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• Best way to update UI when dealing with data synchronization

  - by developerdoug

  I'm working on a bug at work. The app is written in Objective-C for iOS based device, for the iPad. I'm the new guy there and I've been given a hard task. Sometimes, the UIButton text property does not show the correct state when syncing. Basically, when the app is syncing, my UI control would say "Syncing" and when its not syncing it'll display "Updated @ [specific date]". Right now there is a property on the app delegate called "SyncInProgress". When querying / syncing, occurring on background thread, it updates a counter. The property will return a bool checking expression 'counter 0'. There are three states I need to deal with. Sync has started. Sync is updating tables. Sync finished. These items need to occur in order. My coworker suggested to take a state based approach instead of just responding to events. I'm not sure about how to go about that. Would it be best to have the UI receive a notification to determine what state its in or to pull every so often if state changed? Here are two posts that I put on stackoverflow, in the last few days, that relate to this. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11025469/ios-syncing-using-a-state-approach-instead-of-just-reacting-to-events http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11037930/viewcontroller-when-viewwillappear-called-does-not-always-correctly-reflect-stat Any ideas that anyone might have to very much appreciated. Thanks, developerDoug

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• ASP.NET Webforms developers and web designers: how to interact?

  - by just_name

  I'm an ASP.NET Webforms developer, and I face some problems when I deal with designers. Designers always complain about the asp.net server controls. They'd rather just have an html file and create css files along with the required images to go with those. Sometimes, if the design phase is done in advance, I get html files with related css files, but then we face many problems integrating the design with the aspx files (sever controls an telerik controls ... etc). What I want to ask about is: How do I overcome these problems? The designers prefer php- and mvc developers because of the problems with .net server controls. I need to know how to interact with the designers in the correct way. Are there any tools or applications to provide the designers with the rendered (html page) of the .aspx pages? By that I mean the page in runtime rather than the aspx in Visual Studio. They do use Web Expression but they want the rendered page in html as well.

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• Acer Aspire One 725 - missing graphic card driver for Radeon HD 6290?

  - by Melon

  Recently I bought an Acer Aspire One 725 Netbook and installed Ubuntu 12.10 on it. I bought it, because it can run HD movies and has Full HD on external VGA port. However, movies from youtube have a really slow framerate. If you open three tabs in Opera (for example g-mail, youtube and askubuntu) it gets really laggy. My suspicion is that the driver for graphic card is missing. When I check the System->Details->Graphics the driver is unknown. After running lspci | grep VGA I get this output: 00:01.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI Device 980a From what I see, I have a AMD C70 processor integrated with (or something similar) AMD Radeon HD 6290. Has anyone had the same problem? Do you know which drivers need to be installed for the graphics to work properly? On official Acer page there are only drivers for Win7 and Win8... Update: I have tried installing fglrx but I get the following error (either I don't have libraries or someone didn't make a clean build before release ;) /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/firegl_public.c: In function ‘KCL_MEM_AllocLinearAddrInterval’: /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/firegl_public.c:2124:5: error: implicit declaration of function ‘do_mmap’ [-Werror=implicit-function-declaration] /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/firegl_public.c:2124:13: warning: cast to pointer from integer of different size [-Wint-to-pointer-cast] /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/firegl_public.c: In function ‘kasInitExecutionLevels’: /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/firegl_public.c:4159:5: error: ‘cpu_possible_map’ undeclared (first use in this function) /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/firegl_public.c:4159:5: note: each undeclared identifier is reported only once for each function it appears in /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/firegl_public.c:4159:5: warning: left-hand operand of comma expression has no effect [-Wunused-value] Update 2: After fixing the erros in compilation, ubuntu acts bizarre and unstable (no left icon panel, no upper panel, cannot run any programs, I only see desktop)

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• Where did I write that code ?

  - by Tarun Arora

  Every been in that situation when you desperately need to find that code you checked into TFS a few days back but just can’t remember what team project, what branch, what solution or what file you checked it into. Well you are not alone… Only if there was a way to efficiently search for files and text with in TFS. It is possible… You need to get your hands on Agent Ransack… This is a stand a lone tool that does not integrate with TFS but gives you the capability to search through text files effortlessly. Agent Ransack searches through files, text or otherwise, fast and efficiently. When searching the contents of files for code, or other text, Agent Ransack displays the text found so you can quickly browse the results without having to separately open each file! Agent Ransack is free for both Personal and Commercial use and can be Download from here.   Set the Look In directory of the Ransack search tool to your TFS Workspace and type the text you would like to scan for, you can limit the search by narrowing down the filter path or the name of the file. Found text is shown with highlighted keywords so you don't need to waste time opening each file looking for the right information.         The regular expression wizard helps you build regular expressions for complex pattern matching searches         You even have the option of searching by modified, created or last accessed date          Export your results to a file for importing into other apps or for sharing with others          Agent Ransack also provides search support for popular Office formats including Office 2007 and OpenOffice Next time you are looking for that illusive line of code whether it is a method declaration, function call, or algorithm that you checked into TFS, use Agent Ransack for a quick search.

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• How to implement isValid correctly?

  - by Songo

  I'm trying to provide a mechanism for validating my object like this: class SomeObject { private $_inputString; private $_errors=array(); public function __construct($inputString) { $this->_inputString = $inputString; } public function getErrors() { return $this->_errors; } public function isValid() { $isValid = preg_match("/Some regular expression here/", $this->_inputString); if($isValid==0){ $this->_errors[]= 'Error was found in the input'; } return $isValid==1; } } Then when I'm testing my code I'm doing it like this: $obj = new SomeObject('an INVALID input string'); $isValid = $obj->isValid(); $errors=$obj->getErrors(); $this->assertFalse($isValid); $this->assertNotEmpty($errors); Now the test passes correctly, but I noticed a design problem here. What if the user called $obj->getErrors() before calling $obj->isValid()? The test will fail because the user has to validate the object first before checking the error resulting from validation. I think this way the user depends on a sequence of action to work properly which I think is a bad thing because it exposes the internal behaviour of the class. How do I solve this problem? Should I tell the user explicitly to validate first? Where do I mention that? Should I change the way I validate? Is there a better solution for this? UPDATE: I'm still developing the class so changes are easy and renaming functions and refactoring them is possible.

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• [LINQ] Master &ndash; Detail Same Record(II)

  - by JTorrecilla

  In my previous post, I introduced my problem, but I didn’t explain the problem with Entity Framework When you try the solution indicated you will take the following error: LINQ to Entities don’t recognize the method 'System.String Join(System.String, System.Collections.Generic.IEnumerable`1[System.String])’ of the method, and this method can’t be translated into a stored expression. The query that produces that error was: 1: var consulta = (from TCabecera cab in 2: contexto_local.TCabecera 3: let Detalle = (from TDetalle detalle 4: in cab.TDetalle 5: select detalle.Nombre) 6: let Nombres = string.Join(",",Detalle ) 7: select new 8: { 9: cab.Campo1, 10: cab.Campo2, 11: Nombres 12: }).ToList(); 13: grid.DataSource=consulta;   Why is this error happening? This error happens when the query couldn’t be translated into T-SQL. Solutions? To quit that error, we need to execute the query on 2 steps: 1: var consulta = (from TCabecera cab in 2: contexto_local.TCabecera 3: let Detalle = (from TDetalle detalle 4: in cab.TDetalle 5: select detalle.Nombre) 6: select new 7: { 8: cab.Campo1, 9: cab.Campo2, 10: Detalle 11: }).ToList(); 12: var consulta2 = (from dato in consulta 13: let Nombes = string.Join(",",dato.Detalle) 14: select new 15: { 16: dato.Campo1, 17: dato.Campo2, 18: Nombres 19: }; 20: grid.DataSource=consulta2.ToList(); Curiously This problem happens with Entity Framework but, the same problem can’t be reproduced on LINQ – To – SQL, that it works fine in one unique step. Hope It’s helpful Best Regards

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• Why do arrays in java choose the biggest? [closed]

  - by Trycon

  I'm new to java so I was reading my book with these code: public class mainb1 { public static void main (String[] args) { //datatype name = expression; //food int min, max; int num[] = new int[10]; num[0]=99; num[1]=90; num[2]=-100; num[3]=100; num[4]=23; num[5]=50; num[6]=123; num[7]=3123; num[8]=2; num[9]=923; min=max=num[1]; for(int x=0;x<10;x++) { if(num[x]<min)min=num[x]; if(num[x]>max)max=num[x]; } System.out.println("Min: "+min+" max: "+max); } } It chose the biggest and the smallest. I don't get it if max was 99, then the last one that is lesser than min is 2? How did this array choose to pick the smallest and the biggest? Can someone explain?

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• Contexts and Dependency Injection(CDI)??

  - by Masa Sasaki

  WebLogic Server?????????????WebLogic Server????????6?20?????????37?WebLogic Server???@????????Contexts and Dependency Injection(CDI)?(?????????? Fusion Middleware?????? ?? ?)?????????????????Java EE 6????????CDI???????DI(Dependency Injection)?Java EE 5????????????????????CDI??DI????????????????????????????????????????????????????????CDI????????????????????(?????? Fusion Middleware?????? ??? ??) CDI?? ???????CDI???Java EE 6???????JSR299: Contexts Dependency Injection????? ?????Dependency Injection (??????)?Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP)?Interception ??????????????????????????? CDI?????????????????????????????????????????????? ?????????????????????????????????????????? ?????????????????????????????????????????????? ???????????????????????????CDI?????????????? CDI?????????????2? ??1???CDI??????????Oracle WebLogic Server 12c????Java EE 6????????? ?????????????????2???beans.xml???????Web??????????WEB-INF/beans.xml? EJB??META-INF/beans.xml????????????CDI????????????????beans.xml???? ?????????????????????? Java EE 5?DI(Dependency Injection) Java EE 5??DI????????????????????????????????????? ?????????????????????????????????????????(@EJB? @Resource?@WebServiceRef)??? Java EE 6?CDI Java EE 6?CDI?????????????????@Inject???????????????? ???????????????????????????????????????????????????? @Qualifier????????????????? ?????????????????????????????????????????@Qualifier? ????????????·??????????????????????@JPN??????????? @Produce???????? ???????????????????? ????????·?????????????? CDI?????????????????????????????????·??????? ????????????????????????????????????????????? ???????????????? EL(Expression Language) ???????? EL????????????JSF?ManagedBean?????????????·?????????????? ??? Java EE 6?????????CDI???????????Java EE 5?DI????AOP??? ???????????????????DI, AOP???????????????? ?????????????CDI?????????????????????????????? ?????CDI?????????????????????????????????? ?????? WebLogic Server??? WebLogic Server?????????WebLogic Server?????! WebLogic Server??????(???????????) WebLogic Server???????? WebLogic Server??????

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• .net developers and web designers: how to interact?

  - by just_name

  I'm an asp.net developer, and I face some problems when I deal with designers. The designer always complains about the asp.net server controls. They rather just have an html file and create css files along with the required images to go with those. Sometimes if the design phase is done in advance I get html files with related css files, but then we face many problems integrating the design with the aspx files (sever controls an telerik controls ... etc). What I want to ask about is: How to overcome these problems? The designers prefer php- and mvc developers because of the problems with .net server controls. I need to know how to interact with the designers in a correct way. Are there any tools or applications to provide the designers with the rendered (html page) of the .aspx pages? By that I mean the page in runtime rather than the aspx in visual studio. They do use Web Expression but they want the rendered page in html as well.

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• Server Setups for Agencies [closed]

  - by styks1987

  We are considering consolidating our server administration by cutting down on the number of systems we currently use to manage all our websites(~65 websites). Currently we have a testing server and 3 production servers. (2 - cherokee(linode), 1 - apache (mt)) We don't have a dedicated server admin, so I am stuck with managing all these servers, and as a developer, I don't want to deal with all the server hassle. So my main goal is to cut down on the time spent messing with the servers. We have looked at Pagoda Box and AppFog as possibilities. I am not sure if Pagoda Box would be cost effective. With 65+ websites we may end up paying anywhere from 0 to $50+ per website per month. Right now we page about $250 per month for the 4 VPS servers mentioned above. We already use Capistrano for deployment. I have the opportunity to completely overhaul the entire setup and I would like some feedback on where you found your information for large scale server management or how you currently do it. Articles are welcome. In summary: What is new (past 2 years) in simple server management arena? If you work at an agency or have had agency experience, how do/did you manage your sites? a. What is the level of effort for SSL, new site setup, database management, and extension management. b. How did you handle datacenter outages. Anyone with Pagoda Box experience, do you like it and did you have problems with Wordpress, Cakephp, Drupal, Expression Engine or Magento? a. Is it expensive for you? b. How has server uptime been? Your direction and comments are greatly appreciated.

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• How do I install Kodos in 12.10?

  - by Brutus

  In previous Ubuntu version I used Kodos extensively. But the package has been dropped in 12.10. It's a neat regular expression testing tool. It's hard to find an alternative that is not Windows only (or Air, or uses action script which bails on more complicated RegEx, or works in Wine - well kinda, but not really..., etc.). So I tried to install Kodos from source, which seems to work (download sourceball and setup.py) but it won't run because of missing PyQT dependencies (that I can't manage to fulfill with anything install-able trough standard packages). I then tried to install PyQT manually (which seems to require manual install of SIP and QT too) and instead of pip I have to use configure.py and qmake. It throws error after error at me. I tried to overcome one after another for over an hour but no luck. It even managed to break Calibre and Music Brains Picard. So I purged all the stuff, reinstalled python-sipand python-qt4 from the standard packages and gave up. Has anyone managed to get Kodos running on 12.10? Or any hints on how to do it?

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• Predicting Likelihood of Click with Multiple Presentations

  - by Michel Adar

  When using predictive models to predict the likelihood of an ad or a banner to be clicked on it is common to ignore the fact that the same content may have been presented in the past to the same visitor. While the error may be small if the visitors do not often see repeated content, it may be very significant for sites where visitors come repeatedly. This is a well recognized problem that usually gets handled with presentation thresholds – do not present the same content more than 6 times. Observations and measurements of visitor behavior provide evidence that something better is needed. Observations For a specific visitor, during a single session, for a banner in a not too prominent space, the second presentation of the same content is more likely to be clicked on than the first presentation. The difference can be 30% to 100% higher likelihood for the second presentation when compared to the first. That is, for example, if the first presentation has an average click rate of 1%, the second presentation may have an average CTR of between 1.3% and 2%. After the second presentation the CTR stays more or less the same for a few more presentations. The number of presentations in this plateau seems to vary by the location of the content in the page and by the visual attraction of the content. After these few presentations the CTR starts decaying with a curve that is very well approximated by an exponential decay. For example, the 13th presentation may have 90% the likelihood of the 12th, and the 14th has 90% the likelihood of the 13th. The decay constant seems also to depend on the visibility of the content. Modeling Options Now that we know the empirical data, we can propose modeling techniques that will correctly predict the likelihood of a click. Use presentation number as an input to the predictive model Probably the most straight forward approach is to add the presentation number as an input to the predictive model. While this is certainly a simple solution, it carries with it several problems, among them: If the model learns on each case, repeated non-clicks for the same content will reinforce the belief of the model on the non-clicker disproportionately. That is, the weight of a person that does not click for 200 presentations of an offer may be the same as 100 other people that on average click on the second presentation. The effect of the presentation number is not a customer characteristic or a piece of contextual data about the interaction with the customer, but it is contextual data about the content presented. Models tend to underestimate the effect of the presentation number. For these reasons it is not advisable to use this approach when the average number of presentations of the same content to the same person is above 3, or when there are cases of having the presentation number be very large, in the tens or hundreds. Use presentation number as a partitioning attribute to the predictive model In this approach we essentially build a separate predictive model for each presentation number. This approach overcomes all of the problems in the previous approach, nevertheless, it can be applied only when the volume of data is large enough to have these very specific sub-models converge.

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• PERT shows relationships between defined tasks in a project without taking into consideration a time line

  The program evaluation and review technique (PERT) shows relationships between defined tasks in a project without taking into consideration a time line. This chart is an excellent way to identify dependencies of tasks based on other tasks. This chart allows project managers to identify the critical path of a project to minimize any time delays to the project. According to Craig Borysowich in his article “Pros & Cons of the PERT/CPM Method stated the following advantages and disadvantages: “PERT/CPM has the following advantages: A PERT/CPM chart explicitly defines and makes visible dependencies (precedence relationships) between the WBS elements, PERT/CPM facilitates identification of the critical path and makes this visible, PERT/CPM facilitates identification of early start, late start, and slack for each activity, PERT/CPM provides for potentially reduced project duration due to better understanding of dependencies leading to improved overlapping of activities and tasks where feasible.  PERT/CPM has the following disadvantages: There can be potentially hundreds or thousands of activities and individual dependency relationships, The network charts tend to be large and unwieldy requiring several pages to print and requiring special size paper, The lack of a timeframe on most PERT/CPM charts makes it harder to show status although colors can help (e.g., specific color for completed nodes), When the PERT/CPM charts become unwieldy, they are no longer used to manage the project.” (Borysowich, 2008) Traditionally PERT charts are used in the initial planning of a project like in a project that is utilizing the waterfall approach. Once the chart was created then project managers could further analyze this data to determine the earliest start time for each stage in the project. This is important because this information can be used to help forecast resource needs during a project and where in the project. However, the agile environment can approach this differently because of their constant need to be in contact with the client and the other stakeholders.  The PERT chart can also be used during project iteration to determine what is to be worked on next, such as a prioritized To-Do list a wife would give her husband at the start of a weekend. In my personal opinion, the COTS-centric environment would not really change how a company uses a PERT chart in their day to day work. The only thing I can is that there would be less tasks to include in the chart because the functionally milestones are already completed when the components are purchased. References: http://www.netmba.com/operations/project/pert/ http://web2.concordia.ca/Quality/tools/20pertchart.pdf http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/enterprise-solutions/pros-cons-of-the-pertcpm-method-22221

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• Inside Red Gate - Divisions

  - by Simon Cooper

  When I joined Red Gate back in 2007, there were around 80 people in the company. Now, around 3 years later, it's grown to more than 200. It's a constant battle against Dunbar's number; the maximum number of people you can keep track of in a social group, to try and maintain that 'small company' feel that attracted myself and so many others to apply in the first place. There are several strategies the company's developed over the years to try and mitigate the effects of Dunbar's number. One of the main ones has been divisionalisation. Divisions The first division, .NET, appeared around the same time that I started in 2007. This combined the development, sales, marketing and management of the .NET tools (then, ANTS Profiler v3) into a separate section of the office. The idea was to increase the cohesion and communication between the different people involved in the entire lifecycle of the tools; from initial product development, through to marketing, then to customer support, who would feed back to the development team. This was such a success that the other development teams were re-worked around this model in 2009. Nowadays there are 4 divisions - SQL Tools, DBA, .NET, and New Business. Along the way there have been various tweaks to the details - the sales teams have been merged into the divisions, marketing and product support have been (mostly) centralised - but the same basic model remains. So, how has this helped? As Red Gate has continued to grow over the years, divisionalisation has turned Red Gate from a monolithic software company into what one person described as a 'federation of small businesses'. Each division is free to structure itself as it sees fit, it's free to decide what to concentrate development work on, organise its own newsletters and webinars, decide its own release schedule. Each division is its own small business. In terms of numbers, the size of each division varies from 20 people (.NET) to 52 (SQL Tools); well below Dunbar's number. From a developer's perspective, this means organisational structure is very flat & wide - there's only 2 layers between myself and the CEOs (not that it matters much; everyone can go and have a chat to Neil or Simon, or anyone else inbetween, whenever they want. Provided you can catch them at their desk!). As Red Gate grows, and expands into new areas, new divisions will be created as needed, old ones merged or disbanded, but the division structure will help to maintain that small-company feel that keeps Red Gate working as it does.

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• How do I get the Apple Wireless Keyboard Working in 10.10?

  - by Jamie

  So I've gone and bought a Magic Mouse and Apple Wireless Non-Numeric Keyboard. The magic mouse worked out-of-the-box almost perfectly, except for the forward/back gesture which still isn't functioning, whereas the keyboard didn't. It has constant trouble with the bluetooth connection. Only the 7, 8 and 9 buttons and volume media keys correspond correctly with the output. Pressing every single key on keyboard has this output: 789/=456*123-0.+ When I use Blueman the keyboard can be setup and shows up in "Devices" but I get a warning when I click "Setup"; "Device added successfully, but failed to connect" (although removing the keyboard and setting it up as a new device doesn't incur this error). Using gnome-bluetooth I have encountered no error messages but it connects properly less often than Blueman and I can still only type the aforementioned output. What am I not doing? Where is this going wrong? EDIT: I have read this http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=224673 inside out several times to no avail. It seems these commands don't work for me with the apple peripherals sudo hidd --search hcitool scan Fortunately I have the luxury of a 1TB hard drive, near limitless patience and no job. I have installed a fresh Ubuntu 10.10 64bit (albeit smaller than mine) and after updating and restarting for the first time, I set up my devices in exactly the same way as I have learnt on my original install I succeeded once again with the mouse and, to my joy, with the keyboard also. Though I could not seem to find Alt+F2 and had to reconfigure that and several other keyboard shortcuts, the keyboard is working and in a spectacular fashion. Still, this leaves me with the issue of my original install. I returned to it with some new found knowledge but failed again. Perhaps I have a missing dependancy? I did uninstall bluetooth after the initial set up and reinstalled it recently for the pupose of these peripherals. Maybe it's because I'm running 64bit? This is still not solved, but easily avoided by not changing too much from the original install. Just hide stuff or turn it off, don't uninstall too much.

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• JavaFX Dialogs, Anyone?

  - by HecklerMark

  A common question about JavaFX, especially for those coming from a Swing background, is "How do I do Dialogs?" The reason this is a question at all is that, currently, there is no baked-in capability to do dialog boxes within a pure JavaFX 2.x application. But come on...you wouldn't be reading about this at all if you weren't a resourceful programmer. You have ways of making things happen.  :-) I ran across a decent patch of code recently that handles many of the dialog chores for you. Pros and cons follow, but pointing your browser to this link on Github (appropriately named JavaFXDialog) will get you off to a good start. Here are some screen shots the original code author, Anton Smirnov, provided: Nothing fancy, just clean and functional. Now, about those pros and cons. From my perspective, here's the bottom line: Pros Already developed. Time required to implement is limited to downloading and decompressing the file, doing a bit of reading, and writing a few lines of code to try things out. Easy. Most of the work is done, and the interface is pretty simple. Open source. If you want to make changes - and I'm already thinking along those lines, so you may as well admit you will, too - you can do it. Cons Documentation. What you see on the Wiki page is the extent of it. Lack of activity. As of the date this article was published, the code hasn't been updated in several months...so the project is a bit stale. To be fair, the cons listed above won't cause anyone to lose sleep. After all, you don't expect constant revisions against something that works well enough for most purposes, and if your needs exceed what is there, it's easy to mod the code yourself or "roll your own" if you prefer. The lack of documentation isn't a show-stopper either due to the limited functionality and complexity of the code. Wrapping It Up If you need a quick, drop-in dialog capability for your JavaFX 2.x app, give it a try and see what you think. And if you're already using something you like, please share it as well! I'd love to hear from you, take a look at what you pass along, and maybe do a "dialog shoot-out" article in the future. So..what works for you?  :-) All the best, Mark

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• Windows Azure Use Case: High-Performance Computing (HPC)

  - by BuckWoody

  This is one in a series of posts on when and where to use a distributed architecture design in your organization's computing needs. You can find the main post here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/buckwoody/archive/2011/01/18/windows-azure-and-sql-azure-use-cases.aspx  Description: High-Performance Computing (also called Technical Computing) at its most simplistic is a layout of computer workloads where a “head node” accepts work requests, and parses them out to “worker nodes'”. This is useful in cases such as scientific simulations, drug research, MatLab work and where other large compute loads are required. It’s not the immediate-result type computing many are used to; instead, a “job” or group of work requests is sent to a cluster of computers and the worker nodes work on individual parts of the calculations and return the work to the scheduler or head node for the requestor in a batch-request fashion. This is typical to the way that many mainframe computing use-cases work. You can use commodity-based computers to create an HPC Cluster, such as the Linux application called Beowulf, and Microsoft has a server product for HPC using standard computers, called the Windows Compute Cluster that you can read more about here. The issue with HPC (from any vendor) that some organization have is the amount of compute nodes they need. Having too many results in excess infrastructure, including computers, buildings, storage, heat and so on. Having too few means that the work is slower, and takes longer to return a result to the calling application. Unless there is a consistent level of work requested, predicting the number of nodes is problematic. Implementation: Recently, Microsoft announced an internal partnership between the HPC group (Now called the Technical Computing Group) and Windows Azure. You now have two options for implementing an HPC environment using Windows. You can extend the current infrastructure you have for HPC by adding in Compute Nodes in Windows Azure, using a “Broker Node”.  You can then purchase time for adding machines, and then stop paying for them when the work is completed. This is a common pattern in groups that have a constant need for HPC, but need to “burst” that load count under certain conditions. The second option is to install only a Head Node and a Broker Node onsite, and host all Compute Nodes in Windows Azure. This is often the pattern for organizations that need HPC on a scheduled and periodic basis, such as financial analysis or actuarial table calculations. References: Blog entry on Hybrid HPC with Windows Azure: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ignitionshowcase/archive/2010/12/13/high-performance-computing-on-premise-and-in-the-windows-azure-cloud.aspx  Links for further research on HPC, includes Windows Azure information: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ncdevguy/archive/2011/02/16/handy-links-for-hpc-and-azure.aspx 

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• Oracle Tutor: Are Documented Policies and Procedures Necessary?

  - by emily.chorba(at)oracle.com

  People refer to policies and procedures with a variety of expressions including business process documentation, standard operating procedures (SOPs), department operating procedures (DOPs), work instructions, specifications, and so on. For our purpose here, policies and procedures mean a set of documents that describe an organization's policies (rules) for operation and the procedures (containing tasks performed by individuals) to fulfill the policies. When an organization documents policies and procedures properly, they can be the strategic link between an organization's vision and its daily operations. Policies and procedures are often necessary because of some external requirement, such as environmental compliance or other governmental regulations. One example of an external requirement would be the American Sarbanes-Oxley Act, requiring full openness in accounting practices. Here are a few other examples of business issues that necessitate writing policies and procedures: Operational needs -- policies and procedures ensure fundamental processes are performed in a consistent way that meets the organization's needs. Risk management -- policies and procedures are identified by the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO) as a control activity needed to manage risk. Continuous improvement -- Procedures can improve processes by building important internal communication practices. Compliance -- Well-defined and documented processes (i.e. procedures, training materials) along with records that demonstrate process capability can demonstrate an effective internal control system compliant with regulations and standards. In addition to helping with the above business issues, policies and procedures can support the basic needs of employees and management. Well documented and easy to access policies and procedures: allow employees to understand their roles and responsibilities within predefined limits and to stay on the accepted path indentified by the organization's management provide clarity to the reader when dealing with accountability issues or activities that are of critical importance allow management to guide operations without constant intervention allow managers to control events in advance and prevent employees from making costly mistakes Can you think of another way organizations can meet the above needs of management and their employees in place of documented Policies and Procedures? Probably not, but we would love your feedback on this question. And that my friends, is why documented policies and procedures are very necessary. Learn MoreFor more information about Tutor, visit Oracle.com or the Tutor Blog. Post your questions at the Tutor Forum. Emily ChorbaPrinciple Product Manager Oracle Tutor & BPM

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• Computer / Software Engineering vs Other Engineering Disciplines [closed]

  - by Mohammad Yaseen

  Since this was a rather specific question, I have tried my best to present this question in a format which fits the style of this site. Please comment if it can be improved further. I have to choose the Engineering discipline on 6th Nov. My interest is in Robotics, hardware-level programming, Artificial Intelligence and back-end programming. I am currently working as a freelance developer using mainly PHP and occasionally working with GWT.I am somewhat familiar with C# and Python too. I am not super good at programming but I do like it. I am thinking to choose Computer and Information Systems Engineering as this is what I love but all the eggheads of my city are going to Mechanical Engineering and when I ask one of them Why are you choosing this? They say It's my interest and for job and the money. Basically I am confused between CIS and Mechanical Engineering, specifically the job market for both. Since this is a programmers' site I think following questions will be relevant . I am asking this because I want to take advice from professionals in this field before diving too deep . Are you happy with your job / work and pay. Are you satisfied with the work environment and career growth Do you feel OK (or great?) about the near and/or distant future of your industry. Why should a person choose Computer if he has other choices i.e what this industry has to offer in particular which other fields of work don't This industry is subject to rapid changes and you have to learn continuously throughout your entire career. Does this learning and constant hard work pay off ? In my country there is no hardware manufacturing. So most of CIS graduates (like Software Engineers) work in Software Houses. What is the scenario in your country. Is a degree titled 'Software' necessary or companies will take Computer Engineers too if they have relevant experience. I am asking this because I plan to move abroad for work. This is going to be something which I'll do for the rest of my life so I am a bit confused about the right choice. You can view the course outline for both programmes below. Computer and Information Systems Engineering. Mechanical Engineering

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• How to wire finite state machine into component-based architecture?

  - by Pup

  State machines seem to cause harmful dependencies in component-based architectures. How, specifically, is communication handled between a state machine and the components that carry out state-related behavior? Where I'm at: I'm new to component-based architectures. I'm making a fighting game, although I don't think that should matter. I envision my state machine being used to toggle states like "crouching", "dashing", "blocking", etc. I've found this state-management technique to be the most natural system for a component-based architecture, but it conflicts with techniques I've read about: Dynamic Game Object Component System for Mutable Behavior Characters It suggests that all components activate/deactivate themselves by continually checking a condition for activation. I think that actions like "running" or "walking" make sense as states, which is in disagreement with the accepted response here: finite state machine used in mario like platform game I've found this useful, but ambiguous: How to implement behavior in a component-based game architecture? It suggests having a separate component that contains nothing but a state machine. But, this necessitates some kind of coupling between the state machine component and nearly all the other components. I don't understand how this coupling should be handled. These are some guesses: A. Components depend on state machine: Components receive reference to state machine component's getState(), which returns an enumeration constant. Components update themselves regularly and check this as needed. B. State machine depends on components: The state machine component receives references to all the components it's monitoring. It queries their getState() methods to see where they're at. C. Some abstraction between them Use an event hub? Command pattern? D. Separate state objects that reference components State Pattern is used. Separate state objects are created, which activate/deactivate a set of components. State machine switches between state objects. I'm looking at components as implementations of aspects. They do everything that's needed internally to make that aspect happen. It seems like components should function on their own, without relying on other components. I know some dependencies are necessary, but state machines seem to want to control all of my components.

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• Handling Coding Standards at Work (I'm not the boss)

  - by Josh Johnson

  I work on a small team, around 10 devs. We have no coding standards at all. There are certain things that have become the norm but some ways of doing things are completely disparate. My big one is indentation. Some use tabs, some use spaces, some use a different number of spaces, which creates a huge problem. I often end up with conflicts when I merge because someone used their IDE to auto format and they use a different character to indent than I do. I don't care which we use I just want us all to use the same one. Or else I'll open a file and some lines have curly brackets on the same line as the condition while others have them on the next line. Again, I don't mind which one so long as they are all the same. I've brought up the issue of standards to my direct manager, one on one and in group meetings, and he is not overly concerned about it (there are several others who share the same view as myself). I brought up my specific concern about indentation characters and he thought a better solution would be to, "create some kind of script that could convert all that when we push/pull from the repo." I suspect that he doesn't want to change and this solution seems overly complicated and prone to maintenance issues down the road (also, this addresses only one manifestation of a larger issue). Have any of you run into a similar situation at work? If so, how did you handle it? What would be some good points to help sell my boss on standards? Would starting a grass roots movement to create coding standards, among those of us who are interested, be a good idea? Am I being too particular, should I just let it go? Thank you all for your time. Note: Thanks everyone for the great feedback so far! To be clear, I don't want to dictate One Style To Rule Them All. I'm willing to concede my preferred way of doing something in favor of what suits everyone the best. I want consistency and I want this to be a democracy. I want it to be a group decision that everyone agrees on. True, not everyone will get their way, but I'm hoping that everyone will be mature enough to compromise for the betterment of the group. Note 2: Some people are getting caught up in the two examples I gave above. I'm more after the heart of the matter. It manifests itself with many examples: naming conventions, huge functions that should be broken up, should something go in a util or service, should something be a constant or injected, should we all use different versions of a dependency or the same, should an interface be used for this case, how should unit tests be set up, what should be unit tested, (Java specific) should we use annotations or external config. I could go on.

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• Separating physics and game logic from UI code

  - by futlib

  I'm working on a simple block-based puzzle game. The game play consists pretty much of moving blocks around in the game area, so it's a trivial physics simulation. My implementation, however, is in my opinion far from ideal and I'm wondering if you can give me any pointers on how to do it better. I've split the code up into two areas: Game logic and UI, as I did with a lot of puzzle games: The game logic is responsible for the general rules of the game (e.g. the formal rule system in chess) The UI displays the game area and pieces (e.g. chess board and pieces) and is responsible for animations (e.g. animated movement of chess pieces) The game logic represents the game state as a logical grid, where each unit is one cell's width/height on the grid. So for a grid of width 6, you can move a block of width 2 four times until it collides with the boundary. The UI takes this grid, and draws it by converting logical sizes into pixel sizes (that is, multiplies it by a constant). However, since the game has hardly any game logic, my game logic layer [1] doesn't have much to do except collision detection. Here's how it works: Player starts to drag a piece UI asks game logic for the legal movement area of that piece and lets the player drag it within that area Player lets go of a piece UI snaps the piece to the grid (so that it is at a valid logical position) UI tells game logic the new logical position (via mutator methods, which I'd rather avoid) I'm not quite happy with that: I'm writing unit tests for my game logic layer, but not the UI, and it turned out all the tricky code is in the UI: Stopping the piece from colliding with others or the boundary and snapping it to the grid. I don't like the fact that the UI tells the game logic about the new state, I would rather have it call a movePieceLeft() method or something like that, as in my other games, but I didn't get far with that approach, because the game logic knows nothing about the dragging and snapping that's possible in the UI. I think the best thing to do would be to get rid of my game logic layer and implement a physics layer instead. I've got a few questions regarding that: Is such a physics layer common, or is it more typical to have the game logic layer do this? Would the snapping to grid and piece dragging code belong to the UI or the physics layer? Would such a physics layer typically work with pixel sizes or with some kind of logical unit, like my game logic layer? I've seen event-based collision detection in a game's code base once, that is, the player would just drag the piece, the UI would render that obediently and notify the physics system, and the physics system would call a onCollision() method on the piece once a collision is detected. What is more common? This approach or asking for the legal movement area first? [1] layer is probably not the right word for what I mean, but subsystem sounds overblown and class is misguiding, because each layer can consist of several classes.

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• How to deal with a boss who is extremely competitive [closed]

  - by user72101

  Okay, so I recently joined this group. My boss who I reported to, left a while ago and my colleague was made the team lead. We both now report to the same head, but she heads the team I work in. I am not sure on how to deal with various situations. I would imagine a team lead who motivates the rest of the team, and not someone who would take credit for what others do. I am the only one who works at the same geographic location. She is very smart, no doubt about it. Things get to me, for example I work on an issue and email a dev team, she would respond on top of my emails and as she is the lead, people respond to her rather than to me. If there is an email addressed with the head on it, she would get it to faster than I do, even when she knew I am looking into it. The rest of the team keeps asking me questions or help. I find it hard to say no, and I try to help them as i feel I might need their help someday as well. I slack in my own work or I could have used the time to learn things. I feel that she should be the go to person and not me. If one gets the benefits of being a lead, why not the work that goes with it? I feel I am stuck in a very unfortunate situation and am totally helpless about it. Everyday it is something or the other. I work on a project for months and finally when it is about to go live and there was a minor issue and the head started asking questions, she completely stole my thunder on a call. She would not let me speak and I have to actually cut her off to speak up. The ideal would be not to give it a thought and just do the best I can,but I feel I am capable of much more and not able to give my best because of this constant war at work. Neetu

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• Overload Avoidance

  - by mikef

  A little under a year ago, Matt Simmons wrote a rather reflective article about his terrifying brush with stress-induced ill health. SysAdmins and DBAs have always been prime victims of work-related stress, but I wonder if that predilection is perhaps getting worse, despite the best efforts of Matt and his trusty side-kick, HR. The constant pressure from share-holders and CFOs to 'streamline' the workforce is partially to blame, but the more recent culprit is technology itself. I can't deny that the rise of technologies like virtualization, PowerCLI, PowerShell, and a host of others has been a tremendous boon. As a result, individual IT professionals are now able to handle more and more tasks and manage increasingly large and complex environments. But, without a doubt, this is a two-edged sword; The reward for competence is invariably more work. Unfortunately, SysAdmins play such a pivotal role in modern business that it's easy to see how they can very quickly become swamped in conflicting demands coming from different directions. However, that doesn't justify the ridiculous hours many are asked (or volunteer) to devote to their work. Admirably though their commitment is, it isn't healthy for them, it sets a dangerous expectation, and eventually something will snap. There are times when everyone needs to step up to the plate outside of 'normal' work hours, but that time isn't all the time. Naturally, with all that lovely technology, you can automate more and more of those tricky tasks to keep on top of the workload, but you are still only human. Clever though you may be, there is a very real limit to how far technology can take you. I'm not suggesting that you avoid these technologies, or deliberately aim for mediocrity; I'm just saying that you need to be more than just technically skilled (and Wesley Nonapeptide riffs on and around this topic in his excellent 'Telepathic Robot Drones' blog post). You need to be able to manage expectations, not just Exchange. Specifically, that means your own expectations of what you are capable of, because those come before everyone else's. After all, how can you keep your work-life balance under control, if you're the one setting the bar way too high? Talking to your manager, or discussing issues with your users, is only going to be productive if you have some facts to work with. "Know Thyself" is the first law of managing work overload, and this is obviously a skill which people develop over time; the fact that veteran Sysadmins exist at all is testament to this. I'd just love to know how you get to that point. Personally, I'm using RescueTime to keep myself honest, but I'm open to recommendations for better methods. Do you track your own time, do you have an intuitive sense of what is possible, or do you just rely on someone else to handle that all for you? Cheers, Michael

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• Impulsioned jumping

  - by Mutoh

  There's one thing that has been puzzling me, and that is how to implement a 'faux-impulsed' jump in a platformer. If you don't know what I'm talking about, then think of the jumps of Mario, Kirby, and Quote from Cave Story. What do they have in common? Well, the height of your jump is determined by how long you keep the jump button pressed. Knowing that these character's 'impulses' are built not before their jump, as in actual physics, but rather while in mid-air - that is, you can very well lift your finger midway of the max height and it will stop, even if with desacceleration between it and the full stop; which is why you can simply tap for a hop and hold it for a long jump -, I am mesmerized by how they keep their trajetories as arcs. My current implementation works as following: While the jump button is pressed, gravity is turned off and the avatar's Y coordenate is decremented by the constant value of the gravity. For example, if things fall at Z units per tick, it will rise Z units per tick. Once the button is released or the limit is reached, the avatar desaccelerates in an amount that would make it cover X units until its speed reaches 0; once it does, it accelerates up until its speed matches gravity - sticking to the example, I could say it accelerates from 0 to Z units/tick while still covering X units. This implementation, however, makes jumps too diagonal, and unless the avatar's speed is faster than the gravity, which would make it way too fast in my current project (it moves at about 4 pixels per tick and gravity is 10 pixels per tick, at a framerate of 40FPS), it also makes it more vertical than horizontal. Those familiar with platformers would notice that the character's arc'd jump almost always allows them to jump further even if they aren't as fast as the game's gravity, and when it doesn't, if not played right, would prove itself to be very counter-intuitive. I know this because I could attest that my implementation is very annoying. Has anyone ever attempted at similar mechanics, and maybe even succeeded? I'd like to know what's behind this kind of platformer jumping. If you haven't ever had any experience with this beforehand and want to give it a go, then please, don't try to correct or enhance my explained implementation, unless I was on the right way - try to make up your solution from scratch. I don't care if you use gravity, physics or whatnot, as long as it shows how these pseudo-impulses work, it does the job. Also, I'd like its presentation to avoid a language-specific coding; like, sharing us a C++ example, or Delphi... As much as I'm using the XNA framework for my project and wouldn't mind C# stuff, I don't have much patience to read other's code, and I'm certain game developers of other languages would be interested in what we achieve here, so don't mind sticking to pseudo-code. Thank you beforehand.

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