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• Advantages and Disadvantages of the Waterfall Methodology

  In my personal opinion I believe the waterfall method is one of the worst methodologies to use when developing larger systems because it leaves is no room for mistakes. As the name implies the waterfall methodology does not allow  for projects to go back up stream to recover from design errors, missing and/or limited requirements. In addition, hidden bugs are not usually found until the testing phase. This can prove to be very costly and time consuming to the developer and the client. According to NCycles.com, the waterfall methodology structures a project into separate stages with defined deliverables from each phase. Define Design Code Test Implement Document and Maintain The advantages found by Ncycle.com to this methodology are: Ease in analyzing potential changes  Ability to coordinate larger teams, even if geographically distributed Can enable precise dollar budget Less total time required from Subject Matter Experts The disadvantages found by Ncycle.com to this methodology are: Lack of flexibility Hard to predict all needs in advance Intangible knowledge lost between hand-offs Lack of team cohesion Design flaws not discovered until the Testing phase References: NCycles.com  (2002). Retrieved from http://www.ncycles.com/e_whi_Methodologies.htmmethodology on April 17, 2009

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• Fuzzing for Security

  - by Sylvain Duloutre

  Yesterday, I attended an internal workshop about ethical hacking. Hacking skills like fuzzing can be used to quantitatively assess and measure security threats in software.  Fuzzing is a software testing technique used to discover coding errors and security loopholes in software, operating systems or networks by injecting massive amounts of random data, called fuzz, to the system in an attempt to make it crash. If the program contains a vulnerability that can leads to an exception, crash or server error (in the case of web apps), it can be determined that a vulnerability has been discovered.A fuzzer is a program that generates and injects random (and in general faulty) input to an application. Its main purpose is to make things easier and automated.There are typically two methods for producing fuzz data that is sent to a target, Generation or Mutation. Generational fuzzers are capable of building the data being sent based on a data model provided by the fuzzer creator. Sometimes this is simple and dumb as sending random bytes, swapping bytes or much smarter by knowing good values and combining them in interesting ways.Mutation on the other hand starts out with a known good "template" which is then modified. However, nothing that is not present in the "template" or "seed" will be produced.Generally fuzzers are good at finding buffer overflow, DoS, SQL Injection, Format String bugs etc. They do a poor job at finding vulnerabilites related to information disclosure, encryption flaws and any other vulnerability that does not cause the program to crash.  Fuzzing is simple and offers a high benefit-to-cost ratio but does not replace other proven testing techniques.What is your computer doing over the week-end ?

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• Microkernel architectural pattern and applicability for business applications

  - by Pangea

  We are in the business of building customizable web applications. We have the core team that provides what we call as the core platform (provides services like security, billing etc.) on top of which core products are built. These core products are industry specific solutions like telecom, utility etc. These core products are later used by other teams to build customer specific solutions in a particular industry. Until now we have a loose separation between platform and core product. The customer specific solutions are build by customizing 20-40% of the core offering and re-packaging. The core-platform and core products are released together as monolithic apps (ear). I am looking to improvise the current situation so that there is a cleaner separation on these 3. This allows us to have evolve each of these 3 separately etc. I've read through the Mircokernel architecture and kind of felt that I can take apply the principles in my context. But most of my reading about this pattern is always in the context of operating systems or application servers etc. I am wondering if there are any examples on how that pattern was used for architecting business applications. Or you could provide some insight on how to apply that pattern to my problem.

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• Splitting big request in multiple small ajax requests

  - by Ionut

  I am unsure regarding the scalability of the following model. I have no experience at all with large systems, big number of requests and so on but I'm trying to build some features considering scalability first. In my scenario there is a user page which contains data for: User's details (name, location, workplace ...) User's activity (blog posts, comments...) User statistics (rating, number of friends...) In order to show all this on the same page, for a request there will be at least 3 different database queries on the back-end. In some cases, I imagine that those queries will be running quite a wile, therefore the user experience may suffer while waiting between requests. This is why I decided to run only step 1 (User's details) as a normal request. After the response is received, two ajax requests are sent for steps 2 and 3. When those responses are received, I only place the data in the destined wrappers. For me at least this makes more sense. However there are 3 requests instead of one for every user page view. Will this affect the system on the long term? I'm assuming that this kind of approach requires more resources but is this trade of UX for resources a good dial or should I stick to one plain big request?

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for 2012-10-09

  - by Bob Rhubart

  SOA Suite create partition in Enterprise Manager | Peter Paul van de Beek "In Oracle SOA Suite 10g, or more specific BPEL 10g, one could group functionality in domains," says Peter Paul van de Beek. "This feature has been away in the early versions of SOA Suite 11g. They have returned in more recent version and can be used for all SCA composites (instead of BPEL only). Nowadays these 10g domains are called partitions." OOW12: Oracle Business Process Management/Oracle ADF Integration Best Practices | Andrejus Baranovskis The Oracle OpenWorld presentations keep coming! Oracle ACE Director Andrejus Baranovskis shares the slides from "Oracle Business Process Management/Oracle ADF Integration Best Practices," co-presented with Danilo Schmiedel from Opitz Consulting. My presentations at Oracle Open World 2012 | Guido Schmutz The list of #OOW participants sharing their presentations grows with this post from Oracle ACE Director Guido Schmutz. You'll find Slideshare links to his presentations "Oracle Fusion Middleware Live Application Development (UGF10464)" and "Effective Fault handling in SOA Suite 11g (CON4832)." HTML Manifest for Content Folios | Kyle Hatlestad Kyle Hatlestad, solutions architect with the Oracle Fusion Middleware A-Team, shares the details on "a project to create a custom content folio renderer in WebCenter Content." Adaptive ADF/WebCenter template for the iPad | Maiko Rocha Oracle Fusion Middleware A-Team member Maiko Rocha responds to a a customer request for information about how to create an adaptive iPad template for their WebCenter Portal application, "a specific template to streamline their workflow on the iPad." Thought for the Day "I loved logic, math, computer programming. I loved systems and logic approaches. And so I just figured architecture is this perfect combination." — Maya Lin Source: Brainy Quote

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• What's a good Game development platform for a platformer game with these characteristics?

  - by Joe

  Yes, I know, the best way to make an indie game is to learn to code. I've got some scripting experience, but I want to do worldbuilding with already-existing tools (and communities surrounding those tools), and I've been really impressed with games like An Untitled Story that were made with pre-packaged toolsets at their core, like Game Maker. :) So I'm planning to make my game using either Game Maker or something like it. The basic parameters of my planned game: -2D platformer. -Physics/speed akin to Sonic the Hedgehog. -Large, non-linear world, flowing as seamlessly as possible -- think Super Metroid, but without the forced screen transitions. The first two points have me leaning toward Game Maker -- Plenty of 2D platformers have been made with it, and there are serviceable, openly available Sonic-the-Hedgehog-style physics engines for it that could be adapted to my needs with minimal muss and fuss. But the third makes me antsy -- from what limited information I hear, Game Maker has problems with large levels/boards/screens/whateveryoucallthem, thus necessitating transitions between screens. I want to avoid that if at all possible -- it would, I believe, fundamentally alter the flow of the game. I understand that generally speaking, the more you have loaded into memory the more things are going to chug (especially for a one-size-fits-all game development platform that isn't a model of efficient coding), but I'm hoping there are systems that can un-load objects that are sufficiently far offscreen and thus better produce seamlessness. Any thoughts, people? :) The sooner I can get a basic pre-fab physics engine and world-building program up and running, the sooner I can start prototyping areas and generally tooling around. Should I be looking at Game Maker, or elsewhere? (My current plan is to more-or-less build the game prototype-style, then worry about art and sound at the very end once the damn thing is playable.)

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• How to sync Ubuntu/software/configurations between N computers with free software and/or without a cloud?

  - by skanatek

  Note: this question is not about syncing data in a Dropbox-like way (files, folders), it is more about syncing configurations. I would like to have exactly the same version of Ubuntu with all the software installed and configured both on my Desktop PC and on my Laptop PC (and maybe on my small netbook PC) without using Ubuntu Sync and with minimal maintenance effort (setup once, run for a long time). The use case is the following: I work on my Laptop PC and do some changes to software configuration, for example: configure vim to have a new plugin update the Search Tracker / Recoll file search index configure Thunderbird to have an additional IMAP account ('remember password') add some new bookmarks in Firefox/Chrome change the desktop background image install new software with apt-get install build and install new software with checkinstall etc. I do some 'sync' operation I switch to my Desktop PC and get all the changes from (1) working on the Desktop PC I work on my Desktop PC and do some changes to software configuration, for example: add new directory to the list of directories to be backed up by DejaDup add a new check spelling dictionary to the Libreoffice Writer configure the Terminator software to have colored fonts install new font into the Ubuntu system configure Ekiga to make phone calls etc. I do some 'sync' operation I switch to my Laptop PC and get all the changes from (1) and (4) working on the Laptop PC. Question: What free/open-source software can I use to sync both machines' Ubuntu systems, installed software and configurations? Is it possible to do that without any cloud services? Complementary question: It is obvious that the Desktop PC and the Laptop PC have different hardware configurations. How does the 'sync software' in question deal with video drivers, wlan drivers and their configurations? Note: I do not need all the PCs to be synced at the same time, because I work with only one single machine at once. Note: I considered to use Chef to solve the problem, but it seems that it might be really cumbersome to maintain such a setup. Note: I also considered using a bootable USB with Ubuntu installed (portable Linux), but I am not sure that the video drivers will work then.

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• Self Service Reporting With PowerPivot

  - by blakmk

  There are so many cool new features in Sql 2008 release 2 it was difficult for me to pick a topic for T-SQL Tuesday . But the one that I am now a secret fan of, I once resented for its creation. Let me explain, for years I have encountered reporting systems cobbled together in tools like Access and Excel built by "database hobbyists" who had no formal training in database design or best practices. They would take their monstrosities as far as they could go before ultimatley it stopped working or the person that wrote it left the company. At that point it would become the resident DBA's problem to support it as a Live application. So when I first heard of Power Pivot, a sense of Deja Vu overtook me and I felt like the guy in the Ausin Powers movie , knowing the inevitable is coming but somehow unsure how to get out of the way. But when I eventually saw it in action, I quickly realised that it is a very powerful tool. It has a much smaller "time to market" than traditional BI architectures. Combined with the new features of Excel, some pretty impressive dashboards can be produced.Of course PowerPivot is not a magic bullet and along with potential scalability issues there are the usual issues such as master data management and data quality that cannot be overcome easily with power pivot. As a tool though, it has potential. Traditional BI is expensive, both in terms of time and the amount of resources it takes to deliver the system. The time lag between an analyst or a commercial accountant requesting reports and the report being delivered can make a huge commercial difference. I have observed companies where empowered end users become extremely productive when allowed to plough in to various disperate datasets. It may not be the correct way or the most sustainable but its cheap and quick. In these times when budgets are being slashed and we are forced to deliver more with less, why not empower the end user in a tool that is designed for exactly this task.... @blakmk  

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• Studentworker - being a superhero?

  - by Niklas H

  A couple of weeks ago I got a new job as a studentworker for a webagency. The job is 15-20 hours of week. Even though I am new in the company, I feel right at home and I enjoy working with my co-workers. To start of with, I was assigned to work on an internal tool in the company, in order to learn their systems and their development platform. The deadline for this project is this week, and I am right on time. But today (wednesday at noon) I received an email from my boss, asking me to do a new project that has a deadline at friday morning. The new assignment alone will be hard to finish on time, and on top of that I need to finish the other assignment on time. My question is: How do I handle my boss expecting me to be a superhero? EDIT: I will talk to my boss about delaying one of the projects. But another problem is that the new assignment will be hard to do on time (friday morning). I didn't have a say on the deadline - I just got a mail telling me the deadline. I am new in the company and want to stay, but I don't want to start off on the wrong foot with the boss.

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• Commercial product using a GPL OS

  - by pfried

  we are planning to create a commercial product. The product consists of come MCUs and a small computer (we are developping on a raspberry pi at the moment). The computer needs an operating system as we would like keep things like WLAN and booting as simple as possible. We create some software running on this computer (node.js application). The most operating systems like Arch Linux are licenced under the GPL. The product we would sell contains the computer with preinstalled OS and software. This system operates as a central access point to MCU devices and is able to control them. We use other's software in our product. We do not modify their source code. The product (the computer part) consists of a computer, an OS and software we create. How does the use of an OS affect our own code (licence)? Is there a possibility of avoiding GPL for our own code? eg. shipping the software seperated? Are there any effects to other components of our product, eg. the MCU part? The node.js application delivers a WebApp to the client where it is executed. Are there any effects (As we would like to sell parts of the code as an additional App on the App Stores)? I know we make use of the work of the community and i respect this. The problem is: The software alone is kind of useless without the MCU devices. I do not expect a legal advice.

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• ACT On Marketing Campaign “Middleware Consolidation and Innovation Program”

  - by JuergenKress

   You want marketing budget to run joint Oracle Fusion Middleware 12 c events? Participate in the OFM ACTon Campaign. The opportunity for you as a partners is to : Create larger deals by reselling software and systems e.g. WebLogic on ODA, SOA on ODA, Exalogic for AppAdvantage Create more service revenue at our existing customer, by consolidation and migration of application servers platforms. Extend and innovate platforms e.g. mobile integration big data or business process automation Create service business at new customers, more than 120.000 customers use middleware today! The objective of the initiative is to run joint events for our middleware customers and Generate re-sell middleware license revenue in the broad market Generate Service revenue for partners Prepare partners to understand upgrade and upsell opportunities to Oracle Fusion Middleware 12c WebLogic Community Workspace (WebLogic Community membership required) you can learn details about the campaign: OFM ACTon event Brief & Middleware Consolidation and Innovation_Act-On Program_Salesplay & Campaign kit DRAFT. Interested and want to participate? Contact your local Value Added Distributer and he will work with you on a joint campaign plan! WebLogic Partner Community For regular information become a member in the WebLogic Partner Community please visit: http://www.oracle.com/partners/goto/wls-emea ( OPN account required). If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Wiki Technorati Tags: marketing,ACton,Campaign,WebLogic,WebLogic Community,Oracle,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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• The Endeca UI Design Pattern Library Returns

  - by Joe Lamantia

  I'm happy to announce that the Endeca UI Design Pattern Library - now titled the Endeca Discovery Pattern Library - is once again providing guidance and good practices on the design of discovery experiences.  Launched publicly in 2010 following several years of internal development and usage, the Endeca Pattern Library is a unique and valued source of industry-leading perspective on discovery - something I've come to appreciate directly through  fielding the consistent stream of inquiries about the library's status, and requests for its rapid return to public availability. Restoring the library as a public resource is only the first step!  For the next stage of the library's evolution, we plan to increase the scope of the guidance it offers beyond user interface design to the broader topic of discovery.  This could include patterns for architecture at the systems, user experience, and business levels; information and process models; analytical method and activity patterns for conducting discovery; and organizational and resource patterns for provisioning discovery capability in different settings.  We'd like guidance from the community on the kinds of patterns that are most valuable - so make sure to let us know. And we're also considering ways to increase the number of patterns the library offers, possibly by expanding the set of contributors and the authoring mechanisms. If you'd like to contribute, please get in touch. Here's the new address of the library: http://www.oracle.com/goto/EndecaDiscoveryPatterns And I should say 'Many thanks' to the UXDirect team and all the others within the Oracle family who helped - literally - keep the library alive, and restore it as a public resource.

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• K-12 and Cloud considerations

  - by user736511

  Much like every other Public Sector organization, school districts in the US and Canada are under tremendous pressure to deliver consistent and modern services while operating with reduced budgets, IT personnel shortages, and staff attrition.  Electronic/remote learning and the need for immediate access to resources such as grades, calendars, curricula etc. are straining IT environments that were already burdened with meeting privacy requirements imposed by both regulators and parents/students.  One area viewed as a solution to at least some of the challenges is the use of "Cloud" in education.  Although the concept of "Cloud" is nothing new in education with many providers supplying educational material over the web, school districts defer previously-in-house-hosted services to established commercial vendors to accommodate document sharing, app hosting, and even e-mail.  Doing so, however, does not reduce an important risk, that of privacy.  As always, Cloud implementations are viewed in a skeptical manner because of the perceived reduction in sensitive data management and protection thereof, although with a careful approach and the right tooling, the benefits realized by Clouds can expand to security and privacy.   Oracle's comprehensive approach to data privacy and identity management ensures that the necessary tools are available to support regulations, operational efficiencies and strong security regardless of where the sensitive data is stored - on premise or a Cloud.  Common management tools, role-based access controls, access policy management and engineered systems provided by Oracle can be the foundational pieces on which school districts can build their Cloud implementations without having to worry about security itself. Their biggest challenge, and it is a positive one, is how to best take advantage of Oracle's DB Security and IDM functionality to reduce operational costs while enabling modern applications and data delivery to those who needs access to it. For more information please refer to http://www.oracle.com/us/products/middleware/identity-management/overview/index.html and http://www.oracle.com/us/products/database/security/overview/index.html.

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• Be There: Tinkerforge/NetBeans Platform Integration Course

  - by Geertjan

  Tinkerforge is an electronic construction kit. It exposes a number of API bindings, including, of course, Java. The nice thing also is that Tinkerforge products are open source, both on the hardware and software levels, so that you can take their bases as a starting point for your own modifications. "The TinkerForge system is a set of pre-built electronics boards that are built in such a way that you can stack the boards (known as bricks), attach accessories (known as bricklets), and have your prototype and and running quickly. Unlike systems, such as the Arduino or Launchpad, the TinkerForge has to be attached to a computer and the computer does all of the work. With an easy set of application programming interfaces (APIs) available in C/C++, C#, Java, PHP, and Ruby, the system is easy to interface and program over USB in a snap." (from this useful article) Henning Krüp, who has arranged several NetBeans Platform Certified Training Courses in the past, in the Nordhorn/Lingen area in Germany, had the inspired idea to focus the next course on integration with Tinkerforge. In other words, the whole course will be focused on creating a standalone Java desktop application that leverages the NetBeans Platform to interact with Tinkerforge! Interested in joining the course or setting up something similar yourself? The course organized by Henning will be held from 19 to 21 September, as explained here, together with contact details.  If you'd like to organize a similar course at a location of your choosing, leave a comment at the end of this blog entry and we'll set something up together!

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• PHP file_put_contents File Locking

  - by hozza

  The Senario: You have a file with a string (average sentence worth) on each line. For arguments sake lets say this file is 1Mb in size (thousands of lines). You have a script that reads the file, changes some of the strings within the document (not just appending but also removing and modifying some lines) and then overwrites all the data with the new data. The Questions: Does 'the server' PHP, OS or httpd etc. already have systems in place to stop issues like this (reading/writing half way through a write)? i. If it does, please explain how it works and give examples or links to relevant documentation. ii. If not, are there things I can enable or set-up, such as locking a file until a write is completed and making all other reads and/or writes fail until the previous script has finished writing? My Assumptions and Other Information: The server in question is running PHP and Apache or Lighttpd. If the script is called by one user and is halfway through writing to the file and another user reads the file at that exact moment. The user who reads it will not get the full document, as it hasn't been written yet. (If this assumption is wrong please correct me) I'm only concerned with PHP writing and reading to a text file, and in particular, the functions "fopen"/"fwrite" and mainly "file_put_contents". I have looked at the "file_put_contents" documentation but have not found the level of detail or a good explanation of what the "LOCK_EX" flag is or does. The senario is an EXAMPLE of a worst case senario where I would assume these issues are more likely to occur, due to the large size of the file and the way the data is edited. I want to learn more about these issues and don't want or need answers or comments such as "use mysql" or "why are you doing that" because I'm not doing that, I just want to learn about file read/writing with PHP and don't seem to be looking in the right places/documentation and yes I understand PHP is not the perfect language for working with files in this way...

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• Ubuntu doesn't boot after adding a bootflag to the Windows partition

  - by Nils

  I have Ubuntu 10.10 installed on one (physical) hd and on the other one Windows. On both drives grub is installed to boot both operating systems. When I wanted to install SP1 for Win 7 I had to add a bootable flag to the partition from which Windows boots, otherwise the installation of SP1 does not work. I did so by booting into Ubuntu and using gparted to add this flag. After doing so the update for SP1 worked without any problems. When trying to boot back into Ubuntu grub complained that it couldn't find the kernel anymore! I tried to boot into a Ubuntu minimal cd and to restore grub using chroot, update-grub and grub-install which didn't work. I still had the problem that it was Unable to boot Ubuntu putting me in some minimal system called initramfs. It seems however that the uuid of the partitions changed. I guess this happened when I added the bootflag to the windows disk. Next thing I tried was to tell grub not to use the uuid for loading the kernel by uncommenting something in /etc/default/grub. Then I got the kernel booting but it suddenly stops (I guess when it is trying to mount the root file system) saying that the concerning uuid does not exist putting me into initramfs again. The strange thing is that there I coulnd't even manage to mount the root partition using /dev/sdb1 (on which it is in my case). I would be glad if there is a way to restore the system again without having to reinstall it.

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• Data migration - dangerous or essential?

  - by MRalwasser

  The software development department of my company is facing with the problem that data migrations are considered as potentially dangerous, especially for my managers. The background is that our customers are using a large amount of data with poor quality. The reasons for this is only partially related to our software quality, but rather to the history of the data: Most of them have been migrated from predecessor systems, some bugs caused (mostly business) inconsistencies in the data records or misentries by accident on the customer's side (which our software allowed by error). The most important counter-arguments from my managers are that faulty data may turn into even worse data, the data troubles may awake some managers at the customer and some processes on the customer's side may not work anymore because their processes somewhat adapted to our system. Personally, I consider data migrations as an integral part of the software development and that data migration can been seen to data what refactoring is to code. I think that data migration is an essential for creating software that evolves. Without it, we would have to create painful software which somewhat works around a bad data structure. I am asking you: What are your thoughts to data migration, especially for the real life cases and not only from a developer's perspecticve? Do you have any arguments against my managers opinions? How does your company deal with data migrations and the difficulties caused by them? Any other interesting thoughts which belongs to this topics?

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• MapReduce

  - by kaleidoscope

  MapReduce is a programming model and an associated implementation for processing and generating large data sets. Users specify a map function that processes a key/value pair to generate a set of  intermediate key/value pairs, and a reduce function that merges all intermediate values associated with the same intermediate key. Many real world tasks are expressible in this model, as shown in the paper. Programs written in this functional style are automatically parallelized and executed on a large cluster of commodity machines. The run-time system takes care of the details of partitioning the input data,  scheduling the program's execution across a set of machines, handling machine failures, and managing the required inter-machine communication. This allows programmers without any experience with parallel and distributed systems to easily utilize the resources of a large distributed system. Example: A process to count the appearances of each different word in a set of documents void map(String name, String document):   // name: document name   // document: document contents   for each word w in document:     EmitIntermediate(w, 1); void reduce(String word, Iterator partialCounts):   // word: a word   // partialCounts: a list of aggregated partial counts   int result = 0;   for each pc in partialCounts:     result += ParseInt(pc);   Emit(result); Here, each document is split in words, and each word is counted initially with a "1" value by the Map function, using the word as the result key. The framework puts together all the pairs with the same key and feeds them to the same call to Reduce, thus this function just needs to sum all of its input values to find the total appearances of that word.   Sarang, K

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• Fixed-Function vs Shaders: Which for beginner?

  - by Rob Hays

  I'm currently going to college for computer science. Although I do plan on utilizing an existing engine at some point to create a small game, my aim right now is towards learning the fundamentals: namely, 3D programming. I've already done some research regarding the choice between DirectX and OpenGL, and the general sentiment that came out of that was that whether you choose OpenGL or DirectX as your training-wheels platform, a lot of the knowledge is transferrable to the other platform. Therefore, since OpenGL is supported by more systems (probably a silly reason to choose what to learn), I decided that I'm going to learn OpenGL first. After I made this decision to learn OpenGL, I did some more research and found out about a dichotomy that I was somewhere unaware of all this time: fixed-function OpenGL vs. modern programmable shader-based OpenGL. At first, I thought it was an obvious choice that I should choose to learn shader-based OpenGL since that's what's most commonly used in the industry today. However, I then stumbled upon the very popular Learning Modern 3D Graphics Programming by Jason L. McKesson, located here: http://www.arcsynthesis.org/gltut/ I read through the introductory bits, and in the "About This Book" section, the author states: "First, much of what is learned with this approach must be inevitably abandoned when the user encounters a graphics problem that must be solved with programmability. Programmability wipes out almost all of the fixed function pipeline, so the knowledge does not easily transfer." yet at the same time also makes the case that fixed-functionality provides an easier, more immediate learning curve for beginners by stating: "It is generally considered easiest to teach neophyte graphics programmers using the fixed function pipeline." Naturally, you can see why I might be conflicted about which paradigm to learn: Do I spend a lot of time learning (and then later unlearning) the ways of fixed-functionality, or do I choose to start out with shaders? My primary concern is that modern programmable shaders somehow require the programmer to already understand the fixed-function pipeline, but I doubt that's the case. TL;DR == As an aspiring game graphics programmer, is it in my best interest to learn 3D programming through fixed-functionality or modern shader-based programming?

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• To encryption=on or encryption=off a simple ZFS Crypto demo

  - by darrenm

  I've just been asked twice this week how I would demonstrate ZFS encryption really is encrypting the data on disk.  It needs to be really simple and the target isn't forensics or cryptanalysis just a quick demo to show the before and after. I usually do this small demo using a pool based on files so I can run strings(1) on the "disks" that make up the pool. The demo will work with real disks too but it will take a lot longer (how much longer depends on the size of your disks).  The file hamlet.txt is this one from gutenberg.org # mkfile 64m /tmp/pool1_file # zpool create clear_pool /tmp/pool1_file # cp hamlet.txt /clear_pool # grep -i hamlet /clear_pool/hamlet.txt | wc -l Note the number of times hamlet appears # zpool export clear_pool # strings /tmp/pool1_file | grep -i hamlet | wc -l Note the number of times hamlet appears on disk - it is 2 more because the file is called hamlet.txt and file names are in the clear as well and we keep at least two copies of metadata. Now lets encrypt the file systems in the pool. Note you MUST use a new pool file don't reuse the one from above. # mkfile 64m /tmp/pool2_file # zpool create -O encryption=on enc_pool /tmp/pool2_file Enter passphrase for 'enc_pool': Enter again: # cp hamlet.txt /enc_pool # grep -i hamlet /enc_pool/hamlet.txt | wc -l Note the number of times hamlet appears is the same as before # zpool export enc_pool # strings /tmp/pool2_file | grep -i hamlet | wc -l Note the word hamlet doesn't appear at all! As a said above this isn't indended as "proof" that ZFS does encryption properly just as a quick to do demo.

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• Visual Studio 2010 Modeling and Architecture Tools

  - by MikeParks

  Jennifer Marsman (Microsoft Evangelist) and Cameron Skinner (Microsoft Visual Studio Product Unit Manager) recently stopped by our office while they were passing through Louisville on their tour to give us a presentation on the new Visual Studio 2010 Modeling and Architecture Tools. I checked out these new features when Visual Studio 2010 Beta versions originally rolled out and have been really impressed with this stuff ever since then. So it was pretty cool to actually learn some new techniques from Cameron himself since he helped write the actual code behind some of those features. If you've upgraded to Visual Studio 2010 recently I would highly recommend using the Architecture tools. They're awesome. If you want to make improvements to it, they even have their own SDK for it. There are plenty of blogs out there to show you how to use it. I've been waiting to find a tool that works like this where I can really analyze the code in solutions and projects and see how everything ties together. It's really handy if you're asked to work on a new project and aren't familiar with how it works. Just run the tools, analyze the DLL's, learn how everything works, and then you'll be ready to implement new code! It's a great tool to learn new systems quick and easy and it's all housed within the Visual Studio IDE. I just wanted to write a blog to brag about it a little bit, so I figured I'd throw this up here. It's a must have tool for Developers/Architects. Here's some screenshots of when I was using it earlier:   Thanks everyone! - Mike

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, November 05, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, November 05, 2012Popular ReleasesCatel ReSharper plugin: Catel.Resharper 1.3 RC 1: (+) Added support for R# 7.1 (+) Added support to Catel 3.4 for to convert auto properties into catel properties from ModelBase. (*) PropertyConverter now generates a the members name (property and notification method) to avoid the usage of existing member name. (x) Fixed reference to Actions.xml resource file.Dyanamic Reports (RDLC) - SharePoint 2010 Visual WebPart: Initial Release: This is a Initial Release.HTML Renderer: HTML Renderer 1.0.0.0 (3): Major performance improvement (http://theartofdev.wordpress.com/2012/10/25/how-i-optimized-html-renderer-and-fell-in-love-with-vs-profiler/) Minor fixes raised in issue tracker and discussions.ZXMAK2: Version 2.7.0.1: fix Spectrum+3 ULA timing if Direct3D is not available, draw warning on black background add Keyboard Help window fix kempston mouse (swap left/right buttons) add Pentagon 1024 memory module add shadow rom support for Pentagon 512/1024 fix to avoid NMI conflict between memory/BDI (Scorpion, Pentagon 512/1024) project structure and namespace refactoring NOTE: this version uses new device namespaces, so if you have VMZ file from previous version, please delete it!CodeGen Code Generator: CodeGen 4.2.2: IMPORTANT: This release replaces the previous 4.2.1 release from 28th October 2012, which has been removed. There was an error in the setup program for 4.2.1 which caused some dependent assemblies (for example the Synergy .NET runtime and other Synergy .NET assemblies) to be distributed as part of the CodeGen installation. This can cause problems when attempting to upgrade to later versions of Synergy. IT IS VERY IMPORTANT THAT ALL 4.2.1 INSTALLATIONS BE UNINSTALLED AND UPGRADED TO 4.2.2 AS ...ProDinner - ASP.NET MVC Sample (EF4.4, N-Tier, jQuery): 8: update to ASP.net MVC Awesome 3.0 udpate to EntityFramework 4.4 update to MVC 4 added dinners grid on homepageASP.net MVC Awesome - jQuery Ajax Helpers: 3.0: added Grid helper added XML Documentation added textbox helper added Client Side API for AjaxList removed .SearchButton from AjaxList AjaxForm and Confirm helpers have been merged into the Form helper optimized html output for AjaxDropdown, AjaxList, Autocomplete works on MVC 3 and 4BlogEngine.NET: BlogEngine.NET 2.7: Cheap ASP.NET Hosting - $4.95/Month - Click Here!! Click Here for More Info Cheap ASP.NET Hosting - $4.95/Month - Click Here! If you want to set up and start using BlogEngine.NET right away, you should download the Web project. If you want to extend or modify BlogEngine.NET, you should download the source code. If you are upgrading from a previous version of BlogEngine.NET, please take a look at the Upgrading to BlogEngine.NET 2.7 instructions. If you looking for Web Application Project, ...Launchbar: Launchbar 4.2.2.0: This release is the first step in cleaning up the code and using all the latest features of .NET 4.5 Changes 4.2.2 (2012-11-02) Improved handling of left clicks 4.1.0 (2012-10-17) Removed tray icon Assembly renamed and signed with strong name Note When you upgrade, Launchbar will start with the default settings. You can import your previous settings by following these steps: Run Launchbar and just save the settings without configuring anything Shutdown Launchbar Go to the folder %LOCA...CommonLibrary.NET: CommonLibrary.NET 0.9.8.8: Releases notes for FluentScript located at http://fluentscript.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=Release%20Notes&referringTitle=Documentation Fluentscript - 0.9.8.8 - Final ReleaseApplication: FluentScript Version: 0.9.8.8 Build: 0.9.8.8 Changeset: 77368 ( CommonLibrary.NET ) Release date: November 2nd, 2012 Binaries: CommonLibrary.dll Namespace: ComLib.Lang Project site: http://fluentscript.codeplex.com/ Download: http://commonlibrarynet.codeplex.com/releases/view/90426 Source code: http://common...Mouse Jiggler: MouseJiggle-1.3: This adds the much-requested minimize-to-tray feature to Mouse Jiggler.Piwik for Microsoft Silverlight Analytics Framework: WP7 and WP8: First release with basic Piwik support. Supported Systems: WP7 and WP8PCAPMerger: 2.1.0.0: Archive contains three folders: x86 - 32-bit version of application x64 - 64-bit version of application test - two testing PCAP files to be merged (both contain scrambled order of packets)Umbraco CMS: Umbraco 4.10.0 Release Candidate: This is a Release Candidate, which means that if we do not find any major issues in the next week, we will release this version as the final release of 4.10.0 on November 9th, 2012. The documentation for the MVC bits still lives in the Github version of the docs for now and will be updated on our.umbraco.org with the final release of 4.10.0. Browse the documentation here: https://github.com/umbraco/Umbraco4Docs/tree/4.8.0/Documentation/Reference/Mvc If you want to do only MVC then make sur...Skype Auto Recorder: SkypeAutoRecorder 1.3.4: New icon and images. Reworked settings window. Implemented high-quality sound encoding. Implemented a possibility to produce stereo records. Added buttons with system-wide hot keys for manual starting and canceling of recording. Added buttons for opening folder with records. Added Help button. Fixed an issue when recording is continuing after call end. Fixed an issue when recording doesn't start. Fixed several bugs and improved stability. Major refactoring and optimization...Python Tools for Visual Studio: Python Tools for Visual Studio 1.5: We’re pleased to announce the release of Python Tools for Visual Studio 1.5 RTM. Python Tools for Visual Studio (PTVS) is an open-source plug-in for Visual Studio which supports programming with the Python language. PTVS supports a broad range of features including CPython/IronPython, Edit/Intellisense/Debug/Profile, Cloud, HPC, IPython, etc. support. For a quick overview of the general IDE experience, please watch this video There are a number of exciting improvement in this release comp...AssaultCube Reloaded: 2.5.5: Linux has Ubuntu 11.10 32-bit precompiled binaries and Ubuntu 10.10 64-bit precompiled binaries, but you can compile your own as it also contains the source. If you are using Mac or other operating systems, please wait while we try to package for those OSes. Try to compile it. If it fails, download a virtual machine. The server pack is ready for both Windows and Linux, but you might need to compile your own for Linux (source included) Changelog: Fixed potential bot bugs: Map change, OpenAL...DirectX Tool Kit: October 30, 2012 (add WP8 support): October 30, 2012 Added project files for Windows Phone 8MCEBuddy 2.x: MCEBuddy 2.3.6: Changelog for 2.3.6 (32bit and 64bit) 1. Fixed a bug in multichannel audio conversion failure. AAC does not support 6 channel audio, MCEBuddy now checks for it and force the output to 2 channel if AAC codec is specified 2. Fixed a bug in Original Broadcast Date and Time. Original Broadcast Date and Time is reported in UTC timezone in WTV metadata. TVDB and MovieDB dates are reported in network timezone. It is assumed the video is recorded and converted on the same machine, i.e. local timezone...MVVM Light Toolkit: MVVM Light Toolkit V4.1 for Visual Studio 2012: This version only supports Visual Studio 2012 (and all Express editions too). If you use Visual Studio 2010, please stay tuned, we will publish an update in a few days with support for VS10. V4.1 supports: Windows Phone 8 Windows 8 (Windows RT) Silverlight 5 Silverlight 4 WPF 4.5 WPF 4 WPF 3.5 And the following development environments: Visual Studio 2012 (Pro, Premium, Ultimate) Visual Studio 2012 Express for Windows 8 Visual Studio 2012 Express for Windows Phone 8 Visual...New Projects3dTalk: Web 2.0 site for 3d projection mapping artists, to have a forum for showing work, getting advice or comments, and giving details of forthcoming shows/exhibition8media: a student project for Windows 8ActiveWorlds Managed Wrapper: HeyAsyncLoggers: AsyncLoggers strives to provide high-quality asynchronous wrappers for all well-known logging frameworks.CapsBeep: CapsBeep is a Windows utility application that causes an audible beep and a notification to appear whenever a key is pressed while the Caps Lock is active.CUDA Tuning with CUDAfy: A step-by-step guide to tuning performance of a CUDA- and CUDAfy-enabled GPU algorithm, using a brute-force Travelling Salesman algorithm as example.DDarkSEngine: New 2D game engine for .netFoxyXLS: Visual FoxPro class to geneate pure XLS files using the BIFF3 file format.JsApi: The purpose of this project is to demonstrate aspects of both the DialectSoftware.Web.UI.CustomControls and the DialectSoftware.Web.JsAPI LF Spec: Add simple test extensions to your MS Test projects for BDD-style unit tests.Liubaobao Website Starter Kit: When it comes to developing a new website - big or small, we all need something to start with. We are putting together a bunch of frequently used system parts.metropress: A feature-rich and easy to customize framework for developer/designer who want to turn any wordpress site into Windows 8 AppMobile Device: Include this in your .NET applications to allow them to easily get information from a connected iDevice.Mouse Trapper: Mouse Trapper is a program that will keep your mouse pointer inside one display, unless the chosen key is being pressed.My WCF Project: Learning projectNetworkFileWatcher: Watch changes to Files and Folders on a remote computer using NetworkFileWatcher. Overcomes the network-path limitation of System.IO.FileSystemWatcher.Quentin: Blog de QuentinQuickbooks Repair Pro: QuickBooks Repair ProSAIN: SAIN es un sistema administrativo integral basado en web que permite la administración de pequeños negocios.SQLCE with Windows Phone 7.1: This project is create on Initial understanding of SQL CE with windows phone. You will get more useful code with this codeplex link in fututre. SSDD Campero: kikhjuiojolipompmlkmlkmTileTool: Work in progress 2D tile based editor.Time Limiter: Set of Windows services used to limit times per day and per session of computer users. Meant for child computer use control. C# WCF Windows Services WMI.Window Manager: Position windows easilyYet Another Regex Tester: Write a regular expression (regex) and test it on real text.

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• Multiple sites with the same codebase in Python

  - by Jimmy

  I am trying to run a large amount of sites which share about 90% of their code. They are simply designed to query an API and return the results. They will have a common userbase / database but will be configured slightly different and will have different CSS (perhaps even different templating). My initial idea was to run them as separate applications with a common library but I have read about the sites framework which would allow them to run from a single instance of Django which may help to reduce memory usage. https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/contrib/sites/ Is the site framework the right approach to a problem like this, and does it have real benefits over running separate applications? Initially I thought it was, but now I think otherwise. I have heard the following: Your SITE_ID is set in settings.py, so in order to have multiple sites, you need multiple settings.py configurations, which means multiple distinct processes/instances. You can of course share the code base between them, but each site will need a dedicated worker / WSGIDaemon to serve the site. This effectively removes any benefit of running multiple sites under one hood, if each site needs a UWSGI instance running. Alternative ideas of systems: https://github.com/iivvoo/django_layers https://github.com/shestera/django-multisite I don't know what route to be taking with this.

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• What to Return with Async CRUD methods

  - by RualStorge

  While there is a similar question focused on Java, I've been in debates with utilizing Task objects. What's the best way to handle returns on CRUD methods (and similar)? Common returns we've seen over the years are: Void (no return unless there is an exception) Boolean (True on Success, False on Failure, exception on unhandled failure) Int or GUID (Return the newly created objects Id, 0 or null on failure, exception on unhandled failure) The updated Object (exception on failure) Result Object (Object that houses the manipulated object's ID, Boolean or status field to with success or failure indicated, Exception information if there was one, etc) The concern comes into play as we've started moving over to utilizing C# 5's Async functionality, and this brought the question up of how we should handle CRUD returns large-scale. In our systems we have a little of everything in regards to what we return, we want to make these returns standardized... Now the question is what is the recommended standard? Is there even a recommended standard yet? (I realize we need to decide our standard, but typically we do so by looking at best practices, see if it makes sense for us and go from there, but here we're not finding much to work with)

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• Oracle releases ADF Mobile with Java ME CDC for iOS and Android

  - by hinkmond

  Finally. Oracle has released a new product that I've worked on for a while now. Oracle ADF Mobile is available for iOS and Android bringing Java ME CDC technology to iPhones and Android devices all over the world. Woot! Java. On iPhone and Android. Yeah, it's like that. See: Java and HTML5 on SmartPhones Here's a quote: Oracle announced the availability of Oracle ADF Mobile – a framework the enables the development of hybrid applications for mobile devices. Oracle ADF Mobile uses Java and HTML5 and enables developers to develop a single application that installs and runs on both iOS and Android systems. Java - Application logic is developed with the Java language. Oracle brings a lightweight Java VM embedded with each application so you can develop all your business logic in the platform neutral language you know and love! (Yes, even iOS!) Gosh, you'd think it was a big deal. Well, it was! So, go download yours today! Hinkmond

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