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• Creating reproducible builds to verify Free Software

  - by mikkykkat

  Free Software is about freedom and privacy, Open Source software is great but making that fully practical usually won't happen. Most Free Software developers publicize binaries that we can't verify are really compiled from the source code or have something bad injected already! We have the freedom to change the code, but privacy for ordinary users is missing. For desktop software there is a lot of languages and opportunities to create Free Software with a reproducible build process (compiling source code to always produce the exact same binary), but for mobile computing I don't know if same thing is possible or not? Mobile devices are probably the future of computing and Android is the only Open Source environment so far which accept Java for coding. Compiling same Android application won't result in the exact same binary every time. For Open Source Android apps how we can verify the produced binary (.apk) is really compiled from the source code? Is there any way to create reproducible builds from the Android SDK or does Java fail here for Free Software? is there any java software ever wrote with a reproducible build?

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• How does this game loop actually work?

  - by Nicolai

  I read this playfulJS post, about ray-casting: http://www.playfuljs.com/a-first-person-engine-in-265-lines/ It looks really interested, so I decided to look at his javascript. I am no expert in javascript, so I quickly got lost. It's the game loop "object" that really gets me. I simply don't understand how it works. From the code: function GameLoop() { this.frame = this.frame.bind(this); this.lastTime = 0; this.callback = function() {}; } GameLoop.prototype.start = function(callback) { this.callback = callback; requestAnimationFrame(this.frame); }; GameLoop.prototype.frame = function(time) { var seconds = (time - this.lastTime) / 1000; this.lastTime = time; if (seconds < 0.2) this.callback(seconds); requestAnimationFrame(this.frame); }; var loop = new GameLoop(); loop.start(function frame(seconds) { map.update(seconds); player.update(controls.states, map, seconds); camera.render(player, map); }); Now, what really confuses me here, is this bind stuff and how this actually loops. I am guessing, that if less than 0.2 seconds have passed, since the last time the loop was run, it simply goes back to re-check the time. If more than 0.2 seconds have passed, it leaves the frame function, and executes the 3 lines in the loop. But, if this is true, then how does the loop.start() get called again? And what on earth is the meaning of this.frame = this.frame.bind(this);? I've looked up prototypes bind() but I really don't understand it.

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• Optimizing hash lookup & memory performance in Go

  - by Moishe

  As an exercise, I'm implementing HashLife in Go. In brief, HashLife works by memoizing nodes in a quadtree so that once a given node's value in the future has been calculated, it can just be looked up instead of being re-calculated. So eg. if you have a node at the 8x8 level, you remember it by its four children (each at the 2x2 level). So next time you see an 8x8 node, when you calculate the next generation, you first check if you've already seen a node with those same four children. This is extended up through all levels of the quadtree, which gives you some pretty amazing optimizations if eg. you're 10 levels above the leaves. Unsurprisingly, it looks like the perfmance crux of this is the lookup of nodes by child-node values. Currently I have a hashmap of {&upper_left_node,&upper_right_node,&lower_left_node,&lower_right_node} -> node So my lookup function is this: func FindNode(ul, ur, ll, lr *Node) *Node { var node *Node var ok bool nc := NodeChildren{ul, ur, ll, lr} node, ok = NodeMap[nc] if ok { return node } node = &Node{ul, ur, ll, lr, 0, ul.Level + 1, nil} NodeMap[nc] = node return node } What I'm trying to figure out is if the "nc := NodeChildren..." line causes a memory allocation each time the function is called. If it does, can I/should I move the declaration to the global scope and just modify the values each time this function is called? Or is there a more efficient way to do this? Any advice/feedback would be welcome. (even coding style nits; this is literally the first thing I've written in Go so I'd love any feedback)

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• What are some arguments AGAINST using EntityFramework?

  - by Rachel

  The application I am currently building has been using Stored procedures and hand-crafted class models to represent database objects. Some people have suggested using Entity Framework and I am considering switching to that since I am not that far into the project. My problem is, I feel the people arguing for EF are only telling me the good side of things, not the bad side :) My main concerns are: We want Client-Side validation using DataAnnotations, and it sounds like I have to create the client-side models anyways so I am not sure that EF would save that much coding time We would like to keep the classes as small as possible when going over the network, and I have read that using EF often includes extra data that is not needed We have a complex database layer which crosses multiple databases, and I am not sure EF can handle this. We have one Common database with things like Users, StatusCodes, Types, etc and multiple instances of our main databases for different instances of the application. SELECT queries can and will query across all instances of the databases, however users can only modify objects that are in the database they are currently working on. They can switch databases without reloading the application. Object modes are very complex and there are often quite a few joins involved Arguments for EF are: Concurrency. I wouldn't have to code in checks to see if the record was updated before each save Code Generation. EF can generate partial class models and POCOs for me, however I am not positive this would really save me that much time since I think we would still need to create the client-side models for validation and some custom parsing methods. Speed of development since we wouldn't need to create the CRUD stored procedures for every database object Our current architecture consists of a WPF Service which handles database calls via parameterized Stored Procedures, POCO objects that go to/from the WCF service and the WPF client, and the WPF client itself which transforms POCOs into class Models for the purpose of Validation and DataBinding.

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• Releasing an open source project without getting embarrassed

  - by Hopeful

  I've been working by myself on a fairly large open source project for quite a while and it's nearing the point where I'd like to release it. However, I'm self-taught and I don't really know anyone who could adequately review my project. A few years ago, I had released a small bit of code which pretty much got ripped apart (in a critical sense) on the forum where I released it. Even though the code worked, the criticism was accurate but brutal. It prompted me to begin searching for best practices for everything and in the end I feel that it made me a much better developer. I've gone over everything in my project so many times trying to make it perfect that I've lost count. I believe in my project and think it has the potential to help a lot of people and I feel like I've done some cool things in interesting ways with it. Still, because I'm self-taught, I can't help but wonder what gaps exist in my self-education. The way my code was ripped apart last time isn't something I'd like to repeat. I think my two biggest fears with releasing my project that I've poured countless hours into are being absolutely embarrassed because I missed some patently obvious things because of my self-education or, worse, releasing it to the sound of crickets. Is there anyone who has been in a similar situation? I'm not afraid of constructive criticism, so long as it is constructive and not just a rant on how I screwed up. I know there is a code review site on StackExchange, but it's not really set up for large projects and I didn't feel like the community there is large enough yet to get good feedback if I were to post parts of my project piecemeal (I tried with one file). What can I do to give my project at least some measure of success without getting embarrassed or devestated in the process?

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• Automated Error Reporting in .NET Reflector - harnessing the most powerful test rig in existence

  - by Alex.Davies

  I know a testing system that will find more bugs than all the unit testing, integration testing, and QA you could possibly do. And the chances are you're not using it. It's called your users. It's a cliché that you should test so that you find your bugs rather than your users. Of course you should. But it's also a cliché that no software is ever shipped bug-free. Lost cause? No, opportunity! I think .NET Reflector 6 is pretty stable. In fact I know exactly how stable it is, because some (surprisingly high) proportion of its users tell me every time it crashes: If they press "Send Error Report", I get: And then I fix it. As a rough guess, while a standard stack trace is enough to fix a problem 30% of the time, having all those local variables in the stack trace means I can fix it about 80% of the time. How does this all happen? Did it take ages to code this swish system? Nope, it was one checkbox in SmartAssembly. It adds some clever code to your assembly to capture local variables every time an exception is thrown, and to ask your user to report it to you, with a variety of other useful information. Of course not all bugs show up as exceptions. But if you get used to knowing that SmartAssembly will tell you when an exception happens, you begin to change your coding style. Now, as long as an exception gets thrown in any situation you don't expect, you'll fix it if it ever happens. You'll start throwing exceptions liberally, and stop having to think about whether tiny edge cases are possible, as long as they throw an exception if they happen.

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• Why can't we capture the design of software more effectively?

  - by Ira Baxter

  As engineers, we all "design" artifacts (buildings, programs, circuits, molecules...). That's an activity (design-the-verb) that produces some kind of result (design-the-noun). I think we all agree that design-the-noun is a different entity than the artifact itself. A key activity in the software business (indeed, in any business where the resulting product artifact needs to be enhanced) is to understand the "design (the-noun)". Yet we seem, as a community, to be pretty much complete failures at recording it, as evidenced by the amount of effort people put into rediscovering facts about their code base. Ask somebody to show you the design of their code and see what you get. I think of a design for software as having: An explicit specification for what the software is supposed to do and how well it does it An explicit version of the code (this part is easy, everybody has it) An explanation for how each part of the code serves to achieve the specification A rationale as to why the code is the way it is (e.g., why a particualr choice rather than another) What is NOT a design is a particular perspective on the code. For example [not to pick specifically on] UML diagrams are not designs. Rather, they are properties you can derive from the code, or arguably, properties you wish you could derive from the code. But as a general rule, you can't derive the code from UML. Why is it that after 50+ years of building software, why don't we have regular ways to express this? My personal opinion is that we don't have good ways to express this. Even if we do, most of the community seems so focused on getting "code" that design-the-noun gets lost anyway. (IMHO, until design becomes the purpose of engineering, with the artifact extracted from the design, we're not going to get around this). What have you seen as means for recording designs (in the sense I have described it)? Explicit references to papers would be good. Why do you think specific and general means have not been succesful? How can we change this?

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• Is SQL Azure a newbies springboard?

  - by jamiet

  Earlier today I was considering the various SQL Server platforms that are available today and I wondered aloud, wonder how long until the majority of #sqlserver newcomers use @sqlazure instead of installing locally Let me explain. My first experience of development was way back in the early 90s when I would crank open VBA in Access or Excel and start hammering out some code, usually by recording macros and looking at the code that they produced (sound familiar?). The reason was simple, Office was becoming ubiquitous so the barrier to entry was incredibly low and, save for a short hiatus at university, I’ve been developing on the Microsoft platform ever since. These days spend most of my time using SQL Server. I take a look at SQL Azure today I see a lot of similarities with those early experiences, the barrier to entry is low and getting lower. I don’t have to download some software or actually install anything other than a web browser in order to get myself a fully functioning SQL Server  database against which I can ostensibly start hammering out some code and I believe that to be incredibly empowering. Having said that there are still a few pretty high barriers, namely: I need to get out my credit card Its pretty useless without some development tools such as SQL Server Management Studio, which I do have to install. The second of those barriers will disappear pretty soon when Project Houston delivers a web-based admin and presentation tool for SQL Azure so that just leaves the matter of my having to use a credit card. If Microsoft have any sense at all then they will realise the huge potential of opening up a free, throttled version of SQL Azure for newbies to party on; they get to developers early (just like they did with me all those years ago) and it gives potential customers an opportunity to try-before-they-buy. Perhaps in 20 years time people will be talking about SQL Azure as being their first foray into the world of coding! @Jamiet Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Translation and Localization Resources for UX Designers

  - by ultan o'broin

  Here is a handy list of translation and localization-related resources for user experience professionals. Following these will help you design an easily translatable user experience. Most of the references here are for web pages or software. Fundamentally, remember your designs will be consumed globally, and never divorce the design process from the development or deployment effort that goes into bringing your designs to life in code. Ask yourself today: Do you know how the text you are using in your designs are delivered to the customer, even in English? Key areas that UX designers always seen to fall foul of, in my space anyway, are: Terminology that is impossible to translate (jargon, multiple modifiers, gerunds) or is used inconsistently Poorly written, verbose text (really, just write well in English, no special considerations) String construction (concatenation of parts assembled dynamically) Composite widget positioning (my favourite) Hard-coded fonts, small font sizes, or character formatting or casing that doesn't work globally Format that is not separate from content Restricted real estate not allowing for text expansion in translation Forcing formatting with breaks, and hard-coding alphabetical sorting Graphics that do not work in Bi-Di languages (because they indicate directionality and can't flip) or contain embedded text. The problems of culturally offensive icons are well known by now in the enterprise applications space, though there are some dangers, such as the use of flags to indicate language, for example. Resources Internationalization Techniques: Authoring HTML & CSS Global By Design Insert Title Here : Variables in Interface Language Prose: Internationalisation Doc and help considerations I can deal with later.

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• Podcast Show Notes: Are You Future Proof?

  - by Bob Rhubart

  On September 14, 2012 ZDNet blogger Joe McKendrick published Why IT is a Profession in Flux, a short article in which he makes the observation that "IT professionals are under considerable pressure to deliver more value to the business, versus being good at coding and testing and deploying and integrating." I forwarded that article to my list of Usual Suspects (the nearly 40 people who have participated in the podcast over the last 3 years), along with a suggestion that I wanted to put together a panel discussion to further explore the issue. This podcast is the result. As it happened, three of the people who responded to my query were in San Francisco for Oracle OpenWorld, as was I, so I seized the rare opportunity for a face to face conversation. The participants are all Oracle ACE Directors, as well as architects: Ron Batra, Director of Cloud Computing at AT&T Basheer Khan, Founder, President and CEO at Innowave Technology Ronald van Luttikhuizen, Managing Partner at Vennster. The Conversation Listen to Part 1 Future-Proofing: As powerful forces reshape enterprise IT, your IT and software development skills may not be enough. Listen to Part 2 Survival Strategy: Re-tooling one’s skill set to reflect changes in enterprise IT, including the knowledge to steer stakeholders around the hype to what’s truly valuable. Listen to Part 3 Writing on the Wall: Do the technological trends that are shaping enterprise IT pose any threat to basic software development roles? What opportunities do these changes represent? The entire conversation is also available in video format from the OTN YouTube Channel. Your Two Cents What are you doing to future-proof your IT career? Share your thoughts in the comments section.

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• Arbitrary Rotation about a Sphere

  - by Der

  I'm coding a mechanic which allows a user to move around the surface of a sphere. The position on the sphere is currently stored as theta and phi, where theta is the angle between the z-axis and the xz projection of the current position (i.e. rotation about the y axis), and phi is the angle from the y-axis to the position. I explained that poorly, but it is essentially theta = yaw, phi = pitch Vector3 position = new Vector3(0,0,1); position.X = (float)Math.Sin(phi) * (float)Math.Sin(theta); position.Y = (float)Math.Sin(phi) * (float)Math.Cos(theta); position.Z = (float)Math.Cos(phi); position *= r; I believe this is accurate, however I could be wrong. I need to be able to move in an arbitrary pseudo two dimensional direction around the surface of a sphere at the origin of world space with radius r. For example, holding W should move around the sphere in an upwards direction relative to the orientation of the player. I believe I should be using a Quaternion to represent the position/orientation on the sphere, but I can't think of the correct way of doing it. Spherical geometry is not my strong suit. Essentially, I need to fill the following block: public void Move(Direction dir) { switch (dir) { case Direction.Left: // update quaternion to rotate left break; case Direction.Right: // update quaternion to rotate right break; case Direction.Up: // update quaternion to rotate upward break; case Direction.Down: // update quaternion to rotate downward break; } }

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• Invoice from Godaddy with intent to defraud?

  - by Berliner

  Hi Webmasters I have received several email asking me to renew a domain name: REMINDER: Renew early for multiple years and lock in your savings! For your review, listed below are domain names and their expiration dates. F.....COM - Mar. 09, 2011 Since I lost the domain name long time ago and couldn't get it back I asked if it was available again. Goddady replyed: According to WHOIS the domain name is registered to a Japanese company with the expiry date: 2011-12-02. I wrote to Godaddy: According to your information the domain holder is a Japanese company as described below. Can you give me an explanation why you send me an email asking me to pay for a domain name which I do not own? (Expiration Date: 2011-12-02) I am just curious, I am sure there is no ill will on your part. Godaddy answered: Dear Sir or Madam, Thank you for contacting online support. This was just to let you know the domain is registered to someone else and who. Then today I got yet another invoice asking me to renew the same domain name once again: **REMINDER: Renew early for multiple years and lock in your savings! The product(s) listed below have expired or are at risk of expiring: Product NameNext Attempt Date.COM Domain Name Renewal - 1 Year (recurring)03/14/2011 F........COM You are at risk of losing the service(s) or product(s) listed above. Your products are currently set to renew manually – they will NOT be renewed automatically on the next attempt date.** The expiry date has now been changed from the 9 of March to the 14 March. Another party owns the domain name and further the domain name was never registered with Godaddy. This appears like a way to make a few buck on a unsuspecting customer, it might even be illegal. Any comment how to take this futher would be most welcome.

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• On the frontier between work and home

  - by MPelletier

  I think we've all been there: You hear of someone say "hey, wouldn't it be nice if platform X had feature Y?" You look around (on SO!), the feature really doesn't exist, even though it probably would be useful in many contexts. So it's pretty generic. Your mind wanders for a bit. "How tough would it be? Well, it'd probably be just a snippet. And an ad-hoc function. And maybe a wrapper." And boom, before you know it, you've spent a dozen hours of your free time implementing a FooFeature that's really neat and generic. The kind of code you might not even have the time to spit and shine at work, that would be a bit rushed and not so documented. So now you wonder "wouldn't this be useful to others?" And you've got your blog, maybe a CodeProject account, and your colleague who asked if FooFeature exists might, haphazardly, come accross that blog entry, had it existed before they told you. On the otherhand, the NDA agreement. It's sort of vague and general. It doesn't forbid you from coding at home, but it's clear on sharing company code, that's a big NO. But this isn't company code. Or is it? Or will it be? So, what do you do with code (that's more than just a snippet) you wrote in your off time with universality in mind but an idea that came from work, and that will most likely be used at work? Can it be published?

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• The Best Websites for Downloading and Playing Classic and New Text Adventure Games

  - by Lori Kaufman

  Before computers could handle graphical games, there were text adventure games. The games are interactive stories, so playing a text adventure game is like being part of a book in which you affect the story. Text adventure games are also referred to as “interactive fiction.” Interactive Fiction (IF) is actually a more accurate term for text adventure games, because these games can cover any topics, such as romances or comedies, not just adventures. They can also simulate real life. Even though computers can now handle intensely graphical games, playing text adventure games can still be fun. It’s like reading a good book and getting lost in the universe of the story, except you become the hero or heroine and affect the ending of the story. We’ve collected some links to websites where you can download classic and new text adventure games or play them online. There are also some free tools available for creating your own text adventure games. We even found a documentary about the evolution of computer adventure games and some articles about the art and craft of developing the original text adventure games. How To Create a Customized Windows 7 Installation Disc With Integrated Updates How to Get Pro Features in Windows Home Versions with Third Party Tools HTG Explains: Is ReadyBoost Worth Using?

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• links for 2010-05-11

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Fat Bloke: Oracle VM VirtualBox 3.1.8 released! "Supporting new platforms such as Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) and delivering a host of bugfixes, VirtualBox 3.1.8 is available now from the usual places, " says the Fat Bloke. (tags: oracle otn virtualization linux) Anthony Shorten: What is the Oracle Utilities Application Framework? "The Oracle Utilities Application Framework is a reusable, scalable and flexible java based framework which allows other products to be built, configured and implemented in a standard way," according to Anthony Shorten (tags: oracle otn framework java standards) Audio podcast: Oracle WebLogic Suite Virtualization Option (Application Grid) "Steve Harris, Senior Vice President of application server and Java Platform, Enterprise Edition development, talks about running Oracle WebLogic Server on Oracle JRockit Virtual Edition. Listen here to learn how you can run faster and more efficiently without a guest operating system on Oracle VM." (tags: oracle otn grid wweblogic podcast virtualization) MySQL Community Blog: MySQL track with free event at Kaleidoscope 2010 "The even greater news," writes Giuseppe Maxia, "is that, in addition to the general schedule, there are SUNDOWN SESSIONS!" (tags: java sun oracle mysql) @SOAtoday: Will Cloudsourcing Change the Face of Consulting? "Will we all be working remotely to deliver our client projects going forward? Maybe someday, but not anytime soon." -- Oracle ACE Director Jordan Braunstein (tags: oracle otn oracleace cloudcomputing entarch) @SOAtoday: Are we Paid to Say No? "Software architects take their governance initiatives seriously, and I can say with a high level of confidence that most of these denials are highly justified. But, have we architects lost our entrepreneurial spirit, with governance as our defense? Are we over-scrutinizing new ideas and slowing down pilots of innovation because they don’t align with our governance policies and enterprise frameworks?" -- Oracle ACE Director Jordan Braunstein (tags: architect entarch oracle otn soa)

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• How can I make PDFs appear life-size when displayed at 100%?

  - by ændrük

  When I open a letter size PDF and then zoom to 100%, the page physically displayed on my monitor is smaller than a real letter size sheet of paper. How can I make "100%" on the computer screen correspond with "100%" in real life? Details This message suggests that I should be investigating the system-wide DPI settings for my monitor. xdpyinfo reports: dimensions: 1024x768 pixels (271x203 millimeters) resolution: 96x96 dots per inch My monitor has a native display resolution of 1024x768 pixels and a diagonal display size of 12.07 inches. PX CALC returns the following information: DPI: 106.05 Dot Pitch: 0.2395mm Size: 9.66" × 7.24" (24.53cm × 18.39cm) What I've tried so far Running xrandr --dpi 106.05 successfully caused my PDF to appear actual size at 100%, but this effect was lost after rebooting. To make the setting persistent I tried creating the following /etc/X11/xorg.conf: Section "Monitor" Identifier "ThinkPad X60 LCD" DisplaySize 245 183 EndSection Section "Screen" Identifier "Screen0" Monitor "ThinkPad X60 LCD" EndSection After re-logging in, /var/log/Xorg.0.log contained [ 1167.824] (**) intel(0): Display dimensions: (245, 183) mm [ 1167.824] (**) intel(0): DPI set to (106, 106) but xdpyinfo still reported dimensions: 1024x768 pixels (271x203 millimeters) resolution: 96x96 dots per inch and "100%" still appeared too small. Link to XRANDR wiki Link to making XRANDR changes persistant

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• What is a good basic/flexible cms for a small website? [closed]

  - by Samuel

  Possible Duplicate: Which Content Management System (CMS) should I use? I'm designing a very basic portfolio website for an artist. It features a blog, portfolio, cv and contact page. I've handcoded the basics of this site in php/java, as it is a very small website (and I like coding by hand). But I need a simple cms backend for the dynamic parts of the website (the blog/portfolio). The big systems (ruby, joomla, wordpress) are far too invasive for my liking (and frankly a bit beyond my capabilities). Wordpress for example, requires too much adaptation of the design to the wordpress structure, and ruby is far too extensive for a simple site like this (in my opinion). So what I'm looking for is a (preferably open source) cms that has a simple backend for the artist to use as a blogger, with a mysql database for the content, that will allow me to insert content with simple tags (using smarty tags for example), but is otherwise not too invasive or demanding in terms of the required page structure. Does anyone know of a good cms that fits this description? p.s.: I have tried phpnews and cmsmadesimple, but phpnews was a litte too basic (but very close too what I'm looking for) and cmsmadesimple was way too slow (but otherwise also pretty close too what I wanted, though a bit too extensive).

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• Is it better to hard code data or find an algorithm?

  - by OghmaOsiris

  I've been working on a boardgame that has a hex grid as the board (the upper right grid in the image below) Since the board will never change and the spaces on the board will always be linked to the same other spaces around it, should I just hard code every space with the values that I need? Or should I use various algorithms to calculate links and traversals? To be more specific, my board game is a 4 player game where each player has a 5x5x5x5x5x5 hex grid (again, the upper right grid in th eimage above). The object is to get from the bottom of the grid to the top, with various obstacles in the way, and each players being able to attack eachother from the edge of their grid onto other players based on a range multiplier. Since the players grid will never change and the distance of any arbitrary space from the edge of the grid will always be the same, should I just hard code this number into each of the spaces, or should I still use a breadth first search algorithm when players are attacking? The only con I can think of for hard coding everything is that I'm going to code 9+ 2(5+6+7+8) = 61 individual cells. Is there anything else that I'm missing that I should consider using more complex algorithms?

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• How can we plan projects realistically while accounting for support issues?

  - by Thomas Clayson

  We're having a problem at work: we're trying to schedule work so that we can assess time scales and get deadline dates. The problem is that it's difficult to plan for a project without knowing everything that's going to happen. For instance, right now we've planned all our projects through the start of December, however in that time we will have various in house and external meetings, teleconferences and extra work. It's all well and good to say that a project will take three weeks, but if there is a week's worth of interruption in that time then the date of completion will be pushed back a week. The problem is 3 fold: When we schedule projects the time scales are taken literally. If we estimate three weeks, the deadline is set for three week's time, the client is told, and there is no room for extension. Interim work and such means that we lose productive time working on the project. Sometimes clients don't have the time that we need to take to do the work, so they'll sometimes come to us and say they need a project done by the end of the month even when we think that the work will take two months - not to mention we already have work to be doing. We have a Gantt chart which we are trying to fill in with all the projects we have and we fill in timesheets, but they're not compared to the Gantt chart at all. This makes it difficult to say "Well, we scheduled 3 weeks for this project, but we've lost a week here so the deadline has to move back a week." It's also not professional to keep missing deadlines we've communicated to the client. How do other people deal with this type of situation? How do you manage the planning of projects? How much "extra" time do you schedule into a project to account for non-project work that occurs during a project? How do you deal with support issues and bugs and stuff? Things you can't account for during planning? UPDATE Lots of good answers thank you.

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• How to make a legacy system time-zone sensitive?

  - by Jerry Dodge

  I need to implement time zones in a very large and old Delphi system, where there's a central SQL Server database and possibly hundreds of client installations around the world in different time zones. The application already interacts with the database by only using the date/time of the database server. So, all the time stamps saved in both the database and on the client machines are the date/time of the database server when it happened, never the time of the client machine. So, when a client is about to display the date/time of something (such as a transaction) which is coming from this database, it needs to show the date/time converted to the local time zone. This is where I get lost. I would naturally assume there should be something in SQL to recognize the time zone and convert a DateTime field dynamically. I'm not sure if such a thing exists though. If so, that would be perfect, but if not, I need to figure out another way. This Delphi system (multiple projects) utilizes the SQL Server database using ADO components, VCL data-aware controls, and QuickReports (using data sources). So, there's many places where the data goes directly from the database query to rendering on the screen, without any code to actually put this data on the screen. In the end, I need to know when and how should I get the properly converted time? What is the proper way to ensure that I handle Dates and Times correctly in a legacy application?

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• Continual Professional Development - proving new skills to non-technical employers

  - by Tom

  Background I work in a non-IT based company, as a professional software developer, building a large scale internal database system. I am fortunate to have a fairly senior position within the company, and have been working here for around 4 years. Often I get asked by management "how do you learn new things?". To be honest, I don't know how to answer this. Over the last 6 months, I've really gotten my teeth into some new techniques and technologies to make my level of coding far better and hopefully improve the quality of the software. Even if it's just refreshing my skills on things I've learnt already. Like last week I dived into some complex XLinq and TPL code (.net). Nothing revolutionary, but I feel like I am a bit better than before. Question The question is, how do I prove this to my employer? It'd be nice to be able to put this on paper. Possibilities I could: Keep a journal of what I've learnt - keeping the technical bits in (nobody would understand or care, but it's better than them being omitted) ???? (I've run out of ideas already) Any ideas? Thanks, Tom

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• Job title inflation and fluffing

  - by Amir Rezaei

  When you work on the same project for a relative long time you get more experienced. You may also master many new technologies. Besides the coding you may also do what would classify other roles. There is however one part of your career that may not get updated. That is your job title. It seems beside all technological hypes there is also job title hype. It all depends on which company you work for. Many companies give employer better job titles because they want to keep them. The employee doesn’t change their job because the current title is much better, even if they would get better working condition and benefits if they changed their job. When you consider changing you job you notice that your job title is kind of “outdated”. People with less skill have a much better title for their job than you. You may very well explain what you did on your project but the fact is that many employers go by the title. So here are the questions: Do you change your current title in your CV? What are other options? Here are some good readings regarding these phenomena: Job title inflation Job title fluffing

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• Sql Server Prevent Saving Changes That Require Table to be Re-created

  When working with SQL Server Management studio, if you use the Design view of a table and attempt to make a change that will require the table to be dropped and re-added, you may receive an error message like this one: Saving changes is not permitted.  The changes you have made require the following tables to be dropped and re-created.  You have either made changes to a table that cant be re-created or enabled the option Prevent saving changes that require the table to be re-created. In truth, its quite likely that you didnt enable such an option, despite the error dialogs accusations, as it is enabled by default when you install SQL Management Studio.  You can learn more about the issue in the KB article, Error message when you try to save a table in SQL Server 2008: Saving changes is not permitted. Warning: As the above article states, it is not recommended that you turn off this option (at least not permanently), as it will ensure that you do not accidentally change the schema of a table such that data is lost.  Do so at your peril. The simplest way to bypass this error is to go into Option Designers and uncheck the option Prevent saving changes that require table re-creation.  See the screenshot below. The main reason why you will see this error is if you attempted to do any of the following to the table whose design you are saving: Change the Allow Nulls setting for a column Reorder columns Change any columns data type Add a new column The recommended workaround is to script out the changes to a SQL file and execute them by hand, or to simply write out your own T-SQL to make the changes. 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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• Does it matter the direction of a Huffman's tree child node?

  - by Omega

  So, I'm on my quest about creating a Java implementation of Huffman's algorithm for compressing/decompressing files (as you might know, ever since Why create a Huffman tree per character instead of a Node?) for a school assignment. I now have a better understanding of how is this thing supposed to work. Wikipedia has a great-looking algorithm here that seemed to make my life way easier. Taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huffman_coding: Create a leaf node for each symbol and add it to the priority queue. While there is more than one node in the queue: Remove the two nodes of highest priority (lowest probability) from the queue Create a new internal node with these two nodes as children and with probability equal to the sum of the two nodes' probabilities. Add the new node to the queue. The remaining node is the root node and the tree is complete. It looks simple and great. However, it left me wondering: when I "merge" two nodes (make them children of a new internal node), does it even matter what direction (left or right) will each node be afterwards? I still don't fully understand Huffman coding, and I'm not very sure if there is a criteria used to tell whether a node should go to the right or to the left. I assumed that, perhaps the highest-frequency node would go to the right, but I've seen some Huffman trees in the web that don't seem to follow such criteria. For instance, Wikipedia's example image http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/82/Huffman_tree_2.svg/625px-Huffman_tree_2.svg.png seems to put the highest ones to the right. But other images like this one http://thalia.spec.gmu.edu/~pparis/classes/notes_101/img25.gif has them all to the left. However, they're never mixed up in the same image (some to the right and others to the left). So, does it matter? Why?

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• Octree implementation for fustrum culling

  - by Manvis

  I'm learning modern (=3.1) OpenGL by coding a 3D turn based strategy game, using C++. The maps are composed of 100x90 3D hexagon tiles that range from 50 to 600 tris (20 different types) + any player units on those tiles. My current rendering technique involves sorting meshes by shaders they use (minimizing state changes) and then calling glDrawElementsInstanced() for drawing. Still get solid 16.6 ms/frame on my GTX 560Ti machine but the game struggles (45.45 ms/frame) on an old 8600GT card. I'm certain that using an octree and fustrum culling will help me here, but I have a few questions before I start implementing it: Is it OK for an octree node to have multiple meshes in it (e.g. can a soldier and the hex tile he's standing on end up in the same octree node)? How is one supposed to treat changes in object postion (e.g. several units are moving 3 hexes down)? I can't seem to find good a explanation on how to do it. As I've noticed, soting meshes by shaders is a really good way to save GPU. If I put node contents into, let's say, std::list and sort it before rendering, do you think I would gain any performance, or would it just create overhead on CPU's end? I know that this sounds like early optimization and implementing + testing would be the best way to find out, but perhaps someone knows from experience?

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