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• What are some good questions (and good/bad answers) to ask at an interview to gauge the competency of the company/team?

  - by Wayne M

  I'm already familiar with the Joel Test, but it's been my experience that some of the questions there have the answers "massaged" to make the company seem better than it is. I've had several jobs in the past that, for instance, claimed they had a QA process and did unit testing, and what they really meant is "The programmers test the app, and test with the debugger and via trial-and-error."; they said they used SVN but they just lumped everything into one giant repository and had no concept of branching/merging or anything more complicated than updating and committing; said they can build in one step and what they really mean is it's "one step" to copy dozens of files by hand from the programmer's PC to the live server. How do you go about properly gauging a company's environment to make sure that it's a well-evolved company and not stuck on doing things a certain way because they've done it for years and they're ignorant of change? You can almost never ask to see their source code, so you're stuck trying to figure out if the interviewer's answer is accurate or BS to make the company seem good. Besides the Joel Test what are some other good questions to get the proper feel for a company, and more importantly what are some good and bad answers that could indicate a good or bad company? I mean something like (take at face value, please, it's all I could think of at short notice): Question: How does the software team apply the SOLID principles and Inversion of Control to their code? Good Answer: We adhere to SOLID wherever possible; we use TDD so it kind of forces us to write abstract, testable code. We use Ninject for our IoC container because it's fairly easy to configure - it was that or StructureMap but I find Ninject a bit more intuitive, and who doesn't like ninjas? You're not a pirate, are you? Bad Answer: Our code is pretty secure, yeah. And what's this Inversion of Control thing? I've never heard of it before. You see what I did there. The "good" answer uses facts to back it up and has a bit of "in crowd" humor; the bad answer shows complete ignorance of the question - not necessarily a bad thing if you are interviewing for a manger/director position, but a terrible answer and a huge red flag if you're interviewing as a developer and talking to a senior developer or manager! My biggest problem at the moment is being able to take a generic response and gauge whether it's the good or bad answer; more often than not it's the bad kind and I find myself frustrated almost from day one at the new job. I suppose I could name drop if I ask about specific things (e.g. "Do you write unit tests?" and if the answer is yes, ask if they use NUnit, MbUnit or something else; if they mention data access ask if they use a clean ORM like NHibernate or something more coupled like EF or Linq) but is there another way short of being resolute to actually call the interview on things (which will almost certainly result in not getting the job, but if they are skirting the question it's probably not a job I want).

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• Gartner PCC: A Shovel & Some Ah-Ha's

  - by kellsey.ruppel

  When Gartner Vice President and leading analyst Whit Andrews kicked off the Gartner Portals, Content & Collaboration Summit on Monday, March 12 at the Gaylord Palms in Orlando, FL by bringing a shovel to the stage, eyebrows raised and a few thoughts went through my head. Either this guy plans to go help the construction workers outside construct that new pool at the Gaylord or he took a wrong turn and is at the wrong conference. Oh and how did he get that shovel through airport security? As Whit explained more his objective became more clear…take everything anyone has ever told you about portals and throw it out the window, as portals have evolved and times they are most certainly changing. The future Web is here, available not only on browsers but also via a broad spectrum of access points, including automobiles, consumer electronics and more and more mobile devices. Not merely prevalent, the future Web is also multimedia-driven and operates in real time, driven by mobility, social media, streaming video and other dynamic services. Applications and user experiences are in the midst of an evolution — from the early, simple mobile Web models to today’s Web 2.0 mobile apps and, ultimately, to a world of predominantly Web apps. Additionally, cloud services will forever change how portals and user experience are designed, built, delivered, sourced and managed. So what does this mean for you? Today’s organizations need software that will enable them to not just do their jobs, but to do it in a way that is familiar and easy for them.  What does this mean for IT? Use software and technology as an enabler, not as a roadblock. Overall, we had a great week in Orlando learning about how to improve the user experience, manage content explosion, launch social initiatives, transition to mobile environments and understand cloud and SaaS options.  We had some great conversations throughout the conference and at the Oracle booth. Lots of demonstrations were given of Oracle WebCenter Sites and Oracle Social Network. And as Christie mentioned earlier this week, our Vice President of Product Management and Strategy for WebCenter Loren Weinberg presented on the topic of customer engagement and talked about how organization’s relationships with their customers have fundamentally changed today and the resulting impact that has on their priorities.  Loren also talked about the importance of customer engagement, why that matters now more than ever, and what you can do to help your company or organization succeed in this new world. The question asked in every keynote and session was a simple one: What is your “ah-ha” moment? I personally had quite a few, some of which I’ve captured below. 70% of internal social initiatives eventually fail. By 2014, refusing to communicate with consumers via social media will be as harmful as ignoring emails/phone calls is today. Customer engagement = multi-channel + social & interactive + personal & relevant + optimized. If people choose to talk about your product/company/service, it's because it's remarkable. -- Seth Godin's keynote (one of the highlights of the conference!) The Web will become the primary method used for delivering content and applications to mobile devices. By 2015, 20% of smart phone users worldwide will conduct commerce using context-enriched services on a weekly basis.  86% of customers will pay more for a better customer experience. 6 P's of Quality User Experience. Product. Enabled by: People, Patterns, Process, Profit, Priorities. Did you attend the Gartner Summit? What were your ah-ha moments?

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• More Free Apps Bound for the Marketplace

  - by Scott Kuhl

  Microsoft has announced they are raising the limit of free applications a developer can submit from 5 to 100.  But what does that really mean? First, lets look at the reason for the limitation.  The iTunes Store and the Android Market both have a lot more applications available than the Windows Phone Marketplace.  But that says nothing about the quality of those applications.  I attended a couple of pre-launch events and Microsoft representatives were clearly told to send a message. We don’t want a bunch of junky applications that do nothing but spam the marketplace.  That was the reason for the 5 free application limit. Okay, so now what has the result been?  Well, there are still fart apps, but there is no sign of a developer flooding the marking with 1500 wallpaper applications or 1000 of the same application all pointed at different RSS feeds.   On the other hand there are developers who want to release real free apps but are constrained by the 5 app limit. So why did Microsoft change it’s mind?  Is it to get the count of applications up, or is to make developers happy?  Windows Phone Marketplace is growing fast but it’s a long way behind the other guys.   I don’t think Microsoft wants to have 100,000 apps show up in the next 3 months if they are loaded with copy cat apps.  Those numbers will get picked apart quickly and the press will start complaining about  the same problems the Android Market has.  I do think the bump was at developer request.  Microsoft is usually good about listening to developer feedback, but has been pretty slow about it at times.  And from a financial perspective, there will me more apps that Microsoft has to review that they will see no profit on.  At least not until they bake in a advertising model connected to Bing. Ultimately, what does this mean for the future? Well, there are developers out there looking to release more than 5 simple free apps, so I think we will see more hobby apps.  And there are developers out there trying to make money from advertising instead of sales, so I think we will see more of those also.  But the category that I think will grow the fastest is free versions of paid applications that are the same as the trial version of the application.  While technically that makes no sense, its purely a marketing move.  Free apps get downloaded a lot more than paid apps, even with a trial mode.  It always surprises me how little consumers are willing to spend on mobile apps.  How many reviews of applications have you seen that says something like “a bit pricey at $1.99”.  Really?  Have you looked at how much you spend on your phone and plan?  I always thought the trial mode baked into Windows Marketplace was a good idea.  So I’m not sure how the more open free market will play out. In the long run though, I won’t be surprised to see a Bing ad mobile ad model show up so Microsoft can capitalize on the more open and free Windows Marketplace. Bonus: The Oatmeal on How I Feel About Buying Apps

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• Games development with a game loop that's abstracted away

  - by Davy8

  Most game development happens with a main game loop. Are there any good articles/blog posts/discussions about games without a game loop? I imagine they'd mostly be web games, but I'd be interested in hearing otherwise. (As a side note, I think it's really interesting that the concept is almost exclusively used in gaming as far as I'm aware, perhaps that may be another question.) Edit: I realize there's probably a redraw loop somewhere. I guess what I really mean is a loop that is hidden to you. Frames are something you as the developer are not concerned with as you're working on a higher level of abstraction. E.g. someLootItem.moveTo(inventory, someAnimatationType) and that will move from the loot box to your inventory using the specified animation type without the game developer having to worry about the implementation details of that animation. Maybe that's how "real" games end up working, but from reading most tutorials they seem to imply a much more granular level of control is used, but that might just be an artifact of being a tutorial. Edit2: I think most people are misunderstanding what I'm trying to ask, likely because I'm having trouble describing exactly what I'm trying to ask. After some more thinking perhaps what I'm referring to is more along the lines of what I believe is referred to as "scripting" where you're working at a very high level and having some game engine take care of the low level details. For example, take custom maps in Starcraft II or Warcraft III. Many of the "maps" have gameplay that deviates enough from the primary game that they could be considered a separate game written on the same engine. What I'm referring to then is along those lines. I may be wrong because I only dabbed in the Warcraft III editor, but as far as I remember no where in the map editor do you control the game loop, and yet you can create many different games out of it. In my mind, these are games in their own right. If you're playing DotA you don't say you're playing Warcraft III, you say you're playing DotA because that's the actual game you're playing. Such a system may impose limitations that don't exist if you're creating a game from scratch, but it greatly reduces development time because much of the "hard" work has already been done for you. Hopefully that clarifies what I'm asking. Another example of what is I mean, is when you write a web app, of course it communicates through sockets and TCP. But does the average web developer doesn't explicitly write code for connecting sockets. They just need to know about receiving a request and sending a response. There are unique scenarios where you do occasionally need to use raw sockets, but it's generally rare in web development. In a similar fashion, it's very possible to write a game without directly using the game loop, even though one is used behind the scenes. Probably not a AAA title, but there must be hundreds of smaller scale games that can and possibly are written this way. Are there any good resources on writing these "simpler" games?

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• How would I handle input with a Game Component?

  - by Aufziehvogel

  I am currently having problems from finding my way into the component-oriented XNA design. I read an overview over the general design pattern and googled a lot of XNA examples. However, they seem to be right on the opposite site. In the general design pattern, an object (my current player) is passed to InputComponent::update(Player). This means the class will know what to do and how this will affect the game (e.g. move person vs. scroll text in a menu). Yet, in XNA GameComponent::update(GameTime) is called automatically without a reference to the current player. The only XNA examples I found built some sort of higher-level Keyboard engine into the game component like this: class InputComponent: GameComponent { public void keyReleased(Keys); public void keyPressed(Keys); public bool keyDown(Keys); public void override update(GameTime gameTime) { // compare previous state with current state and // determine if released, pressed, down or nothing } } Some others went a bit further making it possible to use a Service Locator by a design like this: interface IInputComponent { public void downwardsMovement(Keys); public void upwardsMovement(Keys); public bool pausedGame(Keys); // determine which keys pressed and what that means // can be done for different inputs in different implementations public void override update(GameTime); } Yet, then I am wondering if it is possible to design an input class to resolve all possible situations. Like in a menu a mouse click can mean "click that button", but in game play it can mean "shoot that weapon". So if I am using such a modular design with game components for input, how much logic is to be put into the InputComponent / KeyboardComponent / GamepadComponent and where is the rest handled? What I had in mind, when I heard about Game Components and Service Locator in XNA was something like this: use Game Components to run the InputHandler automatically in the loop use Service Locator to be able to switch input at runtime (i.e. let player choose if he wants to use a gamepad or a keyboard; or which shall be player 1 and which player 2). However, now I cannot see how this can be done. First code example does not seem flexible enough, as on a game pad you could require some combination of buttons for something that is possible on keyboard with only one button or with the mouse) The second code example seems really hard to implement, because the InputComponent has to know in which context we are currently. Moreover, you could imagine your application to be multi-layered and let the key-stroke go through all layers to the bottom-layer which requires a different behaviour than the InputComponent would have guessed from the top-layer. The general design pattern with passing the Player to update() does not have a representation in XNA and I also cannot see how and where to decide which class should be passed to update(). At most time of course the player, but sometimes there could be menu items you have to or can click I see that the question in general is already dealt with here, but probably from a more elobate point-of-view. At least, I am not smart enough in game development to understand it. I am searching for a rather code-based example directly for XNA. And the answer there leaves (a noob like) me still alone in how the object that should receive the detected event is chosen. Like if I have a key-up event, should it go to the text box or to the player?

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• Can you/should you develop components for ASP.NET MVC?

  - by Vilx-

  Following from the previous question I've started to wonder - is it possible to implement "Components" in ASP.NET MVC (latest version)? And should you? Let's clarify what I mean with a "component". With that I mean a "control" (aka "widget"), similar to those that ASP.NET webforms is built upon. A gridview might be a good example. In webforms I can place on my form a datasource component (one line of code), a gridview component (another line of code) and bind them together (specify an attribute on the gridview). In the codebehind file I fill the datasource with data (a few lines of DB-querying code), and I'm all set. At this point the gridview is a fully functional standalone component. I can open the form, and I'll see all the data. I can sort it by clicking on the column headers; it is split into several pages; I can drag the column headers around and rearrange columns; I can turn on "grouping" mode; etc. And I don't need to write another line of code for any of it. The gridview, as a component, already has all the code tucked away in its classes and assemblies. I just place it on the form, initialize it, and it Just Works. At some times (like sorting or navigation to a different page) it will also perform ajax callbacks to the server, but those too will be handled internally, with my code having no knowledge at all about it. And then there are also events that I can attach if I want to get notified when something happens. In MVC I cannot see a way of doing this cleanly. Sure, there are the partial views, but those only handle half of the problem - they render the initial HTML. Some more can be achieved with client-side Javascript (like column re-arranging), but when the grid needs to do an ajax callback (say, to fetch the next page of data), my code will have to get involved and process that request. At best I guess I can provide some helper methods to process it, but I'll have to write the code that calls them, and also provide a controller method with signature matching the arguments of that callback. I guess that I could make some hacks with global events or special routes or something, but that just seems... hackish. Unelegant. Perhaps this is not the MVC way? Although I've completed one project in it, I'm still far from being an MVC expert. But then what is? In the intranet application that we're building there are dozens upon dozens of such grids. Naturally I want them all to have a unified look & behavior, and I don't want to repeat the same code all over the place. So what's the "MVC" approach to this problem?

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• Is the Leptonica implementation of 'Modified Median Cut' not using the median at all?

  - by TheCodeJunkie

  I'm playing around a bit with image processing and decided to read up on how color quantization worked and after a bit of reading I found the Modified Median Cut Quantization algorithm. I've been reading the code of the C implementation in Leptonica library and came across something I thought was a bit odd. Now I want to stress that I am far from an expert in this area, not am I a math-head, so I am predicting that this all comes down to me not understanding all of it and not that the implementation of the algorithm is wrong at all. The algorithm states that the vbox should be split along the lagest axis and that it should be split using the following logic The largest axis is divided by locating the bin with the median pixel (by population), selecting the longer side, and dividing in the center of that side. We could have simply put the bin with the median pixel in the shorter side, but in the early stages of subdivision, this tends to put low density clusters (that are not considered in the subdivision) in the same vbox as part of a high density cluster that will outvote it in median vbox color, even with future median-based subdivisions. The algorithm used here is particularly important in early subdivisions, and 3is useful for giving visible but low population color clusters their own vbox. This has little effect on the subdivision of high density clusters, which ultimately will have roughly equal population in their vboxes. For the sake of the argument, let's assume that we have a vbox that we are in the process of splitting and that the red axis is the largest. In the Leptonica algorithm, on line 01297, the code appears to do the following Iterate over all the possible green and blue variations of the red color For each iteration it adds to the total number of pixels (population) it's found along the red axis For each red color it sum up the population of the current red and the previous ones, thus storing an accumulated value, for each red note: when I say 'red' I mean each point along the axis that is covered by the iteration, the actual color may not be red but contains a certain amount of red So for the sake of illustration, assume we have 9 "bins" along the red axis and that they have the following populations 4 8 20 16 1 9 12 8 8 After the iteration of all red bins, the partialsum array will contain the following count for the bins mentioned above 4 12 32 48 49 58 70 78 86 And total would have a value of 86 Once that's done it's time to perform the actual median cut and for the red axis this is performed on line 01346 It iterates over bins and check they accumulated sum. And here's the part that throws me of from the description of the algorithm. It looks for the first bin that has a value that is greater than total/2 Wouldn't total/2 mean that it is looking for a bin that has a value that is greater than the average value and not the median ? The median for the above bins would be 49 The use of 43 or 49 could potentially have a huge impact on how the boxes are split, even though the algorithm then proceeds by moving to the center of the larger side of where the matched value was.. Another thing that puzzles me a bit is that the paper specified that the bin with the median value should be located, but does not mention how to proceed if there are an even number of bins.. the median would be the result of (a+b)/2 and it's not guaranteed that any of the bins contains that population count. So this is what makes me thing that there are some approximations going on that are negligible because of how the split actually takes part at the center of the larger side of the selected bin. Sorry if it got a bit long winded, but I wanted to be as thoroughas I could because it's been driving me nuts for a couple of days now ;)

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• How to introduce a computer illiterate 50-year old to programming [closed]

  - by sunday

  The other day my dad asked me a question that I would have never expected from him. "How can I learn C++?" My dad is turning 56 this year and computers are a distant concept for him. He doesn't know how to use a phone very well besides calling numbers (no speed dial or contacts); though he has started to learn computers a little better - to the point that he knows how to open the internet (in Windows) and browse around (and has successfully completed several job applications entirely on his own online, of which he was offered positions too). But still, these are too narrow-windowed experiences to mean much, really. While he may not have the background, my dad knows how to read. And I mean reading as a skill, not just an ability. He has little to no college education (financial problems, family, etc.) and was fortunate enough to finish high school, but still taught himself to become a master electrician and has been one for almost 30 years now. He did the same with guitar, learning to play at a very professional level and has been praised for his skill. In high school, he picked up a weight lifting book - and was the only person in his high school at the time to qualify officially as an "athlete" by national standards. In all cases, he just needed something to read. Something to teach him. He absorbs information like a sponge. I have no doubt in my dad's motivation or capability of doing this, so my general goal is simply: Get my dad into the world of computers, and get him on the road to programming. I strongly believe that once I get him through the fundamentals, his drive and reading skill will keep him going on this own. So I'm asking you all: where should I start with all this? And what are the best resources out there? Should I get him to start Linux instead of Windows? Is C++ a bad idea? Remember, he needs to (IMO) learn computers first, and then get that first grasp (the "Hello world" experience) of programming. For money's sake and at top preference, I'd like free online resources that he can read, but by all means any good suggestions in print or paid-for-online are welcome (that I could possibly look into later to purchase). And also, I intend to start him off with C++ (no Python, Java, etc.), because I know it the best and will be able to help him along the way with code. (I have minimal knowledge right now in other languages). Edit: I'm getting a lot of persistent suggestions to use Python. The only reason I wanted to do C++ is that I KNOW it and can be THERE when my dad needs help. My VERY FIRST exposure to programming ever was Java. I learned Java, and I got good at it. I open to other suggestions, but please provide an effective application of your suggestions. EDIT #2: I understand my approach/thinking/knowledge could be lacking here. I'm a sophomore level undergraduate CS major. If you don't agree with anything in my post, tell me why - give me ideas, information - that's why I'm asking in the first place. To narrow down my general goal to specific reachable goals.

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• Why is 0 false?

  - by Morwenn

  This question may sound dumb, but why does 0 evaluates to false and any other [integer] value to true is most of programming languages? String comparison Since the question seems a little bit too simple, I will explain myself a little bit more: first of all, it may seem evident to any programmer, but why wouldn't there be a programming language - there may actually be, but not any I used - where 0 evaluates to true and all the other [integer] values to false? That one remark may seem random, but I have a few examples where it may have been a good idea. First of all, let's take the example of strings three-way comparison, I will take C's strcmp as example: any programmer trying C as his first language may be tempted to write the following code: if (strcmp(str1, str2)) { // Do something... } Since strcmp returns 0 which evaluates to false when the strings are equal, what the beginning programmer tried to do fails miserably and he generally does not understand why at first. Had 0 evaluated to true instead, this function could have been used in its most simple expression - the one above - when comparing for equality, and the proper checks for -1 and 1 would have been done only when needed. We would have considered the return type as bool (in our minds I mean) most of the time. Moreover, let's introduce a new type, sign, that just takes values -1, 0 and 1. That can be pretty handy. Imagine there is a spaceship operator in C++ and we want it for std::string (well, there already is the compare function, but spaceship operator is more fun). The declaration would currently be the following one: sign operator<=>(const std::string& lhs, const std::string& rhs); Had 0 been evaluated to true, the spaceship operator wouldn't even exist, and we could have declared operator== that way: sign operator==(const std::string& lhs, const std::string& rhs); This operator== would have handled three-way comparison at once, and could still be used to perform the following check while still being able to check which string is lexicographically superior to the other when needed: if (str1 == str2) { // Do something... } Old errors handling We now have exceptions, so this part only applies to the old languages where no such thing exist (C for example). If we look at C's standard library (and POSIX one too), we can see for sure that maaaaany functions return 0 when successful and any integer otherwise. I have sadly seen some people do this kind of things: #define TRUE 0 // ... if (some_function() == TRUE) { // Here, TRUE would mean success... // Do something } If we think about how we think in programming, we often have the following reasoning pattern: Do something Did it work? Yes -> That's ok, one case to handle No -> Why? Many cases to handle If we think about it again, it would have made sense to put the only neutral value, 0, to yes (and that's how C's functions work), while all the other values can be there to solve the many cases of the no. However, in all the programming languages I know (except maybe some experimental esotheric languages), that yes evaluates to false in an if condition, while all the no cases evaluate to true. There are many situations when "it works" represents one case while "it does not work" represents many probable causes. If we think about it that way, having 0 evaluate to true and the rest to false would have made much more sense. Conclusion My conclusion is essentially my original question: why did we design languages where 0 is false and the other values are true, taking in account my few examples above and maybe some more I did not think of? Follow-up: It's nice to see there are many answers with many ideas and as many possible reasons for it to be like that. I love how passionate you seem to be about it. I originaly asked this question out of boredom, but since you seem so passionate, I decided to go a little further and ask about the rationale behind the Boolean choice for 0 and 1 on Math.SE :)

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• VSTO Development - Key Improvements In VS2010 / .NET 4.0?

  - by dferraro

  Hi all, I am trying to make a case to my bosses on why we should use VS2010 for an upcoming Excel Workbook VSTO application. I haven't used VSTO before but have used VBA. With 2010 just around the corner, I wanted to read about the improvements made to see if it was worth using 2010 to develop this application. So far I have read 2 major improvements are ease of deployments and also debugging / com interop improvements ... I was just wondering if there was anything else I wasn't aware of, or if anyone here is actually developing in VSTO and has used 2010 and both 2008 and could help make a case / arm me with information. The main concern of my bosses is deploying .NET 4.0 runtime on the Citrix servers here... however it seems that with 3.5, we would have to deploy the VSTO runtime and PIA's, etc... So really wouldn't deployments be easier with 2010 because installing just the 4.0 runtime is better than having to install the 'VSTO Runtime' as well as PIA's, etc? Or is there something I'm missing here? Anyone here deploy VSTO app in an enterprise and can speak to this? Also - I'm trying to also fight to use C# over VB.NET for this app. Does anyone know any key reasons why (except for my bias on preference of syntax) it would be better to use C# over VB for this? Any key features lacking in VB VSTO development? I've read about the VSTO Power Tools, and one of them describes LINQ enalbment of the Excel Object Model classes - however it says 'a set of C# classes'... Does anyone know if they literally mean C# - so this would not work with VB.NET, or do they just mean the code is written in C#? Anyone ever used these power tools with VB? I am going to download & play with it now, but any help again is greatly appreciated Thanks very much for any information.

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• Socket error 10052 on UDP socket

  - by Jesper

  We have a .NET 2.0 desktop application which sends and receives network packets over UDP. Several users have reported an occasional socket error 10052 which happens when the code calls socket.BeginReceiveFrom on a the UDP socket. What does this mean? The official MS documentation for socket error 10052 says - quote: "WSAENETRESET (10052) Network dropped connection on reset . The connection has been broken due to keep-alive activity detecting a failure while the operation was in progress. It can also be returned by setsockopt if an attempt is made to set SO_KEEPALIVE on a connection that has already failed." This just doesn't make much sense for a UDP socket since UDP is a connectionless protocol. I know that another close error code 10054 in connection with UDP sockets means that an ICMP message "Port Unreachable" was received, and I am wondering if 10052 might map to another ICMP message? I have googled this for months, read network books, etc. but can't find anything. Please help - what does socket error 10052 on a UDP socket mean? Thanks in advance

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• What do I do about recurring billing?

  - by phidah

  This might be a subjective question, but I'll give it a go. There are already a number of questions on SO that revolves around subscription billing management. I am currently working on a SaaS solution that will require a fully automated billing system. What I am not looking for when asking this question is not advice on implementing towards a specific payment gateway or stuff like that. Instead I'd like advice on what kind of approach to take. The functionality that I need is a system that can handle upgrades, downgrades, recurring billing, cancellations, etc. Initially for one product only, but it might over time be a requirement that the system can handle multiple products (by products I mean fundamentally different products, not different variations of the same product). As I see it there are a number of possible approaches when you need a solution like this: Code a billing server yourself that supports this and is decoupled from each product so that it can handle multiple independent products. Use a hosted solution like Recurly, Chargify, Spreedly or CheddarGetter. The advantage of using a hosted solution is obviously that you don't need PCI certification, the concern is outsourced and it is a lot faster to get up and running. These advantages come at a cost however: The most important support function for your product - i.e. the billing is not in your control. Additionally you have less control and flexibility. What would you do? If we look beyond the PCI requirements I would definately prefer to have a system coded in-house that could do this kind of job. On the other hand I've heard from numerous sources that coding a system like this is a pain. Any advice is highly appreciated. Also, if you advice to code it yourself, any experiences on how to do it or if there are any opensource projects (no matter the language, what I'm after is not the code but the structure) that I can benefit from would really mean alot. Thanks in advance for your inputs! :-)

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• Kruskal-Wallis test with details on pairwise comparisons

  - by dalloliogm

  The standard stats::kruskal.test module allows to calculate the kruskal-wallis test on a dataset: >>> data(diamonds) >>> kruskal.test.test(price~carat, data=diamonds) Kruskal-Wallis rank sum test data: price by carat by color Kruskal-Wallis chi-squared = 50570.15, df = 272, p-value < 2.2e-16 this is correct, it is giving me a probability that all the groups in the data have the same mean. However, I would like to have the details for each pair comparison, like if diamonds of colors D and E have the same mean price, as some other softwares do (SPSS) when you ask for a Kruskal test. I have found kruskalmc from the package pgirmess which allows me to do what I want to do: > kruskalmc(diamonds$price, diamonds$color) Multiple comparison test after Kruskal-Wallis p.value: 0.05 Comparisons obs.dif critical.dif difference D-E 571.7459 747.4962 FALSE D-F 2237.4309 751.5684 TRUE D-G 2643.1778 726.9854 TRUE D-H 4539.4392 774.4809 TRUE D-I 6002.6286 862.0150 TRUE D-J 8077.2871 1061.7451 TRUE E-F 2809.1767 680.4144 TRUE E-G 3214.9237 653.1587 TRUE E-H 5111.1851 705.6410 TRUE E-I 6574.3744 800.7362 TRUE E-J 8649.0330 1012.6260 TRUE F-G 405.7470 657.8152 FALSE F-H 2302.0083 709.9533 TRUE F-I 3765.1977 804.5390 TRUE F-J 5839.8562 1015.6357 TRUE G-H 1896.2614 683.8760 TRUE G-I 3359.4507 781.6237 TRUE G-J 5434.1093 997.5813 TRUE H-I 1463.1894 825.9834 TRUE H-J 3537.8479 1032.7058 TRUE I-J 2074.6585 1099.8776 TRUE However, this package only allows for one categoric variable (e.g. I can't study the prices clustered by color and by carat, as I can do with kruskal.test), and I don't know anything about the pgirmess package, whether it is maintained or not, or if it is tested. Can you recommend me a package to execute the Kruskal-Wallis test which returns details for every comparison? How would you handle the problem?

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• Fix common library functions, or abandon then?

  - by Ian Boyd

  Imagine i have a function with a bug in it: Boolean MakeLocation(String City, String State) { //Given "Springfield", "MO" //return "Springfield, MO" return City+", "+State; } So the call: MakeLocation("Springfield", "MO"); would return "Springfield, MO" Now there's a slight problem, what if the user called: MakeLocation("Springfield, MO", "OH"); The called it wrong, obviously. But the function would return "Springfield, MO, OH". The system was functioning like this for many years, until i noticed the function being used wrong, and i corrected it. And i also updated the original function to catch such an obvious mistake - in case it's happening elsewhere: Boolean MakeLocation(String City, String State) { //Given "Springfield", "MO" //return "Springfield, MO" if (City.Contains, ",") throw new EMakeLocationException("City name contains a comma. You probably didn't mean that"); return City+", "+State; } And testing showed the problem fixed. Except we missed an edge case, and the customer found it. So now the moral dillema. Do you ever add new sanity checks, safety checks, assertions to exising code? Or do you call the old function abandoned, and have a new one: Boolean MakeLocation(String City, String State) { //Given "Springfield", "MO" //return "Springfield, MO" return City+", "+State; } Boolean MakeLocation2(String City, String State) { //Given "Springfield", "MO" //return "Springfield, MO" if (City.Contains, ",") throw new EMakeLocationException("City name contains a comma. You probably didn't mean that"); return City+", "+State; } The same can apply for anything: Question FetchQuestion(Int id) { if (id == 0) throw new EFetchQuestionException("No question ID specified"); ... } Do you risk breaking existing code, at the expense of existing code being wrong?

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• Linq - how does it work??

  - by clarkeyboy

  Hey, I have just been looking into Linq with ASP.Net. It is very neat indeed. I was just wondering - how do all the classes get populated? I mean in ASP.Net, suppose you have a Linq file called Catalogue, and you then use a For loop to loop through Catalogue.Products and print each Product name. How do the details get stored? Does it just go through the Products table on page load and create another instance of class Product for each row, effectively copying an entire table into an array of class Product? If so, I think I have created a system very much like this, in the sense that there is a SiteContent module with an instance of each Manager class - for example there is UserManager, ProductManager, SettingManager and alike. UserManager contains an instance of the User class for each row in the Users table. They also contain methods such as Create, Update and Remove. These Managers and their "Items" are created on every page load. This just makes it nice and easy to access users, products, settings etc in every page as far as I, the developer, am concerned. Any any subsequent pages I need to create, I just need to reference SiteContent.UserManager to access a list of users, rather than executing a query from within that page (ie this method separates out data access from the workings of the page, in the same way as using code behind separates out the workings of the page from how the page is layed out). However the problem is that this technique seems rather slow. I mean it is effectively creating a database on every page load, taking data from another database. I have taken measures such as preventing, for example, the ProductManager from being created if it is not referenced on page load. Therefore it does not load data into storage when it is not needed. My question is basically whether my technique does the exact same thing as Linq, in the sense of duplicating data from tables into properties of classes.. Thanks in advance for any advice or answers about this. Regards, Richard Clarke

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• Implementing Naïve Bayes algorithm in Java - Need some guidance

  - by techventure

  hello stackflow people As a School assignment i'm required to implement Naïve Bayes algorithm which i am intending to do in Java. In trying to understand how its done, i've read the book "Data Mining - Practical Machine Learning Tools and Techniques" which has a section on this topic but am still unsure on some primary points that are blocking my progress. Since i'm seeking guidance not solution in here, i'll tell you guys what i thinking in my head, what i think is the correct approach and in return ask for correction/guidance which will very much be appreciated. please note that i am an absolute beginner on Naïve Bayes algorithm, Data mining and in general programming so you might see stupid comments/calculations below: The training data set i'm given has 4 attributes/features that are numeric and normalized(in range[0 1]) using Weka (no missing values)and one nominal class(yes/no) 1) The data coming from a csv file is numeric HENCE * Given the attributes are numeric i use PDF (probability density function) formula. + To calculate the PDF in java i first separate the attributes based on whether they're in class yes or class no and hold them into different array (array class yes and array class no) + Then calculate the mean(sum of the values in row / number of values in that row) and standard divination for each of the 4 attributes (columns) of each class + Now to find PDF of a given value(n) i do (n-mean)^2/(2*SD^2), + Then to find P( yes | E) and P( no | E) i multiply the PDF value of all 4 given attributes and compare which is larger, which indicates the class it belongs to In temrs of Java, i'm using ArrayList of ArrayList and Double to store the attribute values. lastly i'm unsure how to to get new data? Should i ask for input file (like csv) or command prompt and ask for 4 values? I'll stop here for now (do have more questions) but I'm worried this won't get any responses given how long its got. I will really appreciate for those that give their time reading my problems and comment.

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• Base 128 or 256 Encoding for the Binary Lexical Octet Adhoc Transport Protocol?

  - by Randolpho

  I'm in the process of implementing a network driver for the Binary Lexical Octet Adhoc Transport (BLOAT) protocols in the hopes of replacing the TCP/UDP/IP stack with a much more flexible XML structure. BLOAT is detailed in RFC 3252, so if you're unfamiliar with the protocol I highly recommend you read the entire RFC before providing any comments. Don't worry, it's short and sweet; you might even enjoy it. Anyway, my problem is this: BLOAT requires that the payload be Base64 encoded which doesn't make sense to me. I mean, sure, it's the internet standard for binary payloads, but there are better, more efficient encodings available: Base128 and Base256, for example. That the RFC requires Base64 and doesn't allow for any other payload encoding really bothers me. To that end, I'm considering a small optional change to the protocol. Embrace and extend, right? Anyway, I'd like to modify the payload element to accept an encoding attribute, which can extend the encoding to Base128 or Base256, or even to other encodings I can't conceive of at the moment. If the encoding attribute isn't present, Base64 would be assumed. So my question is this: should I? I mean, BLOAT is an accepted standard, even if it isn't exactly omnipresent. If I make this change, will there be compatibility issues? I don't foresee any, but perhaps you, oh great Stack Overflow Community, can? If I do implement this change, should I contact the original RFC author? Should I offer a supplemental RFC?

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• Regression Testing and Deployment Strategy

  - by user279516

  I'd like some advice on a deployment strategy. If a development team creates an extensive framework, and many (20-30) applications consume it, and the business would like application updates at least every 30 days, what is the best deployment strategy? The reason I ask is that there seems to be a lot of waste (and risk) in using an agile approach of deploying changes monthly, if 90% of the applications don't change. What I mean by this is that the framework can change during the month, and so can a few applications. Because the framework changed, all applications should be regression-tested. If, say, 10 of the applications don't change at all during the year, then those 10 applications are regression-tested EVERY MONTH, when they didn't have any feature changes or hot fixes. They had to be tested simply because the business is rolling updates every month. And the risk that is involved... if a mission-critical application is deployed, that takes a few weeks, and multiple departments, to test, is it realistic to expect to have to constantly regression-test this application? One option is to make any framework updates backward-compatible. While this would mean that applications don't need to change their code, they would still need to be tested because the underlying framework changed. And the risk involved is great; a constantly changing framework (and deploying this framework) means the mission-critical app can never just enjoy the same code base for a long time. These applications share the same database, hence the need for the constant testing. I'm aware of TDD and automated tests, but that doesn't exist at the moment. Any advice?

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• help in the Donalds B. Johnson's algorithm, i cannot understand the pseudo code

  - by Pitelk

  Hi , does anyone know the Donald B. Johnson's algorithm which enumarates all the elementary circuits (cycles) in a Directed graph? link text I have the paper he had published in 1975 but I cannot understand the pseudo-code. My goal is to implement this algorithm in java. Some questions i have is for example what is the matrix Ak it refers to. In the pseudo code mentions that Ak:=adjacency structure of strong component K with least vertex in subgraph of G induced by {s,s+1,....n}; Does that mean i have to implement another algorithm that finds the Ak matrix? Another question is what the following means? begin logical f; Does also the line "logical procedure CIRCUIT (integer value v);" means that the circuit procedure returns a logical variable. In the pseudo code also has the line "CIRCUIT := f;" . Does this mean? It would be great if someone could translate this 1970's pseudocode to a more modern type of pseudo code so i can understand it in case you are interested to help but you cannot find the paper please email me at [email protected] and i will send you the paper. Thanks in advance

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• Definition of the job titles involved in a software development process.

  - by Rafael Romão

  I have seen many job titles for people involved in a software development process, but never found a consensus about they mean. I know many of them are equivalent, and found some other questions about that here in SO, but I would like to know your definitions and comments about them. I want not only to know if there is really a consensus, but also to know if what I suppose to be a Software Architect, is really a Software Architect, and so on. The job titles I mean are: Developer; System Analyst; Programmer; Analyst Programmer; Software Engineer; Software Architect; Designer; Software Designer; Business Manager; Business Analyst; Program Manager; Project Manager; Development Manager; Tester; Support Analyst; Please, feel free to add more titles to this list in your answers. It would be very helpful.

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• Accounting System for Winforms / SQL Server applications

  - by Craig L

  If you were going to write a vertical market C# / WinForms / SQL Server application and needed an accounting "engine" for it, what software package would you chose ? By vertical market, I mean the application is intended to solve a particular set of business problems, not be a generic accounting application. Thus the value add of the program is the 70% of non-accounting related functionality present in the finished product. The 30% of accounting functionality is merely to enable the basic accounting needs of the business. I said all that to lead up to this: The accounting engine needs to be a royalty-free runtime license and not super expensive. I've found a couple C#/SQL Server accounting apps that can be had with source code and a royalty free run time for $150k+ and that would be fine for greenfield development funded by a large bankroll, but for smaller apps, that sort of capital outlay isn't feasible. Something along the lines of $5k to $15k for a royalty-free runtime would be more reasonable. Open-source would be even better. By accounting engine, I mean something that takes care of at a minimum: General Ledger Invoices Statements Accounts Receivable Payments / Credits Basically, an accounting engine should be something that lets the developer concentrate on the value added (industry specific business best practices / processes) part of the solution and not have to worry about how to implement the low level details of a double entry accounting system. Ideally, the accounting engine would be something that is licensed on a royalty free run-time basis. Suggestions, please ?

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• Graph navigation problem

  - by affan

  I have graph of components and relation between them. User open graph and want to navigate through the graph base on his choice. He start with root node and click expand button which reveal new component that is related to current component. The problem is with when use decide to collapse a node. I have to choose a sub-tree to hide and at same time leave graph in consistent state so that there is no expanded node with missing relation to another node in graph. Now in case of cyclic/loop between component i have difficult of choosing sub-tree. For simplicity i choose the order in which they were expanded. So if a A expand into B and C collapse A will hide the nodes and edge that it has created. Now consider flowing scenario. [-] mean expanded state and [+] mean not yet expanded. A is expanded to reveal B and C. And then B is expanded to reveal D. C is expanded which create a link between C and exiting node D and also create node E. Now user decide to collapse B. Since by order of expansion D is child of B it will collapse and hide D. This leave graph in inconsistent state as C is expanded with edge to D but D is not anymore there if i remove CD edge it will still be inconsistent. If i collapse C. And E is again a cyclic link e.g to B will produce the same problem. /-----B[-]-----\ A[-] D[+] \-----C[-]-----/ \ E[+] So guys any idea how can i solve this problem. User need to navigate through graph and should be able to collapse but i am stuck with problem of cyclic nodes in which case any of node in loop if collapse will leave graph in inconsistent state.

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• Namespaces combined with TFS / Source Control explanation

  - by Christian

  As an ISV company we slowly run into the "structure your code"-issue. We mainly develop using Visual Studio 2008 and 2010 RC. Languages c# and vb.net. We have our own Team Foundation Server and of course we use Source Control. When we started developing based on the .NET Framework, we also begun using Namespaces in a primitive way. With the time we 'became more mature', i mean we learned to use the namespaces and we structured the code more and more, but only in the solution scope. Now we have about 100 different projects and solutions in our Source Safe. We realized that many of our own classes are coded very redundant, i mean, a Write2Log, GetExtensionFromFilename or similar Function can be found between one and 20 times in all these projects and solutions. So my idea is: Creating one single kind of root folder in Source Control and start an own namespace-hierarchy-structure below this root, let's name it CompanyName. A Write2Log class would then be found in CompanyName.System.Logging. Whenever we create a new solution or project and we need a log function, we will 'namespace' that solution and place it accordingly somewhere below the CompanyName root folder. To have the logging functionality we then import (add) the existing project to the solution. Those 20+ projects/solutions with the write2log class can then be maintained in one single place. To my questions: - is that a good idea, the philosophy of namespaces and source control? - There must be a good book explaining the Namespaces combined with Source Control, yes? any hints/directions/tips? - how do you manage your 50+ projects?

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• Broken flash movie player! allowFullScreen does not work with anything other than a wmode value of "

  - by lhnz

  I have a flash player on a page which plays videos. I also have modal popups which need to be able to display over the top of the flash player when they are opened, etc... I can't change either of these requirements since they are part of the spec I have been given. Flash seems to ignore z-indexes I set on it with css, and the modal popups will therefore only appear above the video player if I set the video player's wmode to opaque or transparent. However, if I do this then the full screen functionality stops working correctly: when I un-fullscreen the video it stays zoomed in. In short If you open a popup on an item page or another page containing flash the popup should be displayed above this. Flash ignores z-index values. You can stop flash ignoring z-index values by setting wmode to opaque or transparent rather than the default: window. This stops full screen from working correctly. Has anybody else faced this issue before? What can I do to fix it? I was thinking of recreating the video player with wmode=opaque whenever I opened a modal popup and then switching it back to wmode=window when the modal popup is closed, since this would mean that the popup should display above it (as wmode=opaque) and the fullscreen should work correct (as wmode=window). However, this is not ideal at all: as well as being a hack it would also mean that the video would stop playing if somebody clicked a button which opened a popup. Cheers!

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• PayPal: IPN vs PDT

  - by Tom

  Hi, I'm having some trouble choosing between PayPal's Instant Payment Notification (IPN) and Payment Data Transfer (PDT). Basically, users buy a one-off product on my site, pay on PayPal, and return to my site. I understand how IPN works but I'm now seeing that I might be able to trigger the various actions that take place after a successful purchase more easily with PDT, as the data gets returned there and then (as opposed to needing a separate listener). However, PayPal's PDT documentation contains this cryptic line: "PDT is not meant to be used with credit card or Express Checkout transactions." ... but I can't find anything further whatsoever on the topic. (1) Are credit cards REALLY not meant to be used with PDT? I would like more than a sentence. (2) Does that mean that a user must have/create a PayPal account to pay? (3) Does it mean that if I want to allow users to pay with their PayPal accounts AND/OR with credit cards directly, I must implement IPN? Could anyone who's gone through this kindly shed some light? Thank you.

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