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  • ASSIMP in my program is much slower to import than ASSIMP view program

    - by Marco
    The problem is really simple: if I try to load with the function aiImportFileExWithProperties a big model in my software (around 200.000 vertices), it takes more than one minute. If I try to load the very same model with ASSIMP view, it takes 2 seconds. For this comparison, both my software and Assimp view are using the dll version of the library at 64 bit, compiled by myself (Assimp64.dll). This is the relevant piece of code in my software // default pp steps unsigned int ppsteps = aiProcess_CalcTangentSpace | // calculate tangents and bitangents if possible aiProcess_JoinIdenticalVertices | // join identical vertices/ optimize indexing aiProcess_ValidateDataStructure | // perform a full validation of the loader's output aiProcess_ImproveCacheLocality | // improve the cache locality of the output vertices aiProcess_RemoveRedundantMaterials | // remove redundant materials aiProcess_FindDegenerates | // remove degenerated polygons from the import aiProcess_FindInvalidData | // detect invalid model data, such as invalid normal vectors aiProcess_GenUVCoords | // convert spherical, cylindrical, box and planar mapping to proper UVs aiProcess_TransformUVCoords | // preprocess UV transformations (scaling, translation ...) aiProcess_FindInstances | // search for instanced meshes and remove them by references to one master aiProcess_LimitBoneWeights | // limit bone weights to 4 per vertex aiProcess_OptimizeMeshes | // join small meshes, if possible; aiProcess_SplitByBoneCount | // split meshes with too many bones. Necessary for our (limited) hardware skinning shader 0; cout << "Loading " << pFile << "... "; aiPropertyStore* props = aiCreatePropertyStore(); aiSetImportPropertyInteger(props,AI_CONFIG_IMPORT_TER_MAKE_UVS,1); aiSetImportPropertyFloat(props,AI_CONFIG_PP_GSN_MAX_SMOOTHING_ANGLE,80.f); aiSetImportPropertyInteger(props,AI_CONFIG_PP_SBP_REMOVE, aiPrimitiveType_LINE | aiPrimitiveType_POINT); aiSetImportPropertyInteger(props,AI_CONFIG_GLOB_MEASURE_TIME,1); //aiSetImportPropertyInteger(props,AI_CONFIG_PP_PTV_KEEP_HIERARCHY,1); // Call ASSIMPs C-API to load the file scene = (aiScene*)aiImportFileExWithProperties(pFile.c_str(), ppsteps | /* default pp steps */ aiProcess_GenSmoothNormals | // generate smooth normal vectors if not existing aiProcess_SplitLargeMeshes | // split large, unrenderable meshes into submeshes aiProcess_Triangulate | // triangulate polygons with more than 3 edges //aiProcess_ConvertToLeftHanded | // convert everything to D3D left handed space aiProcess_SortByPType | // make 'clean' meshes which consist of a single typ of primitives 0, NULL, props); aiReleasePropertyStore(props); if(!scene){ cout << aiGetErrorString() << endl; return 0; } this is the relevant piece of code in assimp view code // default pp steps unsigned int ppsteps = aiProcess_CalcTangentSpace | // calculate tangents and bitangents if possible aiProcess_JoinIdenticalVertices | // join identical vertices/ optimize indexing aiProcess_ValidateDataStructure | // perform a full validation of the loader's output aiProcess_ImproveCacheLocality | // improve the cache locality of the output vertices aiProcess_RemoveRedundantMaterials | // remove redundant materials aiProcess_FindDegenerates | // remove degenerated polygons from the import aiProcess_FindInvalidData | // detect invalid model data, such as invalid normal vectors aiProcess_GenUVCoords | // convert spherical, cylindrical, box and planar mapping to proper UVs aiProcess_TransformUVCoords | // preprocess UV transformations (scaling, translation ...) aiProcess_FindInstances | // search for instanced meshes and remove them by references to one master aiProcess_LimitBoneWeights | // limit bone weights to 4 per vertex aiProcess_OptimizeMeshes | // join small meshes, if possible; aiProcess_SplitByBoneCount | // split meshes with too many bones. Necessary for our (limited) hardware skinning shader 0; aiPropertyStore* props = aiCreatePropertyStore(); aiSetImportPropertyInteger(props,AI_CONFIG_IMPORT_TER_MAKE_UVS,1); aiSetImportPropertyFloat(props,AI_CONFIG_PP_GSN_MAX_SMOOTHING_ANGLE,g_smoothAngle); aiSetImportPropertyInteger(props,AI_CONFIG_PP_SBP_REMOVE,nopointslines ? aiPrimitiveType_LINE | aiPrimitiveType_POINT : 0 ); aiSetImportPropertyInteger(props,AI_CONFIG_GLOB_MEASURE_TIME,1); //aiSetImportPropertyInteger(props,AI_CONFIG_PP_PTV_KEEP_HIERARCHY,1); // Call ASSIMPs C-API to load the file g_pcAsset->pcScene = (aiScene*)aiImportFileExWithProperties(g_szFileName, ppsteps | /* configurable pp steps */ aiProcess_GenSmoothNormals | // generate smooth normal vectors if not existing aiProcess_SplitLargeMeshes | // split large, unrenderable meshes into submeshes aiProcess_Triangulate | // triangulate polygons with more than 3 edges aiProcess_ConvertToLeftHanded | // convert everything to D3D left handed space aiProcess_SortByPType | // make 'clean' meshes which consist of a single typ of primitives 0, NULL, props); aiReleasePropertyStore(props); As you can see the code is nearly identical because I copied from assimp view. What could be the reason for such a difference in performance? The two software are using the same dll Assimp64.dll (compiled in my computer with vc++ 2010 express) and the same function aiImportFileExWithProperties to load the model, so I assume that the actual code employed is the same. How is it possible that the function aiImportFileExWithProperties is 100 times slower when called by my sotware than when called by assimp view? What am I missing? I am not good with dll, dynamic and static libraries so I might be missing something obvious. ------------------------------ UPDATE I found out the reason why the code is going slower. Basically I was running my software with "Start debugging" in VC++ 2010 Express. If I run the code outside VC++ 2010 I get same performance of assimp view. However now I have a new question. Why does the dll perform slower in VC++ debugging? I compiled it in release mode without debugging information. Is there any way to have the dll go fast in debugmode i.e. not debugging the dll? Because I am interested in debugging only my own code, not the dll that I assume is already working fine. I do not want to wait 2 minutes every time I want to load my software to debug. Does this request make sense?

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  • How To Disable Accelerators In Internet Explorer 8/9

    - by Gopinath
    Internet Explorer 8 introduced Accelerators features that popups blue icon when we select a piece of text in Internet Explorer. If you are annoyed with this blue icon or Accelerators feature in IE 8/ IE 9 you can disable it easily. Follow these steps 1. Launch Internet Explorer 2. Click Tools -> Internet Options -> Advanced 3. Uncheck the box for Display Accelerator button on selection, under Browsing category. 4. Click Apply and OK. 5. Restart Internet Explorer to apply the changes. That’s all. From now onwards Internet Explorer does not display Accelerators Icon when you select text in the browser. This article titled,How To Disable Accelerators In Internet Explorer 8/9, was originally published at Tech Dreams. Grab our rss feed or fan us on Facebook to get updates from us.

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  • How can I make a rectangle to an irregular shape?

    - by Anil gupta
    I used masking for breaking an image into the below pattern. Now that it's broken into different pieces I need to make a rectangle of each piece. I need to drag the broken pieces and adjust to the correct position so I can reconstruct the image. To drag and put at the right position I need to make the pieces rectangles but I am not getting the idea of how to make rectangles out of these irregular shapes. How can I make rectangles for manipulating these pieces? This is a follow up to my previous question.

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  • Towards Database Continuous Delivery – What Next after Continuous Integration? A Checklist

    - by Ben Rees
    .dbd-banner p{ font-size:0.75em; padding:0 0 10px; margin:0 } .dbd-banner p span{ color:#675C6D; } .dbd-banner p:last-child{ padding:0; } @media ALL and (max-width:640px){ .dbd-banner{ background:#f0f0f0; padding:5px; color:#333; margin-top: 5px; } } -- Database delivery patterns & practices STAGE 4 AUTOMATED DEPLOYMENT If you’ve been fortunate enough to get to the stage where you’ve implemented some sort of continuous integration process for your database updates, then hopefully you’re seeing the benefits of that investment – constant feedback on changes your devs are making, advanced warning of data loss (prior to the production release on Saturday night!), a nice suite of automated tests to check business logic, so you know it’s going to work when it goes live, and so on. But what next? What can you do to improve your delivery process further, moving towards a full continuous delivery process for your database? In this article I describe some of the issues you might need to tackle on the next stage of this journey, and how to plan to overcome those obstacles before they appear. Our Database Delivery Learning Program consists of four stages, really three – source controlling a database, running continuous integration processes, then how to set up automated deployment (the middle stage is split in two – basic and advanced continuous integration, making four stages in total). If you’ve managed to work through the first three of these stages – source control, basic, then advanced CI, then you should have a solid change management process set up where, every time one of your team checks in a change to your database (whether schema or static reference data), this change gets fully tested automatically by your CI server. But this is only part of the story. Great, we know that our updates work, that the upgrade process works, that the upgrade isn’t going to wipe our 4Tb of production data with a single DROP TABLE. But – how do you get this (fully tested) release live? Continuous delivery means being always ready to release your software at any point in time. There’s a significant gap between your latest version being tested, and it being easily releasable. Just a quick note on terminology – there’s a nice piece here from Atlassian on the difference between continuous integration, continuous delivery and continuous deployment. This piece also gives a nice description of the benefits of continuous delivery. These benefits have been summed up by Jez Humble at Thoughtworks as: “Continuous delivery is a set of principles and practices to reduce the cost, time, and risk of delivering incremental changes to users” There’s another really useful piece here on Simple-Talk about the need for continuous delivery and how it applies to the database written by Phil Factor – specifically the extra needs and complexities of implementing a full CD solution for the database (compared to just implementing CD for, say, a web app). So, hopefully you’re convinced of moving on the the next stage! The next step after CI is to get some sort of automated deployment (or “release management”) process set up. But what should I do next? What do I need to plan and think about for getting my automated database deployment process set up? Can’t I just install one of the many release management tools available and hey presto, I’m ready! If only it were that simple. Below I list some of the areas that it’s worth spending a little time on, where a little planning and prep could go a long way. It’s also worth pointing out, that this should really be an evolving process. Depending on your starting point of course, it can be a long journey from your current setup to a full continuous delivery pipeline. If you’ve got a CI mechanism in place, you’re certainly a long way down that path. Nevertheless, we’d recommend evolving your process incrementally. Pages 157 and 129-141 of the book on Continuous Delivery (by Jez Humble and Dave Farley) have some great guidance on building up a pipeline incrementally: http://www.amazon.com/Continuous-Delivery-Deployment-Automation-Addison-Wesley/dp/0321601912 For now, in this post, we’ll look at the following areas for your checklist: You and Your Team Environments The Deployment Process Rollback and Recovery Development Practices You and Your Team It’s a cliché in the DevOps community that “It’s not all about processes and tools, really it’s all about a culture”. As stated in this DevOps report from Puppet Labs: “DevOps processes and tooling contribute to high performance, but these practices alone aren’t enough to achieve organizational success. The most common barriers to DevOps adoption are cultural: lack of manager or team buy-in, or the value of DevOps isn’t understood outside of a specific group”. Like most clichés, there’s truth in there – if you want to set up a database continuous delivery process, you need to get your boss, your department, your company (if relevant) onside. Why? Because it’s an investment with the benefits coming way down the line. But the benefits are huge – for HP, in the book A Practical Approach to Large-Scale Agile Development: How HP Transformed LaserJet FutureSmart Firmware, these are summarized as: -2008 to present: overall development costs reduced by 40% -Number of programs under development increased by 140% -Development costs per program down 78% -Firmware resources now driving innovation increased by a factor of 8 (from 5% working on new features to 40% But what does this mean? It means that, when moving to the next stage, to make that extra investment in automating your deployment process, it helps a lot if everyone is convinced that this is a good thing. That they understand the benefits of automated deployment and are willing to make the effort to transform to a new way of working. Incidentally, if you’re ever struggling to convince someone of the value I’d strongly recommend just buying them a copy of this book – a great read, and a very practical guide to how it can really work at a large org. I’ve spoken to many customers who have implemented database CI who describe their deployment process as “The point where automation breaks down. Up to that point, the CI process runs, untouched by human hand, but as soon as that’s finished we revert to manual.” This deployment process can involve, for example, a DBA manually comparing an environment (say, QA) to production, creating the upgrade scripts, reading through them, checking them against an Excel document emailed to him/her the night before, turning to page 29 in his/her notebook to double-check how replication is switched off and on for deployments, and so on and so on. Painful, error-prone and lengthy. But the point is, if this is something like your deployment process, telling your DBA “We’re changing everything you do and your toolset next week, to automate most of your role – that’s okay isn’t it?” isn’t likely to go down well. There’s some work here to bring him/her onside – to explain what you’re doing, why there will still be control of the deployment process and so on. Or of course, if you’re the DBA looking after this process, you have to do a similar job in reverse. You may have researched and worked out how you’d like to change your methodology to start automating your painful release process, but do the dev team know this? What if they have to start producing different artifacts for you? Will they be happy with this? Worth talking to them, to find out. As well as talking to your DBA/dev team, the other group to get involved before implementation is your manager. And possibly your manager’s manager too. As mentioned, unless there’s buy-in “from the top”, you’re going to hit problems when the implementation starts to get rocky (and what tool/process implementations don’t get rocky?!). You need to have support from someone senior in your organisation – someone you can turn to when you need help with a delayed implementation, lack of resources or lack of progress. Actions: Get your DBA involved (or whoever looks after live deployments) and discuss what you’re planning to do or, if you’re the DBA yourself, get the dev team up-to-speed with your plans, Get your boss involved too and make sure he/she is bought in to the investment. Environments Where are you going to deploy to? And really this question is – what environments do you want set up for your deployment pipeline? Assume everyone has “Production”, but do you have a QA environment? Dedicated development environments for each dev? Proper pre-production? I’ve seen every setup under the sun, and there is often a big difference between “What we want, to do continuous delivery properly” and “What we’re currently stuck with”. Some of these differences are: What we want What we’ve got Each developer with their own dedicated database environment A single shared “development” environment, used by everyone at once An Integration box used to test the integration of all check-ins via the CI process, along with a full suite of unit-tests running on that machine In fact if you have a CI process running, you’re likely to have some sort of integration server running (even if you don’t call it that!). Whether you have a full suite of unit tests running is a different question… Separate QA environment used explicitly for manual testing prior to release “We just test on the dev environments, or maybe pre-production” A proper pre-production (or “staging”) box that matches production as closely as possible Hopefully a pre-production box of some sort. But does it match production closely!? A production environment reproducible from source control A production box which has drifted significantly from anything in source control The big question is – how much time and effort are you going to invest in fixing these issues? In reality this just involves figuring out which new databases you’re going to create and where they’ll be hosted – VMs? Cloud-based? What about size/data issues – what data are you going to include on dev environments? Does it need to be masked to protect access to production data? And often the amount of work here really depends on whether you’re working on a new, greenfield project, or trying to update an existing, brownfield application. There’s a world if difference between starting from scratch with 4 or 5 clean environments (reproducible from source control of course!), and trying to re-purpose and tweak a set of existing databases, with all of their surrounding processes and quirks. But for a proper release management process, ideally you have: Dedicated development databases, An Integration server used for testing continuous integration and running unit tests. [NB: This is the point at which deployments are automatic, without human intervention. Each deployment after this point is a one-click (but human) action], QA – QA engineers use a one-click deployment process to automatically* deploy chosen releases to QA for testing, Pre-production. The environment you use to test the production release process, Production. * A note on the use of the word “automatic” – when carrying out automated deployments this does not mean that the deployment is happening without human intervention (i.e. that something is just deploying over and over again). It means that the process of carrying out the deployment is automatic in that it’s not a person manually running through a checklist or set of actions. The deployment still requires a single-click from a user. Actions: Get your environments set up and ready, Set access permissions appropriately, Make sure everyone understands what the environments will be used for (it’s not a “free-for-all” with all environments to be accessed, played with and changed by development). The Deployment Process As described earlier, most existing database deployment processes are pretty manual. The following is a description of a process we hear very often when we ask customers “How do your database changes get live? How does your manual process work?” Check pre-production matches production (use a schema compare tool, like SQL Compare). Sometimes done by taking a backup from production and restoring in to pre-prod, Again, use a schema compare tool to find the differences between the latest version of the database ready to go live (i.e. what the team have been developing). This generates a script, User (generally, the DBA), reviews the script. This often involves manually checking updates against a spreadsheet or similar, Run the script on pre-production, and check there are no errors (i.e. it upgrades pre-production to what you hoped), If all working, run the script on production.* * this assumes there’s no problem with production drifting away from pre-production in the interim time period (i.e. someone has hacked something in to the production box without going through the proper change management process). This difference could undermine the validity of your pre-production deployment test. Red Gate is currently working on a free tool to detect this problem – sign up here at www.sqllighthouse.com, if you’re interested in testing early versions. There are several variations on this process – some better, some much worse! How do you automate this? In particular, step 3 – surely you can’t automate a DBA checking through a script, that everything is in order!? The key point here is to plan what you want in your new deployment process. There are so many options. At one extreme, pure continuous deployment – whenever a dev checks something in to source control, the CI process runs (including extensive and thorough testing!), before the deployment process keys in and automatically deploys that change to the live box. Not for the faint hearted – and really not something we recommend. At the other extreme, you might be more comfortable with a semi-automated process – the pre-production/production matching process is automated (with an error thrown if these environments don’t match), followed by a manual intervention, allowing for script approval by the DBA. One he/she clicks “Okay, I’m happy for that to go live”, the latter stages automatically take the script through to live. And anything in between of course – and other variations. But we’d strongly recommended sitting down with a whiteboard and your team, and spending a couple of hours mapping out “What do we do now?”, “What do we actually want?”, “What will satisfy our needs for continuous delivery, but still maintaining some sort of continuous control over the process?” NB: Most of what we’re discussing here is about production deployments. It’s important to note that you will also need to map out a deployment process for earlier environments (for example QA). However, these are likely to be less onerous, and many customers opt for a much more automated process for these boxes. Actions: Sit down with your team and a whiteboard, and draw out the answers to the questions above for your production deployments – “What do we do now?”, “What do we actually want?”, “What will satisfy our needs for continuous delivery, but still maintaining some sort of continuous control over the process?” Repeat for earlier environments (QA and so on). Rollback and Recovery If only every deployment went according to plan! Unfortunately they don’t – and when things go wrong, you need a rollback or recovery plan for what you’re going to do in that situation. Once you move in to a more automated database deployment process, you’re far more likely to be deploying more frequently than before. No longer once every 6 months, maybe now once per week, or even daily. Hence the need for a quick rollback or recovery process becomes paramount, and should be planned for. NB: These are mainly scenarios for handling rollbacks after the transaction has been committed. If a failure is detected during the transaction, the whole transaction can just be rolled back, no problem. There are various options, which we’ll explore in subsequent articles, things like: Immediately restore from backup, Have a pre-tested rollback script (remembering that really this is a “roll-forward” script – there’s not really such a thing as a rollback script for a database!) Have fallback environments – for example, using a blue-green deployment pattern. Different options have pros and cons – some are easier to set up, some require more investment in infrastructure; and of course some work better than others (the key issue with using backups, is loss of the interim transaction data that has been added between the failed deployment and the restore). The best mechanism will be primarily dependent on how your application works and how much you need a cast-iron failsafe mechanism. Actions: Work out an appropriate rollback strategy based on how your application and business works, your appetite for investment and requirements for a completely failsafe process. Development Practices This is perhaps the more difficult area for people to tackle. The process by which you can deploy database updates is actually intrinsically linked with the patterns and practices used to develop that database and linked application. So you need to decide whether you want to implement some changes to the way your developers actually develop the database (particularly schema changes) to make the deployment process easier. A good example is the pattern “Branch by abstraction”. Explained nicely here, by Martin Fowler, this is a process that can be used to make significant database changes (e.g. splitting a table) in a step-wise manner so that you can always roll back, without data loss – by making incremental updates to the database backward compatible. Slides 103-108 of the following slidedeck, from Niek Bartholomeus explain the process: https://speakerdeck.com/niekbartho/orchestration-in-meatspace As these slides show, by making a significant schema change in multiple steps – where each step can be rolled back without any loss of new data – this affords the release team the opportunity to have zero-downtime deployments with considerably less stress (because if an increment goes wrong, they can roll back easily). There are plenty more great patterns that can be implemented – the book Refactoring Databases, by Scott Ambler and Pramod Sadalage is a great read, if this is a direction you want to go in: http://www.amazon.com/Refactoring-Databases-Evolutionary-paperback-Addison-Wesley/dp/0321774515 But the question is – how much of this investment are you willing to make? How often are you making significant schema changes that would require these best practices? Again, there’s a difference here between migrating old projects and starting afresh – with the latter it’s much easier to instigate best practice from the start. Actions: For your business, work out how far down the path you want to go, amending your database development patterns to “best practice”. It’s a trade-off between implementing quality processes, and the necessity to do so (depending on how often you make complex changes). Socialise these changes with your development group. No-one likes having “best practice” changes imposed on them, so good to introduce these ideas and the rationale behind them early.   Summary The next stages of implementing a continuous delivery pipeline for your database changes (once you have CI up and running) require a little pre-planning, if you want to get the most out of the work, and for the implementation to go smoothly. We’ve covered some of the checklist of areas to consider – mainly in the areas of “Getting the team ready for the changes that are coming” and “Planning our your pipeline, environments, patterns and practices for development”, though there will be more detail, depending on where you’re coming from – and where you want to get to. This article is part of our database delivery patterns & practices series on Simple Talk. Find more articles for version control, automated testing, continuous integration & deployment.

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  • How to Automatically Clean Your Linux PC with Cruftbuster

    - by Zainul Franciscus
    Do you have folders filled with myriad of files that need a serious spring cleaning ? If you do, we have Cruftbuster, an automated self-cleaning tool for Linux, to sort out your messy folders. Well, you can always move these files, or trash them, but why bother doing that if you can have your computer do that automatically for you. This is exactly what Cruftbuster does; It is a freeware for Linux to organize your files. Editor’s Note: this piece of open-source software was created by Zainul Franciscus, a writer here at How-To Geek. Naturally, we need a disclaimer, so if this breaks your PC or deletes the wrong files, don’t blame us. Backup your data!What is a Histogram, and How Can I Use it to Improve My Photos?How To Easily Access Your Home Network From Anywhere With DDNSHow To Recover After Your Email Password Is Compromised

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  • RenderTarget2D behavior in XNA

    - by Utkarsh Sinha
    I've been dabbling with XNA for a couple of days now. This chunk of code doesn't work as I expect. The goal is to render sprites individually and composite them on another rendertarget. P = RenderTarget2D(with RenderTargetUsage.PreserveContents) D = RenderTarget2D(with RenderTargetUsage.DiscardContents) for all sprites: graphicsDevice.SetRenderTarget(D); <draw sprite i> graphicsDevice.SetRenderTarget(P); <Draw D> graphicsDevice.SetRenderTarget(null); <Draw P> The result I get is - only the last sprite is visible. I'm sure I'm missing some piece of information about RenderTarget2D. Any hints on what that might be? Cross posted from - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9970349/weird-rendertarget2d-behaviour

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  • Humour : un artiste transforme un bogue Windows en oeuvre, l'erreur est-elle un art ?

    Humour : un artiste transforme un bogue Windows en oeuvre, l'erreur est-elle un art ? Paul Destieu, artiste contemporain, a des réactions originales. Lorsque son ordinateur plante, au lieu de le jeter par la fenêtre ou de lui vociférer dessus tout en le frappant avec son clavier ; naît en lieu une onde créatrice. Transformer un bug de Windows en oeuvre d'art, encore fallait-il y penser. Son tableau morderne, My Favourite Landscape, est en fait "une installation réalisée à partir de 500 affiches offset de 70 x 50 cm. La pièce propose une réappropriation du célèbre fond d'écran Windows XP : Colline Verdoyante et s'empare des faiblesses de la machine informatique pour reproduire de manière analogique le beug de c...

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  • Toyota's Supply Chain "ran too hot"

    - by [email protected]
    The Feb 28th '10 edition of the Economist had a very informative artical (pg.74) on Toyota's over-stretched supply chain pointing out that they were ' the author of most of its own misfortunes".  James Womack is quoted in the piece on Toyota's rapid expansion 'meant working with a lot of unfamiliar suppliers who didn't have a deep understandin of Toyota's culture.  The majority of the problems almost certainly originated not in the Toyota factories but in those of the supppliers'. One purchasing executive said that it started in mid-2008, when the weaker parts of the supply chain were put under great strain. There is a need for visibility but not always there. Firms need transparancy and speed of communications to make sure defective parts and errors dont reach the customer. It concludes with guidance to manufacturers: "It may be safer not to have all your eggs in one basket, but to have maybe 3 suppliers for major components who can benchmark each other' - Toyota was the peerless exemplar, now seen as an awful warning

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  • Dangerous programming

    - by benhowdle89
    Ok, i'm talking pure software/web, i'm not on about code to power Life Support machines or NASA rockets. In terms of software/web development what is the most dangerous single piece of code someone could put into a program (say if they had a grudge against a client/employee) In PHP, the first thing that comes to mind is some sort of file deletion: function EmptyDir($dir) { $handle=opendir($dir); while (($file = readdir($handle))!==false) { echo "$file <br>"; @unlink($dir.'/'.$file); } closedir($handle); } EmptyDir('images'); Or a PHP script that takes a user's sensitive input and posts it to Google sitemap or something? I hope this doesnt get closed off as subjective as there surely must be a ranking order of dangerous code. So i'm asking for the No.1 spot :) DISCLAIMER: I have no grudges against anyone, just curious for the answer!

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  • OS Analytics Post and Discussion

    - by Owen Allen
    Eran Steiner has written an interesting piece over on the Enterprise Manager blog about the OS Analytics feature of Ops Center. OS Analytics gives you a huge amount of information about the characteristics of managed operating systems and lets you track changes to these characteristics over time. Take a look; it's a useful feature. The OS Analytics feature is also the subject of the community call this week (Eran is leading that one too). It's at 11 am EST. To join the conference: Go to https://oracleconferencing.webex.com/oracleconferencing/j.php?ED=209833067&UID=1512092402&PW=NY2JhMmFjMmFh&RT=MiMxMQ%3D%3D If requested, enter your name and email address. If a password is required, enter the meeting password: oracle123 Click Join. To dial into the conference, dial 1-866-682-4770 (US/Canada) or go here for the numbers in other countries. The conference code is 7629343# and the security code is 7777#.

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  • Derive a algorithm to match best position

    - by Farooq Arshed
    I have pieces in my game which have stats and cost assigned to them and they can only be placed at a certain location. Lets say I have 50 pieces. e.g. Piece1 = 100 stats, 10 cost, Position A. Piece2 = 120 stats, 5 cost, Position B. Piece3 = 500 stats, 50 cost, Position C. Piece4 = 200 stats, 25 cost, Position A. and so on.. I have a board on which 12 pieces have to be allocated and have to remain inside the board cost. e.g. A board has A,B,C ... J,K,L positions and X Cost assigned to it. I have to figure out a way to place best possible piece in the correct position and should remain within the cost specified by the board. Any help would be appreciated.

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  • Stand-Up Desk 2012 Update

    - by BuckWoody
    One of the more popular topics here on my technical blog doesn't have to do with technology, per-se - it's about the choice I made to go to a stand-up desk work environment. If you're interested in the history of those, check here: Stand-Up Desk Part One Stand-Up Desk Part Two I have made some changes and I was asked to post those here.Yes, I'm still standing - I think the experiment has worked well, so I'm continuing to work this way. I've become so used to it that I notice when I sit for a long time. If I'm flying, or driving a long way, or have long meetings, I take breaks to stand up and move around. That being said, I don't stand as much as I did. I started out by standing the entire day - which did not end well. As you can read in my second post, I found that sitting down for a few minutes each hour worked out much better. And over time I would say that I now stand about 70-80% of the day, depending on the day. Some days I don't even notice I'm standing, so I don't sit as often. Other days I find that I really tire quickly - so I sit more often. But in both cases, I stand more than I sit. In the first post you can read about how I used a simple coffee-table from Ikea to elevate my desktop to the right height. I then adjusted the height where I stand by using a small plastic square and some carpet. Over time I found this did not work as well as I'd like. The primary reason is that the front of these are at the same depth - so my knees would hit the desk or table when I sat down. Also, the desk was at a certain height, and I had to adjust, rather than the other way around.  Also, I like a lot of surface area on top of a desk - almost more of a table. Routing cables and wiring was a pain, and of course moving it was out of the question.   So I've changed what I use. I found a perfect solution for what I was looking for - industrial wire shelving: I bought one, built only half of it (for the right height I wanted) and arranged the shelves the way I wanted. I then got a 5'x4' piece of wood from Lowes, and mounted it to where the top was balanced, but had an over-hang  I could get my knees under easily.My wife sewed a piece of fake-leather for the top. This arrangement provides the following benefits: Very strong Rolls easily, wheels can lock to prevent rolling Long, wide shelves Wire-frame allows me to route any kind of wiring and other things all over the desk I plugged in my UPS and ran it's longer power-cable to the wall outlet. I then ran the router's LAN connection along that wire, and covered both with a large insulation sleeve. I then plugged in everything to the UPS, and routed all the wiring. I can now roll the desk almost anywhere in the room so that I can record, look out the window, get closer to or farther away from the door and more. I put a few boxes on the shelves as "drawers" and tidied that part up. Even my printer fits on a shelf. Laser-dog not included - some assembly required In the second post you can read about the bar-stool I purchased from Target for the desk. I cheaped-out on this one, and it proved to be a bad choice. Because I had to raise it so high, and was constantly sitting on it and then standing up, the gas-cylinder in it just gave out. So it became a very short stool that I ended up getting rid of. In the end, this one from Ikea proved to be a better choice: And so this arrangement is working out perfectly. I'm finding myself VERY productive this way. I hope these posts help you if you decide to try working at a stand-up desk. Although I was skeptical at first, I've found it to be a very healthy, easy way to code, design and especially present over a web-cam. It's natural to stand to speak when you're presenting, and it feels more energetic than sitting down to talk to others.

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  • Adobe flash plug-in crashed/needs permission in Chromium

    - by sally
    A couple of days ago I started to get these messages when trying to watch videos on Youtube and a couple of other sites. (Using Chromium browser) Normally starts by just seeing a black screen with Missing Plug-in faintly visible, but will also ask me to give permission to run both at top (yellow bar), and if I tell it to 'allow' it follows up with the white puzzle piece on black background requesting permission. Occasionally I have seen the message telling me the flash-player has crashed, too. Giving permission does not fix the problem. Have also navigated to 'about:plugins' and checked that Adobe flash is enabled and permitted. I have just done a fresh installation of Lubuntu 11.10 as a last resort but problem still not fixed.

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  • Which Java web framework do you recommend for intranet webapp (not content website)?

    - by pregzt
    I'm about to start development of small purpose build intranet web application for small software vendor. It will be administration console of the server managing licenses for off-the-shelf software installed by users. There will be a few users who need to be able to sign in, issue a batch of license codes, revoke some, renew outdated, resolve issues, etc. Bear in mind that my customer requires Java for this solution. I'm seasoned Java programmer and before I used different frameworks to implement webapps, mainly Apache Struts in the past and Spring MVC recently. I was wondering what else could you recommend for such specific intranet webapp. I looked at using Google Web Toolkit (possibly with SmartGWT) Ext JS for fancy widgets in UI and REST back-end in SpringMVC SpringMVC with JQueryUI Could you please think of any piece of recommendation with regard to the choice I'm going to made?

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  • How to learn to draw UML sequence diagrams

    - by PeterT
    How can I learn to draw UML sequence diagrams. Even though I don't use UML much I find that type of diagrams to be quite expressive and want to learn how to draw them. I don't plan to use them to visualise a large chunks of code, hence I would like to avoid using tools, and learn how to draw them with just pen and paper. Muscle memory is good. I guess I would need to learn some basics of notation first, and then just practice it like in "take the piece of code, draw a seq. diagram visualising the code, then generate the diagram using some tool/website, then compare what I'd drawn to what the tool result. Find the differences, correct them, repeat.". Where do I start? Can you recommend a book or a web site or something else?

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  • Unity: Assigning a key to perform an action in the inspector

    - by Marc Pilgaard
    I am trying to write a simple piece of code in JavaScript where a button toggles the activation of a shield, by dragging a prefab with Resources.load("ActivateShieldPreFab") and destroying it again (Haven't implemented that yet). I wish to assign this button through the inspector, so I have created a string variable which appears as intended in the inspector. Though it doesn't seem to register the inspector input, even though I changed the value through the inspector. It only provides the error: "Input Key named: is unknown" When the button name is assigned within the code, there is no issues. Code as follows: var ShieldOn = false; var stringbutton : String; function Start(){ } function Update () { if(Input.GetKey(stringbutton) && ShieldOn != true) { Instantiate(Resources.load("ActivateShieldPreFab"), Vector3 (0, 0, 0), Quaternion.identity); ShieldOn = true; } }

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  • Mobile miscellany; 14 April

    Some updates on a few developing stories in the mobile space. First of all, the Palm acquisition. Right now the chaos is only increasing. Mobile consultant Tomi Ahonen gives an excellent overview of all major mobile players and why they would want to acquire Palm — or not. His bet is on Lenovo, with HTC running second. See also this piece which pinpoints Palm’s distribution model (or rather lack thereof) as a serious problem. The Sprint-exclusivity in the US was a bad idea. Meanwhile, Huawei and...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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  • Integrating Windows Form Click Once Application into SharePoint 2007 &ndash; Part 2 of 4

    - by Kelly Jones
    In my last post, I explained why we decided to use a Click Once application to solve our business problem. To quickly review, we needed a way for our business users to upload documents to a SharePoint 2007 document library in mass, set the meta data, set the permissions per document, and to do so easily. Let’s look at the pieces that make up our solution.  First, we have the Windows Form application.  This app is deployed using Click Once and calls SharePoint web services in order to upload files and then calls web services to set the meta data (SharePoint columns and permissions).  Second, we have a custom action.  The custom action is responsible for providing our users a link that will launch the Windows app, as well as passing values to it via the query string.  And lastly, we have the web services that the Windows Form application calls.  For our solution, we used both out of the box web services and a custom web service in order to set the column values in the document library as well as the permissions on the documents. Now, let’s look at the technical details of each of these pieces.  (All of the code is downloadable from here: )   Windows Form application deployed via Click Once The Windows Form application, called “Custom Upload”, has just a few classes in it: Custom Upload -- the form FileList.xsd -- the dataset used to track the names of the files and their meta data values SharePointUpload -- this class handles uploading the file SharePointUpload uses an HttpWebRequest to transfer the file to the web server. We had to change this code from a WebClient object to the HttpWebRequest object, because we needed to be able to set the time out value.  public bool UploadDocument(string localFilename, string remoteFilename) { bool result = true; //Need to use an HttpWebRequest object instead of a WebClient object // so we can set the timeout (WebClient doesn't allow you to set the timeout!) HttpWebRequest req = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(remoteFilename); try { req.Method = "PUT"; req.Timeout = 60 * 1000; //convert seconds to milliseconds req.AllowWriteStreamBuffering = true; req.Credentials = System.Net.CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials; req.SendChunked = false; req.KeepAlive = true; Stream reqStream = req.GetRequestStream(); FileStream rdr = new FileStream(localFilename, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read); byte[] inData = new byte[4096]; int bytesRead = rdr.Read(inData, 0, inData.Length); while (bytesRead > 0) { reqStream.Write(inData, 0, bytesRead); bytesRead = rdr.Read(inData, 0, inData.Length); } reqStream.Close(); rdr.Close(); System.Net.HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse)req.GetResponse(); if (response.StatusCode != HttpStatusCode.OK && response.StatusCode != HttpStatusCode.Created) { String msg = String.Format("An error occurred while uploading this file: {0}\n\nError response code: {1}", System.IO.Path.GetFileName(localFilename), response.StatusCode.ToString()); LogWarning(msg, "2ACFFCCA-59BA-40c8-A9AB-05FA3331D223"); result = false; } } catch (Exception ex) { LogException(ex, "{E9D62A93-D298-470d-A6BA-19AAB237978A}"); result = false; } return result; } The class also contains the LogException() and LogWarning() methods. When the application is launched, it parses the query string for some initial values.  The query string looks like this: string queryString = "Srv=clickonce&Sec=N&Doc=DMI&SiteName=&Speed=128000&Max=50"; This Srv is the path to the server (my Virtual Machine is name “clickonce”), the Sec is short for security – meaning HTTPS or HTTP, the Doc is the shortcut for which document library to use, and SiteName is the name of the SharePoint site.  Speed is used to calculate an estimate for download speed for each file.  We added this so our users uploading documents would realize how long it might take for clients in remote locations (using slow WAN connections) to download the documents. The last value, Max, is the maximum size that the SharePoint site will allow documents to be.  This allowed us to give users a warning that a file is too large before we even attempt to upload it. Another critical piece is the meta data collection.  We organized our site using SharePoint content types, so when the app loads, it gets a list of the document library’s content types.  The user then select one of the content types from the drop down list, and then we query SharePoint to get a list of the fields that make up that content type.  We used both an out of the box web service, and one that we custom built, in order to get these values. Once we have the content type fields, we then add controls to the form.  Which type of control we add depends on the data type of the field.  (DateTime pickers for date/time fields, etc)  We didn’t write code to cover every data type, since we were working with a limited set of content types and field data types. Here’s a screen shot of the Form, before and after someone has selected the content types and our code has added the custom controls:     The other piece of meta data we collect is the in the upper right corner of the app, “Users with access”.  This box lists the different SharePoint Groups that we have set up and by checking the boxes, the user can set the permissions on the uploaded documents. All of this meta data is collected and submitted to our custom web service, which then sets the values on the documents on the list.  We’ll look at these web services in a future post. In the next post, we’ll walk through the Custom Action we built.

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  • Are programmers tied to their code?

    - by Jason
    Assuming you are working for a company or in a team of developers, is the code bound to the person who did it? When someone develops a particular functionnality or an area of the application, is this person the only one who can, is allowed or is just able to make changes to it? I personnally think that a well-done piece of code or program should be easily modified by any programmers, but what about what you see in your environment? At my work, I'd say that the majority of the code can be modified by anyone (that's what coding standards are for right?). There are some things though that are 'property' of some coworkers like the module that handles the pay or some important functionality of the production module (we are developing an ERP system). What about your work place? Am I the only one living this?

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  • Speaking in St. Louis on June 14th

    - by Bill Graziano
    I’m going back to speak in St. Louis next month.  I didn’t make it last year and I’m looking forward to it.  You can find additional details on the St. Louis SQL Server user group web site.  The meeting will be held at the Microsoft office and I’ll be speaking at 1PM. I’ll be speaking on the procedure cache.  As people get better and better tuning queries this is the next major piece to understand.  We’ll talk about how and when query plans are reused.  The most common issue I see around odd query plans are stored procedures that use one query plan but the queries run completely different when you extract the SQL and hard code the parameters.  That’s just one of the common issues that I’ll address. There will be a second speaker after I’m done, then a short vendor presentation and a drawing for a netbook.

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  • Is it ok to replace optimized code with readable code?

    - by Coder
    Sometimes you run into a situation where you have to extend/improve an existing code. You see that the old code is very lean, but it's also difficult to extend, and takes time to read. Is it a good idea to replace it with modern code? Some time ago I liked the lean approach, but now, it seems to me that it's better to sacrifice a lot of optimizations in favor of higher abstractions, better interfaces and more readable, extendable code. The compilers seem to be getting better as well, so things like struct abc = {} are silently turned into memsets, shared_ptrs are pretty much producing the same code as raw pointer twiddling, templates are working super good because they produce super lean code, and so on. But still, sometimes you see stack based arrays and old C functions with some obscure logic, and usually they are not on the critical path. Is it good idea to change such code if you have to touch a small piece of it either way?

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  • How can i move towards the Business intelliegnce/ data mining fields from software developer

    - by user1758043
    I am working as python developer and i work with djnago. I also do some web scrapping and building spiders and bots. Now from there i want to make my move to Business intelligence. I just want to know how can i move into that field. because as companies are not going to hire me in that field directly , i just want to know how can i make transistions. I was thinking of first work as Database developer in sql and then i can see futher. But i want from you guys so that i can start learning that stuff so that i can chnage jobs keeping that in mind. here in my area there are plent of jobs in all area but i need to know hoe to transitio and what thing i should learn before making that transition. Here JObs are plenty so if i know my stuff , getting job is piece of cake becaus ethey don't ahve any persons. same jobs keep getting advertised for months and months

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  • unseen/unknown function definition in linux source

    - by Broncha
    Can any one please explain this piece of code I found in the linux kernel source. I see a lots of code like this in linux and minix kernel but dont seem to find what it does (even if C compilers support that kind of function definition) /* IRQs are disabled and uidhash_lock is held upon function entry. * IRQ state (as stored in flags) is restored and uidhash_lock released * upon function exit. */ static void free_user(struct user_struct *up, unsigned long flags) __releases(&uidhash_lock) { uid_hash_remove(up); spin_unlock_irqrestore(&uidhash_lock, flags); key_put(up->uid_keyring); key_put(up->session_keyring); kmem_cache_free(uid_cachep, up); } I cannot find out if this reference __releases(&uidhash_lock) before the parenthesis starts is allowed OR supported. (It sure is supported as it is in the linux kernel)

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  • Is there an alternative Skype client?

    - by Joseph
    I love Ubuntu, but one thing I think is a pain is skype for it. It's outdated, buggy and generally just not as smooth as a lot of the other Ubuntu software. Is there an alternative for it? I'm not speaking about another IM like AIM or Live Messenger. Put another piece of software like the native app that comes with Ubuntu, that allows me to sign into Skype as well? Or is there perhaps a plugin for the native Ubuntu chat app that allows Skype contacts, calling etc. etc.

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  • The Batcave in LEGO

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    There seems to be something of an arms race afoot among hardcore LEGO enthusiasts, but given the awesome fruits of their labor we’re not about to attempt an intervention. This amazing diorama, complete with functioning lighting, is a 20,000 piece tribute to the Batcave. Courtesy of builders Wayne Hussey and Carlyle Livingston, we’re treated to a Batcave rendition in LEGO that’s so detailed the close-up shots feel like you can step right into them. Hit up the link below to check out more detailed photos and videos of the build. LEGO Batcave [via Make] HTG Explains: What is the Windows Page File and Should You Disable It? How To Get a Better Wireless Signal and Reduce Wireless Network Interference How To Troubleshoot Internet Connection Problems

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