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• How can I calculate a vertex normal for a hard edge?

  - by K.G.

  Here is a picture of a lovely polygon: Circled is a vertex, and numbered are its adjacent faces. I have calculated the normals of those faces as such (not yet normalized, 0-indexed): Vertex 1 normal 0: 0.000000 0.000000 -0.250000 Vertex 1 normal 1: 0.000000 0.000000 -0.250000 Vertex 1 normal 2: -0.250000 0.000000 0.000000 Vertex 1 normal 3: -0.250000 0.000000 0.000000 Vertex 1 normal 4: 0.250000 0.000000 0.000000 What I'm wondering is, how can I determine, taken as given that I want this vertex to represent a hard edge, whether its normal should be the normal of 1/2 or 3/4? My plan after I glanced at the sketch I used to put this together was "Ha! I'll just use whichever two faces have the same normal!" and now I see that there are two sets of two faces for which this is true. Is there a rule I can apply based on the face winding, angle of the adjacent edges, moon phase, coin flip, to consistently choose a normal direction for this box? For the record, all of the other polygons I plan to use will have their normals dictated in Maya, but after encountering this problem, it made me really curious.

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• Representing heightmaps, on disk and when drawing

  - by gardian06

  This is a conglomeration question when answering please specify which part you are addressing. I am looking at creating a maze type game that utilizes elevation. I have a few features I would like to have, but am unsure as to some of the implementation. I have done work doing fileIO maze generation (using a key to read the file, and then generate the level based on that file), but I am unsure how to think about this with elevation in the mix. I think height maps might be a good approach, but don't know how to represent them effectively. for a height map which is more beneficial XML(containing h[u,v] data and key definition), CSV (item1 is key reference, item2 is elevation), or another approach that I have not thought of yet? When it comes to placing the elevation values themselves what kind of deltah values are appropriate to have it noticeable at about a 60degree angle while not really effecting gravity driven physics (assuming some effect while moving up/down hill)? I am thinking of maybe going to procedural generation at some point, but am wondering if it is practical to have a procedurally generated grid (wall squares possibly same dimensions as the open space squares), or if designing to a thin wall open spaces is better? this decision will effect the amount of work need on the graphics end for uniform vs. irregular walls. EDIT: Game will be a elevation maze shooter. Levels/maps will be mazes with elevation the player has to negotiate. Elevations will have effects on "combat" vision, and movement.

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• No Worms Here: Early Bird Registration Begins for Oracle OpenWorld

  - by Oracle OpenWorld Blog Team

  Save US$500 with your Early Bird registration By Karen Shamban Early Birds for Oracle OpenWorld won’t catch any worms, but they will catch great savings: $US500! If you register now, those savings can be yours. If you're thinking about attending and wondering what’s happening as the preparation for OpenWorld continues, here’s a quick rundown: •    Review teams are selecting the presenters and topics that will provide attendees with superior technical session content •    Knowledgeable partners and sponsors are being engaged•    In-depth demos and labs are being developed•    Extraordinary experiences are being created•    Fantastic networking events are in the works Think you’d like to attend OpenWorld but concerned about time and budget being tight? If that’s the case, check out the Discover pass. It gives you access to keynotes, designated sessions, exhibition halls, the Oracle DEMOgrounds, and more. All for hundreds of dollars less than a full registration package. Want to be there? Learn more about registration options for Oracle OpenWorld. And remember, if you're going to register or have already, book your hotel room now. The best rooms go quickly and are gone before you know it. Have an Oracle OpenWorld topic you’d like to see covered in this blog? Comments welcome!   

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• Procedural world generation oriented on gameplay features

  - by Richard Fabian

  In large procedural landscape games, the land seems dull, but that's probably because the real world is largely dull, with only limited places where the scenery is dramatic or tactical. Looking at world generation from this point of view, a landscape generator for a game (that is, not for the sake of scenery, but for the sake of gameplay) needs to not follow the rules of landscaping, but instead some rules married to the expectations of the gamer. For example, there could be a choke point / route generator that creates hills ravines, rivers and mountains between cities, rather than the natural way cities arise, scattered on the land based on resources or conditions generated by the mountains and rainfall patterns. Is there any existing work being done like this? Start with cities or population centres and then add in terrain afterwards? The reason I'm asking is that I'd previously pondered taking existing maps from fantasy fiction (my own and others), putting the information into the system as a base point, and then generating a good world to play in from it. This seems covered by existing technology, that is, where the designer puts in all the necessary information such as the city populations, resources, biomes, road networks and rivers, then allows the PCG fill in the gaps. But now I'm wondering if it may be possible to have a content generator generate also the overall design. Generate the cities and population centres, balancing them so that there is a natural seeming need of commerce, then generate the positions and connectivity, then from the type of city produce the list of necessary resources that must be nearby, and only then, maybe given some rules on how to make the journey between cities both believable and interesting, generate the final content including the roads, the choke points, the bridges and tunnels, ferries and the terrain including the biomes and coastline necessary. If this has been done before, I'd like to know, and would like to know what went wrong, and what went right.

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• I used a 301 Permanent Redirect to a 3rd party site by mistake! Can I stop the redirection?

  - by Dees

  Oh Noes! I've been parking a domain name for a friend/client of mine on my hosting provider (Dreamhost, FWIW) for a while, and they eventually asked me to redirect their domain to a 3rd party website which is currently featuring some relevant promotional content. Once this period ends, we will probably go ahead and set up a proper website for the domain on my hosting account. I used Dreamhost's "redirect" hosting option in their domain configuration panel, not realizing that it would implement a 301 Permanent redirect, or what the implications were. Now it seems that for any client that has visited the site anytime recently, the 301 redirect is still cached/in effect, although I have changed the domain settings back to regular Dreamhost full site hosting. It seems that the only thing that can be done is to wait out the TTL/cache expiration for the redirect. I have no idea how long that might be, so I'm wondering if there is any good way to cache-bust the redirect or otherwise undo its long-term effects. I put a simple html meta refresh in the domain folder to replace the 301 to keep the intended functionality in place, but I'm still not able to access the domain's other content normally, even via FTP, etc. Isn't there anything I can do? Otherwise, how long does it take for a cached redirect to expire? It's gonna be a bummer if it's really permanent.

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• Live chat solutions

  - by Lèse majesté

  What good live chat/live help solutions are available (preferably for use on a site hosted on a LAMP stack and free)? I'm looking for a way to allow our sales and customer service reps to talk directly with visitors to our site. I've looked at phpopenchat, but it looks very unpolished. The only other free live chat app I've come across looked egregious. The aesthetics and UI design alone made me shudder to think what the underlying code might look like. This isn't a critical feature, and it wouldn't be hard to code up myself, so I'm not really looking for commercial software or paid services (unless there's a really compelling reason to use them). I'm just wondering if any other webmasters have come across a satisfactory free/open source solution for providing live customer support on their website. As a side note, live voice chat would also be an option, but it has to be be designed (or customizable) for customer support rather than a public chatroom. Edit: Looking at the responses, it looks like there probably aren't going to be many free solutions for this type of business-oriented chat solution, so feel free to post answers even if they are commercial solutions as long as they're a good value. Also feel free to post any alternate live support solutions (such as the Skype recommendation) that could be in someway integrated with a website. This will give me a good lay of the land for what people are actually using for live support, and I think will be more helpful to others reading this question.

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• What follows after lexical analysis?

  - by madflame991

  I'm working on a toy compiler (for some simple language like PL/0) and I have my lexer up and running. At this point I should start working on building the parse tree, but before I start I was wondering: How much information can one gather from just the string of tokens? Here's what I gathered so far: One can already do syntax highlighting having only the list of tokens. Numbers and operators get coloured accordingly and keywords also. Autoformatting (indenting) should also be possible. How? Specify for each token type how many white spaces or new line characters should follow it. Also when you print tokens modify an alignment variable (when the code printer reads "{" increment the alignment variable by 1, and decrement by 1 for "}". Whenever it starts printing on a new line the code printer will align according to this alignment variable) In languages without nested subroutines one can get a complete list of subroutines and their signature. How? Just read what follows after the "procedure" or "function" keyword until you hit the first ")" (this should work fine in a Pascal language with no nested subroutines) In languages like Pascal you can even determine local variables and their types, as they are declared in a special place (ok, you can't handle initialization as well, but you can parse sequences like: "var a, b, c: integer") Detection of recursive functions may also be possible, or even a graph representation of which subroutine calls who. If one can identify the body of a function then one can also search if there are any mentions of other function's names. Gathering statistics about the code, like number of lines, instructions, subroutines EDIT: I clarified why I think some processes are possible. As I read comments and responses I realise that the answer depends very much on the language that I'm parsing.

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• The Iron Bird Approach

  - by David Paquette

  It turns out that designing software is not so different than designing commercial aircraft.  I just finished watching a video that talked about the approach that Bombardier is taking in designing the new C Series aircraft.  I was struck by the similarities to agile approaches to software design.  In the video, Bombardier describes how they are using an Iron Bird to work through a number of design questions in advance of ever having a version of the aircraft that can ever be flown.  The Iron Bird is a life size replica of the plane.  Based on the name, I would assume the plane is built in a very heavy material that could never fly.  Using this replica, Bombardier is able to valid certain assumptions such as the length of each wire in the electric system.  They are also able to confirm that some parts are working properly (like the rudders).  They even go as far as to have a complete replica of the cockpit.  This allows Bombardier to put pilots in the cockpit to run through simulated take-off and landing sequences. The basic tenant of the approach seems to be Validate your design early with working prototypes Get feedback from users early, well in advance of finishing the end product   In software development, we tend to think of ourselves as special.  I often tell people that it is difficult to draw comparisons to building items in the physical world (“Building software is nothing like building a sky scraper”).  After watching this video, I am wondering if designing/building software is actually a lot like designing/building commercial aircraft.   Watch the video here (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/video/video-selling-the-c-series/article4400616/)

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• Grading an algorithm: Readability vs. Compactness

  - by amiregelz

  Consider the following question in a test \ interview: Implement the strcpy() function in C: void strcpy(char *destination, char *source); The strcpy function copies the C string pointed by source into the array pointed by destination, including the terminating null character. Assume that the size of the array pointed by destination is long enough to contain the same C string as source, and does not overlap in memory with source. Say you were the tester, how would you grade the following answers to this question? 1) void strcpy(char *destination, char *source) { while (*source != '\0') { *destination = *source; source++; destionation++; } *destionation = *source; } 2) void strcpy(char *destination, char *source) { while (*(destination++) = *(source++)) ; } The first implementation is straightforward - it is readable and programmer-friendly. The second implementation is shorter (one line of code) but less programmer-friendly; it's not so easy to understand the way this code is working, and if you're not familiar with the priorities in this code then it's a problem. I'm wondering if the first answer would show more complexity and more advanced thinking, in the tester's eyes, even though both algorithms behave the same, and although code readability is considered to be more important than code compactness. It seems to me that since making an algorithm this compact is more difficult to implement, it will show a higher level of thinking as an answer in a test. However, it is also possible that a tester would consider the first answer not good because it's not readable. I would also like to mention that this is not specific to this example, but general for code readability vs. compactness when implementing an algorithm, specifically in tests \ interviews.

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• Web hosting providers for businesses (with offsite backups, disaster recovery options, etc.) [closed]

  - by Harry Muscle

  Possible Duplicate: How to find web hosting that meets my requirements? I'm wondering if anyone can point me in the direction of a couple of web hosting providers that are geared towards businesses. By this I mean providers that make it easy to create daily off site backups, are aware that websites require disaster recovery options and have these in place or are able to assist with them, etc. We currently have about a dozen sites with various providers, however, I've been asked to consolidate all of these into one provider and create a full disaster recovery plan. Unfortunately it seems like most providers are geared towards average users that don't require all these extra bells and whistles that businesses need. For example, HostGator, which is a very popular and well reviewed provider, doesn't even allow you to schedule full backups, they have to be manually requested via cPanel and then downloaded once available. If anyone can point out a couple companies that might be able to help with these sorts of things that would be much appreciated. Thanks, Harry P.S. I should also add that we are hoping to stay away from having to manage our own server, we're hoping for a fully managed solution like what HostGator would offer for example.

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• I'm hoping to start an online supermarket and needs advice on open source shopping cart software and applications..

  - by Betterman Simidi

  I have been researching on both open source software and off-the-shelf software for an online supermarket project in Africa. I have now narrowed by search to X-cart and the PHP based PrestaShop shopping carts. My plan is to acquire an open source shopping cart either by purchasing or as a free open source cart and hire a local developer to customize it to our local needs. I have been doing the demo for x-cart for three weeks now and had thought it might work best for us but after going through the 600 page manual and I'm concerned with how far it can be localized. Yesterday i was looking at the possible Prestashop free open source cart and i seem to like the back-end. Didn't like the back-end for Magento much but from reviews conducted by third-parties they seem to recommend it. I'm now wondering whether i should have a developer start the whole project from scratch, or use an open source software such us PrestaShop or get x-cart which can then be customized. Note that my store will have thousands of products and services including groceries and so i want something that can handle upto 500,000 products and over. Kindly advice. 93276

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• Sprites, Primitives and logic entity as structs

  - by Jeffrey

  I'm wondering would it be considered acceptable: The window class is responsible for drawing data, so it will have a method: Window::draw(const Sprite&); Window::draw(const Rect&); Window::draw(const Triangle&); Window::draw(const Circle&); and all those primitives + sprites would be just public struct. For example Sprite: struct Sprite { float x, y; // center float origin_x, origin_y; float width, height; float rotation; float scaling; GLuint texture; Sprite(float w, float h); Sprite(float w, float h, float a, float b); void useTexture(std::string file); void setOrigin(float a, float b); void move(float a, float b); // relative move void moveTo(float a, float b); // absolute move void rotate(float a); // relative rotation void rotateTo(float a); // absolute rotation void rotationReset(); void scale(float a); // relative scaling void scaleTo(float a); // absolute scaling void scaleReset(); }; So instead of having each primitive to call their draw() function, which is a little bit off topic for their object, I let the Window class handle all the OpenGL stuff and manipulate them as simple objects that will be drawn later on. Is this pattern used? Does it have any cons against it's primitives-draw-themself pattern? Are there any other related patterns?

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• Glimpse: Open Source Web Development

  - by Elizabeth Ayer

  We’re delighted to announce that Red Gate will be backing Glimpse! For those of you who aren’t familiar with the project, Glimpse is an open source tool which does for the server what Firebug does for the client. It’s been in beta for the last year, and we’re very excited to give Glimpse the support and dedicated effort needed to take it to a v1 and beyond. Glimpse’s founders (Nik Molnar and Anthony van der Hoorn) have joined Red Gate, and they’re just as excited as we are about the opportunities that active development of Glimpse will bring. They will continue to write code, support the community and drive the project forward (as they’ve done since its inception). With full-time attention on growing Glimpse and its community, users and developers can expect the project to accelerate, with frequent releases of new functionality. Red Gate is excited about its first major involvement with open source. You may well be wondering, though, why Red Gate is doing this. Glimpse dovetails beautifully with Red Gate’s .NET tools, which makes Glimpse an ideal framework for plugging in advanced, paid-for functionality (like performance analysis) the way web developers want to see it. As a means to this end, we will contribute to the Glimpse open source project in order to broaden its adoption and delight web developers. Since bringing in .NET Reflector in 2008, we’ve learnt sharp lessons from the community about the right and wrong ways to engage with developers, not to mention the enduring value of free. Glimpse further shows what the .NET community can achieve through open source collaboration, and we’re looking forward to working with the Glimpse community to make something enduring and awesome. Nik and Anthony, themselves passionate advocates of community-driven software, will continue to control the Glimpse project, steering it to best meet the needs of its users and contributors. If you have any questions or queries about Glimpse, or Red Gate’s involvement in the project, please tweet with the #glimpse hashtag, contact us at Red Gate on [email protected], or post to the Glimpse Development Forum on Google Groups.

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• Kids and programming: ScratchKara

  - by Mike Pagel

  Ever now and then I kept wondering how to share with my kids the excitement of creating something with your computer. Of course, today this is a bit more difficult, as they have seen 3D animation games and well-edited websites. I guess that's why they weren't all that hyped when I found my first computer model at our local recycling facilities (an 8-bit Laser VZ-200 with rubber keys). When I finally got it up and running with an old analog TV set they finally asked whether we could play soccer on it. Needless to say that my showing them how it remembers some BASIC commands and lists and executes them did not make any impression. So the question is for real: How do you get today's kids excited about programming? And just recently I looked again for environments that allow even young kids (mine are 7 and 9 years old now) to do something and have fun. Obviously any real, text-oriented programming language wouldn't work well. To cut it short: Something really nice was built by University of Oldenburg: ScratchKara. It is the perfect mixture of Kara, a simulation of a little ladybug and Scratch, an authoring environment from MIT. ScratchKara allows kids to initially simply explore how the bug moves and turns by pressing the action buttons, then move towards sequencing commands through drag & drop, and eventually end up building algorithms with procedures and functions. Even through it is built for kids and beginners, the environment comes with debugging and refactoring, which I found more than amazing. My kids love it and I have to admit I keep thinking about how to solve a bit more advanced problems with this language, which does not allow you to store any state information (other than your call stack). Yes, I am hooked, too... Once the language is understood you can then move to one of the original Kara versions, where you can define the bug's behavior through finite statemachines, Turing tables, Java and other textual languages. And from there, anything is possible.

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• Algorithm for optimal control on space ship using accelerometer input data

  - by mm24

  Does someone have a good algorithm for controlling a space ship in a vertical shooter game using acceleration data? I have done a simple algorithm, but works very badly. I save an initial acceleration value (used to calibrate the movement according to the user's initial position) and I do subtract it from the current acceleration so I get a "calibrated" value. The problem is that basing the movement solely on relative acceleration has an effect of loss of sensitivity: certain movements are independent from the initial position. Would anyone be able to share a a better solution? I am wondering if I should use/integrate also inputs from gyroscope hardware. Here is my sample of code for a Cocos2d iOS game: - (void) accelerometer:(UIAccelerometer *)accelerometer didAccelerate:(UIAcceleration *)acceleration { if (calibrationLayer.visible){ [self evaluateCalibration:acceleration]; initialAccelleration=acceleration; return; } if([self evaluatePause]){ return; } ShooterScene * shooterScene = (ShooterScene *) [self parent]; ShipEntity *playerSprite = [shooterScene playerShip]; float accellerationtSensitivity = 0.5f; UIAccelerationValue xAccelleration = acceleration.x - initialAccelleration.x; UIAccelerationValue yAccelleration = acceleration.y - initialAccelleration.y; if(xAccelleration > 0.05 || xAccelleration < -0.05) { [playerSprite setPosition:CGPointMake(playerSprite.position.x + xAccelleration * 80, playerSprite.position.y + yAccelleration * 80)]; } else if(yAccelleration > 0.05 || yAccelleration < -0.05) { [playerSprite setPosition:CGPointMake(playerSprite.position.x + xAccelleration * 80, playerSprite.position.y + yAccelleration * 80)]; } }

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• What types of programming contest problems are there?

  - by Alex

  Basically, I want to make a great reference for use with programming contests that would have all of the algorithms that I can put together that I would need during a contest as well as sample useage for the code. I'm planning on making this into a sort of book that I could print off and take with me to competitions. I would like to do this rather than simply bringing other books (such as Algorithms books) because I think that I will learn a lot more by going over all of the algorithms myself as well as I would know exactly what I have in the book, making it more efficient to have and use. So, I've been doing research to determine what types of programming problems and algorithms are common on contests, and the only thing I can really find is this (which I have seen referenced a few times): Hal Burch conducted an analysis over spring break of 1999 and made an amazing discovery: there are only 16 types of programming contest problems! Furthermore, the top several comprise almost 80% of the problems seen at the IOI. Here they are: Dynamic Programming Greedy Complete Search Flood Fill Shortest Path Recursive Search Techniques Minimum Spanning Tree Knapsack Computational Geometry Network Flow Eulerian Path Two-Dimensional Convex Hull BigNums Heuristic Search Approximate Search Ad Hoc Problems The most challenging problems are Combination Problems which involve a loop (combinations, subsets, etc.) around one of the above algorithms - or even a loop of one algorithm with another inside it. These seem extraordinarily tricky to get right, even though conceptually they are ``obvious''. Now that's good and all, but that study was conducted in 1999, which was 13 years ago! One thing I know is that there are no BigNums problems any more (as Java has a BigInteger class, they have stopped making those problems). So, I'm wondering if anyone knows of any more recent studies of the types of problems that may be seen in a programming contest? Or what the most helpful algorithms on contests would be?

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• How to handle URLs with diacritic characters

  - by user359650

  I am wondering how to handle URLs which correspond to strings containing diacritic (á, u, ´...). I believe what we're seeing mostly are URLs where diacritic characters where converted to their closest ASCII equivalent, for instance Rånades på Skyttis i Ö-vik converted to ranades-pa-skyttis-i-o-vik. However depending on the corresponding language, such conversion might be incorrect. For instance in German, ü should be converted to ue and not just u, as seen with the below URL representing the Bayern München string as bayern-muenchen: http://www.bundesliga.de/en/liga/clubs/fc-bayern-muenchen/index.php However what I've also noticed, is that browsers can render non-ASCII characters when they are percent-encoded in the URL, which is the approach Wikipedia has chosen, for instance http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/FC_Bayern_M%C3%BCnchen which is rendered as: Therefore I'm considering the following approach for creating URL slugs: -(1) convert strings while replacing non-ASCII characters to their recommended ASCII representation: Bayern München - bayern-muenchen -(2) also convert strings to percent encoding: Bayern München - bayern_m%C3%BCnchen -create a 301 redirect from version (1) to version (2) Version (1) URLs could be used for marketing purposes (e.g. mywebsite.com/bayern-muenchen) but the URLs that would end being displayed in the browser bar would be version (2) URLs (e.g. mywebsite.com/bayern-münchen). Can you foresee particular problems with this approach? (Wikipedia is not doing it and I wonder why, apart from the fact that they don't need to market their URLs)

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• Fixing Windows7 Bootmgr

  - by Ashfame

  I made my laptop Dell XPS 15z dual boot with Ubuntu last year, and something went wrong & BOOTMGR of my windows got fried. I couldn't fix it that time. And I kept using Ubuntu. I don't even remember whether I installed directly via a live usb or used wubi, sorry. I installed 11.10 at that point of time, but right now I am on 12.10. Today, I got to know about the Boot repair tool, so I was wondering with this tool may be I can figure out what's exactly wrong with my setup. This is my Boot info - http://paste.ubuntu.com/1343575/ If I select the Win7 entry on GRUB2, I get the error BOOTMGR is missing. Press Ctrl-Alt-Del. Now the thing is I have read numerous links on how this could be fixed, but I don't feel comfortable without knowing what I am doing. So unless I am sure what a certain tool would do, I would prefer fixing it by hand (manually editing files). So reading from my boot info file, can anyone explain it to me what's messed up wrong here and what could fix it? I certainly can't afford to have my ubuntu install unbootable right now, but looking into this issue is bothering me too much. Help appreciated! I have Win7 DVD & Ubuntu live USBs with me, I am just looking for a sure shot way of fixing Win7 without any harm to my existing Ubuntu install.

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• Web Hosting Checklist

  - by Chris

  Hello, I am a web developer that is starting to look into hosting his own website. I would like to showcase my programming skills (PHP, MySQl, C#, Wordpress). My knowledge of languages I am OK with but the actually hosting site is where my knowledge starts to get a little shaky. I know the basics (bandwidth, sub-domains, re-write rules) but I would love your input, to help me formulate a check list of certain web-hosting services that I should be on the look-out for. Also I was wondering if there were any reliable hosting providers who give you the option to host both c# code-behinds and PHP code. As I would like to have two versions of my site, one in C# and one in PHP the hope is that if I need to look for another job this website will help me show possible employers my server side knowledge. I hope this is enough info, I did some researching online but found a bunch of unless articles and I've always have had luck on the StackExchange sites. So hopefully you, can help me. Thanks alot.

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• Problems with Ubuntu and AMD A10-4655M APU

  - by Robert Hanks

  I have a new HP Sleekbook 6z with AMD A10-4655M APU. I tried installing Ubuntu with wubi--the first attempt ended up with a 'AMD unsupported hardware' watermark that I wasn't able to remove (the appeared when I tried to update the drivers as Ubuntu suggested) On the second attempted install Ubuntu installed (I stayed away from the suggested drivers) but the performance was extremely poor----as in Windows Vista poor. I am not sure what the solution is--if I need to wait until there is a kernel update with Ubuntu or if there are other solutions--I realise this is a new APU for the market. I would love to have Ubuntu 12.04 up and running--Windows 7 does very well with this new processor so Ubuntu should, well, be lightening speed. The trial on the Sleekbook with Ubuntu 12.10 Alpha 2 release was a complete failure. I created a bootable USB. By using either the 'Try Ubuntu' or 'Install Ubuntu' options resulted in the usual purple Ubuntu splash screen, followed by nothing...as in a black screen without any hint of life. Interestingly one can hear the Ubuntu intro sound. In case you are wondering, this same USB was trialed subsequently on another computer with and Intel Atom Processor. Worked flawlessly. Lastly the second trial on the Sleekbook resulted in the same results as the first paragraph. Perhaps 12.10 Beta will overcome this issue, or the finalised 12.10 release in October. I don't have the expertise to know what the cause of the behaviour is-the issue could be something else entirely. Sadly, the Windows 7 performance is very good with this processor-very similar and in some instances better to the 2nd generation Intel i5 based computer I use at my workplace. Whatever the cause is for the performance with Ubuntu 12.04 or 12.10 Alpha 2, the situation doesn't bode well for Ubuntu. Ubuntu aside, the HP Sleekbook is a good performer for the price. I am certain once the Ubuntu issue is worked on and solutions arise, the Ubuntu performance will probably be better than ever.

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• Is there ever a reason to do all an object's work in a constructor?

  - by Kane

  Let me preface this by saying this is not my code nor my coworkers' code. Years ago when our company was smaller, we had some projects we needed done that we did not have the capacity for, so they were outsourced. Now, I have nothing against outsourcing or contractors in general, but the codebase they produced is a mass of WTFs. That being said, it does (mostly) work, so I suppose it's in the top 10% of outsourced projects I've seen. As our company has grown, we've tried to take more of our development in house. This particular project landed in my lap so I've been going over it, cleaning it up, adding tests, etc etc. There's one pattern I see repeated a lot and it seems so mindblowingly awful that I wondered if maybe there is a reason and I just don't see it. The pattern is an object with no public methods or members, just a public constructor that does all the work of the object. For example, (the code is in Java, if that matters, but I hope this to be a more general question): public class Foo { private int bar; private String baz; public Foo(File f) { execute(f); } private void execute(File f) { // FTP the file to some hardcoded location, // or parse the file and commit to the database, or whatever } } If you're wondering, this type of code is often called in the following manner: for(File f : someListOfFiles) { new Foo(f); } Now, I was taught long ago that instantiated objects in a loop is generally a bad idea, and that constructors should do a minimum of work. Looking at this code it looks like it would be better to drop the constructor and make execute a public static method. I did ask the contractor why it was done this way, and the response I got was "We can change it if you want". Which was not really helpful. Anyway, is there ever a reason to do something like this, in any programming language, or is this just another submission to the Daily WTF?

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• Doing a passable 4X game AI

  - by Extrakun

  I am coding a rather "simple" 4X game (if a 4X game can be simple). It's indie in scope, and I am wondering if there's anyway to come up with a passable AI without having me spending months coding on it. The game has three major decision making portions; spending of production points, spending of movement points and spending of tech points (basically there are 3 different 'currency', currency unspent at end of turn is not saved) Spend Production Points Upgrade a planet (increase its tech and production) Build ships (3 types) Move ships from planets to planets (costing Movement Points) Move to attack Move to fortify Research Tech (can partially research a tech i.e, as in Master of Orion) The plan for me right now is a brute force approach. There are basically 4 broad options for the player - Upgrade planet(s) to its his production and tech output Conquer as many planets as possible Secure as many planets as possible Get to a certain tech as soon as possible For each decision, I will iterate through the possible options and come up with a score; and then the AI will choose the decision with the highest score. Right now I have no idea how to 'mix decisions'. That is, for example, the AI wishes to upgrade and conquer planets at the same time. I suppose I can have another logic which do a brute force optimization on a combination of those 4 decisions.... At least, that's my plan if I can't think of anything better. Is there any faster way to make a passable AI? I don't need a very good one, to rival Deep Blue or such, just something that has the illusion of intelligence. This is my first time doing an AI on this scale, so I dare not try something too grand too. So far I have experiences with FSM, DFS, BFS and A*

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• Most effective work habit for coding? [on hold]

  - by Cris

  Working on a big solo project (~15,000 LOC), I am encountering the following phenomenon: I seem to work best when I program in short bursts of 10-15 minutes. Right now I am working on a section which is a complete first time for me architecturally and if I have any architectural issues that emerge when doing the implementation, I seem to be able to best serve these by taking a total break. Then, later, sketching out the ideas on some paper. And when I feel I have sufficient clarity, then going back to code. This iterates until that architectural issue for that section is resolved. This seems quite counter intuitive: that I can progress more quickly by coding less, and taking more breaks. I am nearing the end of the sections which are "first times" for me, and about to dive into stuff which I am much more familiar and am wondering if this counter intuitive efficiency will continue. So my question is: even for regular coding of sections one is familiar with, which don't require constant re-clarification of the best architecture, is more progress to be attained by taking more breaks and coding in bursts?

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• Ranking drop after using reverse proxy for blog subdirectory and robots.txt for old blog subdomain

  - by user40387

  We have a 3Dcart store and a WordPress blog hosted on a separate server. Originally, we had a CNAME set up to point the blog to http://blog.example.com/. However, in our attempt to boost link-based and traffic-based authority on the main site, we've opted to do a reverse proxy to http://www.example.com/blog/. It’s been about two months since we finished the reverse proxy migration. It appears that everything is technically working as intended, including some robots and sitemap changes; the new URLs are even generating some traffic, as indicated on Google Analytics. While Google has been indexing the new URL locations, they’re ranking very poorly, even for non-competitive, long-tail keywords. Meanwhile, the old subdomain URLs are still ranking mostly as well as they used to (even though they aren’t showing meta titles and descriptions due to being blocked by robots.txt). Our working theory is that Google has an old index of the subdomain URLs, and is considering the new URLs to be duplicate content, since it’s being told not to crawl the subdomain and therefore can’t see the rel canonicals we have in place. To resolve this, we’ve updated the subdomain’s robot.txt to no longer block crawling and indexing. Theoretically, seeing the canonical tag on the subdomain pages will resolve any perceived duplicate content issues. In the meantime, we were wondering if anyone would have any other ideas. We are very concerned that we’ll be losing valuable traffic, as we’re entering our on season at the moment.

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• How should an API use http basic authentication

  - by user1626384

  When an API requires that a client authenticates to it, i've seen two different scenarios used and I am wondering which case I should use for my situation. Example 1. An API is offered by a company to allow third parties to authenticate with a token and secret using HTTP Basic. Example 2. An API accepts a username and password via HTTP Basic to authenticate an end user. Generally they get a token back for future requests. My Setup: I will have an JSON API that I use as my backend for a mobile and web app. It seems like good practice for both the mobile and web app to send along a token and secret so only these two apps can access the API blocking any other third party. But the mobile and web app allow users to login and submit posts, view their data, etc. So I would want them to login via HTTP Basic as well on each request. Do I somehow use a combination of both these methods or only send the end user credentials (username and token) on each request? If I only send the end user credentials, do I store them in a cookie on the client?

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