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• How do functional languages handle random numbers?

  - by Electric Coffee

  What I mean about that is that in nearly every tutorial I've read about functional languages, is that one of the great things about functions, is that if you call a function with the same parameters twice, you'll always end up with the same result. How on earth do you then make a function that takes a seed as a parameter, and then returns a random number based on that seed? I mean this would seem to go against one of the things that are so good about functions, right? Or am I completely missing something here?

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• Download Speed is 0.12 Mbps when tested with servers in U.S, but it is 0.76 Mbps when tested with local servers, normal? [closed]

  - by Graviton

  Feeling that my ISP is cheating my money ( My subscription package is 1 Mbps), I did a speed test on my internet connection using www.speedtest.net. I tried to test the connection speed on two servers, one local ( Malaysia), another in U.S. I found that while the upload speed remain constant, but the download speed is different; 0.76 Mbps for servers in Malaysia, and 0.12 Mbps for servers in U.S. I called the ISP, and they blamed it on the intercontinental signal lost. But how can it be that the speed differs by that much? If it really differs by that much than we should always take a grain of salt of what is advertised as the broadband speed because the advertised speed is not the speed we are getting. No?

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• Java regex patterns - compile time constants or instance members?

  - by KepaniHaole

  Currently, I have a couple of singleton objects where I'm doing matching on regular expressions, and my Patterns are defined like so: class Foobar { private final Pattern firstPattern = Pattern.compile("some regex"); private final Pattern secondPattern = Pattern.compile("some other regex"); // more Patterns, etc. private Foobar() {} public static Foobar create() { /* singleton stuff */ } } But I was told by someone the other day that this is bad style, and Patterns should always be defined at the class level, and look something like this instead: class Foobar { private static final Pattern FIRST_PATTERN = Pattern.compile("some regex"); private static final Pattern SECOND_PATTERN = Pattern.compile("some other regex"); // more Patterns, etc. private Foobar() {} public static Foobar create() { /* singleton stuff */ } } The lifetime of this particular object isn't that long, and my main reason for using the first approach is because it doesn't make sense to me to hold on to the Patterns once the object gets GC'd. Any suggestions / thoughts?

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• Can't use PHP extension Mcrypt in Ubuntu 13.10 (Nginx, PHP-FPM)

  - by Marc-François

  I installed a fresh Ubuntu 13.10 on my laptop. Like I usually do, I install the packages I need for Web development, which are nginx, php5-fpm, mysql, php5-mysql, php5-mcrypt and a few others. After editing some configuration files, this usually works. But today, since 13.10, an error appears instead of the Web page I expected. Laravel requires the Mcrypt PHP extension. The package php5-mcrypt has been installed and reinstalled. The command php -m doesn't seem to show mcrypt. Any idea where the problem could come from? I've done this setup many times and it always worked.

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• Process Centric Banking: Loan Origination Solution

  - by Manish Palaparthy

  There is an old proverb that goes, "The difference between theory and practice is greater in practice than in theory". So, we keep doing numerous "Proof of Concepts" with our own products on various business cases to analyze them deeply, understand and explain to our customers. We then present our learnings as they happened. The awareness of each PoC should help readers increase the trustworthiness of the results coming out of these PoCs. I present one such PoC where we invested a lot of time&effort.  Process Centric Banking : Loan Origination Solution Loan Origination is a process by which a borrower applies for a new loan and the lender processes that application. Loan origination includes the series of steps taken by the bank from the point the customer shows interest in a loan product all the way to disbursal of funds. The Loan Origination process is relevant for many kind of lenders in Financial services: Banks, Credit Unions, NBFCs(Non Banking Financial Companies) and so on. For simplicity sake, I will use "Bank" as the lending institution in the rest of my article.  Loan Origination is one of the core processes for Banks as it is the process by which the it creates assets against which the Institution earns most of its profits from. A well tuned loan origination process can affect the Bank in many positive ways. Banks have always shown great interest in automating the loan origination process for the above reason. However, due the constant changes in customer environment, market dynamics, prevailing economic conditions, cost pressures & regulatory environment they run into lot of challenges. Let me categorize some of these challenges for you Customer Environment Multiple Channels: Customer can use any of the available channels (Internet Banking, Email, Fax, Branch, Phone Banking, ATM, Broker, Mobile, Snail Mail) to perform all or some of the activities related to her Visibility into the origination process: Expect immediate update on the status of loan processing & alert messages Reduced Turn Around Time: Expect loans to be processed with least turn around time Reduced loan processing fees: Partly due to market dynamics the customer expects the loan processing fee to be negligible Market Dynamics Competitive environment:  The competition keeps creating many variants of loan products to attract customers, the bank needs to create similar product variants with better offers to attract customers or keep existing ones Ability to migrate loans from one vendor to another: It has become really easy for retail customers to move from one bank to the other given the low fee of loan processing and highly attractive offers. How does the bank protect it's customer base while actively engaging with potential customers banking with competitor banks Flexibility to react to market developments: Market development greatly influence loan processing, underwriting, asset valuation, risk mitigation rules. Can the bank modify rules and policies, the idea is not just to react to market developments but to pro-actively manage new developments Economic conditions Constant change in various rates and their implications on the rates and rules applied when on-boarding a loan: How quickly can the bank apply changes to rates offered to customers when the central bank changes various rates Requirements of Audit by the central banker: Tough economic conditions have demanded much more stringent audit rules and tests. The banks needs to produce ready reports(historic & operational) for audit compliance Risk Mitigation: While risk mitigation has always been a key concern for the bank, this is the area where the bank's underwriters & risk analysts spend the maximum time when processing a loan application. In order to reduce TAT the bank cannot compromise on its risk mitigation strategies Cost pressures Reduce Cost of processing per application: To deliver a reduced loan processing fee to the customer, the bank needs to keep its cost per processing loan application low. Meet customer TAT expectations while reducing the queues and the systems being used to process the loan application: The loan application could potentially be spending a lot of time waiting in the queue for further processing. Different volumes & patterns of applications demand different queuing algorithms. The bank needs to have real-time visibility into these queues and have the flexibility to change queuing algorithms at runtime  Increase the use of electronic communication and reduce the branch channel usage: Lesser automation leads not only leads to Increased turn around time, it also impacts more costs to reach out to customers The objective of our PoC was to implement a Loan Origination Solution whose ownership lies with the bank and effectively meet the challenges listed above. We built a simple story board for the solution We then went about implementing our storyboard using Oracle BPM Suite, Webcenter Content : Imaging. The web UI has been built on ADF technolgies, while the integration with core-services has been implemented using the underlying SOA infrastructure. The BPM process model is quite exhaustive can meet all the challenges listed above to reasonable degree. A bank intending to implement an end-to-end Loan Origination Solution has multiple options at it's disposal. It can Develop a customer Loan Origination Application from scratch: Gives maximum opportunity to build what you want but inflexible to upgrade and maintain. Higher TCO in long term Buy a Packaged application & customize it: Customizing a generic loan application can be tedious and prove as difficult as above. Build it using many disparate & un-integrated tools: Initially seems easier than developing from scratch. But, without integrated tool sets this is not a viable approach either or A solution based on a Framework: Independent Services and Business Process Modeling provide decoupled architecture that is flexible. We built this framework end-to-end with processes the core process of loan origination & several sub-processes such as Analyse and define customer needs, customer credit verification, identity check processes, legal review process, New customer registration & risk assessment.

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• Why use 3d matrix and camera in 2D world for 2d geometric figures?

  - by Navy Seal

  I'm working in XNA on a 2d isometric world/game and I'm using DrawUserPrimitives to draw some geometric figures... I saw some tutorials about creating dynamic shadows but I didn't understood why they use a "3d" matrix to control the transformations since the figure I'm drawing is in 2d perspective. I know I'm drawing a 2d figure in 3d but I still can't understand if I really need to work with the matrix. Is there any advantage in using a 3d Matrix to control camera and view? Any reason why I can't just update my vertex's positions by using a regular method since the view is always the same... And since I want to work only with single figures, won't this cause all the geometric figures have the same transformations simultaneously? To understand better what I mean here's a video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjvsGHXaGEA&feature=player_embedded

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• Android Development: MVC vs MVVM

  - by Mel

  I've started coding for android and I'm having difficulty trying to properly partition my code. I always end up with a very tight coupling between my UI logic and the actual controls I use to represent them. I have background in both WPF MVVM and ASP.net MVC so I'm familiar with those patterns. After some digging, I found Android Binding. It seems nice and fits nicely with my WPF background. However, it bugs me that its not built in. I'm pretty sure that the android makers have thought of this when designing the android programming interface. So my question is, what is the best practice pattern to use when developing in android, if any. I have looked and looked at their site but didn't find anything...

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• Examples of interesting implementations of character stats?

  - by Tchalvak

  I've got this BBG going ( http://ninjawars.net ), and the character stats currently are simplistic. I'm looking to add a few stats to the current 1/2 (strength and maximum hitpoints, essentially). I've come up with: (strength (unchanged), speed, stamina, and some others that are somewhat interesting wildcard stats). However, I'm not satisfied with how boring the effects of some of these stats are, because they're very linear. Better stat, better effects of the stat, but the stats don't interact with each-other, there's no Rock-Paper-Scissors interaction, having more is always better all the time. So what I'd really like is to see examples of interesting character stats or effects of stats? Examples that I can think of off hand: Call of Cthulu's Insanity stat (things get really weird/chaotic if you start losing sanity) White Wolf stats, to a certain extent (the stats themselves have some basic effects, and all skills effectiveness base themselves off of stats as well) What are some other ways people have used stats to check out?

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• Should a programmer take writing lessons to enhance code expressiveness?

  - by Jose Faeti

  Given that programmers are authors and write code to express abstract thoughts and concepts, and good code should be read by other programmers without difficulties and misunderstandings, should a programmer take writing lessons to write better code? Abstracting concepts and real world problems/entities is an important part of writing good code, and a good mastery of the language used for coding should allow the programmer to express his thoughts more easily, or in a better way. Besides, when trying to write or rewrite some code to make it better, much time can be spent in deciding the names for functions, variables or data structures. I think this could also help to avoid writing code with more than one meaning, often cause of misunderstanding between different programmers. Code should always express clearly its function unambiguously.

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• Mass Metadata Updates with Folders

  - by Kyle Hatlestad

  With the release of WebCenter Content PS5, a new folder architecture called 'Framework Folders' was introduced.  This is meant to replace the folder architecture of 'Folders_g'.  While the concepts of a folder structure and access to those folders through Desktop Integration Suite remain the same, the underlying architecture of the component has been completely rewritten.  One of the main goals of the new folders is to scale better at large volumes and remove the limitations of 1000 content items or sub-folders within a folder.  Along with the new architecture, it has a new look and a few additional features have been added.  One of those features are Query Folders.  These are folders that are populated simply by a query rather then literally putting items within the folders.  This is something that the Library has provided, but it always took an administrator to define them through the Web Layout Editor.  Now users can quickly define query folders anywhere within the standard folder hierarchy. [ Read More ]

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• Why aren't tangent space normal maps completely blue?

  - by seahorse

  Why aren't normal maps just blue? I would think that normal maps should be predominantly blue in color because the Z component of the normal is represented by blue. Normals point out of the surface in the Z direction so we should see blue as the predominant colour since the Z component is dominant. By definition tangent space is perpendicular to the surface. At any point we should have the normal always pointing in the Z (blue direction) with no X (red direction) or Y (green direction). Thus the normal map (since it is a "normal map") should have the colour of the normals which is just blue (R = x = 0, G = y = 0, B = z = 1) with no shades in between. But normal maps are not so, and they have gradients of shades in them. Why is this so?

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• Screen problems

  - by Erick

  I struggled a lot in order to install Ubuntu because of a problem with the video drivers caused by when installing the driver and after turning it on it just appears a black screen, which worked for me was to use the terminal with sudo setpci -s 00:02.0 F4.B=0 and the screen starts, but after rebooting the changes won't remain and I have to run that command again. My question is: How can I make the changes permanent and not to be in need to execute that command always when I shut it down? Original Question in Spanish: Problemas con pantalla He batallado mucho al instalar ubuntu por el problema con el controlador de video ya que al instalarlo al encenderla aparece solo una pantalla negra lo que me funciono fue usar desde consola sudo setpci -s 00:02.0 F4.B=0 enciende la pantalla pero al reiniciarla los cambios no se quedan guardados y tengo que volver a ejecutar ese comando mi pregunta es ¿como hacerle para que los cambios queden igual y no tener que estar ejecutando eso siempre que la apago?

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• Does anyone actually use the /// comment blocks?

  - by Rachel

  Someone once said we should prefix all our methods with the /// <summary> comment blocks (C#) and I am wondering if that is true or not. I started to use them and found they annoyed me quite a bit, so stopped using them except for libraries and static methods. They're bulky and I'm always forgetting to update them. Do you recommend using them? Why? EDIT: I normally use // comments all the time, it's just the /// <summary> blocks I was wondering about

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• Performing user authentication in a CodeIgniter controller constructor?

  - by msanford

  In "The Clean Code Talks -- Unit Testing" (http://youtu.be/wEhu57pih5w), Miško Hevery mentions that "as little work as possible should be done in constructors [to make classes more easily testable]'. It got me thinking about the way I have implemented my user authentication mechanism. Having delved into MVC development through CodeIgniter, I designed my first web application to perform user authentication for protected resources in controllers' constructors in cases where every public function in that controller requires the user to be authenticated. For controllers with public methods having mixed authentication requirements, I would naturally move the authentication from the constructor to each method requiring authentication (though I don't currently have a need for this). I made this choice primarily to keep the controller tight, and to ensure that all resources in the controller are always covered. As for code longevity and maintainability: given the application structure, I can't foresee a situation in which one of the affected controllers would need a public method that didn't require user authentication, but I can see this as a potential drawback in general with this implementation (i.e., requiring future refactoring). Is this a good idea?

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• Enumerating the Future With Reactive Extensions

  Iterating over a collection of items seems like a pretty straightforward mundane concept. I dont know about you, but I dont spend the typical day thinking about the mechanics of iteration, much like I dont spend a lot of time thinking about how a roll of toilet paper is made. At least I didnt until watching Elmo Potty Time with my son. Now I think about it all the time, but I digress. Historically, Ive always thought of iteration as an action over a static set of items. You have this collection...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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• When does "proper" programming no longer matter?

  - by Kai Qing

  I've been a full time programmer for about 8 years now. Web based mostly, ranging in weird jobs for clients. Never anything I "want" to do. So my experience is limited to what I've been contracted to do, having no real incentive to master anything in particular. So here's my scenario and ultimately what I wonder about... I've been building an android game in my spare time. It's using the libgdx library so quite a bit of the heavy lifting is done for me. I don't read much of the docs cause unless it's in tutorial format I will just not care, and ultimately most of my questions have already been asked on stackoverflow. I get along fine and my game works as expected... Suspiciously well, even. So much so that I wonder why one should bother to be "proper" when coding if the end result is ultimately the same. To be more specific, I used a hashtable because I wanted something close to an associative array. Human readable key values. In other places to achieve similar things, I use a vector. I know libgdx has vector2 and vector3 classes, but I've never used them. When I come across weird problems and search stackoverflow for help, I see a lot of people just reaming the questions that use a certain datatype when another one is technically "proper." Like using an ArrayList because it does not require defined bounds versus re-defining an int[] with new known boundaries. Or even something trivial like this: for(int i = 0; i < items.length; i ++) { // do something } I know it evaluates item.length on every iteration. I just don't care. I know items will never be more than 15 to 20 items. So why bother caring if I evaluate items.length on every iteration? So I wonder - why does everyone get all up in arms over this? Who cares if I use a less efficient datatype to get the job done? I ran some tests to see how the app performs using the lazy, get it done fast and don't look back method I just described versus the proper, follow the tutorial and use the exact data types suggested by the community. The results: Same thing. Average 45 fps. I opened every app on the phone and galaxy tab. Same deal. No difference. My game is pretty graphic intensive. It's not like it's just a simple thing. I expected it to perform kind of badly since I don't care to optimize image assets or... well, you probably get the idea. I'm making the game for fun. As a joke, really. But in doing so I'm working outside the normal scope of my job, which is to always follow the rules and do it the right way. So to say, I am without bounds here and this has caused me to wonder why I ever really care to be "proper" So I guess my question to you is this: Is there a threshold when it no longer matters to be proper? Is there a lasting, longer term consequence to the lazy, get it done and don't look back route? Is it ok to say - "so long as it gets the job done, I don't care?" Disclaimer: When I program my game, I am almost always drunk. I do it to remember why I got into this stuff to begin with because the monotony of client based web work will make you hate being a programmer. I'm having a blast and my game is not crashing, tests well, performs well, looks good on all devices so far and has no noticeable negative impact on any of my testing devices. I expected failure because I was being so drunkenly careless with my code, but to my surprise, it had no noticeable impact. I am now starting to question the need to be careful. Help me regain the ability to care! ... or explain why it's not a bad thing to not care. Secondary disclaimer: I am aware of the benefits of maintainability. For myself and others. Agreed. But it's not like someone happening across my inefficient int[] loop won't know what it does. As an experienced programmer those kinds of things are just clear on sight. I document the complex stuff for myself knowing I was drunk and will probably need a reminder. Those notes would clarify any confusion for someone who might ever gaze upon my ridiculous game - though the reality is that either I maintain it myself or it fades into time. I'm ok with that. But if it doesn't slow the device down, or crash, then crossing the t's and dotting the i's might actually require more time than it's worth.

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• How should modules access data outside their scope?

  - by Joe

  I run into this same problem quite often. First, I create a namespace and then add modules to this namespace. Then issue I always run into is how best to initialize the application? Naturally, each module has its own startup procedure so should this data(not code in some cases, just a list of items to run) stay with the module? Or should there be a startup procedure in the global namespace which has the startup data for ALL the modules. Which is the more robust way of organizing this situation? Should some things be made centralized or should there be strict adherence to modules encapsulating everything about themselves? Though this is a general architecture questions, Javascript centric answers would be really appreciated!

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• How does Blizzard manage to support Mac OS and Windows in their games?

  - by begray

  I've always thought, that using Direct X for Windows was the most powerful, easy and modern method to create games with modern graphics nowdays. And knowing, that it's only Windows I thinks it's pretty difficult to make something similar on other platforms (Mac OS to be exact). But Blizzard somehow managed to deliver Starcraft 2 for Mac OS, and Diablo 3 will be available for Mac too. So what I'm interested in is information about: what technologies are they using for their game engines? are they using one engine for both games (Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3)? Or develop custom for each game? what are they paying in terms of time and money for Mac OS support? Thanks

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• How-to hide the close icon for task flows opened in dialogs

  - by frank.nimphius

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} ADF bounded task flows can be opened in an external dialog and return values to the calling application as documented in chapter 19 of Oracle Fusion Middleware Fusion Developer's Guide for Oracle Application Development Framework11g: http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E15523_01/web.1111/b31974/taskflows_dialogs.htm#BABBAFJB Setting the task flow call activity property Run as Dialog to true and the Display Type property to inline-popup opens the bounded task flow in an inline popup. To launch the dialog, a command item is used that references the control flow case to the task flow call activity <af:commandButton text="Lookup" id="cb6"         windowEmbedStyle="inlineDocument" useWindow="true"         windowHeight="300" windowWidth="300"         action="lookup" partialSubmit="true"/> By default, the dialog that contains the task flow has a close icon defined that if pressed closes the dialog and returns to the calling page. However, no event is sent to the calling page to handle the close case. To avoid users closing the dialog without the calling application to be notified in a return listener, the close icon shown in the opened dialog can be hidden using ADF Faces skinning. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} The following skin selector hides the close icon in the dialog af|panelWindow::close-icon-style{ display:none; } To learn about skinning, see chapter 20 of Oracle Fusion Middleware Web User Interface Developer's Guide for Oracle Application Development Framework http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E15523_01/web.1111/b31973/af_skin.htm#BAJFEFCJ However, the skin selector that is shown above hides the close icon from all af:panelWindow usages, which may not be intended. To only hide the close icon from dialogs opened by a bounded task flow call activity, the ADF Faces component styleClass property can be used. The af:panelWindow component shown below has a "withCloseWindow" style class property name defined. This name is referenced in the following skin selector, ensuring that the close icon is displayed af|panelWindow.withCloseIcon::close-icon-style{ display:block; } In summary, to hide the close icon shown for bounded task flows that are launched in inline popup dialogs, the default display behavior of the close icon of the af:panelWindow needs to be reversed. Instead to always display the close icon, the close icon is always hidden, using the first skin selector. To show the disclosed icon in other usages of the af:panelWindow component, the component is flagged with a styleClass property value as shown below <af:popup id="p1">   <af:panelWindow id="pw1" contentWidth="300" contentHeight="300"                                 styleClass="withCloseIcon"/> </af:popup> The "withCloseIcon" value is referenced in the second skin definition af|panelWindow.withCloseIcon::close-icon-style{ display:block; } The complete entry of the skin CSS file looks as shown below: af|panelWindow::close-icon-style{ display:none; } af|panelWindow.withCloseIcon::close-icon-style{ display:block; }

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• Charles Barkley syndrome

  - by dacracot

  Charles Barkley was an excellent basketball player, a hall of fame, and a dream team member. He played for the 76ers, Suns, and Rockets. Yet he never won an NBA championship. Some might argue this was because he was never surrounded by other players of his caliber, and in the NBA, you can't win on your own. So what does this have to do with programming? How many of you out there feel like Sir Charles? Leading your team in every category, KLOCs, bugs fixed, systems configured... Always the one pushing for improvements, upgrading systems, negotiating with customers... Feeling like you are carrying the team. Anger just under the surface. Only to retire eventually, without "the ring"1. 1: Keep in mind, Charles never blamed his team. He just performed at his best.

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• T-SQL User-Defined Functions: the good, the bad, and the ugly (part 1)

  - by Hugo Kornelis

  So you thought that encapsulating code in user-defined functions for easy reuse is a good idea? Think again! SQL Server supports three types of user-defined functions. Only one of them qualifies as good. The other two – well, the title says it all, doesn’t it? The bad: scalar functions A scalar user-defined function (UDF) is very much like a stored procedure, except that it always returns a single value of a predefined data type – and because of that property, it isn’t invoked with an EXECUTE statement,...(read more)

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• Deep in the Heart of Texas

  - by Applications User Experience

  Author: Erika Webb, Manager, Fusion Applications UX User Assistance When I was first working in the usability field, the only way I could consider conducting a usability study was to bring a potential user to a lab environment where I could show them whatever I was interested in learning more about and ask them questions. While I hate to reveal just how long I have been working in this field, let's just say that pads of paper and a stopwatch were key tools for any test I conducted. Over the years, I have worked in simple labs with basic video taping equipment and not much else, and I have worked in corporate environments with sophisticated usability labs and state-of-the-art equipment. Years ago, we conducted all usability studies at the location of the user. If we wanted to see if there were any differences between users in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, we went to those places to run the test. A lab environment is very useful for many test situations. However, there has always been a debate in the usability field about whether bringing someone into a lab environment, however friendly we make it, somehow intrinsically changes the behavior of the user as compared to having them work in their own environment, at their own desk, and on their own computer. We developed systems to create a portable usability lab, so that we could go to the users that we needed to test.  Do lab environments change user behavior patterns? Then 9/11 hit. You may not remember, but no planes flew for weeks afterwards. Companies all over the world couldn't fly-in employees for meetings. Suddenly, traveling to the location of the users had an additional difficulty. The company I was working for at the time had usability specialists stuck in New York for days before they could finally rent a car and drive home to Colorado. This changed the world pretty suddenly, and technology jumped on the change. Companies offering Internet meeting tools were strugglinguntil no one could travel. The Internet boomed with collaboration tools that enabled people to work together wherever they happened to be. This change in technology has made a huge difference in my world. We use collaborative tools to bring our product concepts and ideas to the user across the Internet. As a global company, we benefit from having users from all over the world inform our designs. We now run usability studies with users all over the world in a single day, a feat we couldn't have accomplished 10 years ago by plane! Other technology companies have started to do more of this type of usability testing, since the tools have improved so dramatically. Plus, in our busy world, it's not always easy to find users who can take the time away from their jobs to come to our labs. reaching users where it is convenient for them greatly improves the odds that people do participate. I manage a team of usability specialists who live in India and California, whlie I live in Colorado. We have wonderful labs that we bring users into to show them our products. But very often, we run our studies remotely. We used to take the lab to the users now we use the labs, but we let the users stay where they are. We gain users who might not have been able to leave work to come to our labs, and they get to use the system they are familiar with. And we gain users nearly anywhere that we can set up an Internet connection, as long as the users have a phone, a broadband connection, and a compatible Web browser (with no pop-up blockers). After we recruit participants in a traditional manner, we send them an invitation to participate through the use of a telephone conference call and Web conferencing tool. At Oracle, we use Oracle Web Conference part of Oracle Collaboration Suite, which enables us to give the user control of the mouse, while we present a prototype or wireframe pictures. We can record the sessions over the Web and phone conference. We send the users instructions, plus tips to ensure that we won't have problems sharing screens. In some cases, when time is tight, we even run a five-minute "test session" with users a day in advance to be sure that we can connect. Prior to the test, we send users a participant script that contains information about the study, including any questionnaires. This is exactly the same script we give to participants who come to the labs. We ask users to print this before the beginning of the session. We generally run these studies by having a usability engineer in our usability labs, so that we can record the session as though the user were in the lab with us. Roughly 80% of our application software usability testing at Oracle is performed using remote methods. The probability of getting a   remote test participant decreases the higher up the person is in the target organization. We have a methodology checklist available to help our usability engineers work through the remote processes.

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• Quick and Dirty way to search for characters in a string

  - by mbcrump

  I saw this today on StackOverflow, all credit goes to Jon Skeet. I have always used RegEx or loops to check for special chars. This is a more human-friendly way of doing it.   Code Snippet using System;   class Program {     //field     private static readonly char[] SpecialChars = "!@#$%^&*()".ToCharArray();       static void Main(string[] args)     {         //text to search for         string text = "michael";         int indexOf = text.IndexOfAny(SpecialChars);               if (indexOf == -1)             {                 Console.WriteLine("no special char");             }               Console.ReadLine();     } }

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• Windows 8 fresh install and 12.10 dual boot

  - by Sir Linuxalot

  I have a question concerning Windows 8 and dual booting with Ubuntu 12.10. I've researched answers here, but haven't seen a question that resembles mine exactly: Ubuntu install and dual Boot with Windows 8 UEFI UEFI hardware and dual booting with windows Ubuntu 12.10 wont boot Specifically, I'm pondering installing a fresh install of Windows 8 (for game purposes), and a fresh install of 12.10 and dual booting them. I'm not sure if UEFI is hardware specific or software specific, and I'm worried if I try to implement the dual boot I'm going to run into UEFI issues and have to go through the grief of getting things up and running by following a long and tedious procedure. Can I, starting with Windows 8, then install 12.10 without too much hassle? My current hardware config is: Microstar Motherboard 7514 with an Intel Core 2 Duo processor. The drive I'm thinking of using is a Western Digital TB drive, new out of the box. As always, any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

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• ATI Proprietary Driver Over/Underscan setting ignored after reboot

  - by Lassi

  I installed the proprietary driver (fglrx-updates) on Ubuntu 12.10 64-bit for my graphics card (ATI Radeon HD 7570). I am using two displays, one connected with DVI, one with HDMI. I set the desktop to be expanded to both screens and disabled the under scan for the HDMI screen, which is always for some reason enabled on HDMI screens. Now the issue. Everything was fine until I restarted my computer. After reboot, the screen connected with HDMI cable had the black borders again, meaning that the under scan is again enabled. I checked the ATI CCC, and under scan was disabled. However, moving the slider to enable under scan and then back to zero fixed the issue -- temporarily. The same issue is repeated every time I restart my computer. The settings remains the same, but the computer seems to ignore it. Any ideas how I could solve the issue?

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