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• TraceTune supports uploading Zip files

  - by Bill Graziano

  I’ve been using the online version of ClearTrace more and more lately.  When I get to a new client it’s just much easier to upload a trace file rather than install ClearTrace. That means I’ve finally been adding more features to it.  The two latest features are around ease of use. You can now upload a ZIP file that contains a trace file.  Trace files are already somewhat compressed.  Putting it in a ZIP file further compresses it by a factor of 8X or 9X in my testing. That means you can start with a 100MB trace and end up with a 10Mb-12MB ZIP file to upload.  I’m consistently able to get over 150,000 events in a 100MB ZIP file.  That gives me a pretty good look at a system. The second part of this is that files are now processed asynchronously.  After you upload a file you’ll be taken to a processing page that updates every few seconds with the number of rows processed.  It generally takes under a minute to process a 100MB trace file but I *hated* staring at a blank screen. Give TraceTune a try.  It’s getting easier to use every day.

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• How To Figure Out Your PC’s Host Name From the Command Prompt

  - by The Geek

  If you’re doing any work with networking, you probably need to know the name of your computer. Rather than diving into Control Panel, there’s a really simple way to do this from the command prompt. Note: If you haven’t already, be sure to read our complete guide to networking Windows 7 with XP and Vista. To see the hostname… all you have to do is type hostname at the command prompt. Go figure, eh? The same thing works in Linux or OS X, though you can see that most of the time the hostname is part of the prompt anyway. Note: you can also change the hostname by simply typing “hostname <newhostname>”. Of course, the easiest way to see your computer name in Windows is to just hit the Win+Break key combination, which will pop up the System pane from Control Panel.   If you want to change it instead, you can always change your computer name easily through Control Panel. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips MySql: Give Root User Logon Permission From Any HostUse "Command Prompt Here" in Windows VistaKeyboard Ninja: Scrolling the Windows Command Prompt With Only the KeyboardVerify the Integrity of Windows Vista System FilesFind Path of Application Running on Solaris, Ubuntu, Suse or Redhat Linux TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Home Networks – How do they look like & the problems they cause Check Your IMAP Mail Offline In Thunderbird Follow Finder Finds You Twitter Users To Follow Combine MP3 Files Easily QuicklyCode Provides Cheatsheets & Other Programming Stuff Download Free MP3s from Amazon

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• Reformatting and version control

  - by l0b0

  Code formatting matters. Even indentation matters. And consistency is more important than minor improvements. But projects usually don't have a clear, complete, verifiable and enforced style guide from day 1, and major improvements may arrive any day. Maybe you find that SELECT id, name, address FROM persons JOIN addresses ON persons.id = addresses.person_id; could be better written as / is better written than SELECT persons.id, persons.name, addresses.address FROM persons JOIN addresses ON persons.id = addresses.person_id; while working on adding more columns to the query. Maybe this is the most complex of all four queries in your code, or a trivial query among thousands. No matter how difficult the transition, you decide it's worth it. But how do you track code changes across major formatting changes? You could just give up and say "this is the point where we start again", or you could reformat all queries in the entire repository history. If you're using a distributed version control system like Git you can revert to the first commit ever, and reformat your way from there to the current state. But it's a lot of work, and everyone else would have to pause work (or be prepared for the mother of all merges) while it's going on. Is there a better way to change history which gives the best of all results: Same style in all commits Minimal merge work ? To clarify, this is not about best practices when starting the project, but rather what should be done when a large refactoring has been deemed a Good Thing™ but you still want a traceable history? Never rewriting history is great if it's the only way to ensure that your versions always work the same, but what about the developer benefits of a clean rewrite? Especially if you have ways (tests, syntax definitions or an identical binary after compilation) to ensure that the rewritten version works exactly the same way as the original?

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• What is a 'good number' of exceptions to implement for my library?

  - by Fuzz

  I've always wondered how many different exception classes I should implement and throw for various pieces of my software. My particular development is usually C++/C#/Java related, but I believe this is a question for all languages. I want to understand what is a good number of different exceptions to throw, and what the developer community expect of a good library. The trade-offs I see include: More exception classes can allow very fine grain levels of error handling for API users (prone to user configuration or data errors, or files not being found) More exception classes allows error specific information to be embedded in the exception, rather than just a string message or error code More exception classes can mean more code maintenance More exception classes can mean the API is less approachable to users The scenarios I wish to understand exception usage in include: During 'configuration' stage, which might include loading files or setting parameters During an 'operation' type phase where the library might be running tasks and doing some work, perhaps in another thread Other patterns of error reporting without using exceptions, or less exceptions (as a comparison) might include: Less exceptions, but embedding an error code that can be used as a lookup Returning error codes and flags directly from functions (sometimes not possible from threads) Implemented an event or callback system upon error (avoids stack unwinding) As developers, what do you prefer to see? If there are MANY exceptions, do you bother error handling them separately anyway? Do you have a preference for error handling types depending on the stage of operation?

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• Add an entry for Ubuntu on Windows 8 boot loader

  - by John

  I have installed Ubuntu 12.10 by creating free space in Windows 8 and then using that space to create 3 partitions, one for SWAP, one for GRUB (mounting point is /boot) and one for the actual OS. I did this so the Windows 8 boot loader wouldn't be overwritten in case I ever wanted to remove Ubuntu. I can still boot into Ubuntu if I select the boot loader from the BIOS. I want to add Ubuntu to the Windows 8 boot loader and I've been told to use EasyBCD. The issue with that is it doesn't actually direct Windows to the GRUB file, but rather to something like autogrub0.mri. I have found another programme called Visual BCD which will allow me to actually set the bootloader paths and drives. From here, I don't quite know what to do. I believe I have it set to the correct drive but I don't know if I'm directing to the right file. I think it's /boot/grub/x86_64-efi/grub.efi. I don't know if that's the right file, if I need to remove /boot or if the / need to be \ as that's what Windows uses. Sorry for such a lengthy post, please help!

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• Does it make sense to write tests for legacy code when there is no time for a complete refactoring?

  - by is4

  I usually try to follow the advice of the book Working Effectively with Legacy Code. I break dependencies, move parts of the code to @VisibleForTesting public static methods and to new classes to make the code (or at least some part of it) testable. And I write tests to make sure that I don't break anything when I'm modifying or adding new functions. A colleague says that I shouldn't do this. His reasoning: The original code might not work properly in the first place. And writing tests for it makes future fixes and modifications harder since devs have to understand and modify the tests too. If it's GUI code with some logic (~12 lines, 2-3 if/else block, for example), a test isn't worth the trouble since the code is too trivial to begin with. Similar bad patterns could exist in other parts of the codebase, too (which I haven't seen yet, I'm rather new); it will be easier to clean them all up in one big refactoring. Extracting out logic could undermine this future possibility. Should I avoid extracting out testable parts and writing tests if we don't have time for complete refactoring? Is there any disadvantage to this that I should consider?

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• functional requirements - use wording based on verbs?

  - by yas

  Question: Should the functional requirements in a requirements doc use wording based on verbs? Context: School assignment, working in a team, working through the SDLC. The requirements doc has been done and we are now into design. Problem: The requirements doc has an enumerated list of what I'd call features of the app - the functional requirements. In that list are things that I'd think of as "how's" rather than "what's" and now, trying to work on design, I feel like a part of design has been prematurely dictated. I've not done this before! To me, I should be dealing strictly with things that describe "what." Example of current: Pretend that the job is to make an omelet. Listing: crack the egg, break into bowl, scramble, etc.; crosses over the line into the territory of how. Along that track, so does wording like: create, generate, list, calculate, determine, validate, etc. - verbs, basically. Right now, I have a list of requirements that are partially rooted in verbs. My idea of a requirements doc for an omelet would be more like: has two eggs, x ounces of ham, x ounces of bacon, x ounces of montery-jack cheese, x ounces of cilantro, etc. - nothing but what (nouns). I might have, and could have, spoken up before finalizing the requirements doc if I'd had any experience.

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• How to represent a graph with multiple edges allowed between nodes and edges that can selectively disappear

  - by Pops

  I'm trying to figure out what sort of data structure to use for modeling some hypothetical, idealized network usage. In my scenario, a number of users who are hostile to each other are all trying to form networks of computers where all potential connections are known. The computers that one user needs to connect may not be the same as the ones another user needs to connect, though; user 1 might need to connect computers A, B and D while user 2 might need to connect computers B, C and E. Image generated with the help of NCTM Graph Creator I think the core of this is going to be an undirected cyclic graph, with nodes representing computers and edges representing Ethernet cables. However, due to the nature of the scenario, there are a few uncommon features that rule out adjacency lists and adjacency matrices (at least, without non-trivial modifications): edges can become restricted-use; that is, if one user acquires a given network connection, no other user may use that connection in the example, the green user cannot possibly connect to computer A, but the red user has connected B to E despite not having a direct link between them in some cases, a given pair of nodes will be connected by more than one edge in the example, there are two independent cables running from D to E, so the green and blue users were both able to connect those machines directly; however, red can no longer make such a connection if two computers are connected by more than one cable, each user may own no more than one of those cables I'll need to do several operations on this graph, such as: determining whether any particular pair of computers is connected for a given user identifying the optimal path for a given user to connect target computers identifying the highest-latency computer connection for a given user (i.e. longest path without branching) My first thought was to simply create a collection of all of the edges, but that's terrible for searching. The best thing I can think to do now is to modify an adjacency list so that each item in the list contains not only the edge length but also its cost and current owner. Is this a sensible approach? Assuming space is not a concern, would it be reasonable to create multiple copies of the graph (one for each user) rather than a single graph?

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• High Availability

  - by mattjgilbert

  Udi Dahan presented at the UK Connected Systems User Group last night. He discussed High Availability and pointed out that people often think this is purely an infrastructure challenge. However, the implications of system crashes, errors and resulting data loss need to be considered and managed by software developers. In addition a system should remain both highly reliable (backwardly compatible) and available during deployments and upgrades. The argument is that you cannot be considered highly available if your system is always down every time you upgrade. For our recent BizTalk 2009 upgrade we made use of our Business Continuity servers (note the name, rather than calling them Disaster Recovery servers ? ) to ensure our clients could continue to operate while we upgraded the Production BizTalk servers. Then we failed back to the newly built 2009 environment and rebuilt the BC servers. Of course, in the event of an actual disaster there was a window where either one or the other set were not available to take over – however, our Staging machines were already primed to switch to production settings, having been used for testing the upgrade in the first place.   While not perfect (the failover between environments was not automatic and without some minimal outage) planning the upgrade in this way meant BizTalk was online during the rebuild and upgrade project, we didn’t have to rush things to get back on-line and planning meant we were ready to be as available as we could be in the event of an actual disaster.

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• Photos being copied all over the place

  - by plua

  We have a rather popular website with plenty of photos. Our whole business depends on our content - and the photos are important in this. We invest a lot of time, effort, and money into taking these pictures. On our website we have clear copyright notices, we have the website name and logo in the photos, and we have a Photo Licensing page which states the prices of licensing our photos. Despite all this, our photos are copied by personal and commercial websites alike. We really want to do something about this. We do not want them to take out the photos and leave it at that. We want them to pay for the usage, as we clearly state on our website. Now a few questions come to mind: Can we legally force them to pay right away? Or are we obligated to first write a "Cease and Desist" letter? Photos are used on websites throughout the world. Are there any worldwide rules for this? Has anybody experience with doing these things outside of their home country? Should we hire a lawyer in any country? Or could a local lawyer contact oversees companies directly?

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• SteamCMD can't add files to my home directory

  - by Angle O'Saxon

  I'm trying to clean up the administration of some game servers I run on a Ubuntu box, part of which has been finally setting permissions properly so I can run the Steam console tool that controls updates and such. I had been running it as root using sudo, but I changed the permissions so that I can start it as a regular user rather than root. That bit seems to work fine, but now when SteamCMD actually starts, it errors with the following output ./steam.sh: line 24: /home/angleosaxon/.steampid: Permission denied Installing breakpad exception handler for appid(steam)/version(1334262703) SteamUpdater: Error: Couldn't create directory /home/angleosaxon/Steam/package, got error 13 [ 0%] Download complete. [----] Verifying installation... unlinked 0 orphaned pipes [----] !!! Fatal Error: Steam failed to load: *SteamStartEngine(0xbfa7cfa0) failed with error 1: Failed to open logfile /home/angleosaxon/Steam/steam.log Leaving aside the question of why it wants to add this information to my home directory, why is it getting access denied errors? As I understand it, since it's being run by my account, it operates with my permissions, so it should be able to read/write from my home directory, shouldn't it? This is the command I'm using to run it: /opt/steamcmd/steam.sh "+login UserAccount \"This is not my actual password.\"" +force_install_dir $ServerDir "+app_update 215360 validate" +quit

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• Pros and cons of PHP vs C,C++ as language in a programming interview ?

  - by DhruvPathak

  Hi All, Though this is a matter of personal choice and comfort. I would want your views on a situation like this. Programmer A has been working on PHP for some years, and has had prior experience in C.C++ during algorithm courses in university. The current fluency is good is PHP,but C,C++ can also be brushed up. So for interviews with major companies who put lot of emphasis on algorithms and data structures in programming interview e.g. binary trees, linked lists, arrays , strings . What should programmer A do ? Try to implement those things in PHP ( which is generally more suited for web development rather than programming contests/interviews ) or Or brush up the C,C++ skills and keep them as primary tool for tackling interview questions. What are advantages/ disadvantages of each language for an environment like programming contest or an interview ? Why would you recommend,not recommend Programmer A to participate in a contest like google code Jam/ ACM ICPC using PHP instead of C++ ? ( assuming PHP is allowed as a language there)

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• Can I use nofollow for offsite links without it affecting my page rank?

  - by Jack

  What I have is a page with almost all offsite links. Each clicked link is forwarded on to the destination. What I would like the search engines to do is to index the text between the anchor tag and not follow the link itself. <a href="somelink">Index This Text Only</a> I've read several articles and they all seem to contradict themselves as to when to use nofollow. What's been happening over the past 2 months that the site has been live is that both Google and Bing are crawling the site as well as all the links on the site that it has been forwarded to. The search engines are now generating a lot of 404s for images and files that never existed on my site but rather seems to correlate to the site it was forwarded to. The search engines don't seem to honor the 302 header when forwarded. I would like to get a definitive answer on the nofollow tag as it relates to my situation. Can I use nofollow to stop the 404s and if so, will it affect my page ranking negatively?

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• Matrices: Arrays or separate member variables?

  - by bjz

  I'm teaching myself 3D maths and in the process building my own rudimentary engine (of sorts). I was wondering what would be the best way to structure my matrix class. There are a few options: Separate member variables: struct Mat4 { float m11, m12, m13, m14, m21, m22, m23, m24, m31, m32, m33, m34, m41, m42, m43, m44; // methods } A multi-dimensional array: struct Mat4 { float[4][4] m; // methods } An array of vectors struct Mat4 { Vec4[4] m; // methods } I'm guessing there would be positives and negatives to each. From 3D Math Primer for Graphics and Game Development, 2nd Edition p.155: Matrices use 1-based indices, so the first row and column are numbered 1. For example, a12 (read “a one two,” not “a twelve”) is the element in the first row, second column. Notice that this is different from programming languages such as C++ and Java, which use 0-based array indices. A matrix does not have a column 0 or row 0. This difference in indexing can cause some confusion if matrices are stored using an actual array data type. For this reason, it’s common for classes that store small, fixed size matrices of the type used for geometric purposes to give each element its own named member variable, such as float a11, instead of using the language’s native array support with something like float elem[3][3]. So that's one vote for method one. Is this really the accepted way to do things? It seems rather unwieldy if the only benefit would be sticking with the conventional math notation.

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• Best way to protect website application code

  - by Gaz_Edge

  Background I have a web application that I host on my own server. I have clients who use the application as is, but some have asked if they can host the application on their own server. This enables them to have their own URLS rather than mine. The application only forms part of their website so I'm assuming it will not be possible for my server to respond to a direct call to their domain etc To give some examples, i currently have urls like www.mydomain.com/profile, www.mydomain.com/index.php?option=someoption&view=someview&id=1 What my clients' want is www.theirdomian.com/profile, www.theirdomian.com/index.php?option=someoption&view=someview&id=1 etc Question My question is, what is the best way for me to allow them to use their own URLs with my application, without giving them all the backend source code and databases to install on their server? One way I thought would be to create a router.php file that sits on their server. The router then asks my server to output the html. The router modifies all the links etc in the html source and outputs the new html through the clients server. When a link is clicked on the clients site, the router receives the request and modifies the url to get the data from my server etc. Is this an effective way to achieve what I want, or is it way off the mark.

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• How to factorize code in Unreal Kismet (i.e. "Material Function"s for Kismet)

  - by Georges Dupéron

  In the Unreal Development Kit, when using the Material Editor, one can factorize frequently-used groups of nodes by creating a Material Function (content Browser ? right-click ? new matrial function, IIRC). When defining the behaviour of some actor in Kismet, one can easily have a dozen nodes involved. If I have many actors that share the same behaviour, then I'll copy-paste these nodes, and change the variables so they point to the other actors. This leads to inconsistencies (a modification in the behaviour of an actor isn't propagated in the copy-pasted nodes), complexity (you end up with hundreds of nodes), and generally useless effort. My question is : Can I create a "kismet function", just like a material function ? Note: I'd rather avoid using UnrealScript. I don't even know where to type UnrealScripts, don't know where the documentation is and more generally don't have enough time to invest in learning UnrealScript. This "kismet function" feature must be usable by graphists (with little programming knowledge). If a (simple) script suffices to add this feature in the Kismet editor, so that one can create several "functions" without using UnrealScript, then fine, but I don't really want to have to write a script each time I want to factorize a few nodes. Thanks for any information !

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• Can't change folder background

  - by newcomer

  I tried to change via dragging from the Backgrounds and Emblems window, but the icon just goes back to that window rather than changing the folder background.However, I can change the task bar by this drag-n-drop. Probably it is something about changing ownership permission? if so how to change that? In /home/mashruf/.gconf/apps/nautilus/preferences/%gconf.xml file it says:, Should I change this file? how? <?xml version="1.0"?> <gconf> <entry name="click_policy" mtime="1297597800" type="string"> <stringvalue>single</stringvalue> </entry> <entry name="default_folder_viewer" mtime="1297597336" type="string"> <stringvalue>list_view</stringvalue> </entry> <entry name="media_autorun_x_content_open_folder" mtime="1297534321" type="list" ltype="string"> </entry> <entry name="media_autorun_x_content_ignore" mtime="1297534321" type="list" ltype="string"> </entry> <entry name="media_autorun_x_content_start_app" mtime="1297534321" type="list" ltype="string"> <li type="string"> <stringvalue>x-content/software</stringvalue> </li> </entry> <entry name="start_with_location_bar" mtime="1297300028" type="bool" value="true"/> <entry name="side_pane_view" mtime="1297269334" type="string"> <stringvalue>NautilusTreeSidebar</stringvalue> </entry> <entry name="navigation_window_saved_maximized" mtime="1297600306" type="bool" value="false"/> <entry name="navigation_window_saved_geometry" mtime="1297600306" type="string"> <stringvalue>964x608+59+2</stringvalue> </entry> <entry name="sidebar_width" mtime="1297390418" type="int" value="192"/> </gconf>

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• Complex shading using one single (small) texture

  - by teodron

  Recently I stumbled upon a demo reel in UDK about how one can attain beautiful results using just one (rather tiny) texture that's being sent to the shader pipeline. The famous link is this one. Basically, the author states that they've used just one texture and give a snapshot of the technique here. I see that every RGBA channel contains different grayscale information.. and that info could be used to inside a shader to obtain a colour blended output. The problem is that the reel displays a fairly complex scene. To top that, the author even makes use of a normal map. How did they manage to fit a normal map in an already cluttered texture? It makes sense to have a half-space normal map by using only RG from an RGB texture, but what about the rest of the information? Since it was proven to be possible, could someone please explain how it was done (the big picture, not the dirty details!)!? Here's the texture being used. Click to see in full size.

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• a flexible data structure for geometries

  - by AkiRoss

  What data structure would you use to represent meshes that are to be altered (e.g. adding or removing new faces, vertices and edges), and that have to be "studied" in different ways (e.g. finding all the triangles intersecting a certain ray, or finding all the triangles "visible" from a given point in the space)? I need to consider multiple aspects of the mesh: their geometry, their topology and spatial information. The meshes are rather big, say 500k triangles, so I am going to use the GPU when computations are heavy. I tried using arrays with vertices and arrays with indices, but I do not love adding and removing vertices from them. Also, using arrays totally ignore spatial and topological information, which I may need studying the mesh. So, I thought about using custom double-linked list data structures, but I believe doing so will require me to copy the data to array buffers before going on the GPU. I also thought about using BST, but not sure it fits. Any help is appreciated. If I have been too fuzzy and you require other information feel free to ask.

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• Using a CDN for CMS software (multiple sites)

  - by SmokeyPHP

  I'm currently researching ideas for the media management side of a CMS I'm writing. I was looking at having images served from a CDN which is fine on a single site, but I want all sites that run the CMS to make use of a CDN (which will most likely be a custom developed one, rather than a third party service like S3). My main question is: Is a multi-site CDN a good idea? I can't think of a downside, but have probably missed something - obviously they won't share the same folder, as I invisage the requests to be css.cdnsite.com/example.com/style.css or something along those lines. Having multiple sites in the same place will obviously make it easier for us to manage, as well as being cheaper, but then I wonder if it'll be worth it... Long story short: How should the CMS handle user uploaded media (separate installations) Just keep a local copy of all assets and serve them from the same site, like in days of yore? Keep a local copy, force site to use www. and have CDN subdomains per site? Or use a single separate CDN for all sites? Apologies for the length of this question, not sure if this should be multiple questions or not, as all parts are kind of related and could affect each other.

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• Is it appropriate to run a complex enterprise-system configuration and migration project in a similar way to a Scrum development project?

  - by AndyM

  I'm just starting out on the implementation of a large enterprise-wide system, which has complex requirements and many stakeholders. The company has been through high-level evaluation and tender process and determined to purchase a highly configurable "off-the-shelf" product rather than building an entirely bespoke system. The system will replace several existing systems and will require a significant amount of data migration. I'm thinking that the implementation of this system (which is expected to take over 2 years) could be run in a similar way to a Scrum software development project. With the first sprints targeted at building the minimal possible functionality needed (across all functional areas), and then iteratively deepening the level of functionality according the stakeholder feedback. I think this will de-risk the project and help ensure a balance of stakeholder needs within the available time. The user stories are still the same, it's just that to implement them we have work within the constraints of the pre-purchased system. When it comes to 'building stuff', instead of writing custom code the team will be configuring the off-the-shelf package, writing data conversion scripts and the like (and it should be a lot quicker!). Does this sound like a sensible approach? Does the Agile approach makes sense here?

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• Best practices in versioning

  - by Gerenuk

  I develop some scripts for data analysis in a small team. For the moment we use SVN, but not in a very structured way. We haven't even looked how to use branches even though we need this functionality. What do you suggest as the best practice to setup the following system: two code bases (core and plugins) versions can be incompatible to previous scripts sometimes individual features are being developed and not yet finished, while other fixes have to be done urgently to the code In the end we don't deliver the code as a package, but rather place the Python scripts in some directory (with version names?). Some other python script which serves as a configuration choses the desired version, sets the path to these libraries and then starts to import the modules. I saw stable releases to be named "trunk" so I did the same. However, no version numbers yet. Core and plugins are different repositories, however we have to match versions for compatibility. Can you suggest some best practices or reference to ease development and reduce chaos? :) Some suggested GIT. I haven't heard about it, but I'm free to change.

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• How to Create a Grid for a 2D Game?

  - by SoulBeaver

  So I'm currently writing the engine for my videogame. I've almost integrated Tiled (I think) so I should have a map-creator here soon. My question is, how do I actually make the grid? I'm really confused here. If I create a large map with, say, 20x20 grids the size of 32x32 (screen size 640x640), then what do I do with it? Let's say I have the code for creating a window, and then place a player sprite that I can move with input, that's fine. If I use one map that's as big as the screen, then every pixel on the map is also a pixel on the game screen. The mapping is exact. Now what happens if I have a 2000x2000 map, for example? My character would have to keep moving and move the map around (or rather the camera focused on the player moves). Then I can no longer say that the screen maps exactly to the pixel position of the map. I tried making a Grid class that maps out the screen area to 32x32 tiles, but I'm not sure if that makes any sense. Once the map moves each tile would have to update its information, or something. I'm just really confused here. How do I actually make the tiles and a grid and map them to the data I get from tiled, or that I make myself? Are there any good examples of source code that I could look at?

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• Using a random string to authenticate HMAC?

  - by mrwooster

  I am designing a simple webservice and want to use HMAC for authentication to the service. For the purpose of this question we have: a web service at example.com a secret key shared between a user and the server [K] a consumer ID which is known to the user and the server (but is not necessarily secret) [D] a message which we wish to send to the server [M] The standard HMAC implementation would involve using the secret key [K] and the message [M] to create the hash [H], but I am running into issues with this. The message [M] can be quite long and tends to be read from a file. I have found its very difficult to produce a correct hash consistently across multiple operating systems and programming languages because of hidden characters which make it into various file formats. This is of course bad implementation on the client side (100%), but I would like this webservice to be easily accessible and not have trouble with different file formats. I was thinking of an alternative, which would allow the use a short (5-10 char) random string [R] rather than the message for autentication, e.g. H = HMAC(K,R) The user then passes the random string to the server and the server checks the HMAC server side (using random string + shared secret). As far as I can see, this produces the following issues: There is no message integrity - this is ok message integrity is not important for this service A user could re-use the hash with a different message - I can see 2 ways around this Combine the random string with a timestamp so the hash is only valid for a set period of time Only allow each random string to be used once Since the client is in control of the random string, it is easier to look for collisions I should point out that the principle reason for authentication is to implement rate limiting on the API service. There is zero need for message integrity, and its not a big deal if someone can forge a single request (but it is if they can forge a very large number very quickly). I know that the correct answer is to make sure the message [M] is the same on all platforms/languages before hashing it. But, taking that out of the equation, is the above proposal an acceptable 2nd best?

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• I don't program in my spare time. Does that make me a bad developer?

  - by not-my-real-name

  A lot of blogs and advice on the web seem to suggest that in order to become a great developer, doing just your day job is not enough. For example, you should contribute to open source projects in your spare time, write smartphone apps, etc. In fact a lot of this advice seems to suggest that if you don't love programming enough to do it all day long then you're probably in the wrong career. That doesn't ring true with me. I enjoy my work, but when I come home from the office I'm not in the mood to jump straight back onto the computer and start coding away until bedtime. I only have a certain number of hours free time each day, and I'd rather spend them on other hobbies, seeing friends or going outside than in front of the computer. I do get a kick out of programming, and do hack around outside of work occasionally. I'm committed to my personal development and spend time reading tech blogs and books as a way to keep learning and becoming better. But that doesn't extend so far as to my wanting to use all my spare time for coding. Does this mean I'm not a 'true' software developer at heart? Is it possible to become a good software developer without doing extra outside your job? I'd be very interested to hear what you think.

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