big blue - Page 274 - Developer IT

How best to modernize the 2002-era J2EE app?

- by user331465

I have this friend.... I have this friend who works on a java ee application (j2ee) application started in the early 2000's. Currently they add a feature here and there, but have a large codebase. Over the years the team has shrunk by 70%. [Yes, the "i have this friend is". It's me, attempting to humorously inject teenage high-school counselor shame into the mix] Java, Vintage 2002 The application uses EJB 2.1, struts 1.x, DAO's etc with straight jdbc calls (mixture of stored procedures and prepared statements). No ORM. For caching they use a mixture of OpenSymphony OSCache and a home-grown cache layer. Over the last few years, they have spent effort to modernize the UI using ajax techniques and libraries. This largely involves javascript libaries (jquery, yui, etc). Client Side On the client side, the lack of upgrade path from struts1 to struts2 discouraged them from migrating to struts2. Other web frameworks became popular (wicket, spring , jsf). Struts2 was not the "clear winner". Migrating all the existing UI from Struts1 to Struts2/wicket/etc did not seem to present much marginal benefit at a very high cost. They did not want to have a patchwork of technologies-du-jour (subsystem X in Struts2, subsystem Y in Wicket, etc.) so developer write new features using Struts 1. Server Side On the server side, they looked into moving to ejb 3, but never had a big impetus. The developers are all comfortable with ejb-jar.xml, EJBHome, EJBRemote, that "ejb 2.1 as is" represented the path of least resistance. One big complaint about the ejb environment: programmers still pretend "ejb server runs in separate jvm than servlet engine". No app server (jboss/weblogic) has ever enforced this separation. The team has never deployed the ejb server on a separate box then the app server. The ear file contains multiple copies of the same jar file; one for the 'web layer' (foo.war/WEB-INF/lib) and one for the server side (foo.ear/). The app server only loads one jar. The duplications makes for ambiguity. Caching As for caching, they use several cache implementations: OpenSymphony cache and a homegrown cache. Jgroups provides clustering support Now What? The question: The team currently has spare cycles to to invest in modernizing the application? Where would the smart investor spend them? The main criteria: 1) productivity gains. Specifically reducing the time to develope new subsystems features and reduced maintenance. 2) performance/scalability. They do not care about fashion or techno-du-jour street cred. What do you all recommend? On the persistence side Switch everything (or new development only) to JPA/JPA2? Straight hibernate? Wait for Java EE 6? On the client/web-framework side: Migrate (some or all) to struts2? wicket? jsf/jsf2? As for caching: terracotta? ehcache? coherence? stick with what they have? how best to take advantage of the huge heap sizes that the 64-bit jvms offer? Thanks in advance.

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How do I learn algorithms?

- by Panthe

Brief History: Just graduated high school, learned a bit of python and C++, have no friends with any helpful computer knowledge at all. Out of anyone i met in my school years I was probably the biggest nerd, but no one really knew. I consider my self to have a vast amount of knowledge on computers and tech then the average person. built/fixed tons of computers, and ability to troubleshoot pretty much any problem I came across. Now that high school is over, Ive really been thinking about my career. Loving, living computers for the past 15 years of my life I decided to take my ability's and try to learn computer programming, why I didn't start earlier I don't know, seems to be big mistake on my part... Doing some research I concluded that Python was the first programming language I should learn, since it was high level and easier to understand then C++ and Java. I also knew that to become good at what I did I needed to know more then just 2 or 3 languages, which didn't seem like a big problem considering once I learned the way Python worked, mainly syntax changed, and the rest would come naturally. I watched a couple of youtube videos, downloaded some book pdf's and snooped around from some tutorials here and there to get the hang of what to do. A two solid weeks had passed of trying to understand the syntax, create small programs that used the basic functions and understanding how it worked, I think i have got the hang of it. It breaks down into what ive been dealing with all this time (although i kinda knew) is that, input,output, loops, functions and other things derived from 0's and 1's storing data and recalling it, ect. (A VERY BASIC IDEA). Ive been able to create small programs, Hangman, file storing, temperature conversion, Caeser Cipher decode/encoding, Fibonacci Sequence and more, which i can create and understand how each work. Being 2 weeks into this, I have learned alot. Nothing at all compared to what i should be lear ning in the years to come if i get a grip on what I'm doing. While doing these programs I wont stop untill I've done doing a practice problem on a book, which embarresing enough will take me a couple hour depending on the complexity of it. I absolutly will not put aside the challenge until its complete, WHICH CAN BE EXTREMELY DRAINING, ive tried most problems without cheating and reached success, which makes me feel extremely proud of my self after completing something after much trial and error. After all this I have met the demon, alogrithm's which seem to be key to effiecent code. I cant seem to rap my head around some of the computer codes people put out there using numbers, and sometimes even basic functions, I have been able to understand them after a while but i know there are alot more complex things to come, considering my self smart, functions that require complex codes, actually hurt my brain. NOTHING EVER IN LIFE HURT MY BRAIN....... not even math classes in highschool, trying to understand some of the stuff people put out there makes me feel like i have a mental disadvantage lol... i still walk forward though, crossing my fingers that the understanding will come with time. Sorry if is this is long i just wish someone takes all these things into consideration when answering my question. even through all these downsides im still pushing through and continuing to try and get good at this, i know reading these tutorials wont make me any good unless i can become creative and make my own, understand other peoples programs, so this leads me to the simple question i could have asked in the beginning..... WHERE IN THE WORLD DO I START ? Ive been trying to find out how to understand some of the open source projects, how i can work with experianced coders to learn from them and help them, but i dont think thats even possible by the way how far people's knowledge is compared to me, i have no freinds who i can learn from, can someone help me and guide me into the right direction.. i have a huge motivation to get good at coding, anything information would be extremely helpful

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Grabbing all <a> tags in a specific div and displaying them

- by Taylor Swyter

So I'v got a small problem with my portfolio site (you can see it at here) When you click on a portfolio piece, a top section opens up to reveal the details (Title, year, role, description) as well as the photos. I'v been able to get each project to replace all the text data, but I can't seem to get the images to load into the thumbnails. I have been able to get the last image i'm looking for in all of the images on the site, but not display each photo for each project. Here's the HTML i'm working with: <section id="details"> <div class="pagewrapper"> <section id="main-img"> <article id="big-img"> <img src="" alt="big-img" /> </article> <article class="small-img-container"> <a href="#"><img src="#" alt="smallimg" class="small-img" /></a> </article> </section> <section id="description"> <h3></h3> <h4></h4> <h5></h5> <p></p> </section> </div> <div class="clear"></div> </section> <section id="portfolio"> <div class="pagewrapper"> <h2 class="sectionTitle">Portfolio</h2> <div class="thumb"> <a class="small" href="#" title="David Lockwood Music" data-year="2010" data-role="Sole Wordpress Developer" data-description="David Lockwood is a musician and an educator based in New Hampshire who came to me needing a website for his musical career. I fully developed his site using Wordpress as a CMS, creating a custom template based on the design by Jeremiah Louf. Jeremiah and I worked together on the website's UX design."><img src="images_original/davidcover.png" alt="thumb" /> <div class="hide"> <a href="images/davidlockwood/homepage.png" ></a> <a href="images/davidlockwood/blog.png"></a> <a href="images/davidlockwood/shows.png"></a> <a href="images/davidlockwood/bio.png"></a> <a href="images/davidlockwood/photos.png"></a> </div> <h3>David Lockwood Music</h3> <div class="clear"></div> </a> </div> and here's the jQuery: $(document).ready(function(){ var proj = {}; $('.thumb a').click(function() { $('#details').slideDown(1000); $('.hide a').each(function() { proj.img = $(this).attr("href"); $('.small-img-container img').attr('src',proj.img); }); alert("the image is " + proj.img);//is it getting the image URLS? proj.title = $(this).attr("title"); proj.year = $(this).attr("data-year"); proj.role = $(this).attr("data-role"); proj.description = $(this).attr("data-description"); $('#description h3').text(proj.title); $('#description h4').text(proj.year); $('#description h5').text(proj.role); $('#description p').text(proj.description); }); }); Anyone have any idea how I grab just the images for the specific project, display them all as thumbnails and then make those thumbnail clickable to see the bigger image? Thanks!

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What language/framework (technology) to use for website (flash games portal)

- by cripox

Hello, I know there are a lot of similar questions on the net, but because I am a newbie in web development I didn't find the solution for my specific problem. I am planing on creating a flash games portal from scratch. It is a big chance that there will be big traffic from the beginning (millions of pageviews). I want to reduce the server costs as much as possible but in the same time to not be tide to an expensive contract as there is a chance that the project will not be as successfully as I want and in that case the money would be very little. The question is : what technology to use? I don't know any web dev technology yet so it doesn't matter what I will learn. My web dev experience is a little php 8 years ago, and from then I programmed in C++ / Java- game and mobile development. I like Java and C syntax and language very much and I tend to dislike dynamic typing or non robust scripting (like php)- but I can get along if these are the best choices. The candidates are now: - Grails (my best for now) Ruby on Rails Cake PHP Other technologies (Google App Engine, Python/Django etc...) I was considering at first using pure C and compiling the web app in the server- just to squeeze more from the servers, but soon I understand that this is overkill. Next my eyes came on Ruby - as there is a lot of buzz for it's easiness of use. Next I discovered Grails and looked at Java because it is said that it is "faster". But I don't know what this "Faster" really means on my needs, so here comes the first question: 1) What will be my biggest consumption on the server, other than bandwidth, for a lot of flash content requests? Is it memory? I heard that Java needs a lot of memory, but is faster. Is it CPU? I am planning to take some daily VPS.NET nodes at first, to see if there is a demand, and if the "spike" is permanent to move to a dedicated server (serverloft.com has some good offers), else to remain with less nodes. I was also considering developing in Google App Engine- cheap or free hosting to use at first - so I can test my assumption- and also very easy to use (no need for sys administration) but the costs became high if used more ( 3 million games played / month .. x mb/ each). And the issue with Google is that it looks me in this technology. My other concern is scalability (not only for traffic/users, but as adding functionality) My plans are to release a functional site in just 4 weeks (just the basics frontend and some quick basic backend - so I can be able to modify some things and add games manually) - but then to raise it and add more things to it. I am planning to take a little different approach than other portals so I need to write it from scratch (a script will not do). 2) Will Grails take much more resources than RoR or Php server wise? I heard that making it on Java stack will be hardware expensive and is overkill if you don't make a bank application. My application will not be very complex (I hope and i will try to) but will have a lot of traffic. I also took in account using CDN for files, but the cheapest CDN found was 5c/GB (vps.net) and the cost per gb on serverloft (http://www.serverloft.com/dedizierte-server/server-details.php?products=4) is only 1.79 cents/GB and comes with the other resources either. I am new to this domain (web). I am learning the ropes and searching on the web for ~half of year but don't have any really practical experience, so I know that I must have some naive thinking and other issues that i don't know from now, so please give me any advice you want regarding anything, not just the specific questions asked. And thank you so much for such great community!

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Program using read() entering into an infinite loop

- by Soham

1oid ReadBinary(char *infile,HXmap* AssetMap) { int fd; size_t bytes_read, bytes_expected = 100000000*sizeof(char); char *data; if ((fd = open(infile,O_RDONLY)) < 0) err(EX_NOINPUT, "%s", infile); if ((data = malloc(bytes_expected)) == NULL) err(EX_OSERR, "data malloc"); bytes_read = read(fd, data, bytes_expected); if (bytes_read != bytes_expected) printf("Read only %d of %d bytes %d\n", \ bytes_read, bytes_expected,EX_DATAERR); /* ... operate on data ... */ printf("\n"); int i=0; int counter=0; char ch=data[0]; char message[512]; Message* newMessage; while(i!=bytes_read) { while(ch!='\n') { message[counter]=ch; i++; counter++; ch =data[i]; } message[counter]='\n'; message[counter+1]='\0'; //--------------------------------------------------- newMessage = (Message*)parser(message); MessageProcess(newMessage,AssetMap); //-------------------------------------------------- //printf("idNUM %e\n",newMessage->idNum); free(newMessage); i++; counter=0; ch =data[i]; } free(data); } Here, I have allocated 100MB of data with malloc, and passed a file big enough(not 500MB) size of 926KB about. When I pass small files, it reads and exits like a charm, but when I pass a big enough file, the program executes till some point after which it just hangs. I suspect it either entered an infinite loop, or there is memory leak. EDIT For better understanding I stripped away all unnecessary function calls, and checked what happens, when given a large file as input. I have attached the modified code void ReadBinary(char *infile,HXmap* AssetMap) { int fd; size_t bytes_read, bytes_expected = 500000000*sizeof(char); char *data; if ((fd = open(infile,O_RDONLY)) < 0) err(EX_NOINPUT, "%s", infile); if ((data = malloc(bytes_expected)) == NULL) err(EX_OSERR, "data malloc"); bytes_read = read(fd, data, bytes_expected); if (bytes_read != bytes_expected) printf("Read only %d of %d bytes %d\n", \ bytes_read, bytes_expected,EX_DATAERR); /* ... operate on data ... */ printf("\n"); int i=0; int counter=0; char ch=data[0]; char message[512]; while(i<=bytes_read) { while(ch!='\n') { message[counter]=ch; i++; counter++; ch =data[i]; } message[counter]='\n'; message[counter+1]='\0'; i++; printf("idNUM \n"); counter=0; ch =data[i]; } free(data); } What looks like is, it prints a whole lot of idNUM's and then poof segmentation fault I think this is an interesting behaviour, and to me it looks like there is some problem with memory FURTHER EDIT I changed back the i!=bytes_read it gives no segmentation fault. When I check for i<=bytes_read it blows past the limits in the innerloop.(courtesy gdb)

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XML transform element appearing in wrong place in document

- by Mike

I am having some problems with an XML transform and need some help. The stylesheet should iterate through all suffix elements and place the contents without the suffix tag next to the last text node within its first ancestor quote-block element (see desired ouput). It works when only a single suffix is present, but not when 2 are present, when 2 are present it places both suffixes next to each other in the last text node of the first quote-block. Any ideas? I have tried limiting the selections to ancestor::quote-block[1] in various places but that doesn't have the desired effect. Source XML <paragraph> <para> <quote-block> <list prefix-rules="specified"> <item prefix="“B42"> <para id="0a84d149-91b7-4012-ac6d-9f4eb8ed6c37">In June 2000, EME and EWS reached an agreement to negotiate towards a direct contract for coal haulage by rail (on a DIY basis), which would replace the previous indirect E2E arrangements that EME had in place with ECSL. An internal EWS e-mail noted: <quote-block> <quote-para>‘We did the deal with Edison Mission yesterday morning for LBT-Fiddlers @ £[…]/tonne as agreed. This rate until 16th September pending a contract.</quote-para> <quote-para><emphasis strength="strong">Enron are now off our hands so far as Edison are concerned. The Enron flows we have left are to British Energy’s station at Eggborough; from Immingham, Redcar and Hull</emphasis>. Also to Enron’s own power station at Wilton – 250,000 tonnes/year. I think we are stuck Enron [sic] on the Eggborough traffic until next April when British Energy will, hopefully take over their own coal procurement. <emphasis strength="strong">But we have got them out of Fiddlers Ferry and Ferrybridge – a big step forward</emphasis>.’</quote-para> <suffix>(Emphasis added.)</suffix> </quote-block> </para> </item> <item prefix="B43"> <para id="d64a5a72-0a02-476f-9a7b-7c07bbc93a8a">This e-mail is evidence of both EWS’s intent and, indeed, its success in stopping ECSL from carrying out indirect supplies to EME, one of the new generating companies.”</para> </item> </list> <suffix>(emphasis in original)</suffix> </quote-block> </para> </paragraph> Stylesheet <xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns="http://xml.sm.com/schema/cases/report" xmlns:sm="http://xml.sm.com/functions" xmlns:saxon="http://saxon.sf.net/" xpath-default-namespace="http://sm.com/schema/cases/report" exclude-result-prefixes="xs sm" version="2.0"> <xsl:output method="xml" indent="no"/> <xsl:template match="/"> <xsl:apply-templates/> </xsl:template> <xsl:template match="*"> <xsl:copy> <xsl:copy-of select="@*"/> <xsl:apply-templates/> </xsl:copy> </xsl:template>  <xsl:template match="*[*:quote-block and descendant::*:suffix]"> <xsl:call-template name="process-quote-block"/> </xsl:template>  <xsl:template match="*[*:quote and descendant::*:suffix]"> <xsl:call-template name="process-quote-block"/> </xsl:template>  <xsl:template name="process-quote-block"> <xsl:variable name="quoteBlockCopy"> <xsl:copy-of select="."/> </xsl:variable> <xsl:apply-templates select="$quoteBlockCopy" mode="append-suffix"> <xsl:with-param name="suffix" select="sm:get-suffix-note(.)"/> <xsl:with-param name="end-node" select="sm:get-last-text-node($quoteBlockCopy)"/> </xsl:apply-templates> </xsl:template>  <xsl:template match="*[*:quote-block and descendant::*:suffix][ancestor::*:quote-block[1]]" mode="create-copy"> <xsl:call-template name="process-quote-block"/> </xsl:template>  <xsl:template match="*[*:quote and descendant::*:suffix]" mode="create-copy"> <xsl:call-template name="process-quote-block"/> </xsl:template>  <xsl:template match="*" mode="append-suffix"> <xsl:param name="suffix"/> <xsl:param name="end-node"/> <xsl:copy> <xsl:copy-of select="@*"/> <xsl:apply-templates mode="append-suffix"> <xsl:with-param name="suffix" select="$suffix"/> <xsl:with-param name="end-node" select="$end-node"/> </xsl:apply-templates> </xsl:copy> </xsl:template>  <xsl:template match="text()[normalize-space() != '']" mode="append-suffix"> <xsl:param name="suffix"/> <xsl:param name="end-node"/> <xsl:choose> <xsl:when test="count(. | $end-node) = 1"> <xsl:value-of select="."/> <xsl:apply-templates select="$suffix"/> </xsl:when> <xsl:otherwise>  <xsl:value-of select="."/> </xsl:otherwise> </xsl:choose> </xsl:template>  <xsl:template match="*:suffix" mode="append-suffix"/> <xsl:function name="sm:get-suffix-note"> <xsl:param name="node"/> <xsl:sequence select="$node/descendant::*:suffix/node()"/> </xsl:function> <xsl:function name="sm:get-last-text-node">  <xsl:param name="node"/> <xsl:sequence select="reverse($node//text()[not(ancestor::*:suffix) and normalize-space() != ''])[1]"/> </xsl:function> </xsl:stylesheet> Current Output XML <paragraph> <para> <quote-block> <list prefix-rules="specified"> <item prefix="“B42"> <para id="0a84d149-91b7-4012-ac6d-9f4eb8ed6c37">In June 2000, EME and EWS reached an agreement to negotiate towards a direct contract for coal haulage by rail (on a DIY basis), which would replace the previous indirect E2E arrangements that EME had in place with ECSL. An internal EWS e-mail noted: <quote-block> <quote-para>‘We did the deal with Edison Mission yesterday morning for LBT-Fiddlers @ £[…]/tonne as agreed. This rate until 16th September pending a contract.</quote-para> <quote-para><emphasis strength="strong">Enron are now off our hands so far as Edison are concerned. The Enron flows we have left are to British Energy’s station at Eggborough; from Immingham, Redcar and Hull</emphasis>. Also to Enron’s own power station at Wilton – 250,000 tonnes/year. I think we are stuck Enron [sic] on the Eggborough traffic until next April when British Energy will, hopefully take over their own coal procurement. <emphasis strength="strong">But we have got them out of Fiddlers Ferry and Ferrybridge – a big step forward</emphasis>.’</quote-para> </quote-block> </para> </item> <item prefix="B43"> <para id="d64a5a72-0a02-476f-9a7b-7c07bbc93a8a">This e-mail is evidence of both EWS’s intent and, indeed, its success in stopping ECSL from carrying out indirect supplies to EME, one of the new generating companies.”(Emphasis added.)(emphasis in original)</para> </item> </list> </quote-block> </para> </paragraph> Desired Ouput <paragraph> <para> <quote-block> <list prefix-rules="specified"> <item prefix="“B42"> <para id="0a84d149-91b7-4012-ac6d-9f4eb8ed6c37">In June 2000, EME and EWS reached an agreement to negotiate towards a direct contract for coal haulage by rail (on a DIY basis), which would replace the previous indirect E2E arrangements that EME had in place with ECSL. An internal EWS e-mail noted: <quote-block> <quote-para>‘We did the deal with Edison Mission yesterday morning for LBT-Fiddlers @ £[…]/tonne as agreed. This rate until 16th September pending a contract.</quote-para> <quote-para><emphasis strength="strong">Enron are now off our hands so far as Edison are concerned. The Enron flows we have left are to British Energy’s station at Eggborough; from Immingham, Redcar and Hull</emphasis>. Also to Enron’s own power station at Wilton – 250,000 tonnes/year. I think we are stuck Enron [sic] on the Eggborough traffic until next April when British Energy will, hopefully take over their own coal procurement. <emphasis strength="strong">But we have got them out of Fiddlers Ferry and Ferrybridge – a big step forward</emphasis>.’(Emphasis added.)</quote-para> </quote-block> </para> </item> <item prefix="B43"> <para id="d64a5a72-0a02-476f-9a7b-7c07bbc93a8a">This e-mail is evidence of both EWS’s intent and, indeed, its success in stopping ECSL from carrying out indirect supplies to EME, one of the new generating companies.”(emphasis in original)</para> </item> </list> </quote-block> </para> </paragraph>

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Edit Text in a Webpage with Internet Explorer 8

- by Matthew Guay

Internet Explorer is often decried as the worst browser for web developers, but IE8 actually offers a very nice set of developer tools. Here we’ll look at a unique way to use them to edit the text on any webpage. How to edit text in a webpage IE8’s developer tools make it easy to make changes to a webpage and view them directly. Simply browse to the webpage of your choice, and press the F12 key on your keyboard. Alternately, you can click the Tools button, and select Developer tools from the list. This opens the developer tools. To do our editing, we want to select the mouse button on the toolbar “Select Element by Click” tool. Now, click on any spot of the webpage in IE8 that you want to edit. Here, let’s edit the footer of Google.com. Notice it places a blue box around any element you hover over to make it easy to choose exactly what you want to edit. In the developer tools window, the element you selected before is now highlighted. Click the plus button beside that entry if the text you want to edit is not visible. Now, click the text you wish to change, and enter what you wish in the box. For fun, we changed the copyright to say “©2010 Microsoft”. Go back to IE to see the changes on the page! You can also change a link on a page this way: Or you can even change the text on a button: Here’s our edited Google.com: This may be fun for playing a trick on someone or simply for a funny screenshot, but it can be very useful, too. You could test how changes in fontsize would change how a website looks, or see how a button would look with a different label. It can also be useful when taking screenshots. For instance, if I want to show a friend how to do something in Gmail but don’t want to reveal my email address, I could edit the text on the top right before I took the screenshot. Here I changed my Gmail address to [email protected]. Please note that the changes will disappear when you reload the page. You can save your changes from the developer tools window, though, and reopen the page from your computer if you wish. We have found this trick very helpful at times, and it can be very fun too! Enjoy it, and let us know how you used it to help you! Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Edit Webpage Text Areas in Your Favorite Text EditorRemove Webpage Formatting or View the HTML Code When Copying in FirefoxChange the Default Editor From Nano on Ubuntu LinuxShare Text & Images the Easy Way with JustPaste.itEditPad Lite – All Purpose Tabbed Text Editor 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 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Enable Check Box Selection in Windows 7 OnlineOCR – Free OCR Service Betting on the Blind Side, a Vanity Fair article 30 Minimal Logo Designs that Say More with Less LEGO Digital Designer – Free Create a Personal Website Quickly using Flavors.me

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Edit Text in a Webpage with Internet Explorer 8

- by Matthew Guay

Internet Explorer is often decried as the worst browser for web developers, but IE8 actually offers a very nice set of developer tools. Here we’ll look at a unique way to use them to edit the text on any webpage. How to edit text in a webpage IE8’s developer tools make it easy to make changes to a webpage and view them directly. Simply browse to the webpage of your choice, and press the F12 key on your keyboard. Alternately, you can click the Tools button, and select Developer tools from the list. This opens the developer tools. To do our editing, we want to select the mouse button on the toolbar “Select Element by Click” tool. Now, click on any spot of the webpage in IE8 that you want to edit. Here, let’s edit the footer of Google.com. Notice it places a blue box around any element you hover over to make it easy to choose exactly what you want to edit. In the developer tools window, the element you selected before is now highlighted. Click the plus button beside that entry if the text you want to edit is not visible. Now, click the text you wish to change, and enter what you wish in the box. For fun, we changed the copyright to say “©2010 Microsoft”. Go back to IE to see the changes on the page! You can also change a link on a page this way: Or you can even change the text on a button: Here’s our edited Google.com: This may be fun for playing a trick on someone or simply for a funny screenshot, but it can be very useful, too. You could test how changes in fontsize would change how a website looks, or see how a button would look with a different label. It can also be useful when taking screenshots. For instance, if I want to show a friend how to do something in Gmail but don’t want to reveal my email address, I could edit the text on the top right before I took the screenshot. Here I changed my Gmail address to [email protected]. Please note that the changes will disappear when you reload the page. You can save your changes from the developer tools window, though, and reopen the page from your computer if you wish. We have found this trick very helpful at times, and it can be very fun too! Enjoy it, and let us know how you used it to help you! Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Edit Webpage Text Areas in Your Favorite Text EditorRemove Webpage Formatting or View the HTML Code When Copying in FirefoxChange the Default Editor From Nano on Ubuntu LinuxShare Text & Images the Easy Way with JustPaste.itEditPad Lite – All Purpose Tabbed Text Editor 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 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Enable Check Box Selection in Windows 7 OnlineOCR – Free OCR Service Betting on the Blind Side, a Vanity Fair article 30 Minimal Logo Designs that Say More with Less LEGO Digital Designer – Free Create a Personal Website Quickly using Flavors.me

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Inspire Geek Love with These Hilarious Geek Valentines

- by Eric Z Goodnight

Want to send some Geek Love to that special someone? Why not do it with these elementary school throwback valentines, and win their heart this upcoming Valentine’s day—the geek way! Read on to see the simple method to make your own custom Valentines, as well as download a set of eleven ready-made ones any geek guy or gal should be delighted get. It’s amore! How to Make Custom Valentines A size we’ve used for all of our Valentines is a 3” x 4” at 150 dpi. This is fairly low resolution for print, but makes a great graphic to email. With your new image open, Navigate to Edit > Fill and fill your background layer with a rich, red color (or whatever appeals to you.) By setting “Use” to “Foreground color as shown above, you’ll paint whatever foreground color you have in your color picker. Press to select the text tool. Set a few text objects, using whatever fonts appeal to you. Pixel fonts, like this one, are freely downloadable, and we’ve already shared a great list of Valentines fonts. Copy an image from the internet if you’re confident your sweetie won’t mind a bit of fair use of copyrighted imagery. If they do mind, find yourself some great Creative Commons images. to do a free transform on your image, sizing it to whatever dimensions work best for your design. Right click your newly added image layer in your panel and Choose “Blending Effects” to pick a Layer Style. “Stroke” with this setting adds a black line around your image. Also turning on “Outer Glow” with this setting puts a dark black shadow around the top and bottom (and sides, although they are hidden). Add some more text. Double entendre is recommended. Click and hold down on the “Rectangle Tool” to get the “Custom Shape Tool.” The custom shape tool has useful vector shapes built into it. Find the “Shape” dropdown in the menu to find the heart image. Click and drag to create a vector heart shape in your image. Your layers panel is where you can change the color, if it happens to use the wrong one at first. Click the color swatch in your panel, highlighted in blue above. will transform your vector heart. You can also use it to rotate, if you like. Add some details, like this Power or Standby symbol, which can be found in symbol fonts, taken from images online, or drawn by hand. Your Valentine is now ready to be saved as a JPG or PNG and sent to the object of your affection! Keep reading to see a list of 11 downloadable How-To Geek Valentines, including this one and the three from the header image. Download The HTG Set of Valentines Download the HTG Geek Valentines (ZIP) Download the HTG Geek Valentines (ZIP) When he’s not wooing ladies with Valentines cards, you can email the author at [email protected] with your Photoshop and Graphics questions. Your questions may be featured in a future How-To Geek article! Latest Features How-To Geek ETC Inspire Geek Love with These Hilarious Geek Valentines How to Integrate Dropbox with Pages, Keynote, and Numbers on iPad RGB? CMYK? Alpha? What Are Image Channels and What Do They Mean? How to Recover that Photo, Picture or File You Deleted Accidentally How To Colorize Black and White Vintage Photographs in Photoshop How To Get SSH Command-Line Access to Windows 7 Using Cygwin How to Kid Proof Your Computer’s Power and Reset Buttons Microsoft’s Windows Media Player Extension Adds H.264 Support Back to Google Chrome Android Notifier Pushes Android Notices to Your Desktop Dead Space 2 Theme for Chrome and Iron Carl Sagan and Halo Reach Mashup – We Humans are Capable of Greatness [Video] Battle the Necromorphs Once Again on Your Desktop with the Dead Space 2 Theme for Windows 7

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Smart Help with UPK

- by [email protected]

A short lesson on how awesome Smart Help is. In Oracle UPK speak, there are targeted and non-targeted applications. Targeted applications are Oracle EBS, PeopleSoft, Siebel, JD Edwards, SAP and a few others. Non-targeted applications are either custom built or other third party off the shelf applications. For most targeted applications you'll see better object recognition (during recording) and also Help Integration for that application. Help integration means that someone technical modifies the help link in your application to call up the UPK content that has been created. If you have seen this presented before, this is usually where the term context sensitive help is mentioned and the Do It mode shows off. The fact that UPK builds context sensitive help for its targeted applications automatically is awesome enough, but there is a whole new world out there and it's called "custom and\or third party apps." For the purposes of Smart Help and this discussion, I'm talking about the browser based applications. How does UPK support these apps? It used to be that you had to have your vendor try to modify the Help link to point to UPK or if your company had control over the applications configuration menus, then you get someone on your team to modify this for you. But as you start to use UPK for more than one, two or three applications, the administration of this starts to become daunting. Multiple administrators, multiple player packages, multiple call points, multiple break points, help doesn't always work the same way for every application (picture the black white infomercial with an IT person trying to configure a bunch of wires or something funny like that). Introducing Smart Help! (in color of course, new IT person, probably wearing a blue shirt and smiling). Smart help eliminates the need to configure multiple browser help integration points, and adds a icon to the users browser itself. You're using your browser to read this now correct? Look up at the icons on your browser, you have the home link icon, print icon, maybe an RSS feed icon. Smart Help is icon that gets added to the users browser just like the others. When you click it, it first recognizes which application you're in and then finds the UPK created material for you and returns the best possible match, for (hold on to your seat now) both targeted and non-targeted applications (browser based applications). But wait, there's more. It does this automatically! You don't have to do anything! All you have to do is record content, UPK and Smart Help do the rest! This technology is not new. There are customers out there today that use this for as many as six applications! The real hero here is SMART MATCH. Smart match is the technology that's used to determine which application you're in and where you are when you click on Smart Help. We'll save that for a one-on-one conversation. Like most other awesome features of UPK, it ships with the product. All you have to do is turn it on. To learn more about Smart Help, Smart Match, Targeted and Non-Targeted applications, contact your UPK Sales Consultant or me directly at [email protected]

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Make Your Mouse Pointers Left-hand Friendly

- by Matthew Guay

It’s a right-centric world, with everything from pencils to computer mice expecting you to be right-handed. Here’s how you can train your mouse and cursors in Windows 7 and Vista to respect your left-handedness. Using your Left Hand the Right Way It’s easy to switch your mouse to left-handed mode. Enter “mouse” in your Start menu search, and select the first entry. Check the “Switch primary and secondary buttons” box to make your mouse more left-hand friendly. Now your primary select button is your right button, and the secondary button (commonly referred to as right-click) is the left button. But, it can still be awkward to select items on screen with your left hand using the default cursors. MSDN has a free set of cursors designed for left-handed users, that can fix this problem for you. These cursors are exactly like the default Aero cursors in Windows 7 and Vista, except they are reversed to make them better for left-handed use. The cursors are available in 3 sizes: normal, large, and extra large. The normal ones are the same size as the default ones in Windows 7; feel free to choose the other sizes if you prefer them. Click each link to download all 6 cursors for your size (link below). Click “I Agree” after selecting the cursors to accept the license agreement and download them. Once you have all 6 cursors downloaded, select the Pointers tab in the Mouse Properties dialog. Click the cursor to change, and then click Browse to select the new cursor. Browse to the folder you downloaded your new cursors to, select the correct cursor, and click Open. Do this for each of the 6 cursors to be changed. Strangely, the Busy cursor (the spinning blue orb) is a static cursor, so you may not wish to change it. All the other ones look and act like their standard counterparts. Here’s the cursors to be changed, and their equivalents in the default cursors: Normal Select: aero_arrow_left.cur Help Select: aero_helpsel_left.cur Working in Background: aero_working_left.ani Busy: aero_busy_left.cur Handwriting: aero_pen_left.cur Link Select: aero_link_left.cur After changing all the cursors, click Save As… to save this mouse scheme so you can easily select it in the future. Finally click Ok to close the Mouse Properties dialog and accept the changes. Now your pointers will be easier to use left-handed! Conclusion Whether you’re right-handed or left-handed, you can enjoy the Aero cursors in Windows 7 or Vista in the way that works best for you. Unfortunately, many mice are still designed for right-handed people, but this trick will help you make the best out of your mouse. We included all of the 6 cursors for you in a zip file you can download Here. This will make it easier for you to get them all together without having to download them individually. Link Download Left-Handed Mouse Pointers from MSDN Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Prevent Themes From Modifying Icons and Cursors in Windows 7How To Personalize Windows 7 StarterShow Two Time Zones in Your Outlook 2007 CalendarMake Mouse Navigation Faster in WindowsWhy Doesn’t Tab Work for Drop-down Controls in Firefox on OS X? 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 Microsoft’s “How Do I ?” Videos Home Networks – How do they look like & the problems they cause 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

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Best way to Draw a cube for 3D Picking

- by Kenneth Bray

Currently I am drawing a cube for a game that I am making and the cube draw method is below. My question is, what is the best way to draw a cube and to be able to easily find the face that the cursor is over? My draw method works just fine, but I am getting ready to start to add picking (this will be used to mold the cubes into other shaps), and would like to know the best way to find a face of the cube. public void Draw() { // center point posX, posY, posZ float radius = size / 2; //top glPushMatrix(); glBegin(GL_QUADS); { glColor3f(1.0f,0.0f,0.0f); // red glVertex3f(posX + radius, posY + radius, posZ - radius); glVertex3f(posX - radius, posY + radius, posZ - radius); glVertex3f(posX - radius, posY + radius, posZ + radius); glVertex3f(posX + radius, posY + radius, posZ + radius); } glEnd(); glPopMatrix(); //bottom glPushMatrix(); glBegin(GL_QUADS); { glColor3f(1.0f,1.0f,0.0f); // ?? color glVertex3f(posX + radius, posY - radius, posZ + radius); glVertex3f(posX - radius, posY - radius, posZ + radius); glVertex3f(posX - radius, posY - radius, posZ - radius); glVertex3f(posX + radius, posY - radius, posZ - radius); } glEnd(); glPopMatrix(); //right side glPushMatrix(); glBegin(GL_QUADS); { glColor3f(1.0f,0.0f,1.0f); // ?? color glVertex3f(posX + radius, posY + radius, posZ + radius); glVertex3f(posX + radius, posY - radius, posZ + radius); glVertex3f(posX + radius, posY - radius, posZ - radius); glVertex3f(posX + radius, posY + radius, posZ - radius); } glEnd(); glPopMatrix(); //left side glPushMatrix(); glBegin(GL_QUADS); { glColor3f(0.0f,1.0f,1.0f); // ?? color glVertex3f(posX - radius, posY + radius, posZ - radius); glVertex3f(posX - radius, posY - radius, posZ - radius); glVertex3f(posX - radius, posY - radius, posZ + radius); glVertex3f(posX - radius, posY + radius, posZ + radius); } glEnd(); glPopMatrix(); //front side glPushMatrix(); glBegin(GL_QUADS); { glColor3f(0.0f,0.0f,1.0f); // blue glVertex3f(posX + radius, posY + radius, posZ + radius); glVertex3f(posX - radius, posY + radius, posZ + radius); glVertex3f(posX - radius, posY - radius, posZ + radius); glVertex3f(posX + radius, posY - radius, posZ + radius); } glEnd(); glPopMatrix(); //back side glPushMatrix(); glBegin(GL_QUADS); { glColor3f(0.0f,1.0f,0.0f); // green glVertex3f(posX + radius, posY - radius, posZ - radius); glVertex3f(posX - radius, posY - radius, posZ - radius); glVertex3f(posX - radius, posY + radius, posZ - radius); glVertex3f(posX + radius, posY + radius, posZ - radius); } glEnd(); glPopMatrix(); }

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Logging WebSocket Frames using Chrome Developer Tools, Net-internals and Wireshark (TOTD #184)

- by arungupta

TOTD #183 explained how to build a WebSocket-driven application using GlassFish 4. This Tip Of The Day (TOTD) will explain how do view/debug on-the-wire messages, or frames as they are called in WebSocket parlance, over this upgraded connection. This blog will use the application built in TOTD #183. First of all, make sure you are using a browser that supports WebSocket. If you recall from TOTD #183 then WebSocket is combination of Protocol and JavaScript API. A browser supporting WebSocket, or not, means they understand your web pages with the WebSocket JavaScript. caniuse.com/websockets provide a current status of WebSocket support in different browsers. Most of the major browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, Safari already support WebSocket for the past few versions. As of this writing, IE still does not support WebSocket however its planned for a future release. Viewing WebSocket farmes require special settings because all the communication happens over an upgraded HTTP connection over a single TCP connection. If you are building your application using Java, then there are two common ways to debug WebSocket messages today. Other language libraries provide different mechanisms to log the messages. Lets get started! Chrome Developer Tools provide information about the initial handshake only. This can be viewed in the Network tab and selecting the endpoint hosting the WebSocket endpoint. You can also click on "WebSockets" on the bottom-right to show only the WebSocket endpoints. Click on "Frames" in the right panel to view the actual frames being exchanged between the client and server. The frames are not refreshed when new messages are sent or received. You need to refresh the panel by clicking on the endpoint again. To see more detailed information about the WebSocket frames, you need to type "chrome://net-internals" in a new tab. Click on "Sockets" in the left navigation bar and then on "View live sockets" to see the page. Select the box with the address to your WebSocket endpoint and see some basic information about connection and bytes exchanged between the client and the endpoint. Clicking on the blue text "source dependency ..." shows more details about the handshake. If you are interested in viewing the exact payload of WebSocket messages then you need a network sniffer. These tools are used to snoop network traffic and provide a lot more details about the raw messages exchanged over the network. However because they provide lot more information so they need to be configured in order to view the relevant information. Wireshark (nee Ethereal) is a pretty standard tool for sniffing network traffic and will be used here. For this blog purpose, we'll assume that the WebSocket endpoint is hosted on the local machine. These tools do allow to sniff traffic across the network though. Wireshark is quite a comprehensive tool and we'll capture traffic on the loopback address. Start wireshark, select "loopback" and click on "Start". By default, all traffic information on the loopback address is displayed. That includes tons of TCP protocol messages, applications running on your local machines (like GlassFish or Dropbox on mine), and many others. Specify "http" as the filter in the top-left. Invoke the application built in TOTD #183 and click on "Say Hello" button once. The output in wireshark looks like Here is a description of the messages exchanged: Message #4: Initial HTTP request of the JSP page Message #6: Response returning the JSP page Message #16: HTTP Upgrade request Message #18: Upgrade request accepted Message #20: Request favicon Message #22: Responding with favicon not found Message #24: Browser making a WebSocket request to the endpoint Message #26: WebSocket endpoint responding back You can also use Fiddler to debug your WebSocket messages. How are you viewing your WebSocket messages ? Here are some references for you: JSR 356: Java API for WebSocket - Specification (Early Draft) and Implementation (already integrated in GlassFish 4 promoted builds) TOTD #183 - Getting Started with WebSocket in GlassFish Subsequent blogs will discuss the following topics (not necessary in that order) ... Binary data as payload Custom payloads using encoder/decoder Error handling Interface-driven WebSocket endpoint Java client API Client and Server configuration Security Subprotocols Extensions Other topics from the API

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Kanban Tools Review

- by GeekAgilistMercenary

The first two sessions on Sunday were Collaboration and why it is so hard and the following, which was a perfect following session was on Kanban. While in that second session two online Saas Style Tools were mentioned; AgileZen and Leankit. I decided right then and there that I would throw together some first impressions and setup some sample projects. I did this by setting up an account and creating the projects. Agile Zen Account Creation Setting up the initial account required an e-mail verification, which is understandable. Within a few seconds it was mailed out and I was logged in. Setting Up the Kanban Board The initial setup of the board was pretty easy. I maybe clicked around an extra few times, but overall everything I needed to use the tool was immediately available. The representation of everything was very similar to what one expects in a real Kanban Board too. This is a HUGE plus, especially if a team is smart and places this tool in a centrally viewable area to allow for visibility. Each of the board items is just like a post it, being blue, grey, green, pink, or one of another few colors. Dragging them onto each swim lane on the board was flawless, making changes through the work super easy and intuitive. The other thing I really liked about AgileZen is that the Kanban Board had the swim lanes setup immediately. One can change them, but when you know you immediately need a Ready Lane, Working Lane, and a Complete Lane it is nice to just have them right in front of you in the interface. In addition, the Backlog is simply a little tab on the left hand side. This is perfect for the Backlog Queue. Out of the way, with the focus on the primary items. Once I got the items onto the board I was easily able to get back to the actual work at hand versus playing around with the tool. The fact that it was so easy to use, fast and easy UX, and overall a great layout put me back to work on things I needed to do versus sitting a playing with the tool. That, in the end is the key to using these tools. LeanKit Kanban Account Creation Setting up the account got me straight into the online tool. This I thought was pretty cool. Setting Up the Kanban Board Setting up the Kanban Board within Leankit was a bit of trouble. There were multiple UX issues in regard to process and intuitiveness. The Leankit basically forces one to design the whole board first, making no assumptions about how the board should look. The swim lanes in my humble opinion should be setup immediately without any manipulation with the most common lanes; ready, working, and complete. The other UX hiccup that I had a problem with is that as soon as I managed to get the swim lanes into place, I wanted to remove the redundant Backlog Lane. The Backlog Lane, or Backlog Bucket should be somewhere that I accidentally added as a lane. Then on top of that I screwed up and added an item inside the lane, which then prevented me from deleting the lane. I had to go back out of the lane manipulation, remove the item, and then remove the excess lane. Summary Leankit wasn't a bad interface, it just wasn't as good as AgileZen. The AgileZen interface was just better UX design overall. AgileZen also presents a much better user interface graphical design all together. It is much closer to what the Kanban Board would look like if it were a physical Kanban Board. Since one of the HUGE reasons for Kanban is to increase visibility, the fact the design is similar to what a real Kanban Board is actually a pretty big deal. This is an image (click for larger) that shows the two Kanban Boards side by side. The one on the left is AgileZen and the right is Leankit. Original Entry

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Friday Fun: Spell Blazer

- by Asian Angel

Are you ready for some fun and adventure after a long week back at work? This week’s game combines jewel-matching style game play with an RPG story for an awesome mix of fun and fiction. Your goal is to help a young wizard reach the magic academy in Raven as the forces of darkness are building. Spell Blazer The object of the game is to help young Kaven reach the Lightcaster Academy in Raven alive, but he will encounter many dangers along the way. Are you ready to begin the quest? As soon as you click Start Game the intro will automatically begin. If this is your first time playing the game the intro provides a nice background story for the game and what is happening in the game environment. Once you are past the intro, you will see a map of the region with your starting point in the Farmlands, various towns and the roads connecting them, along with your final destination of Raven. Notice that some of the roads are different colors…those colors indicate the “danger levels” for each part of your journey (green = good, yellow = some danger, etc.). To begin your journey click on the Town of Goose with your mouse. You will encounter your first monster part of the way towards Goose. This first round takes you through the game play process step-by-step. Once you have clicked Okay you will see the details about the monster you have just encountered. It is very important that you do not click on Fight! or Flee! until viewing and noting the types of spells that the monster is resistant to or has a weakness against. Choose your spells wisely based on the information provided about the monster. Keep in mind that the healing spell can be very useful depending on the monster you meet and your current health status. Note: Spells shown in order here are Healing, Fireball, Icebolt, & Lightning. Ready to fight! The first battle will also explain how to fight…click Okay to get started. Once the main window is in full view there are details that you need to look at. Beneath each of the combatants you will see the three attacks that each brings to the battle and at the bottom you will see their respective health points. We got lucky and had an Icebolt attack that we could utilize on the first play! Note: You can exchange two squares without making a match in order to try and line up an attack. While it happened too quickly to capture in our screenshot, there will be cool lightning bolt effects shoot out from matched up squares to the opposite combatant. You will also see the amount of damage inflicted from a particular attack on top of the avatars. Victory! Once you have won a round of combat a window will appear showing the amount of gold coins left behind by the monster. When you reach a town you will have the opportunity to stop over and rest or directly continue on with your journey. On to Halgard after a good rest! Play Spell Blazer Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How To Boot 10 Different Live CDs From 1 USB Flash Drive The 20 Best How-To Geek Linux Articles of 2010 The 50 Best How-To Geek Windows Articles of 2010 The 20 Best How-To Geek Explainer Topics for 2010 How to Disable Caps Lock Key in Windows 7 or Vista How to Use the Avira Rescue CD to Clean Your Infected PC The Deep – Awesome Use of Metal Objects as Deep Sea Creatures [Video] Convert or View Documents Online Easily with Zoho, No Account Required Build a Floor Scrubbing Robot out of Computer Fans and a Frisbee Serene Blue Windows Wallpaper for Your Desktop 2011 International Space Station Calendar Available for Download (Free) Ultimate Elimination – Lego Black Ops [Video]

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Java Developer Days India Trip Report

- by reza_rahman

You are probably aware of Oracle's decision to discontinue the relatively resource intensive regional JavaOnes in favor of more Java Developer Days, virtual events and deeper involvement with independent conferences. In comparison to the regional JavaOnes, Java Developer Days are smaller, shorter (typically one full day), more focused (mostly Oracle speakers/topics) and more local (targeting cities). For those who have been around the Java ecosystem for a few years, they are basically the current incarnation of the highly popular and developer centric Sun Tech Days. October 21st through October 25th I spoke at Java Developer Days India. This was basically three separate but identical events in the cities of Pune (October 21st), Chennai (October 24th) and Bangalore (October 25th). For those with some familiarity with India, other than Hyderabad these cities are India's IT powerhouses. The events were basically focused on Java EE. I delivered five of the sessions (yes, you read that right), while my friend NetBeans Group Product Manager Ashwin Rao delivered three talks. Jagadish Ramu from the GlassFish team India helped me out in Bangalore by delivering two sessions. It was also a pleasure to introduce my co-contributor to the Cargo Tracker Java EE Blue Prints project Vijay Nair at Bangalore during the opening talk. I thought it was a great dynamic between Ashwin and I flipping between talking about the new features and demoing live code in NetBeans. The following were my sessions (source PDF and abstracts posted as usual on my SlideShare account): JavaEE.Next(): Java EE 7, 8, and Beyond Building Java HTML5/WebSocket Applications with JSR 356 What’s New in Java Message Service 2 JAX-RS 2: New and Noteworthy in the RESTful Web Services API Using NoSQL with JPA, EclipseLink and Java EE The event went well and was packed in all three cities. The Q&A was great and Indian developers were particularly generous with kind words :-). It seemed the event and our presence was appreciated in the truest sense which I must say is a rarity. The events were exhausting but very rewarding at the same time. As hectic as the three city trip was I tried to see at least some of the major sights (mostly at night) since this was my very first time to India. I think the slideshow below is a good representation of the riddle wrapped up in an enigma that is India (and the rest of the Indian sub-continent for that matter): Ironically enough what struck me the most during this trip is the woman pictured below - Shushma. My chauffeur, tour guide and friend for a day, she fluidly navigated the madness that is Mumbai traffic with skills that would make Evel Knievel blush while simultaneously pointing out sights and prompting me to take pictures (Mumbai was my stopover and gateway to/from India). In some ways she is probably the most potent symbol of the new India. When we parted ways I told her she should take solace in the fact she has won mostly without a fight a potentially hazardous battle her sisters across the Arabian sea are still fighting. I'm not sure she entirely understood the significance of what I told her. I hope that she did. I also had occasion to take a pretty cool local bus ride from Chennai to Bangalore instead of yet another boring flight. All in all I really enjoyed the trip to India and hope to return again soon. Jai Hind :-)!

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career in Mobile sw/Application Development [closed]

- by pramod

i m planning to do a course on Wireless & mobile computing.The syllabus are given below.Please check & let me know whether its worth to do.How is the job prospects after that.I m a fresher & from electronic Engg.The modules are- *Wireless and Mobile Computing (WiMC) – Modules* C, C++ Programming and Data Structures 100 Hours C Revision C, C++ programming tools on linux(Vi editor, gdb etc.) OOP concepts Programming constructs Functions Access Specifiers Classes and Objects Overloading Inheritance Polymorphism Templates Data Structures in C++ Arrays, stacks, Queues, Linked Lists( Singly, Doubly, Circular) Trees, Threaded trees, AVL Trees Graphs, Sorting (bubble, Quick, Heap , Merge) System Development Methodology 18 Hours Software life cycle and various life cycle models Project Management Software: A Process Various Phases in s/w Development Risk Analysis and Management Software Quality Assurance Introduction to Coding Standards Software Project Management Testing Strategies and Tactics Project Management and Introduction to Risk Management Java Programming 110 Hours Data Types, Operators and Language Constructs Classes and Objects, Inner Classes and Inheritance Inheritance Interface and Package Exceptions Threads Java.lang Java.util Java.awt Java.io Java.applet Java.swing XML, XSL, DTD Java n/w programming Introduction to servlet Mobile and Wireless Technologies 30 Hours Basics of Wireless Technologies Cellular Communication: Single cell systems, multi-cell systems, frequency reuse, analog cellular systems, digital cellular systems GSM standard: Mobile Station, BTS, BSC, MSC, SMS sever, call processing and protocols CDMA standard: spread spectrum technologies, 2.5G and 3G Systems: HSCSD, GPRS, W-CDMA/UMTS,3GPP and international roaming, Multimedia services CDMA based cellular mobile communication systems Wireless Personal Area Networks: Bluetooth, IEEE 802.11a/b/g standards Mobile Handset Device Interfacing: Data Cables, IrDA, Bluetooth, Touch- Screen Interfacing Wireless Security, Telemetry Java Wireless Programming and Applications Development(J2ME) 100 Hours J2ME Architecture The CLDC and the KVM Tools and Development Process Classification of CLDC Target Devices CLDC Collections API CLDC Streams Model MIDlets MIDlet Lifecycle MIDP Programming MIDP Event Architecture High-Level Event Handling Low-Level Event Handling The CLDC Streams Model The CLDC Networking Package The MIDP Implementation Introduction to WAP, WML Script and XHTML Introduction to Multimedia Messaging Services (MMS) Symbian Programming 60 Hours Symbian OS basics Symbian OS services Symbian OS organization GUI approaches ROM building Debugging Hardware abstraction Base porting Symbian OS reference design porting File systems Overview of Symbian OS Development – DevKits, CustKits and SDKs CodeWarrior Tool Application & UI Development Client Server Framework ECOM STDLIB in Symbian iPhone Programming 80 Hours Introducing iPhone core specifications Understanding iPhone input and output Designing web pages for the iPhone Capturing iPhone events Introducing the webkit CSS transforms transitions and animations Using iUI for web apps Using Canvas for web apps Building web apps with Dashcode Writing Dashcode programs Debugging iPhone web pages SDK programming for web developers An introduction to object-oriented programming Introducing the iPhone OS Using Xcode and Interface builder Programming with the SDK Toolkit OS Concepts & Linux Programming 60 Hours Operating System Concepts What is an OS? Processes Scheduling & Synchronization Memory management Virtual Memory and Paging Linux Architecture Programming in Linux Linux Shell Programming Writing Device Drivers Configuring and Building GNU Cross-tool chain Configuring and Compiling Linux Virtual File System Porting Linux on Target Hardware WinCE.NET and Database Technology 80 Hours Execution Process in .NET Environment Language Interoperability Assemblies Need of C# Operators Namespaces & Assemblies Arrays Preprocessors Delegates and Events Boxing and Unboxing Regular Expression Collections Multithreading Programming Memory Management Exceptions Handling Win Forms Working with database ASP .NET Server Controls and client-side scripts ASP .NET Web Server Controls Validation Controls Principles of database management Need of RDBMS etc Client/Server Computing RDBMS Technologies Codd’s Rules Data Models Normalization Techniques ER Diagrams Data Flow Diagrams Database recovery & backup SQL Android Application 80 Hours Introduction of android Why develop for android Android SDK features Creating android activities Fundamental android UI design Intents, adapters, dialogs Android Technique for saving data Data base in Androids Maps, Geocoding, Location based services Toast, using alarms, Instant messaging Using blue tooth Using Telephony Introducing sensor manager Managing network and wi-fi connection Advanced androids development Linux kernel security Implement AIDL Interface. Project 120 Hours

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Today at Oracle OpenWorld 2012

- by Scott McNeil

We have another full day of great Oracle OpenWorld keynotes, sessions, demos and customer presentations in the Seen and Be Heard threater. Here's a quick run down of what's happening today with Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c: Download the Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c OpenWorld schedule (PDF) Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c (and Private Cloud) General Session Tues 2 Oct, 2012 Time Title Location 11:45 AM - 12:45 PM General Session: Using Oracle Enterprise Manager to Manage Your Own Private Cloud Moscone South - 103* 1:15 PM - 2:15 PM General Session: Breakthrough Efficiency in Private Cloud Infrastructure Moscone West - 3014 Conference Session Tues 2 Oct, 2012 Time Title Location 10:15 AM - 11:15 AM Oracle Exadata/Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c: Journey into Oracle Database Cloud Moscone West - 3018 10:15 AM - 11:15 AM Bulletproof Your Application Upgrades with Secure Data Masking and Subsetting Moscone West - 3020 10:15 AM - 11:15 AM Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c: Architecture Deep Dive, Tips, and Techniques Moscone South - 303 11:45 AM - 12:45 PM RDBMS Forensics: Troubleshooting with Active Session History Moscone West - 3018 11:45 AM - 12:45 PM Building and Operationalizing Your Data Center Environment with Oracle Exalogic Moscone South - 309 11:45 AM - 12:45 PM Securely Building a National Electronic Health Record: Singapore Case Study Westin San Francisco - Concordia 1:15 PM - 2:15 PM Managing Heterogeneous Environments with Oracle Enterprise Manager Moscone West - 3018 1:15 PM - 2:15 PM Complete Oracle WebLogic Server Management with Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Moscone South - 309 1:15 PM - 2:15 PM Database Lifecycle Management with Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Moscone West - 3020 1:15 PM - 2:15 PM Best Practices, Key Features, Tips, Techniques for Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Upgrade Moscone South - 307 1:15 PM - 2:15 PM Enterprise Cloud with CSC’s Foundation Services for Oracle and Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Moscone South - 236 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM Deep Dive 3-D on Oracle Exadata Management: From Discovery to Deployment to Diagnostics Moscone West - 3018 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM Everything You Need to Know About Monitoring and Troubleshooting Oracle GoldenGate Moscone West - 3005 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c: The Nerve Center of Oracle Cloud Moscone West - 3020 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM Advanced Management of Oracle E-Business Suite with Oracle Enterprise Manager Moscone West - 2016 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Cloud Control Performance Pages: Falling in Love Again Moscone West - 3014 Hands-on Labs Tues 2 Oct, 2012 Time Title Location 10:15 AM - 12:45 PM Managing the Cloud with Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Marriott Marquis - Salon 5/6 1:15 PM - 2:15 PM Database Performance Tuning Hands-on Lab Marriott Marquis - Salon 5/6 Scene and Be Heard Theater Session Tues 2 Oct, 2012 Time Title Location 10:30 AM - 10:50 AM Start Small, Grow Big: Hands-On Oracle Private Cloud—A Step-by-Step Guide Moscone South Exhibition Hall - Booth 2407 12:30 PM - 12:50 PM Blue Medora’s Oracle Enterprise Manager Plug-in for VMware vSphere Monitoring Moscone South Exhibition Hall - Booth 2407 Demos Demo Location Application and Infrastructure Testing Moscone West - W-092 Automatic Application and SQL Tuning Moscone South, Left - S-042 Automatic Fault Diagnostics Moscone South, Left - S-036 Automatic Performance Diagnostics Moscone South, Left - S-033 Complete Care for Oracle Using My Oracle Support Moscone South, Left - S-031 Complete Cloud Lifecycle Management Moscone North, Upper Lobby - N-019 Complete Database Lifecycle Management Moscone South, Left - S-030 Comprehensive Infrastructure as a Service via Oracle Enterprise Manager Moscone South, Left - S-045 Data Masking and Data Subsetting Moscone South, Left - S-034 Database Testing with Oracle Real Application Testing Moscone South, Left - S-041 Identity Management Monitoring with Oracle Enterprise Manager Moscone South, Right - S-212 Mission-Critical, SPARC-Powered Infrastructure as a Service Moscone South, Center - S-157 Oracle E-Business Suite, Siebel, JD Edwards, and PeopleSoft Management Moscone West - W-084 Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c Overview Moscone South, Left - S-039 Oracle Enterprise Manager: Complete Data Center Management Moscone South, Left - S-040 Oracle Exadata Management Moscone South, Center - Oracle Exalogic Management Moscone South, Center - Oracle Fusion Applications Management Moscone West - W-018 Oracle Real User Experience Insight Moscone South, Right - S-226 Oracle WebLogic Server Management and Java Diagnostics Moscone South, Right - S-206 Platform as a Service Using Oracle Enterprise Manager Moscone North, Upper Lobby - N-020 SOA Management Moscone South, Right - S-225 Self-Service Application Testing on Private and Public Clouds Moscone West - W-110 Oracle OpenWorld Music Festival New this year is Oracle’s first annual Oracle OpenWorld Musical Festival, featuring some of today's breakthrough musicians from around the country and the world. It's five nights of back-to-back performances in the heart of San Francisco—free to registered attendees. See the lineup Not Heading to OpenWorld—Watch it Live! Stay Connected: Twitter | Facebook | YouTube | Linkedin | Newsletter Download the Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control12c Mobile app

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LibGDX Box2D Body and Sprite AND DebugRenderer out of sync

- by Free Lancer

I am having a couple issues with Box2D bodies. I have a GameObject holding a Sprite and Body. I use a ShapeRenderer to draw an outline of the Body's and Sprite's bounding boxes. I also added a Box2DDebugRenderer to make sure everything's lining up properly. My problem is the Sprite and Body at first overlap perfectly, but as I turn the Body moves a bit off the sprite then comes back when the Car is facing either North or South. Here's an image of what I mean: (Not sure what that line is, first time to show up) BLUE is the Body, RED is the Sprite, PURPLE is the Box2DDebugRenderer. Also, you probably noticed a purple square in the top right corner. Well that's the Car drawn by the Box2D Debug Renderer. I thought it might be the camera but I've been playing with the Cameras for hours and nothing seems to work. All give me weird results. Here's my code: Screen: public void show() { // --------------------- SETUP ALL THE CAMERA STUFF ------------------------------ // battleStage = new Stage( 720, 480, false ); // Setup the camera. In Box2D we operate on a meter scale, pixels won't do it. So we use // an Orthographic camera with a Viewport of 24 meters in width and 16 meters in height. battleStage.setCamera( new OrthographicCamera( CAM_METER_WIDTH, CAM_METER_HEIGHT ) ); battleStage.getCamera().position.set( CAM_METER_WIDTH / 2, CAM_METER_HEIGHT / 2, 0 ); // The Box2D Debug Renderer will handle rendering all physics objects for debugging debugger = new Box2DDebugRenderer( true, true, true, true ); //debugCam = new OrthographicCamera( CAM_METER_WIDTH, CAM_METER_HEIGHT ); } public void render(float delta) { // Update the Physics World, use 1/45 for something around 45 Frames/Second for mobile devices physicsWorld.step( 1/45.0f, 8, 3 ); // 1/45 for devices // Set the Camera matrices and clear the screen Gdx.gl.glClear(GL10.GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT); battleStage.getCamera().update(); // Draw game objects here battleStage.act(delta); battleStage.draw(); // Again update the Camera matrices and call the debug renderer debugCam.update(); debugger.render( physicsWorld, debugCam.combined); // Vehicle handles its own interaction with the HUD // update all Actors movements in the game Stage hudStage.act( delta ); // Draw each Actor onto the Scene at their new positions hudStage.draw(); } Car: (extends Actor) public Car( Texture texture, float posX, float posY, World world ) { super( "Car" ); mSprite = new Sprite( texture ); mSprite.setSize( WIDTH * Consts.PIXEL_METER_RATIO, HEIGHT * Consts.PIXEL_METER_RATIO ); mSprite.setOrigin( mSprite.getWidth()/2, mSprite.getHeight()/2); // set the origin to be at the center of the body mSprite.setPosition( posX * Consts.PIXEL_METER_RATIO, posY * Consts.PIXEL_METER_RATIO ); // place the car in the center of the game map FixtureDef carFixtureDef = new FixtureDef(); mBody = Physics.createBoxBody( BodyType.DynamicBody, carFixtureDef, mSprite ); } public void draw() { mSprite.setPosition( mBody.getPosition().x * Consts.PIXEL_METER_RATIO, mBody.getPosition().y * Consts.PIXEL_METER_RATIO ); mSprite.setRotation( MathUtils.radiansToDegrees * mBody.getAngle() ); // draw the sprite mSprite.draw( batch ); } Physics: (Create the Body) public static Body createBoxBody( final BodyType pBodyType, final FixtureDef pFixtureDef, Sprite pSprite ) { float pRotation = 0; float pWidth = pSprite.getWidth(); float pHeight = pSprite.getHeight(); final BodyDef boxBodyDef = new BodyDef(); boxBodyDef.type = pBodyType; boxBodyDef.position.x = pSprite.getX() / Consts.PIXEL_METER_RATIO; boxBodyDef.position.y = pSprite.getY() / Consts.PIXEL_METER_RATIO; // Temporary Box shape of the Body final PolygonShape boxPoly = new PolygonShape(); final float halfWidth = pWidth * 0.5f / Consts.PIXEL_METER_RATIO; final float halfHeight = pHeight * 0.5f / Consts.PIXEL_METER_RATIO; boxPoly.setAsBox( halfWidth, halfHeight ); // set the anchor point to be the center of the sprite pFixtureDef.shape = boxPoly; final Body boxBody = BattleScreen.getPhysicsWorld().createBody(boxBodyDef); boxBody.createFixture(pFixtureDef); } Sorry for all the code and long description but it's hard to pin down what exactly might be causing the problem.

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IIS Logfile Visualization with XNA

- by BobPalmer

In my office, I have a wall mounted monitor who's whole purpose in life is to display perfmon stats from our various servers. And on a fairly regular basis, I have folks walk by asking what the lines mean. After providing the requisite explaination about CPU utilization, disk I/O bottlenecks, etc. this is usually followed by some blank stares from the user in question, and a distillation of all of our engineering wizardry down to the phrase 'So when the red line goes up that's bad then?' This of course would not do. So I talked to my friends and our network admin about an option to show something more eye catching and visual, with which we could catch at a glance a feel for what was up with our site. He initially pointed me out to a video showing GLTail and Chipmunk done in Ruby. Realizing this was both awesome, and that I needed an excuse to do something in XNA, I decided to knock out a proof of concept for something very similar, but with a few tweaks. Here's a link to a video of the current prototype: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jM_PWZbtH2I Essentially this app opens up a log file (even an active one) and begins pulling out the lines of text. (Here's a good Code Project link that covers how to do tail reading from an active text file: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/files/tail.aspx). As new data is added, a bubble is generated in the application - a GET statement comes from the left, and a POST from the right. I then run it through a series of expression checkers, and based on the kind of statement and the pattern, a bubble of an appropriate color is generated. For example, if I get a 500, a huge red bubble pops out. Others are based on the part of the system the page is from - i.e. green bubbles are from our claims management subsystem, and blue bubbles are from the pages our scheduling staff use to schedule patients. Others include the purple bubbles for security and login, and yellow bubbles for some miscellaneous pages. The little grey bubbles represent things like images, JS, CSS, etc - and their small size makes them work like grease to keep the larger page bubbles moving. The app is also smart enough that if it is starting to bog down with handling the physics and interactions, it will suspend new bubbles until enough have dropped off that performance can resume (you can see this slight stuttering in the sample video). The net result is that anyone will be able to look up on the wall monitor, and instantly get a quick feel for how things are going on the floor. Website slow? You can get a feel for both volume and utilized modules with one glance. Website crashing? Look for a wall of giant red bubbles. No activity at all? Maybe the site is down. Now couple this with utilization within a farm, and cross referenced with a second app showing the same kind of data from your SQL database... As for the app itself, it's a windows XNA project with the code in C#. The physics are handled by the Farseer physicis eingine for XNA (http://www.codeplex.com/FarseerPhysics) which is just pure goodness. The samples are great, and I had the app up and working in two evenings (half of that was fine tuning, and the other was me coding with a kid in my lap). My next steps include wiring this to SQL (I have some ideas...), and adding a nice configuration module. For example, you could use polygons, etc to tie to your regex - or more entertaining things like having a little human ragdoll to represent a user login. Once that's wrapped up and I have a chance to complete some hardening, I will be releasing the whole thing into the wild as opensource. Feel free to ping me if you have any questions! -Bob

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Pimp my Silverlight Firestarter

- by mbcrump

So Silverlight Firestarter is over and your sitting on your couch thinking… what now? Well its time to So how exactly can you pimp the Silverlight Firestarter? Well read below and you will find out: 1) Pimp the videos: First we are going to use a program named Juice to download all of the Silverlight Firestarter videos. Go ahead and point your browser to http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/ and download the application. It works on Mac, Linux and PC. After it is downloaded you are going to want to add an RSS feed by clicking the button highlighted below. At this point you are going to want to add the following URL inside the textbox and hit Save: http://channel9.msdn.com/Series/Silverlight-Firestarter/RSS This RSS feed includes all the Silverlight Firestarter Labs and Presentations located below. The Future of Silverlight Data Binding Strategies with Silverlight and WP7 Building Compelling Apps with WCF using REST and LINQ Building Feature Rich Business Apps Today with RIA Services MVVM: Why and How? Tips and Patterns using MVVM and Service Patterns with Silverlight and WP7 Tips and Tricks for a Great Installation Experience Tune Your Application: Profiling and Performance Tips Performance Tips for Silverlight Windows Phone 7 Select all the videos and click the Download button located below (has blue arrow): Once all the videos are downloaded you will have about 4.64GB of Silverlight fun. You can now move these videos to your MediaServer and watch them with whatever device you want. Put it on an iPad, iPhone.. emm wait I mean WP7 or WMC7. 2) Pimp the Training Material – Download the offline installer for the labs here. This will give you almost a gig of free training materials. Here is the topics covered: Level 100: Getting Started Lab 01 - WinForms and Silverlight Lab 02 - ASP.NET and Silverlight Lab 03 - XAML and Controls Lab 04 - Data Binding Level 200: Ready for More Lab 05 - Migrating Apps to Out-of-Browser Lab 06 - Great UX with Blend Lab 07 - Web Services and Silverlight Lab 08 - Using WCF RIA Services Level 300: Take me Further Lab 09 - Deep Dive into Out-of-Browser Lab 10 - Silverlight Patterns: Using MVVM Lab 11 - Silverlight and Windows Phone 7 You will notice that it install Firestarter to the default of C:\Firestarter. So you will have to navigate to that folder and double click on Default.htm to get started. Now if you followed part one of the pimping guide then you will already have all the videos on your pc. You will notice that once you go into the lab you will get a Lab Document and Source at the bottom of the article. Now instead of opening the Source Folder in a web browser you can just copy the folder C:\Firestarter\Labs into your Visual Studio 2010 Project Folder. This will save a lot of time later. 3) Pimp my Silverlight 5 Knowledge – Always keep reading as much as possible and remember that the Silverlight 5 Beta should come Q1 of 2011 and the final release at the end of 2011. Here are 5 great blog post on Silverlight 5. Scott Gu’s Blog Mary Jo’s Article on Silverlight 5 The Future of Silverlight (Official) Kunal Chowdhury Blog Tim Heuer’s Blog Thats all that I got for now. Have fun with all the new Silverlight content. Subscribe to my feed

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How to mix textures in DirectX?

- by tobsen

I am new to DirectX development and I am wondering if I am taking the wrong route to achieve the following: I would like to mix three textures which contain transparent areas and some solid areas (Red, Blue, Green). The three textures should blend like shown in this example: How can I achieve that in DirectX (preferably in directx9)? A link or example code would be nice. Update: My rendering method looks like this and I still think I am doing it wrong, because the sprite only shows the last texture (nothing is rendered transparent or blended): void D3DTester::render() { d3ddevice->Clear(0, NULL, D3DCLEAR_TARGET, D3DCOLOR_XRGB(0,0,0), 1.0f, 0); d3ddevice->BeginScene(); d3ddevice->SetRenderState(D3DRS_ALPHABLENDENABLE, TRUE); d3ddevice->SetRenderState(D3DRS_SRCBLEND, D3DBLEND_ONE); d3ddevice->SetRenderState(D3DRS_DESTBLEND, D3DBLEND_ONE); LPD3DXSPRITE sprite=NULL; HRESULT hres = D3DXCreateSprite(d3ddevice, &sprite); if(hres != S_OK) { throw std::exception(); } sprite->Begin(D3DXSPRITE_ALPHABLEND); std::vector<LPDIRECT3DTEXTURE9>::iterator it; for ( it=textures.begin() ; it < textures.end(); it++ ) { sprite->Draw(*it, NULL, NULL, NULL, 0xFFFFFFFF); } sprite->End(); d3ddevice->EndScene(); d3ddevice->Present(NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL); } The resulting image looks like this: But I need it to look like this instead: Update2: I figured out that I have to SetRenderState after I use sprite->Begin(D3DXSPRITE_ALPHABLEND); thanks to the hint by Josh Petrie. However, by using this: sprite->Begin(D3DXSPRITE_ALPHABLEND); d3ddevice->SetRenderState(D3DRS_ALPHABLENDENABLE, TRUE); d3ddevice->SetRenderState(D3DRS_SRCBLEND, D3DBLEND_ONE); d3ddevice->SetRenderState(D3DRS_DESTBLEND, D3DBLEND_ONE); std::vector<LPDIRECT3DTEXTURE9>::iterator it; for ( it=textures.begin() ; it < textures.end(); it++ ) { sprite->Draw(*it, NULL, NULL, NULL, 0xFFFFFFFF); } sprite->End(); The sprites colors are becoming transparent towards the background scene e.g.: if I use d3ddevice->Clear(0, NULL, D3DCLEAR_TARGET, D3DCOLOR_XRGB(0,100,21), 1.0f, 0); the result looks like: Is there any way to avoid that? I would like the sprites be transparent to each other but to be still solid to the background. Update3: After having sombody explained to me, how to do what @LaurentCouvidou and @JoshPetrie suggested, I have a working solution and therfore accept the answer: d3ddevice->BeginScene(); D3DCOLOR white = D3DCOLOR_RGBA((UINT)255, (UINT)255, (UINT)255, 255); D3DCOLOR black = D3DCOLOR_RGBA((UINT)0, (UINT)0, (UINT)0, 255); sprite->Begin(D3DXSPRITE_ALPHABLEND); sprite->Draw(pTextureRed, NULL, NULL, NULL, black); sprite->Draw(pTextureGreen, NULL, NULL, NULL, black); sprite->Draw(pTextureBlue, NULL, NULL, NULL, black); sprite->End(); sprite->Begin(D3DXSPRITE_ALPHABLEND); d3ddevice->SetRenderState(D3DRS_ALPHATESTENABLE, TRUE); d3ddevice->SetRenderState(D3DRS_BLENDOP, D3DBLENDOP_ADD); d3ddevice->SetRenderState(D3DRS_SRCBLEND, D3DBLEND_ONE); d3ddevice->SetRenderState(D3DRS_DESTBLEND, D3DBLEND_ONE); sprite->Draw(pTextureRed, NULL, NULL, NULL, white); sprite->Draw(pTextureGreen, NULL, NULL, NULL, white); sprite->Draw(pTextureBlue, NULL, NULL, NULL, white); sprite->End(); d3ddevice->EndScene(); d3ddevice->Present(NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL);

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New Training and Support Center Coming Soon!

- by Ruth

The CRM On Demand Training and Support Center is getting a face lift. In May 2010 we will unveil the new and improved layout, look and feel, and even some new content. Some of you told us loud and clear that you wanted an easier way to find our training courses and other important information. Well, here you are: Immediately you see the look and feel has changed and things have moved around a bit. You may ask, "How can I find the training catalog? Service requests? Downloads?" There are a few ways to find what you're looking for. You may use the search box to find training, quick guides, downloads, best practices, FAQs and more. You may also click the tabs or links in the blue bar, like Browse Training, to browse other documents and information. Here is a brief outline of the tabs and links that will help as you navigate this new tool: The Support tab provides alerts and notifications specific to your application environment. The Get Started tab is organized by role and contains links to resources aimed at helping you get the most out of your first 30 days with CRM On Demand. The Learn More tab outlines information in key topic areas, like administration, integration, and reports. Go to this tab to get the resources you need to move beyond the basics. The Release Information tab contains information specific to the current and upcoming releases of CRM On Demand. Access this tab to learn about and prepare for upgrades to your CRM On Demand application. The Best Practices tab contains a compilation of knowledge gained by experts that work with CRM On Demand day in and day out. Access this knowledge to benefit from their vast experience. The Communities tab offers connections to others in the CRM On Demand community through forums, communities, blogs, and more. The Browse training link opens the training catalog.Take a look at the instructor-led training, Webinars, quick guides, use cases, and tools available to you. The Browse Knowledge link takes you to our knowledge base where you can get answers to frequently asked questions. The Submit a Service Request link directs you to My Oracle Support where you can log a service request. The steps in that process have not changed. The Web Services Library provides simple APIs and a link to Oracle Sample Code where you can get samples that can help you build custom integrations. The Add-On Applications link allows access to our downloadable applications that allow you to extend the functionality of CRM On Demand. The Templates and Tools link provides access to resources that can help you design and build CRM On Demand to meet your company's specific needs. A lot has changed and I know it is a lot to take in. To help you out, we have a printable quick guide that you can use during this transition. As always, let us know what you think: [email protected].

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BlueTooth not working on my HP Probook 4720s

- by mtrento

the blue tooth on my ubuntu 11.10 does not work. When i try to ad a device it scans indefinitely and never find anything. Wireless is working perfeclty and with windows 7 it is detected. As i read somewhere , the bluetooth is not listed in the usb devices. Is it supported under ubuntu? here are the output of the various debug command i tested : hciconfig -a hci0: Type: BR/EDR Bus: USB BD Address: E0:2A:82:7A:8B:04 ACL MTU: 310:10 SCO MTU: 64:8 UP RUNNING PSCAN ISCAN RX bytes:1895 acl:0 sco:0 events:70 errors:0 TX bytes:1986 acl:0 sco:0 commands:64 errors:0 Features: 0xff 0xff 0x8f 0xfe 0x9b 0xff 0x59 0x83 Packet type: DM1 DM3 DM5 DH1 DH3 DH5 HV1 HV2 HV3 Link policy: RSWITCH HOLD SNIFF PARK Link mode: SLAVE ACCEPT Name: 'PC543host-0' Class: 0x5a0100 Service Classes: Networking, Capturing, Object Transfer, Telephony Device Class: Computer, Uncategorized HCI Version: 2.1 (0x4) Revision: 0x149c LMP Version: 2.1 (0x4) Subversion: 0x149c Manufacturer: Cambridge Silicon Radio (10) hcitool scan hcitool scan Scanning ... lsusb Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:0020 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub Bus 002 Device 002: ID 8087:0020 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub Bus 001 Device 003: ID 04f2:b1ac Chicony Electronics Co., Ltd Bus 002 Device 003: ID 413c:3010 Dell Computer Corp. Optical Wheel Mouse Bus 002 Device 004: ID 148f:1000 Ralink Technology, Corp. lsmod | grep -i bluetooth bluetooth 166112 23 bnep,rfcomm,btusb dmesg | grep -i bluetooth [ 18.543947] Bluetooth: Core ver 2.16 [ 18.544017] Bluetooth: HCI device and connection manager initialized [ 18.544020] Bluetooth: HCI socket layer initialized [ 18.544021] Bluetooth: L2CAP socket layer initialized [ 18.545469] Bluetooth: SCO socket layer initialized [ 18.548890] Bluetooth: Generic Bluetooth USB driver ver 0.6 [ 30.204776] Bluetooth: RFCOMM TTY layer initialized [ 30.204782] Bluetooth: RFCOMM socket layer initialized [ 30.204784] Bluetooth: RFCOMM ver 1.11 [ 30.247291] Bluetooth: BNEP (Ethernet Emulation) ver 1.3 [ 30.247295] Bluetooth: BNEP filters: protocol multicast lspci 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor DRAM Controller (rev 02) 00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor PCI Express x16 Root Port (rev 02) 00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset HECI Controller (rev 06) 00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset USB2 Enhanced Host Controller (rev 05) 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset High Definition Audio (rev 05) 00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev 05) 00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 2 (rev 05) 00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 4 (rev 05) 00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 6 (rev 05) 00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset USB2 Enhanced Host Controller (rev 05) 00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev a5) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 5 Series Chipset LPC Interface Controller (rev 05) 00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset 6 port SATA AHCI Controller (rev 05) 00:1f.6 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset Thermal Subsystem (rev 05) 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Manhattan [Mobility Radeon HD 5400 Series] 01:00.1 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc Manhattan HDMI Audio [Mobility Radeon HD 5000 Series] 44:00.0 Network controller: Ralink corp. RT3090 Wireless 802.11n 1T/1R PCIe 45:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 03) ff:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QuickPath Architecture Generic Non-core Registers (rev 02) ff:00.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QuickPath Architecture System Address Decoder (rev 02) ff:02.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QPI Link 0 (rev 02) ff:02.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QPI Physical 0 (rev 02) ff:02.2 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor Reserved (rev 02) ff:02.3 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor Reserved (rev 02) rfkill list 0: phy0: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no 1: hci0: Bluetooth Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no 2: hp-wifi: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no 3: hp-bluetooth: Bluetooth Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no

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Skewed: a rotating camera in a simple CPU-based voxel raycaster/raytracer

- by voxelizr

TL;DR -- in my first simple software voxel raycaster, I cannot get camera rotations to work, seemingly correct matrices notwithstanding. The result is skewed: like a flat rendering, correctly rotated, however distorted and without depth. (While axis-aligned ie. unrotated, depth and parallax are as expected.) I'm trying to write a simple voxel raycaster as a learning exercise. This is purely CPU based for now until I figure out how things work exactly -- fow now, OpenGL is just (ab)used to blit the generated bitmap to the screen as often as possible. Now I have gotten to the point where a perspective-projection camera can move through the world and I can render (mostly, minus some artifacts that need investigation) perspective-correct 3-dimensional views of the "world", which is basically empty but contains a voxel cube of the Stanford Bunny. So I have a camera that I can move up and down, strafe left and right and "walk forward/backward" -- all axis-aligned so far, no camera rotations. Herein lies my problem. Screenshot #1: correct depth when the camera is still strictly axis-aligned, ie. un-rotated. Now I have for a few days been trying to get rotation to work. The basic logic and theory behind matrices and 3D rotations, in theory, is very clear to me. Yet I have only ever achieved a "2.5 rendering" when the camera rotates... fish-eyey, bit like in Google Streetview: even though I have a volumetric world representation, it seems --no matter what I try-- like I would first create a rendering from the "front view", then rotate that flat rendering according to camera rotation. Needless to say, I'm by now aware that rotating rays is not particularly necessary and error-prone. Still, in my most recent setup, with the most simplified raycast ray-position-and-direction algorithm possible, my rotation still produces the same fish-eyey flat-render-rotated style looks: Screenshot #2: camera "rotated to the right by 39 degrees" -- note how the blue-shaded left-hand side of the cube from screen #2 is not visible in this rotation, yet by now "it really should"! Now of course I'm aware of this: in a simple axis-aligned-no-rotation-setup like I had in the beginning, the ray simply traverses in small steps the positive z-direction, diverging to the left or right and top or bottom only depending on pixel position and projection matrix. As I "rotate the camera to the right or left" -- ie I rotate it around the Y-axis -- those very steps should be simply transformed by the proper rotation matrix, right? So for forward-traversal the Z-step gets a bit smaller the more the cam rotates, offset by an "increase" in the X-step. Yet for the pixel-position-based horizontal+vertical-divergence, increasing fractions of the x-step need to be "added" to the z-step. Somehow, none of my many matrices that I experimented with, nor my experiments with matrix-less hardcoded verbose sin/cos calculations really get this part right. Here's my basic per-ray pre-traversal algorithm -- syntax in Go, but take it as pseudocode: fx and fy: pixel positions x and y rayPos: vec3 for the ray starting position in world-space (calculated as below) rayDir: vec3 for the xyz-steps to be added to rayPos in each step during ray traversal rayStep: a temporary vec3 camPos: vec3 for the camera position in world space camRad: vec3 for camera rotation in radians pmat: typical perspective projection matrix The algorithm / pseudocode: // 1: rayPos is for now "this pixel, as a vector on the view plane in 3d, at The Origin" rayPos.X, rayPos.Y, rayPos.Z = ((fx / width) - 0.5), ((fy / height) - 0.5), 0 // 2: rotate around Y axis depending on cam rotation. No prob since view plane still at Origin 0,0,0 rayPos.MultMat(num.NewDmat4RotationY(camRad.Y)) // 3: a temp vec3. planeDist is -0.15 or some such -- fov-based dist of view plane from eye and also the non-normalized, "in axis-aligned world" traversal step size "forward into the screen" rayStep.X, rayStep.Y, rayStep.Z = 0, 0, planeDist // 4: rotate this too -- 0,zstep should become some meaningful xzstep,xzstep rayStep.MultMat(num.NewDmat4RotationY(CamRad.Y)) // set up direction vector from still-origin-based-ray-position-off-rotated-view-plane plus rotated-zstep-vector rayDir.X, rayDir.Y, rayDir.Z = -rayPos.X - me.rayStep.X, -rayPos.Y, rayPos.Z + rayStep.Z // perspective projection rayDir.Normalize() rayDir.MultMat(pmat) // before traversal, the ray starting position has to be transformed from origin-relative to campos-relative rayPos.Add(camPos) I'm skipping the traversal and sampling parts -- as per screens #1 through #3, those are "basically mostly correct" (though not pretty) -- when axis-aligned / unrotated.

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