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• Booting Error while using 12.04 booting from GRUB

  - by Paul Z.

  my name is Paul. I have encountered an issue relating to GRUB booting and the booting process in general. I have been running Ubuntu 12.04 LTS on my machine for quite a while. Before that, i had (before) 10.04, 11.04, 11.10, etc. I have been running Ubuntu, in general, but more specifically 12.04 for a long time with little to no problems. The problem: Earlier today, i was using my machine and then decided to take a little break. I shut down my machine (laptop, in case anyone was wondering) and left. Later, I came back ready to start it up and continue. I started it up and it took me to the Toshiba screen (like normal) then to the GRUB screen. I guessed that nothing was truly wrong, and chose the first option (something around the lines of: Ubuntu, with linux 3.22.0-35-generic). I waited for a bit and it still displayed the same purple screen. I restarted it and now chose the option like the first but with recovery at the end. Same result. Later, I waited longer and found that my computer came up with a bunch of lines of script. I waited longer but nothing new happened. What are your suggestions as to fix this problem? I will let my computer run overnight with the recovery setting and will let you know what the result is. Until then, please help. Thank you, your time and effort is greatly appreciated!

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• Scheme vs Haskell for an Introduction to Functional Programming?

  - by haziz

  I am comfortable with programming in C and C#, and will explore C++ in the future. I may be interested in exploring functional programming as a different programming paradigm. I am doing this for fun, my job does not involve computer programming, and am somewhat inspired by the use of functional programming, taught fairly early, in computer science courses in college. Lambda calculus is certainly beyond my mathematical abilities, but I think I can handle functional programming. Which of Haskell or Scheme would serve as a good intro to functional programming? I use emacs as my text editor and would like to be able to configure it more easily in the future which would entail learning Emacs Lisp. My understanding, however, is that Emacs Lisp is fairly different from Scheme and is also more procedural as opposed to functional. I would likely be using "The Little Schemer" book, which I have already bought, if I pursue Scheme (seems to me a little weird from my limited leafing through it). Or would use the "Learn You a Haskell for Great Good" if I pursue Haskell. I would also watch the Intro to Haskell videos by Dr Erik Meijer on Channel 9. Any suggestions, feedback or input appreciated. Thanks. P.S. BTW I also have access to F# since I have Visual Studio 2010 which I use for C# development, but I don't think that should be my main criteria for selecting a language.

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• Does anybody know of any resources to achieve this particular "2.5D" isometric engine effect?

  - by Craig Whitley

  I understand this is a little vague, but I was hoping somebody might be able to describe a high-level workflow or link to a resource to be able to achieve a specific isometric "2.5D" tile engine effect. I fell in love with http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Q6ISVaM5Ww this engine. Especially with the lighting and the shaders! He has a brief description of how he achieved what he did, but I could really use a brief flow of where you would start, what you would read up on and learn and the logical order to implement these things. A few specific questions: 1) Is there a heightmap on the ground texture that lets the light reflect brighter on certain parts of it? 2) "..using a special material which calculates the world-space normal vectors of every pixel.." - is this some "magic" special material he has created himself, or can you hazard a guess at what he means? 3) with relation to the above quote - what does he mean by 'world-space normal vectors of every pixel'? 4) I'm guessing I'm being a little bit optimistic when I ask if there's any 'all-in-one' tutorial out there? :)

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• Automatic Generalization

  - by Nick Harrison

  I have been interested in functional programming since college. I played around a little with LISP back then, but I have not had an opportunity since then. Now that F# ships standard with VS 2010, I figured now is my chance. So, I was reading up on it a little over the weekend when I came across a very interesting topic. F# includes a concept called "Automatic Generalization". As I understand it, the compiler will look at your method and analyze how you are using parameters. It will automatically switch to a generic parameter if it is possible based on your usage. Wow! I am looking forward to playing with this. I have long been an advocate of using the most generic types possible especially when developing library classes. Use the highest level base class that you can get away with. Use an interface instead of a specific implementation. I don't advocate passing object around, but you get the idea. Tools like resharper, fxCop, and most static code analysis tools provide guidance to help you identify when a more generalized type is possible, but this is the first time I have heard about the compiler taking matters into its own hands. I like the sound of this. We'll see if it is a good idea or not. What are your thoughts? Am I missing the mark on what Automatic Generalization does in F#? How would this work in C#? Do you see any problems with this?

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• Circle to Circle collision, checking each circle against all others

  - by user14861

  I'm currently coding a little circle to circle collision demo but I've got a little stuck. I think I currently have the code to detect collision but I'm not sure how to loop through my list of circles and check them off against one another. Collision check code: public static Vector2 GetIntersectionDepth(Circle a, Circle b) { float xValue = a.Center.X - b.Center.X; float yValue = a.Center.Y - b.Center.Y; Vector2 depth = Vector2.Zero; float distance = Vector2.Distance(a.Center, b.Center); if (a.Radius + b.Radius > distance) { float result = (a.Radius + b.Radius) - distance; depth.X = (float)Math.Cos(result); depth.Y = (float)Math.Sin(result); } return depth; } Loop through code: Vector2 depth = Vector2.Zero; for (int i = 0; i < bounds.Count; i++) for (int j = i+1; j < bounds.Count; j++) { depth = CircleToCircleIntersection.GetIntersectionDepth(bounds[i], bounds[j]); } Clearly I'm a complete newbie, wondering if anyone can give any suggestions or point out my errors, thanks in advance. :)

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• Showing Egde Shaped Event Duration in StreamInsight using Debugger

  Whilst writing some courseware I wanted to be able to see the start and end times of Edge shaped events from within the debugger.  A quick recap on Edge events At the start of the event you do not know the end time and most probably cannot work it out or you should be using one of the other shapes. You enqueue an event (Start Edge) with the start time and payload of the event.  The end time of the event is set to infinity When you see the end edge come through, you enqueue another event (End Edge) with the previous start time and payload and restate the event’s end time.  This is the Retract Event All seems simple enough.  The problem is the debugger is a little shy about showing you what you need but you can get it to show you everything by also reading this article Here’s what I mean. Here is what the Event Debugger looks like by default when viewing 2 complete edge events.  Notice how all the end times are set to infinity   The above does not tell you for how long an event was valid.  I then add the “NewEndTime” column to the debugger output and there I can now see the duration of events.  You will see the Retract events (End Edge) have the same start time and payload as their respective start events (Start Edge)   You can follow the exact same logic when looking at Interval shape events.  They look a little different on the output adapter but using this article you can easily see what is happening.

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• Introducing Code Map for Visual Studio 2012 September CTP

  - by krislankford

  As part of the Visual Studio 2012 CTP for September, Visual Studio got a little sexier at helping you discover and visualize your code. The introduction of the Code Map feature helps compliment the variety of other tools that are included with Visual Studio to help you analyze and visualize your projects and solutions. Code Map leverages the dgml format within Visual Studio that is currently used b the Architecture and Modeling tools. This is a nice addition that gets us from point A to point B a little faster. The great thing about Code Map is that you can gain access to the functionality from directly within your code from the context menu. This Code Map functionality is also context specific based on your cursor. You can evaluate and add items such as methods and variables directly to the Code Map window. As you add items the Code Map surface is updated to show your new item plus any relationships and dependencies that have been introduced in your code. Something that is also very nice is that the Code Map surface is interactive and allows you to use the F12 button (Go To Definition) which can help you navigate your code especially is you are adding items that span multiple files or projects. To get started all you have to do is go out and download the September CTP for Visual Studio 2012 located here. Happy Coding!   Code Map Window

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• Developer momentum on open source projects

  - by sashang

  Hi I've been struggling to develop momentum contributing to open source projects. I have in the past tried with gcc and contributed a fix to libstdc++ but it was a once off and even though I spent months in my spare time on the dev mailing list and reading through things I just never seemed to develop any momentum with the code. Eventually I unsubscribed and got my free time back and uncluttered my mailbox. Like a lot of people I have some little open source defunct projects lying around on the net, but they're not large and I'm the only contributor. At the moment I'm more interested in contributing to a large open source project and want to know how people got started because I find it difficult while working full time to develop any momentum with the code base. Other more regular contributors, who are on the project full-time, are able to make changes at will and as result enter that positive feedback cycle where they understand the code and also know where it's heading. It makes the barrier to entry higher for those that come along later. My questions are to people who actively contribute to large opensource projects, like the Linux kernel, or gcc or clang/llvm or anything else with say a developer head count of more than 10. How did you get started? Was there a large chunk of time in your life that you just could dedicate to working on the project? I know in Linus's case he had a chunk of time (6 months) to get it started. What barriers to entry did you encounter? Can you describe the initial stages of the time spent with the project, from when you had little understanding of the code to when you understood enough to commit regularly. Thanks

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• Earmarks of a Professional PHP Programmer

  - by Scotty C.

  I'm a 19 year old student who really REALLY enjoys programming, and I'm hoping to glean from your years of experience here. At present, I'm studying PHP every chance I get, and have been for about 3 years, although I've never taken any formal classes. I'd love to some day be a programmer full time, and make a good career of it. My question to you is this: What do you consider to be the earmarks or traits of a professional programmer? Mainly in the field of PHP, but other, more generalized qualifications are also more than welcome, as I think PHP is more of a hobbyist language and may not be the language of choice in the eyes of potential employers. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Above all, I don't want to wast time on something that isn't worth while. I'm currently feeling pretty confident in my knowledge of PHP as a language, and I know that I could build just about anything I need and have it "work", but I feel sorely lacking in design concepts and code structure. I can even write object oriented code, but in my personal opinion, that isn't worth a hill of beans if it isn't organized well. For this reason, I bought Matt Zandstra's book "PHP Objects, Patterns, and Practice" and have been reading that a little every day. Anyway, I'm starting to digress a little here, so back to the original question. What advice would you give to an aspiring programmer who wants to make an impact in this field? Also, on a side note, I've been working on a project with a friend of mine that would give a fairly good idea of where I'm at coding wise. I'm gonna give a link, I don't want anyone to feel as though I'm pushing or spamming here, so don't click it if you don't want to. But if you are interested on giving some feedback there as well, you can see the code on github. I'm known as The Craw there. https://github.com/PureChat/PureChat--Beta-/tree/

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• Can't detect collision properly using Rectangle.Intersects()

  - by Daniel Ribeiro

  I'm using a single sprite sheet image as the main texture for my breakout game. The image is this: My code is a little confusing, since I'm creating two elements from the same Texture using a Point, to represent the element size and its position on the sheet, a Vector, to represent its position on the viewport and a Rectangle that represents the element itself. Texture2D sheet; Point paddleSize = new Point(112, 24); Point paddleSheetPosition = new Point(0, 240); Vector2 paddleViewportPosition; Rectangle paddleRectangle; Point ballSize = new Point(24, 24); Point ballSheetPosition = new Point(160, 240); Vector2 ballViewportPosition; Rectangle ballRectangle; Vector2 ballVelocity; My initialization is a little confusing as well, but it works as expected: paddleViewportPosition = new Vector2((GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Bounds.Width - paddleSize.X) / 2, GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Bounds.Height - (paddleSize.Y * 2)); paddleRectangle = new Rectangle(paddleSheetPosition.X, paddleSheetPosition.Y, paddleSize.X, paddleSize.Y); Random random = new Random(); ballViewportPosition = new Vector2(random.Next(GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Bounds.Width), random.Next(GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Bounds.Top, GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Bounds.Height / 2)); ballRectangle = new Rectangle(ballSheetPosition.X, ballSheetPosition.Y, ballSize.X, ballSize.Y); ballVelocity = new Vector2(3f, 3f); The problem is I can't detect the collision properly, using this code: if(ballRectangle.Intersects(paddleRectangle)) { ballVelocity.Y = -ballVelocity.Y; } What am I doing wrong?

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• Software Licencing [closed]

  - by Craig

  A colleague of mine wanted a means to do something, so it was suggested that I write some software to do this. The software has turned into more than the original specification and is now something rather complex, however it is not fully functional still. My colleague has not paid me anything so far and I am unwilling to continue writing the software until some faith has been reciprocated in my direction, as I have put a lot of effort into writing the software. I am also unwilling to finish the software as I do not want to give away a huge chunk of my time and effort away as free, neither do I want to be under compensated for my efforts. Some concerns I have. If I finish the software, what if the client doesn't pay me anything or pays too little, or what if I write the software to a usable level, but not complete and the client pays me a too little. I have lost my motivation to finish the software, as more and more specifications have been added to the software and I have developed a substantially complex piece of software and been effectively paid nothing. To finish the software, I need motivation, money would do this, however the client doesn't want to pay for something that isn't complete, yet keeps adding more requirements. I seem to be in a catch 22 with this, as I have developed some software on faith and have had no faith reciprocated in my direction. I'm really not sure how to get some payment from the client or on how to develop a licencing model so that I get some money from the client and development resumes.

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• Windows 8 App Downloads Increasing + Over 5,000 Apps Available

  - by David Paquette

  Windows 8 will be unleashed on the general public tomorrow and I thought it would be a good time to review some of the numbers I have been tracking over the last month. Downloads of Windows 8 Apps have been steadily increasing over the last month.  Below is screenshot from the App Summary page for my Windows 8 app.  The blue line is my app, while the orange line is average for the top 5 apps in that subcategory.  Considering the large gap between the 2, I think it is safe to assume that my app is NOT in the top 5 in the subcategory. The spike in the last couple of days is fairly dramatic and I am a little surprised by that.  I would have expected that kind of spike on the days following the official release as opposed to the days leading up to the release.   Finally, the all important App count.  There have been some stories floating around that the Window 8 Store is a ghost town and that there are no apps available.  I think these might be exaggerating the situation a little.  As of this morning, in the US store there are over 5000 apps available for download.  Obviously a far cry from the hundreds of thousands available in other app stores, but we are seeing solid growth in this number. Less than a month ago, that number was 2000. That means the store more than doubled in less than a month. If the growth continues, it won’t be long before the Widows 8 Store is filled with all the apps you need (and a whole lot you don’t need).

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• Transition from 2D to 3D Game development [closed]

  - by jakebird451

  I have been working in the 2D world for a long time from manual blitting in windows to SDL to Python (pygame, pyopengl) and a bunch in between. Needless to say I have been programming for a while. So a while ago I started to program in OpenGL via C++ on my Mac. I then got a little intricate with my work after a while (3D models with skeleton structure and terrain development). After a long time of tinkering, I stopped due to the heavy work just to yield a low level understanding of how OpenGL works. Still interested in Graphics and Game Development I went on a search for a stable game engine with some features to grow on. Licence Requirement: Anything other than GPL (LGPL will do) OS Requirement: Mac & Windows Shader: GLSL or CG (GLSL preferred due to experience) Models: Any model structure with rigging (bone) support & animation I am looking at http://www.ogre3d.org/ currently and am starting to meddle around with some examples. However I am a little reluctant to spend a lot of time on it only to yield another dead end. So instead of falling down a spiraling black pit, I am posting my question to you guys to lead me in the right direction based on my requirements. How was your experience with the engine you recommend? Is it well documented? Does it have well documented examples? Any library requirements (Boost, libpng, etc)?

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• Never Bet Against the Impossible

  - by BuckWoody

  My uncle used to say “If a man tells you that his car squirts milk in his eye when you lift the hood, don’t bet against that. You’ll end up with milk in your eye.” My friend Allen White tells me this is taken from a play (and was said about playing cards), but I think the sentiment holds, even in database work. I mentioned the other day that you should allow the other person to talk and actively listen before you propose a solution. Well, I saw a consultant “bet against the impossible”  the other day – and it bit her. She explained to the person telling her the problem that the situation simply couldn’t exist that way, and he proceeded to show her that it did. She got silent, typed a few things, muttered a little, and then said “well, must be something else.” She just couldn’t admit she was wrong. So don’t go there. If someone explains a problem to you with their database, listen with purpose, and then explore the troubleshooting steps you know to find the problem. But keep your absolutes to yourself. In fact, I have a friend that has recently sent me one of those. He connects to a system with SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) version 2008 (if I recall correctly) and it shows a certain version number of the target system in the connection tab. Then he connects to it using SSMS 2008 R2 and gets a different number. Now, as far as I know, we didn’t change the connection string information, and that’s provided by the target system, so this is impossible. But I won’t tell him that. Not until I look a little more. :) Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Vector vs Scalar velocity?

  - by Serguei Fedorov

  I am revamping an engine I have been working on and off on for the last few weeks to use a directional vector to dictate direction; this way I can dictate the displacement based on a direction. However, the issue I am trying to overcome is the following problem; the speed towards X and speed towards Y are unrelated to one another. If gravity pulls the object down by an increasing velocity my velocity towards the X should not change. This is very easy to implement if my speed is broken into a Vector datatype, Vector.X dictates one direction Vector.Y dictates the other (assuming we are not concerned about the Z axis). However, this defeats the purpose of the directional vector because: SpeedX = 10 SpeedY = 15 [1, 1] normalized = ~[0.7, 0.7] [0.7, 0.7] * [10, 15] = [7, 10.5] As you can see my direction is now "scaled" to my speed which is no longer the direction that I want to be moving in. I am very new to vector math and this is a learning project for me. I looked around a little bit on the internet but I still want to figure out things on my own (not just look at an example and copy off it). Is there way around this? Using a directional vector is extremely useful but I am a little bit stumped at this problem. I am sorry if my mathematical understanding maybe completely wrong.

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• Developing momentum on open source projects

  - by sashang

  Hi I've been struggling to develop momentum contributing to open source projects. I have in the past tried with gcc and contributed a fix to libstdc++ but it was a once off and even though I spent months in my spare time on the dev mailing list and reading through things I just never seemed to develop any momentum with the code. Eventually I unsubscribed and got my free time back and uncluttered my mailbox. Like a lot of people I have some little open source defunct projects lying around on the net, but they're not large and I'm the only contributor. At the moment I'm more interested in contributing to a large open source project and want to know how people got started because I find it difficult while working full time to develop any momentum with the code base. Other more regular contributors, who are on the project full-time, are able to make changes at will and as result enter that positive feedback cycle where they understand the code and also know where it's heading. It makes the barrier to entry higher for those that come along later. My questions are to people who actively contribute to large opensource projects, like the Linux kernel, or gcc or clang/llvm or anything else with say a developer head count of more than 10. How did you get started? Was there a large chunk of time in your life that you just could dedicate to working on the project? I know in Linus's case he had a chunk of time (6 months) to get it started. What barriers to entry did you encounter? Can you describe the initial stages of the time spent with the project, from when you had little understanding of the code to when you understood enough to commit regularly. Thanks

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• What are some practical uses of the "new" modifier in C# with respect to hiding?

  - by Joel Etherton

  A co-worker and I were looking at the behavior of the new keyword in C# as it applies to the concept of hiding. From the documentation: Use the new modifier to explicitly hide a member inherited from a base class. To hide an inherited member, declare it in the derived class using the same name, and modify it with the new modifier. We've read the documentation, and we understand what it basically does and how it does it. What we couldn't really get a handle on is why you would need to do it in the first place. The modifier has been there since 2003, and we've both been working with .Net for longer than that and it's never come up. When would this behavior be necessary in a practical sense (e.g.: as applied to a business case)? Is this a feature that has outlived its usefulness or is what it does simply uncommon enough in what we do (specifically we do web forms and MVC applications and some small factor WinForms and WPF)? In trying this keyword out and playing with it we found some behaviors that it allows that seem a little hazardous if misused. This sounds a little open-ended, but we're looking for a specific use case that can be applied to a business application that finds this particular tool useful.

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• How important is Domain knowledge vs. Technical knowledge?

  - by Mayank

  I am working on a Trading and Risk Management application and although from a C# background, I have been asked to work on SSIS packages. Now I can live with that. The pain point is that there is too much emphasis on business understanding. Trading (Energy Trading to be exact) is a HUGE area and understanding every little bit of it is overwhelming. But for the past two months I have been working on understanding the business terms - Mark To Market, Risk Metrics, Positions, PnL, Greeks, Instruments, Book Structure... every little detail (you get the point). Now IMHO, this is the job of a BA. Sure it is very important for developers to understand the business but where do you draw the line? When I talked to my manager about this, he almost mocked me by saying that anybody can learn a technology in a week. It's the business that's harder. My long term aspiration is to remain on the technical side, probably become an architect (if possible). If I wanted to focus so much on business I would have pursued an MBA! I want to know if I am wrong or too naive in understanding the business importance or is my frustration justified?

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• The Start of a Blog

  - by dbradley

  So, here's my new blog up and running, who am I and what am I planning to write here?First off - here's a little about me:I'm a recent graduate from university (coming up to a year ago since I finished) studying Software Engineering on a four year course where the third year was an industrial placement. During the industrial placement I went to work for a company called Adfero in a "Technical Consultant" role as well as a junior "Information Systems Developer". Once I completed my placement I went back to complete my final year but also continued in my developer role 2/3 days a week with the company.Working part time while at uni always seems like a great idea until you get half way through the year. For me the problem was not so much having a lack of time, but rather a lack of interest in the course content having got a chance at working on real projects in a live environment. Most people who have been graduated a little while also find this - when looking back at uni work, it seem to be much more trivial from a problem solving point of view which I found to be true and I found key to uni work to actually be your ability to prove though how you talk about something that you comprehensively understand the basics.After completing uni I then returned full time to Adfero purely in the developer role which is where I've now been for almost a year and have now also taken on the title of "Information Systems Architect" where I'm working on some of the more high level design problems within the products.What I'm wanting to share on this blog is some of the interesting things I've learnt myself over the last year, the things they don't teach you in uni and pretty much anything else I find interesting! My personal favorite areas are text indexing, search and particularly good software engineering design - good design combined with good code makes the first step towards a well-written, maintainable piece of software.Hopefully I'll also be able to share a few of the products I've worked on, the mistake I've made and the software problems I've inherited from previous developers and had to heavily re-factor.

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• Update usb Driver

  - by Enrico Caponi

  i just now start to use Xubuntu, and i install Xubuntu on my second laptop i had in my garage, just for put back in use. On the ASUS xubuntu work really perfect but now after i put on my old laptop i have some little proble. My Laptop old is a Fujitsu Siemens AMILO L7310GW, i explain my problem: The installation works fine, everything is quite good but there are few little problem i have a know idea, how I can fix them... so USB: i have a optical mouse usb and works quite strage, when i tip on terminal "lsusb" the system recognized fine my mouse but the strange thing is the mouse it move like jump around the desktop. what i had done: - update the usbdrive - change mouse - tried mouse on different pc and on both they work fine another problem i don't know where came from: when i take off my mouse, and try to put back doesn't work at all, if i want back i have to restart the OS. and no usb pen or other ar working so for that i think is usb problem. i can tell before Xubuntu whit winXP the usb work fine, but i don't want windows anymore... So i tried almost everything you can find on the net, maybe i have done something wrong so please help me. I tried also to install the new version 12.04, but i came back for the 11.10.

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• Java SE 8 (with JavaFX) Developer Preview Release for ARM

  - by Roger Brinkley

  In an effort to get ARM developers testing Java SE 8 before the scheduled release later this year a Java SE 8 Developer Preview Release for ARM has been made available. This release has been tested on the Raspberry PI but should work on other ARM platforms. In addition to the new Java SE features, this release provides specific support of hard float GPU on the Raspberry PI. The support for hard float GPU has been anticipated by a number of developers. Additionally, this release includes support of an optimized JavaFX. Specific configurations of JDK 8 on ARM are defined below: Java FX is supported on ARM architecture v6/7 (hard float) Supported platforms without Java FX: ARM architecture v6/7 (hard float) ARM architecture v7 (VFP, little endian) ARM architecture v5 (soft float, little endian) Linux x86 The download page includes setup instructions for a Raspberry PI device as well as demos and samples. Developers are also encouraged to try their own applications as well and to share their stories via the JavaFX or Project Feedback Forums.  If you've got a Raspberry PI or other ARM devices it's time to get started with Java SE 8 Developer Preview release.

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• two-part dice pool mechanic

  - by bythenumbers

  I'm working on a dice mechanic/resolution system based off of the Ghost/Echo (hereafter shortened to G/E) tabletop RPG. Specifically, since G/E can be a little harsh with dealing out consequences and failure, I was hoping to soften the system and add a little more player control, as well as offer the chance for players to evolve their characters into something unique, right from creation. So, here's the mechanic: Players roll 2d12 against the two statistics for their character (each is a number from 2-11, and may be rolled above or below depending on the nature of the action attempted, rolling your stat exactly always fails). Depending on the success for that roll, they add dice to the pool rolled for a modified G/E style action. The acting player gets two dice anyhow, and I am debating offering a bonus die for each success, or a single bonus die for succeeding on both of the statistic-compared rolls. One the size of the dice pool is set, the entire pool is rolled, and the players are allowed to assign rolled dice to a goal and a danger. Assigned results are judged as follows: 1-4 means the attempted goal fails, or the danger comes true. 5-8 is a partial success at the goal, or partially avoiding the danger. 9-12 means the goal is achieved, or the danger avoided. My concerns are twofold: Firstly, that the two-stage action is too complicated, with two rolls to judge separately before anything can happen. Secondly, that the statistics involved go too far in softening the game. I've run some basic simulations, and the approximate statistics follow: 2 dice (up to) 3 dice (up to) 4 dice failure ~33% ~25% ~20% partial ~33% ~35% ~35% success ~33% ~40% ~45% I'd appreciate any advice that addresses my concerns or offers to refine my simulation (right now the first roll is statistically modeled as sign(1d12-1d12), where 0 is a success).

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• How to deal with a valuable person going in all directions?

  - by JVerstry

  I am working with someone producing user content to be included in a software application. He is not a coder, but rather an expert in his field, sharing the knowledge. His contribution, taken piece by piece is great, but he goes in all directions and has issues producing work sequentially. He works on 25 pieces of content at the same time, and as soon as he reads something 'interesting', he wants to rewrite some of his stuff to improve the quality of it. He does not converge naturally. He collects tons of informations, produces some valuable stuff, but in a completely unstructured way. We addressed this issue with him some time ago and in order to try to solve it, we created a document with the 100 items he had to fill. Problem is, it does not seem to work very well. How to deal with those people and collect information? I was thinking about a new technique: ask him to send his bits, out of order, little by little, as soon as they are ready, and keep a list of what remains to be done, and show him that list to give him direction. This situation is stressing the hell out of me. If his production was not good, I would not be trying so hard to make this work. If you have experience to share, it is welcome.

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• Geekswithblogs.net | Screen Resolutions of our Readers

  - by Jeff Julian

  Yesterday I talked about the Browsers we see being used by our readers driven off of our Google Analytics traffic and today I want to share with you the Screen Resolutions we see.  As a web developer most of my life, it is hard to decide how large you should build your application because typically you have a couple huge high resolution monitors on your desk, but you typical end user is thought to have 1024x768.  With HTML5/CSS3 out, it is a little better coming up with a design that will scale to all resolutions, but it is still nice to know the numbers when it comes to how much real estate do I have on my clients. If you look at these numbers for Geekswithblogs.net, we have a lot of high resolution monitors from users that visit the site.  After a little more investigation of the number you will notice we do not have as much height available as we do width.  If the primary goal of a site is to deliver as much data in the viewable area without scrolling, this becomes a challenge when most of our pages have long pieces of formatted data.  So our challenge is to build skins that use up more of the sides of the content toward the top on larger resolution browsers and then entice the reader to scroll to get the goodies embedded in the content of the posts.  Going to be an interesting battle for sure, but we really need more skin offerings on the site. Technorati Tags: Resolution Statistics,Geekswithblogs.net

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• Designing and refactoring of payment logic

  - by jokklan

  Im currently working on an application that helps users to coordinate dinner clubs and all related accounting. (A dinner club is where people in a group, take turns to cook for the rest and then you pay a small amount to participate. This is pretty normal in dorms and colleges where im from). However there is some different models that all have a price and the accounting aspect is therefore a little spread. We both have DinnerClub, ShoppingItem and are about to implement the third Payment when users pay their debts (or get refunded for expenses). Each of these have a "price" attribute and a users expense (that he or she needs refunded) is calculated by the total of these "prices" minus what other users have bought and he or she have used/participated in. My question is then if someone have some hints to refactor this bring all this behavior together in one place? For now have i thought about a Transaction class that are responsible for this behaviour, but I'm a little worried about the performance impact on having to query for another polymorphic record each time i want to show the price on dinner clubs and shopping items (i have a standard index page with a list for both so it's a lot of extra records being queried)...

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