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• XNA Notes 001

  - by George Clingerman

  Just a quick recap of things I noticed going on in or around the XNA community this past week. I’m sure there’s a lot I missed (it’s a pretty big community with lots of different parts to it) but these where the things I caught that I thought were pretty cool. The XNA Team Michael Klucher gave a list of books every gamer should read. http://twitter.com/#!/mklucher/status/22313041135673344 Shawn Hargreaves posted Nelxon Studio posting about a cheatsheet for converting 3.1 to 4.0 http://blogs.msdn.com/b/shawnhar/archive/2011/01/04/xna-3-1-to-4-0-cheat-sheet.aspx?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter XNA Game Studio won the Frontline award for Programming Tool by GameDev magazine! Congrats to the XNA team! http://www.gdmag.com/homepage.htm XNA MVPs In January several MVPs were up for re-election, Jim Perry, Andy ‘The ZMan’ Dunn, Glenn Wilson and myself were all re-award a Microsoft MVP award for their contributions to the XNA/DirectX communities. https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/communities/mvp.aspx?product=1&competency=XNA%2fDirectX A movement to get Michael McLaughlin an MVP award has started and you can join in too! http://twitter.com/#!/theBigDaddio/status/22744458621620224 http://www.xnadevelopment.com/MVP/MichaelMcLaughlinMVP.txt Don’t forget you can nominate ANYONE for a MVP award, that’s how they work. https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/gp/mvpbecoming  XNA Developers James Silva of Ska Studios hit 9,200 sales of ZP2KX and recommends you listen to Infected Mushroom. http://twitter.com/#!/Jamezila/status/22538865357094912 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infected_Mushroom Noogy creator of the upcoming XBLA title Dust an Elysian tail posts some details into his art creation. http://noogy.com/image/statue/statue.html Xbox LIVE Indie Game News Microsoft posts acknowledging there was an issue with the sales data that has been addressed and apologized for not posting about it sooner. http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/71347/436154.aspx#436154 Winter Uprising sales still chugging along and being updated by Xalterax (by those developers willing to actually share sales numbers. Thanks for sharing guys, much appreciated!) http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/t/70147.aspx Don’t forget about Dream Build Play coming up in February! http://www.dreambuildplay.com/Main/Home.aspx The Best Xbox LIVE Indie Games December Edition comes out on NeoGaf http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=414485 The Greatest XBox LIVE Indie Games of 2010 on DealSpwn – Congrats to DrMistry and MStarGames for his #1 spot with his massive XBLIG Space Pirates From Tomorrow! http://www.dealspwn.com/xbligoty-2010/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Dealspwn+%28Dealspwn%29 XNA Game Development The future of XACT and WP7 has finally been confirmed and we finally know what our options are for looping audio seamlessly on WP7. http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/61826/436639.aspx#436639  Super Mario 3 Design Notes is an interesting read for XBLIG developers, giving some insight to the training that natural occurs for players as they start playing the game. Good things for XBLIG developers to think about. http://www.significant-bits.com/super-mario-bros-3-level-design-lessons

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• Win7 is not a tablet OS, no matter what the boys in Redmond think.

  - by John Conwell

  Despite what execs at Microsoft think, Windows 7 is NOT a tablet OS.  Just because you can install some software (or OS) on a device, doesn't mean that device is meant to run that software.  This seems to be the step that the non-engineer execs at Microsoft have seem to not understood.  In order to seamlessly work with a device, the software needs to be designed with that device in mind.  That has been the problem with the Windows PDA platform, the Windows Mobil platform, and now with trying to force fit Windows 7 on a tablet.  Its just not designed for that style of interaction.   Windows is designed to be interacted with via a mouse and keyboard.  In fact, it is brilliant at that.  But, It is NOT designed to be interacted with by your fingers.  And that is why the Windows tablet failed 10 years ago, and why it will fail today.  Its not the hardware's fault like Microsoft claimed 10 years ago.  Its the User Interaction design that failed. And this is why the iPhone and Android OS's work wonderfully on a tablet.  The user interaction was designed for small screens, navigated by big fat fingers.  I love these OS's and how I interact with them.  And when I play with a touch screen Windows 7 device, I am feel like I'm playing with a brittle wana-be.  And its not the hardware's fault.  The touchscreen is very responsive.  I actually like the hardware.  But the OS and the software are just not designed to be interacted with, with my big fat fingers.  In order to be successful, Microsoft needs to start from scratch, and build a platform AND SOFTWARE specifically for use by fingers.  Thats why everyone was so excited when they though Microsoft was going to release the Courier tablet.  Because it looked like a totally different platform.  Something that might actually work.  But Windows 7...I hate to burst your bubble, but you are not a touch platform.

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• Playing a video logs me out

  - by Kartick Vaddadi

  When I try to play a video in vlc, totem or banshee, it immediately logs me out. Sometimes this happens when I try to full screen the video. This seems to happen only after upgrading to ubuntu 11, and happens for multiple kinds of files, like avi and m4v. The motherboard is Asus a8v-mx. Please help me fix my ubuntu installation. Thanks. Here are the relevant entries from syslog: 21:12:27 enlightenment kernel: [ 488.157457] powernow-k8: Hardware error - pending bit very stuck - no further pstate changes possible May 1 21:12:27 enlightenment kernel: [ 488.158634] powernow-k8: transition frequency failed May 1 21:12:27 enlightenment kernel: [ 488.264015] powernow-k8: failing targ, change pending bit set May 1 21:12:27 enlightenment kernel: [ 488.306466] agpgart-amd64 0000:00:00.0: AGP 3.0 bridge May 1 21:12:27 enlightenment kernel: [ 488.306489] agpgart-amd64 0000:00:00.0: putting AGP V3 device into 8x mode May 1 21:12:27 enlightenment kernel: [ 488.306562] pci 0000:01:00.0: putting AGP V3 device into 8x mode May 1 21:12:27 enlightenment kernel: [ 488.372044] powernow-k8: error - out of sync, fix 0x2 0xa, vid 0x4 0x4 May 1 21:12:27 enlightenment kernel: [ 488.372055] powernow-k8: ph2 null fid transition 0xa May 1 21:12:30 enlightenment rtkit-daemon[1304]: Successfully made thread 1987 of process 1987 (n/a) owned by '105' high priority at nice level -11. May 1 21:12:30 enlightenment rtkit-daemon[1304]: Supervising 1 threads of 1 processes of 1 users. May 1 21:12:30 enlightenment rtkit-daemon[1304]: Successfully made thread 1988 of process 1987 (n/a) owned by '105' RT at priority 5. May 1 21:12:30 enlightenment rtkit-daemon[1304]: Supervising 2 threads of 1 processes of 1 users. May 1 21:12:30 enlightenment rtkit-daemon[1304]: Successfully made thread 1989 of process 1987 (n/a) owned by '105' RT at priority 5. May 1 21:12:30 enlightenment rtkit-daemon[1304]: Supervising 3 threads of 1 processes of 1 users. May 1 21:12:32 enlightenment gdm-simple-greeter[1975]: Gtk-WARNING: /build/buildd/gtk+2.0-2.24.4/gtk/gtkwidget.c:5687: widget not within a GtkWindow May 1 21:12:32 enlightenment gdm-simple-greeter[1975]: WARNING: Unable to load CK history: no seat-id found May 1 21:12:34 enlightenment gdm-session-worker[1978]: GLib-GObject-CRITICAL: g_value_get_boolean: assertion `G_VALUE_HOLDS_BOOLEAN (value)' failed May 1 21:12:38 enlightenment gdm-session-worker[1978]: pam_sm_authenticate: Called May 1 21:12:38 enlightenment gdm-session-worker[1978]: pam_sm_authenticate: username = [rama] May 1 21:12:39 enlightenment rtkit-daemon[1304]: Successfully made thread 2108 of process 2108 (n/a) owned by '1000' high priority at nice level -11. May 1 21:12:39 enlightenment rtkit-daemon[1304]: Supervising 4 threads of 2 processes of 2 users. May 1 21:12:39 enlightenment pulseaudio[2108]: pid.c: Stale PID file, overwriting. May 1 21:12:39 enlightenment rtkit-daemon[1304]: Successfully made thread 2111 of process 2108 (n/a) owned by '1000' RT at priority 5. May 1 21:12:39 enlightenment rtkit-daemon[1304]: Supervising 5 threads of 2 processes of 2 users. May 1 21:12:39 enlightenment rtkit-daemon[1304]: Successfully made thread 2112 of process 2

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• Internships available in Oracle Netherlands - this summer

  - by jessica.ebbelaar

  I am Jannie Minnema, Director of Business Operations for Oracle in the Benelux. My career at Oracle started at Oracle Headquartes in San Francisco as a Project Manager, building Computer Based Training Products. After spending 3 years in Dubai, my husband and I moved to the USA as he wanted to study a MBA there. This move kick started my career as I was working in Silicon Valley during a time of great opportunity. After the USA, I fulfilled numerous roles at Oracle ranging from Project Management to Sales and Marketing. I currently work in the Netherlands were I am now Director of Business Operations for Oracle in the Benelux and a member of the Dutch Management Team. Business Operations advises the Benelux Management Team and focuses on topics such as Corporate Social Responsibility, Customer Satisfaction, Internal Communication, Internal training and effective usage of Sales Tools and Systems. We are currently also working on how best to introduce a “New way of Working”. The move to our new office building in 2011 aides in creating the right environment for this. Our goal is to continually improve the organisation. I enjoy working for Oracle because there is never a dull moment, and I am continuously challenged to improve. The environment that I work in changes constantly. Look at all the recent acquisitions; over 60 in the past 3 years! If you, as an Oracle employee, see something that can be done better, like a new service or tool, then combine it with some enthusiasm, motivate it further and the (Oracle) world changes! Internships This summer we have a number of Internships available, coordinated by the Business Operations team. We very much look forward to welcoming Students in our Dutch office. We look at it as an opportunity for both Oracle and the Interns to learn from each other. It will definitely result in both parties improving, growing and achieving results! We offer Internships related to Sales, Marketing and New Technology. You can find the assignments here. During the Internship you will experience what is like to work for an international and dynamic company, where we work and play hard. Our customers are major Dutch companies and our employees are professionals that compare working at Oracle with playing a Soccer World Cup final. We offer several Internships at the same time, so you will learn and share your experiences with a group of fellow students. If you have any questions related to this article feel free to contact [email protected].  You can find our job opportunities via http://campus.oracle.com

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• "sr0" I/O read boot error in Xubuntu 12.10

  - by Entropicurity

  Just recently upgraded Xubuntu 12.10 after having installed 12.04 originally. Ever since that happened, any time I inserted a disk into my DVD/CD reader/writer I would end up getting a number of error messages from my DVD player/Audio player softer, typically with any of them either crashing or returning a GStreamer backend error. So doing some research I tried to mount it manually, and it typically returned the error messages you'll see below: (using the dmesg | grep "sr0" command) [17545.435584] end_request: I/O error, dev sr0, sector 0 [17545.492968] sr 3:0:0:0: >[sr0] [17545.492981] sr 3:0:0:0: >[sr0] [17545.492992] sr 3:0:0:0: >[sr0] [17545.493003] sr 3:0:0:0: >[sr0] CDB: [17545.493020] end_request: I/O error, dev sr0, sector 0 [17545.493058] EXT3-fs (sr0): error: unable to read superblock [17545.553224] sr 3:0:0:0: >[sr0] [17545.553237] sr 3:0:0:0: >[sr0] [17545.553247] sr 3:0:0:0: >[sr0] [17545.553258] sr 3:0:0:0: >[sr0] CDB: [17545.553275] end_request: I/O error, dev sr0, sector 0 [17545.553312] EXT4-fs (sr0): unable to read superblock [17545.611482] sr 3:0:0:0: >[sr0] [17545.611494] sr 3:0:0:0: >[sr0] [17545.611504] sr 3:0:0:0: >[sr0] [17545.611514] sr 3:0:0:0: >[sr0] CDB: [17545.611531] end_request: I/O error, dev sr0, sector 0 [17545.611568] FAT-fs (sr0): unable to read boot sector When I grepped this, the number of error messages just seemed to spill all over the screen, and typically all revolve around the I/O error. I then went into VLC and tried to run the stuff through there, but for some reason it won't read with the default devices. Instead I have to manually input sr0 into each of the /dev/ references and it will play just fine, until I exit out of the program, at which point I have to re-input everything. I have already installed all the media dependencies, both open source and restricted, through the software center. I just found this strange, as out of the box 12.04 there wasn't any problem what so ever. At this point, it could be that all my audio CD's are not in a format that is familiar with the OS (I've read in some places that EXTF4 has issues with this) but I don't see how that could be a problem when the above error messages even tested to see if it is EXT3 as well? I've tried my best to troubleshoot this up till now using existing topics, but it seems that this is a regular problem with a multitude of varying factors that incorporate into it, including but not limited to read/write problems with the format of the CD and right protection. Is there something integral that I am missing?

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• Using runtime checking of code contracts in Visual Studio 2010

  - by DigiMortal

  In my last posting about code contracts I introduced how to check input parameters of randomizer using static contracts checking. But you can also compile code contracts to your assemblies and use them also in runtime. In this posting I will show you simple example about runtime checking of code contracts. NB! If you want to play with code and try out things described here feel free to download example solution. if you are speaker and want to use this solution as a part of your sessions then feel free to do so, but don’t forget to refer me and this blog as source of this solution. And please let me know about your session. As a speaker I am very interested about it. :) To see how code contracts are checked at runtime we have to enable runtime checking from project properties. Make sure you have checked the box “Perform Runtime Contract Checking” and make sure you select “Full” from dropdown. These parts are in red box on the screenshot below. Visual Studio 2010 settings for code contracts. Runtime Checking is turned on and checks are made only in public surface. Click on image to see it at original size.  Save project settings. Then compile code and run it. As soon as code execution hits the call to GetRandomFromRangeContracted() exception is thrown. If you are not currently playing with solution referred above take a look at the following screenshot. Visual Studio 2010 runtime checking of code contracts. Exception of type ContractException is thrown when contract is violated. Click on image to see it at original size.  The exact type of exception is ContractException and it is defined in System.Diagnostics.Contracts.__ContractsRuntime namespace. In our example the message of exception is following: "Precondition failed: min < max  Min must be less than max" Besides the description we inserted for the case contract violation the message also contains violated contract type. In this case the type of contract is Precondition. Conclusion Using runtime checking of code contracts enables you to take code contracts with your code and have them checked every time when your methods are called. This way you can assure that all conditions are met to run method or exception is thrown and calling system has to handle the situation.

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for November 8, 2012

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Webcast: Meeting Customer Expectations in the New Age of Retail Keep your eye on this live webcast as Sanjeev Sharma (Principal Product Director, Oracle Exalogic), Kelly Goetsch (Senior Principal Product Manager, Oracle Commerce), and Dan Conway (Senior Product Manager, Oracle Retail) offer real-world examples of business value derived by running customer-facing applications on Oracle Engineered Systems. Live, Thursday Nov 8, 10am PT/ 1pm ET. Solving Big Problems in Our 21st Century Information Society | Irving Wladawsky-Berger "I believe that the kind of extensive collaboration between the private sector, academia and government represented by the Internet revolution will be the way we will generally tackle big problems in the 21st century. Just as with the Internet, governments have a major role to play as the catalyst for many of the big projects that the private sector will then take forward and exploit. The need for high bandwidth, robust national broadband infrastructures is but one such example." — Irving Wladawsky-Berger SOA Still Not Dead: Ratification of Governance Standard Highlights SOA’s Continued Relevance So just about the time I dig into Google Trends to learn that the conversation about governance peaked in 2004, along comes all this InfoQ article by Richard Seroter. And of course you've already listened to the OTN Archbeat Podcast about governance, right? Right? Implications of Java 6 End of Public Updates for Oracle E-Business Suite Users | Steven Chan The short version is: "Nothing will change for EBS users after February 2013." According to Steven Chan, "EBS users will continue to receive critical bug fixes and security fixes as well as general maintenance for Java SE 6." You'll find additional information on Steven's blog. ADF Mobile Custom Javascript – iFrame Injection | John Brunswick The ADF Mobile Framework provides a range of out of the box components to add within your AMX pages, according to John Brunswick. But what happens when "an out of the box component does not directly fulfill your development need? What options are available to extend your application interface?" John has an answer. How Data and BPM are married to get the right information to the right people at the right time | Leon Smiers "Business Process Management…supports a large group of stakeholders within an organization, all with different needs," says Oracle ACE Leon Smiers. "End-to-end processes typically run across departments, stakeholders and applications, and can often have a long life-span. So how do organizations provide all stakeholders with the information they need?" Leon provides answers in this post. Thought for the Day "(When) asking skilled architects…what they do when confronted with highly complex problems…(they) would most likely answer, 'Just use Common Sense.' (A) better expression than 'common sense' is 'contextual sense' — a knowledge of what is reasonable within a given content. Practicing architects through eduction, experience and examples accumulate a considerable body of contextual sense by the time they're entrusted with solving a system-level problem…" — Eberhardt Rechtin (January 16, 1926 – April 14, 2006) Source: SoftwareQuotes.com

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• Web Experience Management: Segmentation & Targeting - Chalk Talk with John

  - by Michael Snow

  Today's post comes from our WebCenter friend, John Brunswick.  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Having trouble getting your arms around the differences between Web Content Management (WCM) and Web Experience Management (WEM)?  Told through story, the video below outlines the differences in an easy to understand manner. By following the journey of Mr. and Mrs. Smith on their adventure to find the best amusement park in two neighboring towns, we can clearly see what an impact context and relevancy play in our decision making within online channels.  Just as when we search to connect with the best products and services for our needs, the Smiths have their grandchildren coming to visit next week and finding the best park is essential to guarantee a great family vacation.  One town effectively Segments and Targets visitors to enhance their experience, reducing the effort needed to learn about their park. Have a look below to join the Smiths in their search.    Learn MORE about how you might measure up: Deliver Engaging Digital Experiences Drive Digital Marketing SuccessAccess Free Assessment Tool

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• ATI (fglrx) Dual monitor / laptop hot-plugging

  - by Brendan Piater

  I feel like I've gone back 5 years on my desktop today. I'll try not dump to much frustration here... I been running 12.04 since alpha with the ATI open source drivers and the gnome 3 desktop. I been generally very happy with them with only small issues along the way. Now of course it does not support 3D acceleration 100%, so games like my newly purchased Amnesia from the Humble bundle would not play. OK, no worries, the ATI driver is in the repos so let me have a go I thought. With all this testing that's been done with multi-monitor support, what could go wrong...? How I use my computer: It's laptop, with a HD 3670 card in it. I spend about 50% of the time working directly on the laptop (at home) and about 50% of the time working with an additional display connected (at work), multi desktop environment. What happening now: installed drivers things seemed to working, save some small other bugs (not critical) this morning I take my machine and plug the additional monitor into it, and nothing happens... ok fine. open "displays" try configure dual display, won't work open ati config "thing" (cause it is a thing, a crap thing) and set-up monitors there reboot it says (oh ffs, really.... ok) reboot, login and wow, I got a gnome 2 desktop (presume gnome 3 fall back) and no multi-monitor...great. (screenshot: http://ubuntuone.com/5tFe3QNFsTSIGvUSVLsyL7 ) after getting into a situation where I had to Ctrl + Alt + Del to get out of a frozen display, I eventually manage to set-up a single display desktop on the "main" monitor ok.. time to go home... unplug monitor... nothing happens.. oh boy here we go... try displays again, nothing, just hangs the display.. great. crash all the apps and reboot... So it's been a trying day... What I really hope is that someone else has figured out how to avoid this PAIN. Please help with a solution that: allows me run fglrx (so I can run the games I want) allows me to hot-plug a monitor to my laptop and remove it again allows me to change the display so include the hot-plugged monitor (preferable automatically like it did with the open drivers) Next best if that's not possible: switch between laptop only display and monitor only display easily (i.e. not having to reboot/logout/suspened etc) Really appreciate the time of anyone that has a solution. Thanks in advance. Regards Brendan PS: I guess I should file a bug about this too, so some direction as to the best place to file this would be appreciated too.

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• Microsoft JScript runtime error in Visual studio 2010

  - by anirudha

  There is many tool exist to debug JavaScript visual studio , firebug and some other great plugin are one of them. here I show you solution for Microsoft JScript runtime error: Object doesn't support this property or method  if you search on Google for how to debug Javascript in Visual studio. all of them told you to follow this instruction :- go to Internet option in IE > advanced tab > Browsing section > uhcheck the both option disable script debugging for IE (internet explorer) disable script debugging (others). that’s the information you read are outdate or not true these days. in visual studio you can play with JavaScript debugging even these option is check or unchecked. off-course you  can try these step in express version of visual studio. I found a little problem that my code [based on jQuery plugin] try to call some function. some of them not implement in browser so they call other so that’s fine and work in every browser. when visual studio found some function they trying to call and not implemented in browser I use to debug they tell me Microsoft JScript runtime error: Object doesn't support this property or method  they tell me again whenever I put refresh [f5] in browser. so the thing they do you never like that. see error window first whenever code is not buggy and see everytime before see the page you want to see. this behavior harsh you. there is no problem whenever you not commonly used IE but whenever you really want to debugging you got some pain too from the behavior of this. well I have some patch for that if you really like the debugging in Visual studio with IE. so if you sure that code is not buggy or you really not want to see that’s window here is trick. when you debug the JavaScript in IE choose the compact mode and they never force you to see window first who tell the thing you not want to see. How to do that for reliefs from this pain in visual studio after debug the project or website IE gone automatically launch. go to Developer tool by pressing f12 > you see window something like this:- by the way they give you document mode IE 7 as default or browser mode based on your settings. first thing is that you need to set the compact view [any ] in browser mode. and next time the error window never come again who tell you Microsoft JScript runtime error: Object doesn't support this property or method

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• Refresh banshee album art

  - by kmassada

  I usually just copy ~/.config/banshee-1, and ~/.gconf/apps/banshee-1 when i'm moving from one computer to the other, if I keep the path of the folders. I get to keep my music library intact with the playlists I have. The problem with this method is that, the album arts doesn't carry over nicely. You'd have to play every album to get the album art to appear. Anyone knows a workaround, to maybe force banshee to reload all album art? I saw this, but not quite what my issue is? I tried banshee --fetch-artwork, but didn't work too well kenneth@dv7:~$ banshee --fetch-artwork [Warn 11:23:38.200] DBus support could not be started. Disabling for this sessi on. - System.Exception: Error 111: Connection refused (in `dbus-sharp') at DBus.Unix.UnixSocket.Connect (System.Byte[] remote_end) [0x00000] in <filen ame unknown>:0 at DBus.Transports.UnixNativeTransport.OpenAbstractUnix (System.String path) [ 0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 at DBus.Transports.UnixNativeTransport.Open (System.String path, Boolean abstr act) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 at DBus.Transports.UnixTransport.Open (DBus.AddressEntry entry) [0x00000] in < filename unknown>:0 at DBus.Transports.Transport.Create (DBus.AddressEntry entry) [0x00000] in <fi lename unknown>:0 at DBus.Connection.OpenPrivate (System.String address) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 at DBus.Connection..ctor (System.String address) [0x00000] in <filename unknow n>:0 at DBus.Bus..ctor (System.String address) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 at DBus.Bus.Open (System.String address) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 at DBus.Bus.get_Session () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 System.Exception: Unable to open the session message bus. (in `dbus-sharp') at DBus.Bus.get_Session () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 at DBus.BusG.Init () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 at Banshee.ServiceStack.DBusConnection.Connect (System.String serviceName, Boo lean init) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 at Banshee.ServiceStack.DBusConnection.GrabDefaultName () [0x00000] in <filena me unknown>:0 [Info 11:23:38.286] Running Banshee 2.6.0: [Ubuntu 12.10 (linux-gnu, x86_64) @ 2012-10-11 06:19:37 UTC] (Banshee:21865): GConf-WARNING **: Client failed to connect to the D-BUS daemon: Failed to connect to socket /tmp/dbus-vLxS6Riwsn: Connection refused [Warn 11:23:38.948] Could not read GConf key core.send_anonymous_usage_data - G Lib.GException: No D-BUS daemon running (in `gconf-sharp') at GConf.Client.Get (System.String key) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 at Banshee.GnomeBackend.GConfConfigurationClient.TryGet[Boolean] (System.Strin g namespace, System.String key, System.Boolean& result) [0x00000] in <filename u nknown>:0 (Banshee:21865): GConf-WARNING **: Client failed to connect to the D-BUS daemon: Failed to connect to socket /tmp/dbus-vLxS6Riwsn: Connection refused [Warn 11:23:39.239] Could not read GConf key core.send_anonymous_usage_data - G Lib.GException: No D-BUS daemon running (in `gconf-sharp') at GConf.Client.Get (System.String key) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 at Banshee.GnomeBackend.GConfConfigurationClient.TryGet[Boolean] (System.Strin g namespace, System.String key, System.Boolean& result) [0x00000] in <filename u nknown>:0

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• StreamInsight 1.0 Released

  - by Roman Schindlauer

  One piece in the set of products offered in SQL Server 2008 R2 that has generated a lot of buzz and interest during its CTP phase is StreamInsight, Microsoft’s platform for Complex Event Processing. Microsoft’s information platform vision provides enterprises with a “complete approach” to managing information assets, enabling all businesses to gain strategic value from information from the desktop to the datacenter to the cloud. And StreamInsight V1 is one essential piece in this spectrum. After more than a year of blood, sweat, tears, and insane amounts of coffee we are proud to release the first version of our Complex Event Processing Framework.   Those of you who have been following our Community Technology Previews (CTPs) throughout last year have already had the possibility to familiarize themselves with the product. Early feedback was not only incredibly positive, but also very constructive and strongly influenced the final feature set. Four notable increments over our last public CTP are: Count windows Non-occurrence detection (Anti-Join) Dynamic query composition at runtime Synchronize time across input streams Additionally, many smaller issues and bugs were addressed. A few APIs slightly changed with respect to the November CTP, but porting your application to RTM should not require a lot of effort.   Here are the (english) bits - choosing the evaluation license during setup lets you already play with this version. Before you install, make sure to uninstall any previous CTP version:   StreamInsight X86StreamInsight X64   Within a few days, we will update our product page and add download links and instructions there as well.   The StreamInsight documentation is provided through a help file as part of the installation as well as through Books Online on MSDN. We also invite you to visit the StreamInsight Blog and the StreamInsight Forum, which is a great place to discuss questions and issues with the community and the development team.   Regards,Roman Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• TypeScript first impressions

  - by Bertrand Le Roy

  Anders published a video of his new project today, which aims at creating a superset of JavaScript, that compiles down to regular current JavaScript. Anders is a tremendously clever guy, and it always shows in his work. There is much to like in the enterprise (good code completion, refactoring and adoption of the module pattern instead of namespaces to name three), but a few things made me rise an eyebrow. First, there is no mention of CoffeeScript or Dart, but he does talk briefly about Script# and GWT. This is probably because the target audience seems to be the same as the audience for the latter two, i.e. developers who are more comfortable with statically-typed languages such as C# and Java than dynamic languages such as JavaScript. I don’t think he’s aiming at JavaScript developers. Classes and interfaces, although well executed, are not especially appealing. Second, as any code generation tool (and this is true of CoffeeScript as well), you’d better like the generated code. I didn’t, unfortunately. The code that I saw is not the code I would have written. What’s more, I didn’t always find the TypeScript code especially more expressive than what it gets compiled to. I also have a few questions. Is it possible to duck-type interfaces? For example, if I have an IPoint2D interface with x and y coordinates, can I pass any object that has x and y into a function that expects IPoint2D or do I need to necessarily create a class that implements that interface, and new up an instance that explicitly declares its contract? The appeal of dynamic languages is the ability to make objects as you go. This needs to be kept intact. More technical: why are generated variables and functions prefixed with _ rather than the $ that the EcmaScript spec recommends for machine-generated variables? In conclusion, while this is a good contribution to the set of ideas around JavaScript evolution, I don’t expect a lot of adoption outside of the devoted Microsoft developers, but maybe some influence on the language itself. But I’m often wrong. I would certainly not use it because I disagree with the central motivation for doing this: Anders explicitly says he built this because “writing application-scale JavaScript is hard”. I would restate that “writing application-scale JavaScript is hard for people who are used to statically-typed languages”. The community has built a set of good practices over the last few years that do scale quite well, and many people are successfully developing and maintaining impressive applications directly in JavaScript. You can play with TypeScript here: http://www.typescriptlang.org

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• Choose Custom New Tab Pages in Chrome

  - by Asian Angel

  For most people the default New Tab Page in Chrome works perfectly well for their purposes. But if you would prefer to choose what opens in a new tab for yourself then you will definitely want to have a look at the “Define your own new tab!” extension for Google Chrome. Before Unless you are using a Speed Dial (or similar) extension each time you click on the “New Tab Button” you get the same old page. It would certainly be a lot more satisfying if you could choose custom webpage(s) to open as new tabs. After Once you have the extension installed the best thing to do is click on the “New Tab Button”. That will open up the “Options Page” where you can enter one or two custom website URLs of your choosing. Once you have your custom URLs entered click on “Save”. As soon as you click on the “New Tab Button” your new custom webpage(s) will open. If you chose two webpages the first choice will open focused on the “right side” instead of the “left”. Clicking on the “Home Button” will also open the webpage(s) that you chose. The webpage(s) that you chose will also open as your starting “Home Pages” each time that you start your browser. Conclusion If you have wanted to choose your own custom “New Tab Page” then this is the extension that you have been waiting for. Links Download the Define your own new tab! extension (Google Chrome Extensions) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Find Similar Websites in Google ChromeAccess Google Chrome’s Special Pages the Easy WayEnable Vista Black Style Theme for Google Chrome in XPSet Custom Reload Times for Individual Webpages in ChromeEnable Auto-Paging Goodness in Google Chrome TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Play Music in Chrome by Simply Dragging a File 15 Great Illustrations by Chow Hon Lam Easily Sync Files & Folders with Friends & Family Amazon Free Kindle for PC Download Stretch popurls.com with a Stylish Script (Firefox) OldTvShows.org – Find episodes of Hitchcock, Soaps, Game Shows and more

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• PMI South Florida Job Fair 2010

  - by Sam Abraham

  The South Florida Chapter of the Project Management Institute is planning a Job Fair slated for September 2010. This year has seen a significant improvement in the job market with many surveyed companies indicating their intention to add temporary or permanent staff to their workforce in the near future.   The Job Fair Initiative fits well within the chapter's message and goal for this year: "Exercising Social Responsibility" - Our responsibility as PMI volunteers at all levels towards our members and surrounding community.   Our Free-to-members Annual Job Fair will play an important role in connecting Recruiters, Exhibitors and Job Seekers together thereby helping hiring companies gain access to a large talent pool at an affordable cost (Totally free in certain cases, details to be revealed once finalized) while giving job seekers centralized access to many reputable hiring companies in the South Florida area.   My involvement in the 2010 Job Fair started with a good conversation I had with Bernie Saenz, President and CEO of the South Florida PMI Chapter, in a networking event a few months ago. I had approached him with a few ideas in line with his goal to serve the community and our members given today's difficult economic climate. Bernie indicated that the Project Manager for the 2010 Job Fair had just been appointed and invited me to participate in this important initiative as a member of her team. I simply couldn't resist and gladly accepted the invitation.   I chose an initial role as Recruiter Relations Lead which entails developing documentation and timelines for our project plan with regards to Recruiter Engagement as well as reaching out to recruiting companies to meet target representation at the Job Fair.   Being heavily involved in the local Technical community has afforded me the privilege of coming in contact with many reputable Technology Recruiting companies. (As a matter of fact, I already have 2 interested very reputable IT recruiting firms willing to join us at the fair)   The excitement for me however will be finding and reaching out to recruiters in areas of Project Management and Leadership that I might not have been exposed to before including Finance, Healthcare and Marketing, to name a few.   Keep an eye in the upcoming few weeks for official announcements on the PMI South Florida Job Fair 2010.   Environment.Exit(0);   -Sam Abraham Site Director - West Palm Beach .Net User Group Recruiter Relations Lead - PMI South Florida Job Fair 2010 Project Lead - Mentoring Programs- PMI South Florida

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• Executable execution path. Does it depends of the place the executable is called from?

  - by Valkea

  as I'm still a new Linux user, I still discover some behaviours and I'm unable to tell if they are "normals" or not. I searched the Internet but as I can't really find an answer I guess it's time to ask here. Few weeks ago I installed a small game called "Machinarium" and I played it... but few days later when I wanted to continue my game I was unable to make the game start correctly. And as I didn't had the time to search I given up. But yesterday as I was working on a program of mine, I had the exactly same behaviour. So I searched a bit and I discovered that when using Nautilus with the "List view", I was able to run the program (ie: the program does find the sound, images etc resources) when I was literally "inside" the executable folder, but unable when I was in a parent folder and expanding it to the executable folder to run it. To illustrate the behaviour here are two screen shots. It doesn't works if the executable is double clicked from here It does works if the executable is double clicked from here This is indeed the same "place", but the Nautilus view is slightly different as the current folder is not the same and it seems to make a difference for the program. Furthermore, when I create a menu items via System Settings/Main Menu to the executable, it behaves just like if the executable can't find the resources (that's why I was unable to play Machinarium the second time as I created a menu short-cut after my first game). So I asked my program to generate a text file at it's root when running, and I started to launch it from different "parent" folders to see where is generated the text file. Each time the file was generated on the top folder of the current Nautilus view. I was expected to see it appears in the same folder of the executable (well not as I was guessing what as happening, but before that I would have expected to see it appears in the exe folder). Does anyone can explain me why it does works like this (I guess it's normal) ? How I'm supposed to solve this when creating programs (Should I detect the executable path in my C++ code or should I organize the resources files another way than on windows ?)

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• How do I configure sound with PulseAudio and Multiseat?

  - by Anthony

  In the spirit of full disclosure, i just posted this question to the ubuntu forums, but i figure more heads working on it couldn't hurt. I have a multi-seat setup working quite well. Hot plugging input devices works as expected and such. The only issue I am still not able to resolve is getting the audio for each seat. Here is a summary of my attempts at getting audio to work: Make ~/.pulse/default.pa dynamically configured based on which $DISPLAY the user logs in at. See this pastebin for the details. Load pulseaudio as a system-wide instance. Couldn't get this to work. None of the audio hardware was accessible to the users. Use udev rules to mark seats in ConsoleKit. Following udev guidelines found here: http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/multiseat I didn't think this would work, although it was "guaranteed" to work by someone in irc.freenode #pulseaudio None of those attempts yielded success, which is why I now turn to the community for help. It is quite possible that the suggested methods work and I just messed some aspect of it up, idk. This is the last piece of the puzzle which is needed before I can go and update the MultiseatX page to include instructions for Ubuntu 12.04. My understandings on the situation: Access to pulseaudio is restricted to the active session as marked by ConsoleKit (something about an ACL). CK can only mark one session as active at a time. This simple little fact of life leads me to believe that the solution should involve pulseaudio being run as a system-wide instance. Each user should connect to the pulse server and be limited to a subset of all the hardware. Maybe each user connects to the pulse server via localhost, idk. I do know that regardless of my attempts and their failed results, I was always able to use sudo aplay -D plughw:0,0 /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav to play something to any of the hardware. I'm grasping at straws and am now down to the last few hairs i can pull out of my head. Please, help me figure this out so we can share the wealth. Any additional information needed will be provided at your request.

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• Radeon HD 2000, 3000, 4000 on 12.10 Quantal: fglrx (legacy) 12.6 unsupported, what to do?

  - by Andrew Mao

  After upgrading to 12.10 quantal, the packaged version of fglrx no longer works. I discovered that this is because there is a separate 'legacy' fglrx driver for the HD 2k-4k series cards, but it is incompatible with the xorg server on 12.10. This is the most current version of the driver for HD 2000 through HD 4000 series cards. You can't use the non-legacy fglrx driver, but you can use the open-source radeon driver if you prefer your WM compositing to be laggy and your YouTube videos to play like they would on a Pentium MMX series: http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/catalyst126legacyproducts.aspx Usually this driver can be installed in the following way, necessary because apt-get install fglrx would pull in the non-legacy driver: wget http://www2.ati.com/drivers/legacy/amd-driver-installer-12.6-legacy-x86.x86_64.zip unzip amd-driver-installer-* sudo sh ./amd-driver-installer-*.run --buildpkg Ubuntu/quantal sudo dpkg -i fglrx*.deb sudo aticonfig --initial -f If you use a different version of fglrx (for example, a newer 12.9 that doesn't support those cards) then the final command will give you an error no supported hardware detected or something similar. However, everything works at this point and you will get a reasonable xorg.conf: ... other stuff Section "Device" Identifier "aticonfig-Device[0]-0" Driver "fglrx" BusID "PCI:1:5:0" EndSection ... other stuff At this point you're supposed to reboot and everything will be working with the fglrx driver. However, upon rebooting, you'll be treated to the following errors in Xorg.0.log when fglrx attempts to load: (EE) Failed to load /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/fglrx_drv.so: /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/fglrx_drv.so: undefined symbol: noXFree86DRIExtension Some searching around will show that this is a problem with the legacy ATI drivers not supporting xserver 1.13 or newer. (Arch Linux thread) ATI has released a fixed driver for its most recent (HD 5000 series or later) cards, but not for the 'legacy' cards yet. The non-legacy ATI drivers can't be used with the old cards. What should an Ubuntu user, using one of these HD 2000-4000 series cards, do? Wait for an updated 'legacy' ATI driver that properly works with xserver 1.13? Downgrade back to 12.04 Precise, which uses xserver 1.11? Try to downgrade xserver on 12.10 Quantal to 1.12, which could possibly break Unity and GNOME? Forced upgrade to HD 5000 series or later card? (Not possible with integrated graphics...) Some other 1337 action that fixes this problem painlessly?

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• Ubuntu 10.10 forgets desktop theme.

  - by Marcelo Cantos

  (I posed this question on superuser.com and haven't received any answers or comments, then I came across this site, so my apologies to anyone who has seen this already.) I am running Ubuntu in VirtualBox (on a Windows 7 host). Several times now, the top-level menu bar, the task bar — and seemingly every system dialog — have forgotten the out-of-the-box "Ambiance" theme they conform to when I first installed the system. Window captions still preserve the theme, but pretty much nothing else does. I have searched high and low on Google for assistance with this problem. Everything I've found suggests either running some gconf reset or deleting .gconf* .gnome* and other similar directories. I have followed all this advice and nothing works. I still get a boring Windows-95-style gray 3D look and feel. On previous occasions, after much messing around I've given up and rebooted the VM instance, and been pleasantly suprised to see the original "Ambience" theme restored throughout the UI, but invariably it disappears again some time later, usually after a reboot, so I can never figure out what I did that broke it. Here's a sample from Ubuntu's site of what I want it to look like. And here's a screenshot of my system as it currently looks. Also note that my GNOME Terminals normally have a nice purple semi-translucent look, and as can be seen from the screenshot, they are now just a solid matt white. This last time (just yesterday), trying numerous combinations all the usual tricks and rebooting several times hasn't fixed it, so here I am on SU wondering: How do I recover the out-of-the-box theme for my Gnome/Ubuntu desktop, noting that blowing away all config files — as suggested in many places online — fails to achieve this? It might help to know that it seems to fail either after I resize the VM instance, forcing the Ubuntu desktop to resize itself, or after I play around with Compiz settings. I haven't been able to figure out which of these it is, and it could be neither. Given the amount of pain I have had to go through to get things back to normal (and given that I am at a loss as to how to do so), it has proven difficult to definitively isolate the cause.

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• Create Outlook Appointments from PowerShell

  - by BuckWoody

  I've been toying around with a script to create a special set of calendar objects in Outlook that show when my SQL Server Agent Jobs are scheduled to run. I haven't finished yet, but I thought I would share the part that creates the Outlook Appointments.I have yet to fill a variable with the start and end times, and then loop through that to create the appointments. I'm thinking I'll make the script below into a function, and feed it those variables in a loop. The script below creates a whole new Calendar Folder in Outlook called "SQL Server Agent Jobs". I also use categories quite a bit, so you'll see that too. Caution: If you plan to play with this script, do it on an isolated workstation, not on your "regular" Outlook calendar. Otherwise, you'll have lots of appointments in there that you don't care about!  # Add a new calendar item to a new Outlook folder called "SQL Server Agent Jobs" $outlook = new-object -com Outlook.Application $calendar = $outlook.Session.folders.Item(1).Folders.Item("SQL Server Agent Jobs") $appt = $calendar.Items.Add(1) # == olAppointmentItem $appt.Start = [datetime]"03/11/2010 11:00" $appt.End = [datetime]"03/11/2009 12:00" $appt.Subject = "JobName" $appt.Location = "ServerName" $appt.Body = "Job Details" $appt.Categories = "SQL server Agent Job" $appt.Save()   Script Disclaimer, for people who need to be told this sort of thing: Never trust any script, including those that you find here, until you understand exactly what it does and how it will act on your systems. Always check the script on a test system or Virtual Machine, not a production system. All scripts on this site are performed by a professional stunt driver on a closed course. Your mileage may vary. Void where prohibited. Offer good for a limited time only. Keep out of reach of small children. Do not operate heavy machinery while using this script. If you experience blurry vision, indigestion or diarrhea during the operation of this script, see a physician immediately.   Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Memory Glutton

  - by AreYouSerious

  I have to admit that I can't get enough storage. I have hard drives just sitting around in case I need to move somthing, or I'm going to a friends and either they want something I have or I want something they might have. What I'm going to talk about today is cost effective memory for devices. I don't know how this particualr device will work in a camera, as That's not what I use in my camera, in fact I don't have a camera that doesn't either use SD, or the old compact flash card, that's not so compact anymore. There's this thing that uses two micro sd cards to double the capacity of your memory, and it costs about 4 bucks, without the Micro SD card. I have had one for about a year and was going to throw it away because I couldn't get it to work with my computer, or with my Sony Reader. However I found out by one last ditch effort that this thing works beautifully with my Sony PSP. there is no software to speak of associated with this thing, you simply put in two SD cards of the same size... (if you put in two different sizes it will still work, you'll only double the smallest cards size though) and format through the psp. Viola you know have a 29 GB memory card for your PSP. why is this important ? well for starters you can carry more music and more videos. Second if you have gone the way of the hacker.... you can store more games on your card... There are just a few things you have to note.... I speak from experience... you have to use the usb connection to the PSP to do any file moving, as I said previously said card doesn't play well with my computers or card readers... I not saying it won't work at all, just hasn't work with anything I own. Second. If for some reason you try to Hack/crack your PSP don't attempt to delete a game from the psp, use the usb file browser to remove games. if you delete from the PSP you are likely to have to move all your files off, reformat and start again... just a couple things I have noticed... if I had done something like that.   anyway, Here's a link.... http://www.photofast-adapter.com/  and if you want to buy one, get it off ebay, I've seen them as low as $1.99

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• LightSwitch Tutorial - Adding Image to a LightSwitch Screen

  - by ChrisD

  Last week, I have discussed how to control Screen Layouts in LightSwitch. Now, I will talk about how to add an image to the LightSwitch screen. In this demo, I will try to upload the image to the screen and will save the image into the database. The first step we need to do is start the VS 2010, create LightSwitch Desktop application with the name “AddingImageIntoScreenInLSBeta2” as shown in the following figure. The second steps, create a table as shown in the screen by selecting the "create a table" option in the start up screen. Then, we need to add a New Data Screen to our demo application. See the following figure which is the default screen layouts for the screen we have created. So we have to change the layout of this screen so that the uploading and using the image in the screen can be easily explained. Before adding the Model Window we have to prepare the layout. So delete the Highlighted fields as shown in the above figure. After preparing the layout to add the image, just add a new Group to the Person Property Rows Layout. To add a new group, [No: 1] – Select the Rows layout, it will shows you the Add button. [No: 2] – Click the Add button to select the new group. [No: 3] – Select the New Group. After adding the new group change the Layout type to Columns Layout. Here, -          Change the rows layout to columns layouts and give the display name as Uploading Image Example. -          Click on the add button to add the Photo field under the column layout. Add a new group under the Column layout group. Follow the [No: #] to create a new group under the columns layout group. After adding a new group of rows layout add the fields to the newly created group. [No: 1] – Select the Rows Layout group and change the display name as Details. [No: 2] – Click on Add button to select the appropriate fields to add to the group. [No: 3] – Add the fields to the group The above snippet shows the complete layout tree for our screen. Now the screen for uploading the image is ready. Just press the Play button. And see the result.

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• GUI device for throwing a ball

  - by Fredrik Johansson

  The hero has a ball, which shall be thrown with accuracy in a court on iPhone/iPad. The player is seen from above, in a 2D view. In game play, the player reach is between 1/15 and 1/6 of the height of the iPhone screen. The player will run, and try to outmaneuver his opponent, and then throw the ball at a specific location, which is guarded by the opponent (which is also shown on the screen). The player is controlled by a joystick, and that works ok, but how shall I control the stick? Maybe someone can propose a third control method? I've tried the following two approaches: Joystick: Hero has a reach of 1 meter, and this reach is marked with a semi-opaque circle around the player. The ball can be moved by a joystick. When the joystick is moved south, the ball is moved south within the reach circle. There is a direct coupling with the joystick and the position of the ball. I.e. when the joystick is moved max south, the ball is max south within the player reach. At each touch update the speed is calculated, and the Box2d ball position and ball speed are updated. NB, the ball will never be moved outside the reach as long as the player push the joystick. The ball is thrown by swiping the joystick to make the ball move, and then releasing the joystick. At release, the ball will get a smoothed speed of the joystick. Joystick Problem: The throwing accuracy gets bad, because the joystick can not be that big, and a small movement results in quite a large movement of the ball. If the user does not release before the end of the joystick maximum end point, the ball will stop, and when the user releases the joystick the speed of the ball will be zero. Bad... Touch pad A force is applied to the ball by a sweep on a touchpad. The ball is released when the sweep is ended, or when the ball is moved outside the player reach. As there is no one to one mapping between the swipe and the ball position, the precision can be improved. A large swipe can result in a small ball movement. Touch Pad Problem A touchpad is less intuitive. Users do not seem to know what to do with the touch pad. Some tap the touchpad, and then the ball just falls to the ground. As there is no one-to-one mapping, the ball can be moved outside the reach, and then it will just fall to the ground. It's a bit hard to control the ball, especially if the player also moves.

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• Diving into Scala with Cay Horstmann

  - by Janice J. Heiss

  A new interview with Java Champion Cay Horstmann, now up on otn/java, titled  "Diving into Scala: A Conversation with Java Champion Cay Horstmann," explores Horstmann's ideas about Scala as reflected in his much lauded new book,  Scala for the Impatient.  None other than Martin Odersky, the inventor of Scala, called it "a joy to read" and the "best introduction to Scala". Odersky was so enthused by the book that he asked Horstmann if the first section could be made available as a free download on the Typesafe Website, something Horstmann graciously assented to. Horstmann acknowledges that some aspects of Scala are very complex, but he encourages developers to simply stay away from those parts of the language. He points to several ways Java developers can benefit from Scala: "For example," he says, " you can write classes with less boilerplate, file and XML handling is more concise, and you can replace tedious loops over collections with more elegant constructs. Typically, programmers at this level report that they write about half the number of lines of code in Scala that they would in Java, and that's nothing to sneeze at. Another entry point can be if you want to use a Scala-based framework such as Akka or Play; you can use these with Java, but the Scala API is more enjoyable. " Horstmann observes that developers can do fine with Scala without grasping the theory behind it. He argues that most of us learn best through examples and not through trying to comprehend abstract theories. He also believes that Scala is the most attractive choice for developers who want to move beyond Java and C++.  When asked about other choices, he comments: "Clojure is pretty nice, but I found its Lisp syntax a bit off-putting, and it seems very focused on software transactional memory, which isn't all that useful to me. And it's not statically typed. I wanted to like Groovy, but it really bothers me that the semantics seems under-defined and in flux. And it's not statically typed. Yes, there is Groovy++, but that's in even sketchier shape. There are a couple of contenders such as Kotlin and Ceylon, but so far they aren't real. So, if you want to do work with a statically typed language on the JVM that exists today, Scala is simply the pragmatic choice. It's a good thing that it's such a nice choice." Learn more about Scala by going to the interview here.

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• Games at Work Part 2: Gamification and Enterprise Applications

  - by ultan o'broin

  Gamification and Enterprise Applications In part 1 of this article, we explored why people are motivated to play games so much. Now, let's think about what that means for Oracle applications user experience. (Even the coffee is gamified. Acknowledgement @noelruane. Check out the Guardian article Dublin's Frothing with Tech Fever. Game development is big business in Ireland too.) Applying game dynamics (gamification) effectively in the enterprise applications space to reflect business objectives is now a hot user experience topic. Consider, for example, how such dynamics could solve applications users’ problems such as: Becoming familiar or expert with an application or process Building loyalty, customer satisfaction, and branding relationships Collaborating effectively and populating content in the community Completing tasks or solving problems on time Encouraging teamwork to achieve goals Improving data accuracy and completeness of entry Locating and managing the correct resources or information Managing changes and exceptions Setting and reaching targets, quotas, or objectives Games’ Incentives, Motivation, and Behavior I asked Julian Orr, Senior Usability Engineer, in the Oracle Fusion Applications CRM User Experience (UX) team for his thoughts on what potential gamification might offer Oracle Fusion Applications. Julian pointed to the powerful incentives offered by games as the starting place: “The biggest potential for gamification in enterprise apps is as an intrinsic motivator. Mechanisms include fun, social interaction, teamwork, primal wiring, adrenaline, financial, closed-loop feedback, locus of control, flow state, and so on. But we need to know what works best for a given work situation.” For example, in CRM service applications, we might look at the motivations of typical service applications users (see figure 1) and then determine how we can 'gamify' these motivations with techniques to optimize the desired work behavior for the role (see figure 2). Description of Figure 1 Description of Figure 2 Involving Our Users Online game players are skilled collaborators as well as problem solvers. Erika Webb (@erikanollwebb), Oracle Fusion Applications UX Manager, has run gamification events for Oracle, including one on collaboration and gamification in Oracle online communities that involved Oracle customers and partners. Read more... However, let’s be clear: gamifying a user interface that’s poorly designed is merely putting the lipstick of gamification on the pig of work. Gamification cannot replace good design and killer content based on understanding how applications users really work and what motivates them. So, Let the Games Begin! Gamification has tremendous potential for the enterprise application user experience. The Oracle Fusion Applications UX team is innovating fast and hard in this area, researching with our users how gamification can make work more satisfying and enterprises more productive. If you’re interested in knowing more about our gamification research, sign up for more information or check out how your company can get involved through the Oracle Usability Advisory Board. Your thoughts? Find those comments.

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