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• need some concrete examples on user stories, tasks and how they relate to functional and technical specifications

  - by gideon

  Little heads up, Im the only lonely dev building/planning/mocking my project as I go. Ive come up with a preview release that does only the core aspects of the system, with good business value and I've coded most of the UI as dirty throw-able mockups over nicely abstracted and very minimal base code. In the end I know quite well what my clients want on the whole. I can't take agile-ish cowboying anymore because Im completely dis-organized and have no paper plan and since my clients are happy, things are getting more complex with more features and ideas. So I started using and learning Agile & Scrum Here are my problems: I know what a functional spec is.(sample): Do all user stories and/or scenarios become part of the functional spec? I know what user stories and tasks are. Are these kinda user stories? I dont see any Business Value reason added to them. I made a mind map using freemind, I had problems like this: Actor : Finance Manager Can Add a Financial Plan into the system because well thats the point of it? What Business Value reason do I add for things like this? Example : A user needs to be able to add a blog article (in the blogger app) because..?? Its the point of a blogger app, it centers around that feature? How do I go into the finer details and system definitions: Actor: Finance Manager Action: Adds a finance plan. This adding is a complicated process with lots of steps. What User Story will describe what a finance plan in the system is ?? I can add it into the functional spec under definitions explaining what a finance plan is and how one needs to add it into the system, but how do I get to the backlog planning from there? Example: A Blog Article is mostly a textual document that can be written in rich text in the system. To add a blog article one must...... But how do you create backlog list/features out of this? Where are the user stories for what a blog article is and how one adds/removes it? Finally, I'm a little confused about the relations between functional specs and user stories. Will my spec contain user stories in them with UI mockups? Now will these user stories then branch out tasks which will make up something like a technical specification? Example : EditorUser Can add a blog article. Use XML to store blog article. Add a form to add blog. Add Windows Live Writer Support. That would be agile tasks but would that also be part of/or form the technical specs? Some concrete examples/answers of my questions would be nice!!

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• Per-pixel collision detection - why does XNA transform matrix return NaN when adding scaling?

  - by JasperS

  I looked at the TransformCollision sample on MSDN and added the Matrix.CreateTranslation part to a property in my collision detection code but I wanted to add scaling. The code works fine when I leave scaling commented out but when I add it and then do a Matrix.Invert() on the created translation matrix the result is NaN ({NaN,NaN,NaN},{NaN,NaN,NaN},...) Can anyone tell me why this is happening please? Here's the code from the sample: // Build the block's transform Matrix blockTransform = Matrix.CreateTranslation(new Vector3(-blockOrigin, 0.0f)) * // Matrix.CreateScale(block.Scale) * would go here Matrix.CreateRotationZ(blocks[i].Rotation) * Matrix.CreateTranslation(new Vector3(blocks[i].Position, 0.0f)); public static bool IntersectPixels( Matrix transformA, int widthA, int heightA, Color[] dataA, Matrix transformB, int widthB, int heightB, Color[] dataB) { // Calculate a matrix which transforms from A's local space into // world space and then into B's local space Matrix transformAToB = transformA * Matrix.Invert(transformB); // When a point moves in A's local space, it moves in B's local space with a // fixed direction and distance proportional to the movement in A. // This algorithm steps through A one pixel at a time along A's X and Y axes // Calculate the analogous steps in B: Vector2 stepX = Vector2.TransformNormal(Vector2.UnitX, transformAToB); Vector2 stepY = Vector2.TransformNormal(Vector2.UnitY, transformAToB); // Calculate the top left corner of A in B's local space // This variable will be reused to keep track of the start of each row Vector2 yPosInB = Vector2.Transform(Vector2.Zero, transformAToB); // For each row of pixels in A for (int yA = 0; yA < heightA; yA++) { // Start at the beginning of the row Vector2 posInB = yPosInB; // For each pixel in this row for (int xA = 0; xA < widthA; xA++) { // Round to the nearest pixel int xB = (int)Math.Round(posInB.X); int yB = (int)Math.Round(posInB.Y); // If the pixel lies within the bounds of B if (0 <= xB && xB < widthB && 0 <= yB && yB < heightB) { // Get the colors of the overlapping pixels Color colorA = dataA[xA + yA * widthA]; Color colorB = dataB[xB + yB * widthB]; // If both pixels are not completely transparent, if (colorA.A != 0 && colorB.A != 0) { // then an intersection has been found return true; } } // Move to the next pixel in the row posInB += stepX; } // Move to the next row yPosInB += stepY; } // No intersection found return false; }

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• Speaker Notes...

  - by wulfers

  At a .Net User Group meeting this week, I experienced two poorly prepared speakers floundering through presentations….  As a Lead Technologist at the company I work for, I have experience training technical staff and also giving presentations at code camps.  Here are a few guidelines for aspiring speakers you might find helpful…   1.       Do not stand in front of your audience and read your slides.  This is  offensive to your audience and not what they came for...  Your slides are there to reinforce the information you are presenting and to give the audience a little clarification on some terms you may use and as a visual aid for some complicated issues. 2.       Have someone review your presentation (slides, notes, …) who speaks the language you will be presenting in fluently.  Also record at least ten minutes of your presentation and have that same person review that.  One of the speakers this week used the word “Basically” fifty times in less than thirty minutes…  I started to flinch every time he used the term. 3.       Be Prepared  -  before the presentation begins.  Don’t make any last minute changes to your presentation or demo code the night before.  Don’t patch your laptop or demo servers the night before.  If possible create a virtual image that you only use for presentations and use that (refreshed before every presentation). 4.       Know the level of expertise of your audience.  Speaking above or below their abilities will make or break your presentation. 5.       Deliver what you promise. The presentation this week was supposed to be on BDD (Behavior Driven Develpment).  The presenter completely ran off track and 90% of the discussion was how his team mistakenly used TDD (Test Driven Development), and was unhappy with the results.  Based on his loss of focus we only heard a rushed 10 minute presentation on DBB which was a disservice to the audience. 6.       Practice your presentation with your own small team before you try this on a room full of people you don’t know.  A side benefit of doing this with your own team is that you can get candid feedback from your team and also get kudos for training your own team.  I find I can also turn my presentations into technical white papers and get a third benefit from the work I’ve put into a presentation. 7.       Sharpen your own saw.  Pick a topic that is fairly current.  Something you would like to learn about and would benefit your current career path. 8.       Have fun doing it.

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• Can I get a C++ Compiler to instantiate objects at compile time

  - by gam3

  I am writing some code that has a very large number of reasonably simple objects and I would like them the be created at compile time. I would think that a compiler would be able to do this, but I have not been able to figure out how. In C I could do the the following: #include <stdio.h> typedef struct data_s { int a; int b; char *c; } info; info list[] = { 1, 2, "a", 3, 4, "b", }; main() { int i; for (i = 0; i < sizeof(list)/sizeof(*list); i++) { printf("%d %s\n", i, list[i].c); } } Using #C++* each object has it constructor called rather than just being layed out in memory. #include <iostream> using std::cout; using std::endl; class Info { const int a; const int b; const char *c; public: Info(const int, const int, const char *); const int get_a() { return a; }; const int get_b() { return b; }; const char *get_c() const { return c; }; }; Info::Info(const int a, const int b, const char *c) : a(a), b(b), c(c) {}; Info list[] = { Info(1, 2, "a"), Info(3, 4, "b"), }; main() { for (int i = 0; i < sizeof(list)/sizeof(*list); i++) { cout << i << " " << list[i].get_c() << endl; } } I just don't see what information is not available for the compiler to completely instantiate these objects at compile time, so I assume I am missing something.

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• RTS Game Style Application [closed]

  - by Daniel Wynand van Wyk

  My question may seem somewhat odd, but I hope that my specifications will clarify EXACTLY what it is that I am after. I need some help choosing the right tooling for a particular endeavour. My background is in desktop application development and large back-end systems. I have worked primarily on the Microsoft stack using C# and the .Net framework. My goal is to develop a 2D, RTS style, interactive office simulation. The simulation will model various office spaces, office equipment, employees and their interactions with one another. The idea is to abstract the concept of an office completely. Under the hood the application will do many things that are nothing like a game. This includes P2P networking, VPN tunnelling, streaming video, instant messaging, document collaboration, remote screen sharing, file-sharing, virus scanning, VOIP, document scanning, faxing, emailing, distributed computing, content management and much more! A somewhat similar thing has been attempted by IBM, where they created a virtual office in second life. If their attempt was a game, the game-play would be notably horrible, to say the least! The users/players will drive and control my application through the various objects modelled in the simulation. A single application capable of performing all of these various tasks would be a nightmare to navigate for even the most expert user. Using the concept of a game, I can easily separate functionality by assigning them to objects that relate 1-1 with their real world counter-parts. This can greatly simplify computing for novice users, with many added benefits in terms of visibility, transparency of process and centralized configuration. My hope is to make complex computing tasks accessible to all kinds of users and to greatly reduce the cognitive load associated with using the many different utilities and applications inside office settings. The complexity is therefore limited to the complexity of the space in which you find yourself. I want the application to target as many platforms as possible and run on computers that have no accelerated graphics capabilities. The simulation won't contain any of the fancy eye-candy you find in modern games, to the contrary, my "game" will purposefully be clean and simple. The closest thing I could imagine would be an old game like "Theme Hospital" or the first instalment of "The Sims". All the content will be pre-created and not user-generated like Second Life. New functionality will be added via a plugin system. Given my background and nature of my "game", I would like to spend most of my time writing code that does not have to do with the simulated office, as the "game" is really just a glorified application menu. I have done much reading about existing engines, frameworks and tools. I need the help of an experienced game developer who has tried and tested various products over the years who can guide me in the right direction given my very particular needs. I would appreciate any help I can get!

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• How to get better at solving Dynamic programming problems

  - by newbie

  I recently came across this question: "You are given a boolean expression consisting of a string of the symbols 'true', 'false', 'and', 'or', and 'xor'. Count the number of ways to parenthesize the expression such that it will evaluate to true. For example, there is only 1 way to parenthesize 'true and false xor true' such that it evaluates to true." I knew it is a dynamic programming problem so i tried to come up with a solution on my own which is as follows. Suppose we have a expression as A.B.C.....D where '.' represents any of the operations and, or, xor and the capital letters represent true or false. Lets say the number of ways for this expression of size K to produce a true is N. when a new boolean value E is added to this expression there are 2 ways to parenthesize this new expression 1. ((A.B.C.....D).E) ie. with all possible parenthesizations of A.B.C.....D we add E at the end. 2. (A.B.C.(D.E)) ie. evaluate D.E first and then find the number of ways this expression of size K can produce true. suppose T[K] is the number of ways the expression with size K produces true then T[k]=val1+val2+val3 where val1,val2,val3 are calculated as follows. 1)when E is grouped with D. i)It does not change the value of D ii)it inverses the value of D in the first case val1=T[K]=N.( As this reduces to the initial A.B.C....D expression ). In the second case re-evaluate dp[K] with value of D reversed and that is val1. 2)when E is grouped with the whole expression. //val2 contains the number of 'true' E will produce with expressions which gave 'true' among all parenthesized instances of A.B.C.......D i) if true.E = true then val2 = N ii) if true.E = false then val2 = 0 //val3 contains the number of 'true' E will produce with expressions which gave 'false' among all parenthesized instances of A.B.C.......D iii) if false.E=true then val3=( 2^(K-2) - N ) = M ie. number of ways the expression with size K produces a false [ 2^(K-2) is the number of ways to parenthesize an expression of size K ]. iv) if false.E=false then val3 = 0 This is the basic idea i had in mind but when i checked for its solution http://people.csail.mit.edu/bdean/6.046/dp/dp_9.swf the approach there was completely different. Can someone tell me what am I doing wrong and how can i get better at solving DP so that I can come up with solutions like the one given above myself. Thanks in advance.

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• How to end a relationship with a client without pissing them off?

  - by thesam18888

  Here's my situation: I'm a freelancing student and I was working on a software project for a client over the summer holidays of 2010. At the time I completed the application, tested it on my machine, delivered it to the client and went back to University. However the client is not completely satisfied with the product and apparently has found a couple of bugs with it. Ever since I went back to Uni, they have been chasing me up and asking me to spend some time to fix the bugs. I have explained that this is simply not possible as I am extremely busy with my Uni work and cannot afford to spare my time for anything else. The client is getting increasingly pissed off and have been chasing me by calling during lectures at evenings and even asking me if I could go over to their place over the weekend to talk about this. This is in turn pissing me off as well because they're essentially asking me to give up my education so that I could help them out by fixing bugs. I go to Uni 5 days a week, 9-6 and feel it is unreasonable for them to call me during evenings and to ask me to work over weekends etc. I would like to end my relationship with this client but would like to do it amicably without pissing them off. How can I do this? I really wish they would just find someone else but I was charging them piss-poor rates so I think they don't want to go to anyone else because they would have to pay more. EDIT The application does not seem to work perfectly on their machine. I had tested it extensively on my machine and it seemed to work fine. I am not sure what exactly is causing it to not work. I was paid a very low amount and it was on an hourly basis. e.g. I would send an invoice saying I worked on this for x amount of hours and they would pay me for it. Apart from the work itself, I have not charged them for all the time spent sending e-mails back and forth, phone calls, visits to their place etc. I would really like to end all my dealings with this client right away.

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• The partition table is corrupt

  - by Tim

  I have a corrupt the partition table on the laptop that is running Ubunutu 10.4. Before the partition table was corrupt I had the following partitions: 2 primary partitions: 1st - NTFS 2nd - Extended 4 logical partitons that are built within 2nd extended: 1st NTFS (68 Gib) 2nd Linux (19 Gib) 3rd Swap (1.4 Gib) 4th Linux (24 Gib) The physical order of these partitions was the following: ( 4th Linux ) - ( 1st NTFS ) - ( 2nd Linux ) - ( 3rd Swap ) The logical order of the partition was different: ( 1st NTFS ) - ( 2nd Linux ) - ( 3rd Swap ) ( 4th Linux ) NTFS partition was big and it resided between 2 Linux partitions, neither of these partitions had enough space to install Oracle 11g. Therefore, I decided to a) either move the NTFS partion to the left or b) remove it completely and extend partition where Linux resides. As I tool I have chosen GParted. But unfortunately it was not able to move the partition because he found that in NTFS partition there are some blocks that are referenced multiple times. Also it was not able to remove the partition neither, because in this case the partitions that follow it ( 2nd Linux ) - ( 3rd Swap ) have to be in his opinion also removed, because the organization of extended partition is a linked list. Since GParted was not able to do such thing I was trying to find another tool. I found diskdrake tool on PSLinuxOS distribution of linux. That tool silently deleted ( 1st NTFS ) partition and I thought that everything was fine. But diskdrake has damaged the partition in a way that I am not able either to boot from the hard disk nor to see the partitions with GParted and even with diskdrake itself! Fortunately I have a live CD of Ubuntu 8.10 and I am able to boot and see hard disk. I have 2 ideas how I can solve the problem: 1) Manually change disk partitions and point them to the correct partitions. 2) Create partition table with GParted that as much as possible is the same with the previous one I find the 2nd approach less time consuming but some data will be lost because of it is not possible to place borders of the partitions exactly how it was before. And moreover I am not sure if such approach would work, for example, if the OS is able to locate files after repartitioning. I feel like that it will but not 100% sure. Are there some ideas how the problem may be solved?

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• I didn't mean to become a database developer, but now I am. Should I stop or try to get better?

  - by pretlow majette

  20 years ago I couldn't afford even a cheap POS program when I opened my first surf shop in the Virgin Islands. I bought a copy of Paradox (remember that?) in 1990 and spent months in a back room scratching out a POS application. Over many iterations, including a switch to Access (2000)/SQL Server (2003), I built a POS and backoffice solution that runs four stores with multiple cash registers, a warehouse and office. Until recently, all my stores were connected to the same LAN (in a small shopping center) and performance wasn't an issue. Now that we've opened a location in the States that's changed. Connecting to my local server via the internet has slowed that locations application to a crawl. This is partly due to the slow and crappy dsl service we have in the Virgin Islands, and partly due to my less-than-professional code and sql. With other far-away stores in the works, I need a better solution. I like my application. My staff knows it well, and I'm not inclined to take on the expense of a proper commercial solution. So where does that leave me? I should probably host my sql online to sidestep the slow dsl here. I think I can handle cleaning up my SQL querries to speed that up a bit. What about Access? My version seems so old, but I don't like the newer versions with the 'ribbon'. There are so many options... Should I be learning Visual Studio with an eye on moving completely to the web? Will my VBA skills help me at all there? I don't have the luxury of a year at the keyboard to figure it out anymore. What about dotnetnuke, sharepoint, or lightswitch? They all seem like possibilities, but even understanding their capabilities is daunting. I'm pretty deep into it, but maybe I should bail and hire a consultant or programmer. That sounds expensive tho, and there's no guarantee there either... Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Or, if anybody is interested in buying a small chain of surf shops...

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• Nvidia driver overscan issue second monitor via dvi-d cable

  - by benmichael

  Ok, I know that I have a bit of a bizarre setup, but here goes. I have an old laptop, HP Pavilion 6000. The graphics card in there is a GeForce 7150M. The monitor connection is an old 18pin. The external monitor I use is a Samsung SyncMaster 2333. Don't ask me why, but this monitor only has a dvi-d connection (yes, i have searched it). So I have the monitor plugged into the laptop. If I use any of the Nvidia propriety drivers and try to set the resolution up to 1920x1080 (the monitor's native resolution), I get a massive overscan issue. Over the years I have tried to get this to work, tinkering with my xorg.conf to death. I have also tried this on every Ubuntu since 10.04, on all the corresponding LUbuntus, and on all the Linux Mints since Lisa. Exact same issue. I have even tried it in WinDoze and it works perfectly there (although I did get the error once, but was unable to reproduce it). Using the Open Source drivers it works perfectly iff I switch off the laptop monitor (this makes no difference with the Nvidia drivers). I would have happily gone on using the Open Source drivers, except that since upgrading to LUbuntu 12.10, the Open Source drivers make my monitor completely hazy and have the same overscan issue until I (through the haze, only because I know where things are) go to the monitor settings, activate the laptop's monitor, then deactivate it, and suddenly it comes right. I have to do this every time. So I have to find a way to fix one of them, so I may as well tackle the propriety drivers, hence this overlong question. Amidst other things, I have tried the nvidia-settings, but because it is connected to an 18pin, it detects the monitor as a vga monitor and does not give me overscan correction options. I have tried custom modlines (although there are always more of those try), I have tried using xrandr, and I have tried all the FlatPanelOptions. What I have not tried is a Gentoo build, as I don't have time any more to do that installation, but up to about three years ago when I ran Gentoo exclusively I did not have this issue. Below is an link to an image with a red highlight around the portion of the screen visible to me, the numbers around it are the number of pixels which are cut off. This does seem to drift a few pixels every now and then. Thanks in advance. Nvidia driver issue image

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• IPS Package Groups

  - by Alan_Solaris_RE

  IPS group packages consist solely of dependencies on other packages that make up a logical grouping of software. These are similar to, but not the equivalent of, Solaris 10 metaclusters. The main difference is that metaclusters are nested subsets ranging from a minimal install to nearly all packages on the media. Group packages have no such hierarchy. They can overlap other groups, or be completely disjoint sets. A group dependency is set this way in an IPS package manifest file: depend fmri=full/pkg/name type=group Current Solaris Groups Solaris currently has 4 system groups defined. These are used for different types of installation, and are included in the xml manifest files used by the various Solaris installers: Package Name Summary Description Default Installation For:  group/system/solaris-desktop Oracle Solaris Desktop Provides an Oracle Solaris desktop environment Live Media  group/system/solaris-large-server Oracle Solaris Large Server Provides an Oracle Solaris large server environment Text Installer  group/system/solaris-small-server Oracle Solaris Small Server Provides a useful command-line Oracle Solaris environment  Zones  group/system/solaris-auto-install  Oracle Solaris Automated Installer Client  Provides an Oracle Solaris Automated Installer client  Automated Installer There are also several "feature" groups such as AMP and GNU Developer Tools. These are provided for convenience, but are not used directly by any installers. Retrieving Group Package Information A listing of all current groups can be found with the command: pkg info -r group/* A listing of all the packages in a group can be obtained with: pkg contents -o fmri -H -rt depend -a type=group groupname An example: $ pkg contents -o fmri -H -rt depend -a type=group solaris-desktop archiver/gnu-tar audio/audio-utilities codec/flac codec/libtheora codec/ogg-vorbis codec/speex communication/im/pidgin etc. You can determine which package group is currently installed on your system: $ pkg list group/system/\* Output would look like: NAME (PUBLISHER) VERSION IFO group/system/solaris-desktop 0.5.11-0.175.0.0.0.0.0 i-- Note that there are not version numbers associated with a group package dependency. The package version that best fits the system will be used, based on other dependencies such as what is listed in incorporation files. Installing a Group To Install a group, simple use the group package name as you would any other package: $ pkg install solaris-small-server  If you want to exclude a package from installing, you can use the --reject flag: $ pkg install --reject audio/audio-utilities solaris-desktop Creating Your Own Group To create your own group package, you can follow the pkg(5) documentation on how to create a package, and use this action for each package that is part of your group:   depend fmri=full/pkg/name type=group

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• Link instead of Attaching

  - by Daniel Moth

  With email storage not being an issue in many companies (I think I currently have 25GB of storage on my email account, I don’t even think about storage), this encourages bad behaviors such as liberally attaching office documents to emails instead of sharing a link to the document in SharePoint or SkyDrive or some file share etc. Attaching a file admittedly has its usage scenarios too, but it should not be the default. I thought I'd list the reasons why sharing a link can be better than attaching files directly. In no particular order: Better Review. It allows multiple recipients to review the file and their comments are aggregated into a single document. The alternative is everyone having to detach the document, add their comments, then send back to you, and then you have to collate. Wirth the alternative, you also potentially miss out on recipients reading comments from other recipients. Always up to date. The attachment becomes a fork instead of an always up to date document. For example, you send the email on Thursday, I only open it on Tuesday: between those days you could have made updates that now I am missing because you decided to share a link instead of an attachment. Better bookmarking. When I need to find that document you shared, you are forcing me to search through my email (I may not even be running outlook), instead of opening the link which I have bookmarked in my browser or my collection of links in my OneNote or from the recent/pinned links of the office app on my task bar, etc. Can control access. If someone accidentally or naively forwards your link to someone outside your group/org who you’d prefer not to have access to it, the location of the document can be protected with specific access control. Can add more recipients. If someone adds people to the email thread in outlook, your attachment doesn't get re-attached - instead, the person added is left without the attachment unless someone remembers to re-attach it. If it was a link, they are immediately caught up without further actions. Enable Discovery. If you put it on a share, I may be able to discover other cool stuff that lives alongside that document. Save on storage. So this doesn't apply to me given my opening statement, but if in your company you do have such limitations, attaching files eats up storage on all recipients accounts and will also get "lost" when those people archive email (and lose completely at some point if they follow the company retention policy). Like I said, attachments do have their place, but they should be an explicit choice for explicit reasons rather than the default. Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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• Crash when using Cocos2d

  - by ipodfreak0313

  Sorry about the poor question title, it's just that this seems to big for a title. So here's the dirt: I am making a game (obviously) and I want the enemies to shoot (not necessarily at the player). I want the shoot method to be in the Enemies file, so as not to clutter up my HelloWorldLayer.m file even more. Here's what I'm using right now: HelloWorldLayer.m -(void)addEnemy:(BigAndStrongEnemy *)enemy { enemy = nil; if((arc4random() % 4) == 3) { enemy = [BigAndStrongEnemy enemy]; } else { enemy = [SmallAndFastEnemy enemy]; } if(buffDude.position.y > character.position.y || buffDude.position.y < (character.position.y + 10)) { } int rand = arc4random() % 320; if((arc4random() % 2 == 1)) { [enemy setPosition:ccp(0,rand)]; }else{ [enemy setPosition:ccp(480,rand)]; } [self animateEnemy:enemy]; [self addChild:enemy]; } -(void)animateEnemy:(BigAndStrongEnemy *)enemy2 { float randX = arc4random() % 480; float randY = arc4random() % 320; int rand = arc4random() % 320; CGPoint moveToPoint = CGPointMake(randX, (randY - rand)); [enemies addObject:enemy2]; action = [CCSequence actions: [CCMoveBy actionWithDuration:1 position:ccpMult(ccpNormalize(ccpSub(moveToPoint, enemy2.position)), 75)], [CCMoveBy actionWithDuration:3 position:ccp(buffDude.position.x,buffDude.position.y)], nil]; CCCallFuncO *a = [CCCallFuncO actionWithTarget:self selector:(@selector(shoot:)) object:enemy2]; CCSequence *s = [CCSequence actions:action,a, nil]; CCRepeatForever *repeat = [CCRepeatForever actionWithAction:s]; [enemy2 runAction:repeat]; } And here's the Shoot info from the Enemies class: Enemies.m: -(void)shoot:(id)sender { self = (BigAndStrongEnemy *)sender; [self shoot]; } -(void)spriteMoveFinished:(id)sender { CCSprite *b = (CCSprite *)sender; [self removeChild:b cleanup:YES]; } -(void)shoot { self = [CCSprite spriteWithFile:@"bigAndStrongEnemy.gif"]; CCSprite *b = [CCSprite spriteWithFile:@"bullet.gif"]; b.position = ccp(self.position.x,self.position.y); b.tag = 2; [self addChild:b]; [bullets addObject:b]; CGSize winSize = [[CCDirector sharedDirector] winSize]; CGPoint point = CGPointMake((winSize.width - (winSize.width - self.position.x)),0); [b runAction:[CCSequence actions: [CCMoveBy actionWithDuration:0.5 position:point], [CCCallFuncN actionWithTarget:self selector:@selector(spriteMoveFinished:)], nil]]; } Every time the 3 seconds goes by, the app crashes, and goes to the breakpoint in the CCCallFuncO file. I haven't touched it, is the thing. I am completely confused. Any help is greatly appreciated.

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• Ubuntu 13.XX unable to mount USB HDD. Tried everything. I/O error boot sector/file system

  - by XaviGG

  I know that there are many posts related but none of them helped me. I will jump to the last test because it is the one that should work, but it does not. An external HDD with single partition slow NTFS formatted in Windows, empty and clean. Checked for errors, it tells that not errors where found. Moving to Ubutnu 13.04... Gparted throws the first error when trying to read the disk: Input/output error It appears as unknown the content of the disk. Unable to create partition table or format it, getting the same error when trying. If I try to mount it in the terminal it tells me the same, specifying that also there is an I/O error reading the boot sector. I have this problem since I upgraded (always with fresh install) to 13.04. I thought it will be solved by the 13.10 but it has the same behavior. I tried with two different HDD (HD and SSHD) that work perfectly in Windows 7. In 13.04 at least I got a trying of mounting where the icon of the drive started showing and disappearing until finally it disappeared. But now it doesn't even try. Possible causes: -The HDD was my old main HDD, so it had WIN,RECOVERY,SYSTEM,UBU,SWAP partitions. Maybe the way or place where the partition table is defined is not the best for an external HDD but I don't know a lot in that topic. I would appreciate a lot if someone can give me a guideline to convert one of these HDD in a working external HDD. No files to recover, nothing to care about. Just format completely the disk and be able to use it for storing backups without having to move the files first to the windows partition, load windows and then copy them to the external HDD. Because I want to use a file comparator for the backups. Thanks a lot Edit 1: I found an option in Windows to convert it to a dynamic HDD that warns me that I wont be able to run O.S. after changing. I suppose that is what I need because in the current mode I cannot safely extract it. But it tells me an error that it couldn't change the mode.

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• Attaching new animations onto skeleton via props, a good idea?

  - by Cardin

  I'm thinking of coding a game with an idea of mine. I've coded 2D games before, but I'm new to 3D programming, so I'd like to ask if this idea of mine is feasible or out of my depth. I'm making a game where there are many different characters for the player to choose from (JRPG style). So to save time, I have an idea of creating many different varied characters using a completely naked body mesh and animation skeleton, standardised across all characters. For example, by placing different hair, boots, armor props on the character mesh, new characters can be formed. Kinda like playing dress-up with a barbie doll. I'm thinking this can be done by having a bone on the prop that I can programmically attach to the main mesh. Also, I plan to have some props add new animations to the base skeleton, so equipping some particular props would give it new attack, damage, idle animations. This is because I can't expect the character to have the same swinging animation if he had a big sword or an axe. I think this might be possible if the prop has its own instance of the animation skeleton with just only the new animations, and parenting the base body mesh to this new skeleton. So all the base body mesh has are just the basic animations, other animations come from the props. My concerns are, 1) the props might not attach to the mesh properly and jitter a lot, 2) since prop and body are animated differently, the props and base mesh will cause visual artefacts, like the naked thighs showing through the pants when the character walks, 3) a custom pipeline have to be developed to export skeletons without mesh, and also to attach the base body mesh to a new skeleton during runtime in the game. So my question: are these features considered 'easy' to code? Or am I trying to do something few have ever succeeded with on their own? It feels like all these can be done given enough time and I know I definitely have to do a bit of bone matrix calculations, but I really don't want to drag out the development timeline unnecessarily from coding mathematically intense things or analyzing how to parse 3D export formats. I'm currently only at the Game Design stage, so if these features aren't a good idea, I can simply change the design of the game. (Unrelated to question) I could always, as last resort, have the characters have predetermined outfit and weapon selections so as to animate everything manually.

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• Moms on Mobile: Are They Way Ahead of You?

  - by Mike Stiles

  You may have no idea how much and how fast moms are embracing mobile. Of all the demographics that can be targeted by marketers, moms have always been at or near the top of the list. And why not? They’re running households, they’re all over town, they’re making buying decisions, and they’re influencing family and friends. They, out of necessity, become masters of efficiency and time management. So when a technology tool, like mobile, comes along that assists with that efficiency and time management, we would obviously expect them to take advantage of it. So if it’s obvious, why are so many big, sophisticated brands left choking on the dust of moms who have zoomed past them in the adoption of mobile, and social on mobile? Let’s break down some hard truths as presented by a Mojiava report: -Moms spend 6.1 hours per day on average on their smartphones – more than magazines, TV or radio. -46% took action after seeing a mobile ad. -51% self-identify as “addicted” to their smartphone. -Households with an income of $25K-$50K have about the same mobile penetration among moms as those with incomes of $50K-$75K. So mobile is regarded as a necessity for middle-class moms. -Even moms without smartphones spend 2.5 hours on average per day on some connected mobile device. -Of moms with such devices, 9.8% have an iPad, 9.5% a Kindle and 5.7% an iPod Touch. -Of tablet-owning moms, 97% bought something using their tablet in the last month. -31% spend over 10 hours per week on their tablet, but less than 2 hours per week on their PCs. -62% of connected moms use shopping apps. -46% want to get info on their mobile while in a store. -Half of connected moms use social on their mobile. And they’re engaged. 81% are brand fans, 86% post updates, and 84% comment. If women and moms are one of your primary targets and you find yourself with no strong social channels where content is driving engagement and relationship-building, with sites not optimized for mobile, or with no tablet or smartphone apps, you have been solidly left behind by your customers and prospects. And their adoption of mobile and social on mobile is only exponentially speeding up, not slowing down. How much sense does it make when your customer is ready to act on your mobile ad, wants to user your iPad app to buy something from you, wants to be your fan on Facebook, wants to get messages and deals from you while they’re in your store…but you’re completely absent? I’ll help you cheat on the test by giving you the answer…no sense at all. Catch up to momma.

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• Homepage issue on Google [closed]

  - by nico

  We have recently updated our website www.blinds4uk.co.uk with a new homepage containing additional features and more on page content but since then we have lost primary keyword positions and the home page has disappeared completely. The only time it appears is for an exact search ‘blinds4uk’. Today I took snippets of 'unique content' from the homepage and put this into the 'google search' but our homepage was nowhere to be found. When I did the same in ‘Yahoo’ the homepage came up. Are we missing something? We ranked in the top 4 for primary kw terms 'blinds uk' & 'uk blinds' but now we don’t show anywhere for these terms. Our homepage has never ranked well for the primary kw 'blinds' yet our internal pages rank very well with many pages on page 1 of google uk. We employed an SEO firm for 9 months to help us establish issues with the homepage but they never could, so we got rid. We have been trying to get to the root cause of why the homepage ranks so poorly for a number of years and only yesterday we established that we had the meta tag directly below the tag and our title & meta description were further down the page; we have today corrected. Not sure what effect this would have on the way Google reads the homepage but we are trying everything to try and get the homepage ranking fro those primary kw's. Our current developers & ex SEO guys are all part of the same company and cannot pin-point anything other than saying carryon with their SEO team because it will take time but just comes across as a milking exercise. Another thing which I have found very strange is the data from our 'traffic audience'. We are a UK based website yet our traffic stats were showing as;- UK 36.6%, Denmark 35.8% and India 27.6%. – don’t make sense to me! Is there anybody out there that could simply point us in the right direction to the problem(s), so we can fix once and for all? Could there be anything within the code that is causing the home page not to display within google for our primary kw's terms such as blinds, window blinds etc. I would appreciate any advice at all that may help us in our quest to sort this homepage issue once and for all

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• Complete Beginner to Game Programming and Unreal Engine 4, Looking For Advice [on hold]

  - by onemic

  I am currently a 2nd year programming student(Just finished my first year so I will be starting my second year in September) and have mainly learned C and C++ in my classes. In terms of what I know of C++, I know about general inheritance, polymorphism, overloading operators, iterators, a little bit about templates(only class and function templates) etc. but not of the more advanced topics like linked lists and other sequential containers(containers in general I guess), enumerations, most of the standard library(other than like strings and vectors), and probably a bunch of other stuff I dont even know about yet. I subscribed to Unreal Engine 4 as I was very intrigued by their Unreal Tournament announcement earlier this month, especially after hearing that UE4 is going completely C++. Of course my end goal in doing this programming program is to eventually go into game/graphics programming. Since it's my summer off, I thought what better way then to actually apply some of my skills to a personal project so I actually have a firmer understanding of C++ past what my professors tell me. My questions are this: What would be the best way to start off making a small personal game in UE4 as a project for the summer? What should I be aiming for, especially for someone that is still learning C++? Should I focus on making a simple 2D game rather than a 3D one to get started? Seeing the Flappy Chicken showcase intrigued me because before I thought the UE engine was pretty much pigeonholed into being for FPS games What should my expectations be going into UE4 and a game engine for the first time?(UE4 will be my first foray into making a game) What can I expect to gain from making things in UE4, in terms of making games and in terms of further fleshing out my knowledge of C++? Would you recommend I start off 100% using C++ for scripting or using the visual blueprints? Since I'm not a designer, how would I be able to add objects and designs to my game? For someone at my level is retaining the UE4 subscription worth it or is it better to cancel and resub when I learn enough about UE4 and C++? Lastly is there anything to be gained in terms of knowledge/insight through me looking at the source code for UE4? I opened it in VS2013, but noticed that most of the files were C# files and not cpp's. Thanks in advance for taking the time to answer.

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• All hail the Excel Queen

  - by Tim Dexter

  An excellent question this past week from dear ol Blighty; actually from Brian at Nextgen Clearing Ltd in the big smoke (London). Brian was developing an excel template and wanted to be able to reference the data fields multiple times inside the Excel template. Damn good question and I of course has some wacky solutions, from macros and cell referencing in Excel to pre-processing the data with an XSL stylesheet to copy the data multiple times so it could be referenced multiple times. All completely outlandish, enter our Queen of Excel, Shirley from the development team. Shirley is singlehandedly responsible for the Excel templates, I put her through six months of hell a few years back, with a host of Excel template requirements. She was more than up to the challenge and has developed some great features. One of those, is the ability to use the hidden XDO_METADATA sheet to map the data to custom named fields so they can be used multiple times in the template. So simple and very neat! Excel template and regular Excel users will know that you can only use the naming function once ie the names have to be unique across the workbook so you can not reuse a cell/group name. To get around this you can just come up with as many cell names as you want and map them in the XDO_METADATA sheet to the data columns/fields in your XML data set:. For example: XDO_?DEPTNO_SUMMARY?  <?DEPTNO?> XDO_?DNAME_SUMMARY?  <?DNAME?> XDO_GROUP_?G_D_DETAIL? <xsl:for-each-group select=".//G_D" group-by="./DEPTNO"> XDO_?DEPTNO_DETAIL? <?DEPTNO?> As you can see DEPTNO has been referenced twice and mapped to different named values in the left hand column. These values can then be used to name individual cells in the Excel template. You'll also notice a mix of Publisher <? ...?> and native XSL commands. So the world is your oyster on the mapping and the complexity you might need for calculations or string manipulation. Shirley has kindly built out a sample Excel template, data and result here so you can see how it all hangs together. the XDO_METADATA sheet is hidden, just right click on the sheet names and use the Unhide command to show it.

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• Fans running very fast on MacBook Pro 8.1 ubuntu 12.04

  - by Tomasz Kacprzak

  I installed Ubuntu 12.04 on Macbook Pro 8.1 and one of the first things I noticed was that the fans were starting to spin very fast every few minutes for 10-30 sec and then going back to normal. That was happening even without any processor load, when completely idle. The fans were usually spinning at 4000 RPM and made much noise. The computer was not getting hotter than usual. When running OSX Lion there was no noise at all, fans almost all the time at 2000 RPM. I spent some time on it and found out that Precise uses a deamon to control the temperature, called macfanctld. You can use /etc/macfanctld.conf to set the configuration. I found out that the high fan speed is not due to the fact that the temperature is getting hot, but because there are two sensors which indicate wrong numbers (you can check that using 'sensors' command ): TW0P: +129.0°C TCTD: +256.0°C TCFC: +0.0°C TMBS: +0.0°C or setting the macfanctld log level to 2: Speed: 4992, *AVG: 56.9C, TC0P: 50.2C, TG0P: 51.5C, Sensors: TB0T:34 TB1T:34 TB2T:33 TC0C:58 TC0D:56 TC0E:59 TC0F:60 TC0P:50 TC1C:58 TC2C:58 TC3C:58 TC4C:57 TCFC:0 TCGC:57 TCSA:53 TCTD:256 TG0D:52 TG0P:52 THSP:42 TM0S:64 TMBS:0 TP0P:54 TPCD:60 TW0P:129 Th1H:51 Th2H:48 Tm0P:40 Ts0P:32 Ts0S:43 Moreover, TCTD was randomly jumping from temperatures of 0 to 256, so this may be the reason for unjustified random fan speeds. macfanctld is taking an average of the sensors including the values above, so the actual AVG temp used to control the fans is wrong, usually biased up, hence high RPM and noise. The workaround solution is to use an option in the macfanctld.conf which allows to ignore the malfunctioning sensors: exclude: 13 16 21 24 After reboot the reported temperatures are usually normal and the fans are working at reasonable speeds. I tested the response of the fans to heavy processor load by asking MATLAB to invert 10000x10000 matrix and the AVG temperature jumped to 63deg, and the fan to max 6200 RPM and then got it back to normal temperature. So I think it is safe so far. There is a expired bug about the failing sensor readings: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/955538 which may be good to open again. My question would be: does anyone know what the failing sensors do and if there is any danger in excluding them? Maybe some better solution to this problem?

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• Understanding the levels of computing

  - by RParadox

  Sorry, for my confused question. I'm looking for some pointers. Up to now I have been working mostly with Java and Python on the application layer and I have only a vague understanding of operating systems and hardware. I want to understand much more about the lower levels of computing, but it gets really overwhelming somehow. At university I took a class about microprogramming, i.e. how processors get hard-wired to implement the ASM codes. Up to now I always thought I wouldn't get more done if learned more about the "low level". One question I have is: how is it even possible that hardware gets hidden almost completely from the developer? Is it accurate to say that the operating system is a software layer for the hardware? One small example: in programming I have never come across the need to understand what L2 or L3 Cache is. For the typical business application environment one almost never needs to understand assembler and the lower levels of computing, because nowadays there is a technology stack for almost anything. I guess the whole point of these lower levels is to provide an interface to higher levels. On the other hand I wonder how much influence the lower levels can have, for example this whole graphics computing thing. So, on the other hand, there is this theoretical computer science branch, which works on abstract computing models. However, I also rarely encountered situations, where I found it helpful thinking in the categories of complexity models, proof verification, etc. I sort of know, that there is a complexity class called NP, and that they are kind of impossible to solve for a big number of N. What I'm missing is a reference for a framework to think about these things. It seems to me, that there all kinds of different camps, who rarely interact. The last few weeks I have been reading about security issues. Here somehow, much of the different layers come together. Attacks and exploits almost always occur on the lower level, so in this case it is necessary to learn about the details of the OSI layers, the inner workings of an OS, etc.

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• Best system for creating a 2d racing track

  - by tesselode

  I am working a 2D racing game and I'm trying to figure out what is the best way to define the track. At the very least, I need to be able to create a closed circuit with any amount of turns at any angle, and I need vehicles to collide with the edges of the track. I also want the following things to be true if possible (but they are optional): The code is simple and free of funky workarounds and extras I can define all of the parts of the track (such as turns) relative to the previous parts I can predict the exact position of the road at a certain point (that way I can easily and cleanly make closed circuits) Here are my options: Use a set of points. This is my current system. I have a set of turns and width changes that the track is supposed to make over time. I have a point which I transform according to these instructions, and I place a point every 5 steps or so, depending on how precise I want the track to be. These points make up the track. The main problem with this is the discrepancy between the collisions and the way the track is drawn. I won't get into too much detail, but the picture below shows what is happening (although it is exaggerated a bit). The blue lines are what is drawn, the red lines are what the vehicle collides with. I could work around this, but I'd rather avoid funky workaround code. Beizer curves. These seem cool, but my first impression of them is that they'll be a little daunting to learn and are probably too complicated for my needs. Some other kind of curve? I have heard of some other kinds of curves; maybe those are more applicable. Use Box2D or another physics engine. Instead of defining the center of the track, I could use a physics engine to define shapes that make up the road. The downside to this, however, is that I have to put in a little more work to place the checkpoints. Something completely different. Basically, what is the simplest system for generating a race track that would allow me to create closed circuits cleanly, handle collisions, and not have a ton of weird code?

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• Separating logic and data in browser game

  - by Tesserex

  I've been thinking this over for days and I'm still not sure what to do. I'm trying to refactor a combat system in PHP (...sorry.) Here's what exists so far: There are two (so far) types of entities that can participate in combat. Let's just call them players and NPCs. Their data is already written pretty well. When involved in combat, these entities are wrapped with another object in the DB called a Combatant, which gives them information about the particular fight. They can be involved in multiple combats at once. I'm trying to write the logic engine for combat by having combatants injected into it. I want to be able to mock everything for testing. In order to separate logic and data, I want to have two interfaces / base classes, one being ICombatantData and the other ICombatantLogic. The two implementers of data will be one for the real objects stored in the database, and the other for my mock objects. I'm now running into uncertainties with designing the logic side of things. I can have one implementer for each of players and NPCs, but then I have an issue. A combatant needs to be able to return the entity that it wraps. Should this getter method be part of logic or data? I feel strongly that it should be in data, because the logic part is used for executing combat, and won't be available if someone is just looking up information about an upcoming fight. But the data classes only separate mock from DB, not player from NPC. If I try having two child classes of the DB data implementer, one for each entity type, then how do I architect that while keeping my mocks in the loop? Do I need some third interface like IEntityProvider that I inject into the data classes? Also with some of the ideas I've been considering, I feel like I'll have to put checks in place to make sure you don't mismatch things, like making the logic for an NPC accidentally wrap the data for a player. Does that make any sense? Is that a situation that would even be possible if the architecture is correct, or would the right design prohibit that completely so I don't need to check for it? If someone could help me just layout a class diagram or something for this it would help me a lot. Thanks. edit Also useful to note, the mock data class doesn't really need the Entity, since I'll just be specifying all the parameters like combat stats directly instead. So maybe that will affect the correct design.

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• Cannot install "ATI/AMD proprietary FGLRX graphics driver" (SystemError)

  - by Fisherman John

  I have just installed a fresh copy of 12.04.1 64bit. I formatted my PC completely and enabled updates during the installation. After the installation was complete, I went on updating my software. However, when I wanted to install the additional drivers using the Additional Drivers tool (namely "ATI/AMD proprietary FGLRX graphics driver"), it gave me this error: SystemError: E:Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages. The same error shows up if I try installing the post-release updates driver. Installing the drivers from the terminal results in this output: XXXXXX:~$ sudo apt-get install fglrx [sudo] password for XXXXX: Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable distribution that some required packages have not yet been created or been moved out of Incoming. The following information may help to resolve the situation: The following packages have unmet dependencies: fglrx : Depends: lib32gcc1 but it is not going to be installed Depends: libc6-i386 but it is not going to be installed E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages." I get this using "sudo apt-get update": http://pastebin.com/AWAtDXjY But "sudo apt-get install fglrx" still get me this error: http://pastebin.com/RYM55bVN & "sudo apt-get -f install fglrx" gives me this error: http://pastebin.com/xxekajvP Any help would be greatly appreciated. (Please note that I'm new to Linux, coming directly from Windows. I have tried Ubuntu twice or so before, but it was not for a long period of time. The drivers got installed smoothly the few times I've tried Ubuntu, but post-release updates never worked for me.) [I am going to work now, so I can only answer from my phone. Can't really test any new solutions you may give me until ~10 hours from now on. Maybe more.] @stonedsquirrel When I try to run that command, I get this error: "XXXXXX:~$ sudo apt-get install fglrx [sudo] password for XXXXX: Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable distribution that some required packages have not yet been created or been moved out of Incoming. The following information may help to resolve the situation: The following packages have unmet dependencies: fglrx : Depends: lib32gcc1 but it is not going to be installed Depends: libc6-i386 but it is not going to be installed E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages." ie. I get the same error. ( I am Fisherman John, dunno how to login & thereby respond to your comment again _ )

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• Taking a Projects Development to the Next Level

  - by user1745022

  I have been looking for some advice for a while on how to handle a project I am working on, but to no avail. I am pretty much on my fourth iteration of improving an "application" I am working on; the first two times were in Excel, the third Time in Access, and now in Visual Studio. The field is manufacturing. The basic idea is I am taking read-only data from a massive Sybase server, filtering it and creating much smaller tables in Access daily (using delete and append Queries) and then doing a bunch of stuff. More specifically, I use a series of queries to either combine data from multiple tables or group data in specific ways (aggregate functions), and then I place this data into a table (so I can sort and manipulate data using DAO.recordset and run multiple custom algorithms). This process is then repeated multiple times throughout the database until a set of relevant tables are created. Many times I will create a field in a query with a value such as 1.1 so that when I append it to a table I can store information in the field from the algorithms. So as the process continues the number of fields for the tables change. The overall application consists of 4 "back-end" databases linked together on a shared drive, with various output (either front-end access applications or Excel). So my question is is this how many data driven applications that solve problems essentially work? Each backend database is updated with fresh data daily and updating each takes around 10 seconds (for three) and 2 minutes(for 1). Project Objectives. I want/am moving to SQL Server soon. Front End will be a Web Application (I know basic web-development and like the administration flexibility) and visual-studio will be IDE with c#/.NET. Should these algorithms be run "inside the database," or using a series of C# functions on each server request. I know you're not supposed to store data in a database unless it is an actual data point, and in Access I have many columns that just hold calculations from algorithms in vba. The truth is, I have seen multiple professional Access applications, and have never seen one that has the complexity or does even close to what mine does (for better or worse). But I know some professional software applications are 1000 times better then mine. So Please Please Please give me a suggestion of some sort. I have been completely on my own and need some guidance on how to approach this project the right way.

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