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• Why don't windows of the same application behave as they should?

  - by Yuttadhammo

  Somewhere along the upgrade path, Unity has developed some strange logic behind window layering. First, before Oneiric, there was a way to see all the windows of an application - I think it was when you click on the icon in the launcher. Now, clicking on the icon often does nothing. Suppose I have two terminals open, one behind this Firefox window, and one in front of it. Clicking on the launcher does nothing - the only way to find the second terminal, afaics, is to move the Firefox window or use the task switcher. Secondly, once I have both terminals on top, then I decide to close one of them, suddenly they both disappear (the second one, for some reason, has gone into hiding behind the Firefox window). Third (though I can't pin it down now), sometimes when a window is on top, focus is still on a window in back; I click on the top x to close the window in front, only to find I've closed an important window in the back. (Update: this question details the problem) I can't really believe these are bugs, since they seem too obvious to not have been fixed by now. My question is, am I missing something? Some compiz option I can set to make it act like it used to? Or is this really how Unity is supposed to act?

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• Minimize Apps to the System Tray in Windows with MoveToTray

  - by Asian Angel

  Would you like an easy way to minimize apps to the System Tray in Windows and keep your Taskbar clear of clutter? Then all you need is the MoveToTray app to make it happen. MoveToTray does not require installation. Just double click on the exe file or create a shortcut to the app to activate it. When you see the icon for MoveToTray appear in the System Tray you are ready to minimize those apps. To minimize the active app window use the keyboard shortcut “Ctrl + Alt + M” and watch it instantly disappear to the System Tray. To maximize the window simply double click on the app’s icon in the System Tray. Sometimes an app’s regular icon will not display in the System Tray and a copy of MoveToTray’s icon will appear in its’ place (i.e. Paint.NET in our example). Note: There may occasionally be an app that will not minimize to the System Tray. Only one (CubicExplorer) would not minimize during our tests. Download MoveToTray at Softpedia View the Original Blog Post on MoveToTray HTG Explains: What’s the Difference Between the Windows 7 HomeGroups and XP-style Networking?Internet Explorer 9 Released: Here’s What You Need To KnowHTG Explains: How Does Email Work?

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• Java : 2D Collision Detection

  - by neko

  I'm been working on 2D rectangle collision for weeks and still cannot get this problem fixed. The problem I'm having is how to adjust a player to obstacles when it collides. I'm referencing this link. The player sometime does not get adjusted to obstacles. Also, it sometimes stuck in obstacle guy after colliding. Here, the player and the obstacle are inheriting super class Sprite I can detect collision between the two rectangles and the point by ; public Point getSpriteCollision(Sprite sprite, double newX, double newY) { // set each rectangle Rectangle spriteRectA = new Rectangle( (int)getPosX(), (int)getPosY(), getWidth(), getHeight()); Rectangle spriteRectB = new Rectangle( (int)sprite.getPosX(), (int)sprite.getPosY(), sprite.getWidth(), sprite.getHeight()); // if a sprite is colliding with the other sprite if (spriteRectA.intersects(spriteRectB)){ System.out.println("Colliding"); return new Point((int)getPosX(), (int)getPosY()); } return null; } and to adjust sprites after a collision: // Update the sprite's conditions public void update() { // only the player is moving for simplicity // collision detection on x-axis (just x-axis collision detection at this moment) double newX = x + vx; // calculate the x-coordinate of sprite move Point sprite = getSpriteCollision(map.getSprite().get(1), newX, y);// collision coordinates (x,y) if (sprite == null) { // if the player is no colliding with obstacle guy x = newX; // move } else { // if collided if (vx > 0) { // if the player was moving from left to right x = (sprite.x - vx); // this works but a bit strange } else if (vx < 0) { x = (sprite.x + vx); // there's something wrong with this too } } vx=0; y+=vy; vy=0; } I think there is something wrong in update() but cannot fix it. Now I only have a collision with the player and an obstacle guy but in future, I'm planning to have more of them and making them all collide with each other. What would be a good way to do it? Thanks in advance.

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• Creating a backup - Rsync - Connection refused (111)

  - by pablofiumara

  I am trying to create a backup of my website for free. I just want to have a backup of my website, including not only all files and the configuration but also the databases. I mean, a full backup. If it can be done automatically, it would be better. I feel there are better ways than using the cpanel to achieve that (actually, I believe sometimes web hosters does not have any cpanel). I read the following on how to do it: Automatically mirror the entire contents and configuration of your main server to a secondary backup server on a completely separate network in a different data centre. Use RSync, FXP, cPanel voodoo, or whatever method you wish to automate syncing. That is why I installed Rsync Daemon which is an alternative to SSH for remote backups. I configured it but the test went wrong. The terminal is showing me this: pablofiumara@pablofiumara-Lenovo-G470:~$ sudo rsync [email protected]::share [sudo] password for pablofiumara: rsync: failed to connect to pablofiumara.com (50.87.147.75): Connection refused (111) rsync error: error in socket IO (code 10) at clientserver.c(122) [Receiver=3.0.9] pablofiumara@pablofiumara-Lenovo-G470:~$ sudo rsync [email protected]::share failed to connect to 50.87.147.7 (50.87.147.7): Connection refused (111) rsync error: error in socket IO (code 10) at clientserver.c(122) [Receiver=3.0.9] What should I do? Is there a better or easier way to achieve what I wish (I mentioned this in the first paragraph)?

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• Ubuntu 12.04 Freezes at Bootup

  - by Ryan Yu

  I have an Acer Aspire One Model AO722, that has a dual-boot configuration with Windows 7 Home Premium and Ubuntu 12.04. Processor: AMD C-50, 1.00GHz 2.00GB ram, 64-bit, AMD Radeon HD 6250 Graphics. I installed Ubuntu two days ago, and since then, loading it has been sporadic. Windows 7 still loads just fine, but Ubuntu will sometimes freeze. First time I booted Ubuntu up, it ran no problem. Worked with it for half an hour, then shut down the computer. The second time I booted it up, it froze after ten minutes when I was trying to set up Thunderbird. Third time, same thing. Fourth time, it froze about 5 minutes after bootup when I was trying to connect to my wifi. Fifth time, it ran no problems for about 5~ hours. Then, three consecutive times I've restarted (what is it, the 6th, 7th, and 8th times?) it has gotten to the login screen, I've entered my password, all the text on the page disappears as if its going to load my desktop, and it freezes. A minute ago when I booted Ubuntu up for the 9th time, it loaded the desktop fine. Who knows if it'll crash soon; probably, though. Any ideas?

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• Suggestions for a Live chat software on websites for customer support?

  - by Munish Goyal

  Recommendations needed. We want to get in touch with customers via live chat. Requirements: chat window customisable to mingle with website theme (colors etc) preferably the window should be within webpage and not only pop-out/popup. ease of use by customer minimally intrusive should have triggers/Alerts to backend side. for ex: user is unable to fill-up signup form or something, we should be able to offer help to user and this chat window automatically shows to user. What is the cost ? UPDATE: After R&D we also narrowed down to comm100 and liveperson, and we will go with comm100. LP is best commerical soln. but comm100 is a good free soln. We go with comm100 as starting point. But it gives out exceptions alerts sometimes in the dashboard. Can it be configured for chat invitations triggered on certain conditions. Currently only a timebased trigger is available. Any other major difference between these two ?

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• Click buttons on the mouse stopped working in 12.10

  - by Kushal

  everything was great for a couple weeks after the upgrade, and then all of a sudden, the click buttons on my trackpad (as well as any other USB mouse I would hook up) stopped working. The pointer moves fine, but the clicks don't work. Sometimes the left click doesn't work but right click does, and then some times, neither works. I noticed this would begin when I would accidentally drag some text in a web browser (you know how when you try to move your pointer through the trackpad, but you accidentally tap down and it starts to drag whatever text you've selected on the window), and then you're done. The clicks won't work after that. They would work upon rebooting or logging off and back on, but then after a few minutes of usage, things would go back to being broken again. It happened a LOT when I was trying to play Scrabble on Facebook. I've raised a bug for this, but I haven't heard back anything on it. Here's the bug report: https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1077805 Since the system was unusable this way, I had to remove it and install another OS based on 12.04. Has anyone else faced this issue or does someone know what to do to fix it? I'd go back to vanilla Ubuntu in a heartbeat if this issue can be fixed.

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• How does one find out which application is associated with an indicator icon in Ubuntu 12.04?

  - by Amos Annoy

  It is trivial to do this in Ubuntu 10.04. The question is specific to Ubuntu 12.04. This has nothing to do (does it?) with right click. How can an indicator's icon in Ubuntu 12.04 be matched with the program responsible for it's manifestation on the top panel? A list of running applications can include all processes using System Monitor. How is the correct matching process found for an indicator? (the examination of SM points out a rather poignant factor in the faster depletion and shortened run time on battery - the ambient quiescent CPU rate in 12.04 is now well over 20% when previously it was well under 10% in 10.04, between 5% and 7%!) (I have a problem with the battery indicator - it sometimes has % and other times hh:mm - it is necessary to know the ap. & v. to get more info on controlling same. ditto: There are issues with other indicator aps.) Details from: How can I find Application Indicator ID's? suggests looking at: file:///usr/share/indicator-application/ordering-override.keyfile [Ordering Index Overrides] nm-applet=1 gnome-power-manager=2 ibus=3 gst-keyboard-xkb=4 gsd-keyboard-xkb=5 which solves the battery identification, and presumably nm is NetworkManager for the rf icon, but the envelope, blue tooth and speaker indicator aps. are still a mystery. (Also, the ordering is not correlated.) Mind you, it was simple in the past to simply right click to get the About option to find the ap. & v. info. browsing around and about: file:///usr/share/indicator-application/ordering-override.keyfile examined: file:///usr/share/indicators file:///usr/share/indicators/messages/applications/ ... perhaps?/presumably? the information sought may be buried in file:///usr/share/indicators

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• Use C2WTS to get a classic windows identity from a claims identity

  - by Sahil Malik

  SharePoint, WCF and Azure Trainings: more information I know you’re going to find this useful at some point. A lot of backend systems still demand classic windows identities, but everything we do now has moved to claims. So sometimes (albeit rare), we have to translate a claims identity into a classic windows identity. This is where the “Claims to Windows Token Service” comes into play. SharePoint 2010 and 2013 make use of this but you can use this in any .NET application. First of all, there are some basic requirements for this to work, First, you will need the string value of a UPN claim. Just a string value, really! This means you can also use FBA or anything else. The “proper” way to do this of course is that you must originate this from a AD backed claim. So a user authenticated using ADFS or similar would be perfect. Just remember that you must issue the UPN claim. Read full article ....

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• Space (and pipe sign) works on occasion only

  - by Timo Riikonen

  I have an issue that when I try to write pipe sign "|" and space after that, I sometimes get wrong type of space (\240) and my command fails. This issue persists on different shells. How could I fix this? I am using Finnish keyboard layout. timo@timo-i7-ubuntu:~$ ps -ef | grep ruby timo 7169 2633 0 12:12 pts/2 00:00:00 ruby1.9.1 /usr/local/bin/rails new admin4 timo 8736 26515 0 14:22 pts/4 00:00:00 grep --color=auto ruby timo@timo-i7-ubuntu:~$ ps -ef | grep ruby No command ' grep' found, did you mean: Command 'igrep' from package 'openimageio-tools' (universe) Command 'dgrep' from package 'debian-goodies' (main) Command 'rgrep' from package 'grep' (main) Command 'zgrep' from package 'gzip' (main) Command 'zgrep' from package 'zutils' (universe) Command 'sgrep' from package 'sgrep' (universe) Command 'lgrep' from package 'lv' (universe) Command 'egrep' from package 'grep' (main) Command 'ngrep' from package 'ngrep' (universe) Command 'grep' from package 'grep' (main) Command 'agrep' from package 'agrep' (multiverse) Command 'pgrep' from package 'procps' (main) Command 'xgrep' from package 'xgrep' (universe) Command 'vgrep' from package 'atfs' (universe) Command 'fgrep' from package 'grep' (main)  grep: command not found timo@timo-i7-ubuntu:~$ cat pipecom ps -ef | grep rails timo@timo-i7-ubuntu:~$ cat pipecom2 ps -ef | grep rails timo@timo-i7-ubuntu:~$ ./pipecom timo 7169 2633 0 12:12 pts/2 00:00:00 ruby1.9.1 /usr/local/bin/rails new admin4 timo 8777 8775 0 14:26 pts/4 00:00:00 grep rails timo@timo-i7-ubuntu:~$ ./pipecom2 ./pipecom2: line 1: $'\302\240grep': command not found timo@timo-i7-ubuntu:~$ diff -w pipecom pipecom2 1c1 < ps -ef | grep rails --- > ps -ef | grep rails

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• How to capture a Header or Trailer Count Value in a Flat File and Assign to a Variable

  - by Compudicted

  Recently I had several questions concerning how to process files that carry a header and trailer in them. Typically those files are a product of data extract from non Microsoft products e.g. Oracle database encompassing various tables data where every row starts with an identifier. For example such a file data record could look like: HDR,INTF_01,OUT,TEST,3/9/2011 11:23 B1,121156789,DATA TEST DATA,2011-03-09 10:00:00,Y,TEST 18 10:00:44,2011-07-18 10:00:44,Y B2,TEST DATA,2011-03-18 10:00:44,Y B3,LEG 1 TEST DATA,TRAN TEST,N B4,LEG 2 TEST DATA,TRAN TEST,Y FTR,4,TEST END,3/9/2011 11:27 A developer is normally able to break the records using a Conditional Split Transformation component by employing an expression similar to Output1 -- SUBSTRING(Output1,1,2) == "B1" and so on, but often a verification is required after this step to check if the number of data records read corresponds to the number specified in the trailer record of the file. This portion sometimes stumbles some people so I decided to share what I came up with. As an aside, I want to mention that the approach I use is slightly more portable than some others I saw because I use a separate DFT that can be copied and pasted into a new SSIS package designer surface or re-used within the same package again and it can survive several trailer/footer records (!). See how a ready DFT can look: The first step is to create a Flat File Connection Manager and make sure you get the row split into columns like this: After you are done with the Flat File connection, move onto adding an aggregate which is in use to simply assign a value to a variable (here the aggregate is used to handle the possibility of multiple footers/headers): The next step is adding a Script Transformation as destination that requires very little coding. First, some variable setup: and finally the code: As you can see it is important to place your code into the appropriate routine in the script, otherwise the end result may not be as expected. As the last step you would use the regular Script Component to compare the variable value obtained from the DFT above to a package variable value obtained say via a Row Count component to determine if the file being processed has the right number of rows.

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• When does implementing MVVM not make sense

  - by Kelly Sommers

  I am a big fan of various patterns and enjoy learning new ones all the time however I think with all the evangelism around popular patterns and anti-patterns sometimes this causes blind adoption. I think most things have individual pros and cons and it's important to educate what the cons are and when it doesn't make sense to make a particular choice. The pros are constantly advocated. "It depends" I think applies most times but the industry does a poor job at communicating what it depends ON. Also many patterns surfaced from inheriting values from previous patterns or have derivatives, which each one brings another set of pros and cons to the table. The sooner we are more aware of the trade off's of decisions we make in software architecture the sooner we make better decisions. This is my first challenge to the community. Even if you are a big fan of said pattern, I challenge you to discover the cons and when you shouldn't use it. Define when MVVM (Model-View-ViewModel) may not make sense in a particular piece of software and based on what reasons. MVVM has a set of pros and cons. Let's try to define them. GO! :)

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• Pandaboard crash on startup or freeze after minutes

  - by Meach

  I just received my Pandaboard ES (rev B) and I am having trouble after installing ubuntu-omap4-addons. Once I copied the image ubuntu-12.04-preinstalled-desktop-armhf+omap4.img on my sd card and boot the pandaboard with it, I run the following commands: sudo add-apt-repository ppa:tiomap-dev/release sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get dist-upgrade sudo apt-get install ubuntu-omap4-extras At the end of the installation of ubuntu-omap4-extras, Ubuntu tells me that a problem occurs when the console displays: ldconfig deferred processing now taking place Clicking on "report the problem" tell me that the problem concerns pvr-omap4-dkms. I read somewhere that this can happen and it is better to reinstall pvr-omap4-dkms. Which I am doing by running: sudo apt-get install --reinstall pvr-omap4-dkms I reboot. Then the board has sometimes difficulties to start Ubuntu: it freezes during the loading page, only action I can do is unplugging the board to start it again. Some other times, Ubuntu load successfully but then freeze at another random time, in the range 20 - 40 minutes. I searched on internet for similar bug and found this: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-ti-omap4/+bug/971091 So I typed this in: update-rc.d ondemand disable apt-get -y install cpufrequtils echo 'ENABLE="true" GOVERNOR="performance" MAX_SPEED="0" MIN_SPEED="0"' > /etc/default/cpufrequtils cpufreq-set -r -g performance reboot But it doesn't seems to fix the bug. Another detail: on startup, before the loading screen of Ubuntu (when there is the two penguins displayed :)), it shows this: [0.297271] CPU1: Unknown IPI message 0x1 [0.308990] omap_hwmod: mcpdm: _wait_target_ready error: -16 [0.354705] omap_mux_get_by_name: Could not find signal uart1_cts.uart1_cts [0.354766] omap_hwmod_mux_init: Could not allocate device mux entry [2.107086] thermal_get_slope:Getting slope is not supported for domain gpu [2.107116] thermal_get_offset:Getting offset is not supported for domain gpu [2.107299] stm_fw: vendor driver stm_ti1.0 registered [8.725555] OMAPRPC: Registration of OMAPRPC rpmsg service returned 0! debug=0 Any idea what can be wrong? I am not that good with Ubuntu so any help will be appreciated. Cheers! Meach

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• What can be the cause of new bugs appearing somewhere else when a known bug is solved?

  - by MainMa

  During a discussion, one of my colleagues told that he has some difficulties with his current project while trying to solve bugs. "When I solve one bug, something else stops working elsewhere", he said. I started to think about how this could happen, but can't figure it out. I have sometimes similar problems when I am too tired/sleepy to do the work correctly and to have an overall view of the part of the code I was working on. Here, the problem seems to be for a few days or weeks, and is not related to the focus of my colleague. I can also imagine this problem arising on a very large project, very badly managed, where teammates don't have any idea of who does what, and what effect on other's work can have a change they are doing. This is not the case here neither: it's a rather small project with only one developer. It can also be an issue with old, badly maintained and never documented codebase, where the only developers who can really imagine the consequences of a change had left the company years ago. Here, the project just started, and the developer doesn't use anyone's codebase. So what can be the cause of such issue on a fresh, small-size codebase written by a single developer who stays focused on his work? What may help? Unit tests (there are none)? Proper architecture (I'm pretty sure that the codebase has no architecture at all and was written with no preliminary thinking), requiring the whole refactoring? Pair programming? Something else?

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• external display in Ubuntu 13.04

  - by thuc2009

  I have had a look on series of similar topics but I could not find a right answer. Currently, I bought laptop Dell latitude E6530 and installed Ubuntu 13.04 (64 bit) alongside with Windows 7 (I could not get rid of it because of some special programs for work). Ubuntu worked well, however, it did not detect the external displays (Dell 23" and Dell 19") no matter I plugged them before or after booting. Edited: I connected my laptop to those external displays through a laptop dock. I went to Settings- Display, the displays were there, but when I enabled them, Ubuntu logged off automatically. No external display was detected. In addition, the laptop screen sometimes was detected as Dell 23" I got an advice from similar topic that nvidia driver should be updated to version 313 or 319. I upgraded driver and the unity launcher disappeared, main display resolution turned to 640*480 and none of external displays was detected. I tried to use additional drivers, but when I turned it on, it told me that there was no driver to be used. Could some one tell me what should I do ? Edited : options vmwgfx enable_fbdev=1

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• Collision detection with non-rectangular images

  - by Adam Smith

  I'm creating a game and I need to detect collisions between a character and some parts of the environment. Since my character's frames are taken from a sprite sheet with a transparent background, I'm wondering how I should go about detecting collisions between a wall and my character only if the colliding parts are non-transparent in both images. I thought about checking only if part of the rectangle the character is in touches the rectangle a tile is in and comparing the alpha channels, but then I have another choice to make... Either I test every single pixel against every single pixel in the other image and if one is true, I detect a collision. That would be terribly ineficient. The other option would be to keep a x,y position of the leftmost, rightmost, etc. non-transparent pixel of each image and compare those instead. The problem with this one might be that, for instance, the character's hand could be above a tile (so it would be in a transparent zone of the tile) but a pixel that is not the rightmost could touch part of the tile without being detected. Another problem would be that in different frames, the rightmost, leftmost, etc. pixels might not be at the same position. Should I not bother with that and just check the collisions on the rectangles? It would be simpler, but I'm afraid people.will feel that there are collisions sometimes that shouldn't happen.

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• apt-get update stuck on "Waiting for Headers"

  - by crasic

  I'm setting up a Maverick server on a spare PC. The install completes fine and the system boots up into the shell. However, when I try to do a apt-get update , apt hangs on almost every entry with the message 99% [Waiting for headers] sometimes a message of 96 b/s appears on the far right. The actual percent that it claims also varies. Searching around online gave a potential solution by using the option Acquire::http::Pipeline-Depth="0" this somewhat alleviates the problem, i.e. it stalls on every other entry with the same message as above. If you wait it out (the whole update took about 4 hours), the update still fails as a good portion of the hits show a "unable to connect" or similar message, despite the fact that I can ping the server from the pc just fine. The problem is also unrelated to the mirror used since I've tried about a dozen mirrors with no success, I've even tried commenting out everything but the main entry in sources.list and it still refuses to update. The network connection is fine since I can ping and wget (apt won't let me install lynx until I run a successful update) just fine. I've also reinstalled the distro with no luck. The only thing weird about the setup is that the PC is connecting to the internet through my windows laptop with ICS configured properly, but as I've said before, the network connection is fine.

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• How can I find which "command" corresponds to opening a gnome-panel menu, for use in a keyboard shortcut?

  - by Ryan Jendoubi

  There are many questions and answers here and around the web on setting basic keyboard shortcuts in GNOME. Most of them are either for launching applications, or Compiz settings, or for changing defaults for other things for which Ubuntu provides defaults shortcuts. What I want to know though is how to refer to a gnome-panel menu item in a custom keyboard shortcut. I'm using Ubuntu 11.10 with GNOME Classic, and the old GNOME 2 / Ubuntu 10.04 keyboard shortcuts for the main menus (Alt-F1) and the "Me Menu" (Super+S) don't seem to work. So my question is two-fold. Primarily I'd like to know how to set those shortcuts. But a second-order question is how I could have found this out myself: is there some program I can use to see what signals or commands are fired off when I click on various things, in this case gnome-panel menu items? I'm interested in the broader question because I've sometimes wanted to set shortcuts for specific menus or menu items in GNOME 2, so a way to find out what command I need there would be useful. Give a man a rod, as they say :-) I've had a look at a good lot of keyboard shortcut and menu related items here to no avail. One somewhat relevant question is this one, but it's just a "how do I do it" question, and applies to Unity, not GNOME, although it would be great if whatever investigatory method answers this question might also apply under different desktops, like Unity. The answer to this question is essentially how I was doing it in 10.04 / GNOME 2, although the questioner's query isn't exactly addressed - how to get directly to "Broadcast" with a key combination. Again, it would be great if an answer delving into how such menus work and how they interact with the rest of the system would be applicable to pinpoint menu items.

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• How to get Wifi Working Properly - I am Noob

  - by user287853

  I'm a noob to Ubuntu, but not computers. I installed a full version of Ubuntu version 12 whatever it is. I run it on a machine that has Win7/Win8 on another hard drive. My wireless adapter is some tiny USB stick I got on eBay - it works great in Windows, but I can't get it to work in Ubuntu. More precisely, Ubuntu is providing me a list (sometimes) of wireless networks in the area and when I try to connect to mine it just keeps password prompting me even though the one I use is correct. I looked over all the settings multiple times and don't believe there is anything in error regarding what it takes to connect to my network. So, I thought maybe it is a driver issue and came across NDIS. I thought I should try installing it, but I don't know how when I can't connect the Ubuntu machine to the Internet. I tried some commands to no avail. I have the Ubuntu installation disc and it shows a NDIS common and utils .deb files in there. Can someone out there help me out to get this wireless setup so I can get online?

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• Copy-and-Pasted Test Code: How Bad is This?

  - by joshin4colours

  My current job is mostly writing GUI test code for various applications that we work on. However, I find that I tend to copy and paste a lot of code within tests. The reason for this is that the areas I'm testing tend to be similar enough to need repetition but not quite similar enough to encapsulate code into methods or objects. I find that when I try to use classes or methods more extensively, tests become more cumbersome to maintain and sometimes outright difficult to write in the first place. Instead, I usually copy a big chunk of test code from one section and paste it to another, and make any minor changes I need. I don't use more structured ways of coding, such as using more OO-principles or functions. Do other coders feel this way when writing test code? Obviously I want to follow DRY and YAGNI principles, but I find that test code (automated test code for GUI testing anyway) can make these principles tough to follow. Or do I just need more coding practice and a better overall system of doing things? EDIT: The tool I'm using is SilkTest, which is in a proprietary language called 4Test. As well, these tests are mostly for Windows desktop applications, but I also have tested web apps using this setup as well.

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• How to focus on one topic? [closed]

  - by Brian

  I have a huge problem while reading computer books. Every couple pages I'll end up googling something I want to learn more about, but then I'll find something on that page that I'll want to learn more about and google that (sometimes programming related, sometime hardware related). Normally after wasting around 3 hours going into different subjects I'll return to the original text only to repeat the process a few pages later. Any advice for sticking to one subject and learning that in-depth? I have tons of programming books I've read half-way through since I'll become interested in other languages/topics (not that I'm not interested in the books I've started). Also, what would be worth focusing on in depth? I've gone into Python in the most depth but for classes I'm learning Java and assembly (ARM and Motorola 68000). Also, I've taken a class on C++. Lately I've been spending most of my time learning about Linux instead of programming though. I'm not sure what would be worth focusing on the most to get a job. In other words, how can you focus on one topic and not let curiosity about everything else get in the way? Thanks in advance, Brian

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• How to avoid to be employed by companies which are candidates to DailyWTF stories?

  - by MainMa

  I'm reading The Daily WTF archives and especially those stories about IT-related companies which have a completely wrong approach of software development, the job of a developer, etc. Some stories are totally horrible: a company don't have a local network for security reasons, another one has a source control server which can only be accessed by the manager, etc. Add to it all those stories about managers who don't know anything about their work and make stupid decisions without listening to anybody. The thing is that I don't see how to know if you will be employed by such company during an interview. Of course, sometimes, an interviewer tells weird things which gives you an idea that something goes very wrong with the company (in my case, the last manager said I should work 100% of my time through Remote Desktop, connected to on an old and slooooow machine, because "it avoids several people to modify the same source code"; maybe I should explain him what SVN is). But in most cases, you will be unable to get enough information during the interview to get the exact image of a company. So how to avoid being employed by this sort of companies? I thought about asking to see some documents like documentation guide or code style guidelines. The problem is that I live in France, and here, most of the companies don't have those documents at all, and in the rare cases where those documents exist, they are outdated, poorly written, never used, or do force you to make things that don't make any sense. I also thought about asking to see how programmers actually work. But seeing that they have dual screens or "late-modern-artsy-fartsy furnishings" doesn't mean that they don't have people making weird decisions, making it impossible to work there. Have you been in such situations? What have you tried? Have it worked?

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• I've been told that Exceptions should only be used in exceptional cases. How do I know if my case is exceptional?

  - by tieTYT

  My specific case here is that the user can pass in a string into the application, the application parses it and assigns it to structured objects. Sometimes the user may type in something invalid. For example, their input may describe a person but they may say their age is "apple". Correct behavior in that case is roll back the transaction and to tell the user an error occurred and they'll have to try again. There may be a requirement to report on every error we can find in the input, not just the first. In this case, I argued we should throw an exception. He disagreed, saying, "Exceptions should be exceptional: It's expected that the user may input invalid data, so this isn't an exceptional case" I didn't really know how to argue that point, because by definition of the word, he seems to be right. But, it's my understanding that this is why Exceptions were invented in the first place. It used to be you had to inspect the result to see if an error occurred. If you failed to check, bad things could happen without you noticing. Without exceptions every level of the stack needs to check the result of the methods they call and if a programmer forgets to check in one of these levels, the code could accidentally proceed and save invalid data (for example). Seems more error prone that way. Anyway, feel free to correct anything I've said here. My main question is if someone says Exceptions should be exceptional, how do I know if my case is exceptional?

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• What's wrong with cplusplus.com?

  - by Kerrek SB

  This is perhaps not a perfectly suitable forum for this question, but let me give it a shot, at the risk of being moved away. There are several references for the C++ standard library, including the invaluable ISO standard, MSDN, IBM, cppreference, and cplusplus. Personally, when writing C++ I need a reference that has quick random access, short load times and usage examples, and I've been finding cplusplus.com pretty useful. However, I've been hearing negative opinions about that website frequently here on SO, so I would like to get specific: What are the errors, misconceptions or bad pieces of advice given by cplusplus.com? What are the risks of using it to make coding decisions? Let me add this point: I want to be able to answer questions here on SO with accurate quotes of the standard, and thus I would like to post immediately-usable links, and cplusplus.com would have been my choice site were it not for this issue. Update: There have been many great responses, and I have seriously changed my view on cplusplus.com. I'd like to list a few choice results here; feel free to suggest more (and keep posting answers). As of June 29, 2011: Incorrect description of some algorithms (e.g. remove). Information about the behaviour of functions is sometimes incorrect (atoi), fails to mention special cases (strncpy), or omits vital information (iterator invalidation). Examples contain deprecated code (#include style). Inexact terminology is doing a disservice to learners and the general community ("STL", "compiler" vs "toolchain"). Incorrect and misleading description of the typeid keyword.

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• Are long methods always bad?

  - by wobbily_col

  So looking around earlier I noticed some comments about long methods being bad practice. I am not sure I always agree that long methods are bad (and would like opinions from others). For example I have some Django views that do a bit of processing of the objects before sending them to the view, a long method being 350 lines of code. I have my code written so that it deals with the paramaters - sorting / filtering the queryset, then bit by bit does some processing on the objects my query has returned. So the processing is mainly conditional aggregation, that has complex enough rules it can't easily be done in the database, so I have some variables declared outside the main loop then get altered during the loop. varaible_1 = 0 variable_2 = 0 for object in queryset : if object.condition_condition_a and variable_2 > 0 : variable 1+= 1 ..... ... . more conditions to alter the variables return queryset, and context So according to the theory I should factor out all the code into smaller methods, so That I have the view method as being maximum one page long. However having worked on various code bases in the past, I sometimes find it makes the code less readable, when you need to constantly jump from one method to the next figuring out all the parts of it, while keeping the outermost method in your head. I find that having a long method that is well formatted, you can see the logic more easily, as it isn't getting hidden away in inner methods. I could factor out the code into smaller methods, but often there is is an inner loop being used for two or three things, so it would result in more complex code, or methods that don't do one thing but two or three (alternatively I could repeat inner loops for each task, but then there will be a performance hit). So is there a case that long methods are not always bad? Is there always a case for writing methods, when they will only be used in one place?

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