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Teeing Off With Chris Leone at OpenWorld 2012

- by Kathryn Perry

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} A guest post by Chris Leone, Senior Vice President, Oracle Applications Development Monday morning in downtown San Francisco - lots of sunshine, plenty of traffic, and sidewalks chocked full of people with fresh faces and blister free feet. Let the week of Oracle OpenWorld begin! For a great Applications start, Chris Leone packed the house with his Fusion Applications overview session - he covered strategy, scope, roadmaps, and customer successes. Fusion Apps, the world's best SaaS suite, is built on 100 percent standards. Chris talked about its information driven user experience, its innovative design, and the choice of deployment. People can run Fusion in the cloud, in a managed / hosted environment, or on premise -- or they can use a combination of these three models. About seventy percent of our customers go with SaaS. Release 5 of Fusion Apps will become available soon. The cadence of releases will be three times a year. The key drivers are to accelerate business success (no rip and replace) and to simplify business processes. Chris told the audience that organic Fusion is the centerpiece of our cloud solutions, rounded out with acquired offerings such as Taleo Recruiting and RightNow Customer Service. From the cloud solutions, customers can expect real time and predictive BI, social capabilities, choice of deployment, and more productivity because of a next generation UX called FUSE. Chris's demo showed a super easy, new UI that touts self service navigation. We'll blog about FUSE in the very near future. Chris said the next 365 days of Fusion Apps would include more localization, more industries, more power, more mobile, and more configurability. The audience was challenged to think hard about how Fusion could be part of their three-to-five year plans. Chris set up a great opportunity for you to follow up with your customers as they explore the possibilities.

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24 hours to pass until 24 Hours of PASS

- by Rob Farley

There’s a bunch of stuff going on at the moment in the SQL world, so if you’ve missed this particular piece of news, let me tell you a bit about it. Twice a year, the SQL community puts on its biggest virtual event – 24 Hours of PASS. And the next one is tomorrow – March 21st, 2012. Twenty-four sessions, back-to-back, featuring a selection of some of the best presenters in the SQL world, speakers from all over the world, coming together in an online collaboration that so far has well over thirty thousand registrations across the presentations. Some people are signed up for all 24 sessions, some only one. Traditionally, LiveMeeting has been used as the platform for this event, but this year we’re going with a new platform – IBTalk. It promises big, and we’re hoping it won’t let us down. LiveMeeting has been great, and we thank Microsoft for providing it as a platform for the past few years. However, as the event has grown, we’ve found that a new idea is necessary. Last year a search was done for a new platform, and IBTalk ticked the right boxes. The feedback from the presenters and moderators so far has been overwhelmingly positive, and we’re hoping that this is going to really enhance the user experience. One of my favourite features of the platform is the language side. It provides a pretty good translation service. Users who join a session will see a flag on the left of the screen. If they click it, they can change the language to one of 15 on offer. Picking this changes all the labels on everything. It even translates the text in the Q&A window. What this means is that someone from Brazil can ask their question in Portuguese, and the presenter will see it in English. Then if the answer is typed in English, the questioner will be able to see the answer, also in Portuguese. Or they can switch to English to see it as the answerer typed it. I know there’s always the risk of bad translations going on, but I’ve heard good things about this translation service. But there’s more – IBTalk are providing staff to type up closed captioning live during the event. So if English isn’t your first language, don’t worry! Picking your language will also let you see subtitles in your chosen language. I’m hoping that this event is the start of PASS being able to reach people from all corners of the world. Wouldn’t it be great to find that this event is successful, and that the next 24HOP (later in the year, our Summit Preview event) has just as many non-English speakers tuning in as English speakers? If you haven’t been planning which sessions you’re going to attend, you really should get over to sqlpass.org/24hours and have a look through what’s on offer. There’s some amazing material from some of the industry’s brightest, covering a wide range of topics, from classic SQL areas to the brand new SQL 2012 features. There really should be something for every SQL professional. Check the time zones though – if you’re in the US you might be on Summer time, and an hour closer to GMT than normal. Massive thanks must go to Microsoft, SQL Sentry and Idera for sponsoring this event. Without sponsors we wouldn’t be able to put any of this on. These companies are helping 24HOP continue to grow into an event for the whole world. See you tomorrow! @rob_farley | #24hop | #sqlpass

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24 hours to pass until 24 Hours of PASS

- by Rob Farley

There’s a bunch of stuff going on at the moment in the SQL world, so if you’ve missed this particular piece of news, let me tell you a bit about it. Twice a year, the SQL community puts on its biggest virtual event – 24 Hours of PASS. And the next one is tomorrow – March 21st, 2012. Twenty-four sessions, back-to-back, featuring a selection of some of the best presenters in the SQL world, speakers from all over the world, coming together in an online collaboration that so far has well over thirty thousand registrations across the presentations. Some people are signed up for all 24 sessions, some only one. Traditionally, LiveMeeting has been used as the platform for this event, but this year we’re going with a new platform – IBTalk. It promises big, and we’re hoping it won’t let us down. LiveMeeting has been great, and we thank Microsoft for providing it as a platform for the past few years. However, as the event has grown, we’ve found that a new idea is necessary. Last year a search was done for a new platform, and IBTalk ticked the right boxes. The feedback from the presenters and moderators so far has been overwhelmingly positive, and we’re hoping that this is going to really enhance the user experience. One of my favourite features of the platform is the language side. It provides a pretty good translation service. Users who join a session will see a flag on the left of the screen. If they click it, they can change the language to one of 15 on offer. Picking this changes all the labels on everything. It even translates the text in the Q&A window. What this means is that someone from Brazil can ask their question in Portuguese, and the presenter will see it in English. Then if the answer is typed in English, the questioner will be able to see the answer, also in Portuguese. Or they can switch to English to see it as the answerer typed it. I know there’s always the risk of bad translations going on, but I’ve heard good things about this translation service. But there’s more – IBTalk are providing staff to type up closed captioning live during the event. So if English isn’t your first language, don’t worry! Picking your language will also let you see subtitles in your chosen language. I’m hoping that this event is the start of PASS being able to reach people from all corners of the world. Wouldn’t it be great to find that this event is successful, and that the next 24HOP (later in the year, our Summit Preview event) has just as many non-English speakers tuning in as English speakers? If you haven’t been planning which sessions you’re going to attend, you really should get over to sqlpass.org/24hours and have a look through what’s on offer. There’s some amazing material from some of the industry’s brightest, covering a wide range of topics, from classic SQL areas to the brand new SQL 2012 features. There really should be something for every SQL professional. Check the time zones though – if you’re in the US you might be on Summer time, and an hour closer to GMT than normal. Massive thanks must go to Microsoft, SQL Sentry and Idera for sponsoring this event. Without sponsors we wouldn’t be able to put any of this on. These companies are helping 24HOP continue to grow into an event for the whole world. See you tomorrow! @rob_farley | #24hop | #sqlpass

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Silverlight Cream for May 08, 2010 -- #858

- by Dave Campbell

In this Issue: Phil Middlemiss, Jaime Rodriguez, Senthil Kumar, Mike Snow, DaveDev, Gergely Orosz, Kirupa, Cheryl Simmons, András Velvárt, Dan Wahlin, Michael D. Brown, and Ben Rush. Shoutouts: Erik Mork and crew have their latest up: This Week In Silverlight – Where’s the Tablet? Chris Rouw has a good link post and instructions on WCF RIA services: Deploying and Configuring Silverlight 4 and WCF RIA Services From SilverlightCream.com: Quick and Easy Sscalable Rounded Bevels Phil Middlemiss duplicates some bevel-edged rectangles in Blend, and they look great. Now you don't have to import all the other PhotoShop bits to get those things looking the way you want! A transparent Windows PHONE FAQ Jaime Rodriguez combined a bunch of information into a WP7 FAQ that he's going to keep up to date, so bookmark the page. He also has links to the Training Kit, on and offline versions. Windows Phone Developer Training Kit April Refresh is now available for Download Thanks to Senthil Kumar, I found out there is an April refresh of the WP7 Training kit at Channel 9 -- go get yours now --- I'll still be here when you get back! Silverlight Tip of the Day #16 – Working with IgnoreImageCache Mike Snow's Tip of the day #16 covers IgnoreImageCache and like many other things in life, until you read Mike's post you may be surprised at how it works. DoodlePad – A fun, free, sketching application for Windows Phone 7 DaveDev has a new WP7 App up that lets you or your kids 'Doodle' on the phone... could be a note, or could be a drawing... good post with all the links you need to get this cranked up on the emulator. Printing in Silverlight: Printing Charts and Auto Scaling Gergely Orosz's latest post is a very useful one on auto-scaling charts to fit a printed page and then getting them to print. Smoothly Scrolling a ListBox Check out the smooth scrolling Kirupa has on the ListBox near the top of his post... all good stuff... you wanna know how to do that! Plus... it's dead simple and all in Blend :) http://www.sparklingclient.com/wheres-the-silverlight-tablet/ Cheryl Simmons has a great tip up at the SilverlightSDK if you haven't burned through to figure it out yet ... changing the watermark on a DatePicker control... looks great! The story of a wicked bug András Velvárt tells a story of a bug that just defied logic or being found. Read how he tracked it down and what it actually was... could save you some time. Story learned: if I have a problem that bad, I'm calling András :) Text Trimming in Silverlight 4 Dan Wahlin gives a quick run-through of what TextBox trimming is, and then by a good real example... check it out and start using it in your projects. Enterprise Patterns with WCF RIA Services Michael D. Brown has an article in MSDN Magazine on RIA Services. Great information and link-packed article, with all the source avialable for download. Building Custom Players with the Silverlight Media Framework Ben Rush has a nice long tutorial on the Silverlight Media Framework up on the MSDN Magazine site ... lots of information in there. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight Silverlight 3 Silverlight 4 Windows Phone MIX10

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Triangle Line-Segment Intersection - detecting near misses

- by Will

A ray is a very poor approximation of a player! I think approximating a player with a sphere traveling a straight line each game tick will solve my problems of the player intersecting edges of scenery because their line segment missed it yet their own model is not infinitely thin... I have a 3D triangle and a line segment. I have the normal triangle-line-segment intersection code which I admit I have only a woolly grasp of. To model movement and compute collisions of the player I have to determine if a line passes within sphere-radius of a triangle. But I can find no convenient line near-miss intersection code! Here's the classic triangle intersection ### commented ### code with my starting assumptions: function triangle_ray_intersection(a,b,c,ray_origin,ray_dir,ray_radius) { // http://softsurfer.com/Archive/algorithm_0105/algorithm_0105.htm#intersect_RayTriangle%28%29 // get triangle edge vectors and plane normal var u = vec3_sub(b,a); var v = vec3_sub(c,a); var n = vec3_cross(u,v); if(n[0]==0 && n[1]==0 && n[2]==0) return null; // triangle is degenerate var w0 = vec3_sub(ray_origin,a); var j = vec3_dot(n,ray_dir); if(Math.abs(j) < 0.00000001) { //### if parallel, might still pass within ray_radius of it return null; // parallel, disjoint or on plane } var i = -vec3_dot(n,w0); // get intersect point of ray with triangle plane var k = i / j; if(k < 0.0) return null; // ray goes away from triangle //### as its a line segment, k > 1+ray_radius means no intersect var hit = vec3_add(ray_origin,vec3_scale(ray_dir,k)); // intersect point of ray and plane // is I inside T? //### here I'm a bit lost; this is presumably computing barycentric coordinates? var uu = vec3_dot(u,u); var uv = vec3_dot(u,v); var vv = vec3_dot(v,v); var w = vec3_sub(hit,a); var wu = vec3_dot(w,u); var wv = vec3_dot(w,v); var D = uv * uv - uu * vv; var s = (uv * wv - vv * wu) / D; //### therefore, compute if its within ray_radius scaled to the 0..1 of barycentric coordinates? if(s<0.0 || s>1.0) return null; // I is outside T var t = (uv * wu - uu * wv) / D; if(t<0.0 || (s+t)>1.0) return null; // I is outside T //### finally, if it passses a barycentric test it might still be too far //### to a point; must check that its distance from a corner is within ray_radius too if more than one barycentric coord is >1 //### so we have rounded corners... return [hit,n]; // I is in T } Given the distance between the point of plane intersection and each corner, I ought to be able to determine distance at world scale of how far beyond the edge - beyond 1.0 in barycentric coordinates for each axis - that point is... At this point my head explodes! Is this the right track? What's the actual code? UPDATE: you can earn 100 pts on SO if you answer this question there...! How can you determine if a line segment passes within some distance of a triangle?

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Developing an Implementation Plan with Iterations by Russ Pitts

- by user535886

Developing an Implementation Plan with Iterations by Russ Pitts Ok, so you have come to grips with understanding that applying the iterative concept, as defined by OUM is simply breaking up the project effort you have estimated for each phase into one or more six week calendar duration blocks of work. Idea being the business user(s) or key recipient(s) of work product(s) being developed never go longer than six weeks without having some sort of review or prototyping of the work results for an iteration…”think-a-little”, “do-a-little”, and “show-a-little” in a six week or less timeframe…ideally the business user(s) or key recipients(s) are involved throughout. You also understand the OUM concept that you only plan for that which you have knowledge of. The concept further defined, a project plan initially is developed at a high-level, and becomes more detailed as project knowledge grows. Agreeing to this concept means you also have to admit to the fallacy that one can plan with precision beyond six weeks into a project…Anything beyond six weeks is a best guess in most cases when dealing with software implementation projects. Project planning, as defined by OUM begins with the Implementation Plan view, which is a very high-level perspective of the effort estimated for each of the five OUM phases, as well as the number of iterations within each phase. You might wonder how can you predict the number of iterations for each phase at this early point in the project. Remember project planning is not an exact science, and initially is high-level and abstract in nature, and then becomes more detailed and precise as the project proceeds. So where do you start in defining iterations for each phase for a project? The following are three easy steps to initially define the number of iterations for each phase: Step 1 => Start with identifying the known factors… …Prior to starting a project you should know: · The agreed upon time-period for an iteration (e.g 6 weeks, or 4 weeks, or…) within a phase (recommend keeping iteration time-period consistent within a phase, if not for the entire project) · The number of resources available for the project · The number of total number of man-day (effort) you have estimated for each of the five OUM phases of the project · The number of work days for a week Step 2 => Calculate the man-days of effort required for an iteration within a phase… Lets assume for the sake of this example there are 10 project resources, and you have estimated 2,536 man-days of work effort which will need to occur for the elaboration phase of the project. Let’s also assume a week for this project is defined as 5 business days, and that each iteration in the elaboration phase will last a calendar duration of 6 weeks. A simple calculation is performed to calculate the daily burn rate for a single iteration, which produces a result of… ((Number of resources * days per week) * duration of iteration) = Number of days required per iteration ((10 resources * 5 days/week) * 6 weeks) = 300 man days of effort required per iteration Step 3 => Calculate the number of iterations that can occur within a phase Next calculate the number of iterations that can occur for the amount of man-days of effort estimated for the phase being considered… (number of man-days of effort estimated / number of man-days required per iteration) = # of iterations for phase (2,536 man-days of estimated effort for phase / 300 man days of effort required per iteration) = 8.45 iterations, which should be rounded to a whole number such as 9 iterations* *Note - It is important to note this is an approximate calculation, not an exact science. This particular example is a simple one, which assumes all resources are utilized throughout the phase, including tech resources, etc. (rounding down or up to a whole number based on project factor considerations). It is also best in many cases to round up to higher number, as this provides some calendar scheduling contingency.

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Help finding time of collision

- by WannaBe

I am making a simple game right now and am struggling with collision response. My goal is to someday be able to turn it into a 2D platformer but I have a long way to go. I am currently making this in JavaScript and using the canvas element so (0,0) is in the top left and positive X is to the right and positive Y is down. I read a helpful post on StackExchange that got me started on this but I can't seem to get the algorithm 100% correct. How to deal with corner collisions in 2D? I can detect the collision fine but I can't seem to get the response right. The goal is to detect which side the player hit first since minimum displacement doesn't always work. The X response seems to work fine but the Y only works when I am far from the corners. Here is a picture showing what happens Here is the code var bx = box.x; var by = box.y; var bw = box.width; var bh = box.height; var boxCenterX = bx + (bw/2); var boxCenterY = by + (bh/2); var playerCenterX = player.x + player.xvel + (player.width/2); var playerCenterY = player.y + player.yvel + (player.height/2); //left = negative and right = positve, 0 = middle var distanceXin = playerCenterX - boxCenterX; var distanceYin = playerCenterY - boxCenterY; var distanceWidth = Math.abs(distanceXin); var distanceHeight = Math.abs(distanceYin); var halfWidths = (bw/2) + (player.width/2); var halfHeights = (bh/2) + (player.height/2); if(distanceWidth < halfWidths){ //xcollision if(distanceHeight < halfHeights){ //ycollision if(player.xvel == 0){ //adjust y if(distanceYin > 0){ //bottom player.y = by + bh; player.yvel = 0; }else{ player.y = by - player.height; player.yvel = 0; } }else if(player.yvel == 0){ //adjust x if(distanceXin > 0){ //right player.x = bx + bw; player.xvel = 0; }else{ //left player.x = bx - player.width; player.xvel = 0; } }else{ var yTime = distanceYin / player.yvel; var xTime = distanceXin / player.xvel; if(xTime < yTime){ //adjust the x it collided first if(distanceXin > 0){ //right player.x = bx + bw; player.xvel = 0; }else{ //left player.x = bx - player.width; player.xvel = 0; } }else{ //adjust the y it collided first if(distanceYin > 0){ //bottom player.y = by + bh; player.yvel = 0; }else{ player.y = by - player.height; player.yvel = 0; } } } } } And here is a JSFiddle if you would like to see the problem yourself. http://jsfiddle.net/dMumU/ To recreate this move the player to here And press up and left at the same time. The player will jump to the right for some reason. Any advice? I know I am close but I can't seem to get xTime and yTime to equal what I want every time.

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SQLUG Events - London/Edinburgh/Cardiff/Reading - Masterclass, NoSQL, TSQL Gotcha's, Replication, BI

- by tonyrogerson

We have acquired two additional tickets to attend the SQL Server Master Class with Paul Randal and Kimberly Tripp next Thurs (17th June), for a chance to win these coveted tickets email us ([email protected]) before 9pm this Sunday with the subject "MasterClass" - people previously entered need not worry - your still in with a chance. The winners will be announced Monday morning.As ever plenty going on physically, we've got dates for a stack of events in Manchester and Leeds, I'm looking at Birmingham if anybody has ideas? We are growing our online community with the Cuppa Corner section, to participate online remember to use the #sqlfaq twitter tag; for those wanting to get more involved in presenting and fancy trying it out we are always after people to do 1 - 5 minute SQL nuggets or Cuppa Corners (short presentations) at any of these User Group events - just email us [email protected] removing from this email list? Then just reply with remove please on the subject line.Kimberly Tripp and Paul Randal Master Class - Thurs, 17th June - LondonREGISTER NOW AND GET A SECOND REGISTRATION FREE*The top things YOU need to know about managing SQL Server - in one place, on one day - presented by two of the best SQL Server industry trainers!This one-day MasterClass will focus on many of the top issues companies face when implementing and maintaining a SQL Server-based solution. In the case where a company has no dedicated DBA, IT managers sometimes struggle to keep the data tier performing well and the data available. This can be especially troublesome when the development team is unfamiliar with the affect application design choices have on database performance.The Microsoft SQL Server MasterClass 2010 is presented by Paul S. Randal and Kimberly L. Tripp, two of the most experienced and respected people in the SQL Server world. Together they have over 30 years combined experience working with SQL Server in the field, and on the SQL Server product team itself. This is a unique opportunity to hear them present at a UK event which will:>> Debunk many of the ingrained misconceptions around SQL Server's behaviour >> Show you disaster recovery techniques critical to preserving your company's life-blood - the data >> Explain how a common application design pattern can wreak havoc in the database >> Walk through the top-10 points to follow around operations and maintenance for a well-performing and available data tier! Where: Radisson Edwardian Heathrow Hotel, LondonWhen: Thursday 17th June 2010*REGISTER TODAY AT www.regonline.co.uk/kimtrippsql on the registration form simply quote discount code: BOGOF for both yourself and your colleague and you will save 50% off each registration – that’s a 249 GBP saving! This offer is limited, book early to avoid disappointment.Wed, 23 JunREADINGEvening Meeting, More info and registerIntroduction to NoSQL (Not Only SQL) - Gavin Payne; T-SQL Gotcha's and how to avoid them - Ashwani Roy; Introduction to Recency Frequency - Tony Rogerson; Reporting Services - Tim LeungThu, 24 JunCARDIFFEvening Meeting, More info and registerAlex Whittles of Purple Frog Systems talks about Data warehouse design case studies, Other BI related session TBC Mon, 28 JunEDINBURGHEvening Meeting, More info and registerReplication (Components, Adminstration, Performance and Troubleshooting) - Neil Hambly Server Upgrades (Notes and Best practice from the field) - Satya Jayanty Wed, 14 JulLONDONEvening Meeting, More info and registerMeeting is being sponsored by DBSophic (http://www.dbsophic.com/download), database optimisation software. Physical Join Operators in SQL Server - Ami LevinWorkload Tuning - Ami LevinSQL Server and Disk IO (File Groups/Files, SSD's, Fusion-IO, In-RAM DB's, Fragmentation) - Tony RogersonComplex Event Processing - Allan MitchellMany thanks,Tony Rogerson, SQL Server MVPUK SQL Server User Grouphttp://sqlserverfaq.com"

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December 3 is Stephanie Choyer Day

- by rickramsey

I don't answer Stephanie Choyer's email just so I can enjoy her French accent when she calls. "Reek! Reek! Why do joo not answer my eemails?" Without the French, life on Earth would be so much poorer. No, they don't bring to the party any motorcycles that grow chest on your hair, and the Citroen is such a frightening study in Automobile design that I don't dare climb inside one. But they have French architecture. French sidewalks. French villages. The French Alps. Grenoble. French cheese. French wine. And that glorious French accent. If I were French, I'd spend all my time enjoying being French. Which makes the work that Stephanie does day in and day with our hard-edged technologies and stubborn technologists so admirable. Oracle Solaris 11 Resources for Sysadmins and Developers The page in the link above represents the work of many people, but it was Steph who rounded them up. And it wasn't easy. I know, because I ran and hid from her on many, many occasions. But she was tireless. "Reek. Reek. Why have you not published Glynn's article? Pleeeease, you must!" Remember when tech companies gave you a simple choice? You could either read the 27,000 pages of documentation or a double-sided data sheet. Which will it be, pal? Then they started writing white papers. 74 pages of excellent prose did a beautiful job of explaining why the technology was fantastic, but never told you how to use it. Well, have you taken a look at these? How-To Technical Articles for System Admins and Developers Now you can get wicked excited about a cool technique described in a 74-page white paper, and find a technical article that shows you exactly how to use it. The wicked smart marketing folks on the Oracle Solaris team wrote them, but it was Steph who bribed them with a Cabernet or beat them over the head with a baguette until all that work was finished and posted on OTN. There are songs about French wine, but not about French vintners. There are songs about French cities, but not about French bricklayers. About French sidewalks, but not about the French policemen who keep them safe. As far as I know, there are no songs about OTN, but if there were, they would probably neglect to mention Steph. Which is why today, Dec 3rd, we celebrate Stephanie Choyer Day. We dedicate this day to our relentless, hardworking, tireless, patient and friendly French colleague with the delightful accent. If I knew how to speak French, I'd say "Thanks for all you do" in French. But I don't speak French. And I don't trust online translations. I'd probably wind up saying "My left foot yearns for curdled milk." So here it is in plain old English: Thank you, Stephanie. psssst! about that documentation and those white papers ... In case you haven't noticed, the Oracle Solaris doc team has done some pretty cool things with the Solaris docs. And those white papers are interesting reading, well worth setting aside some time. Because with Solaris, as you know, it's not just about getting by with a rudimentary grasp of the basics. It's about the amazing stuff savvy sysadmins and developers can do when they really understand it. Find them here: White Papers Documentation And don't forget training! - Rick Website Newsletter Facebook Twitter

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Silverlight Cream for December 27, 2010 -- #1016

- by Dave Campbell

In this Issue: Sacha Barber, David Anson, Jesse Liberty, Shawn Wildermuth, Jeff Blankenburg(-2-), Martin Krüger, Ryan Alford(-2-), Michael Crump, Peter Kuhn(-2-). Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Part 4 of 4 : Tips/Tricks for Silverlight Developers" Michael Crump WP7: "Navigating with the WebBrowser Control on WP7" Shawn Wildermuth Shoutouts: John Papa posted that the open call is up for MIX11 presenters: Your Chance to Speak at MIX11 From SilverlightCream.com: Aspect Examples (INotifyPropertyChanged via aspects) If you're wanting to read a really in-depth discussion of aspect oriented programming (AOP), check out the article Sacha Barber has up at CodeProject discussing INPC via aspects. How to: Localize a Windows Phone 7 application that uses the Windows Phone Toolkit into different languages David Anson has a nice tutorial up on localizing your WP7 app, including using the Toolkit and controls such as DatePicker... remember we're talking localized Windows Phone From Scratch – Animation Part 1 Jesse Liberty continues in his 'From Scratch' series with this first post on WP7 Animation... good stuff, Jesse! Navigating with the WebBrowser Control on WP7 In building his latest WP7 app, Shawn Wildermuth ran into some obscure errors surrounding browser.InvokeScript. He lists the simple solution and his back, refresh, and forward button functionality for us. What I Learned In WP7 – Issue #7 In the time I was out, Jeff Blankenburg got ahead of me, so I'll catch up 2 at a time... in this number 7 he discusses making videos of your apps, links to the Learn Visual Studio series, and his new website What I Learned In WP7 – Issue #8 Jeff Blankenburg's number 8 is a very cool tip on using the return key on the keyboard to handle the loss of focus and handling of text typed into a textbox. Resize of a grid by using thumb controls Martin Krüger has a sample in the Expression Gallery of a grid that is resizable by using 'thumb controls' at the 4 corners... all source, so check it out! Silverlight 4 – Productivity Power Tools and EF4 Ryan Alford found a very interesting bug associated with EF4 and the Productivity Power Tools, and the way to get out of it is just weird as well. Silverlight 4 – Toolkit and Theming Ryan Alford also had a problem adding a theme from the Toolkit, and what all you might have to do to get around this one.... Part 4 of 4 : Tips/Tricks for Silverlight Developers. Michael Crump has part 4 of his series on Silverlight Development tips and tricks. This is numbers 16 through 20 and covers topics such as Version information, Using Lambdas, Specifying a development port, Disabling ChildWindow Close button, and XAML cleanup. The XML content importer and Windows Phone 7 Peter Kuhn wanted to use the XML content inporter with a WP7 app and ran into problems implementing the process and a lack of documentation as well... he pounded through it all and has a class he's sharing for loading sounds via XML file settings. WP7 snippet: analyzing the hyperlink button style In a second post, Peter Kuhn responds to a forum discussion about the styles for the hyperlink button in WP7 and why they're different than SL4 ... and styles-to-go to get all the hyperlink goodness you want... wrapped text, or even non-text content. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight Silverlight 3 Silverlight 4 Windows Phone MIX10

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Measuring Code Quality

- by DotNetBlues

Several months back, I was tasked with measuring the quality of code in my organization. Foolishly, I said, "No problem." I figured that Visual Studio has a built-in code metrics tool (Analyze -> Calculate Code Metrics) and that would be a fine place to start with. I was right, but also very wrong. The Visual Studio calculates five primary metrics: Maintainability Index, Cyclomatic Complexity, Depth of Inheritance, Class Coupling, and Lines of Code. The first two are figured at the method level, the second at (primarily) the class level, and the last is a simple count. The first question any reasonable person should ask is "Which one do I look at first?" The first question any manager is going to ask is, "What one number tells me about the whole application?" My answer to both, in a way, was "Maintainability Index." Why? Because each of the other numbers represent one element of quality while MI is a composite number that includes Cyclomatic Complexity. I'd be lying if I said no consideration was given to the fact that it was abstract enough that it's harder for some surly developer (I've been known to resemble that remark) to start arguing why a high coupling or inheritance is no big deal or how complex requirements are to blame for complex code. I should also note that I don't think there is one magic bullet metric that will tell you objectively how good a code base is. There are a ton of different metrics out there, and each one was created for a specific purpose in mind and has a pet theory behind it. When you've got a group of developers who aren't accustomed to measuring code quality, picking a 0-100 scale, non-controversial metric that can be easily generated by tools you already own really isn't a bad place to start. That sort of answers the question a developer would ask, but what about the management question; how do you dashboard this stuff when Visual Studio doesn't roll up the numbers to the solution level? Since VS does roll up the MI to the project level, I thought I could just figure out what sort of weighting Microsoft used to roll method scores up to the class level and then to the namespace and project levels. I was a bit surprised by the answer: there is no weighting. That means that a class with one 1300 line method (which will score a 0 MI) and one empty constructor (which will score a 100 MI) will have an overall MI of a respectable 50. Throw in a couple of DTOs that are nothing more than getters and setters (which tend to score 95 or better) and the project ends up looking really, really healthy. The next poor bastard who has to work on the application is probably not going to be singing the praises of its maintainability, though. For the record, that 1300 line method isn't a hypothetical, either. So, what does one do with that? Well, I decided to weight the average by the Lines of Code per method. For our above example, the formula for the class's MI becomes ((1300 * 0) + (1 * 100))/1301 = .077, rounded to 0. Sounds about right. Continue the pattern for namespace, project, solution, and even multi-solution application MI scores. This can be done relatively easily by using the "export to Excel" button and running a quick formula against the data. On the short list of follow-up questions would be, "How do I improve my application's score?" That's an answer for another time, though.

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How do developer get rid of silly requirements?

- by sugar

Hmm ! First of all let me give you the note of the requirement. So that you can have idea what kind of problem I am facing. Words From Project Manager : Hey ! Sugar, I am assigning you a task for developing a framework. This framework is supposed to be developed for all iOS application. Please go through brief of the required framework. It should be able to detect the thickness of my Thumb. It should be able to detect whether User is using thumb or Fingers If user is using thumbs/Fingers, Framework should calculate the size of thumb/fingers. Once size is been calculated, all elements of user interface should arranged & resized automatically. ( not specified how & where as its framework - it should be smart enough to arrange automatically ) If thumb size is larger elements should get arranged near by center area of iPad/iPhone If thumb size is smaller elements should get arranged near by corners of iPad/iPhone If thumb size is larger, fonts of all elements should get smaller. ( assuming = aged person ) If thumb size is smaller, fonts of all elements should get larger. ( assuming smaller thumb = low aged person ) Summary : This framework is required for creating user-friendly user-interfaces programmatically. We need to develop a very developer-friendly framework. Framework should be developed in such a way that we can use in as many projects as needed. Well, I am a developer. What I want to have as an answer is as follows. How to describe them - the way of they thinking is bit ridiculous ? How do I explain them - we can better concentrate on developing actual projects ? How do I convince them - that this kind of things even if possible, is not recommended to develop such things ? How do I say politely, gently & respectfully NO to this ? What should I say, So that they can not point at my experience ? ( e.g. you are 3 years experienced guy & you must have abilities to develop such things ) Feeling horror. Please help. Thanks in advance, Sugar. Note : Please help me to tag this question properly. I am stuck & this is real situation. Frustrated & tensed. You guys might have faced such requirements from TopLevel. requesting you to help with your experience. Well ! I came to know that - those TOPLEVEL guys don't have any idea of iPad, iPhone, Apple etc. I would do one thing. Sir, before we go further for framework development. It is strongly recommended to read Apple Human Interface Guidlines.

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Impressions on jQuery Mobile

- by Jeff

For the uninitiated, jQuery Mobile is a sweet little client framework that turns regular HTML into something more touch and mobile friendly. It results in a user interface that has bigger targets, rounded corners and simple skinning capability. When it was announced that ASP.NET MVC 4 would include support for a mobile-sensitive view engine, offering up alternate views for clients that fit the mobile profile, I was all over that. Combined with jQuery Mobile, it brought a chance to do some experimentation. I blitzed through the views in POP Forums and converted them all to mobile views. (For the curious, this first pass can be found here on CodePlex, while a more recent update that uses RC 2 of jQuery Mobile v1.1.0 is running on the demo site.) Initially, it was kind of a mixed bag. The jQuery demo site also acts as documentation, and it’s reasonably complete. I had no problem getting up a lot of basic views quickly, splitting out portions of some pages as subpages that they quickly load in. The default behavior in the older version was to slide the pages in, which looked a little weird when you were using a back button. They’ve since changed it so the default transition is a fade in/out. Because you’re dealing with Web pages, I don’t think anyone is really under the illusion that you’re not using a native app, so I don’t know that this matters. I’ve tested extensively on iPad and Windows Phone, and to be honest, I’ve encountered a lot of issues. On Windows Phone, there is some kind of inconsistency that prevents the proper respect for the viewport settings. The text background on text fields (for labeling) doesn’t work, either. On both platforms, certain in-DOM page navigation links work only half of the time. Is this an issue of user error? Probably, but that’s what’s frustrating about it. Most of what you accomplish with this framework involves decorating various elements with CSS classes. There isn’t any design-time safety to speak of to make sure that you’re doing it right. I think the issues can be overcome, but there are some trade-offs to consider. The first is download size. Yes, the scripts and CSS do get cached, but that first hit will cost nearly 40k for the mobile parts. That’s still a lot when you’re on some crappy AT&T EDGE network, or hotel Wi-Fi. Then you have to ask yourself, do you really want your app to look like it’s native to iOS? I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, because consistent UI is good, but you will end up feeling a whole lot of sameness, and maybe you don’t want that. I did some experimentation to try and Metro-ize the jQuery Mobile theme, and it’s kind of a mixed bag. It mostly works, but you get some weirdness on badges and with buttons that I’m not crazy about. It probably just means you need to keep tweaking. At this point, I’m a little torn about whether or not I’ll use it for POP Forums or one of the sites I’m working on. The benefits are pretty strong, but figuring out where I’m doing it wrong is proving a little time consuming.

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Octree subdivision problem

- by ChaosDev

Im creating octree manually and want function for effectively divide all nodes and their subnodes - For example - I press button and subnodes divided - press again - all subnodes divided again. Must be like - 1 - 8 - 64. The problem is - i dont understand how organize recursive loops for that. OctreeNode in my unoptimized implementation contain pointers to subnodes(childs),parent,extra vector(contains dublicates of child),generation info and lots of information for drawing. class gOctreeNode { //necessary fields gOctreeNode* FrontBottomLeftNode; gOctreeNode* FrontBottomRightNode; gOctreeNode* FrontTopLeftNode; gOctreeNode* FrontTopRightNode; gOctreeNode* BackBottomLeftNode; gOctreeNode* BackBottomRightNode; gOctreeNode* BackTopLeftNode; gOctreeNode* BackTopRightNode; gOctreeNode* mParentNode; std::vector<gOctreeNode*> m_ChildsVector; UINT mGeneration; bool mSplitted; bool isSplitted(){return m_Splitted;} .... //unnecessary fields }; DivideNode of Octree class fill these fields, set mSplitted to true, and prepare for correctly drawing. Octree contains basic nodes(m_nodes). Basic node can be divided, but now I want recursivly divide already divided basic node with 8 subnodes. So I write this function. void DivideAllChildCells(int ix,int ih,int id) { std::vector<gOctreeNode*> nlist; std::vector<gOctreeNode*> dlist; int index = (ix * m_Height * m_Depth) + (ih * m_Depth) + (id * 1);//get index of specified node gOctreeNode* baseNode = m_nodes[index].get(); nlist.push_back(baseNode->FrontTopLeftNode); nlist.push_back(baseNode->FrontTopRightNode); nlist.push_back(baseNode->FrontBottomLeftNode); nlist.push_back(baseNode->FrontBottomRightNode); nlist.push_back(baseNode->BackBottomLeftNode); nlist.push_back(baseNode->BackBottomRightNode); nlist.push_back(baseNode->BackTopLeftNode); nlist.push_back(baseNode->BackTopRightNode); bool cont = true; UINT d = 0;//additional recursive loop param (?) UINT g = 0;//additional recursive loop param (?) LoopNodes(d,g,nlist,dlist); //Divide resulting nodes for(UINT i = 0; i < dlist.size(); i++) { DivideNode(dlist[i]); } } And now, back to the main question,I present LoopNodes, which must do all work for giving dlist nodes for splitting. void LoopNodes(UINT& od,UINT& og,std::vector<gOctreeNode*>& nlist,std::vector<gOctreeNode*>& dnodes) { //od++;//recursion depth bool f = false; //pass through childs for(UINT i = 0; i < 8; i++) { if(nlist[i]->isSplitted())//if node splitted and have childs { //pass forward through tree for(UINT j = 0; j < 8; j++) { nlist[j] = nlist[j]->m_ChildsVector[j];//set pointers to these childs } LoopNodes(od,og,nlist,dnodes); } else //if no childs { //add to split vector dnodes.push_back(nlist[i]); } } } This version of loop nodes works correctly for 2(or 1?) generations after - this will not divide neightbours nodes, only some corners. I need correct algorithm. Screenshot All I need - is correct version of LoopNodes, which can add all nodes for DivideNode.

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Texture errors in CubeMap

- by shade4159

I am trying to apply this texture as a cubemap. This is my result: Clearly I am doing something with my texture coordinates, but I cannot for the life of me figure out what. I don't even see a pattern to the texture fragments. They just seem like a jumble of different faces. Can anyone shed some light on this? Vertex shader: #version 400 in vec4 vPosition; in vec3 inTexCoord; smooth out vec3 texCoord; uniform mat4 projMatrix; void main() { texCoord = inTexCoord; gl_Position = projMatrix * vPosition; } My fragment shader: #version 400 smooth in vec3 texCoord; out vec4 fColor; uniform samplerCube textures void main() { fColor = texture(textures,texCoord); } Vertices of cube: point4 worldVerts[8] = { vec4( 15, 15, 15, 1 ), vec4( -15, 15, 15, 1 ), vec4( -15, 15, -15, 1 ), vec4( 15, 15, -15, 1 ), vec4( -15, -15, 15, 1 ), vec4( 15, -15, 15, 1 ), vec4( 15, -15, -15, 1 ), vec4( -15, -15, -15, 1 ) }; Cube rendering: void worldCube(point4* verts, int& Index, point4* points, vec3* texVerts) { quadInv( verts[0], verts[1], verts[2], verts[3], 1, Index, points, texVerts); quadInv( verts[6], verts[3], verts[2], verts[7], 2, Index, points, texVerts); quadInv( verts[4], verts[5], verts[6], verts[7], 3, Index, points, texVerts); quadInv( verts[4], verts[1], verts[0], verts[5], 4, Index, points, texVerts); quadInv( verts[5], verts[0], verts[3], verts[6], 5, Index, points, texVerts); quadInv( verts[4], verts[7], verts[2], verts[1], 6, Index, points, texVerts); } Backface function (since this is the inside of the cube): void quadInv( const point4& a, const point4& b, const point4& c, const point4& d , int& Index, point4* points, vec3* texVerts) { quad( a, d, c, b, Index, points, texVerts, a.to_3(), b.to_3(), c.to_3(), d.to_3()); } And the quad drawing function: void quad( const point4& a, const point4& b, const point4& c, const point4& d, int& Index, point4* points, vec3* texVerts, const vec3& tex_a, const vec3& tex_b, const vec3& tex_c, const vec3& tex_d) { texVerts[Index] = tex_a.normalized(); points[Index] = a; Index++; texVerts[Index] = tex_b.normalized(); points[Index] = b; Index++; texVerts[Index] = tex_c.normalized(); points[Index] = c; Index++; texVerts[Index] = tex_a.normalized(); points[Index] = a; Index++; texVerts[Index] = tex_c.normalized(); points[Index] = c; Index++; texVerts[Index] = tex_d.normalized(); points[Index] = d; Index++; } Edit: I forgot to mention, in the image, the camera is pointed directly at the back face of the cube. You can kind of see the diagonals leading out of the corners, if you squint.

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Oracle ties social, CRM, analytics products to customer experience

- by Richard Lefebvre

Oracle will embark on a new product strategy that centers on customer experience management, an approach driven by the company’s many recent acquisitions. The new approach, announced by the company Monday night, will be seen in an expansive suite that features familiar Oracle products -- such as its Fusion CRM platform -- and offerings the company recently gained through acquisitions, including FatWire, RightNow and Vitrue. Billed as Oracle Customer Experience (CX), the suite enables businesses to respond to a market centered on the customer experience, said Anthony Lye, the company’s senior vice president of CRM. Companies “are very aware their products are commoditizing,” Lye said in an interview last week, referring to how the Web and social media channels have empowered customers. Customer experiences start and mature outside of CRM, and applications today need to reflect that shift, Lye said. Businesses thus need to step away from a pure CRM model, he said. Oracle claims CX will improve customer experience management by connecting businesses with customers across Web sites and social channels. Companies can create a single, real-time view of the customer and use predictive analytics of interactions to strengthen the customer experience, Oracle said. “Companies have to connect with their customers wherever, whenever and however they want,” Lye said. “They have to know and understand their customer.” Lye promoted Oracle CX as a suite that will work across channels to complement the company’s applications. A new strategy has been “cooking” for years now, but the acquisitions Oracle has made over the past two years made the time right for a “unique collaboration,” Lye said. CX includes basic Oracle CRM solutions such as Siebel and the new Fusion Apps. It also includes the company’s MDM products, Enterprise Data Quality, Customer Hub and Product Hub. And the suite is rounded out by the services that Oracle recently bought, transactions that created or enhanced the company’s presence in social, marketing, e-commerce and customer service. For instance, FatWire provides tools for marketing. ATG focuses on e-commerce. And RightNow specializes in customer service. Two recent acquisitions -- Collective Intellect and Vitrue -- gave Oracle a seat at the social table. Collective Intellect is a social intelligence program, and Vitrue is a social marketing and engagement platform. Those acquisitions have yet to be finalized. Oracle hopes to eventually integrate the two social offerings, as well as most of the other services, into the CX suite. CX can integrate on Oracle’s standard middleware, and can give users a lower TCO by leveraging it as a single stack on premise or as a cloud solution. Lye deferred questions about the pricing of CX, and instead pitched Oracle’s ability to offer multiple customer experience solutions in one suite. Businesses have struggled with the complexity of infrastructure and modern services that communicate with customers, Lye said. “They’ve struggled to pull all these things together. We’ve done that,” he said. Stephen Powers, a research director at Forrester Research Inc. in Cambridge, Mass., said it’s not surprising for Oracle to offer the CX suite and a related customer experience strategy. “They’ve got CRM, ATG, FatWire. Clearly, it’s been the strategy for them,” he said. But the challenge for Oracle, and for any other vendor that has gone on an “acquisition spree,” is to connect its many products, Powers said. “The portfolio has to be more than the parts. They’ve got to realize the efficiencies and value of having these pieces to tie them together,” he said. “The proof is in the pudding. Adobe has done a nice job in its space with the products they’ve got. Now, Oracle has got to show it has something.” Albert McKeon (SearchCRM) Published: 25 Jun 2012 : http://searchcrm.techtarget.com/news/2240158644/Oracle-ties-social-CRM-analytics-products-to-customer-experience

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Introducing the Metro User Interface on Windows 2012

- by andywe

Although I am a big fan of using PowerShell to do many of my server operations, that aspect is well covered by those far more knowledgeable than I, and there is vast information around the web already on that. The new Metro interface, and getting around both Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 though is relatively new, even for those whop ran the previews. What is this? A blank Desktop! Where did the start button go? Well, it is still there...sort of. It is hidden, and acts like an auto hidden component that appear only when the mouse is hovered over the lower left corner of the screen. Those familiar with Gnome or OSX can relate this to the "Hot Corners" functions. To get to the start button, hover your mouse in the very left corner of the task bar. Let it sit there a moment, and a small blue square with colored tiles in it called start will appear. Click it. I clicked it and now I have all the tiles..What is this? Welcome to the Metro interface. This is a much more modern look, and although at first seems weird and cumbersome, I have actually found that it is a bit more extensible, allowing greater organization and customization than the older explorer desktop. If you look closely, you'll see each box represents either a program, or program group. First, a few basics about using the start view. First and foremost, a right mouse click will bring up a bar on the bottom, with an icon towards the right. Notice it is titled “All Apps”. An even easier way in many places is to hover your mouse in the exact opposite corner, in the upper right. A sidebar will open and expose what used to be a widget bar (remember Vista?), and there are options for Search, Start, and Settings. Ok Great, but where is everything? It’s all there…Click the All Apps icon. Look better? Notice the scroll bar at the bottom. Move it right..your desktop is sized to your content..so you can have a smaller, or larger amount of programs exposed. Each icon can be secondary clicked (right mouse click for most of us, and an options bar at the bottom, rather than the old small context menu, is opened with some very familiar options. Notice the top of the Windows Explorer window has some new features. You still have your right mouse click functions, but since the shortcuts for these items already exist..just copy them. There are many ways, but here is a long way to show you more of the interface. 1. Right mouse click a program icon, and select the Open File Location option. 2. Trusty file manager opens…but if you look closely up at top edge of the window, you’ll see a nifty enhancement. An orange colored box that is titled Shortcut Tools and another lavender box Title Application tools. Each of these adds options at the top of the file manager window to make selection easy. Of course, you can still secondary click an item in the listing window too. 3. Click shortcut tools, right click your app shortcut and copy it. Then simply paste it into the desktop outside the File Explorer window Also note some of the newer features. The large icons up top below the menu that has many common operations. The options change as you select each menu item. Well, that’s it for this installment. I hope this helps you out.

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windows firewall broken on server 2008

- by Chloraphil

This evening I tried to rdp into my server 2008 box and was unable to. After poking around some I discovered that something is awry with my Windows Firewall. I did install 5 windows updates remotely earlier today but rolled those back in an attempt to see if that fixed the problem but had no luck. Symptoms: cannot rdp to machine (including from itself) cannot ping machine cannot connect to file share on machine error message when attempting to open "windows firewall with advanced security" snap-in (there was an error opening the windows firewall with advanced security snap-in ... The Windows Firewall with Advanced Security snap-in failed to load. Restart the windows firewall service on the computer that you are managing. Error code: 0x6D9. When I opened the "user-friendly" Windows Firewall it failed to load most of the gui elements, meaning, the title bar with close, minimize, and maximize buttons is present, the rest of the window has a white background with a yellow rectangle with rounded corners and a yellow triangle w/ an exclamation point is in the upper right. hope that made sense "Windows Firewall" does not appear in the list of services I ran a virus scan that found nothing. How do I fix the firewall and hopefully restore the ability to rdp? EDIT: Added at fission's request: c:\sc query mpsdrv SERVICE_NAME: mpsdrv TYPE : 1 KERNEL_DRIVER STATE : 4 RUNNING (STOPPABLE, NOT_PAUSABLE, IGNORES_SHUTDOWN) WIN32_EXIT_CODE : 0 (0x0) SERVICE_EXIT_CODE : 0 (0x0) CHECKPOINT : 0x0 WAIT_HINT : 0x0 c:\sc query mpssvc SERVICE_NAME: mpssvc TYPE : 20 WIN32_SHARE_PROCESS STATE : 1 STOPPED WIN32_EXIT_CODE : 1068 (0x42c) SERVICE_EXIT_CODE : 0 (0x0) CHECKPOINT : 0x0 WAIT_HINT : 0x0 Those two registry keys do exist: HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\mpsdrv & HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MpsSvc ! The problem seems to be with the Base Filtering Engine, when I try to start it I get the following error: Windows could not start the Base Filtering Engine service on MYCOMPUTER. Error 15100: The resource loader failed to find MUI file. EDIT2: I ran sfc /scannow and i found about 100 occurrences of "[SR] Cannot repair member file"... including several related to the firewall (ex: [l:32{16}]"Firewall.cpl.mui" of Networking-MPSSVC.Resources...). One of them mentioned wordpad.exe, which I tried to open, and it failed. I found here mentions of mounting the install.wim on the install media to copy the affected files over. I am downloading the appropriate AIK and will continue tomorrow evening.

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XNA Notes 007

- by George Clingerman

Every week I keep wondering if there’s going to be enough activity in the community to keep doing these notes on a weekly basis and every week I’m reminded of just how awesome and active the XNA community is. There’s engines being made, tutorials being created, games being crafted. There’s information being shared, questions being answered and then there’s another whole community around the Xbox LIVE Indie Games themselves. It’s really incredibly to just watch all that’s going on and I’m glad I’m playing a small part in all of this. So here’s what I noticed happening in the XNA community last week. If there’s things I’m missing, always feel free to let me know. I love learning about new corners of the XNA community that I wasn’t aware of or just have been missing! XNA Developers: Uditha Bandara held an XNA Game Development Workshops at Singapore Universities http://uditha.wordpress.com/2011/02/18/xna-game-development-workshops-at-singapore-universities-event-update/ Binary Tweed gives his talks about Indie City and gives his opinion on the false promise of digital distribution http://www.develop-online.net/news/37053/OPINION-The-false-promise-of-digital-distribution Kris Steele posts his Trivia or Die postmortem http://www.krissteele.net/blogdetails.aspx?id=246 @MadNinjaSkills (James Johnston) posts his feelings on testing for XBLIG http://www.ezmuze.co.uk/101 Simon (@DDReaper) posts hints and tips for XNA developers to help get the size of their projects down http://twitter.com/#!/DDReaper/status/38279440924545024 http://xna-uk.net/blogs/darkgenesis/archive/2011/02/17/look-at-the-size-of-that-thing.aspx Michael B. McLaughlin proving why he should be an XNA MVP posts the list of commonly used value types in XNA games http://geekswithblogs.net/mikebmcl/archive/2011/02/17/list-of-commonly-used-value-types-in-xna-games.aspx http://twitter.com/#!/mikebmcl/status/38166541354811392 Paul Powell (@ITSligoPaul) posts about a common sprite batch as a game service http://itspaulsblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/xna-common-sprite-batch-as-game-service.html @SigilXNA (John Defenbaugh) posts his new level editor video for the sequel to Opac’s Journey http://twitter.com/SigilXNA/statuses/36548174373982209 http://twitter.com/#!/SigilXNA/status/36548174373982209 http://youtu.be/QHbmxB_2AW8 @jwatte updates kW Animation for XNA 4.0 http://www.enchantedage.com/xna-animation @DSebJ posts Blender to SunBurn http://twitter.com/#!/DSebJ/status/36564920224976896 http://dsebj.evolvingsoftware.com/?p=187 Ads and WP7 Games - @mechaghost shares his revenue data for his ad based games http://www.occasionalgamer.com/2011/02/09/ads-and-wp7-games/ Xbox LIVE Indie Games (XBLIG): Steven Hurdle posts day 100 of his quest to find a fantastic XBLIG purchase every day http://writingsofmassdeduction.com/2011/02/17/day-100-radiangames-ballistic/ Xbox 360 Indie Game Buying Guide - 12 games for $60 including several Xbox LIVE Indie games! (although if the XNA community was asked we could have recommended 60 games for $60...) http://www.indiegamemag.com/xbox360-indie-games-buying-guide/ The best selling Xbox LIVE Indie games of 2010 http://www.1up.com/news/xbox-live-most-popular-games I’d buy that for a dollar! - the California Literary Review points out a few gems on the XBLIG marketplace (and other places) where you can game on the cheap. http://calitreview.com/14125 Armless Octopus Episode 39 - The Indie Gem Octocast http://www.armlessoctopus.com/2011/02/17/armless-octocast-episode-39-the-indie-gem-octocast/ Ska Studios posts a plethora of updates http://www.ska-studios.com/2011/02/11/good-morning-gato-49/ http://www.ska-studios.com/2011/02/14/vampire-smile-valentines/ http://www.ska-studios.com/2011/02/16/the-dishwasher-vs-finds-a-home/ Kotaku posts about the Xbox LIVE Indie Game that makes you go Pew Pew Pew Pew Pew Pew http://kotaku.com/#!5760632/the-game-that-makes-you-go-pew-pew-pew-pew-pew-pew-pew GameMarx continues to be active and doing a ton for the XBLIG community reviews and Top 5 indie games of the week 2/4-2/10 http://www.gamemarx.com/video/the-show/22/ep-9-february-11-2010.aspx a new podcast Xbox Indie New Releases http://twitter.com/#!/gamemarx/status/36888849107910656 http://www.gamemarx.com/news/2011/02/13/a-new-podcast-xbox-indie-new-releases.aspx @MasterBlud uploads Indocalypse XBLIG Collections #2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzCZSv075mc&feature=youtu.be&a http://twitter.com/#!/MasterBlud/status/37100029697064960 Just Press Start interviews Michael Hicks from MichaelArts, 18 year old creator of Honor in Vengeance http://justpressstart.net/?p=465 Achievement Locked interviews Kris Steele of FunInfused Games http://xboxindies.wordpress.com/2011/02/11/interview-fun-infused-games/ XNA Game Development: XNA -UK launches their XAP test service to help the XNA community http://xna-uk.net/blogs/news/archive/2011/02/18/xna-uk-xap-test-service-now-live.aspx Transmute shows off a video of the standard character editor http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqH6gErG948&feature=youtu.be Microsoft Tech Student introduces their first tech student of the month. Meet Daniel Van Tassel from the University of Utah and learn how he created an Xbox LIVE Indie Game using XNA Studio http://blogs.msdn.com/b/techstudent/archive/2010/12/22/introducing-our-first-tech-student-of-the-month-daniel-van-tassel.aspx XNA for Silverlight Developers Part 3 - Animation (transforms) http://www.silverlightshow.net/items/XNA-for-Silverlight-developers-Part-3-Animation-transforms.aspx XNA for Silverlight Developers Part 4 - Animation (frame based) http://www.silverlightshow.net/items/XNA-for-Silverlight-developers-Part-4-Animation-frame-based.aspx @suhinini tweets about an XNA Sprite Font generation tool http://twitter.com/#!/suhinini/status/36841370131890176 http://www.nubik.com/SpriteFont/ XNATouch 1.5 is out and in it’s words is faster, simpler, more reliable and has the XNA 4.0 API http://monogame.codeplex.com/releases/view/60815 IndieCity is hosting marketing workshops for Indie Developers (UK and US) http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/75197/457654.aspx#457654 New York Students - Learn XNA and Silverlight for Xbox 360 and Windows Phone 7 http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/72753/456964.aspx#456964 http://blogs.msdn.com/b/andrewparsons/archive/2011/01/13/learn-to-build-your-own-games-for-xbox-360-and-windows-phone-7.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/andrewparsons/archive/2011/01/13/build-a-game-in-48-hours-win-a-kinect-or-windows-phone-7.aspx Extra Credits: Videogame Music http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/2019-Videogame-Music Steve Pavlina posts an article with useful information for all XNA/XBLIG developers http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2011/02/completion-vs-perfection/

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The ASP.NET Daily Community Spotlight - How posts get there, and how to make it your Visual Studio Start Page

- by Jon Galloway

One really cool part of my job is selecting the articles for the Daily Community Spotlight, on the home page of the ASP.NET website. The spotlight highlights a new post about ASP.NET development every day from a member of the ASP.NET community. You can find it on the home page of the ASP.NET site, at http://asp.net These posts aren't automatically drawn from a pool of RSS feeds or anything - I pick a new post for each day of the year. How I pick the posts I have a few important selection criteria: Interesting to well rounded ASP.NET developers The ASP.NET website has a lot of material for all skill and experience levels, from download / get started to advanced. I try to select community spotlight posts to round that out with fresh and timely information that working ASP.NET developers can really use. Posts highlight solutions to common problems, clever projects and code that helps you leverage ASP.NET, and important announcements about things you can use today. As part of that, I try to mix between ASP.NET MVC, Web Forms, and Web Pages (a.k.a. WebMatrix). As a professional developer, I want to keep on top of all of my options for ASP.NET development, and the common platform base they all share generally means that good ASP.NET code is good ASP.NET code. Exposing new and non-Microsoft community members as much as possible The exercise of selecting good ASP.NET community posts every day of the year has made me think about what the community is. Given the choice, I'll always favor non-Microsoft employees, but since Microsoft often hires ASP.NET community members and MVP's (myself included), I really think that the ASP.NET community includes developers who are using and writing about ASP.NET, both inside and outside of Microsoft. I'm especially excited about the opportunity to highlight new and lesser known bloggers. Usually being featured on the ASP.NET Community Spotlight gives a pretty good traffic bump, and I love being able to both provide great content to the community and encourage lesser known community members by giving them some (much deserved) attention. Announcements only when they're useful to working developers - not marketing Some of the posts are announcements about new releases, such as Scott Hanselman's post on ASP.NET Universal Providers for Session, Memebership, and Roles. I include those when I think they're interesting and of immediate use to you on projects. I occasionally get asked to link to new content from a team at Microsoft; if it's useful and timely content I'll ask them to point me to a blog post by an actual person rather than a faceless team. How the posts are managed This feed used to be managed by an internal spreadsheet on a Sharepoint site, which was painful for a lot of reasons. I took a cue from Jon Udell, who uses of a public Delicious feed feed for his Elm City project, and we moved the management of these posts over to a Delicious feed as well. You can hear more about Jon's use of Delicious in Elm City in our Herding Code interview - still one of my favorite interviews. We ended up with a simpler scenario, but Note: I watched the Yahoo/Delicious news over the past year and was happy to see that Delicious was recently acquired by the founders of YouTube. I investigated several other Delicious competitors, but am happy with Delicious for now. My Delicious feed here: http://www.delicious.com/jon_galloway You can also browse through this past year's ASP.NET Community Spotlight posts using the (pretty cool) Delicious Browse Bar Submitting articles I'm always on the lookout for new articles to feature. The best way to get them to me is to share them via Delicious. It's pretty easy - sign up for an account, then you can add a post and share it to me. Alternatively, you can send them to me via Twitter (@jongalloway) or e-mail (). If you do e-mail me, it helps to include a short description and your full name so I can credit you. Way too many developer blogs don't include names and pictures; if I can't find them I can't feature the post. Subscribing to the Community Spotlight feed The Community Spotlight is available as an RSS feed, so you might want to subscribe to it: http://www.asp.net/rss/spotlight Setting the ASP.NET Community Spotlight feed as your Visual Studio start page If you're an ASP.NET developer, you might consider setting the ASP.NET Community Spotlight as the content for your Visual Studio Start Page. It's really easy - here's how to do it in Visual Studio 2010: Display the Visual Studio Start Page if it's not already showing (View / Start Page) Click on the Latest News tab and enter the following RSS URL: http://www.asp.net/rss/spotlight If you didn't previously have RSS feeds enabled for your start page, click the Enable RSS Feed button Now, every time you start up Visual Studio you'll see great content from members of the ASP.NET community: You can also configure - and disable, if you'd like - the Visual Studio start page in the Tools / Options / Environment / Startup dialog. Credits I'll do a follow-up highlighting some places I commonly find great content for the feed, but I'd like to specifically point out two of them: Elijah Manor posts a lot of great content, which is available in his Twitter feed at @elijahmanor, on his Delicious feed, and on a dedicated website - Web Dev Tweets Chris Alcock's The Morning Brew is a must-read blog which highlights each day's best blog posts across the .NET community. He's an absolute machine, and no matter how obscure the post I find, I can guarantee he'll find it as well if he hasn't already. Did I say must read?

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HTML5 and CSS3 Editing in Windows Live Writer

- by Rick Strahl

Windows Live Writer is a wonderful tool for editing blog posts and getting them posted to your blog. What makes it nice is that it has a small set of useful features, plus a simple plug-in model that has spawned many useful add-ins. Small tool with a reasonably decent plug-in model to extend equals a great solution to a simple problem. If you're running Windows, have a blog and aren’t using Live Writer you’re probably doing it wrong…One of Live Writer’s nice features is that it can download your blog’s CSS for preview and edit displays. It lets you edit your content inside of the context of that CSS using the WYSIWYG editor, so your content actually looks very close to what you’ll see on your blog while you’re editing your post. Unfortunately Live Writer renders the HTML content in the Web Browser Control’s default IE 7 rendering mode. Yeah you read that right: IE 7 is the default for the Web Browser control and most applications that use it, are stuck in this modus unless the application explicitly overrides this default. The Web Browser control does not use the version of Internet Explorer installed on the system (IE 10 on my Win8 machine) but uses IE 7 mode for ‘compatibility’ for old applications.If you are importing your blog’s CSS that may suck if you’re using rich HTML 5 and CSS 3 formatting. Hack the Registry to get Live Writer to render using IE 9 or 10In order to get Live Writer (or any other application that uses the Web Browser Control for that matter) to render you can apply a registry hack that overrides the Web Browser Control engine usage for a specific application. I wrote about this in detail in a previous blog post a couple of years back.Here’s how you can set up Windows Live Writer to render your CSS 3 by making a change in your registry:The above is for setup on a 64 bit machine, where I configure Live Writer which is a 32 bit application for using IE 10 rendering. The keys set are as follows:32bit Configuration on 64 bit machine:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\FeatureControl\FEATURE_BROWSER_EMULATIONKey: WindowsLiveWriter.exeValue: 9000 or 10000 (IE 9 or 10 respectively) (DWORD value)On a 32 bit only machine: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\FeatureControl\FEATURE_BROWSER_EMULATIONKey: WindowsLiveWriter.exeValue: 9000 or 10000 (IE 9 or 10 respectively) (DWORD value)Use decimal values of 9000, 10000 or 11000 to specify specific versions of Internet Explorer. This is a minor tweak, but it’s nice to actually see my blog posts now with the proper CSS formatting intact. Notice the rounded borders and shadow on the code blocks as well as the overflow-x and scrollbars that show up. In this particular case I can see what the code blocks actually look like in a specific resolution – much better than in the old plain view which just chopped things off at the end of the window frame. There are a few other elements that now show properly in the editor as well including block quotes and note boxes that I occasionally use. It’s minor stuff, but it makes the editing experience better yet and closer to the final things so there are less republish operations than I previously had. Sweet!Note that this approach of putting an IE version override into the registry works with most applications that use the Web Browser control. If you are using the Web Browser control in your own applications, it’s a good idea to switch the browser to a more recent version so you can take advantage of HTML 5 and CSS 3 in your browser displayed content by automatically setting this flag in the registry or as part of the application’s startup routine if not dedicated setup tool is used. At the very least you might set it to 9000 (IE 9) which supports most of the basic CSS3 features and is a decent baseline that works for most Windows 7 and 8 machines. If running pre-IE9, the browser will fall back to IE7 rendering and look bad but at least more recent browsers will see an improved experience.I’m surprised that there aren’t more vendors and third party apps using this feature. You can see in my first screen shot that there are only very few entries in the registry key group on my machine – any other apps use the Web Browser control are using IE7. Go figure. Certainly Windows Live Writer should be writing this key into the registry automatically as part of installation to support this functionality out of the box, but alas since it does not, this registry hack lets you get your way anyway…Resources.reg Files to register Live Write Browser Emulation (set for IE9)Specifying Internet Explorer Version for ApplicationsSnagIt LiveWriter Plug-inDownload Windows Live WriterDownload Windows Live Writer with Chocolatey© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2013Posted in Live Writer Windows Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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Shadow mapping with deffered shading for directional lights - shadow map projection problem

- by Harry

I'm trying to implement shadow mapping to my engine. I started with directional lights because they seemed to be the easiest one, but I was wrong :) I have implemented deferred shading and I retrieve position from depth. I think that there is the biggest problem but code looks ok for me. Now more about problem: Shadow map projected onto meshes looks bad scaled and translated and also some informations from shadow map texture aren't visible. You can see it on this screen: http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/2254/93dn.png Yelow frustum is light frustum and I have mixed shadow map preview and actual scene. As you can see shadows are in wrong place and shadow of cone and sphere aren't visible. Could you look at my codes and tell me where I have a mistake? // create shadow map if(!_shd)glGenTextures(1, &_shd); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, _shd); glTexImage2D(GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0, GL_DEPTH_COMPONENT, 1024, 1024, 0, GL_DEPTH_COMPONENT, GL_FLOAT,NULL); // shadow map size glTexParameterf(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER, GL_NEAREST); glTexParameterf(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, GL_NEAREST); glTexParameterf(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_S, GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE); glTexParameterf(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_T, GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE); glFramebufferTexture2D(GL_DRAW_FRAMEBUFFER, GL_DEPTH_ATTACHMENT, GL_TEXTURE_2D, _shd, 0); glDrawBuffer(GL_NONE); // setting camera Vector dire=Vector(0,0,1); ACamera.setLookAt(dire,Vector(0)); ACamera.setPerspectiveView(60.0f,1,0.1f,10.0f); // currently needed for proper frustum corners calculation Vector min(ACamera._point[0]),max(ACamera._point[0]); for(int i=0;i<8;i++){ max=Max(max,ACamera._point[i]); min=Min(min,ACamera._point[i]); } ACamera.setOrthogonalView(min.x,max.x,min.y,max.y,-max.z,-min.z); glBindFramebuffer(GL_DRAW_FRAMEBUFFER, _s_buffer); // framebuffer for shadow map // rendering to depth buffer glBindFramebuffer(GL_DRAW_FRAMEBUFFER, _g_buffer); Shaders["DirLight"].set(true); Matrix4 bias; bias.x.set(0.5,0.0,0.0,0.0); bias.y.set(0.0,0.5,0.0,0.0); bias.z.set(0.0,0.0,0.5,0.0); bias.w.set(0.5,0.5,0.5,1.0); Shaders["DirLight"].set("textureMatrix",ACamera.matrix*Projection3D*bias); // order of multiplications are 100% correct, everything gives mi the same result as using glm glActiveTexture(GL_TEXTURE5); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D,_shd); lightDir(dir); // light calculations Vertex Shader makes nothing related to shadow calculatons Pixel shader function which calculates if pixel is in shadow or not: float readShadowMap(vec3 eyeDir) { // retrieve depth of pixel float z = texture2D(depth, gl_FragCoord.xy/screen).z; vec3 pos = vec3(gl_FragCoord.xy/screen, z); // transform by the projection and view inverse vec4 worldSpace = inverse(View)*inverse(ProjectionMatrix)*vec4(pos*2-1,1); worldSpace /= worldSpace.w; vec4 coord=textureMatrix*worldSpace; float vis=1.0f; if(texture2D(shadow, coord.xy).z < coord.z-0.001)vis=0.2f; return vis; } I also have question about shadows specifically for directional light. Currently I always look at 0,0,0 position and in further implementation I have to move light frustum along to camera frustum. I've found how to do this here: http://www.gamedev.net/topic/505893-orthographic-projection-for-shadow-mapping/ but it doesn't give me what I want. Maybe because of problems mentioned above, but I want know your opinion. EDIT: vec4 worldSpace is position read from depht of the scene (not shadow map). Maybe I wasn't precise so I'll try quick explain what is what: View is camera view matrix, ProjectionMatrix is camera projection,. First I try to get world space position from depth map and then multiply it by textureMatrix which is light view *light projection*bias. Rest of code is the same as in many tutorials. I can't use vertex shader to make something like gl_Position=textureMatrix*gl_Vertex and get it interpolated in fragment shader because of deffered rendering use so I want get it from depht buffer. EDIT2: I also tried make it as in Coding Labs tutorial about Shadow Mapping with Deferred Rendering but unfortunately this either works wrong.

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Create Advanced Panoramas with Microsoft Image Composite Editor

- by Matthew Guay

Do you enjoy making panoramas with your pictures, but want more features than tools like Live Photo Gallery offer? Here’s how you can create amazing panoramas for free with the Microsoft Image Composite Editor. Yesterday we took a look at creating panoramic photos in Windows Live Photo Gallery. Today we take a look at a free tool from Microsoft that will give you more advanced features to create your own masterpiece. Getting Started Download Microsoft Image Composite Editor from Microsoft Research (link below), and install as normal. Note that there are separate version for 32 & 64-bit editions of Windows, so make sure to download the correct one for your computer. Once it’s installed, you can proceed to create awesome panoramas and extremely large image combinations with it. Microsoft Image Composite Editor integrates with Live Photo Gallery, so you can create more advanced panoramic pictures directly. Select the pictures you want to combine, click Extras in the menu bar, and select Create Image Composite. You can also create a photo stitch directly from Explorer. Select the pictures you want to combine, right-click, and select Stitch Images… Or, simply launch the Image Composite Editor itself and drag your pictures into its editor. Either way you start a image composition, the program will automatically analyze and combine your images. This application is optimized for multiple cores, and we found it much faster than other panorama tools such as Live Photo Gallery. Within seconds, you’ll see your panorama in the top preview pane. From the bottom of the window, you can choose a different camera motion which will change how the program stitches the pictures together. You can also quickly crop the picture to the size you want, or use Automatic Crop to have the program select the maximum area with a continuous picture. Here’s how our panorama looked when we switched the Camera Motion to Planar Motion 2. But, the real tweaking comes in when you adjust the panorama’s projection and orientation. Click the box button at the top to change these settings. The panorama is now overlaid with a grid, and you can drag the corners and edges of the panorama to change its shape. Or, from the Projection button at the top, you can choose different projection modes. Here we’ve chosen Cylinder (Vertical), which entirely removed the warp on the walls in the image. You can pan around the image, and get the part you find most important in the center. Click the Apply button on the top when you’re finished making changes, or click Revert if you want to switch to the default view settings. Once you’ve finished your masterpiece, you can export it easily to common photo formats from the Export panel on the bottom. You can choose to scale the image or set it to a maximum width and height as well. Click Export to disk to save the photo to your computer, or select Publish to Photosynth to post your panorama online. Alternately, from the File menu you can choose to save the panorama as .spj file. This preserves all of your settings in the Image Composite Editor so you can edit it more in the future if you wish. Conclusion Whether you’re trying to capture the inside of a building or a tall tree, the extra tools in Microsoft Image Composite Editor let you make nicer panoramas than you ever thought possible. We found the final results surprisingly accurate to the real buildings and objects, especially after tweaking the projection modes. This tool can be both fun and useful, so give it a try and let us know what you’ve found it useful for. Works with 32 & 64-bit versions of XP, Vista, and Windows 7 Link Download Microsoft Image Composite Editor Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Change or Set the Greasemonkey Script Editor in FirefoxNew Vista Syntax for Opening Control Panel Items from the Command-lineTune Your ClearType Font Settings in Windows VistaChange the Default Editor From Nano on Ubuntu LinuxMake MSE Create a Restore Point Before Cleaning Malware 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 Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 Get a free copy of WinUtilities Pro 2010 World Cup Schedule Boot Snooze – Reboot and then Standby or Hibernate Customize Everything Related to Dates, Times, Currency and Measurement in Windows 7 Google Earth replacement Icon (Icons we like) Build Great Charts in Excel with Chart Advisor

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Off center projection

- by N0xus

I'm trying to implement the code that was freely given by a very kind developer at the following link: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/142383-Code-sample-Off-Center-Projection-Code-for-VR-CAVE-or-just-for-fun Right now, all I'm trying to do is bring it in on one camera, but I have a few issues. My class, looks as follows: using UnityEngine; using System.Collections; public class PerspectiveOffCenter : MonoBehaviour { // Use this for initialization void Start () { } // Update is called once per frame void Update () { } public static Matrix4x4 GeneralizedPerspectiveProjection(Vector3 pa, Vector3 pb, Vector3 pc, Vector3 pe, float near, float far) { Vector3 va, vb, vc; Vector3 vr, vu, vn; float left, right, bottom, top, eyedistance; Matrix4x4 transformMatrix; Matrix4x4 projectionM; Matrix4x4 eyeTranslateM; Matrix4x4 finalProjection; ///Calculate the orthonormal for the screen (the screen coordinate system vr = pb - pa; vr.Normalize(); vu = pc - pa; vu.Normalize(); vn = Vector3.Cross(vr, vu); vn.Normalize(); //Calculate the vector from eye (pe) to screen corners (pa, pb, pc) va = pa-pe; vb = pb-pe; vc = pc-pe; //Get the distance;; from the eye to the screen plane eyedistance = -(Vector3.Dot(va, vn)); //Get the varaibles for the off center projection left = (Vector3.Dot(vr, va)*near)/eyedistance; right = (Vector3.Dot(vr, vb)*near)/eyedistance; bottom = (Vector3.Dot(vu, va)*near)/eyedistance; top = (Vector3.Dot(vu, vc)*near)/eyedistance; //Get this projection projectionM = PerspectiveOffCenter(left, right, bottom, top, near, far); //Fill in the transform matrix transformMatrix = new Matrix4x4(); transformMatrix[0, 0] = vr.x; transformMatrix[0, 1] = vr.y; transformMatrix[0, 2] = vr.z; transformMatrix[0, 3] = 0; transformMatrix[1, 0] = vu.x; transformMatrix[1, 1] = vu.y; transformMatrix[1, 2] = vu.z; transformMatrix[1, 3] = 0; transformMatrix[2, 0] = vn.x; transformMatrix[2, 1] = vn.y; transformMatrix[2, 2] = vn.z; transformMatrix[2, 3] = 0; transformMatrix[3, 0] = 0; transformMatrix[3, 1] = 0; transformMatrix[3, 2] = 0; transformMatrix[3, 3] = 1; //Now for the eye transform eyeTranslateM = new Matrix4x4(); eyeTranslateM[0, 0] = 1; eyeTranslateM[0, 1] = 0; eyeTranslateM[0, 2] = 0; eyeTranslateM[0, 3] = -pe.x; eyeTranslateM[1, 0] = 0; eyeTranslateM[1, 1] = 1; eyeTranslateM[1, 2] = 0; eyeTranslateM[1, 3] = -pe.y; eyeTranslateM[2, 0] = 0; eyeTranslateM[2, 1] = 0; eyeTranslateM[2, 2] = 1; eyeTranslateM[2, 3] = -pe.z; eyeTranslateM[3, 0] = 0; eyeTranslateM[3, 1] = 0; eyeTranslateM[3, 2] = 0; eyeTranslateM[3, 3] = 1f; //Multiply all together finalProjection = new Matrix4x4(); finalProjection = Matrix4x4.identity * projectionM*transformMatrix*eyeTranslateM; //finally return return finalProjection; } // Update is called once per frame public void FixedUpdate () { Camera cam = camera; //calculate projection Matrix4x4 genProjection = GeneralizedPerspectiveProjection( new Vector3(0,1,0), new Vector3(1,1,0), new Vector3(0,0,0), new Vector3(0,0,0), cam.nearClipPlane, cam.farClipPlane); //(BottomLeftCorner, BottomRightCorner, TopLeftCorner, trackerPosition, cam.nearClipPlane, cam.farClipPlane); cam.projectionMatrix = genProjection; } } My error lies in projectionM = PerspectiveOffCenter(left, right, bottom, top, near, far); The debugger states: Expression denotes a `type', where a 'variable', 'value' or 'method group' was expected. Thus, I changed the line to read: projectionM = new PerspectiveOffCenter(left, right, bottom, top, near, far); But then the error is changed to: The type 'PerspectiveOffCenter' does not contain a constructor that takes '6' arguments. For reasons that are obvious. So, finally, I changed the line to read: projectionM = new GeneralizedPerspectiveProjection(left, right, bottom, top, near, far); And the error I get is: is a 'method' but a 'type' was expected. With this last error, I'm not sure what it is I should do / missing. Can anyone see what it is that I'm missing to fix this error?

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Cardinality Estimation Bug with Lookups in SQL Server 2008 onward

- by Paul White

Cost-based optimization stands or falls on the quality of cardinality estimates (expected row counts). If the optimizer has incorrect information to start with, it is quite unlikely to produce good quality execution plans except by chance. There are many ways we can provide good starting information to the optimizer, and even more ways for cardinality estimation to go wrong. Good database people know this, and work hard to write optimizer-friendly queries with a schema and metadata (e.g. statistics) that reduce the chances of poor cardinality estimation producing a sub-optimal plan. Today, I am going to look at a case where poor cardinality estimation is Microsoft’s fault, and not yours. SQL Server 2005 SELECT th.ProductID, th.TransactionID, th.TransactionDate FROM Production.TransactionHistory AS th WHERE th.ProductID = 1 AND th.TransactionDate BETWEEN '20030901' AND '20031231'; The query plan on SQL Server 2005 is as follows (if you are using a more recent version of AdventureWorks, you will need to change the year on the date range from 2003 to 2007): There is an Index Seek on ProductID = 1, followed by a Key Lookup to find the Transaction Date for each row, and finally a Filter to restrict the results to only those rows where Transaction Date falls in the range specified. The cardinality estimate of 45 rows at the Index Seek is exactly correct. The table is not very large, there are up-to-date statistics associated with the index, so this is as expected. The estimate for the Key Lookup is also exactly right. Each lookup into the Clustered Index to find the Transaction Date is guaranteed to return exactly one row. The plan shows that the Key Lookup is expected to be executed 45 times. The estimate for the Inner Join output is also correct – 45 rows from the seek joining to one row each time, gives 45 rows as output. The Filter estimate is also very good: the optimizer estimates 16.9951 rows will match the specified range of transaction dates. Eleven rows are produced by this query, but that small difference is quite normal and certainly nothing to worry about here. All good so far. SQL Server 2008 onward The same query executed against an identical copy of AdventureWorks on SQL Server 2008 produces a different execution plan: The optimizer has pushed the Filter conditions seen in the 2005 plan down to the Key Lookup. This is a good optimization – it makes sense to filter rows out as early as possible. Unfortunately, it has made a bit of a mess of the cardinality estimates. The post-Filter estimate of 16.9951 rows seen in the 2005 plan has moved with the predicate on Transaction Date. Instead of estimating one row, the plan now suggests that 16.9951 rows will be produced by each clustered index lookup – clearly not right! This misinformation also confuses SQL Sentry Plan Explorer: Plan Explorer shows 765 rows expected from the Key Lookup (it multiplies a rounded estimate of 17 rows by 45 expected executions to give 765 rows total). Workarounds One workaround is to provide a covering non-clustered index (avoiding the lookup avoids the problem of course): CREATE INDEX nc1 ON Production.TransactionHistory (ProductID) INCLUDE (TransactionDate); With the Transaction Date filter applied as a residual predicate in the same operator as the seek, the estimate is again as expected: We could also force the use of the ultimate covering index (the clustered one): SELECT th.ProductID, th.TransactionID, th.TransactionDate FROM Production.TransactionHistory AS th WITH (INDEX(1)) WHERE th.ProductID = 1 AND th.TransactionDate BETWEEN '20030901' AND '20031231'; Summary Providing a covering non-clustered index for all possible queries is not always practical, and scanning the clustered index will rarely be optimal. Nevertheless, these are the best workarounds we have today. In the meantime, watch out for poor cardinality estimates when a predicate is applied as part of a lookup. The worst thing is that the estimate after the lookup join in the 2008+ plans is wrong. It’s not hopelessly wrong in this particular case (45 versus 16.9951 is not the end of the world) but it easily can be much worse, and there’s not much you can do about it. Any decisions made by the optimizer after such a lookup could be based on very wrong information – which can only be bad news. If you think this situation should be improved, please vote for this Connect item. © 2012 Paul White – All Rights Reserved twitter: @SQL_Kiwi email: [email protected]

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