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• From the Tips Box: Revitalizing Ink Cartridges with a Water Infusion

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  If you’re convinced your ink cartridge has more ink to share than it is willing to give up, you’re right. Read on to see how How-To Geek reader Max squeezes extra life out of his cartridges with plain old water. Max wrote in with his simple solution. He wasn’t as interested in refilling his cartridges as he was in getting all the ink out of them. Here’s his detailed guide to getting nearly every drop of ink out of your high-priced ink cartridge: The ink in many brands of ink jet printer cartridges is generally water soluble. To see if your ink is water soluble, wet your finger and rub it across a page from your printer you don’t mind wasting.  If the print smears the ink is obviously water soluble. The top of the printer cartridge generally has the manufacturer’s label attached. It covers tiny holes through which the ink was injected into the cartridge during manufacture. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How To Make Disposable Sleeves for Your In-Ear Monitors Macs Don’t Make You Creative! So Why Do Artists Really Love Apple? MacX DVD Ripper Pro is Free for How-To Geek Readers (Time Limited!) HTG Explains: What’s a Solid State Drive and What Do I Need to Know? How to Get Amazing Color from Photos in Photoshop, GIMP, and Paint.NET Learn To Adjust Contrast Like a Pro in Photoshop, GIMP, and Paint.NET Bring the Grid to Your Desktop with the TRON Legacy Theme for Windows 7 The Dark Knight and Team Fortress 2 Mashup Movie Trailer [Video] Dirt Cheap DSLR Viewfinder Improves Outdoor DSLR LCD Visibility Lakeside Sunset in the Mountains [Wallpaper] Taskbar Meters Turn Your Taskbar into a System Resource Monitor Create Shortcuts for Your Favorite or Most Used Folders in Ubuntu

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• Bot strategy in an arena

  - by joulesm

  I am writing the player's behavior for an arena game, and I'm wondering if you could offer some strategies. I'm writing it in Python, but I'm just interested in the high level game play. Here are the game aspects: Arena is a circle of a given size. The arena's size shrinks every round to help break any ties. Players are much smaller circles, and can be on teams of 1 or 2 players. Players attack by colliding with other players, and based on the physics of the collision (speed of both players, angle), one could force another player out of the arena. Once a player is out of the arena, they are out of the game (for that round). The goal is to be on the only team with players left in the arena. All other players have been pushed (through collisions or mistakes) out of the arena. It is possible for there to be no winner if the last two players exit the arena at the same time. Once the player has been programmed, the game just runs. There is no human intervention in the game. I'm thinking it's easiest to implement a few simple programmatic rules for my player to follow. For example, stay close to center of the arena, attack opponents from the inner side of the arena, etc. Are there any good simple game strategies? Would adding a random aspect to the game help? For example, to avoid predictability by the other team or something. Thanks in advance.

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• Netretail's online retail operation benefits from personal contact

  - by christopher.jones

  Hot on oracle.com is a snapshot of Netretail Holding B.V. profiling their use of PHP and Oracle technology such as Oracle RAC cluster database to become a leading online retailer across Central and Eastern Europe. We've also just refreshed our key PHP Scalability and High Availability whitepaper which talks about connection pooling (DRCP) and Fast Application Notification (FAN). We brought it up to date for 11gR2 and PHP 5.3. It now includes the new 11gR2 V$CPOOL_CONN_INFO view, the new columns for DBA_CPOOL_INFO, information about LOGOFF triggers, and information about the support for Client Result Caching with DRCP. Back to Netretail. Two of their secrets to success are keeping technically up to date, and networking. That is, networking in the business sense. I had the pleasure of meeting Michal Táborský (@whizz), the Chief System Architect, when he was in California for a Velocity conference. Michal took time to visit Oracle HQ and talk with our developers about his then current architecture and future needs. I also met his manager at last year's Oracle OpenWorld conference. Having built up a relationship with us, Netretail now has access to Oracle Development staff. While this will never bypass Oracle Support (which have tools, systems etc that are needed and useful for resolving issues), it makes communication easier for some classes of questions. It helps discussions that will let us improve Oracle products, and make Netretail stronger. I like this. And there's no reason why you can't talk with us too. You know where to email me.

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• A Great Time at Developer Academy 4 In Israel

  I had a great time today at Developer Academy 4.  It was in a beautiful part of Tel Aviv.  The weather was great and the food fantastic.  They had well over 1,000 paid attendees, so the house was PACKED.   Dev Academys page on Facebook.  Including some pictures of me.  I was very impressed with the high tech community in Israel.  Clearly Israel is a hub of hightech.                 I did a demo in the keynote...Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• B.S.in Computer Science, weak eyes => career change

  - by Prometheus

  So I am going to earn B.S. in Computer Science soon. I like computers. I like programming. The problem is that my eyes are very weak. Depending on their condition, I can only put in about 6 hours in front of computer a day. If I push myself, I have trouble even keeping my eyes open because of soreness/pain, consequently headaches. My eyes do not have medical conditions. I was just born with weak eyes. I tried many different approaches to work around this problem - better monitor, breaks every 10 minutes, supplements... I even memorized a lot of shortcuts to reduce my time on computers! But I am finally giving up. I do not think I can be a programmer for the rest of my life. I was the top of my class in high school because all works were paper-based, I did average in college due to the nature of my eyes and the difficulty of the material. So what do you recommend I do? Or, Is there a career that is similar to programming but requires interacting with computers less?

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• How do I handle having too many links on a webpage because of my menu

  - by RandomBen

  I am developing a website that has a drop-down menu at the top of it. The Menu has around 100 links in it that are repeated on every page. Every page also has some number of links below the Menu that may or may not be in the menu itself. My issue is that Google says they generally don't like pages with more than 100 links on them. Is there any way to change the links on the menu so that they no longer "count" towards my max of 100 links? It seems like there should be an easy way to do this but their really doesn't seem to be. the rel=nofollow still counts towards the number of links on the page at least according to Google, so what other options do I have? I looked into where the 100 comes from and I found that it used to be here: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769#2 but that is no longer the case. I found a more definitive and frankly muddier answer here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/questions-answers-with-googles-spam-guru from Matt Cutts from 2007. Long story short, in 2007 they still felt 100 links was a good number but they stated you could go far beyond that. In fact, they said that pages with high PageRank could have 2-300. It did sound like having many links could reduce the PageRank of the page with all of the links or possibly all of the items linked to. Also, I know IIS7's SEO 1.0 toolkit suggests that pages should have no more than 250 links.

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• EVENT RECAP: Oracle Health Sciences Conference

  - by cwarticki

  Monaco served as an intense location for this year's Oracle Health Sciences User Group conference.  It was a "Grand Prix" event with nearly 200 attendees from all over the world.  In a country famous for high performance race cars, luxury super yachts and lifestyles of the rich & famous, the conference was very Ellison-esque. I think the Superyachts were being paired with Exadata. The OSHUG staff were fantastic . Robin and Taylor (pictured left) from Drohan Management took care of all the details and were wonderful to get to know. I met with some real Oracle loyalists.  Stan Sachar,  I.T. Manager for Westat, and the Focus Group co-chair for Admin Configuration Mgmt (ACM).  Westat was an early adopter of Oracle Clinical for clinical trial projects with installations in 1997-98.  I had a chance to talk with Stan during the reception and he is an Oracle advocate and evangelist. He's invested in his career in using Oracle products. (Stan Sachar pictured right with Dick Wolnick from Oracle, on left) I also met with Mirco Becker from Grunenthal Gmbh.  He's been working with the Argus product for over 6 years.  He's a big user of Oracle Support. Mirco attended my support best practices session and was actively engaged and asked several questions.  He's excited to adopt those best practices and work more efficiently and effectively with Support. Finally, I thank the many who attended my session.  I admit, the beautiful weather and view of the ocean was a distraction, but nonetheless my mission was to provide you with all the necessary support resources for Health Sciences users. You will find a copy of my presentation on the OSHUG website. Bon Voyage Monaco.  Thanks for the memories.  I'll see everyone next year, in Miami. -Chris WartickiGlobal Customer Management

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• Career paths after web development?

  - by Mike

  I know this is open ended, but I'm just curious what you've done after your web development career, or if you've stayed loyal. I have a feeling/read/heard that web development salaries top out at a certain amount.. even after 10-15 years of experience. Reason I ask is that I graduated last summer with a BS in Chemical Engineering.. but have not been able to find a job in California. I've been web designing/developing since high school and thought that I should start a career, even if its not related to my major and not lose more time. Even though I'd really like to have an engineering career, I don't think that will happen. Do you guys have any suggestions or experiences for choices after/ways to enhance your career after several years in web development? Thanks! Update: Thanks for the responses guys! One more question: Is it likely to be accepted into a MS/PhD program if you've been out of uni for a couple years? Or with semi-related job experience? Would I be a bit of a misfit with a BS in ChemE studying CS/CompE for an MS?

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• How should I manage persistent score in Game Center leaderboards?

  - by Omega

  Let's say that I'm developing an iOS RPG where the player gains 1 point per monster kill. The amount of monsters killed is persistent data: it is an endless adventure, and the score keeps on growing. It isn't a "session score" like Fruit Ninja, but rather a "reputation score". There are Game Center leaderboards for that score. Keep killing monsters, your score goes up, and the leaderboards are updated. My problem is that, technically, you can log out and log in using a different Game Center account, kill one monster, and the leaderboards will be updated for the new GC account. Supposing that this score is a big deal, this could be considered as cheating, because if you have a score of 2000, any of your friends who have never played the game can simply log into your iPhone, play the game, and the system will update the score for their accounts, essentially giving them 2000 points in the leaderboards for doing nothing. I have considered linking one GC account to a specific save game. It won't update your score unless you're using the linked GC account. But what if the player actually needs to change their GC account? Technically they would be forced to start a new game and link their account to that profile. How should I prevent this kind of cheat? Essentially, I don't want someone to distribute a high schore to multiple GC accounts, given the fact that the game updates the score constantly since it isn't a "session score". I do realize that it isn't quite a big deal. But I'm curious about how to avoid this.

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• Oracle Exadata X3 announcement at Oracle Openworld

  - by Javier Puerta

  Oracle Announces Oracle Exadata X3 Database In-Memory MachineOracle Press ReleaseFourth Generation Exadata X3 Systems are Ideal for High-End OLTP, Large Data Warehouses, and Database Clouds; Eighth-Rack Configuration Offers New Low-Cost Entry Point During his opening keynote address at Oracle OpenWorld, Oracle CEO, Larry Ellison announced the Oracle Exadata X3 Database In-Memory Machine - the latest generation of its Oracle Exadata Database Machines. The Oracle Exadata X3 Database In-Memory Machine is a key component of the Oracle Cloud. Oracle Exadata X3-2 Database In-Memory Machine and Oracle Exadata X3-8 Database In-Memory Machine can store up to hundreds of Terabytes of compressed user data in Flash and RAM memory, virtually eliminating the performance overhead of reads and writes to slow disk drives, making Exadata X3 systems the ideal database platforms for the varied and unpredictable workloads of cloud computing. In order to realize the highest performance at the lowest cost, the Oracle Exadata X3 Database In-Memory Machine implements a mass memory hierarchy that automatically moves all active data into Flash and RAM memory, while keeping less active data on low-cost disks. With a new Eighth-Rack configuration, the Oracle Exadata X3-2 Database In-Memory Machine delivers a cost-effective entry point for smaller workloads, testing, development and disaster recovery systems, and is a fully redundant system that can be used with mission critical applications. Detailed info at Oracle Exadata Database Machine

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• Warnings When Undo Isn't Possible

  - by ultan o'broin

  Enjoyed this post Never Use a Warning When you Mean Undo by Aza Raskin. It makes sense never to warn users if an undo option is possible. The examples given are from the web space. Here's the conclusion: Warnings cause us to lose our work, to mistrust our computers, and to blame ourselves. A simple but foolproof design methodology solves the problem: "Never use a warning when you mean undo." And when a user is deleting their work, you always mean undo. However, in enterprise apps you may find that an undo option isn't technically possible or desirable. Objects may be shared, part of a flow elsewhere, or undoing something committed to the database (a rollback I guess) may not be feasible if it becomes locked by another process. Plus, what constitutes user ownership of objects isn't always clear to users. The implications of delete (and other) actions need to be clearly communicated out in advance. Really, warnings are important in the enterprise space. Data has a very high value, and users can perform a wide variety of actions that may risk that data, not always within the application itself (at browser level, for example). That said, throwing warnings all over the place when an undo option is possible is annoying. Instead, treat warnings with respect. When there is no undo option possible, use warning messages to communicate potentially dangerous or irrecoverable actions or the downstream consequences of user actions on the process or task flow. Force the user to respond to a warning message by using a modal dialog with clearly labeled action buttons. Here's a couple of examples. A great article that got me thinking. Let's see more like that. Let's not forget there's more types of messages than just error messages. User assistance and user experience professionals need to understand when best to use confirmation, information, and warning types too!

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, February 29, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, February 29, 2012Popular ReleasesZXing.Net: ZXing.Net 0.4.0.0: sync with rev. 2196 of the java version important fix for RGBLuminanceSource generating barcode bitmaps Windows Phone demo client (only tested with emulator, because I don't have a Windows Phone) Barcode generation support for Windows Forms demo client Webcam support for Windows Forms demo clientOrchard Project: Orchard 1.4: Please read our release notes for Orchard 1.4: http://docs.orchardproject.net/Documentation/Orchard-1-4-Release-NotesFluentData -Micro ORM with a fluent API that makes it simple to query a database: FluentData version 1.2: New features: - QueryValues method - Added support for automapping to enumerations (both int and string are supported). Fixed 2 reported issues.NetSqlAzMan - .NET SQL Authorization Manager: 3.6.0.15: 3.6.0.15 28-Feb-2012 • Fix: The communication object, System.ServiceModel.Channels.ServiceChannel, cannot be used for communication because it is in the Faulted state. Work Item 10435: http://netsqlazman.codeplex.com/workitem/10435 • Fix: Made StorageCache thread safe. Thanks to tangrl. • Fix: Members property of SqlAzManApplicationGroup is not functioning. Thanks to tangrl. Work Item 10267: http://netsqlazman.codeplex.com/workitem/10267 • Fix: Indexer are making database calls. Thanks to t...SCCM Client Actions Tool: Client Actions Tool v1.1: SCCM Client Actions Tool v1.1 is the latest version. It comes with following changes since last version: Added stop button to stop the ongoing process. Added action "Query update status". Added option "saveOnlineComputers" in config.ini to enable saving list of online computers from last session. Default value for "LatestClientVersion" set to SP2 R3 (4.00.6487.2157). Wuauserv service manual startup mode is considered healthy on Windows 7. Errors are now suppressed in checkReleases...Document.Editor: 2012.1: Whats new for Document.Editor 2012.1: Improved Recent Documents list Improved Insert Shape Improved Dialogs Minor Bug Fix's, improvements and speed upsKinect PowerPoint Control: Kinect PowerPoint Control v1.1: Updated for Kinect SDK 1.0.SharpCompress - a fully native C# library for RAR, 7Zip, Zip, Tar, GZip, BZip2: SharpCompress 0.8: API Updates: SOLID Extract Method for Archives (7Zip and RAR). ExtractAllEntries method on Archive classes will extract archives as a streaming file. This can offer better 7Zip extraction performance if any of the entries are solid. The IsSolid method on 7Zip archives will return true if any are solid. Removed IExtractionListener was removed in favor of events. Unit tests show example. Bug fixes: PPMd passes tests plus other fixes (Thanks Pavel) Zip used to always write a Post Descri...Social Network Importer for NodeXL: SocialNetImporter(v.1.3): This new version includes: - Download new networks for Facebook fan pages. - New options for downloading more posts - Bug fixes To use the new graph data provider, do the following: Unzip the Zip file into the "PlugIns" folder that can be found in the NodeXL installation folder (i.e "C:\Program Files\Social Media Research Foundation\NodeXL Excel Template\PlugIns") Open NodeXL template and you can access the new importer from the "Import" menuASP.NET REST Services Framework: Release 1.1 - Standard version: Beginning from v1.1 the REST-services Framework is compatible with ASP.NET Routing model as well with CRUD (Create, Read, Update, and Delete) principle. These two are often important when building REST API functionality within your application. It also includes ability to apply Filters to a class to target all WebRest methods, as well as some performance enhancements. New version includes Metadata Explorer providing ability exploring the existing services that becomes essential as the number ...SQL Live Monitor: SQL Live Monitor 1.31: A quick fix to make it this version work with SQL 2012. Version 2 already has 2012 working, but am still developing the UI in version 2, so this is just an interim fix to allow user to monitor SQL 2012.DotNet.Highcharts: DotNet.Highcharts 1.1 with Examples: Fixed small bug in JsonSerializer about the numbers represented as string. Fixed Issue 310: decimal values don't work Fixed Issue 345: Disable Animation Refactored Highcharts class. Implemented Issue 341: More charts on one page. Added new class Container which can combine and display multiple charts. Usage: new Container(new[] { chart1, chart2, chart3, chart4 }) Implemented Feature 302: Inside an UpdatePanel - Added method (InFunction) which create the Highchart inside JavaScript f...Content Slider Module for DotNetNuke: 01.02.00: This release has the following updates and new features: Feature: One-Click Enabling of Pager Setting Feature: Cache Sliders for Performance Feature: Configurable Cache Setting Enhancement: Transitions can be Selected Bug: Secure Folder Images not Viewable Bug: Sliders Disappear on Postback Bug: Remote Images Cause Error Bug: Deleted Images Cause Error System Requirements DotNetNuke v06.00.00 or newer .Net Framework v3.5 SP1 or newer SQL Server 2005 or newerImage Resizer for Windows: Image Resizer 3 Preview 3: Here is yet another iteration toward what will eventually become Image Resizer 3. This release is stable. However, I'm calling it a preview since there are still many features I'd still like to add before calling it complete. Updated on February 28 to fix an issue with installing on multi-user machines. As usual, here is my progress report. Done Preview 3 Fix: 3206 3076 3077 5688 Fix: 7420 Fix: 7527 Fix: 7576 7612 Preview 2 6308 6309 Fix: 7339 Fix: 7357 Preview 1 UI...Finestra Virtual Desktops: 2.5.4500: This is a bug fix release for version 2.5. It fixes several things and adds a couple of minor features. See the 2.5 release notes for more information on the major new features in that version. Important - If Finestra crashes on startup for you, you must install the Visual C++ 2010 runtime from http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=5555. Fixes a bug with window animations not refreshing the screen on XP and with DWM off Fixes a bug with with crashing on XP due to a bug in t...AutoExpandOver - Show popup on mouseover, focus, click in Silverlight: AutoExpandOver 2.1: Many fixes. All leaks are gone. Features added.FileSquirrel: FileSquirrel Alpha 1.2.1 32bit and x64: FileSquirrel Alpha 1.2.1Publishing SCSM Work Item to a Sharepoint Calendar: PublishWI command line tool (Updated): Updated for SCSM 2012 (RC) PublishWI command line tool Usage: PublishWI.exe WIID URL CalendarName WIID: ID of the Work Item to publish (for example, CR3333) URL: URL of the SharePoint site, such as http://www.sharepoint.com CalendarName: The name of the sharepoint calendar to publish WI to.HttpRider - Tool for Web Site Performance and Stress Tests: HttpRider 1.0: Please let me know any issues you face. ThanksMedia Companion: MC 3.432b Release: General Now remembers window location. Catching a few more exceptions when an image is blank TV A couple of UI tweaks Movies Fixed the actor name displaying HTML Fixed crash when using Save files as "movie.nfo", "movie.tbn", & "fanart.jpg" New CSV template for HTML output function Added <createdate> tag for HTML output A couple of UI tweaks Known Issues Multiepisodes are not handled correctly in MC. The created nfo is valid, but they are not displayed in MC correctly & saving the...New Projects.NET Implementation of Extensions for Financial Services: NXFS is planned to be a compliant .Net implementation of CEN/XFS (currently version 3.20) to overcome some deficits of native implementation such as not supporting highly productive programming languages (like C#) and supporting only Windows XP and x86 platform.BigCoder WebMaster Tools: BigCoder WebMaster ToolsBigCoder Whois Program: BigCoder Whois ProgrambiscuitCMS: biscuitCMS makes it easier for <target user group> to <activity>. You'll no longer have to <activity>. It's developed in <programming language>. BridgeSeismic: BridgeSeismicData Normilizer: Decomposer for SQL fact tables, for BI projectsDownload Indexed Cache: "Download Indexed Cache" implements the Bing API Version 2 to retrieve content indexed within the Bing Cache to support the "Search Engine Reconnaissance" section of the OWASP Testing Guide v3. FITSExplorer: FITS Explorer is designed to allow astronomers to quickly and easily browse and preview the image and metadata stored in FITS files. The application was developed using primarily WPF and C#, with some low-level data manipulation routines written in C++ for high-performance.ICalSync: icalsyncLeague Manager: Nosso gerenciador de campeonatosLemcube SISTRI: interfacciamento ai servizi di Interoperabilità SIS.: Lemcube SISTRI: interfacciamento ai servizi di Interoperabilità SIS.LittlePluginLib: A small plugin system based on the .net framework 3.5Log reading: Reading and parsing huge log files, download from ftp server and upload to msql database.Mail Aggregator Service: To address the problem of being 'spammed' by your own alert emails this service was created to group/batch mail messages sent to the same 'to' address. It can integrate into QuickMon or even be used as a stand-alone tool to send out alert notifications. MangoTicTacToe: Demo application of a simple Silverlight game for Windows Phone 7. This tictactoe game features some of the most basics requirements for making a Silverlight game for Windows Phone 7.MonkeyButt: Web alternatives to commercial software like Facebook and Google.PizzaSoft: PizzaSoftproject: project demoSharePoint 2010 Automatically Generated Solution Demo: In this demo project I show how to generate Sandboxed Solutions by code at runtime.SoftService: Software ServiceSPAdmin: SharePoint WarmUp ToolSSASNet: SSASNetSSIS Data Masker: A SSIS Data Flow Transformation Component To Provide Basic Data Masking Capabilities.UpiGppf: This is a high shcool projectXMPP/Media Library for .NET and Windows Phone 7.5: .NET libraries for XMPP, TLS, RTP, STUN, SOCKS and more for windows and windows phone.

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• Styles of games that work at low-resolution

  - by Brendan Long

  I'm taking a class on compilers, and the goal is to write a compiler for Meggy Jr devices (Arduino). The goal is just to make a simple compilers with loops and variables and stuff. Obviously, that's lame, so the "real goal" is to make an impressive game on the device. The problem is that it only has 64 pixels to work with (technically 72, but the top 8 are single-color and not part of the main display, so they're really only useful for displaying things like money). My problem is thinking of something to do on a device that small. It doesn't really matter if it's original, but it can't be something that's already available. My first idea was "snake", but that comes with the SDK. Same with a side-scrolling shooter. Remaining ideas include a tower defense game (hard to write, hard to control), an RPG (same), tetris (lame).. The problem is that all of the games I like require a high-resolution screen because they have a lot of text. Even a really simple game like nethack would be hard because each creature would be a single color. tl;dr What styles of games require a. No text; and b. Few enough objects that representing them each with a single color is acceptable? EDIT: To clarify, the display is 8x8 for a total of 64 pixels, not 64x64.

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• GIS-based data visualization and maintenance tool

  - by Dave Jarvis

  Background Looking to leverage an existing GIS system for exploring organizational data. Architecture The following figure represents a high-level overview of the system's desired features: The most basic usage would be as follows: The user visits a web site. The system presents a map (having regions, cities, and buildings). The user drills-down on the map to a particular building. The system provides a basic CRUD interface. The user can view and modify information about personnel (e.g., their assigned teams), equipment (e.g., network appliances), applications, and the building itself (e.g., contact and phone numbers). Ideally, all the components should be open-source (or otherwise free). Problem This must be a small project that needs a quick (but functional) prototype, mostly to confirm whether or not such a system would be useful in the long term. Questions What software components would you use to quickly develop a working prototype? What open-source solutions already exist, if any? Ideas Here is what I am thinking: PostGIS - Define the regions, cities, and sites Google Maps - Display an interactive, clickable map geoJSON - Protocol between PostGIS and Google Maps Seam - CRUD interface Custom Development For example, this would entail: Installation and configuration Configure SSH for remote logins Subversion (or git) PostgreSQL PostGIS Java Tomcat Seam JasperReports Enter GIS information into PostGIS Aggregate data sources into PostgreSQL database Develop starting page for map interface Develop clickable Google Maps interface Develop summary reports Develop CRUD interface using Seam for data maintenance Surely something like this already exists? Thank you!

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• How can we make agile enjoyable for developers that like to personally, independently own large chunks from start to finish

  - by Kris

  We’re roughly midway through our transition from waterfall to agile using scrum; we’ve changed from large teams in technology/discipline silos to smaller cross-functional teams. As expected, the change to agile doesn’t suit everyone. There are a handful of developers that are having a difficult time adjusting to agile. I really want to keep them engaged and challenged, and ultimately enjoying coming to work each day. These are smart, happy, motivated people that I respect on both a personal and a professional level. The basic issue is this: Some developers are primarily motivated by the joy of taking a piece of difficult work, thinking through a design, thinking through potential issues, then solving the problem piece by piece, with only minimal interaction with others, over an extended period of time. They generally complete work to a high level of quality and in a timely way; their work is maintainable and fits with the overall architecture. Transitioning to a cross-functional team that values interaction and shared responsibility for work, and delivery of working functionality within shorter intervals, the teams evolve such that the entire team knocks that difficult problem over. Many people find this to be a positive change; someone that loves to take a problem and own it independently from start to finish loses the opportunity for work like that. This is not an issue with people being open to change. Certainly we’ve seen a few people that don’t like change, but in the cases I’m concerned about, the individuals are good performers, genuinely open to change, they make an effort, they see how the rest of the team is changing and they want to fit in. It’s not a case of someone being difficult or obstructionist, or wanting to hoard the juiciest work. They just don’t find joy in work like they used to. I’m sure we can’t be the only place that hasn’t bumped up on this. How have others approached this? If you’re a developer that is motivated by personally owning a big chunk of work from end to end, and you’ve adjusted to a different way of working, what did it for you?

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• Suitability of ground fog using layered alpha quads?

  - by Nick Wiggill

  A layered approach would use a series of massive alpha-textured quads arranged parallel to the ground, intersecting all intervening terrain geometry, to provide the illusion of ground fog quite effectively from high up, looking down, and somewhat less effectively when inside the fog and looking toward the horizon (see image below). Alternatively, a shader-heavy approach would instead calculate density as function of view distance into the ground fog substrate, and output the fragment value based on that. Without having to performance-test each approach myself, I would like first to hear others' experiences (not speculation!) on what sort of performance impact the layered alpha texture approach is likely to have. I ask specifically due to the oft-cited impacts of overdraw (not sure how fill-rate bound your average desktop system is). A list of games using this approach, particularly older games, would be immensely useful: if this was viable on pre DX9/OpenGL2 hardware, it is likely to work fine for me. One big question is in regards to this sort of effect: (Image credit goes to Lume of lume.com) Notice how the vertical fog gradation is continuous / smooth. OTOH, using textured quad layers, I can only assume that layers would be mighty obvious when walking through them -- the more sparse they were, the more obvious this would be. This is in contrast to where fog planes are aligned to face the player every frame, where this coarseness would be much less obvious.

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• I want to build a Virtual Machine, are there any good references?

  - by Michael Stum

  I'm looking to build a Virtual Machine as a platform independent way to run some game code (essentially scripting). The Virtual Machines that I'm aware of in games are rather old: Infocom's Z-Machine, LucasArts' SCUMM, id Software's Quake 3. As a .net Developer, I'm familiar with the CLR and looked into the CIL Instructions to get an overview of what you actually implement on a VM Level (vs. the language level). I've also dabbled a bit in 6502 Assembler during the last year. The thing is, now that I want¹ to implement one, I need to dig a bit deeper. I know that there are stack based and register based VMs, but I don't really know which one is better at what and if there are more or hybrid approaches. I need to deal with memory management, decide which low level types are part of the VM and need to understand why stuff like ldstr works the way it does. My only reference book (apart from the Z-Machine stuff) is the CLI Annotated Standard, but I wonder if there is a better, more general/fundamental lecture for VMs? Basically something like the Dragon Book, but for VMs? I'm aware of Donald Knuth's Art of Computer Programming which uses a register-based VM, but I'm not sure how applicable that series still is, especially since it's still unfinished? Clarification: The goal is to build a specialized VM. For example, Infocom's Z-Machine contains OpCodes for setting the Background Color or playing a sound. So I need to figure out how much goes into the VM as OpCodes vs. the compiler that takes a script (language TBD) and generates the bytecode from it, but for that I need to understand what I'm really doing. ¹ I know, modern technology would allow me to just interpret a high level scripting language on the fly. But where is the fun in that? :) It's also a bit hard to google because Virtual Machines is nowadays often associated with VMWare-type OS Virtualization...

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• Is comparing an OO compiler to a SQL compiler/optimizer valid?

  - by Brad

  I'm now doing a lot of SQL development at my new job where as before I was doing Object Oriented desktop app stuff. I keep running across very large scripts (thousands of lines) and wanting to refactor in some way. I am seeing that SQL is a different sort of beast and it's probably fine to have these big scripts for the most part but while explaining this to me people are also insisting that the whole idea of refactoring is bad. That stuff like the .NET compiler are actually burdened by refactored code and that a big wall of code is more efficient and better design than code designed for reuse, readability and scalability. The other argument is that OO compilers are almost dangerously inefficient and don't have efficient memory management or runs too many CPU instructions compared to older "simpler" compilers and compared to SQL. Are these valid complaints? Even if some compiler like a C compiler is modestly more "efficient" (whatever that means on this high of a level without seeing code) would you want to write applications in C over C# or Java? Is comparing an OO compiler to a SQL compiler/optimizer even valid?

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• Automated Error Reporting in .NET Reflector - harnessing the most powerful test rig in existence

  - by Alex.Davies

  I know a testing system that will find more bugs than all the unit testing, integration testing, and QA you could possibly do. And the chances are you're not using it. It's called your users. It's a cliché that you should test so that you find your bugs rather than your users. Of course you should. But it's also a cliché that no software is ever shipped bug-free. Lost cause? No, opportunity! I think .NET Reflector 6 is pretty stable. In fact I know exactly how stable it is, because some (surprisingly high) proportion of its users tell me every time it crashes: If they press "Send Error Report", I get: And then I fix it. As a rough guess, while a standard stack trace is enough to fix a problem 30% of the time, having all those local variables in the stack trace means I can fix it about 80% of the time. How does this all happen? Did it take ages to code this swish system? Nope, it was one checkbox in SmartAssembly. It adds some clever code to your assembly to capture local variables every time an exception is thrown, and to ask your user to report it to you, with a variety of other useful information. Of course not all bugs show up as exceptions. But if you get used to knowing that SmartAssembly will tell you when an exception happens, you begin to change your coding style. Now, as long as an exception gets thrown in any situation you don't expect, you'll fix it if it ever happens. You'll start throwing exceptions liberally, and stop having to think about whether tiny edge cases are possible, as long as they throw an exception if they happen.

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• Is it wise to ask about design decisions made on a product during an interview?

  - by Desolate Planet

  I've been thinking about interview questions lately and I've been reflecting on bad interview experiences I've had in the past. One of particular note is where I had asked the interviewer why the team chose to use Spring over EJB3 in their product. The interviewer pretty much tore my face off, yelling "Because Spring is not the be all and end all of Java software development, do you want this job or not?". In response to this, I told him that this probably wasn't the job for me and I walked out the interview. He told me at the start of the interview that they had high stuff turnover, the product had gone from Modula 3 to Perl to Java then after asking him a technical question, he went in flames. It seemed obvious to me that he was toxic to the company with that kind of attitude. Question: Is it a good idea to probe on architectural choices taken in an interview? If not, why? From my own point of view, an interview is a two-way process. If the interviewers are testing me on my technical skills, I've got every right to ask them the same questions to 1) Figure out what their mindset and attitudes towards developing software solutions are and 2) To figure out if there are in line with how I would approach problems of that kind. It's very possible that the interviewer who got angry was a bad interviewer and forgot that an interview is a two-way process. If I was asked this, I would have simply said something along the lines of wanting to leverage the container more, but I certainly wouldn't have tried to put him in a state of meek capitulation. The interviewer in question was the lead developer in the team.

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• Design for XML mapping scenarios between two different systems [on hold]

  - by deepak_prn

  Mapping XML fields between two systems is a mundane routine in integration scenarios. I am trying to make the design documents look better and provide clear understanding to the developers especially when we do not use XSLT or any other IDE such as jDeveloper or eclipse plugins. I want it to be a high level design but at the same time talk in developer's language. So that there is no requirements that slip under the crack. For example, one of the scenarios goes: the store cashier sells an item, the transaction data is sent to Data management system. Now, I am writing a functional design for the scenario which deals with mapping XML fields between our system and the data management system. Question : I was wondering if some one had to deal with mapping XML fields between two systems? (without XSLT being involved) and if you used a table to represent the fields mapping (example is below) or any other visualization tool which does not break the bank ? I am trying to find out if there is a better way to represent XML mapping in your design documents. The widely accepted and used method seems to be using a simple table such as in the picture to illustrate the mapping. I am wondering if there are alternate ways/ tools to represent such as in Altova:

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• Is it bad practice for services to share a database in SOA?

  - by Paul T Davies

  I have recently been reading Hohpe and Woolf's Enterprise Integration Patterns, some of Thomas Erl's books on SOA and watching various videos and podcasts by Udi Dahan et al. on CQRS and Event Driven systems. Systems in my place of work suffer from high coupling. Although each system theoretically has its own database, there is a lot of joining between them. In practice this means there is one huge database that all systems use. For example, there is one table of customer data. Much of what I've read seems to suggest denormalising data so that each system uses only its database, and any updates to one system are propagated to all the others using messaging. I thought this was one of the ways of enforcing the boundaries in SOA - each service should have its own database, but then I read this: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4019902/soa-joining-data-across-multiple-services and it suggests this is the wrong thing to do. Segregating the databases does seem like a good way of decoupling systems, but now I'm a bit confused. Is this a good route to take? Is it ever recommended that you should segregate a database on, say an SOA service, an DDD Bounded context, an application, etc?

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• Thinktecture IdentityServer v1.0

  - by Your DisplayName here!

  Yeah – it is finally done. I just uploaded the v1 bits to Codeplex and the documentation to our server. Here’s the official blurb… Thinktecture IdentityServer is an open source security token service based on Microsoft .NET, ASP.NET MVC, WCF and WIF. High level features Multiple protocols support (WS-Trust, WS-Federation, OAuth2, WRAP, JSNotify, HTTP GET) Multiple token support (SAML 1.1/2.0, SWT) Out of the box integration with ASP.NET membership, roles and profile Support for username/password and client certificates authentication Support for WS-Federation metadata Support for WS-Trust identity delegation Extensibility points to customize configuration and user management handling Disclaimer I did thorough testing of all features of IdentityServer - but keep in mind that this is an open source project and I am the only architect, developer and tester on the team. IdentityServer also lacks many of the enterprise-level features like configuration services, proxy support, operations integration etc. I only recommend using IdentityServer if you also understand how it works (to be able to support it). I am offering consulting to help you with customization and lock down - contact me. Download. Documentation. Up next is v1 of the Azure version. Have fun!

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• IASA ITARC &ndash; Denver May 6th

  - by Jeff Certain

  The Denver chapter of the International Association of Software Architects (IASA) is holding an IT Architect Regional Conference (ITARC) in Denver on May 6th. The speaker list for this conference is amazing. Paul Rayner, Dave McComb, Randy Kahle, Peter Provost, Randy Stafford, George Fairbanks – all great speakers, and from Colorado. Brandon Satrom (who also happens to be the president of the IASA Austin chapter) will also be speaking, as will some other heavy hitters (for example, Ted Farrell, Chief Architect and Senior VP of Oracle). This is an amazing line-up, and the conference is quite reasonably priced ($150 for IASA members until April 10th, including a catered lunch). I also have the privilege of being a presenter at this conference. If you’ve ever heard any of the previously named speakers, you know that they set the bar quite high. Sounds like I’m going to have to step up my game. What I get to talk about is really cool stuff. The company I work for – Colorado CustomWare – brought me on board nearly two years ago. To say there was some technical debt is somewhat… understated. Equally understated would be that management is committed to doing the right thing. Over the past two years, we’ve done significant architectural refactoring – including an effort that took the entire team offline for most of a month. We’ve reduced the application size by 50% without losing functionality. As you can imagine, this has reduced the complexity of the application, making development faster and less prone to bugs. We’ve made many other changes – moving to an agile process, training developers, moving towards a more OO architecture. The changes we’ve made reveal, in some ways, just how far afield we were.. and there are still more changes to be made. Amazingly enough, our leadership team is eager for me to share these experiences with other architects. I’m really looking forward to being able to do so.

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• Frustum culling with third person camera

  - by Christian Frantz

  I have a third person camera that contains two matrices: view and projection, and two Vector3's: camPosition and camTarget. I've read up on frustum culling and it makes it seem easy enough for a first person camera, but how would I implement this for a third person camera? I need to take into effect the objects I can see behind me too. How would I implement this into my camera class so it runs at the same time as my update method? public void CameraUpdate(Matrix objectToFollow) { camPosition = objectToFollow.Translation + (objectToFollow.Backward *backward) + (objectToFollow.Up * up); camTarget = objectToFollow.Translation; view = Matrix.CreateLookAt(camPosition, camTarget, Vector3.Up); } Can I just create another method within the class which creates a bounding sphere with a value from my camera and then uses the culling based on that? And if so, which value am I using to create the bounding sphere from? After this is implemented, I'm planning on using occlusion culling for the faces of my objects adjacent to other objects. Will using just one or the other make a difference? Or will both of them be better? I'm trying to keep my framerate as high as possible

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