doesn't seem to be present on this machine, so skip it. Otherwise move to the parent of the current directory and go to step 2. Is this the best algorithm to use? In particular, does anyone know of any case where a different algorithm would work better?

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• PHP Battle System for RPG game

  - by Jay

  I posted this a while ago on stackoverflow, they thought it would be better place here, I agree. Essentially I know what I want to accomplish, and I have something to the effect of what I want but I am not satisfied with it. Here's the problem. Each user has some states: STR (how hard they hit), DEF (dodging/blocking attacks), SPD (when they can strike), and STAMINA (basically their endurance in game, if this runs out they can no longer fight and lose) What I need is something like this: UserA Stats: STR: 1,000 DEF: 2500 SPD: 2000 (HP: 1000/1000) UserB Stats: STR: 1,500 DEF: 500 SPD: 4000 (HP: 1000/1000) Because the second user has double the speed, he lands twice the amount of hits on the first user, before he gets hit. Because he has less strength than the first users defence, he will do no, to little damage. This is how the battle would theoretically go: UserB strikes UserA for 0 damage UserB strikes UserA for 0 damage UserA strikes UserB for 500 damage UserB strikes UserA for 0 damage UserB strikes UserA for 0 damage UserA strikes UserB for 500 damage, and sends him to the hospital! I was using this code, which is buggy, and not efficient, I just need a better way to do this: http://pastebin.com/15LiQQuJ Oh, and if anyone has some good ideas on how to improve the concept that would be cool too! It's not that elaborate so I'll be thinking of all sorts of things to make it more dynamic. Thanks.

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• Can JSON be made easily and safely editable by the non-technical Excel crowd?

  - by glitch

  I'm looking for a data storage format that's very intuitive and easy to edit. It should be ideally targeted towards the same crowd as Excel. At the same time I would like the data structure to be a tree. Ideally this would be JSON, since it offers both the tree aspect and allows for more interesting constructs like arrays. That and parsing libraries for JSON are ubiquitous, so I don't have to reinvent the wheel. The problem is that, at least with a non-specialized text editor, JSON is a giant pain to edit for a non-technical user. I'm thinking along the lines of someone who might have used Excel in the past, but never a real text editor. Someone who might not be comfortable with the idea of preserving JSON syntax by hand. Are there data formats out there that would fit this profile? I'd very much prefer this to be a JSON actually, but then it would require a solid editing tool that would hide the underlying implementation from the user. Think Excel and how it abstracts CSV syntax from the user. The reason I'm looking for something like this is because the team has been working with pretty hierarchical data for a while now and we've hit the limits of how easy it is to represent in simple CSVs without having to create complex rules for how represent hierarchy semantics from each row. Any suggestions?

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• Floating point undesireable in highly critical code?

  - by Kirt Undercoffer

  Question 11 in the Software Quality section of "IEEE Computer Society Real-World Software Engineering Problems", Naveda, Seidman, lists fp computation as undesirable because "the accuracy of the computations cannot be guaranteed". This is in the context of computing acceleration for an emergency braking system for a high speed train. This thinking seems to be invoking possible errors in small differences between measurements of a moving object but small differences at slow speeds aren't a problem (or shouldn't be), small differences between two measurements at high speed are irrelevant - can there be a problem with small roundoff errors during deceleration for an emergency braking system? This problem has been observed with airplane braking systems resulting in hydroplaning but could this actually happen in the context of a high speed train? The concern about fp errors seems to not be well-founded in this context. Any insight? The fp is used for acceleration so perhaps the concern is inching over a speed limit? But fp should be just fine if they use a double in whatever implementation language. The actual problem in the text states: During the inspection of the code for the emergency braking system of a new high speed train (a highly critical, real-time application), the review team identifies several characteristics of the code. Which of these characteristics are generally viewed as undesirable? The code contains three recursive functions (well that one is obvious). The computation of acceleration uses floating point arithmetic. All other computations use integer arithmetic. The code contains one linked list that uses dynamic memory allocation (second obvious problem). All inputs are checked to determine that they are within expected bounds before they are used.

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• What is the point of dynamic allocation in C++?

  - by Aerovistae

  I really have never understood it at all. I can do it, but I just don't get why I would want to. For instance, I was programming a game yesterday, and I set up an array of pointers to dynamically allocated little enemies in the game, then passed it to a function which updates their positions. When I ran the game, I got one of those nondescript assertion errors, something about a memory block not existing, I don't know. It was a run-time error, so it didn't say where the problem was. So I just said screw it and rewrote it with static instantiation, i.e.: while(n<4) { Enemy tempEnemy = Enemy(3, 4); enemyVector.push_back(tempEnemy); n++; } updatePositions(&enemyVector); And it immediately worked perfectly. Now sure, some of you may be thinking something to the effect of "Maybe if you knew what you were doing," or perhaps "n00b can't use pointers L0L," but frankly, you really can't deny that they make things way overcomplicated, hence most modern languages have done away with them entirely. But please-- someone -- What IS the point of dynamic allocation? What advantage does it afford? Why would I ever not do what I just did in the above example?

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• Gems In The Visual Studio 2010 Training Kit &ndash; Introduction to MEF: Learning Labs

  - by Jim Duffy

  No, this post doesn’t have anything to do with cooking up illegal drugs in some rundown shack outside of town. That, my friends, would be a meth lab and fortunately that is waaaaay outside my area of expertise. Now I can talk Kentucky bourbon, or as Homer Simpson would say “mmmmmmmmmmm bourbon”, with you but please refrain from asking me meth questions. :-) Anyway, what I’m talking about are the MEF (Managed Extensibility Framework) Learning Labs contained in the Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Training Kit. Not sure what MEF is and need an overview? Then start here or here. Ok, so you’ve read a bit about MEF or heard about MEF and you’re thinking it might be something you and your development team might want to take a hands-on look at. I have good news then because contained in the Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Training Kit is a series of hands-on learning labs for MEF. I’ve added working my way through them to my “things I want to take a closer look at” list. Have a day. :-|

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• Desktop application, dependency injection

  - by liori

  I am thinking of applying a real dependency injection library to my toy C#/GTK# desktop application. I chose NInject, but I think this is irrelevant to my question. There is a database object, a main window and several utility window classes. It's clear that I can inject the database into every window object, so here DI is useful. But does it make sense to inject utility window classes into other window classes? Example: I have classes such as: class MainWindow {…} class AddItemWindow {…} class AddAttachmentWindow {…} class BrowseItemsWindow {…} class QueryBuilderWindow {…} class QueryBrowserWindow {…} class PreferencesWindow {…} … Each of the utility classes can be opened from MainWindow. Some utility windows can also be opened from other utility windows. Generally, there might be a really complex graph of who can open whom. So each of those classes might need quite a lot of other window classes injected. I'm worried that such usage will go against the suggestion not to inject too many classes at once and become a code smell. Should I use some kind of a service locator object here?

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• Experiences with Ubuntu One?

  - by rsuarez

  I'm currently testing several backup/sync services: Dropbox, SpiderOak and Ubuntu One. Of them, Dropbox is the winner hands down; SpiderOak is nice too, but a bit more intrusive and unpredictable (sometimes is slow in syncing some files, or doesn't sync them at all). Ubuntu One has promise, but I've used it much less than the other two. I'm thinking about buying a "20 pack" and using Ubuntu One as my only synchronization software. It's the cheapest of them all (3$/month vs 10$ in Dropbox and SpiderOak), and 20GB of space is enough for me. My intention is to sync most of my $HOME folder. All the computers I'll connect will have Ubuntu installed, so not being multiplatform doesn't really matter to me. If its performance is as good as Dropbox's, I'm sold. But I'd like to gauge some experiences here first. Is anyone using it seriously? I.e., to sync a lot of files that change often (like the aforementioned $HOME folder, program sources, or something alike). What have been your experiences? Thanks in advance.

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• Architecture of an action multiplayer game from scratch

  - by lcf

  Not sure whether it's a good place to ask (do point me to a better one if it's not), but since what we're developing is a game - here it goes. So this is a "real-time" action multiplayer game. I have familiarized myself with concepts like lag compensation, view interpolation, input prediction and pretty much everything that I need for this. I have also prepared a set of prototypes to confirm that I understood everything correctly. My question is about the situation when game engine must be rewind to the past to find out whether there was a "hit" (sometimes it may involve the whole 'recomputation' of the world from that moment in the past up to the present moment. I already have a piece of code that does it, but it's not as neat as I need it to be. The domain logic of the app (the physics of the game) must be separated from the presentation (render) and infrastructure tools (e.g. the remote server interaction specifics). How do I organize all this? :) Is there any worthy implementation with open sources I can take a look at? What I'm thinking is something like this: -> Render / User Input -> Game Engine (this is the so called service layer) -> Processing User Commands & Remote Server -> Domain (Physics) How would you add into this scheme the concept of "ticks" or "interactions" with the possibility to rewind and recalculate "the game"? Remember, I cannot change the Domain/Physics but only the Game Engine. Should I store an array of "World's States"? Should they be just some representations of the world, optimized for this purpose somehow (how?) or should they be actual instances of the world (i.e. including behavior and all that). Has anybody had similar experience? (never worked on a game before if that matters)

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• Issues with Cinnamon?

  - by Corrodie

  I just recently switched my system over to Ubuntu 12.10, and decided on Cinnamon as my environment-- it all worked fine, at first. But I was poorly educated and started using Compiz and Emerald along with it--Setting both as replacements in startup processes. I now know, that's a big, big mistake. Now when loading Cinnamon, I am greeted to my background image, and only that. My only options seem to be to open a terminal. I was advised to attempt muffin --replace and mutter --replace Neither to any avail, the terminal closes, and I cannot load another one unless I completely reload. I went back to Unity, purged and autoremoved Cinnamon, emerald, and compizconfig, and attempted to reinstall Cinnamon, thinking that would solve the problem--no, it came back just as broken as before. So, I reinstalled ubuntu, then cinnamon---still broken. I'm assuming I must find a way to remove the replace commands-- but as I have no menu, I'm not positive I can do that. Is there any way I can access the startup processes via terminal? I'd think though, if I completely removed Cinnamon, all configurations would be gone too, so, it's just not making much sense. Is there some kind of reset I could possibly do? I've been browsing forums and questions here, all leading to things I'd already done, so, it can't hurt to ask for myself. I apologize if you would rather I have posted this over at mint. Next time, I will definitely check compatibility instead of assuming something just has to work. Any help is greatly appreciated, thanks! ****EDIT***** It seems although it didn't allow me to do it before, I was now allowed to access the settings and startup processes for Cinnamon via Unity, and, after quickly removing aforementioned processes- I'm up and running again.

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• How do you get past the Analysis to Paralysis when working on a new project?

  - by Cape Cod Gunny

  I've been struggling with how to get my project going. I've got an old software package that is in need of desparate rewrite. I haven't compiled the source code since 2004. It still sells, it's stable but does require the “Run this program in compatibility mode for:” on a lot of the newer windows systems. It's also one of those hard coded 640 X 480 screen resolution programs. Yuck! I can't seem to get started with this rewrite. I'm constantly fiddling around with different things. I'll play around with different fluid layouts for a while. Then I start looking around at how the main menu should work/look. I quickly find out that there's this thing called "Cool Bars" and I'll spend hours playing with that. Then I start thinking about stuff like "Oh I need to make sure that the screen sizes are preserved so when the application gets relaunched it remebers how the screens were positioned." Which leads to what happens if they have two monitors? Which leads to what happens if they have a quad screen? Yikes it's got to stop. I have always been a slow starter. I think about stuff long and hard up front. This has always plagued me. Once I get my mind made up then bam... I'm off and running. I'm looking for advice from some other one-person software companies that can help someone like me get off to a quicker start?

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• "Viral" license that only blocks legal actions of user and developer against each other

  - by Lukasz Zaroda

  I was thinking a lot about software licensing lately, because I would like to do some coding. I'm not an expert in all those licenses, so I came up with my own idea, and before I will put in on paper, I would like to make sure that I didn't reinvent a wheel, so maybe I would be able to use something that exists. Main idea behind my license is to guarantee freedom of use the software, but not "freedom to" (positive) (e.g. freedom to having source code), but "freedom from" (negative) (strictly from legal actions against you). It would be "viral" copyleft license. You would be able to without fear do everything you want with the software (and binaries e.g. reverse engineering), as long as You will include information about author and/or authors, and all derivative works will be distributed with the same license. I'm not interested in anything that would restrict a freedom of company to do something like "tivoization". I'm just trying to accomplish something that would block any legal actions of user and developer, targeted against each other, with the exception of basic attribution. Does exist something like that?

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for 2012-09-12

  - by Bob Rhubart

  15 Lessons from 15 Years as a Software Architect | Ingo Rammer In this presentation from the GOTO Conference in Copenhagen, Ingo Rammer shares 15 tips regarding people, complexity and technology that he learned doing software architecture for 15 years. Adding a runtime picker to a taskflow parameter in WebCenter | Yannick Ongena Oracle ACE Yannick Ongena shows how to create an Oracle WebCenter popup to allow users to "select items or do more complex things." Oracle Identity Manager 11g R2 Catalog | Daniel Gralewski Oracle Fusion Middleware A-Team blogger Daniel Gralewski shares a detailed overview of the new Catalog feature, one of the most talked about features in the latest release of Oracle Identity Manager 11g. Cloud API and service designers, stop thinking small | Cloud Computing - InfoWorld "The focus must shift away from fine-grained APIs that provide some type of primitive service, such as pushing data to a block of storage or perhaps making a request to a cloud-rooted database," says InfoWorld's David Linthicum. "To go beyond primitives, you must understand how these services should be used in a much larger architectural context. In other words, you need to understand how businesses will employ these services to form real workplace solutions -- inside and outside the enterprise." Oracle Solaris 8 P2V with Oracle database 10.2 and ASM | Orgad Kimchi Orgad Kimchi's technical post illustrates the migration of "a Solaris 8 physical system, with Oracle database version 10.2.0.5 with ASM file-system located on a SAN storage, into a Solaris 8 branded zone inside a Solaris 10 guest domain on top of a Solaris 11 control domain." Thought for the Day "The hardest single part of building a software system is deciding precisely what to build. " — Fred Brooks Source: SoftwareQuotes.com

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• How can Highscores be more meaningful and engaging?

  - by Anselm Eickhoff

  I'm developing a casual Android game in which the player's success can very easily be represented by a number (I'm not more specific because I'm interested in the topic in general). Although I myself am not a highscore person at all, I was thinking of implementing a highscore for that game, but I see at least 2 problems in the classical leaderboard approach: very soon the highscore will be dominated by hardcore players, leaving no chance for beginners, who are then frustrated. This is very severe especially in casual games. there is no direct reward for being a loyal player who plays the game over and over again My current idea is to "reset" the highscore every 24 hours (for example) and each day nominate the "player of the day" who then gets a "star". Then there would be some kind of meta-highscore of players with the most stars. That way even beginners might have a chance to be "player of the day" once and continued or repeated play is rewarded much more. The idea is still very rough and there are many problems in the details and the technical implementation but I have a feeling it is a step in the right direction. Do you have creative and new ideas on how to implement highscores? Which games are doing this well / what types of highscores do you find most engaging?

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• SOA Composite Sensors : Good Practice

  - by angelo.santagata

  I was discussing a interesting design problem with a colleague of mine Niall (his blog) on the topic of how to cancel an inflight SOA Composite process.  Obviously one way to do this is to cancel the process from enterprise Manager ( http://hostort/em ) , however we were thinking this isnt a “user friendly” way of doing this.. If you look at Nialls blog you’ll see he’s highlighted a number of different APIs which enable you the ability to manipulate the SCA instance, e.g. Code Snippet to purge (delete) an instance How to determine the instanceId from a composite_sensor_value using the “composite_sensor_value” table How to determine a BPEL Process status using the cube_instance table   Now all of these require that you know the instanceId of your SOA Composite, how does one find this out? Well the easiest way of doing this is to create a composite sensor on the SCA component. A composite sensor is simply a way of publishing a piece of business data as part of your composite. The magic here is that you can later query composites based on this value. So a good best practice is that for any composites you create consider publishing a composite sensor value using a primary key of some sort , e.g. orderId, that way if you need to manipulate/query composites you can easily look up the instanceId using the sensorid.   For information on how to create a composite Sensor id see this documentation link  

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• Office arangement - comfort vs. teamwork?

  - by finrod

  Our team works in an open-space office. Luckily the cubicles are quite big (L shaped tables for everyone!), there is quite a lot of space so we are not sandwiched. Without going into further detail, there are comfortable spots (window), normal spots and stupid spots (near the corridor). Until recently, the development team of twelve engineers was seated so that all types of spots were occupied and we were all close together. In the old arrangement, verbal communication was very easy - half of the team was withing talking distance. The other half was like ten steps away. Often times I could ask, discuss, solve problems without leaving the cube. Most of the communication is work related, no bullshit or mental masturbation that would unnecessarily distract others. Now we have moved to another part of the building and have larger space to occupy. At this point, everyone could pick their spot. Naturally all stupid spots are left empty (for the poor newcomers to occupy bwehaha). In the new arrangement, the development team is stretched across the floor and some of the key engineers are seated 'far' from each other - definitely not within talking distance. I have yet to experience how this works out but am getting concerned that team work and communication may have been traded for personal comfort. Finally the questions... What do you think is better office arrangement? Such that allows for free verbal communication but trading for some developer's comfort, or such that potentially hinders verbal communication but makes developer's more comfortable in their spot? Or maybe it does not matter at all and we will evolve to be efficient in any arrangement? What is your personal experience? Note - yes I read books and posts how workplace is important in our job. However in this case - we are all still in open space and the difference between the different spots are not really groundbreaking. So I'm thinking the little comfort that few developers gain is not worth the loss of easy communication.

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• Benefits of classic OOP over Go-like language

  - by tylerl

  I've been thinking a lot about language design and what elements would be necessary for an "ideal" programming language, and studying Google's Go has led me to question a lot of otherwise common knowledge. Specifically, Go seems to have all of the interesting benefits from object oriented programming without actually having any of the structure of an object oriented language. There are no classes, only structures; there is no class/structure inheritance -- only structure embedding. There aren't any hierarchies, no parent classes, no explicit interface implementations. Instead, type casting rules are based on a loose system similar to duck-typing, such that if a struct implements the necessary elements of a "Reader" or a "Request" or an "Encoding", then you can cast it and use it as one. Does such a system obsolete the concept of OOP? Or is there something about OOP as implemented in C++ and Java and C# that is inherently more capable, more maintainable, somehow more powerful that you have to give up when moving to a language like Go? What benefit do you have to give up to gain the simplicity that this new paradigm represents?

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