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• Is these company terms good for a programmer or should I move?

  - by o_O

  Here are some of the terms and conditions set forward by my employer. Does these make sense for a job like programming? No freelancing in any way even in your free time outside company work hours (may be okay. May be they wanted their employees to be fully concentrating on their full time job. Also they don't want their employees to do similar work for a competing client. Completely rational in that sense). - So sort of agreed. Any thing you develop like ideas, design, code etc while I'm employed there, makes them the owner of that. Seriously? Don't you think that its bad (for me)? If I'm to develop something in my free time (by cutting down sleep and hard working), outside the company time and resource, is that claim rational? I heard that Steve Wozniak had such a contract while he was working at HP. But that sort of hardware design and also those companies pay well, when compared to the peanuts I get. No other kind of works allowed. Means no open source stuffs. Fully dedicated to being a puppet for the employer, though the working environment is sort of okay. According to my assessment this place would score a 10/12 in Joel's test. So are these terms okay especially considering the fact that I'm underpaid with peanuts?

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• What's the best way to learn/increase problem-solving skills?

  - by tucaz

  Hi all! I'm not sure this is the right place to ask this question, neither if this is the right way to ask this question but I hope you help me if it is not. I work as a programmer since I was 15 (will be 24 next week) so learning programming logic was somehow natural during the course of my career and I think that it helped me to get pretty good problem-solving. One thing none of us (programmers) can deny is that programming logic helps us in a lot of fields outside computer programming. So I'd say it is a very valuable resource that one should learn. My girlfriend is not a programmer and graduated in college on a non related course (Foreign Relations) because she didn't know what to study back then. As the years passed she discovered that she liked Logistics and started to work with it almost two years ago. However, since she does not have a technical background (not even basic Math) she is really having a hard time with it. She is already trying to catch up with Math, but even simple questions/brain-teasers are hard to her. For example, trying to find the missing numbers of this sequence: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, _, _, 34 and so on. We know that this is Fibonacci but if we didn't we would probably be able to get to the correct answer just by "guessing" (using our acquired problem-solving skills). I'm not sure if problem-solving skills or logic are the correct name for it, but this is what I mean: quick solve problems, brain-teasers, find patterns, have a "sharp" mind. So, the question is: what is the best way for someone to learn this kind of skills without being a programmer (or studying algorithms and such)? If you say it is a book, could you please recommend one? Thanks a lot!

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• Migration of PowerBuilder application to multiplatform

  - by Alex Bibiano

  I developed a client/server application with PowerBuilder in the past for medical clinics and done maintenance for it until now. Now, some clients are asking me to develop a release for Mac/Linux and need some advice about what programming language/technology is best suited for it and the learning curve. It’s not a very very big program but I’m the only developer and have done it in my spare time. PowerBuilder is very productive for this kind of projects (database centric), but it’s not multiplatform and it’s hard to sell PowerBuilder application now days (web, .NET, java sells a lot better with his marketing). My programming skills: - I studied C and C++ in the past (university) but never used it on real projects - Have some Java experience but not in desktop applications - Some experience with Ruby on Rails for web projects - Good skills with PowerBuilder and C# (.NET) (there are my main developing languages) My first dilemma is if I change the desktop application to a web interface, but I think the user will lose some user-experience, and some doctors don’t have a clinic (they are alone at home with my software). I think installing a web application (with webserver) for one user will be overwhelming. If I continue developing desktop application, what is at the moment a good framework/toolset to learn having my skills? Somebody has had similar experiences? A lot of thanks

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• Is there a language more general than Lisp?

  - by Jon Purdy

  I've been programming for a long time, and writing in Lisp (well, mostly Scheme) for a little less. My experience in these languages (and other functional languages) has informed my ability to write clean code even with less powerful tools. Lisp-family languages have lovely facilities for implementing every abstraction in common use: S-expressions generalise structure. Macros generalise syntax. Continuations generalise flow control. But I'm dissatisfied. Somehow, I want more. Is there a language that's more general? More powerful? As great as Lisp is, I find it hard to believe no one has come up with anything (dare I say) better. I'm well aware that ordinarily a question like this ought to be closed for its argumentative nature. But there seems to be a broad consensus that Lisp represents the theoretical pinnacle of programming language design. I simply refuse to accept that without some kind of proof. Which I guess amounts to questioning whether the lambda calculus is in fact the ideal abstraction of computation.

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• Introducing a (new) test method to a team

  - by Jon List

  A couple of months ago i was hired in a new job. (I'm fresh out of my Masters in software engineering) The company mainly consists of ERP consultants, but I was hired in their fairly small web department (6 developers), our main task is ERP/ecom integration (ERP-integrated web shops). The department is growing, and recently my manager asked me to start thinking about introducing tests to the team, i love a challenge, but frankly I'm a bit scared (I'm the least experience member of the team). Currently the method of testing is clicking around in the web shop and asking the customer if the products are there, if they look okay, and if orders are posted correctly to the ERP. We are getting a lot of support cases on previous projects, where a customer or a customer's customer have run into errors, which - i suppose - is why my manager wants more structured testing. Off the top of my head, I though of some (obvious?) improvements, like looking at the requirement specification, having an issue tracker, enabling team members to register their time on a "tests"-line on the budget, and to circulate tasks amongst members of the team. But as i see it we have three main challenges: general website testing. (javascript, C#, ASP.NET and CMS integration tests) (live) ERP integration testing (customers rarely want to pay for test environments). adopting a method in the team I like the responsibility, but I am afraid that I'm in a little bit over my head. I expect that my manager expects me to set up some kind of workshop for the team where I present some techniques and ideas and where we(the team) can find some solutions together. What I learned in school was mostly unit testing and program verification, not so much testing across multiple systems and applications. What I'm looking for here, is references/advice/pointers/anecdotes; anything that might help me to get smarter and to improve the current method of my team. Thanks!! (TL;DR: read the bold parts)

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• Standard ratio of cookies to "visitors"?

  - by Jeff Atwood

  As noted in a recent blog post, We see a large discrepancy between Google Analytics "visitors" and Quantcast "visitors". Also, for reasons we have never figured out, Google Analytics just gets larger numbers than Quantcast. Right now GA is showing more visitors (15 million) on stackoverflow.com alone than Quantcast sees on the whole network (14 million): Why? I don’t know. Either Google Analytics loses cookies sometimes, or Quantcast misses visitors. Counting is an inexact science. We think this is because Quantcast uses a more conservative ratio of cookies-to-visitors. Whereas Google Analytics might consider every cookie a "visitor", Quantcast will only consider every 1.24 cookies a "visitor". This makes sense to me, as people may access our sites from multiple computers, multiple browsers, etcetera. I have two closely related questions: Is there an accepted standard ratio of cookies to visitors? This is obviously an inexact science, but is there any emerging rule of thumb? Is there any more accurate way to count "visitors" to a website other than relying on browser cookies? Or is this just always going to be kind of a best-effort estimation crapshoot no matter how you measure it?

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• DPKG errors after upgrade to 12.10

  - by James Wulfe

  So I was doing fine then i upgraded my system to 12.10 and now i cant get my system to update all of its packages properly. no matter what i do, cleaning apt cache, manual install using dpkg, etc, i just cant get them to install. what is happening here and how do i fix this. if i would have thought 12.10 would be this much of a hassle i would have never upgraded..... here is a sampling of the code that returns from "apt-get -f install" Preparing to replace usb-modeswitch-data 20120120-0ubuntu1 (using .../usb-modeswitch-data_20120815-1_all.deb) ... /var/lib/dpkg/info/usb-modeswitch-data.prerm: 4: /var/lib/dpkg/info/usb-modeswitch-data.prerm: dpkg-maintscript-helper: Input/output error dpkg: warning: subprocess old pre-removal script returned error exit status 2 dpkg: trying script from the new package instead ... /var/lib/dpkg/tmp.ci/prerm: 4: /var/lib/dpkg/tmp.ci/prerm: dpkg-maintscript-helper: Input/output error dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/usb-modeswitch-data_20120815-1_all.deb (--unpack): subprocess new pre-removal script returned error exit status 2 /var/lib/dpkg/info/usb-modeswitch-data.postinst: 7: /var/lib/dpkg/info/usb-modeswitch-data.postinst: dpkg-maintscript-helper: Input/output error dpkg: error while cleaning up: subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 2 Errors were encountered while processing: /var/cache/apt/archives/network-manager_0.9.6.0-0ubuntu7_i386.deb /var/cache/apt/archives/pcmciautils_018-8_i386.deb /var/cache/apt/archives/unity-common_6.10.0-0ubuntu2_all.deb /var/cache/apt/archives/whoopsie_0.2.7_i386.deb /var/cache/apt/archives/usb-modeswitch_1.2.3+repack0-1ubuntu3_i386.deb /var/cache/apt/archives/usb-modeswitch-data_20120815-1_all.deb E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1) It is also just these 6 packages only. no other packages have given me this kind of trouble. well i should say as of now. It was just 5, but them i got an update for unity, and now unity-common is added to the trouble makers. which prevents me from further upgrading the actual unity package as this package is a dependancy.....

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• EPM Architecture: Reporting and Analysis

  - by Marc Schumacher

  Reporting and Analysis is the basis for all Oracle EPM reporting components. Through the Java based Reporting and Analysis web application deployed on WebLogic, it enables users to browse through reports for all kind of Oracle EPM reporting components. Typical users access the web application by browser through Oracle HTTP Server (OHS). Reporting and Analysis Web application talks to the Reporting and Analysis Agent using CORBA protocol on various ports. All communication to the repository databases (EPM System Registry and Reporting and Analysis database) from web and application layer is done using JDBC. As an additional data store, the Reporting and Analysis Agent uses the file system to lay down individual reports. While the reporting artifacts are stored on the file system, the folder structure and report based security information is stored in the relational database. The file system can be either local or remote (e.g. network share, network file system). If an external user directory is used, Reporting and Analysis services also communicate to this directory. The next post will cover WebAnalysis.

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• Is ActionScript 3 used by Serious Indie Developers?

  - by Puedes

  This question is for dedicated independent game developers: My dream is to be a game developer. I am a senior in high school who has taken Computer Science for all four years. I have used Java the whole time, but last year I started using PHP and ActionScript 3 (with Flixel). I also used Game Maker for a brief period. I apologize for this, I wanted to get that out of the way and clarify the fact that I have experience of some kind with game development. I am stuck at the moment because I don't quite know what language to use to develop games at a professional level. I am seriously interested in becoming a dedicated game developer, but this issue is really bothering me. I would like to know what the best option would be for my case, based on your experiences. Any advice is appreciated. Things to consider: I am only interested in making 2D games (I am not worried about 3D support) It would be ideal to use something that can be ported to multiple platforms (so as not to run into this problem later) I can't seem to figure out what the industry likes to use So far, this is what I have: I can't decide if it would be wise to stick with ActionScript 3, or move to C++ I know Flash would be for browser games, but what if I want to make a downloadable game, like Plants Vs. Zombies or Super Crate Box? Would Flash be a smart choice for standalone games, or did they use something else? Thank you for reading this, as I would like to stop worrying about this and make some games! Also, I hope this wasn't all over the place :) tl;dr Should I move ahead with AS3 or use something else i.e. C++

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• Is there such a thing as "closure" with software work?

  - by Bobby Tables

  I burned out last year (after a decade of fulltime programming jobs) and am on a sabbatical now. With all the self-examination I've started to figure out some of the root causes of my burnout, and one of the major ones is basically this: there was never any real closure in any of the work I've ever done. It was always a case of getting into an open-ended support/maintenance grind and going stale. When I first entered the industry, I had this image of programming work being very project-based. And I expected projects to have a start, beginning, and END. And then you move on and start on something totally new and fresh. Basically I never expected that a lot (most) of software work involves supporting and maintaining the same code base for open-ended long periods of time - years and even decades. That, combined with generally having itchy feet makes me think that burnout is inevitable for me, after 2-3 years, in ANY fulltime software job. All this sounds like I probably should have been a contractor instead of a fulltimer. But when I discuss this with people, a lot of them say that even THEN you can't really escape having to go back and maintain/support the stuff you worked on, over and over (eg. Coming back on support contracts, for example). The nature of software work is simply like that. There is no project closure, unlike in many other engineering fields. So my question is - Is there ANY programming work out there which is based on short to mid term projects/stints and then moving on cleanly? And is there any particular industry domain or specialization where this kind of project work is typical?

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• Simple monitoring of a Raspberry Pi powered screen - Part 2

  - by Chris Houston

  If you have read my previous blog post Raspberry Pi entrance signed backed by Umbraco - Part 1 which describes how we used a Raspberry Pi to drive an Entrance sign for QV Offices you will have seen I mentioned a follow up post about monitoring the sign.As the sign is mounted in the entrance of the building on the ground floor and the reception is on the 1st floor, this meant that if there was a fault of any kind showing on the screen, the first person to see this was inevitably one of QV Offices' clients as they walked into the building.Although the QV Offices' team were able to check the Umbraco website address that the sign uses, this did not always mean that everything was working as expected. We noticed a couple of times that the sign had Wifi issues (it is now hard wired) and this caused the Chromium browser to render a 404 error when it tried to refresh the screen.The simple monitoring solutionWe added the following line to our refresh script, so that after the sign had been refreshed a screen shot of the Raspberry Pi would be taken:import -display :0 -window root ~/screenshot.jpgFinally we wrote a small Crontab task that ran on a QV Offices Mac that grabs this screen shot and saved it on the desktop, admittedly we have used a package that it not mega secure, but in reality this is an internal system that only runs an office sign, so we are not to concerned about it being hacked.*/5 * * * * /usr/local/bin/sshpass -p 'password' /usr/bin/scp [email protected]:screenshot.jpg Desktop/QVScreenShot.jpgAs the file icon updates, if the image changes, this gives a quick visual indication of the status of the sign, if for some reason the icon does not look correct the QV Offices administrator can just click on the file to see the exact image currently displayed on the sign.Sometimes a quick and easy solution is better than a more complex and expensive one.

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• My first time in the gambling industry

  - by sfrj

  I am a Java enterprise developer with almost 3 years of professional experience. Soon i am going to have a face to face interview with a company in the gambling industry. I already did successfully a phone screening and now for the personal interview i suppose they will ask me about some kind of white board problem or system design task. I think i am in the right place to ask about this, and would appreciate a lot if someone would give me some tips or share something related to his own experience. The things i am more interested in regarding my interview are: What are the most common challenges for programmers, in this industry? Any idea or suggestion on a white board problem they may ask me? Could you point me to some links where i can find information on the topic or sample problems in this industry?. I personally find this question very interesting not just for me. Also i think, the given answers can help also others in a similar situation. Just what i want to say whit this last comment is: Please avoid, answers like: www.google.com and so on...

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• Designing web-based plugin systems correctly so they don't waste as many resources?

  - by Xeoncross

  Many CMS systems which rely on third parties for much of their code often build "plugin" or "hooks" systems to make it easy for developers to modify the codebase's actions without editing the core files. This usually means an Observer or Event design pattern. However, when you look at systems like wordpress you see that on every page they load some kind of bootstrap file from each of the plugin's folders to see if that plugin will need to run that request. Its this poor design that causes systems like wordpress to spend many extra MB's of memory loading and parsing unneeded items each page. Are there alternative ways to do this? I'm looking for ideas in building my own. For example, Is there a way to load all this once and then cache the results so that your system knows how to lazy-load plugins? In other words, the system loads a configuration file that specifies all the events that plugin wishes to tie into and then saves it for future requests? If that also performs poorly, then perhaps there is a special file-structure that could be used to make educated guesses about when certain plugins are unneeded to fullfil the request. Any ideas? If anyone wants an example of the "plugin" concept you can find one here.

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• Can I remove the systems from a component entity system?

  - by nathan

  After reading a lot about entity/component based engines. I feel like there is no real definition for this kind of engine. Reading this thread: Implementing features in an Entity System and the linked article made me think a lot. I did not feel that comfortable using System concept so I'll write something else, inspired by this pattern. I'd like to know if you think it's a good way to organize game code and what improvements can be made. Regarding a more strict implementation of entity/component based engine, is my solution viable? Do I risk getting stuck at any point due to the lack of flexibility of this implementation (or anything else)? My engine, as for entity/component patterns has entities and components, no systems since the game logic is handled by components. Also, I think the main difference is the fact that my engine will use inherence and OOP concepts in general, I mean, I don't try to minimize them. Entity: an entity is an abstract class. It holds his position, width and height, scale and a list of linked components. The current implementation can be found here (java). Every frame, the entity will be updated (i.e all the components linked to this entity will be updated), and rendered, if a render component is specified. Component: like for entity, a component is an abstract class that must be extended to create new components. The behavior of an entity is created through his components collection. The component implementation can be found here. Components are updated when the owning entity is updated or for only one specific component (render component), rendered. Here is an example of a logic component (i.e not a renderable component, a component that's updated each frame) in charge of listening for keyboard events and a render component in charge of display a plain sprite (i.e not animated).

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• Is using multiple canvas objects a good practice?

  - by user1818924

  We're developing a jump and run game with HTML5 and JavaScript and have to build an own game framework for this. Here we have some difficulties and would like to ask you for some advice: We have a "Stage" object, which represents the root of our game and is a global div-wrapper. The stage can contain multiple "Scenes", which are also div-elements. We would implement a Scene for the playing task, for pause, etc. and switch between them. Each scene can therefore contain multiple "Layers", representing a canvas. These Layer contain "ObjectEntities", which represent images or other shapes like rectangles, etc. Each Objectentity has its own temporaryCanvas, to be able to draw images for one entity, whereas another contains a rectangle. We set an activeScene in our Stage, so when the game is played, just the active scene is drawn. Calling activeScene.draw(), calls all sublayers to draw, which draw their entities (calling drawImage(entity.canvas)). But is this some kind of good practice? Having multiple canvas to draw? Each game loop every layer-context is cleared and drawn again. E.g. we just have a still Background-Layer, … wouldn't it be more useful to draw this once and not to clear it every time and redraw it? Or should we use a global canvas for example in the Stage and just use this canvas to draw? But we thought this would be to expensive...

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• How to make Box2D bodies automatically return to a initial rotation

  - by sm4

  I have two long Box2D bodies, that can collide while moving one of them around with MouseJoint. I want them to try to hold their position and rotation. Blue body is moved using MouseJoint (yellow) towards the Red body. Red body has another MouseJoint - Blue can push Red, but Red will try to return to the start point thanks to the MouseJoint - this works just fine. Both bodies correctly rotate along the middle. This is still as I want. I change the MouseJoint to move the Blue away. What I need is both bodies return to their initial rotation (green arrows) Desired positions and rotations Is there anything in Box2D that could do this automatically? The MouseJoint does that nicely for position. I need it in AndEngine (Java, Android) port, but any Box2D solution is fine. EDIT: By automatically I mean having something I can add to the object "Paddle" without the need to change game loop. I want to encapsulate this functionality to the object itself. I already have an object Paddle that has its own UpdateHandler which is being called from the game loop. What would be much nicer is to attach some kind of "spring" joint to both left and right sides of the paddle that would automatically level the paddle. I will be exploring this option soon.

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• Regulating how much to draw based on how much was drawn last frame.

  - by Mike Howard

  I have a 3D game world on an iPhone (limited graphics speed), and I'm already regulating whether I draw each shape on the screen based on it's size and distance from the camera. Something like... if (how_big_it_looks_from_the_camera > constant) then draw What I want to do now is also take into account how many shapes are being drawn, so that in busier areas of the game world I can draw less than I otherwise would. I tried to do this by dividing how_big_it_looks by the number of shapes that were drawn last frame (well, the square root of this but I'm simplifying - the problem is the same). if (how_big_it_looks / shapes_drawn > constant2) then draw But the check happens at the level of objects which represent many drawn shapes, and if an object containing many shapes is switched on, it increases shapes_drawn lots and switches itself back off the next frame. It flickers on and off. I tried keeping a kind of weighted average of previous values, by each frame doing something like shapes_drawn_recently = 0.9 * shapes_drawn_recently + 0.1 * shapes_just_drawn, but of course it only slows the flickering down because of the nature of the feedback loop. Is there a good way of solving this? My project is in Objective-C, but a general algorithm or pseudo-code is good too. Thanks.

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• Should a stack trace be in the error message presented to the user?

  - by Vilx-

  I've got a bit of an argument at my workplace and I'm trying to figure out who is right, and what is the right thing to do. Context: an intranet web application that our customers use for accounting and other ERP stuff. I'm of the opinion that an error message presented to the user (when things crash) should include as much information as possible, including the stack trace. Of course, it has to start with a nice "An Error has occurred, please submit the below information to the developers" in large, friendly letters. My reasoning is that a screenshot of the crashed application will often be the only easily available source of information. Sure, you can try to get a hold of the client's systems administrator(s), attempt to explain where your log files are, etc, but that will probably be slow and painful (talking to the client representatives mostly is). Also, having an immediate and full information is extremely useful in development, where you don't have to go hunting through the log files to find what you need on every exception. (But that could be solved with a configuration switch.) Unfortunately there has been some kind of "Security audit" (no idea how they did that without the sources... but whatever), and they complained about the full exception messages citing them as a security threat. Naturally, the clients (at least one that I know of) has taken this at face value and now demands that the messages be cleaned. I fail to see how a potential attacker could use a stack trace to figure anything out he couldn't have figured out before. Are there any examples, any documented proof of anyone ever doing that? I think that we should fight this foolish idea, but perhaps I'm the fool here, so... Who's right?

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• What is the best way to render a 2d game map?

  - by Deukalion

  I know efficiency is key in game programming and I've had some experiences with rendering a "map" earlier but probably not in the best of ways. For a 2D TopDown game: (simply render the textures/tiles of the world, nothing else) Say, you have a map of 1000x1000 (tiles or whatever). If the tile isn't in the view of the camera, it shouldn't be rendered - it's that simple. No need to render a tile that won't be seen. But since you have 1000x1000 objects in your map, or perhaps less you probably don't want to loop through all 1000*1000 tiles just to see if they're suppose to be rendered or not. Question: What is the best way to implement this efficiency? So that it "quickly/quicker" can determine what tiles are suppose to be rendered? Also, I'm not building my game around tiles rendered with a SpriteBatch so there's no rectangles, the shapes can be different sizes and have multiple points, say a curved object of 10 points and a texture inside that shape; Question: How do you determine if this kind of objects is "inside" the View of the camera? It's easy with a 48x48 rectangle, just see if it X+Width or Y+Height is in the view of the camera. Different with multiple points. Simply put, how to manage the code and the data efficiently to not having to run through/loop through a million of objects at the same time.

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• Chainloading GRUB2 from BURG

  - by WindowsEscapist

  I have an old PC with Puppy Linux in addition to Ubuntu and Windows XP. THis creates a LOT of menu entries (all of which I would like to keep): Ubuntu 10.04 Ubuntu Recovery Mode Memtest x86 Memtest Serial Windows XP Pro Precise Puppy Linux Precise Puppy TORAM Puppy 4.3.1 Puppy 4.3.1 TORAM Plop Boot Manager (for booting to USB, PC doesn't have BIOS option). Now, in my fancy shiny laptop I've gotten really attached to BURG, and would like a setup where I have a Windows icon, an Ubuntu icon, and an arrow that chainloads GRUB2 so that I can boot from USB or run Puppy if need be (all these entries will obviously not fit into the BURG theme I use, Lightness). The problem is, GRUB2 can't install the the beginning of a partition like it used to be able to (I am reluctant to specify andything with --force at the end), at least, without warning that warn: This is a BAD idea!. So I'm kind of at a loss here. I can't see how the folding option would work, because all of those other options would have the same icon once I unfolded (Lightness is non-text-based). If I do embed GRUB using grub-install /dev/sdax --force, how do I chainload it with BURG? Is there another way?

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• Applying Textures to Hexagonal Tiles Seamlessly

  - by PATRY

  I'm doing a tactical game (X-Com / Fallout style) for fun. I've decided to use a hexagonal map, but I'm having a graphic problem. My current map display is HUD-like, with only the border of the map cells displayed, without any texture. it's simple and allow for display of different types of informations by varying the color of the border. For exemple the "danger view mode" displays the borders with a color going from green (no damage possible) to red (prob of damage 90%). Now, It's a bit hard to differentiate the kind of tile the player is on. I could put a plain color (green is grass, pale blue is water...), but this is going to limit the possibilities. Thus, i would like to display a texture on my tiles. Since the map are generated, i can not use a picture for the whole map with the HUD over. So, my question is : does any one knows how i could generate the sealess hexagonal textures (algo or plugin), or if there is a site with some hexagonal tiles ?

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• Real-time stock market application

  - by Sam

  I'm an amateur programmer. I'd like to develop a software application (like Tradestation), to analyse real-time market data. Please teach me if the following approach is correct, ie the procedures, knowledge or software needed etc: Use a DB to read the real-time feed from data provider: what should be the right DB to use? I know it should be a time serious one. Can I use SQL, Mysql, or others? What database can receive real-time data feed? Do I need to configure the DB to do this? If the real-time data is in ASCII form, how can it be converted to those that can be read by the DB and my application? Should I have to write codes or just use some add-ins? What kind of add-in are needed? How should I code the program to retrieve the changing data from the DB so that the analysis software screen data can also change asynchronously? (like the RTD in excel) Which aspects of programming do I need to learn to develop the above? Are there web resources/ books I can refer to for more information?

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• Any ideas about how to make Programming Techniques Class more interesting.

  - by Eedoh

  Hello. I already found similar question here on SO, but almost all the answers were more philosophical, then practical. I'd like You to share some of Your PRACTICAL ideas about how to make my course more interesting. It doesn't matter how much effort it takes from me. I even thought about trying to motivate them to pick some topic in the beginning of the course and to work on it as some kind of real, small, startup project that they could maybe financially exploit once it's finished. But I'm afraid that most of them will not get the project to the end, and that it could be boring to them working on one thing all year long. Also I thought about involving them in Torcs, but I'm afraid most of them wouldn't be up to the task. Btw, Torcs is Car Racing Simulation, but there's an API for developers so they can develop their own AI for the driver, and then race their cars against the other programmer's AI's. I'm not asking here for problem examples, as I asked a separate question about that. I need ideas about making my lectures more interesting and fun.

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• Want to tap into a niche market. Do I create new site or bolt on to existing site?

  - by nitbuntu

  Hi, After a lot of heard work and a few years of perseverance, I'm seeing regular sales on my website which have been steadily growing over the past year. However, the entrepreneur in me wants tap into a niche market which I've become very interested in. It's possible to bolt on this niche onto my existing site as an additional category, without it looking too out of place; my new category of products would also benefit from the ranking my current site gets. The kind of people who would purchase these new niche products, however, are very particular and obsessive about detail. So, for example, many Vegetarians would not eat in KFC even if they were to introduce a new range of Veggie burgers. So, I thought it best to create a new website and since my existing site was created using an 'old-school' shopping cart and there are many more up-to-date, feature-rich, ones available now, I wanted to use a different shopping cart system. My dilemma is that I already have 2 websites (1 b2c and another b2b site) and maintaining a 2nd b2c site would end up vastly increasing my workload and I fear that I would not be able to pay adequate attention to all the sites. Moreover, the additional customer service work (e.g. answering emails from many separate email accounts) could end up being too confusing and difficult to maintain. The easy answer would be to take on an employee, but I'm just not earning enough to justify this yet. If anyone has any tips or experience they'd like to share, which could help me answer this question, I'd be highly grateful.

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• Tracking feature requests for small-scale components

  - by DXM

  I'm curious how other development teams (especially those that work in moderate to large development groups) track "future" features/wishlists for functionality for internally developed frameworks or components. I know the standard advice is that a development team should find one good tool for tracking bugs/features and use that for everything and I agree with that if the future requests are for the product itself. In my company we have an engineering department, which is broken up into multiple groups and within each there can be one to several agile teams. The bug tracking product we use has been "a leader since 1997" (their UI/usability seems to also be evaluated against that year even today) but my agile team or even group doesn't really control what is being used by the whole department. What we are looking to track is not necessarily product features but expansion/nice to have functionality for internal components that go into our product. So to name a few for example... framework/utility library on top of CppUnit which our developers share low-level IPC communications framework Common development SDK that myself and several other team leads started to help share some common code/tools at the department-wide level (this SDK is released as internal "product" to each of the groups). Is the standard practice to use the one bug tracking tool? Or would it make more sense to setup something more localized specifically for our needs and maintain it ourselves? It's also unclear how management will feel if developers start performing "IT" roles of maintaining software and servers. At the same time, right now, we use excel files, internal wiki and MS OneNote for this kind of stuff and that just doesn't feel right. (I'm afraid to ask for actual software recommendations, since that might make this question more localized or something. Also developers needs this way more than management, so it would be nice to find something either free or no more than the cost of a happy hour).

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