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• Should CSS be listed on your resume under Languages?

  - by Sandeepan Nath

  I have some doubts like Whether CSS should be put under Languages or not? Although Wikipedia says Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language ... But do they write CSS under the languages section of the resume, along with PHP, etc? Similarly what about HTML? I have some doubt and I don't want to sound like someone who is not aware of the trends. Just to give an example, currently I have the following languages,frameworks, technologies, etc. listed under the "Technical Expertise" section of my resume - Technical Expertise * Languages - Proficient - PHP 5, Javascript, HTML ?*,CSS ?*,Sass ?*. Beginner - Linux Bash. * Databases - MySQL 5. * Technologies - AJAX. * Frameworks/Libraries - Symfony, jQuery. * CMSes - Wordpress. Although my domain is Web-development/design, I welcome domain-agnostic answers which can provide some generic ideas/reasoning. I have seen, a lot of people messing up these sections (even more serious than my doubts :) ), putting things under wrong sub-headings and thus putting a big question mark on their understanding of those things. I don't know much about XML, Comet Technology etc. Considering those are included too, What things should be put under Languages? E.g. Should CSS be put under Languages? Please give some reasoning to support your views. Where should the others (XML, Comet, cURL etc. ) be put? I welcome some examples of how you put it. Or do you have an additional Keywords section where you write all the unsortables ? Considering a set of standards like W3C standards, etc. do you have a standards sub-heading? I guess I have put the contents of other sections Okay. But do let me know about your ideas and reasoning. After all, I understand there may not be a single answer to this, but let's see what is the trend. Thanks Updates Further, do you mention design patters you have used? Web Services etc.? Where do you mention SOAP, XML etc...

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• Enhance Your Gmail Account in Chrome

  - by Asian Angel

  Are you tired of items like the Chat and Invite Boxes cluttering up your Gmail account? Then join us as we look at the Better Gmail extension for Google Chrome. Before Here are some examples of items that you may be tired of looking at in your Gmail account such as the “Footer” below your “Inbox”, the “Chat Box”, and the “Invitation Box”. Perhaps you would also like to have the “New Window, Print all, & Create a document Commands” moved elsewhere. And of course there is everyone’s “favorite” sponsored links… Time to do some cleaning up and reorganizing. Better Gmail in Action As soon as you have installed Better Gmail a new tab will automatically open and present you with the available options. Place a “checkmark” in the box for each option that you would like activated and click on “Save” when finished. Note: The final option entry is a tie-in with two other “linked” extensions (Folders4Gmail & HTML Signature) while the middle listing is a link to an article for disabling Google Buzz. Once you have saved your changes in the “Options” you will be prompted to refresh your Gmail tab to see the changes. Going back to our “Inbox Area” everything looks so much more streamlined and clean now. Goodbye clutter! The “New Window, Print all, & Create a document Commands” definitely look a lot nicer as a small toolbar above our e-mail. And the right side…you can see for yourself just how much better that looks. No more distractions there to bother you as you read your e-mail. Conclusion If you have been wanting to get rid of the undesirable elements visible in your Gmail account then hurry over to the Better Gmail page, grab the extension and enjoy the better view. Links Download the Better Gmail extension (Google Chrome Extensions) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Figure out which Online accounts are selling your email to spammersAdd a Remember The Milk Task Pane to Gmail in ChromeHow to Send and Receive Hotmail from Your Gmail AccountAdd Your Gmail To Windows Live MailOpen Your Gmail Account in a Popup Window 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 Windows Media Player 12: Tweak Video & Sound with Playback Enhancements Own a cell phone, or does a cell phone own you? Make your Joomla & Drupal Sites Mobile with OSMOBI Integrate Twitter and Delicious and Make Life Easier Design Your Web Pages Using the Golden Ratio Worldwide Growth of the Internet

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• Send raw data to USB parallel port after upgrading to 11.10

  - by zaphod

  I have a laser cutter connected via a generic USB to parallel adapter. The laser cutter speaks HPGL, as it happens, but since this is a laser cutter and not a plotter, I usually want to generate the HPGL myself, since I care about the ordering, speed, and direction of cuts and so on. In previous versions of Ubuntu, I was able to print to the cutter by copying an HPGL file directly to the corresponding USB "lp" device. For example: cp foo.plt /dev/usblp1 Well, I just upgraded to Ubuntu 11.10 oneiric, and I can't find any "lp" devices in /dev anymore. D'oh! What's the preferred way to send raw data to a parallel port in Ubuntu? I've tried System Settings Printing + Add, hoping that I might be able to associate my device with some kind of "raw printer" driver and print to it with a command like lp -d LaserCutter foo.plt But my USB to parallel adapter doesn't seem to show up in the list. What I do see are my HP Color LaserJet, two USB-to-serial adapters, "Enter URI", and "Network Printer". Meanwhile, over in /dev, I do see /dev/ttyUSB0 and /dev/ttyUSB1 devices for the 2 USB-to-serial adapters. I don't see anything obvious corresponding to the HP printer (which was /dev/usblp0 prior to the upgrade), except for generic USB stuff. For example, sudo find /dev | grep lp produces no output. I do seem to be able to print to the HP printer just fine, though. The printer setup GUI gives it a device URI starting with "hp:" which isn't much help for the parallel adapter. The CUPS administrator's guide makes it sound like I might need to feed it a device URI of the form parallel:/dev/SOMETHING, but of course if I had a /dev/SOMETHING I'd probably just go on writing to it directly. Here's what dmesg says after I disconnect and reconnect the device from the USB port: [ 924.722906] usb 1-1.1.4: USB disconnect, device number 7 [ 959.993002] usb 1-1.1.4: new full speed USB device number 8 using ehci_hcd And here's how it shows up in lsusb -v: Bus 001 Device 008: ID 1a86:7584 QinHeng Electronics CH340S Device Descriptor: bLength 18 bDescriptorType 1 bcdUSB 1.10 bDeviceClass 0 (Defined at Interface level) bDeviceSubClass 0 bDeviceProtocol 0 bMaxPacketSize0 8 idVendor 0x1a86 QinHeng Electronics idProduct 0x7584 CH340S bcdDevice 2.52 iManufacturer 0 iProduct 2 USB2.0-Print iSerial 0 bNumConfigurations 1 Configuration Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 2 wTotalLength 32 bNumInterfaces 1 bConfigurationValue 1 iConfiguration 0 bmAttributes 0x80 (Bus Powered) MaxPower 96mA Interface Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 4 bInterfaceNumber 0 bAlternateSetting 0 bNumEndpoints 2 bInterfaceClass 7 Printer bInterfaceSubClass 1 Printer bInterfaceProtocol 2 Bidirectional iInterface 0 Endpoint Descriptor: bLength 7 bDescriptorType 5 bEndpointAddress 0x82 EP 2 IN bmAttributes 2 Transfer Type Bulk Synch Type None Usage Type Data wMaxPacketSize 0x0020 1x 32 bytes bInterval 0 Endpoint Descriptor: bLength 7 bDescriptorType 5 bEndpointAddress 0x02 EP 2 OUT bmAttributes 2 Transfer Type Bulk Synch Type None Usage Type Data wMaxPacketSize 0x0020 1x 32 bytes bInterval 0 Device Status: 0x0000 (Bus Powered)

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• Silverlight Cream Monday WP7 App Review # 1

  - by Dave Campbell

  I'm going to try something here... if it seems useful, I'll continue, if it doesn't, I'll stop... so give me feedback! There are *lots* of Apps in the WP7 Marketplace, and heaven help me, but the Marketplace sucks for finding stuff. I won't rehash what's already been said in the blogs, but I agree with one and all. I went out last Saturday to find 2 apps that I knew were released, and couldn't do so on my device. Even in the Zune app, it took quite a while to find them... ok, I'll back off a bit, because I just found out I can do 'Search' now if I know the name... I didn't think that was working before. So my thought is on Monday (like today), I will post a review of 5 apps/games I either use or have played with on my device. These are strictly my opinions, you understand, but hey... it's better than a poke in the eye with an iPhone! A few disclaimers:     Feel free to write me about your app and tell me about it. While it would be very cool to receive a whole bunch of xap files to review, at this point, for technical reasons, I'm unable to side-load my device. Since I plan on only doing this one day a week, and only 5, I may never get caught up, so if you send me some info, be patient. Re: games ... remember I'm old... I'm from the era of Colossal Cave and Zork. Duke-Nukem 2D and Captain Comic were awesome. I don't own an XBOX or any other game system, so take game reviews from my perspective -- who knows, it may be refreshing :) I won't pay for an app or game just to try it. If you expect me to test-drive your app, it's going to have to have a Free Trial. In this Issue:   Jingo! is the first app I bought, just to see what the experience was like. It's very much like a game we used to play in school in the Army in 1971 on paper we passed around. Sort of a cross between hangman and Mastermind, you try to figure out the hidden word in 5 tries. You get really good at 5-letter words after a while. I like this because you have to think, and you're not pressured by a clock Jingo! is by James Furdell and is $1.99 I reviewed René Schulte's Pictures Lab a while back, and have not changed my mind. This is an excellent app for playing with any photo on your device... one you've just taken, one you've synced from your PC, or one you've saved from email. I like this because you can get some cool effects for your photos, and it just works. Pictures Lab is by Schulte Software Development and is $1.99 Since I work as a consultant, and from home, I wanted something I could track my time with. I've test-driven all the contenders I could find so far on the phone, and so far I like ONTRACK! the best. If asked, I have some suggestions, but it's probably just the way I work or think. What I do like is I can tap a project to start/stop/restart a counter, and at the end of the day it shows me how much time I've been working. If there's a way to make an adjustment in case you forget to tap the counter, I don't know how to do it, and that's my biggest complaint. I like this because you can get a daily readout which you can also email as a spreadsheet. The daily results display is very good. ONTRACK! is by Qmino and is $2.99 Remember Item 4 above... I've been playing guitar for 48 years... obviously since before the invention of 'tuners', so I'm not as dependent upon these as some folks are. I've tried some in the past and have always felt I can do just as good by ear (I have perfect relative pitch). So, I gave this app by András Velvárt a dance just to see how it works, and it is surprisingly good. If you're used to one of the stage tuners this may take a little getting used to, but it does the job. The difference with this one is there is no real 'null' point inside which you can think your guitar is in tune. The soundwave stays visible on the device, and if it's moving to the right, your string is flat, if it's moving to the left, your string is sharp. Getting it exact might be tricky, but it is exact! If you need to rely on a tuner, this is a good choice in my opinion, exactly because of the sensitivity.. tune up with this and you're dead-on. Guitar Tuner is by Kinabalu Innovation Limited and is $0.99 Popper 2 is the WP7 version of a wildly popular game by Bill Reiss named Dr. Popper. You can get a trial, or you can now get a free lite version of the game. Popper 2 is a fast-paced bubble breaker game. I find it something fun to play when I just want to buzz out, but maybe the best review is that my daughter didn't want to give my phone back when I showed it to her, and always wants to grab my phone to play 'that game'. A fun distraction with great graphics and a great price Popper 2 is by Blue Rose Systems, LLC and is $1.29 Let me know what you think of the idea of doing reviews, or the layout/whatever, and Stay in the 'Light!   Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• Basic WCF Unit Testing

  - by Brian

  Coming from someone who loves the KISS method, I was surprised to find that I was making something entirely too complicated. I know, shocker right? Now I'm no unit testing ninja, and not really a WCF ninja either, but had a desire to test service calls without a) going to a database, or b) making sure that the entire WCF infrastructure was tip top. Who does? It's not the environment I want to test, just the logic I’ve written to ensure there aren't any side effects. So, for the K.I.S.S. method: Assuming that you're using a WCF service library (you are using service libraries correct?), it's really as easy as referencing the service library, then building out some stubs for bunking up data. The service contract We’ll use a very basic service contract, just for getting and updating an entity. I’ve used the default “CompositeType” that is in the template, handy only for examples like this. I’ve added an Id property and overridden ToString and Equals. [ServiceContract] public interface IMyService { [OperationContract] CompositeType GetCompositeType(int id); [OperationContract] CompositeType SaveCompositeType(CompositeType item); [OperationContract] CompositeTypeCollection GetAllCompositeTypes(); } The implementation When I implement the service, I want to be able to send known data into it so I don’t have to fuss around with database access or the like. To do this, I first have to create an interface for my data access: public interface IMyServiceDataManager { CompositeType GetCompositeType(int id); CompositeType SaveCompositeType(CompositeType item); CompositeTypeCollection GetAllCompositeTypes(); } For the purposes of this we can ignore our implementation of the IMyServiceDataManager interface inside of the service. Pretend it uses LINQ to Entities to map its data, or maybe it goes old school and uses EntLib to talk to SQL. Maybe it talks to a tape spool on a mainframe on the third floor. It really doesn’t matter. That’s the point. So here’s what our service looks like in its most basic form: public CompositeType GetCompositeType(int id) { //sanity checks if (id == 0) throw new ArgumentException("id cannot be zero."); return _dataManager.GetCompositeType(id); } public CompositeType SaveCompositeType(CompositeType item) { return _dataManager.SaveCompositeType(item); } public CompositeTypeCollection GetAllCompositeTypes() { return _dataManager.GetAllCompositeTypes(); } But what about the datamanager? The constructor takes care of that. I don’t want to expose any testing ability in release (or the ability for someone to swap out my datamanager) so this is what we get: IMyServiceDataManager _dataManager; public MyService() { _dataManager = new MyServiceDataManager(); } #if DEBUG public MyService(IMyServiceDataManager dataManager) { _dataManager = dataManager; } #endif The Stub Now it’s time for the rubber to meet the road… Like most guys that ever talk about unit testing here’s a sample that is painting in *very* broad strokes. The important part however is that within the test project, I’ve created a bunk (unit testing purists would say stub I believe) object that implements my IMyServiceDataManager so that I can deal with known data. Here it is: internal class FakeMyServiceDataManager : IMyServiceDataManager { internal FakeMyServiceDataManager() { Collection = new CompositeTypeCollection(); Collection.AddRange(new CompositeTypeCollection { new CompositeType { Id = 1, BoolValue = true, StringValue = "foo 1", }, new CompositeType { Id = 2, BoolValue = false, StringValue = "foo 2", }, new CompositeType { Id = 3, BoolValue = true, StringValue = "foo 3", }, }); } CompositeTypeCollection Collection { get; set; } #region IMyServiceDataManager Members public CompositeType GetCompositeType(int id) { if (id <= 0) return null; return Collection.SingleOrDefault(m => m.Id == id); } public CompositeType SaveCompositeType(CompositeType item) { var existing = Collection.SingleOrDefault(m => m.Id == item.Id); if (null != existing) { Collection.Remove(existing); } if (item.Id == 0) { item.Id = Collection.Count > 0 ? Collection.Max(m => m.Id) + 1 : 1; } Collection.Add(item); return item; } public CompositeTypeCollection GetAllCompositeTypes() { return Collection; } #endregion } So it’s tough to see in this example why any of this is necessary, but in a real world application you would/should/could be applying much more logic within your service implementation. This all serves to ensure that between refactorings etc, that it doesn’t send sparking cogs all about or let the blue smoke out. Here’s a simple test that brings it all home, remember, broad strokes: [TestMethod] public void MyService_GetCompositeType_ExpectedValues() { FakeMyServiceDataManager fake = new FakeMyServiceDataManager(); MyService service = new MyService(fake); CompositeType expected = fake.GetCompositeType(1); CompositeType actual = service.GetCompositeType(2); Assert.AreEqual<CompositeType>(expected, actual, "Objects are not equal. Expected: {0}; Actual: {1};", expected, actual); } Summary That’s really all there is to it. You could use software x or framework y to do the exact same thing, but in my case I just didn’t really feel like it. This speaks volumes to my not yet ninja unit testing prowess.

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• Action delegate in C#

  - by Jalpesh P. Vadgama

  In last few posts about I have written lots of things about delegates and this post is also part of that series. In this post we are going to learn about Action delegates in C#.  Following is a list of post related to delegates. Delegates in C#. Multicast Delegates in C#. Func Delegates in C#. Action Delegates in c#: As per MSDN action delegates used to pass a method as parameter without explicitly declaring custom delegates. Action Delegates are used to encapsulate method that does not have return value. C# 4.0 Action delegates have following different variants like following. It can take up to 16 parameters. Action – It will be no parameter and does not return any value. Action(T) Action(T1,T2) Action(T1,T2,T3) Action(T1,T2,T3,T4) Action(T1,T2,T3,T4,T5) Action(T1,T2,T3,T4,T5,T6) Action(T1,T2,T3,T4,T5,T6,T7) Action(T1,T2,T3,T4,T5,T6,T7,T8) Action(T1,T2,T3,T4,T5,T6,T7,T8,T9) Action(T1,T2,T3,T4,T5,T6,T7,T8,T9,T10) Action(T1,T2,T3,T4,T5,T6,T7,T8,T9,T10,T11) Action(T1,T2,T3,T4,T5,T6,T7,T8,T9,T10,T11,T12) Action(T1,T2,T3,T4,T5,T6,T7,T8,T9,T10,T11,T12,T13) Action(T1,T2,T3,T4,T5,T6,T7,T8,T9,T10,T11,T12,T13,T14) Action(T1,T2,T3,T4,T5,T6,T7,T8,T9,T10,T11,T12,T13,T14,T15) Action(T1,T2,T3,T4,T5,T6,T7,T8,T9,T10,T11,T12,T13,T14,T15,T16) So for this Action delegate you can have up to 16 parameters for Action.  Sound interesting!!… Enough theory now. It’s time to implement real code. Following is a code for that. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; namespace DelegateExample { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { Action<String> Print = p => Console.WriteLine(p); Action<String,String> PrintAnother = (p1,p2)=> Console.WriteLine(string.Format("{0} {1}",p1,p2)); Print("Hello"); PrintAnother("Hello","World"); } } } In the above code you can see that I have created two Action delegate Print and PrintAnother. Print have one string parameter and its printing that. While PrintAnother have two string parameter and printing both the strings via Console.Writeline. Now it’s time to run example and following is the output as expected. That’s it. Hope you liked it. Stay tuned for more updates!!

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• Are SQL Injection vulnerabilities in a PHP application acceptable if mod_security is enabled?

  - by Austin Smith

  I've been asked to audit a PHP application. No framework, no router, no model. Pure PHP. Few shared functions. HTML, CSS, and JS all mixed together. I've discovered numerous places where SQL injection would be easily possible. There are other problems with the application (XSS vulnerabilities, rampant inline CSS, code copy-pasted everywhere) but this is the biggest. Sometimes they escape inputs, not using a prepared query or even mysql_real_escape_string(), mind you, but using addslashes(). Often, though, their queries look exactly like this (pasted from their code but with columns and variable names changed): $user = mysql_query("select * from profile where profile_id='".$_REQUEST["profile_id"]."'"); The developers in question claimed that they were unable to hack their application. I tried, and found mod_security to be enabled, resulting in HTTP 406 for some obvious SQL injection attacks. I believe there to be sophisticated workarounds for mod_security, but I don't have time to chase them down. They claim that this is a "conceptual" matter and not a "practical" one since the application can't easily be hacked. Their internal auditor agreed that there were problems, but emphasized the conceptual nature of the issues. They also use this conceptual/practical argument to defend against inline CSS and JS, absence of code organization, XSS vulnerabilities, and massive amounts of repetition. My client (rightly so, perhaps) just wants this to go away so they can launch their product. The site works. You can log in, do what you need to do, and things are visibly functional, if slow. SQL Injection would indeed be hard to do, given mod_security. Further, their talk of "conceptual vs. practical" is rhetorically brilliant, considering that my client doesn't understand web application security. I worry that they've succeeded in making me sound like an angry puritan. In many ways, this is a problem of politics, not technology, but I am at a loss. As a developer, I want to tell them to toss the whole project and start over with a new team, but I face a strong defense from the team that built it and a client who really needs to ship their product. Is my position here too harsh? Even if they fix the SQL Injection and XSS problems can I ever endorse the release of an unmaintainable tangle of spaghetti code?

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• Code review recommendations and Code Smells

  - by Michael Freidgeim

  Some time ago Twitter told that I am similar to Boris Lipschitz . Indeed he is also .Net programmer from Russia living in Australia. I‘ve read his list of Code Review points and found them quite comprehensive. A few points  were not clear for me, and it forced me for a further reading.In particular the statement “Exception should not be used to return a status or an error code.” wasn’t fully clear for me, because sometimes we store an exception as an object with all error details and I believe it’s a valid approach. However I agree that throwing exceptions should be avoided, if you expect to return error as a part of a normal flow. Related link: http://codeutopia.net/blog/2010/03/11/should-a-failed-function-return-a-value-or-throw-an-exception/ Another point slightly puzzled me“If Thread.Sleep() is used, can it be replaced with something else, ei Timer, AutoResetEvent, etc” . I believe, that there are very rare cases, when anyone using Thread.Sleep in any production code. Usually it is used in mocks and prototypes.I had to look further to clarify “Dependency injection is used instead of Service Location pattern”.Even most of articles has some preferences to Dependency injection, there are also advantages to use Service Location. E.g see http://geekswithblogs.net/KyleBurns/archive/2012/04/27/dependency-injection-vs.-service-locator.aspx. http://www.cookcomputing.com/blog/archives/000587.html  refers to Concluding Thoughts of Martin Fowler The choice between Service Locator and Dependency Injection is less important than the principle of separating service configuration from the use of services within an applicationThe post had a link to excellent article Code Smells of Jeff Atwood, but the statement, that “code should not pass a review if it violates any of the  code smells” sound too strict for my environment. In particular, I disagree with “Dead Code” recommendation “Ruthlessly delete code that isn't being used. That's why we have source control systems!”. If there is a chance that not used code will be required in a future, it is convenient to keep it as commented or #if/#endif blocks with appropriate explanation, why it could be required in the future. TFS is a good source control system, but context search in source code of current solution is much easier than finding something in the previous versions of the code.I also found a link to a good book “Clean Code.A.Handbook.of.Agile.Software”

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• What tools exist for assessing an organisation's development capability?

  - by Eric Smith

  I have a bit of a challenge at work at the moment. Presently (and in fact, for some time now), we have been experiencing the following problems with some in-house maintained applications: Defects (sometimes quite serious) being released into production; The Customer (that is, the relevant business unit) perpetually changing their minds (or appearing to do so) about what issue to work on next; A situation where everyone seems to be in a "fire-fighting" mode a lot of the time; Development staff responding to operational requests from business users; ("operational" here means something that needs to be done in order to continue with business, or perhaps just to make a business user's life a little less painful, as opposed to fixing a bug in the application, or enhancing the application); Now I'm sure this doesn't sound particularly new or surprising to most of the participants on this Q&A site and no prizes for identifying the "usual suspects" when it comes to root causes. My challenge is that I have to persuade the higher-ups to do uncomfortable things in order to address all of this. The folk I need to persuade come from a mixture of the following two cultures: Accounting; IT Infrastructure. I have therefore opted for a strategy that draws from things with-which folk from such a culture would be most comfortable (at least, in my estimation), namely: numbers and tangibles. Of course modern development practitioners know all too well that this sort of thing isn't easily solved using an analytical mindset (some would argue that that mindset is, in fact, entirely inappropriate). Never-the-less, this is the dichotomy with-which I am faced, so that's the stake that I've put in the ground. I would like to be able to do research and use the outputs to present findings in the form of metrics and measures. I am finding it quite difficult, though, to find an agreed-upon methodology and set of templates for assessing an organisations development capability--the only thing that seems applicable is the Software Engineering Institute's Capability Maturity Model. The latter, however, seems dated and even then rather vague. So, the question is: Do any tools or methodologies (free or commercial) exist that would assist me in completing this assessment?

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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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• Will polishing my current project be a better learning experience than starting a new one?

  - by Alejandro Cámara

  I started programming many years ago. Now I'm trying to make games. I have read many recommendations to start cloning some well known games like galaga, tetris, arkanoid, etc. I have also read that I should go for the whole game (including menus, sound, score, etc.). Yesterday I finished the first complete version of my arkanoid clone. But it is far from over. I can still work on it for months (I program as a hobby in my free time) implementing a screen resolution switcher, remap of the control keys, power-ups falling from broken bricks, and a huge etc. But I do not want to be forever learning how to clone ONE game. I have the urge to get to the next clone in order to apply some design ideas I have come upon while developing this arkanoid clone (at the same time I am reading the GoF book and much source code from Ludum Dare 21 game contest). So the question is: Should I keep improving the arkanoid clone until it has all the features the original game had? or should I move to the next clone (there are almost infinite games to clone) and start mending the things I did wrong with the previous clone? This can be a very subjective question, so please restrain the answers to the most effective way to learn how to make my own games (not cloning someone ideas). Thank you! CLARIFICATION In order to clarify what I have implemented I make this list: Features implemented: Bouncing capabilities (the ball bounces on walls, on bricks, and on the bar). Sounds when bouncing on bricks and the bar, and when the player wins or loses. Basic title menu (new game and exit only). Also in-game menu and win/lose menus. Only three levels, but the map system is so easy I do not think it will teach me much (am I wrong?). Features not-implemented: Power-ups when breaking the bricks. Complex bricks (with more than one "hit point" and invincible). Better graphics (I am not really good at it). Programming polishing (use more intensively the design patterns). Here's a link to its (minimal) webpage: http://blog.acamara.es/piperine/ I kind of feel ashamed to show it, so please do not hit me too hard :-) My question was related to the not-implemented features. I wondered what was the fastest (optimal) path to learn. 1) implement the not-implemented features in this project which is getting big, or 2) make a new game which probably will teach me those lessons and new ones. ANSWER I choose @ashes999 answer because, in my case, I think I should polish more and try to "ship" the game. I think all the other answers are also important to bear in mind, so if you came here having the same question, before taking a rush decision read all the discussion. Thank you all!

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• Devoxx!!

  - by Yolande

  0 0 1 350 2000 Oracle Corporation 16 4 2346 14.0 Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* 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-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:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}  Announcing Devoxx London! Taking place on  March 26th and 27th, 2013 right before Devoxx  France on March 28th and 29th, this will be the first  edition of Devoxx UK!. The call for papers begins  on December 1st for Devoxx in London and Paris.  Speakers will be able to present at the two  conferences in the same week. Oracle committed  to fully sponsor the three Devoxx conferences in  2013 with a platinum sponsorship. Over 5,000 developers are expected to attend those conferences. Five dancing NAO robots welcomed attendees at the keynote. Stephan Janssen offers the JUGs to replicate Devoxx4kids workshops using his content and web infrastructure.  He recommended organizing kid events because “the workshops were really fun and such rewarding experience.” Stephan also announced the redesign of Parleys with Html 5 and GlassFish. Friendlier to speakers, they will be able to post their slides online before their talks and then sync the talk's sound track with the slides. Nandini Ramani, VP of product development explained in her keynote address the growing role of Java from enterprise application development to cloud computing to embedded machine-to-machines systems. “Java continues to drive the applications and devices that enrich our interactivity with the world around us” she said. The Java platform has expanded its reach with the OS X and Linux ARM support on Java SE and with two new releases, Java SE embedded and Java embedded Suite 7.0 middleware platform.  Coming up next year is JDK 8, which will include Project Lambda, Project Nashorn and more. As part of that release, JavaFX will offer 3D and third-party component integration. At Devoxx, the slick and interactive schedules were designed with JavaFX. The earliest version of the Java EE 7 SDK is available for download and has WebSocket support, improved JSON support and more.  Stephen Chin arrived on stage with his bike, ending his European NightHacking tour. Check the hacking sessions online here

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• Own a KINECT for MS-XBOX before anyone does

  Following is the announced by Richik Nandi from Microsoft team. Dear Customer, We believe that our privileged customers shouldn't have to wait for good things. So, here's a special offer exclusively for you. Be one of the first in India to own and experience Kinect for XBOX 360, few days before it is even launched in stores. Introducing the new Kinect for XBOX 360®. Kinect needs no controllers. You are the controller. Kinect brings games and entertainment to life in extraordinary new ways without using a controller. The sensor recognizes your face, eyes and body movements to deliver a superb gaming experience. Easy to use and great fun, Kinect gets everyone off the couch. See a ball? Kick it. Want to join a friend in the fun? Simply jump in. Imagine controlling movies and music with the wave of a hand or the sound of your voice! Kinect is all about fun for you and your family. And the best part is Kinect works with every Xbox 360®. There are two options you can choose from: •  Kinect sensor + 4GB Xbox 360 bundle + Kinect Adventures game at Rs 22,990/-and get Dance Central game worth Rs 1999 from Redington, 20% discount voucher from Starwood on food and beverages, T-shirt from PUMA and a Kinect adventure live card absolutely free using your unique promo code : XbTXXZl2Sb •  Kinect Sensor at Rs 9,500/-and get 20% discount voucher from Starwood on food and beverages, T-shirt from PUMA and a Kinect adventure live card absolutely free using your unique promo code : lDg6o8SuYh We want you to own your Kinect before the official launch. The promotion closes by 10th November. To know more about Kinect click here. To book your Kinect PRE-ORDER now! Enter your details along with the above mentioned promo code to avail of the free gifts offer. We will have your Kinect delivered by 19th November 2010. Enjoy being the controller. Enjoy the Kinect. span.fullpost {display:none;}

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• What can a Service do on Windows?

  - by Akemi Iwaya

  If you open up Task Manager or Process Explorer on your system, you will see many services running. But how much of an impact can a service have on your system, especially if it is ‘corrupted’ by malware? Today’s SuperUser Q&A post has the answers to a curious reader’s questions. Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites. The Question SuperUser reader Forivin wants to know how much impact a service can have on a Windows system, especially if it is ‘corrupted’ by malware: What kind malware/spyware could someone put into a service that does not have its own process on Windows? I mean services that use svchost.exe for example, like this: Could a service spy on my keyboard input? Take screenshots? Send and/or receive data over the internet? Infect other processes or files? Delete files? Kill processes? How much impact could a service have on a Windows installation? Are there any limits to what a malware ‘corrupted’ service could do? The Answer SuperUser contributor Keltari has the answer for us: What is a service? A service is an application, no more, no less. The advantage is that a service can run without a user session. This allows things like databases, backups, the ability to login, etc. to run when needed and without a user logged in. What is svchost? According to Microsoft: “svchost.exe is a generic host process name for services that run from dynamic-link libraries”. Could we have that in English please? Some time ago, Microsoft started moving all of the functionality from internal Windows services into .dll files instead of .exe files. From a programming perspective, this makes more sense for reusability…but the problem is that you can not launch a .dll file directly from Windows, it has to be loaded up from a running executable (exe). Thus the svchost.exe process was born. So, essentially a service which uses svchost is just calling a .dll and can do pretty much anything with the right credentials and/or permissions. If I remember correctly, there are viruses and other malware that do hide behind the svchost process, or name the executable svchost.exe to avoid detection. Have something to add to the explanation? Sound off in the comments. Want to read more answers from other tech-savvy Stack Exchange users? Check out the full discussion thread here.

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• JUDCon 2013 Trip Report

  - by reza_rahman

  JUDCon (JBoss Users and Developers Conference) 2013 was held in historic Boston on June 9-11 at the Hynes Convention Center. JUDCon is the largest get together for the JBoss community, has gone global in recent years but has it's roots in Boston. The JBoss folks graciously accepted a Java EE 7 talk from me and actually referenced my talk in their own sessions. I am proud to say this is my third time speaking at JUDCon/the Red Hat Summit over the years (this was the first time on behalf of Oracle). I had great company with many of the rock stars of the JBoss ecosystem speaking such as Lincoln Baxter, Jay Balunas, Gavin King, Mark Proctor, Andrew Lee Rubinger, Emmanuel Bernard and Pete Muir. Notably missing from JUDCon were Bill Burke, Burr Sutter, Aslak Knutsen and Dan Allen. Topics included Java EE, Forge, Arquillian, AeroGear, OpenShift, WildFly, Errai/GWT, NoSQL, Drools, jBPM, OpenJDK, Apache Camel and JBoss Tools/Eclipse. My session titled "JavaEE.Next(): Java EE 7, 8, and Beyond" went very well and it was a full house. This is our main talk covering the changes in JMS 2, the Java API for WebSocket (JSR 356), the Java API for JSON Processing (JSON-P), JAX-RS 2, JPA 2.1, JTA 1.2, JSF 2.2, Java Batch, Bean Validation 1.1, Java EE Concurrency and the rest of the APIs in Java EE 7. I also briefly talked about the possibilities for Java EE 8. The slides for the talk are here: JavaEE.Next(): Java EE 7, 8, and Beyond from reza_rahman Besides presenting my talk, it was great to catch up with the JBoss gang and attend a few interesting sessions. On Sunday night I went to one of my favorite hangouts in Boston - the exalted Middle East Club as Rolling Stone refers to it (other cool spots in an otherwise pretty boring town is "the Church"). As contradictory as it might sound to the uninitiated, the Middle East Club is possibly the best place in Boston to simultaneously get great Middle Eastern (primarily Lebanese) food and great underground metal. For folks with a bit more exposure, this is probably not contradictory at all given bands like Acrassicauda and documentaries like Heavy Metal in Baghdad. Luckily for me they were featuring a few local Thrash metal bands from the greater Boston area. It wasn't too bad considering it was primarily amateur twenty-something guys (although I'm not sure I'm a qualified critic any more since I all but stopped playing about at that age). It's great Boston has the Middle East as an incubator to keep the rock, metal, folk, jazz, blues and indie scene alive. I definitely enjoyed JUDCon/Boston and hope to be part of the conference next year again.

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• Referencing a picture in another DLL in Silverlight and Windows Phone 7

  - by Laurent Bugnion

  This one has burned me a few times, so here is how it works for future reference: Usually, when I add an Image control into a Silverlight application, and the picture it shows is local (as opposed to loaded from the web), I set the picture’s Build Action to Content, and the Copy to Output Directory to Copy if Newer. What the compiler does then is to copy the picture to the bin\Debug folder, and then to pack it into the XAP file. In XAML, the syntax to refer to this local picture is: <Image Source="/Images/mypicture.jpg" Width="100" Height="100" /> And in C#: return new BitmapImage(new Uri( "/Images/mypicture.jpg", UriKind.Relative)); One of the features of Silverlight is to allow referencing content (pictures, resource dictionaries, sound files, movies etc…) located in a DLL directly. This is very handy because just by using the right syntax in the URI, you can do this in XAML directly, for example with: <Image Source="/MyApplication;component/Images/mypicture.jpg" Width="100" Height="100" /> In C#, this becomes: return new BitmapImage(new Uri( "/MyApplication;component/Images/mypicture.jpg", UriKind.Relative)); Side note: This kind of URI is called a pack URI and they have been around since the early days of WPF. There is a good tutorial about pack URIs on MSDN. Even though it refers to WPF, it also applies to Silverlight Side note 2: With the Build Action set to Content, you can rename the XAP file to ZIP, extract all the files, change the picture (but keep the same name), rezip the whole thing and rename again to XAP. This is not possible if the picture is embedded in an assembly! So what’s the catch? Well the catch is that this does not work if you set the Build Action to Content. It’s actually pretty simple to explain: The pack URI above tells the Silverlight runtime to look within an assembly named MyOtherAssembly for a file named MyPicture.jpg in the Images folder. If the file is included as Content, however, it is not in the assembly. Silverlight does not find it, and silently returns nothing. The image is not displayed. And the fix? The fix, for class libraries, is to set the Build Action to Resource. With this, the picture will gets packed into the DLL itself. Of course, this will increase the size of the DLL, and any change to the picture will require recompiling the class library, which is not ideal. But in the cases where you want to distribute pictures (icons etc) together with a plug-in assembly, well, this is a good way to have everything in the same place Happy coding, Laurent   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

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• How to draw textures on a model

  - by marc wellman

  The following code is a complete XNA 3.1 program almost unaltered to that code skeleton Visual Studio is creating when creating a new project. The only things I have changed are imported a .x model to the content folder of the VS solution. (the model is a simple square with a texture spanning over it - made in Google Sketchup and exported with several .x exporters) in the Load() method I am loading the .x model into the game. The Draw() method uses a BasicEffect to render the model. Except these three things I haven't added any code. Why does the model does not show the texture ? What can I do to make the texture visible ? This is the texture file (a standard SketchUp texture from the palette): And this is what my program looks like - as you can see: No texture! Find below the complete source code of the program AND the complete .x file: namespace WindowsGame1 { /// <summary> /// This is the main type for your game /// </summary> public class Game1 : Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Game { GraphicsDeviceManager graphics; SpriteBatch spriteBatch; public Game1() { graphics = new GraphicsDeviceManager(this); Content.RootDirectory = "Content"; } /// <summary> /// Allows the game to perform any initialization it needs to before starting to run. /// This is where it can query for any required services and load any non-graphic /// related content. Calling base.Initialize will enumerate through any components /// and initialize them as well. /// </summary> protected override void Initialize() { // TODO: Add your initialization logic here base.Initialize(); } Model newModel; /// <summary> /// LoadContent will be called once per game and is the place to load /// all of your content. /// </summary> protected override void LoadContent() { // Create a new SpriteBatch, which can be used to draw textures. spriteBatch = new SpriteBatch(GraphicsDevice); // TODO: usse this.Content to load your game content here newModel = Content.Load<Model>(@"aau3d"); foreach (ModelMesh mesh in newModel.Meshes) { foreach (ModelMeshPart meshPart in mesh.MeshParts) { meshPart.Effect = new BasicEffect(this.GraphicsDevice, null); } } } /// <summary> /// UnloadContent will be called once per game and is the place to unload /// all content. /// </summary> protected override void UnloadContent() { // TODO: Unload any non ContentManager content here } /// <summary> /// Allows the game to run logic such as updating the world, /// checking for collisions, gathering input, and playing audio. /// </summary> /// <param name="gameTime">Provides a snapshot of timing values.</param> protected override void Update(GameTime gameTime) { // Allows the game to exit if (GamePad.GetState(PlayerIndex.One).Buttons.Back == ButtonState.Pressed) this.Exit(); // TODO: Add your update logic here base.Update(gameTime); } /// <summary> /// This is called when the game should draw itself. /// </summary> /// <param name="gameTime">Provides a snapshot of timing values.</param> protected override void Draw(GameTime gameTime) { if (newModel != null) { GraphicsDevice.Clear(Color.CornflowerBlue); Matrix[] transforms = new Matrix[newModel.Bones.Count]; newModel.CopyAbsoluteBoneTransformsTo(transforms); foreach (ModelMesh mesh in newModel.Meshes) { foreach (BasicEffect effect in mesh.Effects) { effect.EnableDefaultLighting(); effect.TextureEnabled = true; effect.World = transforms[mesh.ParentBone.Index] * Matrix.CreateRotationY(0) * Matrix.CreateTranslation(new Vector3(0, 0, 0)); effect.View = Matrix.CreateLookAt(new Vector3(200, 1000, 200), Vector3.Zero, Vector3.Up); effect.Projection = Matrix.CreatePerspectiveFieldOfView(MathHelper.ToRadians(45.0f), 0.75f, 1.0f, 10000.0f); } mesh.Draw(); } } base.Draw(gameTime); } } } This is the model I am using (.x): xof 0303txt 0032 // SketchUp 6 -> DirectX (c)2008 edecadoudal, supports: faces, normals and textures Material Default_Material{ 1.0;1.0;1.0;1.0;; 3.2; 0.000000;0.000000;0.000000;; 0.000000;0.000000;0.000000;; } Material _Groundcover_RiverRock_4inch_{ 0.568627450980392;0.494117647058824;0.427450980392157;1.0;; 3.2; 0.000000;0.000000;0.000000;; 0.000000;0.000000;0.000000;; TextureFilename { "aau3d.xGroundcover_RiverRock_4inch.jpg"; } } Mesh mesh_0{ 4; -81.6535;0.0000;74.8031;, -0.0000;0.0000;0.0000;, -81.6535;0.0000;0.0000;, -0.0000;0.0000;74.8031;; 2; 3;0,1,2, 3;1,0,3;; MeshMaterialList { 2; 2; 1, 1; { Default_Material } { _Groundcover_RiverRock_4inch_ } } MeshTextureCoords { 4; -2.1168,-3.4022; 1.0000,-0.0000; 1.0000,-3.4022; -2.1168,-0.0000;; } MeshNormals { 4; 0.0000;1.0000;-0.0000; 0.0000;1.0000;-0.0000; 0.0000;1.0000;-0.0000; 0.0000;1.0000;-0.0000;; 2; 3;0,1,2; 3;1,0,3;; } }

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• What does it mean to treat data as an asset?

  What does it mean to treat data as an asset? When considering this concept, we must define what data is and how it can be considered an asset. Data can easily be defined as a collection of stored truths that are open to interpretation and manipulation.  Expanding on this definition, data can be viewed as a set of captured facts, measurements, and ideas used to make decisions. Furthermore, InvestorsWords.com defines asset as any item of economic value owned by an individual or corporation. Now let’s apply this definition of asset to our definition of data, and ask the following question. Can facts, measurements and ideas be items that are of economic value owned by an individual or corporation? The obvious answer is yes; data can be bought and sold like commodities or analyzed to make smarter business decisions.  We can look at the economic value of data in one of two ways. First, data can be sold as a commodity that can take the form of goods like eBooks, Training, Music, Movies, and so on. Customers are willing to pay to gain access to this data for their consumption. This directly implies that there is an economic value for data in the form of a commodity because customers see a value in obtaining it.  Secondly data can be used in making smarter business decisions that allow for companies to become more profitable and/or reduce their potential for risk in regards to how they operate.  In the past I have worked at companies where we had to analyze previous sales activities in conjunction with current activities to determine how the company was preforming for the quarter.  In addition trends can be formulated based on existing data that allow companies to forecast data so that they can make strategic business decisions based sound forecasted data. Companies that truly value their data are constantly trying to grow and upgrade their data and supporting applications because it is the life blood of a company. If we look at an eBook retailer for example, imagine if they lost all of their data. They would be in essence forced out of business because they would have nothing to sell. In turn, if we look at a company that was using data to facilitate better decision making processes and they lost all of their data then they could be losing potential revenue and/ or increasing the company’s losses by making important business decisions virtually in the dark compared to when they were made on solid data.

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• What are the arguments against parsing the Cthulhu way?

  - by smarmy53

  I have been assigned the task of implementing a Domain Specific Language for a tool that may become quite important for the company. The language is simple but not trivial, it already allows nested loops, string concatenation, etc. and it is practically sure that other constructs will be added as the project advances. I know by experience that writing a lexer/parser by hand -unless the grammar is trivial- is a time consuming and error prone process. So I was left with two options: a parser generator à la yacc or a combinator library like Parsec. The former was good as well but I picked the latter for various reasons, and implemented the solution in a functional language. The result is pretty spectacular to my eyes, the code is very concise, elegant and readable/fluent. I concede it may look a bit weird if you never programmed in anything other than java/c#, but then this would be true of anything not written in java/c#. At some point however, I've been literally attacked by a co-worker. After a quick glance at my screen he declared that the code is uncomprehensible and that I should not reinvent parsing but just use a stack and String.Split like everybody does. He made a lot of noise, and I could not convince him, partially because I've been taken by surprise and had no clear explanation, partially because his opinion was immutable (no pun intended). I even offered to explain him the language, but to no avail. I'm positive the discussion is going to re-surface in front of management, so I'm preparing some solid arguments. These are the first few reasons that come to my mind to avoid a String.Split-based solution: you need lot of ifs to handle special cases and things quickly spiral out of control lots of hardcoded array indexes makes maintenance painful extremely difficult to handle things like a function call as a method argument (ex. add( (add a, b), c) very difficult to provide meaningful error messages in case of syntax errors (very likely to happen) I'm all for simplicity, clarity and avoiding unnecessary smart-cryptic stuff, but I also believe it's a mistake to dumb down every part of the codebase so that even a burger flipper can understand it. It's the same argument I hear for not using interfaces, not adopting separation of concerns, copying-pasting code around, etc. A minimum of technical competence and willingness to learn is required to work on a software project after all. (I won't use this argument as it will probably sound offensive, and starting a war is not going to help anybody) What are your favorite arguments against parsing the Cthulhu way?* *of course if you can convince me he's right I'll be perfectly happy as well

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• SceneManagers as systems in entity system or as a core class used by a system?

  - by Hatoru Hansou

  It seems entity systems are really popular here. Links posted by other users convinced me of the power of such system and I decided to try it. (Well, that and my original code getting messy) In my project, I originally had a SceneManager class that maintained needed logic and structures to organize the scene (QuadTree, 2D game). Before rendering I call selectRect() and pass the x,y of the camera and the width and height of the screen and then obtain a minimized list containing only visible entities ordered from back to front. Now with Systems, originally in my first attempt my Render system required to get added all entities it should handle. This may sound like the correct approach but I realized this was not efficient. Trying to optimize It I reused the SceneManager class internally in the Renderer system, but then I realized I needed methods such as selectRect() in others systems too (AI principally) and make the SceneManager accessible globally again. Currently I converted SceneManager to a system, and ended up with the following interface (only relevant methods): /// Base system interface class System { public: virtual void tick (double delta_time) = 0; // (methods to add and remove entities) }; typedef std::vector<Entity*> EntitiesVector; /// Specialized system interface to allow query the scene class SceneManager: public System { public: virtual EntitiesVector& cull () = 0; /// Sets the entity to be used as the camera and replaces previous ones. virtual void setCamera (Entity* entity) = 0; }; class SceneRenderer // Not a system { vitual void render (EntitiesVector& entities) = 0; }; Also I could not guess how to convert renderers to systems. My game separates logic updates from screen updates, my main class have a tick() method and a render() method that may not be called the same times. In my first attempt renderers were systems but they was saved in a separated manager, updated only in render() and not in tick() like all other systems. I realized that was silly and simply created a SceneRenderer interface and give up about converting them to systems, but that may be for another question. Then... something does not feel right, isn't it? If I understood correctly a system should not depend on another or even count with another system exposing an specific interface. Each system should care only about its entities, or nodes (as optimization, so they have direct references to relevant components without having to constantly call the component() or getComponent() method of the entity).

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• Poor Customer Service Example

  - by MightyZot

  Lately I have been frustrated by examples of poor customer service. At least one is worth writing about because I don’t think companies realize the effects of their service policies on loyal customers. Bad Customer Service Example #1 Recently, I received an offer in the mail from my cable company, suddenLink. The offer was for an updated TiVo for $12/mo. Normally I ignore offers like this one because I already have the service they’re offering and many times advertisers are offering alternatives to what is already an excellent product offering. I tend to exhibit a high level of loyalty to the products and brands that I use. In this case, we were looking to upgrade our TiVo and this deal is attractive for several reasons: I don’t want to pay a huge amount up-front for the device, so paying a monthly amount for the device is attractive to me. My entertainment is almost all on a single invoice. I’m no longer going to be billed by suddenLink and TiVo. TiVo is still involved, so I am still loyal to the brand I love. I have resisted moving to other DVRs and services for over a decade. I called suddenLink to order the new TiVo and was rewarded with great customer service. In fact, I can’t remember ever getting poor customer service from suddenLink. They are always there to answer my technical support questions and they are very responsive to outages. Then I called TiVo. First of all, I chose the option on the phone system to change or cancel my service, which was consequently met by an inordinate hold time. (I’m calling this time inordinate because I get through very quickly if I want to purchase something.) This is a trend that I’ve noticed with companies – if you want me to be loyal to you, it should be just as easy to cancel your service as it is to purchase it. Because, I should never be cancelling because I am unhappy. And, if you ever want my business again, or more importantly a reference, then you’d better make the exit door open just as easy as the enter door. After quite some time on hold, I talked to “Victor” who was very courteous. Victor canceled my service and then told me that I could keep my current TiVo and transfer recorded programs to it from the new TiVo.  Cool I said, but what about the cost?  He said there was no extra cost.  This was also attractive to me because I paid for my TiVo and it would be good to use it for something at least.  That was four months ago. This month I noticed that TiVo was still charging me for my original service. I was a little upset, but I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt. After all, I am a loyal TiVo customer and I have resisted moving to other solutions for over a decade. I’m sure they will do whatever it takes to keep my business, through TiVo or through suddenLink. After quite some time on hold, I was able to talk to a customer service representative, “Les”. I explained that I am a loyal TiVo customer, but I purchased this deal through my cable provider. I’m still with TiVo, I just wanted a single bill and to take advantage of the pay-over-time option. “Les” told me that he was very sorry to hear that I’m leaving TiVo, to which I responded again that I wasn’t leaving TiVo, I just want one invoice, and to take advantage of the pay-over-time. So, after explaining that I requested a termination of the non-suddenLink account (TiVo can see both of course), I was put on hold again for quite some time while my refund was “approved”.  “Les” said that he could see my cancellation request back in July. Note that it is now November, so they have billed me inappropriately four times. After quite some time, he came back on the line and told me that he was able to “get me most of my money back.” He got approval to refund 90 days. Even though I requested cancellation of one of my accounts, TiVo has that cancellation request on file and they admit overbilling me, I am going to get “most” of my money back. To top this experience off, when we were ready to hang up, “Les” told me that he was sorry to see me go and that he hoped I would come back to TiVo again. Again, I explained to “Les” that I have not left TiVo. I am just paying them through suddenLink. At that point, he went into a small dissertation about how this is a special arrangement they have with suddenLink and very few others. He made me feel like I was doing something wrong. Why should I feel that way? TiVo made the deal with suddenLink, not me, and the deal seemed like a good compromise for me to be able to get what I need. Here is what TiVo Customer Service accomplished on those two calls – I no longer feel like I need to be loyal to the TiVo brand or service. If I had been treated better on these two calls, I would still be recommending TiVo to my friends. They would still be getting revenue from a loyal customer, who paid the same rate for over a decade, and this article wouldn’t be here for you to read. Interesting… In my opinion, if you want brand loyalty, be loyal to your customers!

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• Are You an IT Geek? Why Not Write for How-To Geek?

  - by The Geek

  Are you a geek in the IT field that wants to share your skills with the world? We’re looking for an experienced Sysadmin / IT Admin / Webmaster geek with writing skills that wants to join our team on a part-time basis. Please apply if you have the following qualities: You must be a geek at heart, willing to try and make the boring world of IT sound glamorous and sexy. If that’s not possible, at least be willing to share your wisdom and skills to help other IT geeks save time and become better at what they do. You must be able to write articles that are easy to understand. Either Windows or Linux writers are welcome to apply. You must be able to follow our style guide. You must be creative. You must generate ideas for articles on your own, and take suggestions like a pro. You’re ambitious, looking to build your skills and your name, and are prepared to work hard. If you aren’t willing to work hard, put some dedication and pride into your work, or aren’t really interested in the topic, this job might not be for you. We’re looking for serious individuals that want to grow with us, and as we grow, you’ll grow as well. How To Apply If you think this job is a good fit for you, send an email to [email protected] and include some background information about yourself, why you’d be a good fit, some topic areas you are familiar with, and hopefully some examples of your work. Bonus points if you have a ninja costume and a keyboard strapped to your back. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips What Topics Should The How-To Geek Write About?Got Awesome Skills? Why Not Write for How-To Geek?Got Awesome Geek Skills? The How-To Geek is Looking for WritersAbout the GeekThe How-To Geek Bounty Program 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 DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 QuicklyCode Provides Cheatsheets & Other Programming Stuff Download Free MP3s from Amazon Awe inspiring, inter-galactic theme (Win 7) Case Study – How to Optimize Popular Wordpress Sites Restore Hidden Updates in Windows 7 & Vista Iceland an Insurance Job?

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• Educause Top-Ten IT Issues - the most change in a decade or more

  - by user739873

  The Education IT Issue Panel has released the 2012 top-ten issues facing higher education IT leadership, and instead of the customary reshuffling of the same deck, the issues reflect much of the tumult and dynamism facing higher education generally.  I find it interesting (and encouraging) that at the top of this year's list is "Updating IT Professionals' Skills and Roles to Accommodate Emerging Technologies and Changing IT Management and Service Delivery Models."  This reflects, in my view, the realization that higher education IT must change in order to fully realize the potential for transforming the institution, and therefore it's people must learn new skills, understand and accept new ways of solving problems, and not be tied down by past practices or institutional inertia. What follows in the remaining 9 top issues all speak, in some form or fashion, to the need for dramatic change, but not just in the areas of "funding IT" (code for cost containment or reduction), but rather the need to increase effectiveness and efficiency of the institution through the use of technology—leveraging the wave of BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) to the institution's advantage, rather than viewing it as a threat and a problem to be contained. Although it's #10 of 10, IT Governance (and establishment and implementation of the governance model throughout the institution) is key to effectively acting upon many of the preceding issues in this year's list.  In the majority of cases, technology exists to meet the needs and requirements to effectively address many of the challenges outlined in top-ten issues list. Which brings me to my next point. Although I try not to sound too much like an Oracle commercial in these (all too infrequent) blog posts, I can't help but point out how much confluence there is between several of the top issues this year and what my colleagues and I have been evangelizing for some time. Starting from the bottom of the list up: 1) I'm gratified that research and the IT challenges it presents has made the cut.  Big Data (or Large Data as it's phased in the report) is rapidly going to overwhelm much of what exists today even at our most prepared and well-equipped research universities.  Combine large data with the significantly more stringent requirements around data preservation, archiving, sharing, curation, etc. coming from granting agencies like NSF, and you have the brewing storm that could result in a lot of "one-off" solutions to a problem that could very well be addressed collectively and "at scale."   2) Transformative effects of IT – while I see more and more examples of this, there is still much more that can be achieved. My experience tells me that culture (as the report indicates or at least poses the question) gets in the way more than technology not being up to task.  We spend too much time on "context" and not "core," and get lost in the weeds on the journey to truly transforming the institution with technology. 3) Analytics as a key element in improving various institutional outcomes.  In our work around Student Success, we see predictive "academic" analytics as essential to getting in front of the Student Success issue, regardless of how an institution or collections of institutions defines success.  Analytics must be part of the fabric of the key academic enterprise applications, not a bolt-on.  We will spend a significant amount of time on this topic during our semi-annual Education Industry Strategy Council meeting in Washington, D.C. later this month. 4) Cloud strategy for the broad range of applications in the academic enterprise.  Some of the recent work by Casey Green at the Campus Computing Survey would seem to indicate that there is movement in this area but mostly in what has been termed "below the campus" application areas such as collaboration tools, recruiting, and alumni relations.  It's time to get serious about sourcing elements of mature applications like student information systems, HR, Finance, etc. leveraging a model other than traditional on-campus custom. I've only selected a few areas of the list to highlight, but the unifying theme here (and this is where I run the risk of sounding like an Oracle commercial) is that these lofty goals cry out for partners that can bring economies of scale to bear on the problems married with a deep understanding of the nuances unique to higher education.  In a recent piece in Educause Review on Student Information Systems, the author points out that "best of breed is back". Unfortunately I am compelled to point out that best of breed is a large part of the reason we have made as little progress as we have as an industry in advancing some of the causes outlined above.  Don't confuse "integrated" and "full stack" for vendor lock-in.  The best-of-breed market forces that Ron points to ensure that solutions have to be "integratable" or they don't survive in the marketplace. However, by leveraging the efficiencies afforded by adopting solutions that are pre-integrated (and possibly metered out as a service) allows us to shed unnecessary costs – as difficult as these decisions are to make and to drive throughout the organization. Cole

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• Is it evil to model JSON responses to classes when they are mostly smilar?

  - by Aybe

  Here's the problem : While implementing a C# wrapper for an online API (Discogs) I've been faced to a dilemma : quite often the responses returned have mostly similar members and while modeling these responses to classes, some questions surfaces on which way to go would be the best. Example : Querying for a 'release' or a 'master' will return an object that contains an array of 'artist', however these 'artists' do not exactly have the same members. Currently I decided to represent these 'artists' as a single 'Artist' class, against having respective 'ReleaseArtist' and 'MasterArtist' classes which soon becomes very confusing even though another problem arises : when a category (master or release) does not return these members, they will be null. Though it might sound confusing as well I find it less confusing than the former situation as I've tackled the problem by simply not showing null members when visualizing these objects. Is this the right approach to follow ? An example of these differences : public class Artist { public List<Alias> Aliases { get; set; } public string DataQuality { get; set; } public List<Image> Images { get; set; } public string Name { get; set; } public List<string> NameVariations { get; set; } public string Profile { get; set; } public string Realname { get; set; } public string ReleasesUrl { get; set; } public string ResourceUrl { get; set; } public string Uri { get; set; } public List<string> Urls { get; set; } } public class ReleaseArtist { public string Join { get; set; } public string Name { get; set; } public string Anv { get; set; } public string Tracks { get; set; } public string Role { get; set; } public string ResourceUrl { get; set; } public int Id { get; set; } }

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• Purple Cows, Copernicus, and Shampoo – Lessons in Customer Experience

  - by Christina McKeon

  What makes a great customer experience? And, why should you or your organization care? These are the questions that set the stage for the Oracle Customer Experience Summit, which kicked off yesterday in San Francisco. Day 1: The first day was filled with demos and insights from customer experience experts and Oracle customers sharing what it takes to deliver great customer experiences. Author Seth Godin delivered an entertaining presentation that included an in-depth exploration of the always-connected, always-sharing experience revolution that we are witnessing and yes, talked about the purple cow. It turns out that customer experience is your way to be the purple cow. Before everyone headed out to see Pearl Jam and Kings of Leon at the Oracle customer appreciation event, the day wrapped up with a discussion around building a customer-centric culture. Where do you start? Whom does it involve? What are some pitfalls to avoid? Day 2: The second day addressed the details behind all the questions brought up at the end of Day 1. Before you start on a customer experience initiative, Paul Hagen noted that you must understand you will forge a path similar to Copernicus. You will be proposing ideas and approaches that challenge current thinking in your organization. Just as Copernicus' heliocentric theory started a scientific revolution, your customer-centric efforts will start an experience revolution. If you think customer experience is like a traditional marketing approach, think again. It’s not about controlling your customers and leading them where you want them to go. It might sound like heresy to some, but your customers are already in control, whether or not your company realizes and acknowledges it. And, to survive and thrive, you'll have to focus on customers by thinking outside-in and working towards a brand that is better and more authentic. We learned how Vail Resorts takes this customer-centric approach. Employees must experience the mountain themselves and understand the experience from the guest’s standpoint. This has created a culture where employees do things for guests that are not expected. We also learned a valuable lesson in designing and innovating customer-centered experiences from Kerry Bodine. First you make the thing, and then you make the thing right. In this case, the thing is customer experience. Getting customer experience right means iterative prototyping and testing of your ideas. This is where shampoo comes in—think lather, rinse, repeat. Be prepared to keep repeating until the customer experience is right. Many of these sessions will be posted to YouTube in the coming weeks so be sure to subscribe to our CX channel.

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