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• Storing a looong lookup table

  - by inquisitive

  Background The product i am working on has a very long lookup-table. the table contains static data and cannot be auto generated. there are about 500 rows and 10 columns. columns have mostly integers and strings. to complicate the matters, there are actually two such tables. every row in table-1 maps to zero-or-more rows in table-2. we use an SQLite database with two tables. the product installer places the SQLite file in the installation directory. the application is written in dot-net and we use ADO to load the data once on startup. now, the lookup table grows. in each release a month, we add about 10 new entries existing entries are adjusted. every release we fine tune existing entries. The problem a team of (10) developers work on the lookup table. Code goes in the SVN, but the little devil the SQLite does not. this prevents multiple developers to work on it. we do take regular backups of the file, but proper versioning is not possible. we never know who did the breaking change. the worse thing is we dont know if there is any change at all. diff'ing databases is tedious if not impossible. the tables are expected to grow quite large in years to come and we would need developers to work in parallel on it. the data is business critical. we need to be able to audit changes made to it. Question What would be a solution for the problems outlines above? one idea was to transform the whole thing to XML and treat it like just another source file. that way SVN can do the versioning and we can work in parallel. but the data shows relational behavior. with XML we loose the unique and foreign-key constraints. also we cant query it with sql like ease. any help here will be appreciated.

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• I have a performance problem

  - by Alan

  (copied from my wordpress blog). So start 95% of the performance calls that I receive. They usually continue something like: I have gathered some *stat data for you (eg the guds tool from Document 1285485.1), can you please root cause our problem? So, do you think you could? Neither can I, based on this my answer inevitably has to be "No". Given this kind of problem statement, I have no idea about the expectations, the boundary conditions, or even the application. The answer may as well be "Performance problems? Consult your local Doctor for Viagra". It's really not a lot to go on. So, What kind of problem description is going to allow me to start work on the issue that is being seen? I don't doubt that there really is an issue, it just needs to be pinned down somewhat. What behavior exactly are you expecting to see? Be specific and use business metrics. For example "run-time", "response-time" and "throughput". This helps us define exit criterea. Now, let's look at the system that is having problems. How is what you are seeing different? Use the same type of metrics. The answers to these two questions take us a long way towards being able to work a call. Even more helpful are answers to questions like Has this system ever worked to expectation? If so, when did it start exhibiting this behavior? Is the problem always present, or does it sometimes work to expectation? If it sometimes works to expectation, when are you seeing the problem? Is there any discernible pattern? Is the impact of the problem getting better, worse, or remaining constant? What kind of differences are there between when the system was performing to expectation and when it is not? Are there other machines where we could expect to see the same issue (eg similar usage and load), but are not? Again, differences? Once we start to gather information like this we start to build up a much clearer picture of exactly what we need to investigate, and what we need to achieve so that both you and me agree that the problem has been solved. Please help get that figure of poorly defined problem statements down from it's current 95% value.

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• Physics Engine [Collision Response, 2-dimensional] experts, help!! My stack is unstable!

  - by Register Sole

  Previously, I struggle with the sequential impulse-based method I developed. Thanks to jedediah referring me to this paper, I managed to rebuild the codes and implement the simultaneous impulse based method with Projected-Gauss-Seidel (PGS) iterative solver as described by Erin Catto (mentioned in the reference of the paper as [Catt05]). So here's how it currently is: The simulation handles 2-dimensional rotating convex polygons. Detection is using separating-axis test, with a SKIN, meaning closest points between two polygons is detected and determined if their distance is less than SKIN. To resolve collision, simultaneous impulse-based method is used. It is solved using iterative solver (PGS-solver) as in Erin Catto's paper. Error-correction is implemented using Baumgarte's stabilization (you can refer to either paper for this) using J V = beta/dt*overlap, J is the Jacobian for the constraints, V the matrix containing the velocities of the bodies, beta an error-correction parameter that is better be < 1, dt the time-step taken by the engine, and overlap, the overlap between the bodies (true overlap, so SKIN is ignored). However, it is still less stable than I expected :s I tried to stack hexagons (or squares, doesn't really matter), and even with only 4 to 5 of them, they hardly stand still! Also note that I am not looking for a sleeping scheme. But I would settle if you have any explicit scheme to handle resting contacts. That said, I would be more than happy if you have a way of treating it generally (as continuous collision, instead of explicitly as a special state). Ideas I have: I would try adding a damping term (proportional to velocity) to the Baumgarte. Is this a good idea in general? If not I would not want to waste my time trying to tune the parameter hoping it magically works. Ideas I have tried: Using simultaneous position based error correction as described in the paper in section 5.3.2, turned out to be worse than the current scheme. If you want to know the parameters I used: Hexagons, side 50 (pixels) gravity 2400 (pixels/sec^2) time-step 1/60 (sec) beta 0.1 restitution 0 to 0.2 coeff. of friction 0.2 PGS iteration 10 initial separation 10 (pixels) mass 1 (unit is irrelevant for now, i modified velocity directly<-impulse method) inertia 1/1000 Thanks in advance! I really appreciate any help from you guys!! :)

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• No Sound in 12.04 on Acer TimelineX 3830TG

  - by Fawkes5

  When i first installed ubuntu 12.04 everything worked fine. All of a sudden my sound has stopped working!! This has happened before [like 2 days ago], however the next day it started working again. That may happen again...[I've already rebooted 5 times] My Sound Card is a HDA intel PCH My Sound Chip is Intel CougarPoint HDMI My machine is an Acer TimelineX 3830TG, heres my lcpci output 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core Processor Family DRAM Controller (rev 09) 00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200/2nd Generation Core Processor Family PCI Express Root Port (rev 09) 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 09) 00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family MEI Controller #1 (rev 04) 00:1a.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller #2 (rev 04) 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 04) 00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev b4) 00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 2 (rev b4) 00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 3 (rev b4) 00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 4 (rev b4) 00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller #1 (rev 04) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation HM65 Express Chipset Family LPC Controller (rev 04) 00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family 6 port SATA AHCI Controller (rev 04) 00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family SMBus Controller (rev 04) 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GF108 [GeForce GT 540M] (rev ff) 02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR8151 v2.0 Gigabit Ethernet (rev c0) 03:00.0 Network controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR9287 Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) (rev 01) 04:00.0 Unassigned class [ff00]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTS5116 PCI Express Card Reader (rev 01) 05:00.0 USB controller: NEC Corporation uPD720200 USB 3.0 Host Controller (rev 04) I'm running a dual boot with Windows 7, sound always works there. I've tried loading earlier kernels [3.2.0 ] but that hasn't helped. I've tried playing with alsamixer, unmuting and raising volume, doesn't work I've tried playing with pauvcontrol, doesnt work. Althought, strangely, when i play a song, under output i can see a bar moving implying that something is working, just the sound isn't getting through my speakers. Thus it might be a hardware problem. I've tried unistalling and reinstalling pulsaudio annd alsamixer, doesn't work [maybe made it worse...]. I've heard reverting back to kernel 3.0... works, but i'm reluctant to try that[i dont know much about kernels]. Thank you. Please tell me what other information you need. EDIT: My audio has started working again after another reboot. However this time im not connected to my external audio on startup. I will see if this is the issue next time i'm at home Edit: Connecting to external audio is not the problem.

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• laptop will not boot after attempting upgrade to 13.10

  - by naerwenya

  I wanted to update my OS to the new 14.04 LTS. I was running 12.04 LTS before and followed the advice that upgrades should be done in steps. I first upgraded to 12.10, which seemed to work fine, and later to 13.10. This was all done through the Software Manager. After the last upgrade, I am no longer able to boot up my computer. The GNU GRUB menu opens up, but after selecting Ubuntu, it just stalls with a blank purple screen. If I select one of the other kernels, it also stalls after "Loading initial ramdisk...". I can't get into the Recovery Menu, either. I'm still rather new to Linux and may have possibly made the situation worse. Unfortunately, nothing has worked yet. I tried reinstalling from a flash drive and on my first attempt, the wizard recognised a previous installation. Unfortunately, the wizard also didn't like how my partitions were set up (I didn't change anything) and gave an error before closing. Unfortunately, I didn't write the error down, but it was about the boot partition. On the next attempt and ever since, the installation wizard has stated that "This computer currently has no detected operating systems." This is strange, because I could see the disk and even access my files when booting up from the USB. At this point, I decided to back up my important files using dropbox. Before losing all my files, I wanted to try the Boot-Repair tool, which also produced no results, and the files are no longer visible when booting from USB. The link to the Boot-Repair log is at http://paste.ubuntu.com/7457249/. If I then proceed through to the "Something else" installation option, I can see that the partitions still exist. This is what they look like: /dev/sda free space (size indicated 1MB) /dev/sda1 efi (33MB of 98 MB used) /dev/sda2 efi (352634MB of 746330MB used) /dev/sda3 swap (3725MB, none used) free space (0MB) Is there any way I might be able to get my computer to work and preserve my files as well?

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• Creating a multi-tenant application using PostgreSQL's schemas and Rails

  - by ramon.tayag

  Stuff I've already figured out I'm learning how to create a multi-tenant application in Rails that serves data from different schemas based on what domain or subdomain is used to view the application. I already have a few concerns answered: How can you get subdomain-fu to work with domains as well? Here's someone that asked the same question which leads you to this blog. What database, and how will it be structured? Here's an excellent talk by Guy Naor, and good question about PostgreSQL and schemas. I already know my schemas will all have the same structure. They will differ in the data they hold. So, how can you run migrations for all schemas? Here's an answer. Those three points cover a lot of the general stuff I need to know. However, in the next steps I seem to have many ways of implementing things. I'm hoping that there's a better, easier way. Finally, to my question When a new user signs up, I can easily create the schema. However, what would be the best and easiest way to load the structure that the rest of the schemas already have? Here are some questions/scenarios that might give you a better idea. Should I pass it on to a shell script that dumps the public schema into a temporary one, and imports it back to my main database (pretty much like what Guy Naor says in his video)? Here's a quick summary/script I got from the helpful #postgres on freenode. While this will probably work, I'm gonna have to do a lot of stuff outside of Rails, which makes me a bit uncomfortable.. which also brings me to the next question. Is there a way to do this straight from Ruby on Rails? Like create a PostgreSQL schema, then just load the Rails database schema (schema.rb - I know, it's confusing) into that PostgreSQL schema. Is there a gem/plugin that has these things already? Methods like "create_pg_schema_and_load_rails_schema(the_new_schema_name)". If there's none, I'll probably work at making one, but I'm doubtful about how well tested it'll be with all the moving parts (especially if I end up using a shell script to create and manage new PostgreSQL schemas). Thanks, and I hope that wasn't too long! UPDATE May 11, 2010 11:26 GMT+8 Since last night I've been able to get a method to work that creates a new schema and loads schema.rb into it. Not sure if what I'm doing is correct (seems to work fine, so far) but it's a step closer at least. If there's a better way please let me know. module SchemaUtils def self.add_schema_to_path(schema) conn = ActiveRecord::Base.connection conn.execute "SET search_path TO #{schema}, #{conn.schema_search_path}" end def self.reset_search_path conn = ActiveRecord::Base.connection conn.execute "SET search_path TO #{conn.schema_search_path}" end def self.create_and_migrate_schema(schema_name) conn = ActiveRecord::Base.connection schemas = conn.select_values("select * from pg_namespace where nspname != 'information_schema' AND nspname NOT LIKE 'pg%'") if schemas.include?(schema_name) tables = conn.tables Rails.logger.info "#{schema_name} exists already with these tables #{tables.inspect}" else Rails.logger.info "About to create #{schema_name}" conn.execute "create schema #{schema_name}" end # Save the old search path so we can set it back at the end of this method old_search_path = conn.schema_search_path # Tried to set the search path like in the methods above (from Guy Naor) # conn.execute "SET search_path TO #{schema_name}" # But the connection itself seems to remember the old search path. # If set this way, it works. conn.schema_search_path = schema_name # Directly from databases.rake. # In Rails 2.3.5 databases.rake can be found in railties/lib/tasks/databases.rake file = "#{Rails.root}/db/schema.rb" if File.exists?(file) Rails.logger.info "About to load the schema #{file}" load(file) else abort %{#{file} doesn't exist yet. It's possible that you just ran a migration!} end Rails.logger.info "About to set search path back to #{old_search_path}." conn.schema_search_path = old_search_path end end

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• Interactive Data Language, IDL: Does anybody care?

  - by Alex

  Anyone use a language called Interactive Data Language, IDL? It is popular with scientists. I think it is a poor language because it is proprietary (every terminal running it has to have an expensive license purchased) and it has minimal support (try searching for IDL, the language, right now on stack) . I am trying to convince my colleagues to stop using it and learn C/C++/Python/Fortran/Java/Ruby. Does anybody know about or even care about IDL enough to have opinions on it? What do you think of it? Should I tell my colleagues to stop wasting their time on it now? How can I convince them? Edit: People are getting the impression that I don't know or use IDL. Also, I said IDL has minimal support which is true in one sense, so I must clarify that the scientific libraries are indeed large. I use IDL all the time, but this is exactly the problem: I am only using IDL because colleagues use it. There is a file format IDL uses, the .sav, which can only be opened in IDL. So I must use IDL to work with this data and transfer the data back to colleagues, but I know I would be more efficient in another language. This is like someone sending you a microsoft word file in an email attachment and if you don't understand how wrong that is then you probably write too many words not enough code and you bought microsoft word. Edit: As an alternative to IDL Python is popular. Here is a list of The Pros of IDL (and the cons) from AstroBetter: Pros of IDL Mature many numerical and astronomical libraries available Wide astronomical user base Numerical aspect well integrated with language itself Many local users with deep experience Faster for small arrays Easier installation Good, unified documentation Standard GUI run/debug tool (IDLDE) Single widget system (no angst about which to choose or learn) SAVE/RESTORE capability Use of keyword arguments as flags more convenient Cons of IDL Narrow applicability, not well suited to general programming Slower for large arrays Array functionality less powerful Table support poor Limited ability to extend using C or Fortran, such extensions hard to distribute and support Expensive, sometimes problem collaborating with others that don’t have or can’t afford licenses. Closed source (only RSI can fix bugs) Very awkward to integrate with IRAF tasks Memory management more awkward Single widget system (useless if working within another framework) Plotting: Awkward support for symbols and math text Many font systems, portability issues (v5.1 alleviates somewhat) not as flexible or as extensible plot windows not intrinsically interactive (e.g., pan & zoom) Pros of Python Very general and powerful programming language, yet easy to learn. Strong, but optional, Object Oriented programming support Very large user and developer community, very extensive and broad library base Very extensible with C, C++, or Fortran, portable distribution mechanisms available Free; non-restrictive license; Open Source Becoming the standard scripting language for astronomy Easy to use with IRAF tasks Basis of STScI application efforts More general array capabilities Faster for large arrays, better support for memory mapping Many books and on-line documentation resources available (for the language and its libraries) Better support for table structures Plotting framework (matplotlib) more extensible and general Better font support and portability (only one way to do it too) Usable within many windowing frameworks (GTK, Tk, WX, Qt…) Standard plotting functionality independent of framework used plots are embeddable within other GUIs more powerful image handling (multiple simultaneous LUTS, optional resampling/rescaling, alpha blending, etc) Support for many widget systems Strong local influence over capabilities being developed for Python Cons of Python More items to install separately Not as well accepted in astronomical community (but support clearly growing) Scientific libraries not as mature: Documentation not as complete, not as unified Not as deep in astronomical libraries and utilities Not all IDL numerical library functions have corresponding functionality in Python Some numeric constructs not quite as consistent with language (or slightly less convenient than IDL) Array indexing convention “backwards” Small array performance slower No standard GUI run/debug tool Support for many widget systems (angst regarding which to choose) Current lack of function equivalent to SAVE/RESTORE in IDL matplotlib does not yet have equivalents for all IDL 2-D plotting capability (e.g., surface plots) Use of keyword arguments used as flags less convenient Plotting: comparatively immature, still much development going on missing some plot type (e.g., surface) 3-d capability requires VTK (though matplotlib has some basic 3-d capability)

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• Changing html <-> ajax <-> php/mysql to threaded approach

  - by Saif Bechan

  I have an application that needs to be updated real-time. There are various counters and other information that have to come from the database and the system needs to be up to date for the user. My approach now is just a normal ajax request every second to get the new values from the database. There is a JavaScript which loops every second getting the values trough ajax. This works fine but I think its very inefficient. The problem There is an ajax script that loops every second requesting data from php # On the server it has to load the PHP interpeter The PHP file has to get the data and format it correctly # PHP has to make a connection with the mysql database Work with the database(reads,never writes) Format the data so it can be send Send the data back to the browser # Close the database connection, and close the php interpeter Last the browser has to read these values and update the various html parts Now with this approach it has to load the interpreter and make a db connection every second. I was thinking of a way to make this more efficient, and maybe use a threaded approach to this. Threaded aprouch Do a post to the PHP when you enter the page and keep the connection alive In PHP only load the interpreter once, and make a connection to the DB ones Every second send an ajax response to the javascript listener The javascript listener than just changes values as the response from php arrives. I think this approach will be a great optimization to the server load and overall performance. But I can spot some weak point in the system and i need some help with these. Problems with the approach PHP execution time limit I don't think PHP is designed for such a setup. I know there is a time limit on php script execution. I don't know if an everlasting loop in PHP will cause any serious cpu/memory problems. Sending ajax request without breaking I don't know if it is possible to have just one ajax post action and have open and accepting data. user exists the page What will happen when the user exists the page and the PHP script is still going. Will it go on forever. security issues so far i can't think of any security issues. Almost every setup you use have some security issues. Maybe there are some with this solution I do not know of. Open to other solution I really want to change the setup as it is now and move to a threaded approach or better. If someone has a better approach to tackle this I definitely want to hear that. Maybe the usage of some other scripts is better suited for having an ongoing runtime. I only know php and java so any suggestions are welcome and I am willing to dig trough. I know there are things like perl, python etcetera that are used for this type of threaded but i don't know which one is best suited. When using other script If the best way is to go with other type of script like perl,python etcetera I do have some critera. The script has to be accessible via ajax post If it accepts some kind of json encode/decode it would be nice The script has to be able to access the session file This is essential because I need to know if the user is logged in The script has to be able to easily talk to MySQL All comments are welcome, and I hope this question is helpful to other also. Cheers!

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• A methology that allows for a single Java code base covering many different versions?

  - by Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen

  I work in a small shop where we have a LOT of legacy Cobol code and where a methology has been adopted to allow us to minimize forking and branching as much as possible. For a given release we have three levels: CORE - bottom layer, this code is common to all releases GROUP - optional code common to several customers. CUSTOMER - optional code specific for a single customer. When a program is needed, it is first searched for in CUSTOMER, then in GROUP and finally in CORE. A given application for us invokes many programs which all are looked for in this sequence (think exe files and PATH under Windows). We also have Java programs interacting with this legacy code, and as the core-group-customer lookup mehchanism does not lend it self easily to Java it has tended to grow in a CVS branch for each customer, requiring much too much maintainance. The Java part and the backend part tend to be developed in parallel. I have been assigned to figure out a way to make the two worlds meet. Essentially we want a Java enviornment which allows us to have a single code base with sources for each release, where we easily can select a group and a customer and work with the application as it goes for that customer, and then easily switch to another codeset and THAT customer. I was thinking of perhaps a scenario with an Eclipse project for each core, customer, and group and then use Project Sets to select those we need for a given scenario. The problem I cannot get my head about, is how we would create robust code in the CORE projects which will work regardless of which group and customer is selected. A Factory class which knows which sub class of a passed Class object to invoke instead of each and every new? Others must have had similar code base management problems. Anybody with experiences to share? EDIT: The conclusion to this problem above has been that CVS needs to be replaced with a source code management system better suited for dealing with many branches concurrently and the migration of source from one component to the other while keeping history. Inspired by the recent migration by slf4j and logback we are currently looking at git as it handles branches very well. We've considered subversion and mercurial too but git appears to be better for single location, multibranched projects. I've asked about Perforce in another question, but my personal inclination is towards open source solutions for something as crucial as this. EDIT: After some more pondering, we've found that our actual pain point is that we use branches in CVS, and that branches in CVS are the easiest to work with if you branch ALL files! The revised conclusion is that we can do this with CVS alone, by switching to a forest of java projects, each corresponding to one of the levels above, and use the Eclipse build paths to tie them together so each CUSTOMER version pulls in the appropriate GROUP and CORE project. We still want to switch to a better versioning system but this is so important a decision so we want to delay it as much as possible. EDIT: I now have a proof-of-concept implementation of the CORE-GROUP-CUSTOMER concept using Google Guice 2.0 - the @ImplementedBy tag is just what we need. I wonder what everybody else does? Using if's all over the place? EDIT: Now I also need this functionality for web applications. Guice was until the JSR-330 is in place. Anybody with versioning experience? EDIT: JSR-330/299 is now in place with the JEE6 reference implementation Weld based on JBoss Seam and I have reimplemented the proof-of-concept with Weld and can see that if we use @Alternative along with ... in beans.xml we can get the behaviour we desire. I.e. provide a new implementation for a given functionality in CORE without changing a bit in the CORE jars. Initial reading up on the Servlet 3.0 specification indicates that it may support the same functionality for web application resources (not code). We will now do initial testing on the real application.

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• What is "elegant" code?

  - by Breton

  I see a lot of lip service and talk about the most "elegant" way to do this or that. I think if you spend enough time programming you begin to obtain a sort of intuitive feel for what it is we call "elegance". But I'm curious. Even if we can look at a bit of code, and say instinctively "That's elegant", or "That's messy", I wonder if any of us really understands what that means. Is there a precise definition for this "elegance" we keep referring to? If there is, what is it? Now, what I mean by a precise definition, is a series of statements which can be used to derive questions about a peice of code, or a program as a whole, and determine objectively, or as objectively as possible, whether that code is "elegant" or not. May I assert, that perhaps no such definition exists, and it's all just personal preference. In this case, I ask you a slightly different question: Is there a better word for "elegance", or a better set of attributes to use for judging code quality that is perhaps more objective than merely appealing to individual intuition and taste? Perhaps code quality is a matter of taste, and the answer to both of my questions is "no". But I can't help but feel that we could be doing better than just expressing wishy washy feelings about our code quality. For example, user interface design is something that to a broad range of people looks for all the world like a field of study that oughtta be 100% subjective matter of taste. But this is shockingly and brutally not the case, and there are in fact many objective measures that can be applied to a user interface to determine its quality. A series of tests could be written to give a definitive and repeatable score to user interface quality. (See GOMS, for instance). Now, okay. is Elegance simply "code quality" or is it something more? Is it something that can be measured? Or is it a matter of taste? Does our profession have room for taste? Maybe I'm asking the wrong questions altogether. Help me out here. Bonus Round If there is such a thing as elegance in code, and that concept is useful, do you think that justifies classifying the field of programming as an "Art" capital A, or merely a "craft". Or is it just an engineering field populated by a bunch of wishful thinking humans? Consider this question in the light of your thoughts about the elegance question. Please note that there is a distinction between code which is considered "art" in itself, and code that was written merely in the service of creating an artful program. When I ask this question, I ask if the code itself justifies calling programming an art. Bounty Note I liked the answers to this question so much, I think I'd like to make a photographic essay book from it. Released as a free PDF, and published on some kind of on demand printing service of course, such as "zazz" or "tiggle" or "printley" or something . I'd like some more answers, please!

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• Making a non-trivial Image and Video Gallery with a really nice interface

  - by Cawas

  Short part: I'm starting to build an Image and Video Gallery for our intranet. It's pretty much like an image gallery with video thumbnails that play on click. It's just good to keep that in mind because caching and streaming happen in very different ways there. It will serve to browse our reference database, which will also contain searching, tagging and voting. There are 3 features that I need to begin with: Quick preview of thumbnails from each Gallery Fast zoom in / out Animated scrolling Now to the long part, since I can't seem to reduce this: I hope this question belongs here. Maybe people can read this through and identify with it, specially since I expect answers to be pretty specific. The first plan was getting Apple's mobile me gallery as base, because it just so happens to have all those 3 features. If you've never seem it, you should check it out. Move the mouse over each collection and you'll get a nice preview "per pixel". Carousel got a really good scrolling, not just because of the pretty effect. I like it much more than cooliris, but it would be nice to have it in several rows, maybe without the magnifying effect... Then it could be all in the same place with the zoom. The more the features blend-in together, the better. Zooming out with the mouse, scrolling by dragging, once the zoom is really out it becomes a browsing through galleries, with the quick-show preview of each, all properly cached and fast. That'd be perfect. A very compelling interface will be important in this project. Well, my point here is just describing what I need and hope to hear from people with more experience in all that stuff of what's already done and what I'd have to do myself. And how (i.e. which framework to use) to do it. To begin with, I've found a gallery demo and its source code (I think it was from here, but the link seems broken now). I guess it was made in SproutCore, which is what mobileme was based upon. Definitely with JQuery (which already seems a little slow). But I'm still missing two features there: the carousel and the fast zoom (it's just not as slow as the zoom in this demo with cappuccino). Then I've found a supposedly better one with a pretty good and similar zoom, that I'm not sure if it's using any framework and is already in php. Right now it'd be better having just the HTML, no server-side, since I'm building interface first. So, can anyone point directions? There are way too many options! Should I look for another solution closer to what I need, or try and tweak this one? I'm not familiar with any framework at all. Sorry for bringing this question that I will have to answer myself anyway sooner or later and sorry that I couldn't make this smaller. Thanks.

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• Create / build / generate a web form that can be on my server and has modern looks and could be impl

  - by Luay

  I have a small web site and would like to add a 'contact us' form and a 'feedback' form. i would like the forms to satisfy the following: 1- be modern looking (with beautiful css effects) 2- the form fields are validated properly and 'inline'. What I mean is once a user skips a required field or enters an email address incorrectly some kind of tooltip or icon is displayed to ask him to cerrect the error (as opposed to a message box that appears after the user clicks 'submit') 3- once the submit button is clicked the form contents are emailed to me. 4- the whole thing can be setup by a noob like myself. 5- no ads on the form I have been searching for at least 5 days for a solution but I can't seem to find anything the would satisfy the above 5 conditions. I don't mind paying for a solution as long as it is hosted on my site and it is a one off payment and not a monthly payment. So far my search has lead me to the following: 1 wufoo. The good: the generated forms seem to look okay but not the best there is. The bad: the free service is limited to 100 submissions. ads on the form. it is not hosted on my server. Paid service requires monthly payments 2- emailmeform: almost same as above except the generated form looks old. They do have an offer where you pay only $4 to get the form and set it up on your own site but that doesn't solve the fact that the forms look old. 3- formAssembly: same as above with minor variations (the generated form looks better) 4- formchamp, formthis, kontaktr,... And other similar online services: the same problem. either the form generated looks outdated or require monthly payments or they put ads...they don't satisfy my conditions. 5- coffeecup form builder. a desktop software. The problem is the generated forms look too old and use flash. 6- simfatic. Another software. Much better than coffeecup. almost satisfies my conditions but the forms not as good as I like. 7- many, many php scripts or html templates that look so outdated or fail when tested (probably because they are too old). Seriously guys, how hard is this. At least 90%+ of website contain at least a 'contact us' form. Why aren't there better solutions? if there is I can't seem to find them. In terms of looks I want something similar to this: http://web-kreation.com/articles/lightform-free-ajaxphp-contact-form/ It is called lightform. And this is a perfect example of what I mean by 'inline' validation. the only problem: there is no script to handle sending the mail. Even if I find one, I don't know how to modify it for my needs. So could you please help me out. I really can't search anymore. I reached rock bottom with this issue. I need a complete solution. If nothing exists then at least a: 1- form template (html) that looks nice and can easily be modified 2- a validation script that does 'inline' validation like the example above (or similar to it) and can be easily implemented by a noob like me to work with the html form. 3- a php script that will handle sending the email and can be easily implemented (all three working in harmony). I hope there is a complete solution but am I asking for too much? Pretty please...help...

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• Is this a reasonable way to handle getters/setters in a PHP class?

  - by Mark Biek

  I'm going to try something with the format of this question and I'm very open to suggestions about a better way to handle it. I didn't want to just dump a bunch of code in the question so I've posted the code for the class on refactormycode. base-class-for-easy-class-property-handling My thought was that people can either post code snippets here or make changes on refactormycode and post links back to their refactorings. I'll make upvotes and accept an answer (assuming there's a clear "winner") based on that. At any rate, on to the class itself: I see a lot of debate about getter/setter class methods and is it better to just access simple property variables directly or should every class have explicit get/set methods defined, blah blah blah. I like the idea of having explicit methods in case you have to add more logic later. Then you don't have to modify any code that uses the class. However I hate having a million functions that look like this: public function getFirstName() { return $this->firstName; } public function setFirstName($firstName) { return $this->firstName; } Now I'm sure I'm not the first person to do this (I'm hoping that there's a better way of doing it that someone can suggest to me). Basically, the PropertyHandler class has a __call magic method. Any methods that come through __call that start with "get" or "set" are then routed to functions that set or retrieve values into an associative array. The key into the array is the name of the calling method after get or set. So, if the method coming into __call is "getFirstName", the array key is "FirstName". I liked using __call because it will automatically take care of the case where the subclass already has a "getFirstName" method defined. My impression (and I may be wrong) is that the __get & __set magic methods don't do that. So here's an example of how it would work: class PropTest extends PropertyHandler { public function __construct() { parent::__construct(); } } $props = new PropTest(); $props->setFirstName("Mark"); echo $props->getFirstName(); Notice that PropTest doesn't actually have "setFirstName" or "getFirstName" methods and neither does PropertyHandler. All that's doing is manipulating array values. The other case would be where your subclass is already extending something else. Since you can't have true multiple inheritance in PHP, you can make your subclass have a PropertyHandler instance as a private variable. You have to add one more function but then things behave in exactly the same way. class PropTest2 { private $props; public function __construct() { $this->props = new PropertyHandler(); } public function __call($method, $arguments) { return $this->props->__call($method, $arguments); } } $props2 = new PropTest2(); $props2->setFirstName('Mark'); echo $props2->getFirstName(); Notice how the subclass has a __call method that just passes everything along to the PropertyHandler __call method. Another good argument against handling getters and setters this way is that it makes it really hard to document. In fact, it's basically impossible to use any sort of document generation tool since the explicit methods to be don't documented don't exist. I've pretty much abandoned this approach for now. It was an interesting learning exercise but I think it sacrifices too much clarity.

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• IIS7 Mixed Mode Authentication

  - by drachenstern

  We're getting ready to start migrating some of our IIS6 sites to IIS7, and the application currently uses Forms Authentication. We have started getting some requests from various sites to use the Windows Authentication for the users. While this is easy enough to implement (and I've shown internally that there is no issue with the app, as expected) the question then is how to continue to keep Forms authentication for when Integrated Windows doesn't work. I've seen several walkthroughs on how to have it configured on IIS6, and I could do the same thing on IIS7, but then I have to turn on Classic Mode processing. Any solution should also be back portable to IIS6, if possible, to keep the build tree simple. So what are my options on this? Do I setup the app with Integrated Windows Authentication in IIS7, Forms Auth in the web.config, and redirect 401 errors to an "error page" allowing them to login using forms, then back to the regular app? The case when Forms is likely to be needed is going to be reserved for Contract workers, our support staff, and if someone needs to access it on their site from their Extranet. So primarily it's for our staff to login to check functionality and confirm bug reports. I suggested we just maintain that for our support staff to work, we need a Windows login that will always be live, and then we'll just enforce local responsibility on who can login to the site, but I'm told that we would do better to have Forms Authentication. Any thoughts? I can post some of the links of the articles I've already read through if that would help the forum better narrow my needs. Many thanks. tl;dr: How to do mixed mode authentication (forms, windows) in IIS7 without changing to classic pipeline and still be able to use the build in IIS6 if possible.

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• Why does Mass Effect 1 run so slow on my machine if I have an XFX NVidia 9400GT video card? [closed]

  - by Papuccino1

  I so sick and tired of having my components pass the minimum requirements of a game and then I get 15 FPS on the game on everything low. Should't PC developers say 'use at least this video card for a smooth 30 FPS'? Here are my specs: Windows 7 2GB DDR2 RAM XFX Nvidia 9400gt Intel Pentium D Dual Core 2.8ghz I should be at LEAST getting 30 FPS on everything low right? Please tell me what I can do to make games run as they should, or is my video card not good for these games? Here are the recommended requirements from the official site: Recommended System Requirements for Mass Effect on the PC Operating System: Windows XP or Vista Processor: 2.6+GHZ Intel or 2.4+GHZ AMD Memory: 2 Gigabyte Ram Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX or higher. ATI X1800 XL series or higher Hard Drive Space: 12 Gigabytes Sound Card: DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card and drivers – 5.1 sound card recommended My videocard is 9400GT, how is that worse than a 7900GTX? :S Edit 2: I should note, that I get poor frames when running the game in absolute BOTTOM specs. lowest resolution, no particles, etc. etc. Absolute ZERO and getting poor framerates.

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

  - by dferraro

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

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• Windows Server 2008 R2, SQL Server 2008 R2, and Registry Backups

  - by charliedigital

  Hi folks! As a developer, I've installed various instances of SQL Sever (2000, 2005, 2008, R2) from all the ways back to 2003 and I've never had an install fail on me....until yesterday. I was installing SQL Server 2008 R2 onto a Windows Server 2008 R2 hosted virtual server and the install finished, but failed on every component. To make matters worse, it was in a state in which I could not uninstall it either, even using command line options! I dug around a bit, but didn't get very far with it. The error is enigmatic and Google didn't turn up much hope. So today, I am going to try again after having the VM image wiped overnight. My question is how can I guard against the same failure today? I don't mind if it fails, but then I know it may be something wrong with the base image I'm getting from the hosting company. I really don't feel like paying another $20 to wipe the VM and I have no idea why it failed. Is it enough for me to backup the registry so that I can restore it in case it fails? What about the installation files? Do I need to have a tool to clean that out, too? Sorry, I'm no sys admin so no real experience with backup/restore aside from System Restore! So any advice would be appreciated!

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• GWT carousel widget

  - by Nils

  Hello, I'm currently working on a GWT project, in which I need to use a "carousel" widget. The carousel widget is supposed to display pieces of information and 2 arrows - when the user clicks on one of the arrow, the content is moved with an animation and replaced with new content. I've been looking through the available widget libs, but the "carousel" widget does not seem to be that available. The only real candidate I found is the gwt-yui-carousel widget (see link below), but this seems to be an overload of ressources - though it does almost exactly what I need, but instead of displaying simple images, I'll have to display, in MVP terms, a view/presenter. Here is the widget running : http://gwt-yui-carousel.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/www/com.gwtyuicarousel.javascriptload.JavaScriptLoad/javascriptload.html (coming from here : http://code.google.com/p/gwt-yui-carousel/ ). Is there a better carousel widget available that I would not know of ? Or should I extend an existing one to create the desired effect ? Would you recommend to use the gwt-yui-carousel (I don't think so) ? If there is no better option, do you think that it would be a good idea to create the widget myself ? Note that I think that the key thing is, here, that I'll have to display presenter/views, which will fetch data in DataBase on arrow clicks and so on - so a customisation of an existing widget would be required, or the chosen widget should be able to display a list of GWT Widgets. Again I don't think that I can use one of the existing usual carousel widgets, since those are not "gwt-oriented" and could not support view/presenters and all this gwt stuff ;) Any answer would be greatly appreciated :) Best regards, Nils

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• Dynamically specify and change a Silverlight DataGrid's columns during runtime (MVVM)

  - by Biggert

  What's the best method of dynamically specifying DataGrid columns in the Silverlight DataGrid control at runtime following the MVVM pattern? What I'd like to do would be bind the "DataGrid.Columns" property to a property in my ViewModel so that, if the user adds/removes columns, I simply update the ViewModel property and the DataGrid would change. Problem is, the "DataGrid.Columns" property can't be bound to (I don't think). Because this property isn't available nor is the DataGrid control itself available at the ViewModel level, my current approach is to step outside of the MVVM pattern for this particular implementation and capture certain events in View's code-behind using MVVM Light's Messenger class and then talk directly with the DataGrid control to achieve this capability. I know this is a general statement to this approach without details but is there an easier way... or maybe not so much easier, but a better way that adheres to the MVVM pattern a little better? It's driving me crazy that the DataGrid control's Columns property can't be bound... seems like such a simple thing. FYI - Before it's suggested to use AutoGenerateColumns = True, the class being bound for each item in the collection that's bound to DataGrid.ItemsSource does not have individual properties to identify what is bound to the columns... it's a collection property that contains the columns in order to keep them completely dynamic so that particular path is out. Also, handling the AutoGeneratingColumns and using e.Cancel to show/hide columns is also iffy for this same reason (I think).

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• SHA512 vs. Blowfish and Bcrypt

  - by Chris

  I'm looking at hashing algorithms, but couldn't find an answer. Bcrypt uses Blowfish Blowfish is better than MD5 Q: but is Blowfish better than SHA512? Thanks.. Update: I want to clarify that I understand the difference between hashing and encryption. What prompted me to ask the question this way is this article, where the author refers to bcrypt as "adaptive hashing" http://chargen.matasano.com/chargen/2007/9/7/enough-with-the-rainbow-tables-what-you-need-to-know-about-s.html Since bcrypt is based on Blowfish, I was led to think that Blowfish is a hashing algorithm. If it's encryption as answers have pointed out, then seems to me like it shouldn't have a place in this article. What's worse is that he's concluding that bcrypt is the best. What's also confusing me now is that the phpass class (used for password hashing I believe) uses bcrypt (i.e. blowfish, i.e. encryption). Based on this new info you guys are telling me (blowfish is encryption), this class sounds wrong. Am I missing something?

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• asp.net MVC 1.0 and 2.0 currency model binding

  - by David Liddle

  I would like to create model binding functionality so a user can enter ',' '.' etc for currency values which bind to a double value of my ViewModel. I was able to do this in MVC 1.0 by creating a custom model binder, however since upgrading to MVC 2.0 this functionality no longer works. Does anyone have any ideas or better solutions for performing this functionality? A better solution would be to use some data annotation or custom attribute. public class MyViewModel { public double MyCurrencyValue { get; set; } } A preferred solution would be something like this... public class MyViewModel { [CurrencyAttribute] public double MyCurrencyValue { get; set; } } Below is my solution for model binding in MVC 1.0. public class MyCustomModelBinder : DefaultModelBinder { public override object BindModel(ControllerContext controllerContext, ModelBindingContext bindingContext) { object result = null; ValueProviderResult valueResult; bindingContext.ValueProvider.TryGetValue(bindingContext.ModelName, out valueResult); bindingContext.ModelState.SetModelValue(bindingContext.ModelName, valueResult); if (bindingContext.ModelType == typeof(double)) { string modelName = bindingContext.ModelName; string attemptedValue = bindingContext.ValueProvider[modelName].AttemptedValue; string wantedSeperator = NumberFormatInfo.CurrentInfo.NumberDecimalSeparator; string alternateSeperator = (wantedSeperator == "," ? "." : ","); try { result = double.Parse(attemptedValue, NumberStyles.Any); } catch (FormatException e) { bindingContext.ModelState.AddModelError(modelName, e); } } else { result = base.BindModel(controllerContext, bindingContext); } return result; } }

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• Any task-control algorithms programming practices?

  - by NumberFour

  Hi, I was just wondering if there's any field which concerns the task-control programming (or at least that's the way I call it). For a better explanation of task-control consider the following scenario: An application (master-thread) waits for a command - which might be a particular action or a set of actions the application should perform. When a command is received the master-thread creates a task (= spawns an independent thread which actually does the action) and adds a record in it's task-list - thus keeping track of the time of execution, thread handle, task priority...etc. The master-thread awaits for any other incoming commands while taking care of all the tasks - e.g: kills tasks running too long, prioritizes tasks with higher priorities, kills a task on a request of another task, limits the number of currently running tasks, allows task scheduling, cleans finished tasks (threads) and so on. The model is pretty similar to what we can see in OS dealing with running processes. Are there any good practices programming such task-models or is there some theoretical work done in this field? Maybe my question is too generalized, but at least I wanted to know whether there are any experiences working on such models or if there's a better approach. Thanks for any answers.

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• Synchronizing audio and video using MP4Box / ffmpeg to concatenate files

  - by jdl2003

  I have two H.264 encoded MPEG-4 files that I need to concatenate. I have been using MP4Box for this task by first ensuring the files are encoded identically (even went so far as to compare output from h264_parse on their video tracks) and then concatenating with this command: MP4Box -cat file1.mp4 -cat file2.mp4 output_file.mp4 This works and the output file is playable, but on playback in Quicktime or VLC the second video's audio starts too soon, making the entire second part of the concatenated file out of sync. I have tried reencoding the output through ffmpeg with -vcodec copy and -acodec copy but the sync issue persists. I have also tried converting to MPEG-2 format first, concatenating with a simple cat file1.mpg file2.mpg > output.mpg and reencoding the result with ffmpeg. This was even worse. I know that I can pass commands to MP4Box to adjust the start time of the audio track, but I am trying to do this programmatically for any input video (in the same encoding of course). I am looking for possible solutions that would not require human intervention / manual adjustments. Or, at least, an understanding of what is happening to make the second part of the concatenated video go out of sync.

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• How to HitTest in a WPF Grid Panel to find column index.

  - by John

  Hi. We need to create a "timeline" feature where a user is allowed to drag and draw "time spans" into a WPF grid (we thought this better than a Canvas since it has resizing capabilities). Each span spans multiple columns, but only one row. We utilize the PreviewMouseDown/Up/Move events to see when the user clicks, drags, and releases the mouse. On the "Down" we create a new rectangle and on the "Move" we resize the rectangle, settings its ColumnSpan property to the correct value every time the mouse enteres the next column. At this point the grid has 48 1-star-sized columns. How do we find out which column the user has clicked on? Right now we are unable to find the column using the VisualTreeHelper.HitTest function. We would like to position the rectangle correctly via Grid.SetColumn(rect, X) and then resize it as needed using Grid.SetColumnSpan(rect, Y) Has anyone done something like this before and can help us? Or, is there a better way to draw what we need? Thanks.

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• Arch Linux drops me on my school network.

  - by Kravlin

  I'm running a Lenovo X61 which i carry around my college for getting on the internet at various points in the day. The network has always been finicky but recently it's gotten worse. I'll connect using iwconfig, get an ip from dhcpcd and log in using vpnc to their system. Sometimes I'll stay connected for hours but most of the time within 30 seconds my network traffic will drop to zero and i'll be unable to do anything. My computer still belives it's connected, however to try again i need to put my wireless interface down, put it back up and try again. It's gotten so bad that i've got a window on my computer pinging yahoo or google constantly in order to know if i'm still able to get online. I know other people who have used Arch Linux that don't have the same problems as well as people who use Ubuntu who haven't had any problems either. It seems like my computer is a special case. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to fix it? dmesg doesn't show anything out of the ordinary going on and i don't know where else to look for errors or other things to try.

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