streaming media - Page 189

Network Your Computers & Devices: Step by Step

- by The Geek

If you’re looking for a great book to help you learn more about Windows home networking, there’s a new book on the market by our good friend Ciprian, and published by none other than Microsoft Press. Note: our friend Ciprian has been a guest contributor here on How-To Geek in the past, and he’s not only a geek that knows what he’s talking about, he’s also one of the more honest and decent people I’ve worked with. In his spare time, he runs the 7 Tutorials web site. The Book One of the great things about this book is that you aren’t limited to just Windows networking—it also explains how to connect Windows 7, XP, Vista, Mac OS X, and even Linux on the same network and share folders and devices between them. Everything in the book is written in a typical How-To Geek step-by-step format, with plenty of screenshots and pictures to help you through the process. Book Outline If you’re going to be spending some money on the book, you probably want to know what it’s all about, and since the Amazon page doesn’t give, well, much information at all, here’s the entire outline for you: Setting Up a Router and Devices Setting User Account on All Computers Setting Up Your Libraries on All Windows 7 Computers Creating the Network Customizing Network Sharing Settings in Windows 7 Creating the Homegroup and Joining Windows 7 Computers Sharing Libraries and Folders Sharing and Working with Devices Streaming Media Over the Network and the Internet Sharing Between Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7 Computers Sharing Between Mac OS X and Windows 7 Computers Sharing Between Ubuntu Linux and Windows 7 Computers Keeping the Network Secure Setting Up Parental Controls Troubleshooting Network and Internet Problems It’s a great book, with loads of information, and compared to most tech books isn’t very expensive—only $19.79 for the paperback and $9.99 for the Kindle version. Well worth it, and hey, it’s an official Microsoft Press book—written by a How-To Geek guest author. Network Your Computers & Devices Step by Step [Amazon] Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How To Boot 10 Different Live CDs From 1 USB Flash Drive The 20 Best How-To Geek Linux Articles of 2010 The 50 Best How-To Geek Windows Articles of 2010 The 20 Best How-To Geek Explainer Topics for 2010 How to Disable Caps Lock Key in Windows 7 or Vista How to Use the Avira Rescue CD to Clean Your Infected PC 2011 International Space Station Calendar Available for Download (Free) Ultimate Elimination – Lego Black Ops [Video] BotSync Enables Secure FTP File Synchronization on Android Devices Enjoy Beautiful City Views with the Cityscape Theme for Windows 7 Luigi Installs Any OS on Google’s Cr-48 Notebook DIY iPad Stylus Offers Pen-Based Interaction on the Cheap

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Communities - The importance of exchange and discussion

Communication with your environment is an essential part of everyone's life. And it doesn't matter whether you are actually living in a rural area in the middle of nowhere, within the pulsating heart of a big city, or in my case on a wonderful island in the Indian Ocean. The ability to exchange your thoughts, your experience and your worries with another person helps you to get different points of view and new ideas on how to resolve an issue you might be confronted with. Benefits of community work What happens to be common sense in your daily life, also applies to your work environment. Working in IT, or ICT as it is called in Mauritius, requires a lot of reading and learning. Not only during your lectures at the university but with your colleagues in a project assignment and hopefully with 'unknown' pals in the universe of online communities. At least I can say that I learned quite a lot from other developers code, their responses in various forums, their numerous blog articles, and while attending local user group meetings. When I started to work as a professional software developer (or engineer some may say) years ago I immediately checked the existence of communities on the programming language, the database technology and other vital information on software development in general. Luckily, it wasn't too difficult to find. My employer had a subscription of the monthly magazines and newsletters of a national organisation which also run the biggest forum in that area. Getting in touch with other developers and reading their common problems but also solutions was a huge benefit to my growth. Image courtesy of Michael Kappel (CC BY-NC 2.0) Active participation and regular contribution to this community gave me some nice advantages, too. Within three years I was listed as a conference speaker at the annual developer's conference and provided several sessions on different topics during consecutive years. Back in 2004, I took over the responsibility and management of the monthly meetings of a regional user group, and organised it for more than two years. Furthermore, I was invited to the newly-founded community program of Microsoft Germany (Community Leader/Insider Program - CLIP). My website on Active FoxPro Pages was nominated in the second batch of online communities. Due to my community work and providing advice to others, I had the honour to be awarded as Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) - Visual Developer for Visual FoxPro in the years 2006 and 2007. It was a great experience to meet with other like-minded people and I'm really grateful for that. Just in case, more details are listed in my Curriculum Vitae. But this all changed when I moved to Mauritius... Cyber island Mauritius? During the first months in Mauritius I was way too busy to think about community activities at all. First of all, there was the new company that had to be set up, the new staff had to be trained and of course the communication work-flows and so on with the project managers back in Germany had to be sorted out, too. Second, I had to get a grip of my private matters like getting the basics for my new household or exploring the neighbourhood, and last but not least I needed a break from the hectic and intensive work prior to my departure. As soon as the sea literally calmed down, I started to have conversations with my colleagues about communities and user groups. Sadly, it turned out that there were none, or at least no one was aware of any at that time. Oh oh, what did I do? Anyway, having this kind of background and very positive experience with off-line and on-line activities I decided for myself that some day I'm going to found a community in Mauritius for all kind of IT/ICT-related fields. The main focus might be on software development but not on a certain technology or methodology. It was clear to me that it should be an open infrastructure and anyone is welcome to join, to experience, to share and to contribute if they would like to. That was the idea at that time... Ok, fast-forward to recent events. At the end of October 2012 I was invited to an event called Open Days organised by Microsoft Indian Ocean Islands together with other local partners and resellers. There I got in touch with local Technical Evangelist Arnaud Meslier and we had a good conversation on communities during the breaks. Eventually, I left a good impression on him, as we are having chats on Facebook or Skype irregularly. Well, seeing that my personal and professional surroundings have been settled and running smooth, having that great exchange and contact with Microsoft IOI (again), and being really eager to re-animate my intentions from 2007, I recently founded a new community: Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community - #MSCC It took me a while to settle down with the name but it was obvious that the community should not be attached to one single technology, like ie. .NET user group, Oracle developers, or Joomla friends (these are fictitious names). There are several other reasons why I came up with 'Craftsmanship' as the core topic of this community. The expression of 'engineering' didn't feel right with the fields covered. Software development in all kind of facets is a craft, and therefore demands a lot of practice but also guidance from more experienced developers. It also includes the process of designing, modelling and drafting the ideas. Has to deal with various types of tests and test methodologies, and of course should be focused on flexible and agile ways of acting. In order to meet and to excel a customer's request for a solution. Next, I was looking for an easy way to handle the organisation of events and meeting appointments. Using all kind of social media platforms like Google+, LinkedIn, Facebook, Xing, etc. I was never really confident about their features of event handling. More by chance I stumbled upon Meetup.com and in combination with the other entities (G+ Communities, FB Pages or in Groups) I am looking forward to advertise and manage all future activities here: Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community This is a community for those who care and are proud of what they do. For those developers, regardless how experienced they are, who want to improve and master their craft. This is a community for those who believe that being average is just not good enough. I know, there are not many 'craftsmen' yet but it's a start... Let's see how it looks like by the end of the year. There are free smartphone apps for Android and iOS from Meetup.com that allow you to keep track of meetings and to stay informed on latest updates. And last but not least, there will be a Trello workspace to collect and share ideas and provide downloads of slides, etc. Sharing is caring! As mentioned, the #MSCC is present in various social media networks in order to cover as many people as possible here in Mauritius. Following is an overview of the current networks: Twitter - Latest updates and quickies Google+ - Community channel Facebook - Community Page LinkedIn - Community Group Trello - Collaboration workspace to share and develop ideas Hopefully, this covers the majority of computer-related people in Mauritius. Please spread the word about the #MSCC between your colleagues, your friends and other interested 'geeks'. Your future looks bright Running and participating in a user group or any kind of community usually provides quite a number of advantages for anyone. On the one side it is very joyful for me to organise appointments and get in touch with people that might be interested to present a little demo of their projects or their recent problems they had to tackle down, and on the other side there are lots of companies that have various support programs or sponsorships especially tailored for user groups. At the moment, I already have a couple of gimmicks that I would like to hand out in small contests or raffles during one of the upcoming meetings, and as said, companies provide all kind of goodies, books free of charge, or sometimes even licenses for communities. Meeting other software developers or IT guys also opens up your point of view on the local market and there might be interesting projects or job offers available, too. A community like the Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community is great for freelancers, self-employed, students and of course employees. Meetings will be organised on a regular basis, and I'm open to all kind of suggestions from you. Please leave a comment here in blog or join the conversations in the above mentioned social networks. Let's get this community up and running, my fellow Mauritians!

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MPEG-2 playback inconsistent

- by DustByte

Many years ago I gave up on Linux because video playback was choppy. Now I'm back, and video playback is still playing up... I have two MPEG files: good.mpg bad.mpg. Here is some information about the two files, using avprobe: My machine is Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 @ 3.00GHz x 2, 64-bit. I do not know what graphics card I have. I run Ubuntu 12.04. So far I have had no problems with YouTube and playback of various video files, including playback of the file good.mpg, included in the avprobe snapshot above. However, the file bad.mpg gives me headache! The file bad.mpg is produced by a respectable "Old-video-tapes-to-DVD" company. I converted over 10 Video-8 tapes to MPEG through them, and today I collected my hard drive containing the MPEG files. Unfortunately I have problem watching them! Here are some details: Using Totem Movie Player 3.0.1 works well for several seconds, then it gets choppy and the playback is not at all smooth. Also the player easily freezes for a while when trying to jump to another position in the file. Most strangely though, the total time is shown as 0:42 (42 seconds) instead of the true 00:39:11: The VLC media player is doing a better job. It shows the correct total length, but as soon as I jump in the video to a new position, it stalls. Playback also stalls after 30 seconds if I press play and leave it. Using Handbrake and choosing bad.mpg as the source, gives me: There is only one title to choose, and it is 6 min 53 seconds. I would have guessed the full 39 minutes of the video should have shown. Lastly, putting the file bad.mpg in Dropbox and viewing it on my iPad with the Dropbox app seems fine (disregard the lack of easy jumping forward due to real-time encoding when streaming it). My question is simple: What is going on?! Why do I have problem to play the MPEG-2 files I just paid good money for (the issue with bad.mpg applies to all files I had encoded)? Is it an issue with my particular Linux machine? The graphics card? But why has everything worked fine so far, and why does not the good.mpg file cause any problems?

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Three Ways to Take Official MySQL for Database Administrators course

- by Antoinette O'Sullivan

The MySQL for Database Administrators course is a 5 day course that teaches the key skills essential for MySQL Database Administrators. You can take this course in one of the following three ways: Training on Demand: Get Instructor-led training within 24 hours through streaming-video from your desk. Live Virtual Class: Live instructor-led training from your desk. Over 1000! LVC events on the schedule for the MySQL for Database Administrator course. In Class: See below for a selection of locations where you can take this training For more information on this course or teaching schedule, go to the Oracle University portal and click on MySQL or search under your country/location. A selection of the In-Class schedule for the MySQL for Database Administrator course: Location Date Delivery Language Mechelen, Belgium 10 Sept 2012 English Prague, Czech Republic 27 Aug 2012 Czech Nice, France 24 Sept 2012 French Paris, France 24 Sept 2012 French Strasbourg, France 10 Sept 2012 French Dresden, Germany 20 Aug 2012 German Gummersbach, Germany 27 Aug 2012 German Hamburg, Germany 23 July 2012 German Munich, Germany 16 July 2012 German Munster, Germany 6 Aug 2012 German Stuttgart, Germany 9 July 2012 German London, Great Britan 9 July 2012 English Belfast, Ireland 27 Aug 2012 English Rome, Italy 30 July 2012 Italian Windhof, Luxembourg 26 Nov 2012 English Nieuwegein, Netherlands 1 Oct 2012 English Oslo, Norway 10 Sept 2012 English Warsaw, Poland 9 July 2012 Polish Lisbon, Portugal 3 Sept 2012 European Portugese Madrid, Spain 25 Jun 2012 Spanish Baden Dattwil, Switzerland 19 Nov 2012 German Zurick, Switzerland 8 Aug 2012 German Istanbul, Turkey 27 Aug 2012 Turkish Petaling Jaya, Malaysia 25 Jul 2012 English Singapore 16 July 2012 English Brisbane, Australia 30 July 2012 English Bangkok, Thailand 30 July 2012 Thai Edmonton, Canada 10 Sept 2012 English Vancouver, Canada 10 Sept 2012 English Ottawa, Canada 30 July 2012 English Toronto, Canada 30 July 2012 English Montreal, Canada 30 July 2012 English Mexico City, Mexico 25 Jun 2012 Spanish With these three delivery options and an impressive LVC and In-Class schedule you should find an event to suit your needs. If you are interested in another date or location you can register your interest on the Oracle University portal.

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TDC: The Developer's Conference Day One

- by Tori Wieldt

The Developer's Conference (TDC) kicked off Wednesday in São Paulo, Brazil. With over 3000 developers in attendance over five days, it is the premier multi-community developer conference in Brazil, organized by Globalcode. Yara Senger, one of the organizers said, "We like to say multi-community rather than multi-technology because it is interesting and benefical when various communities get together. They learn so much from each other!" TDC includes tracks on Java and several other technologies, including SOA, Python, Ruby, mobile and digital TV. In the mobile track, developers who create a Java ME app will get a Nokia S40 phone!New this year at TDC is the Java University track, sponsored by Oracle. It is aimed at university students and professionals who are new to Java. The lectures are introductory level, with an educational focus and practical exercises. The Java track and other tracks, such as SOA, mobile and Digital TV, are getting lots of help from the expertise of Brazilian JUGS members. Thanks to GoJava, JavaBahia, JavaNoroeste and SouJava!Carlos Fernando, one of the coordinators on the Digital TV track, said "My goal is to teach developers the basics of digital TV, and show them the tools used to build interactive TV applications." Fernando explained the concept of "the second screen:" that many people watch TV and have second smart device (tablet or smartphone) with them, and this creates many opportunities for developers. For example, while watching TV, a viewer can get extra content (interviews, behind the scenes) on their tablet. More interestingly, while watching their favorite TV show a viewer likes an outfit one of the actors is wearing, their smartphone can tell them where they can buy it nearby, or they can order it online immediately. Fernando exclaimed, "The opportunities for developers are nearly infinite in the area of digital TV!" At the TDC opening keynote, Debora Palermo, Oracle University country manager for Brazil, reminded attendees that Java is present in many devices, from simple to complex, and knowledge of this platform can open many doors in the labor market. She explained Oracle's Workforce Development Program (WDP), managed by Oracle University, which allows educational institutions to deliver Oracle training. WDP allows for easy and low-cost access to Oracle training in local communities across the world. "Oracle University is committed to creating the next generation of Java developers, and WDP can make that happen," Palermo said. As of March 2012, Oracle University is partnering with Globalcode to offer WDP. Students can earn official Oracle Course Certifications, a great way to learn Java.Brazilian developers that cannot attend TDC can watch live streaming.

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Corsair Hackers Reboot

It wasn't easy for me to attend but it was absolutely worth to go. The Linux User Group of Mauritius (LUGM) organised another get-together for any open source enthusiast here on the island. Strangely named "Corsair Hackers Reboot" but it stands for a positive cause: "Corsair Hackers Reboot Event A collaborative activity involving LUGM, UoM Computer Club, Fortune Way Shopping Mall and several geeks from around the island, striving to put FOSS into homes & offices. The public is invited to discover and explore Free Software & Open Source." And it was a good opportunity for me and the kids to visit the east coast of Mauritius, too. Perfect timing It couldn't have been better... Why? Well, for two important reasons (in terms of IT): End of support for Microsoft Windows XP - 08.04.2014 Release of Ubuntu 14.04 Long Term Support - 17.04.2014 Quite funnily, those two IT dates weren't the initial reasons and only during the weeks of preparations we put those together. And therefore it was even more positive to promote the use of Linux and open source software in general to a broader audience. Getting there ... Thanks to the new motor way M3 and all the additional road work which has been completed recently it was very simple to get across the island in a very quick and relaxed manner. Compared to my trips in the early days of living in Mauritius (and riding on a scooter) it was very smooth and within less than an hour we hit Centrale de Flacq. Well, being in the city doesn't necessarily mean that one has arrived at the destination. But thanks to modern technology I had a quick look on Google Maps, and we finally managed to get a parking behind the huge bus terminal in Flacq. From there it was just a short walk to Fortune Way. The children were trying to count the number of buses... Well, lots and lots of buses - really impressive actually. What was presented? There were different areas set up. Right at the entrance one's attention was directly drawn towards the elevated hacker's stage. Similar to rock stars performing their gig there was bunch of computers, laptops and networking equipment in order to cater the right working conditions for coding/programming challenge(s) on the one hand and for the pen-testing or system hacking competition on the other hand. Personally, I was very impresses that actually Nitin took care of the pen-testing competition. He hardly started one year back with Linux in general, and Kali Linux specifically. Seeing his personal development from absolute newbie to a decent Linux system administrator within such a short period of time, is really impressive. His passion to open source software made him a living. Next, clock-wise seen, was the Kid's Corner with face-painting as the main attraction. Additionally, there were numerous paper print outs to colour. Plus a decent workstation with the educational suite GCompris. Of course, my little ones were into that. They already know GCompris since a while as they are allowed to use it on an IGEL thin client terminal here at home. To simplify my life, I set up GCompris as full-screen guest session on the server, and they can pass the login screen without any further obstacles. And because it's a thin client hooked up to a XDMCP remote session I don't have to worry about the hardware on their desk, too. The next section was the main attraction of the event: BYOD - Bring Your Own Device Well, compared to the usual context of BYOD the corsairs had a completely different intention. Here, you could bring your own laptop and a team of knowledgeable experts - read: geeks and so on - offered to fully convert your system on any Linux distribution of your choice. And even though I came later, I was told that the USB pen drives had been in permanent use. From being prepared via dd command over launching LiveCD session to finally installing a fresh Linux system on bare metal. Most interestingly, I did a similar job already a couple of months ago, while upgrading an existing Windows XP system to Xubuntu 13.10. So far, the female owner is very happy and enjoys her system almost every evening to go shopping online, checking mails, and reading latest news from the Anime world. Back to the Hackers event, Ish told me that they managed approximately 20 conversion during the day. Furthermore, Ajay and others gladly assisted some visitors with some tricky issues and by the end of the day you can call is a success. While I was around, there was a elderly male visitor that got a full-fledged system conversion to a Linux system running completely in French language. A little bit more to the centre it was Yasir's turn to demonstrate his Arduino hardware that he hooked up with an experimental electrical circuit board connected to an LCD matrix display. That's the real spirit of hacking, and he showed some minor adjustments on the fly while demo'ing the system. Also, very interesting there was a thermal sensor around. Personally, I think that platforms like the Arduino as well as the Raspberry Pi have a great potential at a very affordable price in order to bring a better understanding of electronics as well as computer programming to a broader audience. It would be great to see more of those experiments during future activities. And last but not least there were a small number of vendors. Amongst them was Emtel - once again as sponsor of the general internet connectivity - and another hardware supplier from Riche Terre shopping mall. They had a good collection of Android related gimmicks, like a autonomous web cam that can convert any TV with HDMI connector into an online video chat system given WiFi. It's actually kind of awesome to have a Skype or Google hangout video session on the big screen rather than on the laptop. Some pictures of the event LUGM: Great conversations on Linux, open source and free software during the Corsair Hackers Reboot LUGM: Educational workstation running GCompris suite attracted the youngest attendees of the day. Of course, face painting had to be done prior to hacking... LUGM: Nadim demoing some Linux specifics to interested visitors. Everyone was pretty busy during the whole day LUGM: The hacking competition, here pen-testing a wireless connection and access point between multiple machines LUGM: Well prepared workstations to be able to 'upgrade' visitors' machines to any Linux operating system Final thoughts Gratefully, during the preparations of the event I was invited to leave some comments or suggestions, and the team of the LUGM did a great job. The outdoor banner was a eye-catcher, the various flyers and posters for the event were clearly written and as far as I understood from the quick chats I had with Ish, Nadim, Nitin, Ajay, and of course others all were very happy about the event execution. Great job, LUGM! And I'm already looking forward to the next Corsair Hackers Reboot event ... Crossing fingers: Very soon and hopefully this year again :) Update: In the media The event had been announced in local media, too. L'Express: Salon informatique: Hacking Challenge à Flacq

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Why Is Vertical Resolution Monitor Resolution so Often a Multiple of 360?

- by Jason Fitzpatrick

Stare at a list of monitor resolutions long enough and you might notice a pattern: many of the vertical resolutions, especially those of gaming or multimedia displays, are multiples of 360 (720, 1080, 1440, etc.) But why exactly is this the case? Is it arbitrary or is there something more at work? 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 Trojandestroy recently noticed something about his display interface and needs answers: YouTube recently added 1440p functionality, and for the first time I realized that all (most?) vertical resolutions are multiples of 360. Is this just because the smallest common resolution is 480×360, and it’s convenient to use multiples? (Not doubting that multiples are convenient.) And/or was that the first viewable/conveniently sized resolution, so hardware (TVs, monitors, etc) grew with 360 in mind? Taking it further, why not have a square resolution? Or something else unusual? (Assuming it’s usual enough that it’s viewable). Is it merely a pleasing-the-eye situation? So why have the display be a multiple of 360? The Answer SuperUser contributor User26129 offers us not just an answer as to why the numerical pattern exists but a history of screen design in the process: Alright, there are a couple of questions and a lot of factors here. Resolutions are a really interesting field of psychooptics meeting marketing. First of all, why are the vertical resolutions on youtube multiples of 360. This is of course just arbitrary, there is no real reason this is the case. The reason is that resolution here is not the limiting factor for Youtube videos – bandwidth is. Youtube has to re-encode every video that is uploaded a couple of times, and tries to use as little re-encoding formats/bitrates/resolutions as possible to cover all the different use cases. For low-res mobile devices they have 360×240, for higher res mobile there’s 480p, and for the computer crowd there is 360p for 2xISDN/multiuser landlines, 720p for DSL and 1080p for higher speed internet. For a while there were some other codecs than h.264, but these are slowly being phased out with h.264 having essentially ‘won’ the format war and all computers being outfitted with hardware codecs for this. Now, there is some interesting psychooptics going on as well. As I said: resolution isn’t everything. 720p with really strong compression can and will look worse than 240p at a very high bitrate. But on the other side of the spectrum: throwing more bits at a certain resolution doesn’t magically make it better beyond some point. There is an optimum here, which of course depends on both resolution and codec. In general: the optimal bitrate is actually proportional to the resolution. So the next question is: what kind of resolution steps make sense? Apparently, people need about a 2x increase in resolution to really see (and prefer) a marked difference. Anything less than that and many people will simply not bother with the higher bitrates, they’d rather use their bandwidth for other stuff. This has been researched quite a long time ago and is the big reason why we went from 720×576 (415kpix) to 1280×720 (922kpix), and then again from 1280×720 to 1920×1080 (2MP). Stuff in between is not a viable optimization target. And again, 1440P is about 3.7MP, another ~2x increase over HD. You will see a difference there. 4K is the next step after that. Next up is that magical number of 360 vertical pixels. Actually, the magic number is 120 or 128. All resolutions are some kind of multiple of 120 pixels nowadays, back in the day they used to be multiples of 128. This is something that just grew out of LCD panel industry. LCD panels use what are called line drivers, little chips that sit on the sides of your LCD screen that control how bright each subpixel is. Because historically, for reasons I don’t really know for sure, probably memory constraints, these multiple-of-128 or multiple-of-120 resolutions already existed, the industry standard line drivers became drivers with 360 line outputs (1 per subpixel). If you would tear down your 1920×1080 screen, I would be putting money on there being 16 line drivers on the top/bottom and 9 on one of the sides. Oh hey, that’s 16:9. Guess how obvious that resolution choice was back when 16:9 was ‘invented’. Then there’s the issue of aspect ratio. This is really a completely different field of psychology, but it boils down to: historically, people have believed and measured that we have a sort of wide-screen view of the world. Naturally, people believed that the most natural representation of data on a screen would be in a wide-screen view, and this is where the great anamorphic revolution of the ’60s came from when films were shot in ever wider aspect ratios. Since then, this kind of knowledge has been refined and mostly debunked. Yes, we do have a wide-angle view, but the area where we can actually see sharply – the center of our vision – is fairly round. Slightly elliptical and squashed, but not really more than about 4:3 or 3:2. So for detailed viewing, for instance for reading text on a screen, you can utilize most of your detail vision by employing an almost-square screen, a bit like the screens up to the mid-2000s. However, again this is not how marketing took it. Computers in ye olden days were used mostly for productivity and detailed work, but as they commoditized and as the computer as media consumption device evolved, people didn’t necessarily use their computer for work most of the time. They used it to watch media content: movies, television series and photos. And for that kind of viewing, you get the most ‘immersion factor’ if the screen fills as much of your vision (including your peripheral vision) as possible. Which means widescreen. But there’s more marketing still. When detail work was still an important factor, people cared about resolution. As many pixels as possible on the screen. SGI was selling almost-4K CRTs! The most optimal way to get the maximum amount of pixels out of a glass substrate is to cut it as square as possible. 1:1 or 4:3 screens have the most pixels per diagonal inch. But with displays becoming more consumery, inch-size became more important, not amount of pixels. And this is a completely different optimization target. To get the most diagonal inches out of a substrate, you want to make the screen as wide as possible. First we got 16:10, then 16:9 and there have been moderately successful panel manufacturers making 22:9 and 2:1 screens (like Philips). Even though pixel density and absolute resolution went down for a couple of years, inch-sizes went up and that’s what sold. Why buy a 19″ 1280×1024 when you can buy a 21″ 1366×768? Eh… I think that about covers all the major aspects here. There’s more of course; bandwidth limits of HDMI, DVI, DP and of course VGA played a role, and if you go back to the pre-2000s, graphics memory, in-computer bandwdith and simply the limits of commercially available RAMDACs played an important role. But for today’s considerations, this is about all you need to know. Have something to add to the explanation? Sound off in the 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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CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, September 29, 2013

CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, September 29, 2013Popular ReleasesAudioWordsDownloader: AudioWordsDownloader 1.1 build 88: New features -------- list of words (mp3 files) is available upon typing when a download path is defined list of download paths is added paths history settings added Bug fixed ----- case mismatch in word search field fixed path not exist bug fixed when history has been used path, when filled from dialog, not stored refresh autocomplete list after path change word sought is deleted when path is changed at the end sought word list is deleted word list not refreshed download end...Activity Viewer 2012: Activity Viewer 2012 V 5.0.0.3: Planning to add new features: 1. Import/Export rules 2. Tabular mode multi servers connections.Tweetinvi a friendly Twitter C# API: Alpha 0.8.3.0: Version 0.8.3.0 emphasis on the FIlteredStream and ease how to manage Exceptions that can occur due to the network or any other issue you might encounter. Will be available through nuget the 29/09/2013. FilteredStream Features provided by the Twitter Stream API - Ability to track specific keywords - Ability to track specific users - Ability to track specific locations Additional features - Detect the reasons the tweet has been retrieved from the Filtered API. You have access to both the ma...AcDown?????: AcDown????? v4.5: ??●AcDown??????????、??、??、???????。????，????，?????????????????????????。???????????Acfun、????(Bilibili)、??、??、YouTube、??、???、??????、SF????、????????????。 ●??????AcPlay?????，??????、????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??，????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ??v4.5 ???? AcPlay????????v3.5 ????????，???????????30% ?? ???????GoodManga.net???? ?? ?????????? ?? ??Acfun?????????? ??Bilibili??????????? ?????????flvcd???????? ??SfAcg????????????? ???????????? ???????????????? ????32...OfflineBrowser: Release v1.2: This release includes some multi-threading support, a better progress bar, more JavaScript fixes, and a help system. This release is also portable (can run with no issues from a flash drive).CtrlAltStudio Viewer: CtrlAltStudio Viewer 1.0.0.34288 Release: This release of the CtrlAltStudio Viewer includes the following significant features: Stereoscopic 3D display support. Based on Firestorm viewer 4.4.2 codebase. For more details, see the release notes linked to below. Release notes: http://ctrlaltstudio.com/viewer/release-notes/1-0-0-34288-release Support info: http://ctrlaltstudio.com/viewer/support Privacy policy: http://ctrlaltstudio.com/viewer/privacy Disclaimer: This software is not provided or supported by Linden Lab, the makers of ...CrmSvcUtil Generate Attribute Constants: Generate Attribute Constants (1.0.5018.28159): Built against version 5.0.15 of the CRM SDK Fixed issue where constant for primary key attribute was being duplicated in all entity classes Added ability to override base class for entity classesC# Intellisense for Notepad++: Release v1.0.6.0: Added support for classless scripts To avoid the DLLs getting locked by OS use MSI file for the installation.CS-Script for Notepad++: Release v1.0.6.0: Added support for classless scripts To avoid the DLLs getting locked by OS use MSI file for the installation.SimpleExcelReportMaker: Serm 0.02: SourceCode and SampleMagick.NET: Magick.NET 6.8.7.001: Magick.NET linked with ImageMagick 6.8.7.0. Breaking changes: - ToBitmap method of MagickImage returns a png instead of a bmp. - Changed the value for full transparency from 255(Q8)/65535(Q16) to 0. - MagickColor now uses floats instead of Byte/UInt16.Media Companion: Media Companion MC3.578b: With the feedback received over the renaming of Movie Folders, and files, there has been some refinement done. As well as I would like to introduce Blu-Ray movie folder support, for Pre-Frodo and Frodo onwards versions of XBMC. To start with, Context menu option for renaming movies, now has three sub options: Movie & Folder, Movie only & Folder only. The option Manual Movie Rename needs to be selected from Movie Preferences, but the autoscrape boxes do not need to be selected. Blu Ray Fo...WDTVHubGen - Adds Metadata, thumbnails and subtitles to WDTV Live Hubs: WDTVHubGen v2.1.3.api release: This is for the brave at heart, this is the maint release to update to the new movie api. please send feedback on fix requests.FFXIV Crafting Simulator: Crafting Simulator 2.3: - Major refactoring of the code behind. - Added a current durability and a current CP textbox.DNN CMS Platform: 07.01.02: Major HighlightsAdded the ability to manage the Vanity URL prefix Added the ability to filter members in the member directory by role Fixed issue where the user could inadvertently click the login button multiple times Fixed issues where core classes could not be used in out of process cache provider Fixed issue where profile visibility submenu was not displayed correctly Fixed issue where the member directory was broken when Convert URL to lowercase setting was enabled Fixed issu...Rawr: Rawr 5.4.1: This is the Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!For web-based version see http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.php You can find the version notes at: http://rawr.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=VersionNotes Rawr Addon (NOT UPDATED YET FOR MOP)We now have a Rawr Official Addon for in-game exporting and importing of character data hosted on Curse. The Addon does not perform calculations like Rawr, it simply shows your exported Rawr data in wow tooltips and lets you export your character to Rawr (including ba...Sample MVC4 EF Codefirst Architecture: RazMVCWebApp ver 1.1: Signal R sample is added.CODE Framework: 4.0.30923.0: See change notes in the documentation section for details on what's new. Note: If you download the class reference help file with, you have to right-click the file, pick "Properties", and then unblock the file, as many browsers flag the file as blocked during download (for security reasons) and thus hides all content.JayData -The unified data access library for JavaScript: JayData 1.3.2 - Indian Summer Edition: JayData is a unified data access library for JavaScript to CRUD + Query data from different sources like WebAPI, OData, MongoDB, WebSQL, SQLite, HTML5 localStorage, Facebook or YQL. The library can be integrated with KendoUI, Angular.js, Knockout.js or Sencha Touch 2 and can be used on Node.js as well. See it in action in this 6 minutes video KendoUI examples: JayData example site Examples for map integration JayData example site What's new in JayData 1.3.2 - Indian Summer Edition For detai...ZXing.Net: ZXing.Net 0.12.0.0: sync with rev. 2892 of the java version new PDF417 decoder improved Aztec decoder global speed improvements direct Kinect support for ColorImageFrame better Structured Append support many other small bug fixes and improvementsNew ProjectsCACHEDB: CLIENT-DATABASE || CLIENT_CACHEDB-DATABASEClassic WiX Burn Theme: A WiX Burn theme inspired by the classic WiX wizard user interface.CryptStr.Fody: A post-build weaver that encrypts literal strings in your .NET assemblies without breaking ClickOnce.Easy Code: A setting framework.EduSoft: This is a school eg.GameStuff: GameStuff is a library of Physics and Geometrics concepts for video game. Nekora Test Project: Nekora test projectPopCorn Console Game: Simple console gameRadioController: This project started from people installing Tablets in Mustangs. You would typically loose most control of the radio. This projects brings that back!Random searcher i pochodne: Wyszukiwarka plików multimedialnych i czego dusza zapragnie.SporkRandom: A .NET (C#, Visual Basic) interface for the true random number generator service of random.org

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Feedback on meeting of the Linux User Group of Mauritius

Once upon a time in a country far far away... Okay, actually it's not that bad but it has been a while since the last meeting of the Linux User Group of Mauritius (LUGM). There have been plans in the past but it never really happened. Finally, Selven took the opportunity and organised a new meetup with low administrative overhead, proper scheduling on alternative dates and a small attendee's survey on the preferred option. All the pre-work was nicely executed. First, I wasn't sure whether it would be possible to attend. Luckily I got some additional information, like children should come, too, and I was sold to this community gathering. According to other long-term members of the LUGM it was the first time 'ever' that a gathering was organised outside of Quatre Bornes, and I have to admit it was great! LUGM - user group meeting on the 15.06.2013 in L'Escalier Quick overview of Linux & the LUGM With a little bit of delay the LUGM meeting officially started with a quick overview and introduction to Linux presented by Avinash. During the session he told the audience that there had been quite some activity over the island some years ago but unfortunately it had been quiet during recent times. Of course, we also spoke about the acknowledged world dominance of Linux - thanks to Android - and the interesting possibilities for countries like Mauritius. It is known that a couple of public institutions have there back-end infrastructure running on Red Hat Linux systems but the presence on the desktop is still very low. Users are simply hanging on to Windows XP and older versions of Microsoft Office. Following the introduction of the LUGM Ajay joined into the session and it quickly changed into a panel discussion with lots of interesting questions and answers, sharing of first-hand experience either on the job or in private use of Linux, and a couple of ideas about how the LUGM could promote Linux a bit more in Mauritius. It was great to get an insight into other attendee's opinion and activities. Especially taking into consideration that I'm already using Linux since around 1996/97. Frankly speaking, I bought a SuSE 4.x distribution back in those days because I couldn't achieve certain tasks on Windows NT 4.0 without spending a fortune. OpenELEC Mediacenter Next, Selven gave us decent introduction on OpenELEC: Open Embedded Linux Entertainment Center (OpenELEC) is a small Linux distribution built from scratch as a platform to turn your computer into an XBMC media center. OpenELEC is designed to make your system boot fast, and the install is so easy that anyone can turn a blank PC into a media machine in less than 15 minutes. I didn't know about it until this presentation. In the past, I was mainly attached to Video Disk Recorder (VDR) as it allows the use of satellite receiver cards very easily. Hm, somehow I'm still missing my precious HTPC that I had to leave back in Germany years ago. It was great piece of hardware and software; self-built PC in a standard HiFi-sized (43cm) black desktop casing with 2 full-featured Hauppauge DVB-s cards, an old-fashioned Voodoo graphics card, WiFi card, Pioneer slot-in DVD drive, and fully remote controlled via infra-red thanks to Debian, VDR and LIRC. With EP Guide, scheduled recordings and general multimedia centre it offered all the necessary comfort in the living room, besides a Nintendo game console; actually a GameCube at that time... But I have to admit that putting OpenELEC on a Raspberry Pi would be a cool DIY project in the near future. LUGM - our next generation of linux users (15.06.2013) Project Evil Genius (PEG) Don't be scared of the paragraph header. Ish gave us a cool explanation why he named it PEG - Project Evil Genius; it's because of the time of the day when he was scripting down his ideas to be able to build, package and provide software applications to various Linux distributions. The main influence came from openSuSE but the platform didn't cater for his needs and ideas, so he started to work out something on his own. During his passionate session he also talked about the amazing experience he had due to other Linux users from all over the world. During the next couple of days Ish promised to put his script to GitHub... Looking forward to that. Check out Ish's personal blog over at hacklog.in. Highly recommended to read. Why India? Simply because the registration fees per year for an Indian domain are approximately 20 times less than for a Mauritian domain (.mu). Exploring the beach of L'Escalier af the meeting 'After-party' at the beach of L'Escalier Puh, after such interesting sessions, ideas around Linux and good conversation during the breaks and over lunch it was time for a little break-out. Selven suggested that we all should head down to the beach of L'Escalier and get some impressions of nature down here in the south of the island. Talking about 'beach' ;-) - absolutely not comparable to the white-sanded ones here in Flic en Flac... There are no lagoons down at the south coast of Mauriitus, and watching the breaking waves is a different experience and joy after all. Unfortunately, I was a little bit worried about the thoughtless littering at such a remote location. You have to drive on natural paths through the sugar cane fields and I was really shocked by the amount of rubbish lying around almost everywhere. Sad, really sad and it concurs with Yasir's recent article on the same topic. Resumé & outlook It was a great event. I met with new people, had some good conversations, and even my children enjoyed themselves the whole day. The location was well-chosen, enough space for each and everyone, parking spaces and even a playground for the children. Also, a big "Thank You" to Selven and his helpers for the organisation and preparation of lunch. I'm kind of sure that this was an exceptional meeting of LUGM and I'm really looking forward to the next gathering of Linux geeks. Hopefully, soon. All images are courtesy of Avinash Meetoo. More pictures are available on Flickr.

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How to begin? Windows 8 Development

- by Dennis Vroegop

Ok. I convinced you in my last post to do some Win8 development. You want a piece of that cake, or whatever your reasons may be. Good! Welcome to the club! Now let me ask you a question: what are you going to write? Ah. That’s the big one, isn’t it? What indeed? If you have been creating applications for computers before you’re in for quite a shock. The way people perceive apps on a tablet is quite different from what we know as applications. There’s a reason we call them apps instead of applications! Yes, technically they are applications but we don’t call them apps only because it sounds cool. The abbreviated form of the word applications itself is a pointer. Apps are small. Apps are focused. Apps are more lightweight. Apps do one thing but they do that one thing extremely good. In the ‘old’ days we wrote huge systems. We build ecosystems of services, screens, databases and more to create a system that provides value for the user. Think about it: what application do you use most at work? Can you in one sentence describe what it is, or what it does and yet still distinctively describe its purpose? I doubt you can. Let’s have a look at Outlouk. We all know it and we all love or hate it. But what is it? A mail program? No, there’s so much more there: calendar, contacts, RSS feeds and so on. Some call it a ‘collaboration’ application but that’s not really true as well. After all, why should a collaboration application give me my schedule for the day? I think the best way to describe Outlook is “client for Exchange” although that isn’t accurate either. Anyway: Outlook is a great application but it’s not an ‘app’ and therefor not very suitable for WinRT. Ok. Disclaimer here: yes, you can write big applications for WinRT. Some will. But that’s not what 99.9% of the developers will do. So I am stating here that big applications are not meant for WinRT. If 0.01% of the developers think that this is nonsense then they are welcome to go ahead but for the majority here this is not what we’re talking about. So: Apps are small, lightweight and good at what they do but only at that. If you’re a Phone developer you already know that: Phone apps on any platform fit the description I have above. If you’ve ever worked in a large cooperation before you might have seen one of these before: the Mission Statement. It’s supposed to be a oneliner that sums up what the company is supposed to do. Funny enough: although this doesn’t work for large companies it does work for defining your app. A mission statement for an app describes what it does. If it doesn’t fit in the mission statement then your app is going to get to big and will fail. A statement like this should be in the following style “<your app name> is the best app to <describe single task>” Fill in the blanks, write it and go! Mmm.. not really. There are some things there we need to think about. But the statement is a very, very important one. If you cannot fit your app in that line you’re preparing to fail. Your app will become to big, its purpose will be unclear and it will be hard to use. People won’t download it and those who do will give it a bad rating therefor preventing that huge success you’ve been dreaming about. Stick to the statement! Ok, let’s give it a try: “PlanesAreCool” is the best app to do planespotting in the field. You might have seen these people along runways of airports: taking photographs of airplanes and noting down their numbers and arrival- and departure times. We are going to help them out with our great app! If you look at the statement, can you guess what it does? I bet you can. If you find out it isn’t clear enough of if it’s too broad, refine it. This is probably the most important step in the development of your app so give it enough time! So. We’ve got the statement. Print it out, stick it to the wall and look at it. What does it tell you? If you see this, what do you think the app does? Write that down. Sit down with some friends and talk about it. What do they expect from an app like this? Write that down as well. Brainstorm. Make a list of features. This is mine: Note planes Look up aircraft carriers Add pictures of that plane Look up airfields Notify friends of new spots Look up details of a type of plane Plot a graph with arrival and departure times Share new spots on social media Look up history of a particular aircraft Compare your spots with friends Write down arrival times Write down departure times Write down wind conditions Write down the runway they take Look up weather conditions for next spotting day Invite friends to join you for a day of spotting. Now, I must make it clear that I am not a planespotter nor do I know what one does. So if the above list makes no sense, I apologize. There is a lesson: write apps for stuff you know about…. First of all, let’s look at our statement and then go through the list of features. Remove everything that has nothing to do with that statement! If you end up with an empty list, try again with both steps. Note planes Look up aircraft carriers Add pictures of that plane Look up airfields Notify friends of new spots Look up details of a type of plane Plot a graph with arrival and departure times Share new spots on social media Look up history of a particular aircraft Compare your spots with friends Write down arrival times Write down departure times Write down wind conditions Write down the runway they take Look up weather conditions for next spotting day Invite friends to join you for a day of spotting. That's better. The things I removed could be pretty useful to a plane spotter and could be fun to write. But do they match the statement? I said that the app is for spotting in the field, so “look up airfields” doesn’t belong there: I know where I am so why look it up? And the same goes for inviting friends or looking up the weather conditions for tomorrow. I am at the airfield right now, looking through my binoculars at the planes. I know the weather now and I don’t care about tomorrow. If you feel the items you’ve crossed out are valuable, then why not write another app? One that says “SpotNoter” is the best app for preparing a day of spotting with my friends. That’s a different app! Remember: Win8 apps are small and very good at doing ONE thing, and one thing only! If you have made that list, it’s time to prepare the navigation of your app. The navigation is how users see your app and how they use it. We’ll do that next time!

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Screenshot Tour: Ubuntu Touch 14.04 on a Nexus 7

- by Chris Hoffman

Ubuntu 14.04 LTS will “form the basis of the first commercially available Ubuntu tablets,” according to Canonical. We installed Ubuntu Touch 14.04 on our own hardware to see what those tablets will be like. We don’t recommend installing this yourself, as it’s still not a polished, complete experience. We’re using “Ubuntu Touch” as shorthand here — apparently this project’s new name is “Ubuntu For Devices.” The Welcome Screen Ubuntu’s touch interface is all about edge swipes and hidden interface elements — it has a lot in common with Windows 8, actually. You’ll see the welcome screen when you boot up or unlock a Ubuntu tablet or phone. If you have new emails, text messages, or other information, it will appear on this screen along with the time and date. If you don’t, you’ll just see a message saying “No data sources available.” The Dash Swipe in from the right edge of the welcome screen to access the Dash, or home screen. This is actually very similar to the Dash on Ubuntu’s Unity desktop. This isn’t a surprise — Canonical wants the desktop and touch versions of Ubuntu to use the same code. In the future, the desktop and touch versions of Ubuntu will use the same version of Unity and Unity will adjust its interface depending on what type of device your’e using. Here you’ll find apps you have installed and apps available to install. Tap an installed app to launch it or tap an available app to view more details and install it. Tap the My apps or Available headings to view a complete list of apps you have installed or apps you can install. Tap the Search box at the top of the screen to start searching — this is how you’d search for new apps to install. As you’d expect, a touch keyboard appears when you tap in the Search field or any other text field. The launcher isn’t just for apps. Tap the Apps heading at the top of the screen and you’ll see hidden text appear — Music, Video, and Scopes. This hidden navigation is used throughout Ubuntu’s different apps and can be easy to miss at first. Swipe to the left or right to move between these screens. These screens are also similar to the different panels in Unity on the desktop. The Scopes section allows you to view different search scopes you have installed. These are used to search different sources when you start a search from the Dash. Search from the Music or Videos scopes to search for local media files on your device or media files online. For example, searching in the Music scope will show you music results from Grooveshark by default. Navigating Ubuntu Touch Swipe in from the left edge anywhere on the system to open the launcher, a bar with shortcuts to apps. This launcher is very similar to the launcher on the left of Ubuntu’s Unity desktop — that’s the whole idea, after all. Once you’ve opened an app, you can leave the app by swiping in from the left. The launcher will appear — keep moving your finger towards the right edge of teh screen. This will swipe the current app off the screen, taking you back to the Dash. Once back on the Dash, you’ll see your open apps represented as thumbnails under Recent. Tap a thumbnail here to go back to a running app. To remove an app from here, long-press it and tap the X button that appears. Swipe in from the right edge in any app to quickly switch between recent apps. Swipe in from the right edge and hold your finger down to reveal an application switcher that shows all your recent apps and lets you choose between them. Swipe down from the top of the screen to access the indicator panel. Here you can connect to Wi-Fi networks, view upcoming events, control GPS and Bluetooth hardware, adjust sound settings, see incoming messages, and more. This panel is for quick access to hardware settings and notifications, just like the indicators on Ubuntu’s Unity desktop. The Apps System settings not included in the pull-down panel are available in the System Settings app. To access it, tap My apps on the Dash and tap System Settings, search for the System Settings app, or open the launcher bar and tap the settings icon. The settings here a bit limited compared to other operating systems, but many of the important options are available here. You can add Evernote, Ubuntu One, Twitter, Facebook, and Google accounts from here. A free Ubuntu One account is mandatory for downloading and updating apps. A Google account can be used to sync contacts and calendar events. Some apps on Ubuntu are native apps, while many are web apps. For example, the Twitter, Gmail, Amazon, Facebook, and eBay apps included by default are all web apps that open each service’s mobile website as an app. Other applications, such as the Weather, Calendar, Dialer, Calculator, and Notes apps are native applications. Theoretically, both types of apps will be able to scale to different screen resolutions. Ubuntu Touch and Ubuntu desktop may one day share the same apps, which will adapt to different display sizes and input methods. Like Windows 8 apps, Ubuntu apps hide interface elements by default, providing you with a full-screen view of the content. Swipe up from the bottom of an app’s screen to view its interface elements. For example, swiping up from the bottom of the Web Browser app reveals Back, Forward, and Refresh buttons, along with an address bar and Activity button so you can view current and recent web pages. Swipe up even more from the bottom and you’ll see a button hovering in the middle of the app. Tap the button and you’ll see many more settings. This is an overflow area for application options and functions that can’t fit on the navigation bar. The Terminal app has a few surprising Easter eggs in this panel, including a “Hack into the NSA” option. Tap it and the following text will appear in the terminal: That’s not very nice, now tracing your location . . . . . . . . . . . .Trace failed You got away this time, but don’t try again. We’d expect to see such Easter eggs disappear before Ubuntu Touch actually ships on real devices. Ubuntu Touch has come a long way, but it’s still not something you want to use today. For example, it doesn’t even have a built-in email client — you’ll have to us your email service’s mobile website. Few apps are available, and many of the ones that are are just mobile websites. It’s not a polished operating system intended for normal users yet — it’s more of a preview for developers and device manufacturers. If you really want to try it yourself, you can install it on a Wi-Fi Nexus 7 (2013), Nexus 10, or Nexus 4 device. Follow Ubuntu’s installation instructions here.

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RTS Game Style Application [closed]

- by Daniel Wynand van Wyk

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

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How to Edit or Add a New Row in jqGrid

- by Paul

My jqGrid that does a great job of pulling data from my database, but I'm having trouble understanding how the Add New Row functionality works. Right now, I'm able to edit inline data, but I'm not able to create a new row using the Modal Box. I'm missing that extra logic that says, "If this is a new row, post this to the server side URL" instead of modifying existing data. (Right now, hitting Submit only clears the form and reloads the grid data.) The documentation states that Add New Row is: jQuery("#editgrid").jqGrid('editGridRow',"new",{height:280,reloadAfterSubmit:false}); but I'm not sure how to use that correctly. I've spent alot of time studying the Demos, but they seem to all use an external button to fire the new row command, rather than using the Modal Form, which I want to do. My complete code is here: <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" /> <title>jqGrid</title> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen" href="../css/ui-lightness/jquery-ui-1.7.2.custom.css" /> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen" href="../css/ui.jqgrid.css" /> <script src="jquery-1.3.2.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="../js/i18n/grid.locale-en.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="jquery.jqGrid.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script> </head> <body> <h2>My Grid Data</h2> <table id="list" class="scroll"></table> <div id="pager" class="scroll c1"></div> <script type="text/javascript"> var lastSelectedId; jQuery('#list').jqGrid({ url:'grid.php', datatype: 'json', mtype: 'POST', colNames:['ID','Name', 'Price', 'Promotion'], colModel:[ {name:'product_id',index:'product_id', width:25,editable:false}, {name:'name',index:'name', width:50,editable:true, edittype:'text',editoptions:{size:30,maxlength:50}}, {name:'price',index:'price', width:50, align:'right',formatter:'currency', editable:true}, {name:'on_promotion',index:'on_promotion', width:50, formatter:'checkbox',editable:true, edittype:'checkbox'}], rowNum:10, rowList:[5,10,20,30], pager: $('#pager'), sortname: 'product_id', viewrecords: true, sortorder: "desc", caption:"Database", width:500, height:150, onSelectRow: function(id){ if(id && id!==lastSelectedId){ $('#list').restoreRow(lastSelectedId); $('#list').editRow(id,true,null,onSaveSuccess); lastSelectedId=id; }}, editurl:'grid.php?action=save'}) .jqGrid('navGrid','#pager', {refreshicon: 'ui-icon-refresh',view:true}, {height:280,reloadAfterSubmit:true}, {height:280,reloadAfterSubmit:true}, {reloadAfterSubmit:true}) .jqGrid('editGridRow',"new",{height:280,reloadAfterSubmit:false}); function onSaveSuccess(xhr) {response = xhr.responseText; if(response == 1) return true; return false;} </script></body></html> If it makes it easier, I'd be willing to scrap the inline editing functionality and do editing and posting via modal boxes. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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Office 2007 Setup prompts for PptLR.cab

- by kamleshrao

While running Office 2007 Ultimate Setup on Windows 7 box, I get this error message - "Setup cannot find PowerPoint.en-us\PptLR.cab". This file is very much present in the setup folder. It gives me an option to choose the correct path of this file, but when I browse and navigate to the folder containing this file, it doesn't show me the CAB file for selection. I tried installing both from DVD and also running setup from hard disk location. The same setup media was used earlier for installation on Vista without any issues!

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Configure Zabbix to send email notifications through Exim

- by gshankar

I've been working through the installation and configuration of Zabbix over the past couple of days and I think I've finally got everything working... except the sending of notifications / alerts. I'm running on a Ubuntu server which is using Exim to send emails. I'd previously used this Exim setup to send notifications for Nagios so I know that Exim itself works. However, I can't seem to get Zabbix to send out notifications. Here's what I've done so far: Set up a "test trigger" like so: Trigger severity >= "Information" Send message to User "Admin" The Admin user has a email contact (and I've sent command line emails from Exim on the server using "sendmail" to this email address successfully) The media type for email is set. (I've tried 127.0.0.1) I've checked the user permissions and it is read/write for all host groups The triggers are definitely getting set but no actions are being called... I think my problem is within Zabbix as it's not actually executing the actions And idea how to configure this correctly?

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Prevent a partition on a USB drive auto-mounting in Linux

- by nomount

On Linux (Gnome desktop) how do you prevent one of the partitions on an external USB drive auto-mounting when it attached to the machine? I don't just want to prevent the Nautilus window from popping up -- I want that partition not to mount. Fiddling with /etc/fstab is not acceptable, as this is a removable drive that is attached to different machines. I seem to remember that you create a hidden file in the root of the file system, but I can't remember what it's called. Something like: touch /media/usbdisk/.no-mount How do you actually make this work?

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i5 540M or i7 720QM for laptop running VMs and software development tools?

- by Donald Hughes

I'm a software developer that would primarily be running Windows 7 as the primary operating system. On a typical day, I might, at any given moment, be running Visual Studio, Expression Web, SQL Server developer (and Management Console), IIS, Photoshop, a dozen browser tabs in 2-3 different browsers, Skype video chat, streaming music, and a couple of VMs (WinXP and Ubuntu) for testing/experimentation. Obviously, RAM is a concern, which is why I plan to use 8 GB so I can devote enough to the VMs to be usable. I'm also tempted to use an ExpressCard SSD for storing the VM disks to ease disk contention. And I know that that is asking a lot from a laptop, and I should just use a desktop, but I need to be able to take my work with me between several locations. It seems that at a reasonable price point, it comes down to the i5 540M versus the i7 720QM. I'm leaning toward the i7 since it would allow me to dedicate a whole hyperthreaded core to each VM, and still have two cores left for the primary OS. I've heard that the i5 has better battery life, but I'm curious for my scenario if there would be a meaningful difference. I don't usually work without a plug, but I do occasionally ride the train or fly and it would be nice to have at least 3 hours of juice for unusual circumstances. And, finally, for this usage scenario, would a dedicated video option be preferred over the i5's integrated video? It sounds like Visual Studio 2010 (and Windows 7) can take advantage of the video card.

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Getting VMWare ESXi 5.0.0 with RAID using the Intel X79 chipset to work

- by Deleted

I have bought a new server where I use the motherboard ASUS P9X79 WS X79 S-2011 ATX. It will be used for virtualization, preferably using VMware vSphere Hypervisor™ (ESXi) if I can get the RAID on my motherboard working with VMWare (it does not detect it). The motherboard has the Intel® X79 chipset, which for RAID controller means vendor ID 8086 (Intel) and model ID 2826. When I boot the ESXi 5.0.0 installation media from my flash drive I can not see drives in the RAID5 set I created. Questions: Is there a VIB file for the RAID controller I can use? I have found one article at http://www.intel.com/support/motherboards/server/sb/CS-033313.htm on getting RAID to work with some Intel controllers, it lists 9 integrated RAID modules it is comptabile with. However, there is no mention of the X79 chipset.

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Why does OS X insist on spinning up all external drives when loading a file from the local drive?

- by Phillip Oldham

Why does OS X insist on spinning up all the attached external drives (firewire, usb) when loading a file from the local (internal) drive? It's driving me insane that I have to wait for 3 attached drives (1 back-up, 2 media) to spin up -- a total of 20s -- to access a file that is located only on my local/internal drive. There is no obvious need to access the other drives; nothing is being read from them and nothing need be written. Examples: Quicktime X opening a file from the local HDD. Starting Caffeine, an app which doesn't access any other files at all. Can I tell OS X to only spin those drives up when actually accessing them?

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Upgrade from Vista 32 to Vista 64

- by Lance Fisher

I just ordered a laptop, and it came with Vista Home Premium 32. I want Vista Home Premium 64 on it. I'm planning a reinstall. Does anyone know if my product key for Vista 32 will also work for Vista 64 for an OEM copy? As far as I know, I just need to get the 64 bit media. Is this correct? Thanks. Update The laptop is a Dell XPS M1330, and its hardware is supported. Dell would even sell it with 64 bit. However, it was significantly more expensive for lower specs, and I couldn't get it in red.

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Can't copy file with green filename, access denied

- by Swinders

Using Windows Explorer under XP I see some of my files have green filenames. When I try and copy one of these files I get an error reporting Access denied. The My pictures folder also appears with green text and I have a large number of photos from family holidays I don't want to loose. I need to backup these files as I'm changing laptop soon. We use SafeBoot to encryt our hard drives but I don't think this is the problem as it allows me to copy other files to removable media with no problems. Has anybody come across this before and how can I resolve this?

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OpenGL/SharpGL - Points only on -near surface of Ortho projection?

- by FTLPhysicsGuy

When you create points using three dimensions for each point and you use an Ortho projection to view the points, would there be a reason that only the points on the -near surface would appear? For example, if you use (the SharpGL method) gl.Ortho(0, width, height, 0, -10, 10), only the points at z=10 (because the near surface is at -10) actually show up. I'm currently using SharpGL - but I'm hoping the issue I'm having isn't with that particular implementation/library. EDIT: I'm adding the code below that demonstrates the issue. Note that this example requires SharpGL and is in fact a modification of a WPF sample project that comes with the current SharpGL source code (the original sample project is called TwoDSample). The project requires a MainWindow.xaml and a MainWindow.xaml.cs. Here's the xaml: <Window x:Class="TwoDSample.MainWindow" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" Title="MainWindow" Height="350" Width="525" xmlns:my="clr-namespace:SharpGL.WPF;assembly=SharpGL.WPF"> <Grid> <my:OpenGLControl Name="openGLControl1" OpenGLDraw="openGLControl1_OpenGLDraw" OpenGLInitialized="openGLControl1_OpenGLInitialized" Resized="openGLControl1_Resized"/> </Grid> </Window> Here is the code behind: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using System.Windows; using System.Windows.Controls; using System.Windows.Data; using System.Windows.Documents; using System.Windows.Input; using System.Windows.Media; using System.Windows.Media.Imaging; using System.Windows.Navigation; using System.Windows.Shapes; using SharpGL.Enumerations; namespace TwoDSample { /// <summary> /// Interaction logic for MainWindow.xaml /// </summary> public partial class MainWindow : Window { public MainWindow() { InitializeComponent(); } // NOTE: I use this to restrict the openGLControl1_OpenGLDraw method to // drawing only once after m_drawCount is set to zero; int m_drawCount = 0; private void openGLControl1_OpenGLDraw(object sender, SharpGL.SceneGraph.OpenGLEventArgs args) { // NOTE: Only draw once after m_drawCount is set to zero if (m_drawCount < 1) { // Get the OpenGL instance. var gl = args.OpenGL; gl.Color(1f, 0f, 0f); gl.PointSize(2.0f); // Draw 10000 random points. gl.Begin(BeginMode.Points); Random random = new Random(); for (int i = 0; i < 10000; i++) { double x = 10 + 400 * random.NextDouble(); double y = 10 + 400 * random.NextDouble(); double z = (double)random.Next(-10, 0); // Color the point according to z value gl.Color(0f, 0f, 1f); // default to blue if (z == -10) gl.Color(1f, 0f, 0f); // Red for z = -10 else if (z == -1) gl.Color(0f, 1f, 0f); // Green for z = -1 gl.Vertex(x, y, z); } gl.End(); m_drawCount++; } } private void openGLControl1_OpenGLInitialized(object sender, SharpGL.SceneGraph.OpenGLEventArgs args) { } private void openGLControl1_Resized(object sender, SharpGL.SceneGraph.OpenGLEventArgs args) { // NOTE: force the draw routine to happen again when resize occurs m_drawCount = 0; // Get the OpenGL instance. var gl = args.OpenGL; // Create an orthographic projection. gl.MatrixMode(MatrixMode.Projection); gl.LoadIdentity(); // NOTE: Basically no matter what I do, the only points I see are those at // the "near" surface (with z = -zNear)--in this case, I only see green points gl.Ortho(0, openGLControl1.ActualWidth, openGLControl1.ActualHeight, 0, 1, 10); // Back to the modelview. gl.MatrixMode(MatrixMode.Modelview); } } }

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Install Additional Printer Drivers (x86) on Vista (x64) - Can't find suitable (x86) ntprint.inf

- by jmohr

I have a printer connected to my computer that I'd like to share on my home network - shouldn't be a problem. The computer the printer is connected to is running Vista Ultimate x64. The computers I'm trying to share with are x86 Windows XP Professional and x86 Vista, so I need to install additional (x86) drivers. I checked the box to add x86 printer drivers and then it asked for the location of the drivers. I browsed to the location and clicked OK. It then prompted "Please provide path to Windows media (x86 processor). When I click "Browse..." it wants the location of a file named ntprint.inf It looks like it's asking for a Windows (x86) installation disk. I put one in but I can't seem to find this file on the 32-bit Vista install disk Where is the proper place to find this file?

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Force Windows to output only mono sound

- by sheepsimulator

So, the 'right' half of my pair of headphones broke (the transducer+wire are fine, but the earpiece broke on the headband and so the earpiece won't sit over my ear). So now the right channel is being broadcast to my cube neighbors when I wear my headphones. Yes, they look very silly. Is there a way to ensure, in Windows XP (or Windows Media Player), that all stereo sound is downmixed to the left channel only (ie, in mono) so my neighbors don't hear my music? I know that I can setup the mixer to set the balance to 100% left, but information in the right channel won't be heard.

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Session Cookies and IE 8

- by Matt Luongo

I recently built a simple web-app deployed over Tomcat. The app uses pretty standard session based security where a user who has logged in is given a session. Sessions work fine in Firefox and Chrome, but require the use of jsessionid in the URL for IE (tested 7 & 8), set to medium privacy. In IE 8, I tried to override cookie handling, setting "Allow all 3rd party cookies" and "Allow all session cookies"- no dice. However, when I run Tomcat on my local machine, IE accepts the cookie, and sessions work just fine. And now, for the HTTP headers. From Chrome, a logged in user gets a session GET http://devl:8080/testing/ HTTP/1.1 Host: devl:8080 Connection: keep-alive User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/532.5 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/4.1.249.1036 Safari/532.5 Accept: application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5 Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate,sdch Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.8 Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.3 HTTP/1.1 200 OK Server: Apache-Coyote/1.1 P3P: CP="NON CURa ADMa DEVa TAIa OUR BUS IND UNI COM NAV INT STA" Set-Cookie: JSESSIONID=9280023BCE2046F32B13C89130CBC397; Path=/testing Content-Type: text/html;charset=UTF-8 Content-Language: en-US Content-Length: 2450 Date: Fri, 26 Mar 2010 14:14:40 GMT GET http://devl:8080/testing/logout HTTP/1.1 Host: devl:8080 Connection: keep-alive User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/532.5 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/4.1.249.1036 Safari/532.5 Referer: http://devl:8080/testing/ Accept: application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5 Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate,sdch Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.8 Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.3 Cookie: JSESSIONID=9280023BCE2046F32B13C89130CBC397 ... From IE 8, with standard medium level security and privacy- GET http://devl:8080/testing/ HTTP/1.1 Accept: application/x-ms-application, image/jpeg, application/xaml+xml, image/gif, image/pjpeg, application/x-ms-xbap, */* Accept-Language: en-US User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; Trident/4.0; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; SLCC2; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; Media Center PC 6.0; MDDC; Tablet PC 2.0) UA-CPU: AMD64 Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate Host: devl:8080 Connection: Keep-Alive HTTP/1.1 200 OK Server: Apache-Coyote/1.1 P3P: CP="NON CURa ADMa DEVa TAIa OUR BUS IND UNI COM NAV INT STA" Set-Cookie: JSESSIONID=192999F922D6E9C868314452726764BA; Path=/testing Content-Type: text/html;charset=UTF-8 Content-Language: en-US Content-Length: 2450 Date: Fri, 26 Mar 2010 14:32:34 GMT GET http://devl:8080/testing/logout HTTP/1.1 Accept: application/x-ms-application, image/jpeg, application/xaml+xml, image/gif, image/pjpeg, application/x-ms-xbap, */* Referer: http://devl:8080/testing/;jsessionid=6371A83EFE39A46997544F9146AA5CEA Accept-Language: en-US User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; Trident/4.0; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; SLCC2; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; Media Center PC 6.0; MDDC; Tablet PC 2.0) UA-CPU: AMD64 Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate Connection: Keep-Alive Host: devl:8080 ... I thought it might be P3P, but on adding a compact policy, nothing changes. This is the standard Tomcat session, so I'm really surprised I haven't been able to find other people with the same problem so far. Anyone have any ideas?

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