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  • What makes them click ?

    - by Piet
    The other day (well, actually some weeks ago while relaxing at the beach in Kos) I read ‘Neuro Web Design - What makes them click?’ by Susan Weinschenk. (http://neurowebbook.com) The book is a fast and easy read (no unnecessary filler) and a good introduction on how your site’s visitors can be steered in the direction you want them to go. The Obvious The book handles some of the more known/proven techniques, like for example that ratings/testimonials of other people can help sell your product or service. Another well known technique it talks about is inducing a sense of scarcity/urgency in the visitor. Only 2 seats left! Buy now and get 33% off! It’s not because these are known techniques that they stop working. Luckily 2/3rd of the book handles less obvious techniques, otherwise it wouldn’t be worth buying. The Not So Obvious A less known influencing technique is reciprocity. And then I’m not talking about swapping links with another website, but the fact that someone is more likely to do something for you after you did something for them first. The book cites some studies (I always love the facts and figures) and gives some actual examples of how to implement this in your site’s design, which is less obvious when you think about it. Want to know more ? Buy the book! Other interesting sources For a more general introduction to the same principles, I’d suggest ‘Yes! 50 Secrets from the Science of Persuasion’. ‘Yes!…’ cites some of the same studies (it seems there’s a rather limited pool of studies covering this subject), but of course doesn’t show how to implement these techniques in your site’s design. I read ‘Yes!…’ last year, making ‘Neuro Web Design’ just a little bit less interesting. !!!Always make sure you’re able to measure your changes. If you haven’t yet, check out the advanced segmentation in Google Analytics (don’t be afraid because it says ‘beta’, it works just fine) and Google Website Optimizer. Worth Buying? Can I recommend it ? Sure, why not. I think it can be useful for anyone who ever had to think about the design or content of a site. You don’t have to be a marketing guy to want a site you’re involved with to be successful. The content/filler ratio is excellent too: you don’t need to wade through dozens of pages to filter out the interesting bits. (unlike ‘The Design of Sites’, which contains too much useless info and because it’s in dead-tree format, you can’t google it) If you like it, you might also check out ‘Yes! 50 Secrets from the Science of Persuasion’. Tip for people living in Europe: check Amazon UK for your book buying needs. Because of the low UK Pound exchange rate, it’s usually considerably cheaper and faster to get a book delivered to your doorstep by Amazon UK compared to having to order it at the local book store or web-shop.

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  • Where Next for Google Translate? And What of Information Quality?

    - by ultan o'broin
    Fascinating article in the UK Guardian newspaper called Can Google break the computer language barrier? In it, Andreas Zollman, who works on Google Translate, comments that the quality of Google Translate's output relative to the amount of data required to create that output is clearly now falling foul of the law of diminishing returns. He says: "Each doubling of the amount of translated data input led to about a 0.5% improvement in the quality of the output," he suggests, but the doublings are not infinite. "We are now at this limit where there isn't that much more data in the world that we can use," he admits. "So now it is much more important again to add on different approaches and rules-based models." The Translation Guy has a further discussion on this, called Google Translate is Finished. He says: "And there aren't that many doublings left, if any. I can't say how much text Google has assimilated into their machine translation databases, but it's been reported that they have scanned about 11% of all printed content ever published. So double that, and double it again, and once more, shoveling all that into the translation hopper, and pretty soon you get the sum of all human knowledge, which means a whopping 1.5% improvement in the quality of the engines when everything has been analyzed. That's what we've got to look forward to, at best, since Google spiders regularly surf the Web, which in its vastness dwarfs all previously published content. So to all intents and purposes, the statistical machine translation tools of Google are done. Outstanding job, Googlers. Thanks." Surprisingly, all this analysis hasn't raised that much comment from the fans of machine translation, or its detractors either for that matter. Perhaps, it's the season of goodwill? What is clear to me, however, of course is that Google Translate isn't really finished (in any sense of the word). I am sure Google will investigate and come up with new rule-based translation models to enhance what they have already and that will also scale effectively where others didn't. So too, will they harness human input, which really is the way to go to train MT in the quality direction. But that aside, what does it say about the quality of the data that is being used for statistical machine translation in the first place? From the Guardian article it's clear that a huge humanly translated corpus drove the gains for Google Translate and now what's left is the dregs of badly translated and poorly created source materials that just can't deliver quality translations. There's a message about information quality there, surely. In the enterprise applications space, where we have some control over content this whole debate reinforces the relationship between information quality at source and translation efficiency, regardless of the technology used to do the translation. But as more automation comes to the fore, that information quality is even more critical if you want anything approaching a scalable solution. This is important for user experience professionals. Issues like user generated content translation, multilingual personalization, and scalable language quality are central to a superior global UX; it's a competitive issue we cannot ignore.

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  • Oracle BI Server Modeling, Part 1- Designing a Query Factory

    - by bob.ertl(at)oracle.com
      Welcome to Oracle BI Development's BI Foundation blog, focused on helping you get the most value from your Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (BI EE) platform deployments.  In my first series of posts, I plan to show developers the concepts and best practices for modeling in the Common Enterprise Information Model (CEIM), the semantic layer of Oracle BI EE.  In this segment, I will lay the groundwork for the modeling concepts.  First, I will cover the big picture of how the BI Server fits into the system, and how the CEIM controls the query processing. Oracle BI EE Query Cycle The purpose of the Oracle BI Server is to bridge the gap between the presentation services and the data sources.  There are typically a variety of data sources in a variety of technologies: relational, normalized transaction systems; relational star-schema data warehouses and marts; multidimensional analytic cubes and financial applications; flat files, Excel files, XML files, and so on. Business datasets can reside in a single type of source, or, most of the time, are spread across various types of sources. Presentation services users are generally business people who need to be able to query that set of sources without any knowledge of technologies, schemas, or how sources are organized in their company. They think of business analysis in terms of measures with specific calculations, hierarchical dimensions for breaking those measures down, and detailed reports of the business transactions themselves.  Most of them create queries without knowing it, by picking a dashboard page and some filters.  Others create their own analysis by selecting metrics and dimensional attributes, and possibly creating additional calculations. The BI Server bridges that gap from simple business terms to technical physical queries by exposing just the business focused measures and dimensional attributes that business people can use in their analyses and dashboards.   After they make their selections and start the analysis, the BI Server plans the best way to query the data sources, writes the optimized sequence of physical queries to those sources, post-processes the results, and presents them to the client as a single result set suitable for tables, pivots and charts. The CEIM is a model that controls the processing of the BI Server.  It provides the subject areas that presentation services exposes for business users to select simplified metrics and dimensional attributes for their analysis.  It models the mappings to the physical data access, the calculations and logical transformations, and the data access security rules.  The CEIM consists of metadata stored in the repository, authored by developers using the Administration Tool client.     Presentation services and other query clients create their queries in BI EE's SQL-92 language, called Logical SQL or LSQL.  The API simply uses ODBC or JDBC to pass the query to the BI Server.  Presentation services writes the LSQL query in terms of the simplified objects presented to the users.  The BI Server creates a query plan, and rewrites the LSQL into fully-detailed SQL or other languages suitable for querying the physical sources.  For example, the LSQL on the left below was rewritten into the physical SQL for an Oracle 11g database on the right. Logical SQL   Physical SQL SELECT "D0 Time"."T02 Per Name Month" saw_0, "D4 Product"."P01  Product" saw_1, "F2 Units"."2-01  Billed Qty  (Sum All)" saw_2 FROM "Sample Sales" ORDER BY saw_0, saw_1       WITH SAWITH0 AS ( select T986.Per_Name_Month as c1, T879.Prod_Dsc as c2,      sum(T835.Units) as c3, T879.Prod_Key as c4 from      Product T879 /* A05 Product */ ,      Time_Mth T986 /* A08 Time Mth */ ,      FactsRev T835 /* A11 Revenue (Billed Time Join) */ where ( T835.Prod_Key = T879.Prod_Key and T835.Bill_Mth = T986.Row_Wid) group by T879.Prod_Dsc, T879.Prod_Key, T986.Per_Name_Month ) select SAWITH0.c1 as c1, SAWITH0.c2 as c2, SAWITH0.c3 as c3 from SAWITH0 order by c1, c2   Probably everybody reading this blog can write SQL or MDX.  However, the trick in designing the CEIM is that you are modeling a query-generation factory.  Rather than hand-crafting individual queries, you model behavior and relationships, thus configuring the BI Server machinery to manufacture millions of different queries in response to random user requests.  This mass production requires a different mindset and approach than when you are designing individual SQL statements in tools such as Oracle SQL Developer, Oracle Hyperion Interactive Reporting (formerly Brio), or Oracle BI Publisher.   The Structure of the Common Enterprise Information Model (CEIM) The CEIM has a unique structure specifically for modeling the relationships and behaviors that fill the gap from logical user requests to physical data source queries and back to the result.  The model divides the functionality into three specialized layers, called Presentation, Business Model and Mapping, and Physical, as shown below. Presentation services clients can generally only see the presentation layer, and the objects in the presentation layer are normally the only ones used in the LSQL request.  When a request comes into the BI Server from presentation services or another client, the relationships and objects in the model allow the BI Server to select the appropriate data sources, create a query plan, and generate the physical queries.  That's the left to right flow in the diagram below.  When the results come back from the data source queries, the right to left relationships in the model show how to transform the results and perform any final calculations and functions that could not be pushed down to the databases.   Business Model Think of the business model as the heart of the CEIM you are designing.  This is where you define the analytic behavior seen by the users, and the superset library of metric and dimension objects available to the user community as a whole.  It also provides the baseline business-friendly names and user-readable dictionary.  For these reasons, it is often called the "logical" model--it is a virtual database schema that persists no data, but can be queried as if it is a database. The business model always has a dimensional shape (more on this in future posts), and its simple shape and terminology hides the complexity of the source data models. Besides hiding complexity and normalizing terminology, this layer adds most of the analytic value, as well.  This is where you define the rich, dimensional behavior of the metrics and complex business calculations, as well as the conformed dimensions and hierarchies.  It contributes to the ease of use for business users, since the dimensional metric definitions apply in any context of filters and drill-downs, and the conformed dimensions enable dashboard-wide filters and guided analysis links that bring context along from one page to the next.  The conformed dimensions also provide a key to hiding the complexity of many sources, including federation of different databases, behind the simple business model. Note that the expression language in this layer is LSQL, so that any expression can be rewritten into any data source's query language at run time.  This is important for federation, where a given logical object can map to several different physical objects in different databases.  It is also important to portability of the CEIM to different database brands, which is a key requirement for Oracle's BI Applications products. Your requirements process with your user community will mostly affect the business model.  This is where you will define most of the things they specifically ask for, such as metric definitions.  For this reason, many of the best-practice methodologies of our consulting partners start with the high-level definition of this layer. Physical Model The physical model connects the business model that meets your users' requirements to the reality of the data sources you have available. In the query factory analogy, think of the physical layer as the bill of materials for generating physical queries.  Every schema, table, column, join, cube, hierarchy, etc., that will appear in any physical query manufactured at run time must be modeled here at design time. Each physical data source will have its own physical model, or "database" object in the CEIM.  The shape of each physical model matches the shape of its physical source.  In other words, if the source is normalized relational, the physical model will mimic that normalized shape.  If it is a hypercube, the physical model will have a hypercube shape.  If it is a flat file, it will have a denormalized tabular shape. To aid in query optimization, the physical layer also tracks the specifics of the database brand and release.  This allows the BI Server to make the most of each physical source's distinct capabilities, writing queries in its syntax, and using its specific functions. This allows the BI Server to push processing work as deep as possible into the physical source, which minimizes data movement and takes full advantage of the database's own optimizer.  For most data sources, native APIs are used to further optimize performance and functionality. The value of having a distinct separation between the logical (business) and physical models is encapsulation of the physical characteristics.  This encapsulation is another enabler of packaged BI applications and federation.  It is also key to hiding the complex shapes and relationships in the physical sources from the end users.  Consider a routine drill-down in the business model: physically, it can require a drill-through where the first query is MDX to a multidimensional cube, followed by the drill-down query in SQL to a normalized relational database.  The only difference from the user's point of view is that the 2nd query added a more detailed dimension level column - everything else was the same. Mappings Within the Business Model and Mapping Layer, the mappings provide the binding from each logical column and join in the dimensional business model, to each of the objects that can provide its data in the physical layer.  When there is more than one option for a physical source, rules in the mappings are applied to the query context to determine which of the data sources should be hit, and how to combine their results if more than one is used.  These rules specify aggregate navigation, vertical partitioning (fragmentation), and horizontal partitioning, any of which can be federated across multiple, heterogeneous sources.  These mappings are usually the most sophisticated part of the CEIM. Presentation You might think of the presentation layer as a set of very simple relational-like views into the business model.  Over ODBC/JDBC, they present a relational catalog consisting of databases, tables and columns.  For business users, presentation services interprets these as subject areas, folders and columns, respectively.  (Note that in 10g, subject areas were called presentation catalogs in the CEIM.  In this blog, I will stick to 11g terminology.)  Generally speaking, presentation services and other clients can query only these objects (there are exceptions for certain clients such as BI Publisher and Essbase Studio). The purpose of the presentation layer is to specialize the business model for different categories of users.  Based on a user's role, they will be restricted to specific subject areas, tables and columns for security.  The breakdown of the model into multiple subject areas organizes the content for users, and subjects superfluous to a particular business role can be hidden from that set of users.  Customized names and descriptions can be used to override the business model names for a specific audience.  Variables in the object names can be used for localization. For these reasons, you are better off thinking of the tables in the presentation layer as folders than as strict relational tables.  The real semantics of tables and how they function is in the business model, and any grouping of columns can be included in any table in the presentation layer.  In 11g, an LSQL query can also span multiple presentation subject areas, as long as they map to the same business model. Other Model Objects There are some objects that apply to multiple layers.  These include security-related objects, such as application roles, users, data filters, and query limits (governors).  There are also variables you can use in parameters and expressions, and initialization blocks for loading their initial values on a static or user session basis.  Finally, there are Multi-User Development (MUD) projects for developers to check out units of work, and objects for the marketing feature used by our packaged customer relationship management (CRM) software.   The Query Factory At this point, you should have a grasp on the query factory concept.  When developing the CEIM model, you are configuring the BI Server to automatically manufacture millions of queries in response to random user requests. You do this by defining the analytic behavior in the business model, mapping that to the physical data sources, and exposing it through the presentation layer's role-based subject areas. While configuring mass production requires a different mindset than when you hand-craft individual SQL or MDX statements, it builds on the modeling and query concepts you already understand. The following posts in this series will walk through the CEIM modeling concepts and best practices in detail.  We will initially review dimensional concepts so you can understand the business model, and then present a pattern-based approach to learning the mappings from a variety of physical schema shapes and deployments to the dimensional model.  Along the way, we will also present the dimensional calculation template, and learn how to configure the many additivity patterns.

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  • The Windows Store... why did I sign up with this mess again?

    - by FransBouma
    Yesterday, Microsoft revealed that the Windows Store is now open to all developers in a wide range of countries and locations. For the people who think "wtf is the 'Windows Store'?", it's the central place where Windows 8 users will be able to find, download and purchase applications (or as we now have to say to not look like a computer illiterate: <accent style="Kentucky">aaaaappss</accent>) for Windows 8. As this is the store which is integrated into Windows 8, it's an interesting place for ISVs, as potential customers might very well look there first. This of course isn't true for all kinds of software, and developer tools in general aren't the kind of applications most users will download from the Windows store, but a presence there can't hurt. Now, this Windows Store hosts two kinds of applications: 'Metro-style' applications and 'Desktop' applications. The 'Metro-style' applications are applications created for the new 'Metro' UI which is present on Windows 8 desktop and Windows RT (the single color/big font fingerpaint-oriented UI). 'Desktop' applications are the applications we all run and use on Windows today. Our software are desktop applications. The Windows Store hosts all Metro-style applications locally in the store and handles the payment for these applications. This means you upload your application (sorry, 'app') to the store, jump through a lot of hoops, Microsoft verifies that your application is not violating a tremendous long list of rules and after everything is OK, it's published and hopefully you get customers and thus earn money. Money which Microsoft will pay you on a regular basis after customers buy your application. Desktop applications are not following this path however. Desktop applications aren't hosted by the Windows Store. Instead, the Windows Store more or less hosts a page with the application's information and where to get the goods. I.o.w.: it's nothing more than a product's Facebook page. Microsoft will simply redirect a visitor of the Windows Store to your website and the visitor will then use your site's system to purchase and download the application. This last bit of information is very important. So, this morning I started with fresh energy to register our company 'Solutions Design bv' at the Windows Store and our two applications, LLBLGen Pro and ORM Profiler. First I went to the Windows Store dashboard page. If you don't have an account, you have to log in or sign up if you don't have a live account. I signed in with my live account. After that, it greeted me with a page where I had to fill in a code which was mailed to me. My local mail server polls every several minutes for email so I had to kick it to get it immediately. I grabbed the code from the email and I was presented with a multi-step process to register myself as a company or as an individual. In red I was warned that this choice was permanent and not changeable. I chuckled: Microsoft apparently stores its data on paper, not in digital form. I chose 'company' and was presented with a lengthy form to fill out. On the form there were two strange remarks: Per company there can just be 1 (one, uno, not zero, not two or more) registered developer, and only that developer is able to upload stuff to the store. I have no idea how this works with large companies, oh the overhead nightmares... "Sorry, but John, our registered developer with the Windows Store is on holiday for 3 months, backpacking through Australia, no, he's not reachable at this point. M'yeah, sorry bud. Hey, did you fill in those TPS reports yesterday?" A separate Approver has to be specified, which has to be a different person than the registered developer. Apparently to Microsoft a company with just 1 person is not a company. Luckily we're with two people! *pfew*, dodged that one, otherwise I would be stuck forever: the choice I already made was not reversible! After I had filled out the form and it was all well and good and accepted by the Microsoft lackey who had to write it all down in some paper notebook ("Hey, be warned! It's a permanent choice! Written down in ink, can't be changed!"), I was presented with the question how I wanted to pay for all this. "Pay for what?" I wondered. Must be the paper they were scribbling the information on, I concluded. After all, there's a financial crisis going on! How could I forget! Silly me. "Ok fair enough". The price was 75 Euros, not the end of the world. I could only pay by credit card, so it was accepted quickly. Or so I thought. You see, Microsoft has a different idea about CC payments. In the normal world, you type in your CC number, some date, a name and a security code and that's it. But Microsoft wants to verify this even more. They want to make a verification purchase of a very small amount and are doing that with a special code in the description. You then have to type in that code in a special form in the Windows Store dashboard and after that you're verified. Of course they'll refund the small amount they pull from your card. Sounds simple, right? Well... no. The problem starts with the fact that I can't see the CC activity on some website: I have a bank issued CC card. I get the CC activity once a month on a piece of paper sent to me. The bank's online website doesn't show them. So it's possible I have to wait for this code till October 12th. One month. "So what, I'm not going to use it anyway, Desktop applications don't use the payment system", I thought. "Haha, you're so naive, dear developer!" Microsoft won't allow you to publish any applications till this verification is done. So no application publishing for a month. Wouldn't it be nice if things were, you know, digital, so things got done instantly? But of course, that lackey who scribbled everything in the Big Windows Store Registration Book isn't that quick. Can't blame him though. He's just doing his job. Now, after the payment was done, I was presented with a page which tells me Microsoft is going to use a third party company called 'Symantec', which will verify my identity again. The page explains to me that this could be done through email or phone and that they'll contact the Approver to verify my identity. "Phone?", I thought... that's a little drastic for a developer account to publish a single page of information about an external hosted software product, isn't it? On Facebook I just added a page, done. And paying you, Microsoft, took less information: you were happy to take my money before my identity was even 'verified' by this 3rd party's minions! "Double standards!", I roared. No-one cared. But it's the thought of getting it off your chest, you know. Luckily for me, everyone at Symantec was asleep when I was registering so they went for the fallback option in case phone calls were not possible: my Approver received an email. Imagine you have to explain the idiot web of security theater I was caught in to someone else who then has to reply a random person over the internet that I indeed was who I said I was. As she's a true sweetheart, she gave me the benefit of the doubt and assured that for now, I was who I said I was. Remember, this is for a desktop application, which is only a link to a website, some pictures and a piece of text. No file hosting, no payment processing, nothing, just a single page. Yeah, I also thought I was crazy. But we're not at the end of this quest yet. I clicked around in the confusing menus of the Windows Store dashboard and found the 'Desktop' section. I get a helpful screen with a warning in red that it can't find any certified 'apps'. True, I'm just getting started, buddy. I see a link: "Check the Windows apps you submitted for certification". Well, I haven't submitted anything, but let's see where it brings me. Oh the thrill of adventure! I click the link and I end up on this site: the hardware/desktop dashboard account registration. "Erm... but I just registered...", I mumbled to no-one in particular. Apparently for desktop registration / verification I have to register again, it tells me. But not only that, the desktop application has to be signed with a certificate. And not just some random el-cheapo certificate you can get at any mall's discount store. No, this certificate is special. It's precious. This certificate, the 'Microsoft Authenticode' Digital Certificate, is the only certificate that's acceptable, and jolly, it can be purchased from VeriSign for the price of only ... $99.-, but be quick, because this is a limited time offer! After that it's, I kid you not, $499.-. 500 dollars for a certificate to sign an executable. But, I do feel special, I got a special price. Only for me! I'm glowing. Not for long though. Here I started to wonder, what the benefit of it all was. I now again had to pay money for a shiny certificate which will add 'Solutions Design bv' to our installer as the publisher instead of 'unknown', while our customers download the file from our website. Not only that, but this was all about a Desktop application, which wasn't hosted by Microsoft. They only link to it. And make no mistake. These prices aren't single payments. Every year these have to be renewed. Like a membership of an exclusive club: you're special and privileged, but only if you cough up the dough. To give you an example how silly this all is: I added LLBLGen Pro and ORM Profiler to the Visual Studio Gallery some time ago. It's the same thing: it's a central place where one can find software which adds to / extends / works with Visual Studio. I could simply create the pages, add the information and they show up inside Visual Studio. No files are hosted at Microsoft, they're downloaded from our website. Exactly the same system. As I have to wait for the CC transcripts to arrive anyway, I can't proceed with publishing in this new shiny store. After the verification is complete I have to wait for verification of my software by Microsoft. Even Desktop applications need to be verified using a long list of rules which are mainly focused on Metro-style applications. Even while they're not hosted by Microsoft. I wonder what they'll find. "Your application wasn't approved. It violates rule 14 X sub D: it provides more value than our own competing framework". While I was writing this post, I tried to check something in the Windows Store Dashboard, to see whether I remembered it correctly. I was presented again with the question, after logging in with my live account, to enter the code that was just mailed to me. Not the previous code, a brand new one. Again I had to kick my mail server to pull the email to proceed. This was it. This 'experience' is so beyond miserable, I'm afraid I have to say goodbye for now to the 'Windows Store'. It's simply not worth my time. Now, about live accounts. You might know this: live accounts are tied to everything you do with Microsoft. So if you have an MSDN subscription, e.g. the one which costs over $5000.-, it's tied to this same live account. But the fun thing is, you can login with your live account to the MSDN subscriptions with just the account id and password. No additional code is mailed to you. While it gives you access to all Microsoft software available, including your licenses. Why the draconian security theater with this Windows Store, while all I want is to publish some desktop applications while on other Microsoft sites it's OK to simply sign in with your live account: no codes needed, no verification and no certificates? Microsoft, one thing you need with this store and that's: apps. Apps, apps, apps, apps, aaaaaaaaapps. Sorry, my bad, got carried away. I just can't stand the word 'app'. This store's shelves have to be filled to the brim with goods. But instead of being welcomed into the store with open arms, I have to fight an uphill battle with an endless list of rules and bullshit to earn the privilege to publish in this shiny store. As if I have to be thrilled to be one of the exclusive club called 'Windows Store Publishers'. As if Microsoft doesn't want it to succeed. Craig Stuntz sent me a link to an old blog post of his regarding code signing and uploading to Microsoft's old mobile store from back in the WinMo5 days: http://blogs.teamb.com/craigstuntz/2006/10/11/28357/. Good read and good background info about how little things changed over the years. I hope this helps Microsoft make things more clearer and smoother and also helps ISVs with their decision whether to go with the Windows Store scheme or ignore it. For now, I don't see the advantage of publishing there, especially not with the nonsense rules Microsoft cooked up. Perhaps it changes in the future, who knows.

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  • 2010 April Fools Joke

    - by Dane Morgridge
    I started at my current job at the end of March last year and there were some pretty funny April fools jokes.  Nothing super crazy, but pretty funny.  One guy came in and there was a tree in his cube.  We (me and the rest of my team) were planning for a couple of weeks on what we could do that would be just awesome.  We had a lot of really good ideas but nothing was spectacular.  Then Steve Andrews had a brilliant idea (yes it's true).  Since we have internal DNS servers we could redirect DNS to our internal servers for a site such as cnn.com.  Then we would lift the code from the site and create our own home page that would contain news about people in the company.  Steve was actually laughing so hard when he thought of the idea that it took him almost 30 minutes to spit it out. I thought, "this is perfect". I had enlisted a couple of people to help come up with the stories and at the same time we were trying to figure out how to get everybody to the site the morning of the 1st.  Then it hit me.  We could have the main article be one of my getting picked up by the FBI on hacking charges.  Then Chris (my boss) could send an email out telling everyone that I would not be there today and direct them to the site.  That would for sure get everyone to go to cnn.com first thing and see our prank.  I begun the process of looking for photos I could crop myself into and found the perfect one.  Then my wife took a good pic with our Canon 40D and I went to work.  The night before I didn't have any other stories due to everyone being really busy at work, but I decided to go ahead with just the FBI bust on it's own.  I got everything working and tested and coordinated with Chris for me to come in late so no one would see me at the office until after everyone had seen the joke. And so the morning of April fools came and I was waiting at home and the email was perfect.  Chris told everyone that I wouldn't be in and that not to answer any questions if you got any calls from anybody.  The Photoshop job I did was not perfect, but good enough and I even wrote an article with it that went into more detail about how I had been classified as a terrorist and all kinds of stuff. People at work started getting the emails and a few people didn't realize it was a joke (as I had hoped), including some from senior management (one person in particular who shall remain nameless in this post).  Emails started flying around about how to contain the situation and how to handle bad PR.  He basically bought it hook, line and sinker and then went in to crisis mode.  It was awesome! He did finally realize it was a joke and I will likely print and frame the email he sent out.  In short, April fools this year was a huge success.

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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, March 27, 2012

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, March 27, 2012Popular ReleasesHarness: Harness 2.0.2: change to .NET Framework Client Profile bug fix the download dialog auto answer. bug fix setFocus command. add "SendKeys" command. remove "closeAll" command. minor bugs fixed.BugNET Issue Tracker: BugNET 0.9.161: Below is a list of fixes in this release. Bug BGN-2092 - Link in Email "visit your profile" not functional BGN-2083 - Manager of bugnet can not edit project when it is not public BGN-2080 - clicking on a link in the project summary causes error (0.9.152.0) BGN-2070 - Missing Functionality On Feed.aspx BGN-2069 - Calendar View does not work BGN-2068 - Time tracking totals not ok BGN-2067 - Issues List Page Size Bug: Index was out of range. Must be non-negative and less than the si...YAF.NET (aka Yet Another Forum.NET): v1.9.6.1 RTW: v1.9.6.1 FINAL is .NET v4.0 ONLY v1.9.6.1 has: Performance Improvements .NET v4.0 improvements Improved FaceBook Integration More complete change list and discussion here: http://forum.yetanotherforum.net/yaf_postst14201_v1-9-6-1-RTW-Dated--3-26-2012.aspxQuick Performance Monitor: Version 1.8.1: Added option to set main window to be 'Always On Top'. Use context (right-click) menu on graph to toggle.Asp.NET Url Router: v1.0: build for .net 2.0 and .net 4.0SQLinq - use LINQ to generate Ad-Hoc Sql Queries: SQLinq v1.1: Nuget Package:http://nuget.org/packages/sqlinq Install SQLinq via Nuget Change Log:Fixed "SELECT *" bug when no selector is specified Added ".Take(int)" and ".Skip(int)" methods to support paging Added ability to specify "ORDER BY"DbViewSharp: Sql Compact Edition plugins: The SQL CE plugins are new assemblies written to allow DbViewSharp to work with SQL Compact Edition databases. Some features available for Sql Server databases are unavailable because of restrictions in the Compact Edition engine. However there are plans to add different new features as compensation for this. See the Sql CE Plugin page for more details.TileSet Map Editor: Map Creator: can add maps/ layers can use only 1 tileset for now Have Save/Load Logics... added Fill Copy and Paste working towards better code and more optionsBagammon pc player: Baggamon pc player v.1.3: This a source code of a project "tool-game" Bagammon pc player. It has bug. Please do not fix them. Thank you. For your information : "If you want to use it buy it. Send an email."openSourceC.Daylife: Release v1.0a: This is a minor bug fix release with some minor internal refactoring as well. The Documentation page has some code samples that show how to use the library. If you discover any issues with this release, please check the existing Discussions and Issues to see if the issue has already been reported, and if not, create a new discussion with the details of the issue.menu4web: menu4web 0.0.3: menu4web 0.0.3Windawesome: Windawesome v1.4.0 x86: Added a SeparatorWidget. Implemented some xmonad-like functionality for multiple-monitors - see SwapCurrentWorkspaceWith, SwitchToNextMonitor and SwitchToPreviousMonitor. Thanks to mkocubinski for the idea and some of the implementation. Implemented AddBarToWorkspace and RemoveBarFromWorkspace. Small performance improvements. Any issues/recommendations/requests for future versions? This is the 32-bit version of the release. If you use a 32-bit Windows, this is the release you should u...Navigation for ASP.NET Web Forms: Navigation 1.4: Navigation for ASP.NET Web Forms manages movement and data passing between ASPX pages in a unit-testable manner. There is no client-side logic, so it works in all browsers, and no server-side cache, so it works with the browser back button. Comprehensive documentation and sample code can be found under the Documentation tab (Make sure to unblock all zip files prior to extraction) New - Added default State NavigationData. Supports strongly typed values and routing defaults New - Added mobi...Afrihost Usage Monitoring Gadget: Afrihost Gadget 1.2.0: This is the stable current download: Changes: Added support for Uncapped accounts. Added support for IS Uncapped Accounts.ArcGIS Editor for OpenStreetMap: ArcGIS Editor for OSM 2.0 Final: This release installs both the ArcGIS Editor for OSM Server Component and/or ArcGIS Editor for OSM Desktop components. The Desktop tools allow you to download data from the OpenStreetMap servers and store it locally in a geodatabase. You can then use the familiar editing environment of ArcGIS Desktop to create, modify, or delete data. Once you are done editing, you can post back the edit changes to OSM to make them available to all OSM users. The Server Component allows you to quickly create...Craig's Utility Library: Craig's Utility Library 3.1: This update adds about 60 new extension methods, a couple of new classes, and a number of fixes including: Additions Added DateSpan class Added GenericDelimited class Random additions Added static thread friendly version of Random.Next called ThreadSafeNext. AOP Manager additions Added Destroy function to AOPManager (clears out all data so system can be recreated. Really only useful for testing...) ORM additions Added PagedCommand and PageCount functions to ObjectBaseClass (same as M...DotSpatial: DotSpatial 1.1: This is a Minor Release. See the changes in the issue tracker. Minimal -- includes DotSpatial core and essential extensions Extended -- includes debugging symbols and additional extensions Just want to run the software? End user (non-programmer) version available branded as MapWindow Want to add your own feature? Develop a plugin, using the template and contribute to the extension feed (you can also write extensions that you distribute in other ways). Components are available as NuGet pa...Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework - a centralized code sample library: C++, .NET Coding Guideline: Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework Coding Guideline This document describes the coding style guideline for native C++ and .NET (C# and VB.NET) programming used by the Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework project team.WebDAV for WHS: Version 1.0.67: - Added: Check whether the Remote Web Access is turned on or not; - Added: Check for Add-In updates;Phalanger - The PHP Language Compiler for the .NET Framework: 3.0 (March 2012) for .NET 4.0: March release of Phalanger 3.0 significantly enhances performance, adds new features and fixes many issues. See following for the list of main improvements: New features: Phalanger Tools installable for Visual Studio 2011 Beta "filter" extension with several most used filters implemented DomDocument HTML parser, loadHTML() method mail() PHP compatible function PHP 5.4 T_CALLABLE token PHP 5.4 "callable" type hint PCRE: UTF32 characters in range support configuration supports <c...New Projects(MVC4) Character Creation: A simple web site to manage your Avalon CharactersAmfSample: Sample projectBismillah Quran Reader for Wp7: Bismillah Quran Reader is an application for reading Quran translations in WP7. Translations can be read in various languages. Also recitations can be listened to.BlogEngine Mvc: This is an MVC version of BlogEngine.net. Project Description Our plan is to convert the whole BlogEngine.NET into an MVC application by the end of June 2012. It's developed in C# ASP.NET MVC3.Db7: Db7EF4.3 Code First and Migration Sample: EF4.3 Code First and Migration Sampleemoji for windows phone: This project is a windows phone 7 enmoji libary.Excel Document Merger: Excel Document Merger is a utility for combining multiple Excel workbooks and worksheets into a single workbook.exceladdin: exceladdinfastBinaryJSON: Binary JSON serializer based on fastJSONFontographer: A metro style WPF app to demonstrate the capabilites of the fonts on the users systemGonte Web Desktop: Another web desktop using ExtJs javascript frameworkIndoor Cricket Stats: Indoor Cricket StatsKernel32 C# wrapper: Kernel32.dll C# wrapper. Mostly done for threading, pipes, mutexes and other stuff. Not all methods implemented.Live for Desktop: A simple app that lets you browse you Live accout from a webbrowser integrated in the software. Future version will also include a custom interface and a Metro style look.LogoScriptIDE: IDE for LogoScript, A logo and C like scripting languageMcCloud Service Framework: Monte Carlo Cloud Service Framework (McCloud) provides a generic service implementation of Monte Carlo method, based on Microsoft Windows Azure, to solve a wide range of scientific and engineering problems.NetView Control for Microsoft Access: A native control for Microsoft Access forms to display and interact with non-hierarchical data.Polygon: Polygon is a UI composition framework for ASP.NET Web Forms. It can be used for third-party plugin extensibility of ASP.NET Web Forms applications. Though it's developed in C#, plugins can also done in VB as well.Programmeerproject-LambdaOffice: Architectural project. Takes input from the user and prints it to various fileformats such as .docx and .pdfQuick Job Seeker: Final project of computer scienceSchool Education Management: Project Description School Management System helps schools in managing student's data. It is targeted for colleges in the Philippines. It is developed in ASp.Net MVC3 and uses SQL Server as the database. The system is divided into several modules: 1. Registrar Module - used by the Registrar. 2. Scheduling Module - used by Deans for creating course offerings schedule 3. Cashiering Module - used by the Accounting Department 4. Grading Entry Module - used by teachers for encoding grade...Sharepoint Carousel: Sharepoint Carousel\Slider is a webpart that allows you to have a carousel that contains an image with a link below it. it is fully customisable from styles to the actual javascript that generates the slider data it has currently only been tested with sharepoint 2010 This is carousel\slider for sharepoint is built of the JCarousel http://sorgalla.com/jcarousel/.Sieena Dashboard: Metro UI DashboardSimple Redirect Module for DotNetNuke: This module allows content editors in DotNetNuke to have a simple and easy way to properly redirect incoming URLs that are incorrectly indexed by search engines.software de entrenador 2.0: software de entrenador es un Programa diseñado para entrenadores de musculacion y personas cuyo proposito es mejorar en sus entrenamientos y desean llevar un control del mismo a modo de diario.Sqlite Loader: Tool to Import/Export data to an Sqlite database using CSV, XML with a GUI written in C#TestProject_Mercurial: Test Project with MercuriaTestProject_TFS: the test project with tfsThinkPHP-??、???PHP????: ??WEB??????,?????WEB?????? Twesh Ajax: TweshAjax is clientside javascript library for making asynchronous calls to server.UserProfilePropertiesSync: This utility allows to synchronize User Profile properties between different SharePoint 2010 environments.VRacer: Vektor Car racing on windows phone.Workflow Foundation State Machine Service: This is a sample project for workflow foundation 4 state machine exposed as a WCF serviceWPZilla: Bugzilla client for Windows Phone 7.1 and up.XNA GPU Particles Tool: This is a tool to help create particle effects based on the sample shaders provided in the XNA education catalogue. View the changes to the parameters in real time.Y.Music: Y.Music - ??? ?????? ??? ??????? ??????.?????? ???????? ??????. ?? ????????? ?? ??????? ???-??????? ????????? ??????????. ? ???? ?? ?? ?????????? ??????? ?????? ?????????? ?????? ? ????????????? ??????? ? ????????? ? ?????????. ????????? ?????????? ?? WPF/?#/.NET. ????? ? ??? ???????????? ?????????? NAudio ? Fluent Ribbon.

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  • Google, typography, and cognitive fluency for persuasion

    - by Roger Hart
    Cognitive fluency is - roughly - how easy it is to think about something. Mere Exposure (or familiarity) effects are basically about reacting more favourably to things you see a lot. Which is part of why marketers in generic spaces like insipid mass-market lager will spend quite so much money on getting their logo daubed about the place; or that guy at the bus stop starts to look like a dating prospect after a month or two. Recent thinking suggests that exposure effects likely spin off cognitive fluency. We react favourably to things that are easier to think about. I had to give tech support to an older relative recently, and suggested they Google the problem. They were confused. They could not, apparently, Google the problem, because part of it was that their Google toolbar had mysteriously vanished. Once I'd finished trying not to laugh, I started thinking about typography. This is going somewhere, I promise. Google is a ubiquitous brand. Heck, it's a verb, and their recent, jaw-droppingly well constructed Paris advert is more or less about that ubiquity. It trades on Google's integration into any information-seeking behaviour. But, as my tech support encounter suggests, people settle into comfortable patterns of thinking about things. They build schemas, and altering them can take work. Maybe the ubiquity even works to cement that. Alongside their online effort, Google is running billboard campaigns to advertise Chrome, a free product in a crowded space. They are running these ads in some kind of kooky Calibri / Comic Sans hybrid. Now, at first it seems odd that one of the world's more ubiquitous brands needs to run a big print campaign in public places - surely they have all the fluency they need? Well, not so much. Chrome, after all, is not the same as their core product, so there's some basic awareness work to do, and maybe a whole new batch of exposure effect to try and grab. But why the typeface? It's heavily foregrounded, and the ads are extremely textual. Plus, don't we all know that jovial, off-beat fonts look unprofessional, or something? There's a whole bunch of people who want (often rightly) to ban Comic Sans I wonder, though. Are Google trying to subtly disrupt cognitive fluency? There's an interesting paper (pdf) about - among other things - the effects of typography on they way people answer survey questions. Participants given the slightly harder to read question gave more abstract answers. The paper references other work suggesting that generally speaking, less-fluent question framing elicits more considered answers. The Chrome ad typeface is less fluent for print. Reactions may therefore be more considered, abstract, and disruptive. Is that, in fact, what Google need? They have brand ubiquity, but they want here to change accustomed behaviour, to get people to think about changing their browser. Is this actually a very elegant piece of persuasive information design? If you think about their "what is a browser?" vox pop research video, there's certainly a perceptual barrier they're going to have to tackle somehow.

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  • Reconciling the Boy Scout Rule and Opportunistic Refactoring with code reviews

    - by t0x1n
    I am a great believer in the Boy Scout Rule: Always check a module in cleaner than when you checked it out." No matter who the original author was, what if we always made some effort, no matter how small, to improve the module. What would be the result? I think if we all followed that simple rule, we'd see the end of the relentless deterioration of our software systems. Instead, our systems would gradually get better and better as they evolved. We'd also see teams caring for the system as a whole, rather than just individuals caring for their own small little part. I am also a great believer in the related idea of Opportunistic Refactoring: Although there are places for some scheduled refactoring efforts, I prefer to encourage refactoring as an opportunistic activity, done whenever and wherever code needs to cleaned up - by whoever. What this means is that at any time someone sees some code that isn't as clear as it should be, they should take the opportunity to fix it right there and then - or at least within a few minutes Particularly note the following excerpt from the refactoring article: I'm wary of any development practices that cause friction for opportunistic refactoring ... My sense is that most teams don't do enough refactoring, so it's important to pay attention to anything that is discouraging people from doing it. To help flush this out be aware of any time you feel discouraged from doing a small refactoring, one that you're sure will only take a minute or two. Any such barrier is a smell that should prompt a conversation. So make a note of the discouragement and bring it up with the team. At the very least it should be discussed during your next retrospective. Where I work, there is one development practice that causes heavy friction - Code Review (CR). Whenever I change anything that's not in the scope of my "assignment" I'm being rebuked by my reviewers that I'm making the change harder to review. This is especially true when refactoring is involved, since it makes "line by line" diff comparison difficult. This approach is the standard here, which means opportunistic refactoring is seldom done, and only "planned" refactoring (which is usually too little, too late) takes place, if at all. I claim that the benefits are worth it, and that 3 reviewers will work a little harder (to actually understand the code before and after, rather than look at the narrow scope of which lines changed - the review itself would be better due to that alone) so that the next 100 developers reading and maintaining the code will benefit. When I present this argument my reviewers, they say they have no problem with my refactoring, as long as it's not in the same CR. However I claim this is a myth: (1) Most of the times you only realize what and how you want to refactor when you're in the midst of your assignment. As Martin Fowler puts it: As you add the functionality, you realize that some code you're adding contains some duplication with some existing code, so you need to refactor the existing code to clean things up... You may get something working, but realize that it would be better if the interaction with existing classes was changed. Take that opportunity to do that before you consider yourself done. (2) Nobody is going to look favorably at you releasing "refactoring" CRs you were not supposed to do. A CR has a certain overhead and your manager doesn't want you to "waste your time" on refactoring. When it's bundled with the change you're supposed to do, this issue is minimized. The issue is exacerbated by Resharper, as each new file I add to the change (and I can't know in advance exactly which files would end up changed) is usually littered with errors and suggestions - most of which are spot on and totally deserve fixing. The end result is that I see horrible code, and I just leave it there. Ironically, I feel that fixing such code not only will not improve my standings, but actually lower them and paint me as the "unfocused" guy who wastes time fixing things nobody cares about instead of doing his job. I feel bad about it because I truly despise bad code and can't stand watching it, let alone call it from my methods! Any thoughts on how I can remedy this situation ?

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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, March 29, 2012

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, March 29, 2012Popular ReleasesWouter's SharePoint Demo Land: Custom Views and Forms: Samples showing how to provision custom lists. Custom view rendering with code, XSLT, XSLT + code. Custom forms with database lookups.YouTube API Class & Server Control for ASP.NET 4.0: Binary dll Files with Demo: . You can find binary dll files under :- Demo\bin\ folder Demo url :- http://demo.svinn.com/YouTube/Default.aspx 1 GB Hosting + Free Domain => http://ghosting.in/ .callisto: callisto 2.0.23: Patched Script static class and peak user count bug fix.Circuit Diagram: Circuit Diagram 2.0 Alpha 3: New in this release: Added components: Microcontroller Demultiplexer Flip & rotate components Open XML files from older versions of Circuit Diagram Text formatting for components New CDDX syntax Other fixesUmbraco CMS: Umbraco 5.1 CMS (Beta): Beta build for testing - please report issues at issues.umbraco.org (Latest uploaded: 5.1.0.123) What's new in 5.1? The full list of changes is on our http://progress.umbraco.org task tracking page. It shows items complete for 5.1, and 5.1 includes items for 5.0.1 and 5.0.2 listed there too. Here's two headline acts: Members5.1 adds support for backoffice editing of Members. We support the pairing up of our content type system in Hive with regular ASP.NET Membership providers (we ship a def...51Degrees.mobi - Mobile Device Detection and Redirection: 2.1.2.11: One Click Install from NuGet Changes to Version 2.1.2.11Code Changes 1. The project is now licenced under the Mozilla Public Licence 2. 2. User interface control and associated data access layer classes have been added to aid developers integrating 51Degrees.mobi into wider projects such as content management systems or web hosting management solutions. Use the following in a web form or user control to access these new UI components. <%@ Register Assembly="FiftyOne.Foundation" Namespace="...JSON Toolkit: JSON Toolkit 3.1: slight performance improvement (5% - 10%) new JsonException classPicturethrill: Version 2.3.28.0: Straightforward image selection. New clean UI look. Super stable. Simplified user experience.Indent Guides for Visual Studio: Indent Guides v12 (beta 2): Note This beta is likely to be less stable than the previous one. If you have severe troubles using this version, please report them with as much detail as possible (especially other extensions/addins that you may have) and downgrade to the last stable release. Version History Changed since v12 (beta 1): new options dialog with Quick Set selections for behavior restructured settings storage (should be more reliable) asynchronous background document analysis glow effect now appears in p...SQL Monitor - managing sql server performance: SQL Monitor 4.2 alpha 16: 1. finally fixed problem with logic fault checking for temporary table name... I really mean finally ...ScintillaNET: ScintillaNET 2.5: A slew of bug-fixes with a few new features sprinkled in. This release also upgrades the SciLexer and SciLexer64 DLLs to version 3.0.4. The official stuff: Issue # Title 32402 32402 27137 27137 31548 31548 30179 30179 24932 24932 29701 29701 31238 31238 26875 26875 30052 30052 Mugen MVVM Toolkit: Mugen MVVM Toolkit ver 1.1: Added Design mode support.Multiwfn: Multiwfn 2.3.2: Multiwfn 2.3.2Harness: Harness 2.0.2: change to .NET Framework Client Profile bug fix the download dialog auto answer. bug fix setFocus command. add "SendKeys" command. remove "closeAll" command. minor bugs fixed.BugNET Issue Tracker: BugNET 0.9.161: Below is a list of fixes in this release. Bug BGN-2092 - Link in Email "visit your profile" not functional BGN-2083 - Manager of bugnet can not edit project when it is not public BGN-2080 - clicking on a link in the project summary causes error (0.9.152.0) BGN-2070 - Missing Functionality On Feed.aspx BGN-2069 - Calendar View does not work BGN-2068 - Time tracking totals not ok BGN-2067 - Issues List Page Size Bug: Index was out of range. Must be non-negative and less than the si...YAF.NET (aka Yet Another Forum.NET): v1.9.6.1 RTW: v1.9.6.1 FINAL is .NET v4.0 ONLY v1.9.6.1 has: Performance Improvements .NET v4.0 improvements Improved FaceBook Integration KNOWN ISSUES WITH THIS RELEASE: ON INSTALL PLEASE DON'T CHECK "Upgrade BBCode Extensions...". More complete change list and discussion here: http://forum.yetanotherforum.net/yaf_postst14201_v1-9-6-1-RTW-Dated--3-26-2012.aspxmenu4web: menu4web 0.0.3: menu4web 0.0.3ArcGIS Editor for OpenStreetMap: ArcGIS Editor for OSM 2.0 Final: This release installs both the ArcGIS Editor for OSM Server Component and/or ArcGIS Editor for OSM Desktop components. The Desktop tools allow you to download data from the OpenStreetMap servers and store it locally in a geodatabase. You can then use the familiar editing environment of ArcGIS Desktop to create, modify, or delete data. Once you are done editing, you can post back the edit changes to OSM to make them available to all OSM users. The Server Component allows you to quickly create...Craig's Utility Library: Craig's Utility Library 3.1: This update adds about 60 new extension methods, a couple of new classes, and a number of fixes including: Additions Added DateSpan class Added GenericDelimited class Random additions Added static thread friendly version of Random.Next called ThreadSafeNext. AOP Manager additions Added Destroy function to AOPManager (clears out all data so system can be recreated. Really only useful for testing...) ORM additions Added PagedCommand and PageCount functions to ObjectBaseClass (same as M...DotSpatial: DotSpatial 1.1: This is a Minor Release. See the changes in the issue tracker. Minimal -- includes DotSpatial core and essential extensions Extended -- includes debugging symbols and additional extensions Just want to run the software? End user (non-programmer) version available branded as MapWindow Want to add your own feature? Develop a plugin, using the template and contribute to the extension feed (you can also write extensions that you distribute in other ways). Components are available as NuGet pa...New ProjectsAeroFichierAchats: Program that reworks excel files into PDFArepa: A lightweight non-invasive tool that helps you to implement Behavior Driven Development (BDD) on .NET projects. Arepa produces guidelines of using BDD on your current tests, and customisable and portable test reports integrating XML Documentation Comments. It's developed in C# using Scrum and BDD.Azure User Management Console - AUMC: Azure User Management Console - AUMC is a User Graphic Interface (GUI) that manages the users and logins of an Azure SQL database. The tool is simply converting your action into T-SQL commands and execute them on the Azure SQL Database. BaseProject: BaseProjectCraftBukkit Updater: I don't activly monitor the status of CraftBukkit's updates, but I want to stay on top of the updated versions. This will track the last version in cache then check for updates. Upon update there should be an option to download automaticly to location XYZ or to send an email/sms.Dan Dot Com: Dan's SandboxEjemplos Windows 8 Javascript: Este proyecto pretende recoger todos los ejemplos de aplicaciones metro para Windows 8 en JavaScript que vaya desarrollando para fines didácticos. Todas las colaboraciones son bienvenidas.EntityFramework Generic Patterns: EntityFramework Generic PatternsEpFamvir: EpFamvir is a Visual C++ software framework that supports data-intensive distributed applications under a GPL3.0 license. It enables applications to work with thousands of nodes and petabytes of data. Famvir was inspired by Apache Hadoop, Google's MapReduce, and Google FS.etdc/etp: ???????????????? ???????? ??????? etest.ru. IndieCiv: IndieCiv - An independent look at how a new game could be made using fan-made graphics from Civ3. You can visit the discussion at www.civfanatics.com http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=421582Libro SQL Server 2012: Databases and examples for my Italian book on "SQL Server 2012"Linq2Rest: Parses OData system query parameters to create a LINQ query that can be used to filter a model set. Also exposes a LINQ provider for web services supporting the OData query parameters. Use extension method Filter (in Linq2Rest namespace) on any IEnumerable source.LittleUmph: It's a little library to help you to alleviate some of the mundane stuff during your development. It has some nifty stuff like a neat database wrapper, conversion utilities, string functions and vast of other mini helpers to improve the efficiency and consistency of your code.LonghornRPG: LonghornRPGMemberManager: Keep track of membersMSU Student Teaching DataBase: A C# application to manage student placements for MSU.MvcContrib4: This is the MvcContrib project to support MVC 4MYFIRSTDEMOPROJECT: Introduction to CSharpOrchard Page Title Override: This Orchard CMS module allows a user to manage the Page Title. You can now have the Site Name show up last in the Page Title or hide the Site Name completely from the Page Title. The module also contains a Content Part allowing a Page Title to be separate from content title.phoenixtree: .net linux sql php python html javascript c exampleProject Explorer for Notepad++: This project mainly aims at providing a functional rich project explorer experience on notepad++. Features include Folder based file browsing, searching, filtering and more.Projeto Exemplo FPU: Projeto Exemplo FPUPureCalendar: simple web calendarrails study: rails studySafe IM: a safe IM software use AES,SHA,RSA.Contain a server and a clientScoreboard: Scoreboard is a simple sports and/or activities scoreboard which can be used for a variety of purposes It was developed for use with a 1024x768 projector and features home and away scores, countdown clock, even a buzzer. It's developed in VB.net.SharePoint System dates and editor fields updater: The SPChangeDate is a utility used to modify some of the system fields in a SharePoint 2010 document library using a datagridview (Excel Like). It allows the modification of the following SharePoint fields: 1. Created 2. Modified 3. Modified By 4. Created By Shi Ji Xiang CRM 2012: Shi Ji XiangSIGECAR: SIGECARStable Dependencies Principle Checker for nDepend: Small console app for parsing nDepend output files and find assemblies that breaks the Stable Dependencies PrincipleStudentsPointManager: StudentsPointManagertclh123test: 4testThai Sign Language Translator: Thai Sign Language Translator with Kinect Sensor.The House FM / My Praise FM Desktop App: An App to play Christian radio on the desktop of windows Vista and Windows 7 computersTradeSea: Uni ProjectVisual Dependency Tracer: This tool will help you understand how an excel formula is derived/calculated. It provides a visual representation (tree) of the formula, including the precendents and dependents.VK Video Player: Video player for russian social network vk.comXrmSvcToolkit: XrmSvcToolkit is a small JavaScript library that helps you access Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 web service interfaces (SOAP and REST).

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  • Minecraft Style Chunk building problem

    - by David Torrey
    I'm having some problems with speed in my chunk engine. I timed it out, and in its current state it takes a total ~5 seconds per chunk to fill each face's list. I have a check to see if each face of a block is visible and if it is not visible, it skips it and moves on. I'm using a dictionary (unordered map) because it makes sense memorywise to just not have an entry if there is no block. I've tracked my problem down to testing if there is an entry, and accessing an entry if it does exist. If I remove the tests to see if there is an entry in the dictionary for an adjacent block, or if the block type itself is seethrough, it runs within about 2-4 milliseconds. so here's my question: Is there a faster way to check for an entry in a dictionary than .ContainsKey()? As an aside, I tried TryGetValue() and it doesn't really help with the speed that much. If I remove the ContainsKey() and keep the test where it does the IsSeeThrough for each block, it halves the time, but it's still about 2-3 seconds. It only drops to 2-4ms if I remove BOTH checks. Here is my code: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using System.Threading.Tasks; using System.Runtime.InteropServices; using OpenTK; using OpenTK.Graphics.OpenGL; using System.Drawing; namespace Anabelle_Lee { public enum BlockEnum { air = 0, dirt = 1, } [StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential,Pack=1)] public struct Coordinates<T1> { public T1 x; public T1 y; public T1 z; public override string ToString() { return "(" + x + "," + y + "," + z + ") : " + typeof(T1); } } public struct Sides<T1> { public T1 left; public T1 right; public T1 top; public T1 bottom; public T1 front; public T1 back; } public class Block { public int blockType; public bool SeeThrough() { switch (blockType) { case 0: return true; } return false ; } public override string ToString() { return ((BlockEnum)(blockType)).ToString(); } } class Chunk { private Dictionary<Coordinates<byte>, Block> mChunkData; //stores the block data private Sides<List<Coordinates<byte>>> mVBOVertexBuffer; private Sides<int> mVBOHandle; //private bool mIsChanged; private const byte mCHUNKSIZE = 16; public Chunk() { } public void InitializeChunk() { //create VBO references #if DEBUG Console.WriteLine ("Initializing Chunk"); #endif mChunkData = new Dictionary<Coordinates<byte> , Block>(); //mIsChanged = true; GL.GenBuffers(1, out mVBOHandle.left); GL.GenBuffers(1, out mVBOHandle.right); GL.GenBuffers(1, out mVBOHandle.top); GL.GenBuffers(1, out mVBOHandle.bottom); GL.GenBuffers(1, out mVBOHandle.front); GL.GenBuffers(1, out mVBOHandle.back); //make new list of vertexes for each face mVBOVertexBuffer.top = new List<Coordinates<byte>>(); mVBOVertexBuffer.bottom = new List<Coordinates<byte>>(); mVBOVertexBuffer.left = new List<Coordinates<byte>>(); mVBOVertexBuffer.right = new List<Coordinates<byte>>(); mVBOVertexBuffer.front = new List<Coordinates<byte>>(); mVBOVertexBuffer.back = new List<Coordinates<byte>>(); #if DEBUG Console.WriteLine("Chunk Initialized"); #endif } public void GenerateChunk() { #if DEBUG Console.WriteLine("Generating Chunk"); #endif for (byte i = 0; i < mCHUNKSIZE; i++) { for (byte j = 0; j < mCHUNKSIZE; j++) { for (byte k = 0; k < mCHUNKSIZE; k++) { Random blockLoc = new Random(); Coordinates<byte> randChunk = new Coordinates<byte> { x = i, y = j, z = k }; mChunkData.Add(randChunk, new Block()); mChunkData[randChunk].blockType = blockLoc.Next(0, 1); } } } #if DEBUG Console.WriteLine("Chunk Generated"); #endif } public void DeleteChunk() { //delete VBO references #if DEBUG Console.WriteLine("Deleting Chunk"); #endif GL.DeleteBuffers(1, ref mVBOHandle.left); GL.DeleteBuffers(1, ref mVBOHandle.right); GL.DeleteBuffers(1, ref mVBOHandle.top); GL.DeleteBuffers(1, ref mVBOHandle.bottom); GL.DeleteBuffers(1, ref mVBOHandle.front); GL.DeleteBuffers(1, ref mVBOHandle.back); //clear all vertex buffers ClearPolyLists(); #if DEBUG Console.WriteLine("Chunk Deleted"); #endif } public void UpdateChunk() { #if DEBUG Console.WriteLine("Updating Chunk"); #endif ClearPolyLists(); //prepare buffers //for every entry in mChunkData map foreach(KeyValuePair<Coordinates<byte>,Block> feBlockData in mChunkData) { Coordinates<byte> checkBlock = new Coordinates<byte> { x = feBlockData.Key.x, y = feBlockData.Key.y, z = feBlockData.Key.z }; //check for polygonson the left side of the cube if (checkBlock.x > 0) { //check to see if there is a key for current x - 1. if not, add the vector if (!IsVisible(checkBlock.x - 1, checkBlock.y, checkBlock.z)) { //add polygon AddPoly(checkBlock.x, checkBlock.y, checkBlock.z, mVBOHandle.left); } } else { //polygon is far left and should be added AddPoly(checkBlock.x, checkBlock.y, checkBlock.z, mVBOHandle.left); } //check for polygons on the right side of the cube if (checkBlock.x < mCHUNKSIZE - 1) { if (!IsVisible(checkBlock.x + 1, checkBlock.y, checkBlock.z)) { //add poly AddPoly(checkBlock.x, checkBlock.y, checkBlock.z, mVBOHandle.right); } } else { //poly for right add AddPoly(checkBlock.x, checkBlock.y, checkBlock.z, mVBOHandle.right); } if (checkBlock.y > 0) { //check to see if there is a key for current x - 1. if not, add the vector if (!IsVisible(checkBlock.x, checkBlock.y - 1, checkBlock.z)) { //add polygon AddPoly(checkBlock.x, checkBlock.y, checkBlock.z, mVBOHandle.bottom); } } else { //polygon is far left and should be added AddPoly(checkBlock.x, checkBlock.y, checkBlock.z, mVBOHandle.bottom); } //check for polygons on the right side of the cube if (checkBlock.y < mCHUNKSIZE - 1) { if (!IsVisible(checkBlock.x, checkBlock.y + 1, checkBlock.z)) { //add poly AddPoly(checkBlock.x, checkBlock.y, checkBlock.z, mVBOHandle.top); } } else { //poly for right add AddPoly(checkBlock.x, checkBlock.y, checkBlock.z, mVBOHandle.top); } if (checkBlock.z > 0) { //check to see if there is a key for current x - 1. if not, add the vector if (!IsVisible(checkBlock.x, checkBlock.y, checkBlock.z - 1)) { //add polygon AddPoly(checkBlock.x, checkBlock.y, checkBlock.z, mVBOHandle.back); } } else { //polygon is far left and should be added AddPoly(checkBlock.x, checkBlock.y, checkBlock.z, mVBOHandle.back); } //check for polygons on the right side of the cube if (checkBlock.z < mCHUNKSIZE - 1) { if (!IsVisible(checkBlock.x, checkBlock.y, checkBlock.z + 1)) { //add poly AddPoly(checkBlock.x, checkBlock.y, checkBlock.z, mVBOHandle.front); } } else { //poly for right add AddPoly(checkBlock.x, checkBlock.y, checkBlock.z, mVBOHandle.front); } } BuildBuffers(); #if DEBUG Console.WriteLine("Chunk Updated"); #endif } public void RenderChunk() { } public void LoadChunk() { #if DEBUG Console.WriteLine("Loading Chunk"); #endif #if DEBUG Console.WriteLine("Chunk Deleted"); #endif } public void SaveChunk() { #if DEBUG Console.WriteLine("Saving Chunk"); #endif #if DEBUG Console.WriteLine("Chunk Saved"); #endif } private bool IsVisible(int pX,int pY,int pZ) { Block testBlock; Coordinates<byte> checkBlock = new Coordinates<byte> { x = Convert.ToByte(pX), y = Convert.ToByte(pY), z = Convert.ToByte(pZ) }; if (mChunkData.TryGetValue(checkBlock,out testBlock )) //if data exists { if (testBlock.SeeThrough() == true) //if existing data is not seethrough { return true; } } return true; } private void AddPoly(byte pX, byte pY, byte pZ, int BufferSide) { //create temp array GL.BindBuffer(BufferTarget.ArrayBuffer, BufferSide); if (BufferSide == mVBOHandle.front) { //front face mVBOVertexBuffer.front.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX) , y = (byte)(pY + 1), z = (byte)(pZ + 1) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.front.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX) , y = (byte)(pY) , z = (byte)(pZ + 1) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.front.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX + 1), y = (byte)(pY) , z = (byte)(pZ + 1) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.front.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX + 1), y = (byte)(pY) , z = (byte)(pZ + 1) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.front.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX + 1), y = (byte)(pY + 1), z = (byte)(pZ + 1) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.front.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX) , y = (byte)(pY + 1), z = (byte)(pZ + 1) }); } else if (BufferSide == mVBOHandle.right) { //back face mVBOVertexBuffer.back.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX + 1), y = (byte)(pY + 1), z = (byte)(pZ) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.back.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX + 1), y = (byte)(pY) , z = (byte)(pZ) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.back.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX) , y = (byte)(pY) , z = (byte)(pZ) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.back.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX) , y = (byte)(pY) , z = (byte)(pZ) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.back.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX) , y = (byte)(pY + 1), z = (byte)(pZ) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.back.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX + 1), y = (byte)(pY + 1), z = (byte)(pZ) }); } else if (BufferSide == mVBOHandle.top) { //left face mVBOVertexBuffer.left.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX), y = (byte)(pY + 1), z = (byte)(pZ) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.left.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX), y = (byte)(pY) , z = (byte)(pZ) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.left.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX), y = (byte)(pY) , z = (byte)(pZ + 1) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.left.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX), y = (byte)(pY) , z = (byte)(pZ + 1) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.left.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX), y = (byte)(pY + 1), z = (byte)(pZ + 1) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.left.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX), y = (byte)(pY + 1), z = (byte)(pZ) }); } else if (BufferSide == mVBOHandle.bottom) { //right face mVBOVertexBuffer.right.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX + 1), y = (byte)(pY + 1), z = (byte)(pZ + 1) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.right.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX + 1), y = (byte)(pY) , z = (byte)(pZ + 1) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.right.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX + 1), y = (byte)(pY) , z = (byte)(pZ) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.right.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX + 1), y = (byte)(pY) , z = (byte)(pZ) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.right.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX + 1), y = (byte)(pY + 1), z = (byte)(pZ) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.right.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX + 1), y = (byte)(pY + 1), z = (byte)(pZ + 1) }); } else if (BufferSide == mVBOHandle.front) { //top face mVBOVertexBuffer.top.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX) , y = (byte)(pY + 1), z = (byte)(pZ) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.top.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX) , y = (byte)(pY + 1), z = (byte)(pZ + 1) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.top.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX + 1), y = (byte)(pY + 1), z = (byte)(pZ + 1) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.top.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX + 1), y = (byte)(pY + 1), z = (byte)(pZ + 1) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.top.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX + 1), y = (byte)(pY + 1), z = (byte)(pZ) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.top.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX) , y = (byte)(pY + 1), z = (byte)(pZ) }); } else if (BufferSide == mVBOHandle.back) { //bottom face mVBOVertexBuffer.bottom.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX) , y = (byte)(pY), z = (byte)(pZ + 1) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.bottom.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX) , y = (byte)(pY), z = (byte)(pZ) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.bottom.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX + 1), y = (byte)(pY), z = (byte)(pZ) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.bottom.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX + 1), y = (byte)(pY), z = (byte)(pZ) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.bottom.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX + 1), y = (byte)(pY), z = (byte)(pZ + 1) }); mVBOVertexBuffer.bottom.Add(new Coordinates<byte> { x = (byte)(pX) , y = (byte)(pY), z = (byte)(pZ + 1) }); } } private void BuildBuffers() { #if DEBUG Console.WriteLine("Building Chunk Buffers"); #endif GL.BindBuffer(BufferTarget.ArrayBuffer, mVBOHandle.front); GL.BufferData(BufferTarget.ArrayBuffer, (IntPtr)(Marshal.SizeOf(new Coordinates<byte>()) * mVBOVertexBuffer.front.Count), mVBOVertexBuffer.front.ToArray(), BufferUsageHint.StaticDraw); GL.BindBuffer(BufferTarget.ArrayBuffer, mVBOHandle.back); GL.BufferData(BufferTarget.ArrayBuffer, (IntPtr)(Marshal.SizeOf(new Coordinates<byte>()) * mVBOVertexBuffer.back.Count), mVBOVertexBuffer.back.ToArray(), BufferUsageHint.StaticDraw); GL.BindBuffer(BufferTarget.ArrayBuffer, mVBOHandle.left); GL.BufferData(BufferTarget.ArrayBuffer, (IntPtr)(Marshal.SizeOf(new Coordinates<byte>()) * mVBOVertexBuffer.left.Count), mVBOVertexBuffer.left.ToArray(), BufferUsageHint.StaticDraw); GL.BindBuffer(BufferTarget.ArrayBuffer, mVBOHandle.right); GL.BufferData(BufferTarget.ArrayBuffer, (IntPtr)(Marshal.SizeOf(new Coordinates<byte>()) * mVBOVertexBuffer.right.Count), mVBOVertexBuffer.right.ToArray(), BufferUsageHint.StaticDraw); GL.BindBuffer(BufferTarget.ArrayBuffer, mVBOHandle.top); GL.BufferData(BufferTarget.ArrayBuffer, (IntPtr)(Marshal.SizeOf(new Coordinates<byte>()) * mVBOVertexBuffer.top.Count), mVBOVertexBuffer.top.ToArray(), BufferUsageHint.StaticDraw); GL.BindBuffer(BufferTarget.ArrayBuffer, mVBOHandle.bottom); GL.BufferData(BufferTarget.ArrayBuffer, (IntPtr)(Marshal.SizeOf(new Coordinates<byte>()) * mVBOVertexBuffer.bottom.Count), mVBOVertexBuffer.bottom.ToArray(), BufferUsageHint.StaticDraw); GL.BindBuffer(BufferTarget.ArrayBuffer,0); #if DEBUG Console.WriteLine("Chunk Buffers Built"); #endif } private void ClearPolyLists() { #if DEBUG Console.WriteLine("Clearing Polygon Lists"); #endif mVBOVertexBuffer.top.Clear(); mVBOVertexBuffer.bottom.Clear(); mVBOVertexBuffer.left.Clear(); mVBOVertexBuffer.right.Clear(); mVBOVertexBuffer.front.Clear(); mVBOVertexBuffer.back.Clear(); #if DEBUG Console.WriteLine("Polygon Lists Cleared"); #endif } }//END CLASS }//END NAMESPACE

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  • LWJGL Voxel game, glDrawArrays

    - by user22015
    I've been learning about 3D for a couple days now. I managed to create a chunk (8x8x8). Add optimization so it only renders the active and visible blocks. Then I added so it only draws the faces which don't have a neighbor. Next what I found from online research was that it is better to use glDrawArrays to increase performance. So I restarted my little project. Render an entire chunck, add optimization so it only renders active and visible blocks. But now I want to add so it only draws the visible faces while using glDrawArrays. This is giving me some trouble with calling glDrawArrays because I'm passing a wrong count parameter. > # A fatal error has been detected by the Java Runtime Environment: > # > # EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION (0xc0000005) at pc=0x0000000006e31a03, pid=1032, tid=3184 > # Stack: [0x00000000023a0000,0x00000000024a0000], sp=0x000000000249ef70, free space=1019k Native frames: (J=compiled Java code, j=interpreted, Vv=VM code, C=native code) C [ig4icd64.dll+0xa1a03] Java frames: (J=compiled Java code, j=interpreted, Vv=VM code) j org.lwjgl.opengl.GL11.nglDrawArrays(IIIJ)V+0 j org.lwjgl.opengl.GL11.glDrawArrays(III)V+20 j com.vox.block.Chunk.render()V+410 j com.vox.ChunkManager.render()V+30 j com.vox.Game.render()V+11 j com.vox.GameHandler.render()V+12 j com.vox.GameHandler.gameLoop()V+15 j com.vox.Main.main([Ljava/lang/StringV+13 v ~StubRoutines::call_stub public class Chunk { public final static int[] DIM = { 8, 8, 8}; public final static int CHUNK_SIZE = (DIM[0] * DIM[1] * DIM[2]); Block[][][] blocks; private int index; private int vBOVertexHandle; private int vBOColorHandle; public Chunk(int index) { this.index = index; vBOColorHandle = GL15.glGenBuffers(); vBOVertexHandle = GL15.glGenBuffers(); blocks = new Block[DIM[0]][DIM[1]][DIM[2]]; for(int x = 0; x < DIM[0]; x++){ for(int y = 0; y < DIM[1]; y++){ for(int z = 0; z < DIM[2]; z++){ blocks[x][y][z] = new Block(); } } } } public void render(){ Block curr; FloatBuffer vertexPositionData2 = BufferUtils.createFloatBuffer(CHUNK_SIZE * 6 * 12); FloatBuffer vertexColorData2 = BufferUtils.createFloatBuffer(CHUNK_SIZE * 6 * 12); int counter = 0; for(int x = 0; x < DIM[0]; x++){ for(int y = 0; y < DIM[1]; y++){ for(int z = 0; z < DIM[2]; z++){ curr = blocks[x][y][z]; boolean[] neightbours = validateNeightbours(x, y, z); if(curr.isActive() && !neightbours[6]) { float[] arr = curr.createCube((index*DIM[0]*Block.BLOCK_SIZE*2) + x*2, y*2, z*2, neightbours); counter += arr.length; vertexPositionData2.put(arr); vertexColorData2.put(createCubeVertexCol(curr.getCubeColor())); } } } } vertexPositionData2.flip(); vertexPositionData2.flip(); FloatBuffer vertexPositionData = BufferUtils.createFloatBuffer(vertexColorData2.position()); FloatBuffer vertexColorData = BufferUtils.createFloatBuffer(vertexColorData2.position()); for(int i = 0; i < vertexPositionData2.position(); i++) vertexPositionData.put(vertexPositionData2.get(i)); for(int i = 0; i < vertexColorData2.position(); i++) vertexColorData.put(vertexColorData2.get(i)); vertexColorData.flip(); vertexPositionData.flip(); GL15.glBindBuffer(GL15.GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, vBOVertexHandle); GL15.glBufferData(GL15.GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, vertexPositionData, GL15.GL_STATIC_DRAW); GL15.glBindBuffer(GL15.GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, 0); GL15.glBindBuffer(GL15.GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, vBOColorHandle); GL15.glBufferData(GL15.GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, vertexColorData, GL15.GL_STATIC_DRAW); GL15.glBindBuffer(GL15.GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, 0); GL11.glPushMatrix(); GL15.glBindBuffer(GL15.GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, vBOVertexHandle); GL11.glVertexPointer(3, GL11.GL_FLOAT, 0, 0L); GL15.glBindBuffer(GL15.GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, vBOColorHandle); GL11.glColorPointer(3, GL11.GL_FLOAT, 0, 0L); System.out.println("Counter " + counter); GL11.glDrawArrays(GL11.GL_LINE_LOOP, 0, counter); GL11.glPopMatrix(); //blocks[r.nextInt(DIM[0])][2][r.nextInt(DIM[2])].setActive(false); } //Random r = new Random(); private float[] createCubeVertexCol(float[] CubeColorArray) { float[] cubeColors = new float[CubeColorArray.length * 4 * 6]; for (int i = 0; i < cubeColors.length; i++) { cubeColors[i] = CubeColorArray[i % CubeColorArray.length]; } return cubeColors; } private boolean[] validateNeightbours(int x, int y, int z) { boolean[] bools = new boolean[7]; bools[6] = true; bools[6] = bools[6] && (bools[0] = y > 0 && y < DIM[1]-1 && blocks[x][y+1][z].isActive());//top bools[6] = bools[6] && (bools[1] = y > 0 && y < DIM[1]-1 && blocks[x][y-1][z].isActive());//bottom bools[6] = bools[6] && (bools[2] = z > 0 && z < DIM[2]-1 && blocks[x][y][z+1].isActive());//front bools[6] = bools[6] && (bools[3] = z > 0 && z < DIM[2]-1 && blocks[x][y][z-1].isActive());//back bools[6] = bools[6] && (bools[4] = x > 0 && x < DIM[0]-1 && blocks[x+1][y][z].isActive());//left bools[6] = bools[6] && (bools[5] = x > 0 && x < DIM[0]-1 && blocks[x-1][y][z].isActive());//right return bools; } } public class Block { public static final float BLOCK_SIZE = 1f; public enum BlockType { Default(0), Grass(1), Dirt(2), Water(3), Stone(4), Wood(5), Sand(6), LAVA(7); int BlockID; BlockType(int i) { BlockID=i; } } private boolean active; private BlockType type; public Block() { this(BlockType.Default); } public Block(BlockType type){ active = true; this.type = type; } public float[] getCubeColor() { switch (type.BlockID) { case 1: return new float[] { 1, 1, 0 }; case 2: return new float[] { 1, 0.5f, 0 }; case 3: return new float[] { 0, 0f, 1f }; default: return new float[] {0.5f, 0.5f, 1f}; } } public float[] createCube(float x, float y, float z, boolean[] neightbours){ int counter = 0; for(boolean b : neightbours) if(!b) counter++; float[] array = new float[counter*12]; int offset = 0; if(!neightbours[0]){//top array[offset++] = x*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = y*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = z*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = x*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = y*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = z*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = x*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = y*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = z*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = x*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = y*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = z*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; } if(!neightbours[1]){//bottom array[offset++] = x*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = y*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = z*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = x*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = y*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = z*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = x*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = y*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = z*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = x*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = y*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = z*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; } if(!neightbours[2]){//front array[offset++] = x*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = y*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = z*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = x*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = y*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = z*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = x*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = y*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = z*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = x*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = y*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = z*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; } if(!neightbours[3]){//back array[offset++] = x*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = y*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = z*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = x*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = y*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = z*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = x*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = y*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = z*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = x*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = y*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = z*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; } if(!neightbours[4]){//left array[offset++] = x*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = y*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = z*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = x*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = y*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = z*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = x*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = y*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = z*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = x*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = y*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = z*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; } if(!neightbours[5]){//right array[offset++] = x*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = y*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = z*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = x*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = y*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = z*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = x*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = y*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = z*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = x*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = y*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = z*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; } return Arrays.copyOf(array, offset); } public boolean isActive() { return active; } public void setActive(boolean active) { this.active = active; } public BlockType getType() { return type; } public void setType(BlockType type) { this.type = type; } } I highlighted the code I'm concerned about in this following screenshot: - http://imageshack.us/a/img820/7606/18626782.png - (Not allowed to upload images yet) I know the code is a mess but I'm just testing stuff so I wasn't really thinking about it.

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  • Brainless Backups

    - by Jesse
    I’m a software developer by trade which means to my friends and family I’m just a “computer guy”. It’s assumed that I know everything about every facet of computing from removing spyware to replacing hardware. I also can do all of this blindly over the phone or after hearing a five to ten word description of the problem over dinner ;-) In my position as CIO of my friends and families I’ve been in the unfortunate position of trying to recover music, pictures, or documents off of failed hard drives on more than one occasion. It’s not a great situation for anyone, and it’s always at these times that the importance of backups becomes so clear. Several months back a friend of mine found himself in this situation. The hard drive on his 8 year old laptop failed and took a good number of his digital photos with it. I think most folks can deal with losing some of their music and even some of their documents, but it really stings to lose pictures of past events and loved ones. After ordering a new laptop, my friend went out and bought an external hard drive so that he could start keeping a backup of his data. As fate would have it, several months later the drive in his new laptop failed and he learned the hard way that simply buying the external hard drive isn’t enough… you actually have to copy your stuff over every once in awhile! The importance of backup and recovery plans is (hopefully) well known in IT organizations. Well executed backup plans are in place, and hopefully the backup and recovery process is tested regularly. When you’re talking about users at home, however, the need for these backups is often understood far too late. Most typical users can’t be expected to remember to backup their data regularly and also don’t always have the know-how to setup automated backups. For my friends and family members in this situation I recommend tools like Dropbox, Carbonite, and Mozy. Here’s why I like them: They’re affordable: Dropbox and Mozy both have free offerings, though most people with lots of music and/or photos to backup will probably exceed the storage limitations of those free plans pretty quickly. Still, all three offer pretty affordable monthly or yearly plans. In my opinion, Carbonite’s unlimited storage plan for $50-$60 per year is the best value around. They’re easy to setup: Both Dropbox and Carbonite are very easy to get setup and start using. I’ve never used Mozy, but I imagine it’s similarly painless to get up and running. Backups are automatically “off-site”: A backup that is sitting on an external hard drive right next to your computer is great, but might not protect against flood damage, a power surge, or other disasters in that single location. These services exist “in the cloud” so to speak, helping mitigate those concerns. Granted, this kind of backup scheme requires some trust in the 3rd party to protect your data from both malicious people and disastrous events. This truly is a bit of a double edged sword, but I sleep well at night knowing that my data is being backed up and secured by a company made up of engineers that focus on the business of doing backups right. Backups are “brainless”: What I like most about services like these is that they work “automagically” in the background, watching for files to be updated and automatically backing up those changes. There’s no need to remember to plug in that external drive and copy your data over. Since starting to recommend these services to my friends and family I find myself wearing my “data recovery” hat far less often. The only way backups are effective for your standard computer user is if they’re completely automatic. Backups need to be brainless, or they just won’t work.

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  • How can we improve overall Programmer Education & Training?

    - by crosenblum
    Last week, I was just viewing this amazing interview by Kevin Rose of Phillip Rosedale, of Second Life. And they had an amazing discussion about how to find, hire and identify good programmer's, and how hard it is to find good ones. Which has lead me to really think about the way we programmer's learn, are taught. For a majority of us, myself included, we are self-taught. Which is great about being a programmer, anyone can learn and develop skills. But this also means, that there is no real standards of what a good programmer is/are, and what kind of environment's encourage the growth of programming skills. This isn't so much a question, but just a desire in me, to see how we can change the culture of programming, and the manager's of programming, so that education and self-improvement is encouraged. There are a lot of avenue's for continued education, youtube videos, books, conferences, but because of the experiental nature of what we do, it isn't always clear what's important to learn and to master. Let's look at the The Joel 12 Steps. The Joel Test Do you use source control? Can you make a build in one step? Do you make daily builds? Do you have a bug database? Do you fix bugs before writing new code? Do you have an up-to-date schedule? Do you have a spec? Do programmers have quiet working conditions? Do you use the best tools money can buy? Do you have testers? Do new candidates write code during their interview? Do you do hallway usability testing? I think all of these have important value, but because of something I call the Experiential Gap, if a programmer or manager has never experienced any of the negative consequences for not having done items on the list, they will never see the need to do any of them. The Experiental Gap, is my basic theory, that each of us has different jobs and different experiences. So for some of us, that have always worked with dozens of programmer's, source control is a must have. But for people who have always been the only programmer, they can not imagine the need for source control. And it's because of this major flaw in how we learn, that we evaluate people by what best practices they do or not do, and the reason for either can start a flame war. We always evaluate people in our field by what they do, and think "Oh if this guy/gal isn't doing xyz best practice, he/she can't be a good programmer, so let's not waste time or energy talking to them." This is exactly why we have so many programming flame wars, that it becomes, because of the Experiental Gap, we can't imagine people not having made the decisions that we have had to made. So this has lead me to think, that we totally need to rethink how we train, educate and manage programmer's. For example, what percentage of you have had encouragement by your manager's to go to conferences, and even have them pay for it? For me, and a lot of people, this is extremely rare, a lot of us would love to go to conferences, to learn more, but the money ain't there to do that. So the point of this question is really to spark a lot of how can we train, learn and manage better? How can we create a new culture of learning that doesn't insult people for not having the same job experiences. Yes we all have jobs and work to do, but our ability to do our jobs well, depends on our desire, interest and support in improving our mastery of our skills. Right now, I see our culture being rather disorganized, we support the elite, but those tons of us that want to get better, just don't have enough support to learn and improve ourselves. I mean, do we as an industry, want to be perceived as just replaceable cogs? Thank you...

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  • Sorry about the wait.

    - by Ratman21
    In the last two days have been trying remove “Iolo System Mechanic Professional” (With anti-virus and FireWall) from 3 of the 5 pc’s we have (3 lap tops and two Desk tops) as it was going to expire on the 13th.   So I could replace them with a free anti-virus (AVG) and just use the windows fire wall. I have been using the same set up on one of my desk tops (XP Pro) for 8 months and one of the Lap tops (Vista) for 5 months.   The problem was that System Mechanic did not want to go. Even after using the uninstall option on the desk top (my main PC, well its that because has the larger of all the PC’s hard drives but, is the oldest and runs XP home) and using Ccleaner to try and remove it.  It was still showing up as there and after I went a head and tried installing AVG and ran it. I found that the TCP/IP module was missing.  So no internet, I had to restore the PC back to the 1st to get the module back and then install AVG (after making sure window firewall was back on. I didn’t check that on the first try). Got the PC back to normal, very late last night. Only one of the two lap tops was easy but, even at that there are still some parts of System Mechanic on it but, AVG and firewall are working.   I may try an hunt down parts of System Mechanic on it and delete them on this lap top. Which was what finally had to do on the one of the Lap tops (also XP Home) as it would not uninstall after I restored the PC back to the 4th. So delete, delete, delete and Ccleaner (one dl file would not delete though). And I just finish installing AVG and now running a scan on the lap top. So all of this took two days (well three counting today). I started late Friday night and just finishing up now.   I only started this switch over after I had finished my Job search for day on Friday.   As for blogging on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, I was busy and by the end of the day was too tired to blog, that and was hung up still on that 2nd dare of The Love Dare. So I cleaned the house, while she was out of the house. I mean, I cleaned, not just vacuumed house I cleaned the kitchen counter tops and the sinks. Did the dishes and some of the laundry over two of the those days.   As to the third day of Love Dare which is “Love is not selfish” and the dare “Whatever you put your time, energy, and money into will become more important to you. It’s hard to care for something you are not investing in. Along with restraining from negative comments, buy your spouse something that says, I was thinking of you today.”   Being on a very limited income, a lot of normal guy buying for girls is out (for one thing, the comment why did you waste our money on flowers, etc, etc, would come up. Not from me though). So that one is on hold till money issues are not a problem (no that does not mean never). The 4th day “Love is thoughtful” and the dare “Contact your spouse sometime during the business of the day. Have no agenda other than asking how he or she is doing and if there is anything you could do for them”.   I did this dare while I was still working with census last week and trying to do the dares. Well I start my CCNA classes Monday the 15th and I move on to the next Love Dare day “Love is not rude”.

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  • Thoughts on Thoughts on TDD

    Brian Harry wrote a post entitled Thoughts on TDD that I thought I was going to let lie, but I find that I need to write a response. I find myself in agreement with Brian on many points in the post, but I disagree with his conclusion. Not surprisingly, I agree with the things that he likes about TDD. Focusing on the usage rather than the implementation is really important, and this is important whether you use TDD or not. And YAGNI was a big theme in my Seven Deadly Sins of Programming series. Now, on to what he doesnt like. He says that he finds it inefficient to have tests that he has to change every time he refactors. Here is where we part company. If you are having to do a lot of test rewriting (say, more than a couple of minutes work to get back to green) *often* when you are refactoring your code, I submit that either you are testing things that you dont need to test (internal details rather than external implementation), your code perhaps isnt as decoupled as it could be, or maybe you need a visit to refactorers anonymous. I also like to refactor like crazy, but as we all know, the huge downside of refactoring is that we often break things. Important things. Subtle things. Which makes refactoring risky. *Unless* we have a set of tests that have great coverage. And TDD (or Example-based Design, which I prefer as a term) gives those to us. Now, I dont know what sort of coverage Brian gets with the unit tests that he writes, but I do know that for the majority of the developers Ive worked with and I count myself in that bucket the coverage of unit tests written afterwards is considerably inferior to the coverage of unit tests that come from TDD. For me, it all comes down to the answer to the following question: How do you ensure that your code works now and will continue to work in the future? Im willing to put up with a little efficiency on the front side to get that benefit later. Its not the writing of the code thats the expensive part, its everything else that comes after. I dont think that stepping through test cases in the debugger gets you what you want. You can verify what the current behavior is, sure, and do it fairly cheaply, but you dont help the guy in the future who doesnt know what conditions were important if he has to change your code. His second part that he doesnt like backing into an architecture (go read to see what he means). Ive certainly had to work with code that was like this before, and its a nightmare the code that nobody wants to touch. But thats not at all the kind of code that you get with TDD, because if youre doing it right youre doing the write a failing tests, make it pass, refactor approach. Now, you may miss some useful refactorings and generalizations for this, but if you do, you can refactor later because you have the tests that make it safe to do so, and your code tends to be easy to refactor because the same things that make code easy to write unit tests for make it easy to refactor. I also think Brian is missing an important point. We arent all as smart as he is. Im reminded a bit of the lesson of Intentional Programming, Charles Simonyis paradigm for making programming easier. I played around with Intentional Programming when it was young, and came to the conclusion that it was a pretty good thing if you were as smart as Simonyi is, but it was pretty much a disaster if you were an average developer. In this case, TDD gives you a way to work your way into a good, flexible, and functional architecture when you dont have somebody of Brians talents to help you out. And thats a good thing.Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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  • How do you educate your teammates without seeming condescending or superior?

    - by Dan Tao
    I work with three other guys; I'll call them Adam, Brian, and Chris. Adam and Brian are bright guys. Give them a problem; they will figure out a way to solve it. When it comes to OOP, though, they know very little about it and aren't particularly interested in learning. Pure procedural code is their MO. Chris, on the other hand, is an OOP guy all the way -- and a cocky, condescending one at that. He is constantly criticizing the work Adam and Brian do and talking to me as if I must share his disdain for the two of them. When I say that Adam and Brian aren't interested in learning about OOP, I suspect Chris is the primary reason. This hasn't bothered me too much for the most part, but there have been times when, looking at some code Adam or Brian wrote, it has pained me to think about how a problem could have been solved so simply using inheritance or some other OOP concept instead of the unmaintainable mess of 1,000 lines of code that ended up being written instead. And now that the company is starting a rather ambitious new project, with Adam assigned to the task of getting the core functionality in place, I fear the result. Really, I just want to help these guys out. But I know that if I come across as just another holier-than-thou developer like Chris, it's going to be massively counterproductive. I've considered: Team code reviews -- everybody reviews everybody's code. This way no one person is really in a position to look down on anyone else; besides, I know I could learn plenty from the other members on the team as well. But this would be time-consuming, and with such a small team, I have trouble picturing it gaining much traction as a team practice. Periodic e-mails to the team -- this would entail me sending out an e-mail every now and then discussing some concept that, based on my observation, at least one team member would benefit from learning about. The downside to this approach is I do think it could easily make me come across as a self-appointed expert. Keeping a blog -- I already do this, actually; but so far my blog has been more about esoteric little programming tidbits than straightforward practical advice. And anyway, I suspect it would get old pretty fast if I were constantly telling my coworkers, "Hey guys, remember to check out my new blog post!" This question doesn't need to be specifically about OOP or any particular programming paradigm or technology. I just want to know: how have you found success in teaching new concepts to your coworkers without seeming like a condescending know-it-all? It's pretty clear to me there isn't going to be a sure-fire answer, but any helpful advice (including methods that have worked as well as those that have proved ineffective or even backfired) would be greatly appreciated. UPDATE: I am not the Team Lead on this team. Chris is. UPDATE 2: Made community wiki to accord with the general sentiment of the community (fancy that).

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  • Announcing Oracle Knowledge 8.5: Even Superheroes Need Upgrades

    - by Richard Lefebvre
    It’s no secret that we like Iron Man here at Oracle. We've certainly got stuff in common: one of the world’s largest technology companies and one of the world’s strongest technology-driven superheroes. If you've seen the recent Iron Man movies, you might have even noticed some of our servers sitting in Tony Stark’s lab. Heck, our CEO made a cameo appearance in one of the movies. Yeah, we’re fans. Especially as Iron Man is a regular guy with some amazing technology – like us. But Like all great things even Superheroes need upgrades, whether it’s their suit, their car or their spacestation. Oracle certainly has its share of advanced technology.  For example, Oracle acquired InQuira in 2011 after years of watching the company advance the science of Knowledge Management.  And it was some extremely super technology.  At that time, Forrester’s Kate Leggett wrote about it in ‘Standalone Knowledge Management Is Dead With Oracle's Announcement To Acquire InQuira’ saying ‘Knowledge, accessible via web self-service or agent UIs, is a critical customer service component for industries fielding repetitive questions about policies, procedures, products, and solutions.’  One short sentence that amounts to a very tall order.  Since the acquisition our KM scientists have been hard at work in their labs. Today Oracle announced its first major knowledge management release since its acquisition of InQuira: Oracle Knowledge 8.5. We’ve put a massively-upgraded supersuit on our KM solution because we still have bad guys to fight. And we are very proud to say that we went way beyond our original plans. So what, exactly, did we do in Oracle Knowledge 8.5? We did what any high-tech super-scientist would do. We made Oracle Knowledge smarter, stronger and faster. First, we gave Oracle Knowledge a stronger heart: Certified on Oracle technologies, including Oracle WebLogic Server, Oracle Business Intelligence, Oracle Exadata Database Machine and Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud. Huge scaling and performance improvements. Then we gave it a better reach: Improved iConnect functionality that delivers contextualized knowledge directly into CRM applications. Better content acquisition support across disparate sources. Enhanced Language Support including Natural Language search support for 16 Languages. Enhanced Keyword Search for 23 authoring languages, as well as enhanced out-of-the-box industry ontologies covering 14 languages. And finally we made Oracle Knowledge ridiculously smarter: Improved Natural Language Search and a new Contextual Answer Delivery that understands the true intent of each inquiry to deliver the best possible answers. AnswerFlow for Guided Navigation & Answer Delivery, a new application for guided troubleshooting and answer delivery. Knowledge Analytics standardized on Oracle’s Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition. Knowledge Analytics Dashboards optimized search and content creation through targeted, actionable insights. A new three-level language model "Global - Language - Locale" that provides an improved search experience for organizations with a global footprint. We believe that Oracle Knowledge 8.5 is the most sophisticated KM solution in existence today and we’ve worked very hard to help it fulfill the promise of KM: empowering customers and employees with deep insights wherever they need them. We hope you agree it’s a suit worth wearing. We are continuing to invest in Knowledge Management as it continues to be especially relevant today with the enterprise push for peer collaboration, crowd-sourced wisdom, agile innovation, social interaction channels, applied real-time analytics, and personalization. In fact, we believe that Knowledge Management is a critical part of the Customer Experience portfolio for success. From empowering employee’s, to empowering customers, to gaining the insights from interactions across all channels, businesses today cannot efficiently scale their efforts, strengthen their customer relationships or achieve their growth goals without a solid Knowledge Management foundation to build from. And like every good superhero saga, we’re not even close to being finished. Next we are taking Oracle Knowledge into the Cloud. Yes, we’re thinking what you’re thinking: ROCKET BOOTS! Stay tuned for the next adventure… By Nav Chakravarti, Vice-President, Product Management, CRM Knowledge and previously the CTO of InQuira, a knowledge management company acquired by Oracle in 2011

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  • Exclusive Webcast Series Explains How Project Success Drives Business Success

    - by Melissa Centurio Lopes
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} In the wake of the global financial crisis, organizations throughout the world are redoubling their efforts to enhance financial discipline, achieve operational excellence, and mitigate risk. How can they address all these areas with one comprehensive strategy? With enterprise project portfolio management solutions that provide greater transparency and visibility across all projects and portfolios, says Guy Barlow, Oracle director of industry strategy. In the following interview and in an exclusive, three-part webcast series, Barlow examines today’s new management realities and explains how organizations can succeed in this environment. Q: Financial discipline has always been important, what’s different today? A: A number of organizations are showing that by fiscally aligning projects with the business goals of their organizations, they can shave off hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars in inefficiency and waste. For example, one Oracle customer, the Columbus Regional Airport Authority, reduced its unbudgeted costs from US$24.4 million to US$3.5 million, for an 88 percent improvement. Q: How do organizations achieve results like this? A: First, they need to have the vision to see project management as part of a broad and critical element in their overall enterprise strategy. That means using a single solution, such as Oracle‘s Primavera, to manage multiple projects across multiple functions within a company. So someone in corporate mergers and acquisitions as well as a capital projects team can standardize on the same technology. By doing so they all gain greater efficiency in planning and execution—because the technology can be configured for their specific roles and needs—and the IT organization really benefits from lower maintenance. Second, enterprises must give executive leaders—CFOs, COOs, and CEOs—visibility across the entire business to easily see what projects are on track and which ones are falling behind. In fact, once executives see the power of enterprise project portfolio management, uptake is very quick across the organization. Read the full interview here.

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  • What Counts For a DBA – Decisions

    - by Louis Davidson
    It’s Friday afternoon, and the lead DBA, a very talented guy, is getting ready to head out for two well-earned weeks of vacation, with his family, when this error message pops up in his inbox: Msg 211, Level 23, State 51, Line 1. Possible schema corruption. Run DBCC CHECKCATALOG. His heart sinks. It’s ten…no eight…minutes till it’s time to walk out the door. He glances around at his coworkers, competent to handle many problems, but probably not up to the challenge of fixing possible database corruption. What does he do? After a few agonizing moments of indecision, he clicks shut his laptop. He’ll just wait and see. It was unlikely to come to anything; after all, it did say “possible” schema corruption, not definite. In that moment, his fate was sealed. The start of the solution to the problem (run DBCC CHECKCATALOG) had been right there in the error message. Had he done this, or at least took two of those eight minutes to delegate the task to a coworker, then he wouldn’t have ended up spending two-thirds of an idyllic vacation (for the rest of the family, at least) dealing with a problem that got consistently worse as the weekend progressed until the entire system was down. When I told this story to a friend of mine, an opera fan, he smiled and said it described the basic plotline of almost every opera or ‘Greek Tragedy’ ever written. The particular joy in opera, he told me, isn’t the warbly voiced leading ladies, or the plump middle-aged romantic leads, or even the music. No, what packs the opera houses in Italy is the drama of characters who, by the very nature of their life-experiences and emotional baggage, make all sorts of bad choices when faced with ordinary decisions, and so move inexorably to their fate. The audience is gripped by the spectacle of exotic characters doomed by their inability to see the obvious. I confess, my personal experience with opera is limited to Bugs Bunny in “What’s Opera, Doc?” (Elmer Fudd is a great example of a bad decision maker, if ever one existed), but I was struck by my friend’s analogy. If all the DBA cubicles were a stage, I think we would hear many similarly tragic tales, played out to music: “Error handling? We write our code to never experience errors, so nah…“ “Backups failed today, but it’s okay, we’ll back up tomorrow (we’ll back up tomorrow)“ And similarly, they would leave their audience gasping, not necessarily at the beauty of the music, or poetry of the lyrics, but at the inevitable, grisly fate of the protagonists. If you choose not to use proper error handling, or if you choose to skip a backup because, hey, you haven’t had a server crash in 10 years, then inevitably, in that moment you expected to be enjoying a vacation, or a football game, with your family and friends, you will instead be sitting in front of a computer screen, paying for your poor choices. Tragedies are very much part of IT. Most of a DBA’s day to day work has limited potential to wreak havoc; paperwork, timesheets, random anonymous threats to developers, routine maintenance and whatnot. However, just occasionally, you, as a DBA, will face one of those decisions that really matter, and which has the possibility to greatly affect your future and the future of your user’s data. Make those decisions count, and you’ll avoid the tragic fate of many an operatic hero or villain.

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  • Announcing Oracle Knowledge 8.5: Even Superheroes Need Upgrades

    - by Chris Warner
    It’s no secret that we like Iron Man here at Oracle. We've certainly got stuff in common: one of the world’s largest technology companies and one of the world’s strongest technology-driven superheroes. If you've seen the recent Iron Man movies, you might have even noticed some of our servers sitting in Tony Stark’s lab. Heck, our CEO made a cameo appearance in one of the movies. Yeah, we’re fans. Especially as Iron Man is a regular guy with some amazing technology – like us. But Like all great things even Superheroes need upgrades, whether it’s their suit, their car or their spacestation. Oracle certainly has its share of advanced technology.  For example, Oracle acquired InQuira in 2011 after years of watching the company advance the science of Knowledge Management.  And it was some extremely super technology.  At that time, Forrester’s Kate Leggett wrote about it in ‘Standalone Knowledge Management Is Dead With Oracle's Announcement To Acquire InQuira’ saying ‘Knowledge, accessible via web self-service or agent UIs, is a critical customer service component for industries fielding repetitive questions about policies, procedures, products, and solutions.’  One short sentence that amounts to a very tall order.  Since the acquisition our KM scientists have been hard at work in their labs. Today Oracle announced its first major knowledge management release since its acquisition of InQuira: Oracle Knowledge 8.5. We’ve put a massively-upgraded supersuit on our KM solution because we still have bad guys to fight. And we are very proud to say that we went way beyond our original plans. So what, exactly, did we do in Oracle Knowledge 8.5? We did what any high-tech super-scientist would do. We made Oracle Knowledge smarter, stronger and faster. First, we gave Oracle Knowledge a stronger heart: Certified on Oracle technologies, including Oracle WebLogic Server, Oracle Business Intelligence, Oracle Exadata Database Machine and Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud. Huge scaling and performance improvements. Then we gave it a better reach: Improved iConnect functionality that delivers contextualized knowledge directly into CRM applications. Better content acquisition support across disparate sources. Enhanced Language Support including Natural Language search support for 16 Languages. Enhanced Keyword Search for 23 authoring languages, as well as enhanced out-of-the-box industry ontologies covering 14 languages. And finally we made Oracle Knowledge ridiculously smarter: Improved Natural Language Search and a new Contextual Answer Delivery that understands the true intent of each inquiry to deliver the best possible answers. AnswerFlow for Guided Navigation & Answer Delivery, a new application for guided troubleshooting and answer delivery. Knowledge Analytics standardized on Oracle’s Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition. Knowledge Analytics Dashboards optimized search and content creation through targeted, actionable insights. A new three-level language model "Global - Language - Locale" that provides an improved search experience for organizations with a global footprint. We believe that Oracle Knowledge 8.5 is the most sophisticated KM solution in existence today and we’ve worked very hard to help it fulfill the promise of KM: empowering customers and employees with deep insights wherever they need them. We hope you agree it’s a suit worth wearing. We are continuing to invest in Knowledge Management as it continues to be especially relevant today with the enterprise push for peer collaboration, crowd-sourced wisdom, agile innovation, social interaction channels, applied real-time analytics, and personalization. In fact, we believe that Knowledge Management is a critical part of the Customer Experience portfolio for success. From empowering employee’s, to empowering customers, to gaining the insights from interactions across all channels, businesses today cannot efficiently scale their efforts, strengthen their customer relationships or achieve their growth goals without a solid Knowledge Management foundation to build from. And like every good superhero saga, we’re not even close to being finished. Next we are taking Oracle Knowledge into the Cloud. Yes, we’re thinking what you’re thinking: ROCKET BOOTS! Stay tuned for the next adventure… By Nav Chakravarti, Vice-President, Product Management, CRM Knowledge and previously the CTO of InQuira, a knowledge management company acquired by Oracle in 2011. 

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  • SQLAuthority News – Who I Am And How I Got Here – True Story as Blog Post

    - by pinaldave
    Here are few of the sample questions I get every day? “Give me shortcut to become superstar?” “How do I become like you?” “Which book I should read so I know everything?” “Can you share your secret to be successful? I want to know it but do not share with others.” There is generic answer I always give is to work hard and read good educational material or watch good online videos. One of the emails really caught my attention. It was from a friend and SQL Server Expert John Sansom (Blog | Twitter). He wrote if I would like to share my story with the world about “Who I am and How I got Here”. I was very much intrigued with his suggestion. John is one guy I respect a lot. Every single topic he writes, I read it with dedication. I eagerly wait for his Weekly Summary of Best SQL Links. If you have not read them, you are missing something out. Writing a guest post for him was like walking in memory lane. I remembered the time when I was beginning my career and I was bit overconfident and bit naive. I had my share of mistakes when I started my career. As time passed by I realize the truth. Well, we all do mistakes. Though, I am proud that as soon as I know my mistakes I corrected them. I never acted on impulse or when I am angry. I think that alone has helped me analysis the situation better and become better human being. During the course, I have lost my ego and it is replaced by passion. I am much more happy and successful in my work. Quite often people ask me if I am always online and wether I have family or not. Honestly, I am able to work hard because of my family. They support me and they encourage me to be enjoy in what I do. They support everything I do and personally, I do not miss a single occasion to join them in daily chores of fun. If there was a shortcut to success – I want know. I learnt SQL Server hard way and I am still learning. There are so many things, I have to learn. There is not enough time to learn everything which we want to learn. I am constantly working on it every day. I welcome you to join my journey as well. Please join me with my journey to learn SQL Server – more the merrier. I have written a story of my life as a guest post.  Read Here: A Journey to SQL Authority Special thanks to John Sansom (Blog | Twitter) for giving me space to talk my story. Indeed I am honored. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: About Me, Best Practices, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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  • So You Want to Be a Social Media Director

    - by Mike Stiles
    Do you want to be a Social Media Director? Some say the title is already losing its relevance; that social should be a basic skill that is required and used no matter what your position is inside the enterprise. I suppose that’s visionary, and a fun thing for thought leaders to say. But in the vast majority of business organizations, we’re so far away from that reality that the thought of not having someone driving social’s implementation and guiding its proper usage conjures up images of anarchy. That said, social media has become so broad, so catch-all, and so extended across business functions, that today’s Social Media Director, depending on the size of their staff, must make jacks-of-all-trades look like one-trick-ponies. Just as the purview of the CMO has grown all-encompassing, the disciplines required of their heads of social are stacking up. Master of Content Every social pipeline you build must stay filled, with quantity and quality. Content takes time, and the job never stops. Never. And no, it’s not true that anybody can write. Master of Customer Experience You must have a passion for hearing from customers and making them really happy. Master of PR You must know how to communicate and leverage the trust you’ve built when crises strike. Couldn’t hurt to be a Master of Politics. Master of Social Technology So many social management tools on the market. You have to know what social tech ecosystem makes sense and avoid piecemeal point solutions. Master of Business Development Social for selling and prospecting is hot, and you have to know how to use social to do it. Master of Analytics Nothing else matters if you can’t prove social is helping the brand. That’s right, creative content guy has to also be a math and stats geek. Good luck with that. Master of Paid Media You’ve got to learn the language, learn the tactics, learn the vendors and learn how to measure results. Master of Education Guess who gets to teach everyone who has no clue how to use social for business. Master of Personal Likability You’ll be leading the voice, tone, image and personality of the brand. If you don’t instinctively know how to be liked by actual people, the brand will be starting from a deficit. How deep must you go in this parade of masteries? Again, that depends on your employer’s maturity level in social. Serious players recognize these as distinct disciplines requiring true experts for maximum effect. Less serious players will need you to execute personally in many of these areas. Do the best you can, and try to grow quickly at each. If you’re the sole person executing all social…well…you’re in the game of managing expectations and trying to socially educate your employer. The good news is, you should be making a certifiable killing. If you’re alone and your salary is modest, time to understand how many brands out there crave what you’ve mastered. Not to push back against thought leaders, but the need for brand social leadership has not gone away…not even a little bit. @mikestiles @oraclesocialPhoto: Stefan Wagner, freeimages.com

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  • How do developer get rid of silly requirements?

    - by sugar
    Hmm ! First of all let me give you the note of the requirement. So that you can have idea what kind of problem I am facing. Words From Project Manager : Hey ! Sugar, I am assigning you a task for developing a framework. This framework is supposed to be developed for all iOS application. Please go through brief of the required framework. It should be able to detect the thickness of my Thumb. It should be able to detect whether User is using thumb or Fingers If user is using thumbs/Fingers, Framework should calculate the size of thumb/fingers. Once size is been calculated, all elements of user interface should arranged & resized automatically. ( not specified how & where as its framework - it should be smart enough to arrange automatically ) If thumb size is larger elements should get arranged near by center area of iPad/iPhone If thumb size is smaller elements should get arranged near by corners of iPad/iPhone If thumb size is larger, fonts of all elements should get smaller. ( assuming = aged person ) If thumb size is smaller, fonts of all elements should get larger. ( assuming smaller thumb = low aged person ) Summary : This framework is required for creating user-friendly user-interfaces programmatically. We need to develop a very developer-friendly framework. Framework should be developed in such a way that we can use in as many projects as needed. Well, I am a developer. What I want to have as an answer is as follows. How to describe them - the way of they thinking is bit ridiculous ? How do I explain them - we can better concentrate on developing actual projects ? How do I convince them - that this kind of things even if possible, is not recommended to develop such things ? How do I say politely, gently & respectfully NO to this ? What should I say, So that they can not point at my experience ? ( e.g. you are 3 years experienced guy & you must have abilities to develop such things ) Feeling horror. Please help. Thanks in advance, Sugar. Note : Please help me to tag this question properly. I am stuck & this is real situation. Frustrated & tensed. You guys might have faced such requirements from TopLevel. requesting you to help with your experience. Well ! I came to know that - those TOPLEVEL guys don't have any idea of iPad, iPhone, Apple etc. I would do one thing. Sir, before we go further for framework development. It is strongly recommended to read Apple Human Interface Guidlines.

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  • Creating a new instance, C#

    - by Dave Voyles
    This sounds like a very n00b question, but bear with me here: I'm trying to access the position of my bat (paddle) in my pong game and use it in my ball class. I'm doing this because I want a particle effect to go off at the point of contact where the ball hits the bat. Each time the ball hits the bat, I receive an error stating that I haven't created an instance of the bat. I understand that I have to (or can use a static class), but I'm not sure of how to do so in this example. I've included both my Bat and Ball classes. namespace Pong { #region Using Statements using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Audio; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Input; #endregion public class Ball { #region Fields private readonly Random rand; private readonly Texture2D texture; private readonly SoundEffect warp; private double direction; private bool isVisible; private float moveSpeed; private Vector2 position; private Vector2 resetPos; private Rectangle size; private float speed; private bool isResetting; private bool collided; private Vector2 oldPos; private ParticleEngine particleEngine; private ContentManager contentManager; private SpriteBatch spriteBatch; private bool hasHitBat; private AIBat aiBat; private Bat bat; #endregion #region Constructors and Destructors /// <summary> /// Constructor for the ball /// </summary> public Ball(ContentManager contentManager, Vector2 ScreenSize) { moveSpeed = 15f; speed = 0; texture = contentManager.Load<Texture2D>(@"gfx/balls/redBall"); direction = 0; size = new Rectangle(0, 0, texture.Width, texture.Height); resetPos = new Vector2(ScreenSize.X / 2, ScreenSize.Y / 2); position = resetPos; rand = new Random(); isVisible = true; hasHitBat = false; // Everything to do with particles List<Texture2D> textures = new List<Texture2D>(); textures.Add(contentManager.Load<Texture2D>(@"gfx/particle/circle")); textures.Add(contentManager.Load<Texture2D>(@"gfx/particle/star")); textures.Add(contentManager.Load<Texture2D>(@"gfx/particle/diamond")); particleEngine = new ParticleEngine(textures, new Vector2()); } #endregion #region Public Methods and Operators /// <summary> /// Checks for the collision between the bat and the ball. Sends ball in the appropriate /// direction /// </summary> public void BatHit(int block) { if (direction > Math.PI * 1.5f || direction < Math.PI * 0.5f) { hasHitBat = true; particleEngine.EmitterLocation = new Vector2(aiBat.Position.X, aiBat.Position.Y); switch (block) { case 1: direction = MathHelper.ToRadians(200); break; case 2: direction = MathHelper.ToRadians(195); break; case 3: direction = MathHelper.ToRadians(180); break; case 4: direction = MathHelper.ToRadians(180); break; case 5: direction = MathHelper.ToRadians(165); break; } } else { hasHitBat = true; particleEngine.EmitterLocation = new Vector2(bat.Position.X, bat.Position.Y); switch (block) { case 1: direction = MathHelper.ToRadians(310); break; case 2: direction = MathHelper.ToRadians(345); break; case 3: direction = MathHelper.ToRadians(0); break; case 4: direction = MathHelper.ToRadians(15); break; case 5: direction = MathHelper.ToRadians(50); break; } } if (rand.Next(2) == 0) { direction += MathHelper.ToRadians(rand.Next(3)); } else { direction -= MathHelper.ToRadians(rand.Next(3)); } AudioManager.Instance.PlaySoundEffect("hit"); } /// <summary> /// JEP - added method to slow down ball after powerup deactivates /// </summary> public void DecreaseSpeed() { moveSpeed -= 0.6f; } /// <summary> /// Draws the ball on the screen /// </summary> public void Draw(SpriteBatch spriteBatch) { if (isVisible) { spriteBatch.Begin(); spriteBatch.Draw(texture, size, Color.White); spriteBatch.End(); // Draws sprites for particles when contact is made particleEngine.Draw(spriteBatch); } } /// <summary> /// Checks for the current direction of the ball /// </summary> public double GetDirection() { return direction; } /// <summary> /// Checks for the current position of the ball /// </summary> public Vector2 GetPosition() { return position; } /// <summary> /// Checks for the current size of the ball (for the powerups) /// </summary> public Rectangle GetSize() { return size; } /// <summary> /// Grows the size of the ball when the GrowBall powerup is used. /// </summary> public void GrowBall() { size = new Rectangle(0, 0, texture.Width * 2, texture.Height * 2); } /// <summary> /// Was used to increased the speed of the ball after each point is scored. /// No longer used, but am considering implementing again. /// </summary> public void IncreaseSpeed() { moveSpeed += 0.6f; } /// <summary> /// Check for the ball to return normal size after the Powerup has expired /// </summary> public void NormalBallSize() { size = new Rectangle(0, 0, texture.Width, texture.Height); } /// <summary> /// Check for the ball to return normal speed after the Powerup has expired /// </summary> public void NormalSpeed() { moveSpeed += 15f; } /// <summary> /// Checks to see if ball went out of bounds, and triggers warp sfx /// </summary> public void OutOfBounds() { // Checks if the player is still alive or not if (isResetting) { AudioManager.Instance.PlaySoundEffect("warp"); { // Used to stop the the issue where the ball hit sfx kept going off when detecting collison isResetting = false; AudioManager.Instance.Dispose(); } } } /// <summary> /// Speed for the ball when Speedball powerup is activated /// </summary> public void PowerupSpeed() { moveSpeed += 20.0f; } /// <summary> /// Check for where to reset the ball after each point is scored /// </summary> public void Reset(bool left) { if (left) { direction = 0; } else { direction = Math.PI; } // Used to stop the the issue where the ball hit sfx kept going off when detecting collison isResetting = true; position = resetPos; // Resets the ball to the center of the screen isVisible = true; speed = 15f; // Returns the ball back to the default speed, in case the speedBall was active if (rand.Next(2) == 0) { direction += MathHelper.ToRadians(rand.Next(30)); } else { direction -= MathHelper.ToRadians(rand.Next(30)); } } /// <summary> /// Shrinks the ball when the ShrinkBall powerup is activated /// </summary> public void ShrinkBall() { size = new Rectangle(0, 0, texture.Width / 2, texture.Height / 2); } /// <summary> /// Stops the ball each time it is reset. Ex: Between points / rounds /// </summary> public void Stop() { isVisible = true; speed = 0; } /// <summary> /// Updates position of the ball /// </summary> public void UpdatePosition() { size.X = (int)position.X; size.Y = (int)position.Y; oldPos.X = position.X; oldPos.Y = position.Y; position.X += speed * (float)Math.Cos(direction); position.Y += speed * (float)Math.Sin(direction); bool collided = CheckWallHit(); particleEngine.Update(); // Stops the issue where ball was oscillating on the ceiling or floor if (collided) { position.X = oldPos.X + speed * (float)Math.Cos(direction); position.Y = oldPos.Y + speed * (float)Math.Sin(direction); } } #endregion #region Methods /// <summary> /// Checks for collision with the ceiling or floor. 2*Math.pi = 360 degrees /// </summary> private bool CheckWallHit() { while (direction > 2 * Math.PI) { direction -= 2 * Math.PI; return true; } while (direction < 0) { direction += 2 * Math.PI; return true; } if (position.Y <= 0 || (position.Y > resetPos.Y * 2 - size.Height)) { direction = 2 * Math.PI - direction; return true; } return true; } #endregion } } namespace Pong { using Microsoft.Xna.Framework; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics; using System; public class Bat { public Vector2 Position; public float moveSpeed; public Rectangle size; private int points; private int yHeight; private Texture2D leftBat; public float turbo; public float recharge; public float interval; public bool isTurbo; /// <summary> /// Constructor for the bat /// </summary> public Bat(ContentManager contentManager, Vector2 screenSize, bool side) { moveSpeed = 7f; turbo = 15f; recharge = 100f; points = 0; interval = 5f; leftBat = contentManager.Load<Texture2D>(@"gfx/bats/batGrey"); size = new Rectangle(0, 0, leftBat.Width, leftBat.Height); // True means left bat, false means right bat. if (side) Position = new Vector2(30, screenSize.Y / 2 - size.Height / 2); else Position = new Vector2(screenSize.X - 30, screenSize.Y / 2 - size.Height / 2); yHeight = (int)screenSize.Y; } public void IncreaseSpeed() { moveSpeed += .5f; } /// <summary> /// The speed of the bat when Turbo is activated /// </summary> public void Turbo() { moveSpeed += 8.0f; } /// <summary> /// Returns the speed of the bat back to normal after Turbo is deactivated /// </summary> public void DisableTurbo() { moveSpeed = 7.0f; isTurbo = false; } /// <summary> /// Returns the bat to the nrmal size after the Grow/Shrink powerup has expired /// </summary> public void NormalSize() { size = new Rectangle(0, 0, leftBat.Width, leftBat.Height); } /// <summary> /// Checks for the size of the bat /// </summary> public Rectangle GetSize() { return size; } /// <summary> /// Adds point to the player or the AI after scoring. Currently Disabled. /// </summary> public void IncrementPoints() { points++; } /// <summary> /// Checks for the number of points at the moment /// </summary> public int GetPoints() { return points; } /// <summary> /// Sets thedefault starting position for the bats /// </summary> /// <param name="position"></param> public void SetPosition(Vector2 position) { if (position.Y < 0) { position.Y = 0; } if (position.Y > yHeight - size.Height) { position.Y = yHeight - size.Height; } this.Position = position; } /// <summary> /// Checks for the current position of the bat /// </summary> public Vector2 GetPosition() { return Position; } /// <summary> /// Controls the bat moving up the screen /// </summary> public void MoveUp() { SetPosition(Position + new Vector2(0, -moveSpeed)); } /// <summary> /// Controls the bat moving down the screen /// </summary> public void MoveDown() { SetPosition(Position + new Vector2(0, moveSpeed)); } /// <summary> /// Updates the position of the AI bat, in order to track the ball /// </summary> /// <param name="ball"></param> public virtual void UpdatePosition(Ball ball) { size.X = (int)Position.X; size.Y = (int)Position.Y; } /// <summary> /// Resets the bat to the center location after a new game starts /// </summary> public void ResetPosition() { SetPosition(new Vector2(GetPosition().X, yHeight / 2 - size.Height)); } /// <summary> /// Used for the Growbat powerup /// </summary> public void GrowBat() { // Doubles the size of the bat collision size = new Rectangle(0, 0, leftBat.Width * 2, leftBat.Height * 2); } /// <summary> /// Used for the Shrinkbat powerup /// </summary> public void ShrinkBat() { // 1/2 the size of the bat collision size = new Rectangle(0, 0, leftBat.Width / 2, leftBat.Height / 2); } /// <summary> /// Draws the bats /// </summary> public virtual void Draw(SpriteBatch batch) { batch.Draw(leftBat, size, Color.White); } } }

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  • Strange Happenings

    - by MOSSLover
    There are weeks we go about our life thinking nothing is going to change nothing will happen.  Then there are other weeks a billion things happen at once.  Friday started off very weird for me.  I flew into Atlanta and I met some cool people for another SharePoint event.  I had some good conversations.  Saturday then hit me and my virtual machine bombed in my presentation after the auto updater ran.  I was writing code on the board and describing everything in notepad.  I would say as presentations go it was the best and the worst presentation all wrapped into one.  The next day I was in Baltimore and I hung out with my aunt which was relatively uneventful and great.  Then Monday hit and half my presentations failed or succeeded and my screen freezes so I start describing the code.  I was on top of my game until Monday night.  On top of the world.  I'm exhausted I get into Raleigh and one of the craziest stories of my life happens.  So my boss has been renting cars through Priceline this week I got a different company than the other weeks. The company gives me a Ford Focus and I plug in the coordinates on my IPhone where I want go.  I head out and then I get to the destination hotel (or I thought I did). I go inside it's the wrong hotel the other one is a few miles away.  I walk outside hop into the car and it sounds like a gunshot.  Nothing is starting...Am I doing something wrong?  No I'm not the car is completely dead in the water.  I call the rental car facility and they tell me to call roadside they are closing for the night.  Roadside says they can't give me a new car but they can get me a jump then I have to take it up with the facility.  They send me a tow truck to give me a jump the guy can't jump the car.  He tells me this vehicle was towed about an hour ago.  He shows me a copy of a slip from when he towed it.  We also notice the rental car company left one of there price scanning guns in the vehicle.  I call up roadside and now they are interested in getting me a car because I need to be onsite tomorrow.  They get the manager of the facility on the phone he apologizes profusely and he says he'll be there in 10 minutes.  About 30 minutes pass and him plus another dude show up with a Ford Escape leather interior.  At this point I hand him the gun tell him someone left it in the vehicle and that I'm not so happy with them.  I ask them to comp my rental they can't due to Priceline, however if I call him again this week he can get me a voucher.  It's about 2 am and I'm ready to get to the hotel I don't make it in the next morning until 10 am.  I would say this was a crazy week all forms of technology are trying to tell me something.  What I have no idea, but we'll see the outcome soon.  I feel so weird tons of change is about to happen.  I don't know if it's good or bad.  I think this week is some form of omen.

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