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• Huge procedurally generated 'wilderness' worlds

  - by The Communist Duck

  Hi. I'm sure you all know of games like Dwarf Fortress - massive, procedural generated wilderness and land. Something like this, taken from this very useful article. However, I was wondering how I could apply this to a much larger scale; the scale of Minecraft comes to mind (isn't that something like 8x the size of the Earth's surface?). Pseudo-infinite, I think the best term would be. The article talks about fractal perlin noise. I am no way an expert on it, but I get the general idea (it's some kind of randomly generated noise which is semi-coherent, so not just random pixel values). I could just define regions X by X in size, add some region loading type stuff, and have one bit of noise generating a region. But this would result in just huge amounts of islands. On the other extreme, I don't think I can really generate a supermassive sheet of perlin noise. And it would just be one big island, I think. I am pretty sure Perlin noise, or some noise, would be the answer in some way. I mean, the map is really nice looking. And you could replace the ascii with tiles, and get something very nice looking. Anyone have any ideas? Thanks. :D -TheCommieDuck

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• How to Share Links Between Any Browser and Any Smartphone

  - by Justin Garrison

  It happens all the time, you find an article to read but then nature calls. Do you take your laptop with you? With site to phone you can share links between any browser and any smartphone with a single click. If you have Android you may be familiar with this functionality with Google’s Chrome to phone, or with webOS’ Neato! But what if you have an iPhone, Blackberry or Windows Phone 7 device? That is where site to phone comes in handy. It not only supports every major mobile smartphone operating system, but it also supports every major web browser Latest Features How-To Geek ETC The Complete List of iPad Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials The 50 Best Registry Hacks that Make Windows Better The How-To Geek Holiday Gift Guide (Geeky Stuff We Like) LCD? LED? Plasma? The How-To Geek Guide to HDTV Technology The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 8: Filters Improve Digital Photography by Calibrating Your Monitor These 8-Bit Mario Wood Magnets Put Video Games on Your Fridge Christmas Themes 4 Pack for Chrome and Iron Browser Enjoy the First Total Lunar Eclipse in 372 Years This Evening Gmail’s Free Calling Extended Through 2011 Voice Search Brings Android-Style Voice Search to Google Chrome X-Mas Origins: Santa – Fun X-Men and Santa Mashup [Video]

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• Real Excel Templates 1.5

  - by Tim Dexter

  Not the next installment quite yet, just an update from what I knew yesterday. Right after I posted the Real Excel Templates I. Mike from the PM team got in touch to say he and Shirley had just had a meeting with a customer about the Excel Templates and all the fab features. He included BIPs extended functions, data pre-processing, sub templates and other functionality which was great new news. One caveat, much of the really new stuff, is not quite out in the wild yet. Will let you know as soon as I know more. Shirley and I shared a conversation around being able to re-group data in the templates. It's one of the most powerful features of the RTF template. Providing the ultimate flexibility in layouts. As I wrote yesterday, you need hierarchical data for Excel templates. I stand corrected, 'Of course you can do that in Excel, here's an example' said Shirley 'Very cunning Shirley, very cunning' says I. You can basically use the hidden sheet to re-group the data using native XSL. I'll cover the 'how' later. As you can see Excel templates are the new 'black' with lots of attention and more importantly development cycles to take them forward. Looks like we are going to have a great weekend weather wise here in Colorado. The yard work and pond are beckoning. Maybe the trout will be rising and I can give my rusty fly casting skills a run for their money. I need some stupid fish thou :0) See ya'll next week!

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• The Splendiferous Array of Culinary Tools [Infographic]

  - by ETC

  If your geeking out extends from the workbench to the kitchen counter, you’ll love this swanky infographic detailing the families of utensils in your kitchen drawers and cupboards. The poster showcases everything from scissors to strainers in a retro-style poster. If you can find a culinary tool in your kitchen that isn’t on the chart then you’re obviously a culinary wizard of the highest order. You can hit up the link below to check out the poster in full-size and downloadable glory or head over to the design company that created it here (and pre-order a printed copy for your kitchen). A Complete Guide to Your Kitchen Tools [Fast Co. Design via Design Sponge] Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How to Enable User-Specific Wireless Networks in Windows 7 How to Use Google Chrome as Your Default PDF Reader (the Easy Way) How To Remove People and Objects From Photographs In Photoshop Ask How-To Geek: How Can I Monitor My Bandwidth Usage? Internet Explorer 9 RC Now Available: Here’s the Most Interesting New Stuff Here’s a Super Simple Trick to Defeating Fake Anti-Virus Malware The Splendiferous Array of Culinary Tools [Infographic] Add a Real-Time Earth Wallpaper App to Ubuntu with xplanetFX The Citroen GT – An Awesome Video Game Car Brought to Life [Video] Final Man vs. Machine Round of Jeopardy Unfolds; Watson Dominates Give Chromium-Based Browser Desktop Notifications a Native System Look in Ubuntu Chrome Time Track Is a Simple Task Time Tracker

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• ODI 12c - Getting up and running fast

  - by David Allan

  Here's a quick A-B-C to show you how to quickly get up and running with ODI 12c, from getting the software to creating a repository via wizard or the command line, then installing an agent for running load plans and the like. A. Get the software from OTN and install studio. Check out this viewlet here for quickly doing this. B. Create a repository using the RCU, check out this viewlet here which uses the FMW Repository Creation Utility.  You can also silently create (and drop) a repository using the command line, this is really easy. .\rcu -silent -createRepository -connectString yourhost:1521:orcl.st-users.us.oracle.com -dbUser sys -dbRole sysdba -useSamePasswordForAllSchemaUsers true -schemaPrefix X -component ODI -component IAU  -component IAU_APPEND  -component IAU_VIEWER -component OPSS < passwords.txt where the passwords file contains info such as; sysdba_passwd newschema_passwd odi_user_passwd D workreposname workrepos_passwd  You can find details about the silent use of RCU here in the FMW documentation. C. Quickly create an agent for executing load plans and the like -  there is a great OBE for this, check it out here. If you are on your laptop and just wanting as minimal an agent as possible then this link is a must. With these three steps you are ready to get to the fun stuff! Check out more OBEs here - keep on the lookout for more!

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• How to filter a mysql database with user input on a website and then spit the filtered table back to the website? [migrated]

  - by Luke

  I've been researching this on google for literally 3 weeks, racking my brain and still not quite finding anything. I can't believe this is so elusive. (I'm a complete beginner so if my terminology sounds stupid then that's why.) I have a database in mysql/phpmyadmin on my web host. I'm trying to create a front end that will allow a user to specify criteria for querying the database in a way that they don't have to know sql, basically just combo boxes and checkboxes on a form. Then have this form 'submit' a query to the database, and show the filtered tables. This is how the SQL looks in Microsoft Access: PARAMETERS TEXTINPUT1 Text ( 255 ), NUMBERINPUT1 IEEEDouble; // pops up a list of parameters for the user to input SELECT DISTINCT Table1.Column1, Table1.Column2, Table1.Column3,* // selects only the unique rows in these three columns FROM Table1 // the table where this query is happening WHERE (((Table1.Column1) Like TEXTINPUT1] AND ((Table1.Column2)<=[NUMBERINPUT1] AND ((Table1.Column3)>=[NUMBERINPUT1])); // the criteria for the filter, it's comparing the user input parameters to the data in the rows and only selecting matches according to the equal sign, or greater than + equal sign, or less than + equal sign What I don't get: WHAT IN THE WORLD AM I SUPPOSED TO USE (that isn't totally hard)!? I've tried google fusion tables - doesn't filter right with numerical data or empty cells in rows, can't relate tables I've tried DataTables.net, can't filter right with numerical data and can't use SQL without a bunch of indepth knowledge, not even sure it can if you have that.. I've looked into using jQuery with google spreadsheets, doesn't work at all either I have no idea how I'm supposed to build a front end with my database. Every place that looks promising (like zohocreator) is asking for money, and is far too simplified to be able to do the LIKE criteria or SELECT DISTINCT stuff.

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• How do managers know if a person is a good or a bad programmer?

  - by Pavel Shved

  In most companies that do programming teams and divisions consist of programmers who design and write code and managers who... well, do the management stuff. Aside from just not writing code, managers usually do not even look at the code the team develops, and may even have no proper IDE installed on their work machines. Still, the managers are to judge if a person works well, if he or she should be put in charge of something, or if particular developer should be assigned to a task of the most importance and responsibility. And last, but not least: the managers usually assign the quarterly bonuses! To do the above effectively, a manager should know if a person is a good programmer—among other traits, of course. The question is, how do they do it? They don't even look at the code people write, they can't directly assess the quality of the components programmers develop... but their estimates of who is a good coder, and who is "not as good" are nevertheless correct in most cases! What is the secret?

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• Convert a Row to a Column (or Backwards) in Google Docs Spreadsheets

  - by The Geek

  If you have to deal with a lot of spreadsheets, you’re probably really bored right now. You also might be wondering how to turn a row into a column, or a column into a row. Here’s how to do it with Google Docs Spreadsheets. If you’re an Excel user, you’re also in luck, because we’ve already shown you how to turn a row into a column, or vice-versa. It won’t make you any less bored though. Convert a Row to a Column (or backwards) The first thing you’ll need is a column or a row of information that you want to convert into the opposite. For our example, we’ve got this set of data that we created by using the Auto Fill options in Google Docs. Now in another cell, you’ll need to use the TRANSPOSE function, which you can use by simply typing in the following: =TRANSPOSE( And then selecting the cells with the mouse, or manually typing in the range of cells you want to copy. The final function in this example was: =TRANSPOSE(A1:A11) Finish it off with the final ) character to complete the function, hit the Enter key, and there we are… the column was transposed over to the right. You can use the same thing to turn columns into rows, or rows into columns—just change the range you are looking for. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips How To Use AutoFill on a Google Docs Spreadsheet [Quick Tips]Integrate Google Docs with Outlook the Easy WayHow To Export Documents from Google Docs to Your ComputerConvert a Row to a Column in Excel the Easy WayScroll Backwards From the Ubuntu Server Command Line TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Check Your IMAP Mail Offline In Thunderbird Follow Finder Finds You Twitter Users To Follow Combine MP3 Files Easily QuicklyCode Provides Cheatsheets & Other Programming Stuff Download Free MP3s from Amazon Awe inspiring, inter-galactic theme (Win 7)

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• Panning with the OpenGL Camera / View Matrix

  - by Pris

  I'm gonna try this again I've been trying to setup a simple camera class with OpenGL but I'm completely lost and I've made zero progress creating anything useful. I'm using modern OpenGL and the glm library for matrix math. To get the most basic thing I can think of down, I'd like to pan an arbitrarily positioned camera around. That means move it along its own Up and Side axes. Here's a picture of a randomly positioned camera looking at an object: It should be clear what the Up (Green) and Side (Red) vectors on the camera are. Even though the picture shows otherwise, assume that the Model matrix is just the identity matrix. Here's what I do to try and get it to work: Step 1: Create my View/Camera matrix (going to refer to it as the View matrix from now on) using glm::lookAt(). Step 2: Capture mouse X and Y positions. Step 3: Create a translation matrix mapping changes in the X mouse position to the camera's Side vector, and mapping changes in the Y mouse position to the camera's Up vector. I get the Side vector from the first column of the View matrix. I get the Up vector from the second column of the View matrix. Step 4: Apply the translation: viewMatrix = glm::translate(viewMatrix,translationVector); But this doesn't work. I see that the mouse movement is mapped to some kind of perpendicular axes, but they're definitely not moving as you'd expect with respect to the camera. Could someone please explain what I'm doing wrong and point me in the right direction with this camera stuff?

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• Programming as a minor

  - by Tomas Cokis

  Hello Everyone! I've never asked a question here at programmers, and for reasons which will become obvious later I've never answered one here, but I do poke around in short bursts. Anyway, I'm 15 right now, and I've been programming in C++ for 4 years, just working on my own projects that are aim so high as to never be finished. I've been working on a single project for the last year, and every 3 months, I add a new system into it. It might be a value tabling directory enabled log system, or a render system, or a class to load up xml files, whatever it is, I don't mind too much that the overall project (a 3d engine) isn't ever going to get finished, I just get some satisfaction from getting what I have done building and running. I don't know what I want to do when I grow up, although I suspect I'll go into some form of engineering, but I was interested in knowing if I do choose to go into a career as a developer, what kind of material I could look at to push myself up and get myself experience that might help my career later. I'm not talking about books in particular, I'm more interested in subjects areas that will get me access to good job opportunities, or that will give me a hand-up if I do computer science and software related courses at uni. One of the things I was thinking of doing was designing some of the logic gate components of a small computer - which I started briefly over the holidays, working out integer addition, subtraction and multiplication. That kind of stuff interests me, but is it really useful - or more useful then just more programming? But anyway, Any advice? Should I continue on my perpetual 3d engine? Are there any other projects or particular accomplishments that would help my education? Perhaps I should mention that I live in Perth, Australia, so local software companies are likely to be more scarce then usual.

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• PHP 5.4 Support: Traits

  - by Ondrej Brejla

  Hi all! Today we would like to intorduce you another new PHP 5.4 feature for NetBeans 7.2 which is called Traits. Note: All PHP 5.4 features are available in your projects after setting Project Properties -> Sources -> PHP Version to PHP 5.4 value, or after choosing the same value during a PHP Project creation (in New Project Wizard). If you don't know, what Traits are, just look at the official documentation, or RFC. So what is that exact Trait support in NetBeans? Syntax is recognized correctly and code completion offers declared, inherited stuff from used traits. Note: Just one thing is not supported yet - resolving name conflicts and aliasing of method names (it means that you will not have these "virtual" names in your code completion). We would like to implement it in some next NetBeans release. Sorry for any inconvenience. That's all for today and as usual, please test it and if you find something strange, don't hesitate to file a new issue (component php, subcomponent Editor). Thanks.

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• Azure eBook Update #1 &ndash; 16 authors so far!

  - by Eric Nelson

  I just wanted to share with folks where we are up to with the Windows Azure eBook (Check out the original post for full details) I have had lots of great submissions from folks with some awesome stuff to share on Azure. Currently we have 16 authors and 25 proposed articles. There is still a couple of days left to submit your proposal if you would like to get involved (see the original post ) and some topic suggestions below for which we don’t currently have authors. It is official – I’m excited! :-) Article Area Accepted Wikipedia Explorer: A case study how we did it and why. CaseSetudy Optional Patterns for the Windows Azure Platform (picking up 1 or 2 patterns that seem to be evolving) Architecture Optional Azure and cost-oriented architecture. Architecture Yes Code walkthrough of a comprehensive application submitted to newCloudApp contest CaseSetudy Yes Principles of highly scalable apps on Azure Compute Optional Auto-Scaling Azure Compute Yes Implementing a distributed cache using memcached with worker roles Interop Yes Building a content-based router service to direct requests to internal HTTP endpoints Compute Optional How to debug an Azure app by with a custom TraceListener & the AppFabric Service Bus AppFabric Yes How to host Java apps in Azure Interop Yes Bing Maps Tile Servers using Azure Blog Storage Interop Yes Tricks for storing time and date fields in Table Storage Storage Yes Service Runtime in Windows Azure Compute Yes Azure Drive Storage Optional Queries in Azure Table Storage Optional Getting RubyOnRails running on Azure Interop Yes Consuming Azure services within Windows Phone Interop Yes De-risking Your First Azure Project Architecture Yes Designing for failure Architecture Optional Connecting to SQL Azure In x Minutes SQLAzure Yes Using Azure Table Service as a NoSQL store via the REST API Storage Yes Azure Table Service REST API Storage Optional Threading, Scalability and Reliability in the Cloud Compute Yes Azure Diagnostics Compute Yes 5 steps to getting started with Windows Azure Introduction Yes The best tools for working with Windows Azure Tools Author Needed Understanding how SQL Azure works SQLAzure Author Needed Getting started with AppFabric Control Services AppFabric Author Needed Using the Microsoft Sync Framework with SQL Azure SQLAzure Author Needed Dallas - just a TV show or something more? Dallas Author Needed Comparing Azure to other cloud offerings Interop Author Needed Hybrid solutions using Azure and on-premise Interop Author Needed

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• Is Your Desktop Printer More Expensive Than Printing Services?

  - by Eric Z Goodnight

  While many users see desktop printers as the best way to print photos, compared to cheap printing services, they may be more expensive. In this simple How-To, learn how to compare the cost per print to commercial options. Readers may not think of desktop printers as “convenient,” however manufacturers are largely selling the convenience of being able to print at home. Many commercial printers may offer services that are cheaper, even at small quantities. See how a few free downloads, some internet research, and some math can save you money over the holidays Latest Features How-To Geek ETC The Complete List of iPad Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials The 50 Best Registry Hacks that Make Windows Better The How-To Geek Holiday Gift Guide (Geeky Stuff We Like) LCD? LED? Plasma? The How-To Geek Guide to HDTV Technology The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 8: Filters Improve Digital Photography by Calibrating Your Monitor The Brothers Mario – Epic Gangland Style Mario Brothers Movie Trailer [Video] Score Awesome Games on the Cheap with the Humble Indie Bundle Add a Colorful Christmas Theme to Your Windows 7 Desktop This Windows Hack Changes the Blue Screen of Death to Red Edit Images Quickly in Firefox with Pixlr Grabber Zoho Writer, Sheet, and Show Now Available in Chrome Web Store

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• How do I find a qualified web designer in my area?

  - by Incognito

  I just sent out emails to five local web design companies to my area asking to take drawings to HTML/CSS/jQuery. None of the ones who accepted the deal seem suitable to myself. Others rejected the offer because they wanted to 'provide an end-to-end solution' or are 'booked till June'. The local companies did not seem suitable to myself because my review process is this: goto their website, do a view-source. I'll see really weird things (contact us forms that go nowhere), really old things (mm_menu.js), and portfolios that are non-existent (aren't on the site, don't link anywhere, or otherwise). The company would like to hire as locally as they can rather than out-source to another country. Answers I'm looking for Processes you use when searching for someone How you qualify their aptitude for the project Anything that you think I'm doing wrong, or should be doing also. Answers I'm not looking for: "Hello sir please contact me we do everything for 10 dolla." My bud's great at this stuff, call him. example.com is the best for this.

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• How does this game loop actually work?

  - by Nicolai

  I read this playfulJS post, about ray-casting: http://www.playfuljs.com/a-first-person-engine-in-265-lines/ It looks really interested, so I decided to look at his javascript. I am no expert in javascript, so I quickly got lost. It's the game loop "object" that really gets me. I simply don't understand how it works. From the code: function GameLoop() { this.frame = this.frame.bind(this); this.lastTime = 0; this.callback = function() {}; } GameLoop.prototype.start = function(callback) { this.callback = callback; requestAnimationFrame(this.frame); }; GameLoop.prototype.frame = function(time) { var seconds = (time - this.lastTime) / 1000; this.lastTime = time; if (seconds < 0.2) this.callback(seconds); requestAnimationFrame(this.frame); }; var loop = new GameLoop(); loop.start(function frame(seconds) { map.update(seconds); player.update(controls.states, map, seconds); camera.render(player, map); }); Now, what really confuses me here, is this bind stuff and how this actually loops. I am guessing, that if less than 0.2 seconds have passed, since the last time the loop was run, it simply goes back to re-check the time. If more than 0.2 seconds have passed, it leaves the frame function, and executes the 3 lines in the loop. But, if this is true, then how does the loop.start() get called again? And what on earth is the meaning of this.frame = this.frame.bind(this);? I've looked up prototypes bind() but I really don't understand it.

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• Cloning (mirroring) laptop display to area of external monitor display

  - by intuited

  I'm using Maverick "10.10" Meercat on a HP Pavilion tx2110. This machine has an NVidia Go6150 graphics card, and sports a 1280x800 display. I have an external monitor which can do 1280x1024 resolution. FWIW I'm using openbox as my window manager; as I understand it this shouldn't be a factor. I'd like to clone the display to the monitor, so that the size of the desktop remains at 1280x800, and there is a horizontal blank area on the external monitor. I.E. I want to avoid having to pan the display of the desktop on either monitor. So the actual resolution of the monitor would be 1280x1024, but the resolution of the section of the monitor where stuff was actually being displayed would be 1280x800. Using the nvidia-settings applet, I'm able to set up the cloned display so that the desktop size is 1280x1024 (the resolution of the external monitor), but can't find a way to instead have the desktop size stay at the resolution of the laptop's built-in display. Is this achievable? Ideally I'd like the external monitor's blank area to be at the top of the screen, i.e. for it to align the display with the bottom of the screen.

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• Add a Real-Time Earth Wallpaper App to Ubuntu with xplanetFX

  - by Asian Angel

  Are you tired of the same old wallpaper on your Ubuntu desktop? Now you can go from blah to literally spacious, real-time styled views of Earth with the xplanetFX Wallpaper App for Linux. You can conveniently access the “file type” downloads, screenshots, and jump-to links all on the front page. For our example we downloaded the .deb setup file on our system. The setup file will need to download three additional files to complete the setup process. After those are downloaded all dependencies will have been met and you can complete the installation process. Once that is done you can find xplanetFX by going to the Accessories Section of your Ubuntu Menu. This is what the main control window looks like when you start xplanetFX for the first time. You should take a few moments to look through the various tabs and tweak the settings for items like location, screen resolution, timing, auto-start, etc. When you are done click on Execute and within a few moments your desktop will have a fresh new look! Note: It took ~30 seconds for the display to activate on our system. Have fun with xplanetFX! xplanetFX Homepage [via OMG! Ubuntu!] Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How to Enable User-Specific Wireless Networks in Windows 7 How to Use Google Chrome as Your Default PDF Reader (the Easy Way) How To Remove People and Objects From Photographs In Photoshop Ask How-To Geek: How Can I Monitor My Bandwidth Usage? Internet Explorer 9 RC Now Available: Here’s the Most Interesting New Stuff Here’s a Super Simple Trick to Defeating Fake Anti-Virus Malware Add a Real-Time Earth Wallpaper App to Ubuntu with xplanetFX The Citroen GT – An Awesome Video Game Car Brought to Life [Video] Final Man vs. Machine Round of Jeopardy Unfolds; Watson Dominates Give Chromium-Based Browser Desktop Notifications a Native System Look in Ubuntu Chrome Time Track Is a Simple Task Time Tracker Google Sky Map Turns Your Android Phone into a Digital Telescope

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• jQuery + Perl CGI to vb.net transition

  - by user1257458

  I've been developing oracle database-heavy "web applications" forever by building my html by hand, adding some jquery to handle ajax requests (html inserts for forms processing etc), and always did my server side stuff in perl cgi. I really love how easy it is to read some form input, execute some select statements through dbi (SO EASY), and generate HTML to be inserted by the jquery request. That's a web application to me. However, my new boss builds everything in visual studio 2010, vb.net, usually webforms. So, for work reasons, I now need to start developing in vb.net so it can be collectively maintained, and I'm just seeking advice on where to start learning/how to approach this. I know I could at least learn ASP.net and VB.net, and create a webform, have it read parameters, return HTML, etc. which would allow me to use my previously written HTML and client-side scripts (jQuery). Although- since we're moving heavily to mobile applications I really need to reduce client-side processing load. Is there any advantage to my boss' method? Thanks a ton.

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• Black Screen after Resume from Sleep (Kubuntu)

  - by user20271

  I know there is a lot of other posts like this, but I have been looking for hours and I still haven't found any solution. I have recently installed Kubuntu Linux along side my Windows 7, the sleep on my Win7 works fine and resumes like normal. When I am loaded into Kubuntu, and I put my laptop to sleep, it goes into sleep as normal. When I go to RESUME from the sleep, the screen stays solid black, it doesn't light up, no blinking curser or anything. The Wi-Fi light is 'off' (orange) and I cannot turn it on. The Caps lock and the Num lock lights on the keyboard blink slowly. I hear something on the inside of the computer start to spin. I am not very experienced with Kubuntu/Linux, but I do know a bunch of computer terminology, I am still far from an expert though. I have about 300GB designated to my Win7 stuff, and another partition with about 100GB for my Kubuntu Linux. My computers specs are as follows: Windows 7 64-bit I have the most recent version of Kubuntu because I just downloaded it a few days ago and updated it yesterday. AMD Athlon Duel-Core processor 4GB of RAM And it is a HP G61 Laptop

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• Getting into game/game engine programming

  - by Darkslash

  So I am interested in learning game programming, but I really have an interest in the lower level engineering in games. I have openGL experience, and I am really interested in learning more about implementing AI, Physics, etc. I have a computer science degree, so I really like getting into technical stuff. Many times when I ask about this sort of thing, I get a lot of "Use an engine", "Use Unity3d", "Why waste your time writing code that already exists", etc etc. My idea was to use simpler libraries such as SFML or XNA so that I could learn how to implement the more complex systems. The thing is, although I do want to write games, I want to learn things that using something like Unity simply doesnt teach you. My goal is not to make a current generation quality 3D game to sell, I just want to make some cool smaller games and learn all I can about the programming side of game development. Is this something that people just do not do anymore? It seems like everywhere I turn people are using Unity or UDK or GameMaker. I fully understand why you would use a tool like these, but I cant see how they would suit my purposes. So where does someone like myself turn? Am I trying to learn something that people just do not bother doing anymore? Is the innovation in this area gone and just all about gameplay now? Im sorry if this question seems silly, but I am genuinely interested in knowing more about this and meeting more people who are interested in this sort of thing.

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• Ruby or Python?

  - by Bobby Tables

  Hi all, This question is extremely subjective and open-ended. It might even sound like something I should just research for myself and make my own decision. But I'd like to put it out there and get some thoughts from others. Long story short - I burned out with the rat race and am on a self-funded sabbatical this year. Much of it is to take a break from the corporate grind and travel around, but I also want to play around with new technologies and do some self-learning projects, to stay up to speed on programming, and well - I just love tinkering with programming, when there's no pressure! Here's the thing: I am a lifetime C/C++/Java programmer. I'm a bit of a squiggly bracket snob since I've been working with this family of languages for my entire programming career. So I'd like to learn a language which isn't so closely syntactically related to this group. What I'm basically looking for is a language which is relatively general purpose, fun to learn, has some new concepts that are different from C++/Java, and has a good community. A secondary consideration is that it has good web development frameworks. A tertiary consideration is that it's not totally academic (read: there are real world jobs out there using it). I've narrowed it down to Ruby or Python. My impression of Ruby is that it is extremely web oriented - that the only real application of it is as a server side scripting language for doing web stuff (mainly Ruby on Rails). For Python I'm not so sure. TL;DR and to put it as succinctly as possible: which of these would be better for a C++/Java guy to learn to get some new perspectives on programming? And which is more open and general purpose and applicable to a wider set of applications? I'm leaning towards Ruby at the moment, but I worry to an extent that it looks like it's used as nothing but a server side web language.

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• Do we really need a thousand Linux distributions?

  - by nebukadnezzar

  Pointed from an answer to a (possibly related) question, I came across this graphic, and I'm shocked how many linux distributions currently exist. However, it seems that most of these distributions are forks of already popular distributions with minimal changes, usually limited to themes, wallpapers, buttons, the kind of stuff most people probably wouldn't see as a reason to fork a Linux distribution. Of course, someone will always say "Opensource is also about the freedom of choice", and while I wholeheartedly agree, I do not believe that this is a valid reason to fork an already perfectly working Distribution into a new one, which might possibly result in less security/stability due to smaller group of developers. There's another problem: Those, who want to switch to Linux, are confronted with a neverending list of Linux distributions, and wonder rightfully which they're supposed to chose (infact, I was facing that problem before I've discovered Ubuntu). There might be (very few) valid reasons to fork a distribution: Specializing on a particular topic (FOSS Only, work-related topic (i.e., for a Hospital), etc) An exceptional architecture, that requires a special set of software Use of non-FOSS, propietary technology, and such But even with these points in mind, it would still seem easier to create a subdistribution with the required changes, such as XUbuntu with XFCE4, KUbuntu with KDE4, Fluxbuntu with Fluxbox, etc. So, why exactly do we need so many distributions?

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• Windows 8&ndash;Custom WinRT components and WinJS

  - by Jonas Bush

  Wow, I’m still alive! I installed the RTM of Windows 8 when it became available, and in the last few days have started taking a look at writing a windows 8 app using HTML/JS, which in and of itself is a weird thing. I don’t think that windows developers of 10 years ago would’ve thought something like this would have ever come about. As I was working on this, I ran across a problem, found the solution, and thought I’d blog about it to try and kick start me back into blogging. I already answered my own question on Stack Overflow, but will explain here. I needed to create a custom WinRT component to do some stuff that I either wouldn’t be able to or didn’t know how to do with the javascript libraries available to me. I had a javascript class defined like this: WinJS.Namespace.define("MyApp", { MyClass: WinJS.Class.define(function() { //constructor function }, { /*instance members*/ }, { /*static members*/ }) }); This gives me an object I can access in javascript: var foo = new MyApp.MyClass(); I created my WinRT component like this: namespace MyApp { public sealed class SomeClass { public int SomeMethod() { return 42; } } }   With the thought that from my javascript, I’d be able to do this: var foo = new MyApp.MyClass(); var bar = new MyApp.SomeClass(); //from WinRT component foo.SomeProperty = bar.SomeMethod();   When I tried this, I got the following error when trying to construct MyApp.MyClass (the object defined in Javascript) 0x800a01bd - Javascript runtime error: Object doesn't support this action. I puzzled for a bit, then noticed while debugging that my “MyApp” namespace didn’t have anything in it other than the WinRT component. I changed my WinRT component to this: namespace MyAppUtils { public sealed class SomeClass { //etc } } And after this, everything was fine. So, lesson learned: If you’re using Javascript and create a custom WinRT component, make sure that the WinRT component is in a namespace all its own. Not sure why this happens, and if I find out why or if MS says something about this somewhere, I’ll come back and update this.

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• How to recover data from a failing hard drive?

  - by intuited

  An external 3½" HDD seems to be in danger of failing — it's making ticking sounds when idle. I've acquired a replacement drive, and want to know the best strategy to get the data off of the dubious drive with the best chance of saving as much as possible. There are some directories that are more important than others. However, I'm guessing that picking and choosing directories is going to reduce my chances of saving the whole thing. I would also have to mount it, dump a file listing, and then unmount it in order to be able to effectively prioritize directories. Adding in the fact that it's time-consuming to do this, I'm leaning away from this approach. I've considered just using dd, but I'm not sure how it would handle read errors or other problems that might prevent only certain parts of the data from being rescued, or which could be overcome with some retries, but not so many that they endanger other parts of the drive from being saved. I guess ideally it would do a single pass to get as much as possible and then go back to retry anything that was missed due to errors. Is it possible that copying more slowly — e.g. pausing every x MB/GB — would be better than just running the operation full tilt, for example to avoid any overheating issues? For the "where is your backup" crowd: this actually is my backup drive, but it also contains some non-critical and bulky stuff, like music, that aren't backups, i.e. aren't backed up. The drive has not exhibited any clear signs of failure other than this somewhat ominous sound. I did have to fsck a few errors recently — orphaned inodes, incorrect free blocks/inodes counts, inode bitmap differences, zero dtime on deleted inodes; about 20 errors in all. The filesystem of the partition is ext3.

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• How common is it to submit papers to journals or conferences outside of academia?

  - by Furry

  I worked in academia a few years, but more on the D-side of R&D. The race for papers never appealed to me and I'm a practical not theoretical type, but I do like reading papers on certain topics (e.g. Google Papers, NLP, FB papers, ...) a lot. How common is it that normally working developers submit papers to conferences or even journals? It seems to be somewhat common in certain companies (it's not common or encouraged in mine). Do journals or conferences even take papers by an academic nobody (BSc) under consideration? I ask, because I have a few rough ideas and I would just like to bring them into form, one way or the other. Bonus question: Is there a list of CS (in the widest sense) conferences/journals with short descriptions? PS (Four out of five researchers I met published quite some fluffy stuff for my taste. I am no expert, but those people told me sometimes themselves, that the implementation does not matter, just the idea and the presentation. I always wondered about that. I probably could write about ideas all day long (not instantly but with a bit of preparation), but the implementation and the practical part is the really hard part, that academia just does not like to be concerned with. Also many papers actually scream: I was written so the publication list of my author gets longer - which is a waste of time for everyone, and often a waste of tax money, too. When I think of CS-ish papers, I think of running implementations or actual data, like e.g. Google's Map Reduce, Serving Large-scale Batch Computed Data with Project Voldemort or the like.)

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